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some identity with, and the result was near-constant emotional distress.
    She was feeling all right today, though, from what I could see. “Don’t mention it, Lieutenant.”
    “Sir.” She wanted, I saw, to bring something up before we got into the shuttle. “System Governor Giarod is a problem.” System Governor Giarod had been appointed by the same authority that had sent me here to Athoek System. In theory we were allies in the cause of keeping this system safe and stable. But she had passed information to my enemies, just days ago, and that had very nearly gotten me killed. And while it was possible she hadn’t realized it at the time, she surely knew it now. But no word of that from her, no explanation, no apology, no acknowledgment of any kind. Just this edge-of-disrespectful summons to the station. “At some point,” Tisarwat continued, “I think we’re going to need a new system governor.”
    “I doubt Omaugh Palace is going to send us a new one anytime soon, Lieutenant.”
    “No, sir,” replied Tisarwat. “But I could do it. I could be governor. I’d be good at it.”
    “No doubt you would, Lieutenant,” I said, evenly. I turned, ready to push myself over the boundary between Mercy of Kalr ’s artificial gravity and the shuttle’s lack of it. Saw that though Tisarwat had held herself absolutely still at my words, she had been hurt by my response. The pain was dulled by meds, but still there.
    Being who she was, she had to know I would oppose her bid to be system governor. I still lived only because Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch, thought or hoped that I might be a danger to her enemy. But of course, Anaander Mianaai’senemy was herself. I didn’t care particularly which faction of the Lord of the Radch emerged victorious—they were all, as far as I was concerned, the same. I would just as soon see her entirely destroyed. An aim that was well beyond my ability, but she knew me well enough to know that I would do what damage I could, to all of her. She had hijacked the unfortunate Lieutenant Tisarwat in order to be near enough to control that damage as much as she could. Tisarwat herself had said as much to me, not long after we’d arrived at Athoek Station.
    And days ago Tisarwat herself had said, Do you understand, sir, that we’re both doing exactly what she wants? She being Anaander Mianaai. And I had said that I didn’t care much what the Lord of the Radch wanted.
    I turned back. Put my hand on Tisarwat’s shoulder. Said, more gently, “Let’s get through today first, Lieutenant.” Or even through the next few weeks or months or more. Radch space was big. The fighting that was happening in the provincial palaces might reach us here at Athoek tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Or it might burn itself out in the palaces and never arrive here at all. But I wouldn’t bet on that.
    We often speak casually of distances within a single solar system—of a station’s being near a moon or a planet, of a gate’s being near a system’s most prominent station—when in fact those distances are measured in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of kilometers. And a system’s outstations could be hundreds of millions, even billions, of kilometers from those gates.
    Days before, Mercy of Kalr had been truly, dangerously close to Athoek Station, but now it was only near in a relative sense. We would be a whole day on the shuttle. Mercy of Kalr could generate its own gates, shortcuts around normal space,and could have gotten us there much more quickly, but gating close up to a busy station risked colliding with whatever might be in your path as you came out of gate-space. Ship could have done it—had, in fact, quite recently. But for now it was safer to take the shuttle, which was too small to generate its own gravity, let alone make its own gate. Governor Giarod’s problem, whatever it was, would have to wait.
    And I had plenty of time to consider what I might find on the station.