Kimia stayed with Yira for a little while longer.
Something about having another person in the room appeared to break whatever obstruction had been sitting between Yira and the music.
Not inspiration exactly.
Movement.
Yira played the phrase again.
Six notes.
Pause.
Four.
Then she suddenly stopped, grabbed the pencil, and wrote something quickly enough that the tip snapped.
“Damn it.”
She discarded it. Found another. Wrote.
Kimia watched from the bed.
Yira turned toward the computer terminal and opened a note-roll editor. A black field appeared filled with horizontal lines, measures divided into little illuminated columns, all of it green. She entered several notes with the keyboard, listened to the machine play them back in a sterile approximation of an orchestra, frowned, changed two, then listened again.
The phrase became recognizable.
Not finished.
Alive.
Kimia smiled.
Yira did not notice.
Good.
She did not want praise to interrupt the process.
Instead Kimia sat quietly and rolled her daughter's earlier words around inside her.
They’re paying me to know somezhing zhey don’t.
Interpretation. Translation. Add enough of oneself to make the request possible.
Perhaps that was all the interview had been. Perhaps that was half of government. People came to Kimia with something they wanted.
Security. Money. Approval. Permission. A road. A law. A guarantee.
Often they did not know exactly what they wanted until forced to explain it.
Kimia listened. Changed the wording. Changed the amount. Added something. Removed something. Then signed.
The thought pleased her for several seconds.
Then the kilcane made it larger.
Everything connected to everything.
Music to governance. Governance to acting. Acting to identity. Identity to-
No.
Kimia stood.
Enough.
Yira looked over.
“Leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“You alright?”
“Yes.”
A little slower this time.
“Yes.”
Yira watched her.
Kimia appreciated that she did not ask again.
“Good luck.”
“Wizh what?”
“Zhe music.”
Yira looked toward the terminal.
“I zhink I know what it's doing now.”
“Zhen don't let me get in zhe way.”
Kimia left.
The corridor outside was empty.
She walked perhaps twenty paces, then stopped.
The urge to continue somewhere had vanished, so she sat.
A chair stood beneath one of the corridor windows, upholstered in old dark-blue fabric. Kimia lowered herself into it and crossed one leg over the other.
She had nowhere immediately to be.
This should have been safe.
Instead her mind began moving again.
The interview. Yira. The Diet. Tilmuhl. Kilcane. Tarkhe. Her hand. The tiny cut. Vehm's debt. Ghi'cha's eye.
Everything came quickly enough to remain distinct but not long enough to settle.
Kimia looked out the window.
Clouds moved over Peshtul.
She counted them.
One.
No.
That was stupid.
She counted windowpanes instead.
Eight.
Then sixteen if divided along the smaller muntins.
Then-
Footsteps.
Kimia recognized them before Tarkhe appeared around the corner.
He carried the leather case.
Of course.
The physician saw her sitting there and slowed.
“Kimia.”
“Tarkhe.”
“I need to ask you about something.”
She looked toward him.
“What?”
He came closer. Not too close.
Perhaps he could still see the kilcane in her. Perhaps anyone could now that Yira had pointed it out.
“There is a neurologist at the Osmeryzhsa Medical Center.”
Kimia's stomach tightened before he finished.
Tarkhe noticed. He continued anyway.
“I want to make sure you're as ready as possible for the Diet.”
She stared at him.
There it was.
Medical evaluation. Tests. Questions. Some stranger studying the machinery she herself could barely operate.
Kimia's mind immediately produced a black circle around the idea.
Inside it:
Failure. Unfitness. Incompetence. Some written conclusion that said the duchess was no longer trustworthy. Some diagnosis that would turn everything she feared into a document.