“Oh!” she said. “Books!”
“Beg pardon, ma’am?” I said.
“Did my books arrive, Din?”
“Oh. Yes, ma’am. They’re waiting on the porch. I would have taken them in, but I was distracted by your torture of the captain.”
“And now you torture me with your attempt at wit,” she said. “But if you would be so kind…”
I bowed, went to the door, and paused to look back with my hand on the knob.
“Eyes averted!” she said. Her face was turned to the corner of the meeting room. “My eyes are averted!”
Once I confirmed she would not see out, I opened the door, snatched up the pile of books, hauled them in, and shut the door. Instantly she was behind me, wriggling one long, pale finger beneath the knot of twine and ripping it apart.
“Took ages this time,” she growled. “Two weeks! Can you believe it? Two goddamn weeks to get these to me.”
“Must be very hard to go so long without a decent crab book, ma’am.”
“You’ve no idea.” She flung them open one after another, shutting her eyes and feeling the pages. Though most of her skin was a pale gray, her fingertips were pink—altered through a graft, I guessed, to be so hypersensitive she could read printed and occasionally handwritten text by touch alone. Which she did quite a bit, since she spent a huge amount of the day blindfolded. Best to keep the senses limited, she’d explained once. And stay indoors. Too much stimulation drives a person mad.
As I watched her rip through each book, I wondered, not for the first time, how I’d be able to tell in her case. I assumed her afflictions had something to do with her augmentations—even though I had never been told exactly in what manner her mind had been augmented.
“Ahh,” Ana said. She rubbed the page of the crab book in a distinctly sensual manner. “This is a book from the Rathras canton. I can tell by the imprints. Their printing presses were first built to publish their holy books, in their language, so some letters slope to the left very slightly…Thank you for fetching these, Din. They should keep me occupied for a day or so.”
“A day, ma’am?” I said.
“Oh. Do you think it less, Din?” she said, worried.
“Can’t say, ma’am.”
“Or should I have gotten more books, Din?”
“Can’t really say, ma’am.”
A taut pause.
“Is it possible for you to say a sentence,” she said, “that is more than ten words in length, Din?”
I hazarded a glance into her pale yellow gaze and suppressed a smirk. “Could, ma’am,” I said.
“I do so admire,” she said, “how you can be a flippant shit with a mere handful of syllables. Quite a talent.” With a sigh she stood, tottered back to her meeting room, and flopped down in her chair.
I followed, then stood at attention at the doorway. She stared around at the room and all its half-finished projects. A slightly despondent look crept over her face.
“Now that I think about it, Din,” she said, “I just might be going a little fucking mad in here.”
“Very sorry to hear that, ma’am.”
She picked up a small situr harp and absently plucked at it. “Mostly,” she said, “because nothing ever happens in this dull little canton. And the books take so long to arrive.”
I was now familiar with these moods. First the elation of a new idea, new problem, new toy; and then, having unraveled it, a crushing melancholy. The only thing to do was give her a new one.
“Well, speaking of which, ma’am,” I said, “this morning I—”
“It pains me to say that it’s all far more tolerable when you’re around,” she said. “You’re so grim and so serious and so dull, Din, that you keep me very grounded.”
“I will attempt to take that as a compliment, ma’am,” I said. “But that’s why I wanted to te—”
“But your position on my standing request,” she said, “is still the same?”
I shot her a stern look. “Could you clarify, ma’am?”
“You know damned well what I mean.” She leaned forward, grinning. “Will you finally buy me some damned moodies? I’d stop interrogating people if you did!”
“The purchase of mood-altering grafts is strictly outlawed among officers of the Imperial Iyalets,” I said stolidly. “And I don’t break policy, ma’am. Being as I want to keep my position, you see.”