They leave Timni alone, for a little. Plotting away, no doubt, aboard the palatial pleasure-yacht, to the hull of which Timni’s dingy little ship is docked like a tick on a racehorse.
When the exterior panel finally pages her again, she groans and drags her feet. It’s not the Empress — she would never ask permission to board; but no matter how sincerely she tells anyone else to leave her alone, all of them are the Empress’ things. The March-Admiral’s majordomo, no matter how sincerely he disembarked, can be ordered back to Timni at the slightest whim of their glorious masters, and if that is a problem, it is Timni’s problem to have.
It is not the majordomo, however; it is the March-Admiral herself.
“Lady,” Timni says, shoulders falling into a familiar cower. “Your — Notability.” She thinks she recalled that correctly. “I don’t know what’s correct — if I should bow or—”
“Nonsense, Captain,” the March-Admiral says. “None of that,” and extends her arm.
Timni peers at it in much the way she would an outthrust venomous snake. She recognises the gesture solely from video dramas; like a swooning gentleperson or ballroom dance partner, she is being given a elbow to cling to. To be escorted. She restrains herself from taking a step back, but not from the first flinch of the impulse.
The March-Admiral watches her, superficially soft. She does not retract the iron demand of her arm.
“I wouldn’t dare dirty your sleeve,” Timni mutters eventually.
“Captain Timni,” the March-Admiral says quietly, “I have known Her Effulgence, the Empress, since she was only as tall as my knee, and my hope to see her alive was almost gone. You see only the immense disparity between us; I would like to ensure you also see my human gratitude for her safety.”
“She did that herself,” Timni says, shrugging bloodlessly.
“Your friend on Vana offered to throw her in a trash compactor,” the March-Admiral says, with perfect equanimity, and waves away Timni’s blanch. “But you see? It would have been exactly so easy to be rid of her. Or at any of your many port stays, you could have gone ashore and told the Omnijanissaries that you were being terrorised aboard your own vessel by a violent fugitive. Or a million other things you did not do.”
“I’m low, not entirely inhuman,” Timni says bitterly, “She entrusted me to carry her away from murder; I don’t need your thanks for not carrying it out myself,” and then she remembers herself and contracts like a snail.
The March-Admiral watches all of it, calm and shrewd and still pretending softness.
“Captain Timni,” she says. “You’re going to take my arm and come along with me. If your hands are dirty, and my sleeve is stained — well, that’s simply what will happen.”
Timni accidentally meets her eyes for a moment, and flinches as though shocked by a loose wire. She fidgets, as though internally fighting the last costly actions of a war already inevitably lost; haltingly, hating it, she lifts her own clumsy hand to paw nervously at the March-Admiral’s elbow.
The March-Admiral gently covers Timni’s hand with her own, arranges it to satisfaction, and leads her into the wide gangways of the noble yacht. At stately pace, she takes Timni to a lavish stateroom, stares her down until she sits in an upholstered chair — trying to cringe away from actually touching any of it — and puts a tall glass of water in front of her without asking. It has cubes of ice floating in it. Timni stares at it.
She misses it, if the March-Admiral makes any signal or touches a console, but scarcely an awkward minute later, a liveried steward pushes in a trolley and puts a plate of food in front of her.
Timni’s jaw locks with outrage.
“Captain?” the March-Admiral says, looking at her looking at the plate.
“I’d nearly been fooled into thinking this your idea,” Timni says through her teeth. “But I see Her Effulgence is still hard at work micromanaging her tiny Empire’s food intake.”
“Captain Timni,” the March-Admiral says, in crisp rebuff, “you are a guest. I do not need Imperial orders to have a meal prepared for you; I have been offering the hospitality of my house before either you or Her Effulgence were born. Eat.”
Timni wilts. Half stammers out something, then gives up. Meekly picks up her chopsticks.
“I have heard Her Effulgence’s account of her activities,” the March-Admiral says, leaning back in her chair. “I am curious — particularly after your remarks to Lyrus — to hear yours.”
Browbeaten, then debriefed.
“I don’t know what I can add to Her Paramount Majesty’s own telling,” Timni says, dispiritedly poking a vegetable. She is not certain, but she thinks she can identity it; if she could afford to refit with the refrigeration equipment to ship it, she could instantly make an order of magnitude more money per voyage. She cannot afford to buy it to eat. “I am not in her confidence, Your Notability; I merely do as I’m told.”
“Then start with the things you’ve been told,” the March-Admiral says gently, and Timni looks at her plate and thinks: March-Admiral, and thinks: she doesn’t know exactly what kind of title it is, but presumably military. The Empress’ small Empire has expanded to, at the least, a strategist.
Haltingly, pushing the meal around her plate (until sternly reminded: Eat!) she tells the March-Admiral everything. When she reaches the gun-henry parts, the March-Admiral props her chin on her hand, elbow on the arm of her chair, and looks simultaneously half-asleep and dangerous, like some kind of a cat, and begins to ask questions.
“Obviously,” Timni finds herself tiredly explaining, “Her Effulgence, lacking any resource beyond herself, has created this persona as a means of leveraging popular sentiment behind a folk hero figure. The Imperial regime is never truly popular; and she can simply run from any failed uprising and let the rebels take the reprisals in her stead, but claim responsibility for a success. Uprisings in themselves are evidence the regime lacks the Mandate of Heaven; successes, proof. At some point, the masked gun-henry folk hero either unmasks to be the Empress returned, or shuffled back as a general of the Empress returned, with some other face behind the scarf. Her campaign is its own proof; she has the Mandate, and can, must, and will regain the throne.”
The March-Admiral makes a noise in her throat, eyes half closed. “Our efforts found no record of standard educational testing for you, at the confinement-house,” she mentions diffidently.
“I made a poor student,” Timni says, and shrugs, uneasily defensive. “The confinement-house had metrics to maintain, and with the uncertain number and provenance of children there, they could simply maintain them by — omitting problem children from consideration, where necessary.”
The March-Admiral opens her eyes, rolls them to the ceiling, and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Interesting,” she says. “Illuminating, I suppose, of the pragmatic attitude you have to bureaucratic systems and their circumvention — our very systems taught you it.”
Timni shrugs again, and puts the last crunchy green thing into her mouth to chew.
“Timni,” the March-Admiral says. “Might I call you Timni?”
Timni swallows. “Her Notability can choose to call me anything,” she says, dreading what unforeseeable horror she is about to be dealt.
“Your analysis is fascinating, Timni,” the March-Admiral says, and smiles toothily. “I do believe, if Her Effulgence listened to you at all, she would have overthrown a district or two by now. Really, I don’t know whether or not I regret that the two of you haven’t been fulfilling your potential.”
Timni’s mouth dries up. She shrinks back against the chair cushions.
“Timni,” the March-Admiral says, in a friendly sort of tone, “your analysis of Her Imperial Effulgence is wrong in almost every single particular, because you are superstitiously terrified of her and attribute her some kind of privileged hypercompetence. We’ll work on that, because you see, Her Imperial Effulgence is a stupid fucking teenager who’s never been alone before and has had no idea at all what she’s doing.”
Timni is sure, suddenly, that she will throw up. She clasps the back of her hand to her mouth; whimpers.
“We’re all under too much scrutiny to openly help her,” the March-Admiral says. “And, as you reasoned out yourself, the watchfulness is evidence the usurpers are tipped off that she survived. I’ll send you on with what resources I can, but you’ll have to be her minder a little longer, Timni, while her allies create some manoeuvring space.” She leans forward, a sleek predator. “You can do that for me, can’t you, Timni?”
