THERE WERE NO guards present when Kes took her walks in Eva’s company. Only the officer’s visored aide, Teo, stood unobtrusively by the doorway into the complex: a distant, nonthreatening presence she quickly learned to ignore. Ilanya gave her pleasant enough conversation to interrupt the monotony of her days.
“Why do you do this?” she asked abruptly as they strolled the perimeter of the parking dome. “Surely you have better things to do than to walk with me?”
“If you come out here, you have to be escorted. I volunteered.” Eva gave a half shrug. “It’s obvious the guards were getting on your nerves. I thought this would be easier for you.”
“Hm.” It was, and it was exactly the kind of small consideration she had grown to appreciate in this PolitDiv officer. She would not question this kindness in unexpected places; she was grateful for it, actually. It made the mystery of her incarceration—oh, no, “extended visit,” as Eva called it—a little more bearable.
Still, that mystery was something she could not let rest. “So … are you done with all your tests?” she asked.
Eva glanced at her with her sharp blue gaze. “They’re not ‘my’ tests,” she corrected. “They’re Dr. Metmuri’s. I don’t know, exactly, what that status is.”
“When can I go?”
“When he says you’re done.”
“When can I see him to ask?”
Eva gave a short laugh. “You are nothing if not persistent, I’ll give you that. Look.” She came to a halt by a private aircar. Kes stopped and turned towards her. “Here’s a question for you—a self-assessment, if you will.”
As usual, Eva neatly sidestepped anything she did not want to talk about; Kes knew to let the subject rest. “You don’t need to answer,” the officer continued, “but I’m curious about this. You have a service oath to your House, yes?”
Kes nodded.
“But you’re not full Sa’adani.” Eva gestured loosely towards caste marks that were not there. The ruby stud earrings that Kes wore—until they’d been taken from her—marked her occupation as entertainer, a low-ranking order, but she understood Eva to mean she had not been born into a proper Sa’adani family. “So what keeps you in service there, really?”
Kes’s brow furrowed. That was almost an offensive question. To ask what bound her to Palumara House besides an adoption oath was to question whether she would honor her duties and obligations. She kept a check on her temper and answered as bluntly.
“My mother was Sa’adani, and my father one-eighth. So I have more honor-sense than the casteless, if that’s what you’re asking. As for Palumara … I have a debt of roi’tas with them, because they helped me and because they’ve given me a home. I honor that.”
Even as she said those words, Kes wondered how true they were. She yearned to be accepted as Sa’adani, like her mother: to have an unassailable niche of place and person that didn’t lose value because of someone’s whim or attitude. She had celebrated being taken into the clan … but did she feel an honor-debt in the way that a born Sa’adani would? Perhaps not. For her it was a creed adopted in the same way her house affiliation was: because it took her closer to what she wanted to be. She was not so certain how much of that she had truly become. Yet.
Eva studied her for a moment, an appraising look upon her face. “So what motivates you to do as your House wishes?” she persisted. “Duty, devotion, or self-interest?”
Kes was taken aback. Eva read her hesitation and brushed it off with a laugh. “Most people are driven by self-interest; few are devoted. Even in honoring roi’tas, that formula holds true.”
“Are you saying I honor my House oath out of self-interest?”
Eva’s lips quirked briefly. “I’m not saying anything. But it is an interesting question, is it not?”
She turned away and continued their walk. It was a moment before Kes fell into step with her again.
EVA SAT WITH Teo in her office, the matasai sitting at her invitation but holding himself at attention nonetheless. Ilanya closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “Gods, this wears on me. I’m tired of nursemaiding this one.”
“It’s been successful so far,” Teo observed. “When she sees you, and especially when you interact, her physiology changes. Relaxation of tension.”
“I sense it in her aura, too. Metmuri was right about bonding under stress. She has rather latched on to me.”
“And the clone will be as kindly disposed towards you as the Prime is,” remarked Teo. “How do you think it will play when you ask her to kill Janus?”
Eva frowned. “That would be a rather ham-handed way to get into the matter.”
“What’s your in, then?”
“She knows she has a client we consider a danger, and that she’s being ‘enhanced’ to help us deal with him. All that remains is to give her a personal motivation to deal with him herself. I’m saving that tidbit for her clone. That aggressive, uninhibited version of herself with minimal impulse control. The one that will be happy to take out her anger and resentment on our target.”
“I thought she had a cordial relationship with Janus?”
“She does. What she doesn’t realize yet is the role he played in her personal downfall and consignment to life as a shigasa.”
“You mean his connection to the Icechromers? They’re a Red Hand subsidiary, but nearly a quarter of the derevin on Lyndir are.”
“More than that. They’re one of his street gangs, and he’s the boss of their boss. Kes hates the Icechromers with a passion, but doesn’t yet realize who is behind them. Even more, she harbors a grudge about being manipulated into debt-slavery, as well she ought. She covers it up—can’t afford to stew in those juices, I think, not while she must work within the debt-contract system. But that land mine is already primed and armed. She alludes to those things in her past, and I feel the energy she carries around them.” A calculating expression crossed Eva’s face. “When she is stripped down to a singular aggressive persona, those emotions will be a chord ripe for the plucking.”
“You think she’ll be reactive to Janus’s role in her situation?”
“I’m certain of it. She’ll justify killing because her Eosan and I have asked it of her, but she’ll do it willingly to strike at someone responsible for her servitude these last years.”
“Is that a strong enough motivator?”
Eva regarded her matasai. “Would you kill whoever ordered the assassination attempt that nearly destroyed your body and left you … like this?” She gestured at his half-cyborg frame with a languid wave of her hand.
“Gladly.” His response was terse.
She nodded. “The shigasa feels no less destroyed. She had a very different life before she was consigned to a joyhouse and fucked at the whim of the people who put her there. This Kes has rationalized her anger and resentment about those life changes, tried to come to terms with it all. She must, of course, to function.” She shrugged. “But strip that layer of rationalization away—as we’re about to do—and I’ve already felt what’s there beneath the surface. When it’s the new Kes I’m dealing with, I’ll dangle the bait. I have no doubt she’ll bite.”
“Janus is returning to Port Oswin in three weeks now. Will you have enough time with the clone to foster the necessary attitude?”
“Yes. Metmuri is aging the clones to match Hinano’s apparent chron age. Once they’re vivified, my work shouldn’t take long. Oh.” She leaned forward. “I still want an insurance policy in place.”
“Domna?”
“A tried and true method, in case the clone hits a balking point.”
“You’ll want sensation amps, I assume, to implant? Or a chip detonator?”
“Both. Pleasure-wire for persuasion, a chip-mounted microcharge as fail-safe.” Ilanya nodded. “I want all my insurance in place before I dispatch the clone that will kill Janus.”