Independence Day came right after the Genitalia festival, and it always snuck up on Piat. It was hard to believe that barely a month had passed between when Mercy of Kalr gated in to their peaceful little station and when the Translator had left and Piat had finally managed to sit down and catch her breath and think, maybe it will be okay after all, and Lieutenant Tisarwat had swung by and said cheerfully, "A republic! You know what this means? Committees."
And yet, a year later, there they were.
Someone on one of the committees had suggested some sort of big government celebration for the first anniversary of the Fleet Captain's declaration of the independence of the Two Systems, but then somebody else had said maybe that wasn't presenting the image they wanted to present at present, and somebody else said that with all the mixed feelings and financial hardships, maybe it was the wrong time for a large celebration, and then somebody had suggested combining it with the Genitalia Festival this year - after all, didn't that fit the themes of the festival? - which everybody else had agreed to with relief, until one of the Ychana had pointed out that not everybody on Athoek celebrated the Genitalia festival, and then somebody had said well of course they could also include the Ychana spring moon festival thing, and anyway, one thing had led to another, and somehow there had been a decision that there was to be no official public celebration but that for every public committee meeting the week of Independence Day, everybody was supposed to bring a food or other tradition from their culture's spring festival.
Piat had considered pointing out that Radchaai Radchaai didn't have a spring festival - there was nothing linked to planetary cycles in the state religion, since a Dyson sphere didn't exactly have "seasons" - but you couldn't even really say Radchaai Radchaai without sounding like an asshole, especially now, and besides, her mother was always saying that Radchaai should learn to respect and welcome planetary cultures just as the planetary cultures welcomed and respected the Radch.
So she'd just bought a bag of the Athoeki Xhai gummy penises that were all over the station. It was long enough after the festival that the shops even had them on discount. She had still somehow managed to agonize over it; she had grown up enough among the Xhai station residents to know that what kind you bought sent all kinds of signals: just penises (basic, traditional, not rocking any boats but not trying to build any bridges either), or distinctly separate penises and vulvas (which had originally been about resisting Radchaai annexation but was now mostly about being slightly daring in a way most people would carefully not notice) or vulvas only (which was apparently about some ancient Xhai-internal cultural conflict nobody had been able to effectively explain to her) or the ones that were a realistic and anatomically correct spectrum of clitopenises (either trying to signal Radchaai loyalties too subtly for most actual Radchaai to notice, or ironically doing the opposite, or trying to signal that you thought Radchaai were sexy, depending on who you were and who you were giving them to).
In the end she'd bought a variety pack, because that was what this whole holiday compromise was supposed to be about, right, mixing all kinds of people together?
She'd sort of hoped that with Raughd... gone, and her mother's political career... somewhat off course, social interactions would get slightly less excruciating, but no. At least Tisarwat had been polite enough not to laugh in her face when she'd said that.
Anyway, Piat got the impression that nobody around this particular committee table had found it any simpler than she had. It was the committee that was called the "Committee of State" for lack of anything better, and Piat had thought that a Committee of State should be picked some way more carefully than "these are the people who kept turning up and now everybody acts like they're in charge", but Tisarwat had pointed out that nobody had yet picked an official way to pick people to be in charge, so how else could they do it?
And if there was one thing you could learn from watching Breq, it was that having other people think you were in charge was about 90% of actually being in charge.
So it was Fleet Captain Breq, and Mercy of Kalr, and Sword of Atagaris, and Sphene, and Sphene usually brought Zeiat as an observer now that she was back, and Station of course, and Basnaaid from Horticulture, and Uran serving tea and claiming she wasn't really on the committee, and Lieutenant Tisarwat, and Lieutenant Seivarden (mostly, she claimed, to keep Breq and Tisarwat from accidentally taking over any more systems). And Piat, somehow, because Tisarwat had dragged her along and then kept dragging her along.
Mostly what they did was make plans for the Conclave, if it ever finally happened, and argue about ships' rights and system defense and how to deal with the Presger traders, so it made sense that all the people who really cared about Athoeki downwell affairs were on other committees that had been chosen more carefully, but that meant Piat realized too late that she was the only one other than Station who had brought Athoeki food.
Basnaaid had brought sweet sticky rice cakes and dumplings with red bean paste that she said were an old family recipe. Mercy of Kalr had supplied the arrack, because she said she'd had soldiers who celebrated many holidays but they always seemed to involve arrack somehow.
Sword of Atagaris had brought nothing and just stood in the corner blank-faced, as usual.
Fleet Captain Breq had brought some bitter, spicy, dark candies, and daylily flowers fried in maize batter. She said they were based on Itran holiday foods and then didn't explain why she knew about Itran holidays, but you could tell, watching her face, that she didn't want anyone to ask.
Uran had brought eggs, hardboiled and then cracked and boiled again in tea, so that when they were peeled they had crazed patterns on them, like lightning or a crackle-glazed ceramic. She told them that back on Valskaay, her ancestors had decorated eggs with all sorts of inks and colors, but on the tea plantations when she'd been growing up they'd made due with what they had, which was tea.
Piat had asked Queter, once, about the Valskaayan spring celebration, and it had been something about how a good person had been messily tortured and killed by bad people, or possibly about how the bad people's kids had all been killed a good person, except the good people in one story were the bad people in the other one, except they weren't really bad people, and somehow this had saved everyone, she wasn't quite sure - either way there was a lot of blood, even more than in the Xhai genitalia story. Piat would never understand Valskaayan religion.
Seivarden had brought some small ovoid fruit candies, ones Piat had seen before in shops that sold very old-fashioned confections. She'd put them out with a warning of "Don't eat the black ones, I don't know what they've done to the flavorings in the last thousand years but whatever it was, they've ruined the black ones. Actually, don't eat the yellow ones either."
Tisarwat had agonized over what to bring even longer than Piat had. Piat wasn't sure why; she hadn't really explained, except that there were two different cultures to pick from and she didn't know which one the Fleet Captain would want her to use.
In the end she'd brought some little coin-shaped biscuits she'd made in her own quarters, stamped with Etrepa, Esk, Issa, and Vahn.
"These are old-fashioned even to me," the Fleet Captain said, turning one of the Esk ones over and over in her hands. "But I suppose the system where you grew up was something of a backwater?"
"Isolated," Tisarwat had agreed. "Conservative. Not really worth visiting." She'd met the Fleet Captain's gaze but under the table, where she'd held Piat's hand, hers was trembling.
Sphene and the Translator, as usual, were late. They had all, Piat thought, been slightly dreading what those two would bring. You could never be too careful about what Zeiat thought was food, and Sphene had a horrible tendency to do things just for entertainment value, and the two of them together were worse, but nobody wanted to try to separate them.
Zeiat walked in with a cheerful expression and a basket that she dropped on the table, and said “Look what Sphene found us!” What Sphene had found them was bright pink and yellow and in a half-dozen cardboard boxes. Very dusty cardboard boxes. “Cakes shaped like little chicks!”
Someone gasped loudly and Piat turned to look back at the rest of the table. Breq, Tisarwat, and Seivarden all had gobsmacked expressions on their faces.
“Aatr’s tits,” Seivarden said, sounding like all the Emanations had come at once, “is that what it looks like?”
“Peep peep peep!” said Zeiat happily.
“I looked for those everywhere! I’ve been craving them for years! Nobody makes them any more, nobody even knew what I was talking about!”
“Oh no,” Breq said. “I forgot about those. Your mother used to send you some every year, didn’t she.”
“Nobody has made them for years,” Tisarwat said, looking disgusted. “Centuries. They’re an ancient Notai tradition. If you’ve had them since the war please tell me you at least had them in suspension.”
Sphene was looking Samirend today; she had come in and leaned insolently against a wall. “They were in suspension for the first thousand years or so, until I decided I had a better use for the space and moved them into the regular hold.”
“Three thousand year old peeps?” Seivarden said, holding one of the boxes reverently. The ancient cardboard was crumbling into dust at the touch of her gloves.
"Seivarden's mother used to send them in an unsealed package by regular post," Breq added flatly. "They would already be months old by the time I got them. They were the only part of her mail that I didn't slow down on purpose. I'm told they're supposed to be better the older they are."
Seivarden blew a layer of dust off one of the cakes. "I wondered about that, later - my regular packages sometimes took twice as long. Was it because you knew I wanted these to be late?"
"No," Breq said. "It was because I didn't want them in my holds any longer than absolutely necessary."
"Yeah," Seivarden said dreamily. "I always meant to save them until they were really well-aged, but I never had the willpower. My grandmother had a whole dozen that she'd been given when she was little; she said she was saving it for her hundred-fiftieth birthday. I never knew anybody who'd tasted any that were more than two hundred years old, though. Do you have any idea how much my aunts would have paid for peeps that were opened millennia ago?"
"Well, then, you're in luck," Sphene said. "My captain kept enough on board to give to all my officers and my ancillaries on the appropriate holidays, Varden only knows why. I generally put the ones for the ancillaries back in suspension as soon as she wasn't paying attention. Go ahead and eat them - I've got lots more. Zeiat stopped counting at a thousand."
Seivarden said something that sounded like a prayer to Varden, only in an even less intelligible dialect then usual, and lifted them out of ruins of the package - three bright pink things shaped vaguely like fat ducks. She broke one off the end one with a loud crack that rang in the suddenly-quiet committee room.
"Wait," Piat said, since apparently nobody else was going to. "Are they still edible? They aren't going to poison her, are they?"
"I've eaten lots already," said Zeiat. "They're interesting."
"At this point, citizen, they're almost entirely crystallized sucrose," Station said from the speaker on the table. "And once sucrose dries out, it can't really go bad. The worst that can happen is that someone will break a tooth."
"I won't bwea," Seivarden started to say, and then paused to maneuver the bird's head she'd bitten off into one cheek, so she could talk. "I won't break a tooth. They melt on your tongue, if they're properly aged, and this is amazing. This is the best thing I have put in my mouth since--" She shot a glance at Tisarwat, stopped. "Thank you, Sphene."
Sphene looked nonplussed. "It wasn't for you, Lieutenant, but you're welcome."
"This was revenge, wasn't it." Fleet Captain glared at her. "At me. For teaching Zeiat that song. It's been over a year."
Sphene slid down into her chair at the table and folded her hands. "You should listen to your lieutenant. Some things, cousin, are best served stale."