The Favor
On hot, hazy, summer days like this one, Enty was glad she went topless. She had lived with a sensory processing disorder since childhood, and the Harvester Maid of the 10th Order had never been able to stand the feeling of clothing against her skin. Winters were rough because of it, but that wasn't something she had to worry about right now.
The not-so-fun part was that her Arch Maid, Vindik Mal, had reassigned her to a working party for the week outside a small city called Velaeden. It sat between Belentine and the mining town of Furaela, nestled in the Arethanovi mountain range. On top of that, the work was backbreaking.
Velaeden's flood channels ran entirely above ground, a deliberate choice that kept the whole network accessible for maintenance without ever needing to break earth. The large channels were broad stone-cut runs that swept heavy rainfall away to the river, easy enough work for machinery. But branching off from those were dozens of smaller ones, hand-laid and narrow, that wound through the farm fields and between the hamlets like open veins. Too intricate for any machine to navigate without causing damage, they had to be cleared by hand before the autumn rains returned.
This part was going to hurt. Already Enty's back was aching as she clawed at the packed mud in a culvert that a machine couldn't easily reach. Her gloves were soaked with foul smelling mud and her protective trousers and boots were coated. On the nearby bank, her top lay folded in case she had to put it on for safety.
Across the channel, maids of Iron Forge Estate of House Irisik worked in silence.
The arrangement was civic obligation dressed up as cooperation. Iron Forge and Blue Blossom shared a sphere of influence over Velaeden and the hamlets scattered around it, which meant that when maintenance work came due neither house could simply send their people and call it done. Both had to show up. It was written into the old civic agreements that governed border territories like this one, a practical solution to the question of who was responsible for communities that sat between estates rather than inside them. In theory it demonstrated unified support to the civilians who lived and worked here. In practice it meant two houses that would cheerfully ruin each other given half a chance.
Enty glanced further down the channel. She had noticed them the moment they arrived that morning, and she thanked whatever god or goddess took pity on her that she was not a member of Iron Forge Estate or House Irisik. The senior maids were fully dressed despite the heat, every piece of their burnt orange to gold uniforms in place, accouterments worn like medals because to them that was exactly what they were. Below them it stepped down by degrees, less and less with each rank, until at the bottom the newest maids wore nothing but tall boots that came up to the knee. Every bit of comfort and protection in House Irisik was earned, and they only wore those boots thanks to the Imperial Contract Code's stipulation that maids must be protected from severe harm. Everything else was something they hadn't suffered enough to earn yet. Some of them worked stoically while others looked obviously miserable, which Enty supposed was also the point. Where her own party had shed layers and exchanged complaints with cheerful openness, the Irisik maids worked without commentary. No grumbling, no jokes passed between them, no pausing to stretch an aching back. Just the rhythmic scrape of tools against packed earth and the quiet of people who had decided that enduring without remark was the whole point.
She watched one of them for a moment, a tall maid working the opposite bank of the same channel, dragging a clogged mass of sediment free with her bare hands, on her knees and completely ignoring the fact that she was getting covered in it. No hesitation. She just crawled into the mud and fixed it.
Enty looked away before the woman could catch her looking.
The last thing anyone needed was for a staring contest to turn into something that got reported back. She could already imagine how it would read in whatever account House Irisik sent home.
Blue Blossom maid observed making provocative eye contact.
It sounded ridiculous when she put it that way. It would sound a great deal less ridiculous by the time it reached someone with the authority to make it into a problem.
“You're tense,” said Meklaer, working beside her without looking up from his own section.
“I'm fine.”
“If you keep gripping your tool that tight, your hands aren't going to make it to the end of the shift.” He shook his head.
Enty loosened her fingers and drove them under the lip of a packed mud clot instead, working it free. The smell hit her fresh and she grimaced. Across the channel the Irisik maid hadn't reacted to anything. Not the smell, not the heat, not the ache that Enty could see in the set of the woman's shoulders even if her face gave nothing away.
She made herself focus on the mud in front of her. Just the mud. Just this section of channel, this particular pocket of packed silt that needed to come loose.
It wasn't that she had anything against House Irisik personally. She didn't know any of them. That thought sat uncomfortably in her chest. Was she giving a bad impression? Reflecting poorly on her house and her lord? That was no small thing for someone oathed to the only estate in the Empire with a Terran Lord.
The footbridge was barely wide enough for two people to pass each other without turning sideways. It crossed one of the mid-sized channels, low enough that the wooden covering overhead forced anyone over a certain height to duck, and Enty had crossed it twice already that morning to move equipment between sections. She wasn't thinking about it the third time. Just her aching back and the fact that she was fairly sure she had mud somewhere it had no business being.
When it was time for lunch. It was loud on the Blue Blossom side.
Someone had started a complaint about the state of the equipment and it had evolved, as these things always did, into a broader discussion about everything wrong with the assignment, the location, the smell, and apparently sad sandwiches provided by the kitchens. Enty loved them for it. On any other day she would have been right in the middle of it, adding her own grievances to the pile with cheerful enthusiasm.
Today she peeled off quietly with her packed lunch and headed for the footbridge they used to cross multiple times to the work vehicle waiting for them.
The covering gave shade and that was reason enough. Her shoulders were starting to pink despite liberal application of tymor oil. She ducked under the low beam, settled herself against the side railing with her legs dangling over the edge, and pulled open her meal. Enty did her best not to squeal when she saw the sandwich there. Her Arch Maid actually got the kitchens to provide cucumber sandwiches...at least that's what she was told their Terran lord called them. He had actually had it imported to the estate specifically for the maids as a treat. She had never tried human food until she discovered these sandwiches. It was between two thick pieces of bread on top of a layer of doveluveeha, a soft cheese mixed with a hint of citrus juice.
Enty had picked up one half of the sandwich making sure her water bottle was close when she spotted her. She was about six feet away from her leaning against one of the supports in the shadow of the awning. The Blue Blossom maid was so focused on her lunch she hadn't seen the orange clad girl Irisik maid. The woman had short violet hair gathered into a ragged bun on the top of her head. Her matching eyes were large staring at her “enemy” who had just plopped down without thinking.
The two just stared at each other for a few moments before Enty spoke.
“Sorry. I didn't see you there.”
The other didn't respond as she just watched with a mixture of curiosity and fear.
“I'm Enty. Harvester Maid of the 10th Order of House Patton-Avernell.”
Half of the Blue Blossom maid expected her not to respond. Enty had only heard rumors about why the two houses don't like each other but that was well above her station.
“Raeva. Custodial Maid of the 6th Order of House Irisik.”
The silence reigned between them for a few moments before Enty just grinned and offered out half of her sandwich. “Colleague Raeva. Share a meal? It's a cucumber sandwich. From the Terran Confederacy.”
That definitely perked the woman's interest. Enty could see the keen curiosity take over. Silently the maid took the half of the sandwich, rummaged through her own pail of food and offered half a medium sized roll which Enty took.
“Daezak sausage roll. Imported from House Kolisai. We succeeded in our quota for ore extraction this month.”
“Congratulations!” Raeva started and Enty thought that might have been a bit to excited of a response. She breathed to remember to stay polite. “Your estate must be very good at what it does.”
“We are the best on the planet,” Raeva responded, the pride slipping into her voice.
Enty smiled and took a bite of the sausage roll. It hit her immediately, rich and savory with a deep smoky edge that she suspected had something to do with however House Kolisai cured their meat. It was very good. She made a mental note not to say so too enthusiastically given the morning they'd both had. Raeva, for her part, was looking at the cucumber sandwich with the careful attention of someone approaching something they genuinely did not know what to expect from. She turned it over once, examining the pale layer of doveluveeha visible at the edge of the bread, the thin green slices embedded in it.
“It's cold,” she observed.
“Yes.”
“The cheese is cold.”
“That's part of it.”
Raeva took a small, considered bite. She chewed. Something moved across her face that she clearly hadn't intended to be visible, a sort of reluctant recalibration.
“That's,” she started.
“Good, right?”
“It's very mild.”
“It is.”
“I expected something more.” A pause. “Human food has a reputation.”
“For being terrible?”
Raeva looked at her. “For being complicated.”
Enty laughed before she could stop herself, which seemed to startle Raeva slightly, who then looked like she wasn't sure what to do with the fact that she had caused it. She took another bite of the sandwich, more confident this time.
They ate in a silence that had lost most of its edges. Below them the channel moved at its steady pace, indifferent to the politics sitting above it. From the Blue Blossom side came the distant sound of Meklaer still apparently defending himself about something, which meant lunch was running its natural course without her.
Raeva finished her half of the sandwich. She looked at the remaining portion of her own meal in the pail, seemed to make a decision, and took out a small cloth wrapped package which she opened to reveal several thin sliced pieces of something dark and glazed.
“Preserved kolisai fig,” she said, setting it between them without quite making it an offer and without quite not making it one either.
Enty took one. Raeva took one. The matter was settled without discussion.
It was another few minutes before Raeva spoke again. When she did she was looking at the channel below rather than at Enty, which Enty had already learned in the space of one lunch break was how this particular maid approached things that cost her something to say.
“Your estate.” She stopped. Started again with the careful precision of someone who had rehearsed this and was now discovering that the rehearsed version wasn't quite right. “Blue Blossom moves goods. Across estate lines. Imported goods.”
“It is one of the things we do,” Enty said, keeping her voice even.
“Specialist goods. Things that aren't easily found through standard channels.”
“Sometimes.”
Raeva was quiet for a moment. Her hands had gone still over her meal pail, which Enty was beginning to recognize as a tell.
“I wish to ask the blue blossom maid a favor about indikin silk.”
The channel moved below them. The calm that Enty was feeling immediately locked up with anxiety. Indikin silk was not super rare but required not only special licensing but being on good terms with House Avernell if you didn't want to spend a ridiculous amount of money for it. It was produced from a specific insect that could be found across the galaxy on extremely wet worlds. Maelstrom, the third planet in the star system, had those bugs and Glittering Light Estate produced it.
Enty remained silent.
Raeva finally looked at her, and the large violet eyes were steady even if the rest of her wasn't quite. “I would like to acquire a ream.”
“Can I ask why indikin silk specifically,” Enty said trying to keep her voice steady. This situation could go wrong in so many different ways. Something shifted in Raeva's expression. Not defensiveness exactly. More like someone deciding how much of a true answer to give.
“It's for a gift,” she said. “To my Arch Maid. I'm being considered for my fifth order and I want to demonstrate that I can source things. Difficult things. Through my own initiative and my own contacts.” A pause, shorter than the others. “Indikin silk is the kind of thing that says you know people. That you can move in spaces above your current station. As you know our houses and allied houses are not quite on good terms.”
She said it plainly, without embarrassment, which told Enty that whatever else House Irisik's philosophy cost its maids, it at least seemed to cure them of false modesty about their own ambitions.
“Your Arch Maid doesn't know you're doing this,” Enty said.
“No. I'm supposed to be resourceful.”
“So if it goes wrong...”
“Then I pay for my indiscretion,” Raeva said with a simple finality.
Enty looked down at the remaining piece of sausage roll in her hand. There were so many moving parts with this request. It was obvious that maids of House Irisik had to prove themselves differently than her own. But agreeing right off the top of her head, as much as she wanted to, was extremely risky. Enty didn't want to wind up on the Pillar, her body uncovered in this heat. She knew that there was a supply of Indikin silk in the storage room as part of supplies being sold in Velaeden and it was being manned by Nizzie, so she knew she could get her to agree.
“Let me think about it.”
Raeva nodded once. She had the look of someone who had prepared for this answer and found it more tolerable than some of the others she had prepared for.
“How long do we have,” Enty asked. “Before you need an answer?”
“I move to another channel two days from now on the other side of Velaeden. Tomorrow if possible?”
“Alright,” she said.
Raeva looked at her. “Alright you'll think about it?”
“Alright I'll think about it,” Enty confirmed. “That's all I'm promising right now.”
It seemed to be enough. Raeva reached back into her meal pail and produced two more pieces of preserved fig, setting one in front of Enty without comment. Enty ate it. Below them the channel ran on, full and fast from the morning's work, carrying everything downstream to somewhere it could do less damage.
As expected, Nizzie was happy to sell her the ream of indikin silk. She processed the order as if purchased by a civilian and Enty made sure to give a few extra credits from her personal account and a promise to cover one of her illicit naps. Now, Enty had a ream of the very soft white material on her bed back in her room. What she did not expect was standing in front of her Arch Maid's office. Everything in her gut told her that she was about to get discipline but she cared too much about her estate, her lord.
Enty knocked on Vindik Mal's door and waited trying to keep her breathing as regular as possible.
“Enter,” he said.
His room was nicer than hers, which was expected, and he had already made it orderly in the way that Vindik made everything orderly, which was to say completely and without apparent effort. His uniform jacket was hung precisely on the back of the chair. His reports were stacked. His traveling case sat against the wall as though it had been placed there by someone who had thought carefully about where a traveling case ought to go.
He was sitting at the small desk by the window reading something and he did not look up immediately when she entered, which was also expected.
Putting her one hand over the other in front of her, she bowed.
“Harvester maid requests an audience with the Arch Maid.”
He set the document down and looked at her.
“Sit down.”
Enty sat on the edge of the chair across from his desk and waited. Vindik looked at the silk for another moment with the expression of someone cataloging information rather than forming a reaction. Then he looked at her face.
“Is there something you wanted to tell me,” he said.
Oh. The way he said that. She was sure it was a good decision to speak with him even if her butt was going to be sore in a few minutes.
“I acquired something,” Enty said. “On behalf of a colleague. From another estate. I wanted you to be aware of it.”
“Did you.”
“Yes.”
“And this colleague.” He continued. “This would be the Irisik maid.”
Yeah. He knew that they talked.
Enty kept her expression even. “Yes.”
Vindik leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, which meant she had his full attention and should choose her next words with some care.
“Walk me through it,” he said. “All of it.”
So she did. She told him about the footbridge and the preserved figs and Raeva's careful rehearsed words and the violet eyes that gave too much away when she was nervous. She told him about going to Nizzie, about processing it as a civilian order, about the extra credits from her personal account and the nap she had promised to cover. She kept her voice steady and her account precise and she did not editorialize because Vindik did not respond well to editorializing.
When she finished he was quiet for a long moment. Outside on the street below someone was having a conversation that drifted up in fragments, warm and ordinary against the evening.
“You used your personal account,” he said.
“Yes. I made sure of that.”
“And Nizzie processed it as a civilian order.”
“Yes.”
“So on paper...”
“On paper a civilian bought a ream of indikin silk as expected. That's all.”
Another silence. Vindik picked up his computer stylus and turned it over in his fingers once.
“I cannot,” he said carefully, “tell you that what you did was correct. You understand that.”
“Yes.”
“I cannot condone backroom arrangements between maids of opposing estates. Officially, all interactions more than cursory agreements must be handled by a representative or Emissary Maid.” He set the pen down. “Do you understand the difference between what I am saying and what I am not saying.”
Enty looked at him. “I think so.”
“Think more carefully.”
She did. “You can't condone it,” she said slowly. “But you're not telling me I was wrong.”
“I am telling you,” Vindik said, “that there are transactions among maids that have always existed and will always exist regardless of what any Arch Maid officially condones. The estate knows this. Every Arch Maid in the legions knows this. The system accounts for it the way water accounts for the fact that stone has cracks.” He paused. “What the system does not account for, and what no unwritten rule will protect you from, is being caught doing it carelessly.”
Enty felt something shift in her chest. Not quite relief. Something more complicated than that.
“Was I careless?” she asked.
Vindik considered this with genuine seriousness, which she appreciated.
“No,” he said finally. “You were not careless. The civilian order was clean. The personal funds was not the best choice. What you were, was lucky. And luck is not a strategy.”
“No,” Enty agreed.
“The Irisik maid.” He said it without particular inflection. “You believe she is genuine?”
“Yes.”
“You believe this was about her fifth order?”
“I do.”
“And you did not consider,” he said, very evenly, “that a maid trying to demonstrate resourcefulness to her Arch Maid might consider it useful to have demonstrated that she successfully ran an arrangement with a Blue Blossom maid instead? It was not anything about the silk and that she has an way in to a hostile house?”
The room was very still.
Enty opened her mouth and then closed it again.
She had not considered that. She had looked at Raeva's nervous hands and her careful words and her preserved figs and she had not once considered that the nervousness might be performance and the figs might be investment.
“I.” She stopped.
“You don't know,” Vindik said, not unkindly. “That is my point. You made a decision with incomplete information in a politically sensitive environment and it worked out. This time.” He leaned forward slightly. “I want you to understand what I am about to say to you, Enty. Not as your Arch Maid speaking officially. As someone who has been doing this a long time.”
She straightened without thinking about it.
“The higher orders are not given to maids who do their work correctly and keep their heads down,” he said. “Every maid does her work correctly and keeps her head down. The higher orders go to maids who understand how the estate actually functions. Who can process risk and reward and make decisions that help the estate, know when to bend the rules. The formal structure and the informal one. The rules that are written and the ones that aren't. The deals that get made in corridors and on footbridges and in the back rooms of supply quarters.” He held her gaze. “You have a talent for it. You read people well and you act on it, which is rarer than you think. But talent without judgment is how a maid ends up bent over a bench taking the rod for something she thought was clever.”
Enty kept her expression still with some effort and tried to not shift in her seat.
“The question you need to ask yourself,” he continued, “every single time, is not can I do this but what happens if this goes wrong and who does it land on. Not just you. Your estate Your lord. Me. If that Irisik maid walks into her Arch Maid tomorrow and presents this arrangement as a demonstration of her capability, someone somewhere is going to hear about it. And when they do, the question they will ask is not what she did. It is what Blue Blossom was doing making quiet arrangements with House Irisik. If it your mistress is challenged on it and she looks like a fool. There will be hell to pay. You know her.”
Enty swallowed. Though she hadn't been a true target of Mistress Maevin Maer's fury, she had seen it. It was terrifying.
“I used my personal funds,” Enty said. “It's not traceable to the estate. Right?”
“Credits are not the only currency that traces,” Vindik said. “Relationships trace. Favors trace. The fact that a tenth order Harvester Maid somehow got her hands on a ream of indikin silk traces, Nizzie now has money while working in the storage unit, the fact you were witnessed speaking with an Irisik Maid,” He looked at her steadily. “I am not telling you not to play the game. I am telling you to play it better than you did this time.”
Enty looked down at her lap, the true weight of what she had done hitting her. The Arch Maid's room at the end of a day that had started with a footbridge and a cucumber sandwich.
“What do I do with it,” she said. “The silk. Now?”
“Your choice,” he said picking up the computer pad making it clear the talk was over. “This conversation didn't happen. Just understand that if I found out officially, you're not going to be able to sit down for quite awhile...if you're lucky.”
Enty swallowed hard.
“Close the door.”
Being dismissed, Enty quickly stood, bowed again and left.
Finding Raeva alone was easier than Enty expected. The Irisik maids had taken their evening meal separately as they did everything else, quietly and without the sprawling communal noise of the Blue Blossom table, and by the time Enty slipped out into the guesthouse's small rear courtyard Raeva was already there. Standing near the back wall with her meal finished and her pail at her feet, looking up at the first stars appearing over the rooftops of Velaeden with the expression of someone who had been waiting and was trying not to look like it.
She saw Enty and went very still.
Enty crossed the courtyard without hurrying, the ream of indikin silk tucked under one arm wrapped in plain cloth she had found in her room. She stopped in front of Raeva and held it out without ceremony. Raeva took it with both hands. She didn't unwrap it immediately. She just held it, feeling the weight of it, and something moved across her face that she didn't manage to keep inside in time. Relief was part of it. Something that looked very much like genuine disbelief was another part.
So she hadn't been entirely certain Enty would come through. That was useful to know.
Raeva set the package carefully under her arm and reached into the inner pocket of her uniform with her free hand, producing a small cloth purse that was heavy enough that Enty could hear it when it moved. She held it out.
Enty looked at it for a moment. She thought about Vindik's voice. Relationships trace. Favors trace. She thought about Nizzie already sitting in the storage unit with extra credits in her account and the nap arrangement hanging over both of them. She thought about her own shared living space back at the estate, the three other maids she bunked with, any one of whom might notice something tucked away that hadn't been there before.
She thought about how clumsy she had already been and how much clumsier adding a physical purse to the situation would make it.
“Keep it,” she said.
Raeva blinked. “I told you I would pay.”
“I know.”
“I meant it.”
“I know that too,” Enty said. “But I'm not taking the money.”
Raeva looked at her with those large violet eyes that gave too much away when she was thinking hard, and Enty could see her working through the implications of that. Trying to decide if she was being managed or if this was something else.
“Then what do you want,” Raeva said carefully.
“A favor,” Enty said. “Unspecified. At some point in the future, if I ever need it and if it's something you can do.” She paused. “That's all.”
It was a strange thing to ask for and they both knew it. An unspecified future favor from a maid of a hostile house was not a coin you could count or a debt you could put in a ledger. It might never be called in. Enty might never have cause to contact Raeva again in her life. The estates might do something that made any contact between them impossible for years. The honest truth was that she was eating the cost of the silk as the price of a lesson she hadn't known she needed until Vindik had sat across a desk and laid out exactly how clumsy she had been about all of it.
She wasn't going to say that though. Raeva looked at her for a long moment. Then she tucked the purse back into her inner pocket and straightened slightly.
“You have my word,” she said.
Enty had been watching her face since the courtyard and she still believed what she had believed on the footbridge. The nervousness was real. The gratitude was real. The word, she thought, was probably real too.
Probably.
“Good luck with your fifth order,” Enty said.
Something softened briefly in Raeva's expression. “Thank you. For this.”
Enty nodded once and turned back toward the guesthouse door before the moment could become anything more than it was. Behind her she heard Raeva's footsteps moving in the other direction, quick and purposeful, already putting distance between the courtyard and whatever she was going to do next. Enty stopped at the door with her hand on the frame and looked up at the same strip of darkening sky Raeva had been watching when she arrived. The stars were coming in properly now, the Arethanovi range a dark shape against the deep blue at the edge of the city.
She had done a clumsy thing reasonably well. Didn't she?