Ancillary Justice (10 page)

“Coincidence,” I said. Glad on at least one count that we weren’t speaking Radchaai, where the word implied significance. “I found him unconscious. If I’d left him where he was he’d have died.” Strigan didn’t believe that either, from the look she gave me. “Why are you here?”

She laughed, short and bitter—whether because I’d chosen the wrong gender for the pronoun, or something else, I wasn’t certain. “I think that’s my question to ask.”

She hadn’t corrected my grammar, at least. “I came to talk to you. To buy something. Seivarden was ill. You weren’t here. I’ll pay you for what we’ve eaten, of course.”

She seemed to find that amusing, for some reason. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“I’m alone,” I said, answering her unspoken question. “Except for him.” I nodded at Seivarden. My hand was still on my gun, and Strigan likely knew why I kept that hand so still, under my coat. Seivarden still feigned sleep.

Strigan shook her head slightly, disbelieving. “I’d have sworn you were a corpse soldier.” An ancillary, she meant. “When you arrived I was certain of it.” She’d been hiding nearby, then, waiting for us to leave, and the entire place had been under her surveillance. She must have trusted her hiding
place quite extravagantly—if I had been what she feared, staying anywhere near would have been extremely foolish. I would certainly have found her. “But when you saw there was no one here you wept. And him…” She shrugged toward Seivarden, slack and motionless on the pallet.

“Sit up, citizen,” I said to Seivarden, in Radchaai. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

“Fuck off,” she answered, and pulled a blanket over her head. Then shoved it off again and rose, slightly shaky, and went into the sanitary facility and closed the door.

I turned back to Strigan. “That business with the flier rental. Was that you?”

She shrugged ruefully. “He told me a couple of Radchaai were coming out this way. Either he badly underestimated you, or you’re even more dangerous than I thought.”

Which would be considerably dangerous. “I’m used to being underestimated. And you didn’t tell her… him why you thought I was coming.”

Her gun hadn’t wavered. “Why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here.” A quick change in her expression, instantly suppressed. I continued. “Not to kill you. Killing you would defeat the purpose.”

She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head slightly. “Would it.”

The fencing, the feinting, frustrated me. “I want the gun.”

“What gun?” Strigan would never be so foolish as to admit the thing existed, that she knew what gun I was talking about. But her pretended ignorance didn’t convince. She knew. If she had what I thought she had, what I had gambled my life she had, further specificity would be unnecessary. She
knew
.

Whether she would give it to me was another question. “I’ll pay you for it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Garseddai did everything in fives. Five right actions, five principal sins, five zones times five regions. Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch.”

For three seconds Strigan was utterly still. Even her breathing seemed to have stopped. Then she spoke. “Garsedd, is it? What does that have to do with me?”

“I’d never have guessed if you’d stayed where you were.”

“Garsedd was a thousand years ago, and very, very far away from here.”

“Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch,” I repeated. “And twenty-four guns recovered or otherwise accounted for.”

She blinked, drew in a breath. “Who are you?”

“Someone ran. Someone fled the system before the Radchaai arrived. Maybe she was afraid the guns wouldn’t work as advertised. Maybe she knew that even if they did it wouldn’t help.”

“On the contrary, no? Wasn’t that the point? No one defies Anaander Mianaai.” She spoke bitterly. “Not if they want to live.”

I said nothing.

Strigan’s hold on the gun didn’t waver. Even so, she was in danger from me, if I decided to harm her, and I thought she suspected that. “I don’t know why you think I have this gun you’re talking about. Why would I have it?”

“You collected antiques, curiosities. You already had a small collection of Garseddai artifacts. They’d made their way to Dras Annia Station, somehow. Others might do so as well. And then one day you disappeared. You took care you wouldn’t be followed.”

“That’s a very slight basis for such a large assumption.”

“So why this?” I gestured carefully with my free hand, the other still under my coat, holding my gun. “You had a comfortable post on Dras Annia, patients, plenty of money, associations and reputation. Now you’re in the icy middle of nowhere, giving first aid to bov herders.”

“Personal crisis,” she said, the words carefully, deliberately pronounced.

“Certainly,” I agreed. “You couldn’t bring yourself to destroy it, or pass it on to someone who might not be wise enough to realize what a danger it presented. You knew, as soon as you realized what you had, that if Radch authorities ever even dreamed of half-imagining it existed, they would track you down and kill you, and anyone else who might have seen it.”

While the Radch wanted everyone to remember what had happened to the Garseddai, they wanted no one to know just how the Garseddai had managed to do what they’d done, what no one had managed to do for a thousand years before or another thousand years after—destroy a Radchaai ship. Almost no one alive remembered. I knew, and any still-extant ships that had been there. Anaander Mianaai certainly did. And Seivarden, who had seen for herself what the Lord of the Radch wanted no one to think was possible—that invisible armor and gun, those bullets that defeated Radchaai armor—and her ship’s heat shield—so effortlessly.

“I want it,” I told Strigan. “I’ll pay you for it.”

“
If
I had such a thing… if! It’s entirely possible no amount of money in the world would be sufficient.”

“Anything is possible,” I agreed.

“You’re Radchaai. And you’re military.”

“Was,” I corrected. And when she scoffed, I added, “If I still were, I wouldn’t be here. Or if I were, you would already have given me whatever information I wanted, and you’d be dead.”

“Get out of here.” Strigan’s voice was quiet, but vehement. “Take your stray with you.”

“I’m not leaving until I have what I came for.” There would be little point in doing so. “You’ll have to give it to me, or shoot me with it.” As much as admitting I still had armor. Implying I was precisely what she feared, a Radchaai agent come to kill her and take the gun.

Frightened of me as she must be, she could not avoid her own curiosity. “Why do you want it so badly?”

“I want,” I told her, “to kill Anaander Mianaai.”

“What?” The gun in her hand trembled, moved slightly aside, then steadied again. She leaned forward three millimeters, and cocked her head as though she was certain she hadn’t heard me correctly.

“I want to kill Anaander Mianaai,” I repeated.

“Anaander Mianaai,” she said, bitterly, “has thousands of bodies in hundreds of locations. You can’t possibly kill him. Certainly not with one gun.”

“I still want to try.”

“You’re insane. Or is that even possible? Aren’t all Radchaai brainwashed?”

It was a common misconception. “Only criminals, or people who aren’t functioning well, are reeducated. Nobody really cares what you think, as long as you do what you’re supposed to.”

She stared, dubious. “How do you define ‘not functioning well’?”

I made an indefinite,
not my problem
gesture with my free hand. Though perhaps it
was
my problem. Perhaps that question did concern me now, insofar as it might very well concern Seivarden. “I’m going to take my hand out of my coat,” I said. “And then I’m going to go to sleep.”

Strigan said nothing, only twitched one gray eyebrow.

“If I found you, Anaander Mianaai certainly can,” I said. We were speaking Strigan’s language. What gender had she assigned to the Lord of the Radch? “He hasn’t, yet, possibly because he is currently preoccupied with other matters, and for reasons that ought to be clear to you, he is likely hesitant to delegate in this affair.”

“I’m safe, then.” She sounded more convinced of that than she could possibly be.

Seivarden came noisily out of the bathroom and sank back onto her pallet, hands trembling, breathing quick and shallow.

“I’m taking my hand out of my coat now,” I said, and then did that. Slowly. Empty.

Strigan sighed and lowered her gun. “I probably couldn’t shoot you anyway.” Because she was sure I was Radchaai military, and hence armored. Of course, if she could take me unawares, or fire before I could extend my armor, she could indeed shoot me.

And of course, she had that gun. Though she might not have it near to hand. “Can I have my icon back?”

She frowned, and then remembered she was still holding it. “
Your
icon.”

“It belongs to me,” I clarified.

“That’s quite a resemblance,” she said, looking at it again. “Where’s it from?”

“Very far away.” I held out my hand. She returned it, and one-handed I brushed the trigger and the image folded into itself, and the base closed into its gold disk.

Strigan looked over at Seivarden intently, and frowned. “Your stray is having some anxiety.”

“Yes.”

Strigan shook her head, frustrated or exasperated, and went into her infirmary. She returned, went to where Seivarden sat, leaned over, and reached for her.

Seivarden started, shoving herself up and back, grabbing Strigan’s wrist in a move I knew was meant to break it. But Seivarden wasn’t what she had once been. Dissipation and what I suspected was malnutrition had taken a toll. Strigan left her arm in Seivarden’s grasp, and with her other hand plucked a small white tab out of her own fingers and stuck it to Seivarden’s forehead. “I don’t feel sorry for you,” she said, in Radchaai. “It’s just that I’m a doctor.” Seivarden looked at her with an unaccountable expression of horror. “Let go of me.”

“Let go, Seivarden, and lie down.” I said, sharply. She stared two seconds more at Strigan, but then did as she was told.

“I’m not taking him as my patient,” Strigan said to me, as Seivarden’s breathing slowed and her muscles slackened. “It isn’t more than first aid. And I don’t want him panicking and breaking my things.”

“I’m going to sleep now,” I answered. “We can talk more in the morning.”

“It
is
morning.” But she didn’t argue further.

She wouldn’t be foolish enough to search my person while I slept. She would know how dangerous that would be.

She wouldn’t shoot me in my sleep either, though it would be a simple and effective way to be rid of me. Asleep, I would be an easy target for a bullet, unless I extended my armor now and left it up.

But there was no need. Strigan wouldn’t shoot me, at least not until she had the answers to her many questions. Even then she might not. I was too good a puzzle.

Strigan wasn’t in the main room when I woke, but the door into the bedroom was closed, and I assumed she was either asleep or wanted privacy. Seivarden was awake, staring at me, fidgeting, rubbing her arms and shoulders. A week earlier I’d had to prevent her from scraping her skin raw. She’d improved a great deal.

The box of money lay where Strigan had left it. I checked it—it was undisturbed—put it away, latched my pack closed, thinking the while what my next step should be.

“Citizen,” I said to Seivarden, brisk and authoritative. “Breakfast.”

“What?” She was surprised enough to stop moving for a moment.

I lifted the corner of my lip, just slightly. “Shall I ask the doctor to check your hearing?” The stringed instrument lay beside me, where I had set it the night before. I picked it up, plucked a fifth. “Breakfast.”

“I’m not your servant,” she protested. Indignant.

I increased my sneer, just the smallest increment. “Then what are you?”

She froze, anger visible in her expression, and then very visibly debated with herself how best to answer me. But the question was, now, too difficult for her to answer easily. Her confidence in her superiority had apparently taken too severe a blow for her to deal with just now. She didn’t seem to be able to find a response.

I bent to the instrument and began to pick out a line of music. I expected her to sit where she was, sullen, until at the very least hunger drove her to prepare her own meal. Or maybe, much delayed, find something to say to me. I found I half-hoped she’d take a swing at me, so I could retaliate, but
perhaps she was still under the influence of whatever Strigan had given her last night, even if only slightly.

The door to Strigan’s room opened, and she walked into the main living space, stopped, folded her arms, and cocked an eyebrow. Seivarden ignored her. None of us said anything, and after five seconds Strigan turned and strode to the kitchen and swung open a cabinet.

It was empty. Which I’d known the evening before. “You’ve cleaned me out, Breq from the Gerentate,” Strigan said, without rancor. Almost as though she thought it was funny. We were in very little danger of starving—even in summer here, the outdoors effectively functioned as a huge freezer, and the unheated storage building held plenty of provisions. It was only a matter of fetching some, and thawing them.

“Seivarden.” I spoke in the casually disdainful tone I had heard from Seivarden herself in the distant past. “Bring some food from the shed.”

She froze, and then blinked, startled. “Who the
hell
do you think you are?”

“Language, citizen,” I chided. “And I might ask you the same question.”

“You… you ignorant
nobody
.” The sudden intensity of her anger had brought her close to tears again. “You think you’re better than me? You’re barely even
human
.” She didn’t mean because I was an ancillary. I was fairly sure she hadn’t yet realized that. She meant because I wasn’t Radchaai, and perhaps because I might have implants that were common some places outside Radch space and that would, in Radchaai eyes, compromise my humanity. “I wasn’t bred to be your servant.”