The second stage of our sociological recon began with the sound of a well-dressed lady striking our social officer.

“Ow,” yelled Markus, looking at her in surprise. “What did I do?”

She was dressed differently than the people in Torgaior’s village: shawls among the farmers had been a single piece of fabric, with complicated decorations we’d still not figured out, but which we were betting had something to do with the individual’s identity in the village. This lady still wore a shawl, but instead of the designs it had strips in various shades of red and pink sown into it. Some looped over her shoulders, reminding me humorously of a 18th-century cavalry officer’s epaulettes. Salute for Major Valentine! Her skirt was white, and reached nearly to the ground, the longest we’d seen in our surveillance period.

Obviously high class; you didn’t get hair that crazy without support staff. That staff might have been the two young women behind her, dressed in more subdued versions of the style she was wearing, but probably not. Their hair was crazy too. They must have had, like, wire in there to support it, because I don’t know how else they would have gotten a freestanding loop on top of their heads.

She didn’t answer Markus’s question—too bad, it did work sometimes—instead saying, “Kola.”

“Kola?” asked Markus.

A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out of her entourage. He had a ponytail of thick, black hair, glittering with beads, and a beard that was styled into, like, claws or something? There were like five or six curved spikes coming off his chin made of equal parts beard hair and wax, judging by the sheen. Weirdest shit. He was also completely shirtless, and let’s just say he would have given Slinky the Rogue a run for his money.

“Ah,” said Markus. “Kola.”

Kola slapped him. Markus fell to the ground, strategically getting out of their way. Could he have blocked it? Probably, but after decades of field experience he knew better than to start a brawl with a noble’s—bodyguard? Husband?—anyways, he let Mrs. Kola win. Mrs. Kola walked on, not even looking back. The two young women trailed behind her, followed in turn by more shirtless men, with Kola at their head. Kola did look back, and rather than the growly snarl I’d expect from someone with that hairstyle, he shook his head disappointedly at Markus.

Across the street, disguised as a beggar, I tried not to laugh at him. I failed.

*

“I wonder if this is role-conformant here,” said Markus as he applied more makeup. Between translation and reincarnation technology it was possible to straight-up give yourself a different face, but makeup was still cheaper. Plus, after seeing what the translator engines had spit out while trying to make a ladder underneath our little cottage, none of us were very eager to point it at our faces.

I was applying makeup too, trying to make it look like I had cheekbones. I’d never been that good with it—I’d mostly just slapped on concealer under my eyes and called it a day—but Markus had given me pointers when I joined the team.

“Was Kola wearing makeup when he slapped you?” I asked.

“Am I ever going to live that down?” he said.

“Nope!” I said cheerfully. “Up until the next burly man lays hands on you.”

“Reviewing the footage, it seems he was wearing eye shadow,” said Val.

“You too?” asked Markus.

“It’s mission-relevant information,” said Val. “Whatever you’re insinuating is certainly false. Lilith, I have your dress nearly completed.”

Dresses were a thing here. We were still working on figuring out the connotations of the different clothing options, but dresses weren’t so uncommon that I couldn’t go out and see how people reacted. Dresses also came with sleeves, which would hide the fact that my wrist was still in a splint from the angel fight. Constant risk, danger of crippling injury, and a life of lies, science and victory: I never wanted to do another job.

“On my way,” I said.

Abby met me at the door, wearing a cute brown dress with various wraps piled on top of it. They loved their wraps here. It looked weird to my sensibilities: the base kind of looked like a sundress from an Earth perspective, but you don’t cover them with weird rectangular scarves and they don’t have long sleeves, besides. The other thing that was tripping me up was that New Abby was shorter than me, which I kept forgetting for some reason.

“Godsmile, Lilith,” she said aristocratically, somehow managing to look down on me from two inches below eye level.

“Naw, you can’t,” I said. “We’ve only seen that outer wrap on the merchant class.”

Abby blinked, then altered her posture, radiating an almost motherly warmth. “Godsmile,” she said again. “Are you ready for a day at the market?”

“You know, Markus is Markus, whatever he’s doing,” I said. “You? You scare me.”

Abby laughed and gave me a hug, mindful of my wrist. She took my arm and we strolled. I had my comm route video models to my eyes, mostly footage we’d taken of family members on the street. Abby and I didn’t look related, but neither did a lot of families. We were pretty sure adoption was a big thing here. I tried to adopt the posture I was seeing: Therian women tended to project a kind of confidence, but it was less guarded than the confidence I was used to seeing on Earth. The muscle memory wasn’t really with me.

“I won’t say I used all of my life effectively,” said Abby, “but five centuries is too much to waste. You can’t help getting good at things. Today’s the day, Lilith.”

“The day?” I asked.

“I’m getting laid for sure this time,” she said.

“Eugh, you don’t have to come out and say it,” I said.

“That lean fellow with the bicep scarring was definitely willing,” said Abby. “If we hadn’t misjudged the class distance, I’d have had him for sure.”

“Gross,” I said. “I bet he doesn’t brush his teeth. I bet they don’t do that here. Just think about all those sexy, sexy cavities.”

“Every culture has mouth hygiene,” Abby said. “With the matriarchal culture, I bet this one especially.”

“Wait, what?” I said. “Why?”

Abby jerked her head to the side mischievously, a Velean gesture whose closest analogue in American body language is a wink, but with a much smaller semantic range—usually just “Hah! I got something past you!”

“I don’t—ew, gross!” I said.

We grabbed my dress from Val, who’d shaken every one of my expectations when it turned out that he could sew. We’d set him up in the Ragnar’s costume area, where he was able to use his remaining leg to roll around in a big swivel chair. Some inventions are truly so good that every culture invents them.

I threw the dress on, then a half-shawl, then this weird decorative garment that didn’t really cover anything but left beaded strings hanging down all over me. The dress was a nice green color, and we’d come up with some nice arm bangles that went well with it. They were big into bangles here, probably because their fashions so often left their arms and lower legs bare. That was a bit of an annoyance for me—I’d gotten sunburned my first day at this—but nearly everyone we’d seen around here had a darker skin tone than me. I guess the shawls were enough to prevent burns. We’d since applied a combined skin pigment/sunscreen to my skin to minimize the “foreigner walks into town” vibes. Kives might be looking for that.

Hairwise we were careful only to emulate styles we’d seen in use—our knowledge of their aesthetics was still a work in progress, but in the worst case we could start a local trend. Kives would definitely be looking for that. Even women of the lower class had hairstyles I considered elaborate, though. Abby’s hair was still pretty short since her reincarnation, so we’d put her in a wig, which we’d then manipulated so that it swooped back in two fins. I joked that her head looked like a fighter jet, which had confused her until I got my laptop to show her pictures of US military F-15s on my local copy of Wikipedia. We’d wound ribbons through it to make it less obvious that the hair was synthetic. As for me, I’d picked something that looked kind of like a mohawk, except the extra length of hair all got tied up into a ponytail at the top back. Looked like a weird mix of cyberpunk and Victorian.

Val was apparently quite detail-oriented, and our costumes differed from the real thing only in a few respects: the material was more advanced, and there were subtle access points all over where we could hide weapons.

We joined Markus, whose posture had shifted to make himself look smaller, and whose face had taken on a dour cast to it.

“How long until Markus gets slapped again?” I said, shifting my eye color to match my dress.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!” he said.

“I still think it’s the eye contact,” said Abby.

“We’ve seen eye contact within social classes,” I said. “He’s not eyeballing VIPs after”—here I adopted a more sing-song tone—“Kooola. It can’t be eye contact.”

If this were Earth, I would also have winked at Markus, but after a few very awkward encounters I’d learned that, in Velean culture, winking was an explicit sexual invitation. So I just smugged at him.

“There was also that one servant,” said Markus. “But I was with Abby that time, maybe that affects things.”

“We could test it,” I said.

“Don’t we have better things to do?” asked Markus.

“Negative,” Abby said with a smirk. “We have to be culturally fluent, Markus. This is a cultural barrier that must be studied.”

“I need a helmet or something,” he muttered. Funny thing about comms? Muttering’s really easy to hear.

*

The commander almost managed a hookup, but ditched him when her comm picked up the sympathetic resonance of a STI. Rather than risk the guy causing trouble, she left Markus and I at the inn to explore the eastern side of town, near the docks. We were staying out of the inner city for now; that was where all the temples were, and Kives had almost certainly warned them we were in the area.

We’d had a little money from my stint as a beggar, which Markus had used to hustle some hustlers at dice. They used the same trick you saw in Earth movies where you let the newbie win a game or two, then fleece them. Markus was their ideal mark, except for the part where Eifni comms can pick up intent to cheat. He’d get up for a drink right when they were about to get serious. It was probably going to get us jumped in an alley at some point, but hey, all part of the fun!

For my part, I tried to make a friend. She was tall, brunette, with very dark irises. Her hair was all coiled up, and she was dressed in what we’d started calling the “traditional” style, the shawl/wrap/skirt combo they’d all worn back at the village.

“Godsmile,” I said, placing my drink at her table. “Can we sit here?”

Markus smiled in a friendly way.

Fury flashed over her face, but it was replaced by an expression that looked like uncertainty as she looked back at me.

“Something wrong?” asked Markus. Judging by her face, that just made her angry again.

I had a stroke of genius inspiration.

“Tesla!” I snapped imperially at him. He looked at me in surprise, and I slapped him.

“Ow!”

“Go wait outside,” I told him. “You’re embarrassing me.”

I sat down at the table before the Therian woman could react.

“Sorry about him,” I said. I reached desperately for an angle, and decided on the universal human experience of disdaining other cultures. “He’s from the far-off land of, uh, Krypton. They have weird ideas about”—I prayed to Dawkins that Abby was on the money here—“looking women in the eyes there.”

“Disgraceful,” said the woman, who was looking a little less tense. “Why do you keep him around?”

I did my best suggestive voice. “Why do you think?” I winked. Revulsion crossed the woman’s face. Fuck, was winking a sexual thing here, too? I missed winking.

“Okay, uh, hold on, can you tell me what I just implied?” I asked.

“I do not know where you come from,” said the woman, standing up, “but I will not lay with you, I will not lay with your husband, and I am leaving. Pervert.”

I sighed and leaned back.

“Hey guys,” I subvocalized. “I just found out winking’s a sex thing here.”

“I have as well,” said Abby. “Occupied, will debrief later.”

I nodded absently. Then I blinked as I connected the dots.

“Fucking gross!”