By the fourth day Bastien had settled into his new routine. He came at first light bringing a bowl of petow. If I hadn't gotten used to the sickening white tubers by now, I wasn't going to.
Two guards were posted outside my door whether Ruvuk trusted me or not. If he did not trust me, he didn't want me to escape. If he did trust me, I had to be protected from the Strategoi who, I'm sure, would be just as happy with me dead or entirely under their control. Ruvuk, of course, knew that either of those possibilities would derail his plans for the Grand Assembly. After that, I had no idea what my future held.
Bastien, on the other hand, was free during the day in the grounds of the compound in which we were housed. At night, he was as confined as the rest of us were.
He always brought me news. Levet was short in the kitchens. This was more than just a complaint about flour. It showed a deeper supply chain issue.
The rotation officer had a new gash on his cheek. Nobody asked about it.
A Grand Assembly Delegate complained about his room.
Then, almost as an afterthought, in the same flat voice he used for everything he thought worth mentioning and nothing he thought worth dwelling on: "There's a young man been making his way through the kitchen. Working an angle on one of the water-girls, a Helot who works the east cistern."
He paused there wondering whether I was interested. I nodded.
"He was dressed like a Helot. Brown, same as her, same as everyone hauling water in that yard. But the weave's wrong. Too even. Dyed in one pass, not the dozen uneven ones a Helot's home dye actually takes. Whoever dressed him was going for unremarkable, the kind of plain that doesn't earn a second look from anyone who isn't already searching for something. They didn't count on anyone in Spartova who'd know enough to spot the difference."
"There's a line worn into his shoulder, high and narrow, exactly where a kit strap rides, the kind every Legion posting issues. A water-yoke wears a man's shoulders even, both sides, lower down. Whatever put that mark on him, it wasn't hauling buckets."
"Legion-trained, then."
"More than that. His build is slim but he carries himself like the elite postings do. He isn't supposed to be anywhere near that kitchen yard. Whatever they put a man through to get him trusted near an Imperial Relay Station, they don't train him to go looking for a Helot girl on his own time. Discipline doesn't slip that far by accident. Whatever he's spending to be in that yard instead of his post, it isn't worth what it costs him."
"Imperial Relay?"
"He told her. Plain as anything. Said he's an Imperial Relay operator, out of the Legate's compound. Proud of it." He smiled, almost laughed. "Proud of something he's spent years being told not to talk about. She didn't understand a word of it. She had no idea what an Imperial Relay operator was, so she just smiled at him. He saw that smile for exactly what it was. It didn't stop him." Bastien let that sit a moment. "A liar reaching for something to impress a girl picks a thing she'd actually understand. He picked the truth instead. He needed someone, anyone, to know what he was, even knowing it would mean nothing to her."
I knew the building he meant without being told which one. The Legate's compound had its own Needle, the tallest thing inside the walls of Spartova, visible from my window if I stood at the right angle and didn't mind the guards noticing I was looking. I assumed that whatever sat inside that compound was none of my business and never would be.
I thought of the office on the mountain above Heliqar. It felt like another world. A small brass device, passed across a desk. "It does a series of calculations that authenticate messages," Danio had told me, turning it over in my hand like something precious and slightly embarrassing at once. "Technically, possessing this is theft of military property. I'm supposed to have destroyed it. This one went out of effect three years ago. It's invalid. The Empire doesn't care about Heliqar, but the Order of the Axiom cares very much about its math. Keep that out of sight." I had kept it out of sight. I had never once been anywhere near someone who would know what they were looking at if I didn't.
"There's something that makes this relevant." I said.
Bastien went still.
"Danio gave me something before I left Heliqar."
"Danio? Heliqar's Imperial Observer?"
"And chief of Heliqar's Imperial Relay. He gave me a device. Small. Brass. It used to authenticate messages over the relay. The credential on it had already been expired three years by the time he put it in my hand. Possessing it at all is theft of military property. That's the only reason I never told you."
Bastien said nothing for a moment. "And now you intend to use it."
"Differently than it was built for."
"Then what is it for."
"Proof. I'm not going to ask him to authenticate anything with it. His training wouldn't allow that. He'd lose everything he's built for nothing. I know that. What I need from him is smaller than that: a small professional courtesy. He can see it and know that it was entrusted to me by someone of his own background. He may even know Danio personally. I get the impression that the Relay Operators are a tight-knit crowd. There are so few of them and their whole job is to talk to each other. I need him to see the thing and recognize exactly what it is. Once he does, he'll understand on his own that someone doesn't end up holding real Imperial relay hardware by accident. Once he believes that much, the rest of what I'm asking is small enough that a decent man does it just because he's decent."
Bastien considered this warily. "Once he's seen it, he may not just forget about it. They make sure of that on purpose. He has exactly one safe thing left to do: report it. Helping us costs him something real. Reporting costs him nothing."
"I know," I said. "I'm gambling that in his heart, he's a good person. Most people are. Even Ruvuk, despite being twisted by this place. Decommissioned hardware that's been sitting forgotten since before we ever reached Spartova may be just the kind of thing he'll be ok with."
Bastien nodded, understanding but not agreeing.
"Our things from the company are being kept in the storage room off the west passage, the one the household calls the baggage office. There's a gray dispatch chest among them, mine, with a cracked clasp on the front. Press flat against the back panel, near the left corner, and it gives. That's where it's been the whole time."
"And what do I tell him?"
"That I'm a foreign prisoner with men of my own still living, and a good friend gave me this before I ever set foot in Spartova, and I'd rather spend it now than die not knowing whether my parents ever learned what happened to the ones I brought here. Bring it to him exactly as it is, and let him hold it as long as he needs to. Then tell him there's a message that needs to reach the relay station at Heliqar, specifically, by name. No other post will do. Tell him to get word that all the men are alive. All of them, you included. And that we lost Olen."
Bastien gave Olen's memory a moment of silence. So did I. We had not said it to each other that plainly before, not in so few words.
"That's all of it," I said. "Nothing about Ruvuk. Nothing about the Strategoi, the tribunal, where we are or why any of this is happening. Just that. It costs him nothing to say, it's true, and it's the only thing I actually need someone in Heliqar to know if everything after this goes the way it might."
"If he agrees to it at all, how do we know it ever reaches anyone."
"We won't know. He may not have a real way to send something like this on his own authority. He may decide, once he's had a night to think it over, that helping a prisoner isn't worth anything to him at all. There are too many places for this to fail quietly, and no one is going to tell me which one did, if any of them did. I'd rather spend everything I have not knowing than keep it and spend the rest of whatever time I have left wondering if I should have."
Bastien did not repeat any of it back to me. I didn't ask him to. His memory was excellent.
"I'll find him in the kitchens today," he said. He paused at the door, tray balanced against his hip, and for a moment the careful blankness he wore for the guards slipped.
"Olen has been lost." He said it slowly. "First time either of us has said it that way, out loud."
"I know."
He held my eyes a moment longer than the words required. Then he was gone.