Kate Ukrainka (Human)

The detective was young, sat down without her slate, and did not open with a question, and Kate liked all three of those things more than she intended to be useful about.

"I should save you the trouble," Kate said. "I've been asked. I'm no good. I don't notice events — I notice people. If somebody had carried a sack of flour past this table I'd have missed the sack and remembered that they walked like their shift had been doubled. You want a witness to things, and I am a witness to the other part."

The detective said that was all right, and then said nothing further, in a way Kate recognised the shape of at once, because she had written it. Sat still. Said nothing. Let the other party talk themselves into a decision. It was in her second book; a rabbit does it to a customs officer. She considered saying so, and instead — because silence that patient does eventually get what it is patient for — heard herself begin to talk.

"Your steward," she said. "I've watched him give you three statements. I couldn't hear a word of them and I don't need to. Each one asked you for less than the one before. Less flour, less concern, less of your time — he's revising himself downward, and people don't do that because they're lying to you. They do it because the true answer costs somebody, and they mind about the somebody, and the only thing they can think to make smaller instead is the question." She stopped there, one sentence past where she should have, which was one sentence further than she had managed in years of being careful. "None of that is evidence. I'd rather it wasn't written down."

The detective had not written it down. Kate noted — professionally, against her will — that this was how you could tell it would be kept.

She watched the young woman thank her and go, unhurried, in the direction of the dry stores rather than the steward, which meant she had understood the actual content of what Kate had said: don't press the man, find the somebody. A decent character, Kate thought. The rabbit she'd heard about was a better one. She resolved to put neither of them in a book, in the particular way she had resolved such things before, with the next book already quietly disagreeing with her.