Ancillary Justice (11 page)

I can move very, very quickly. I was standing, and my arm halfway through its swing, before I registered my intention to move. The barest fraction of a second passed during which
I could have possibly checked myself, and then it was gone, and my fist connected with Seivarden’s face, too quickly for her to even look surprised.

She dropped, falling backward onto her pallet, blood pouring from her nose, and lay unmoving.

“Is he dead?” asked Strigan, still standing in the kitchen, her voice mildly curious.

I made an ambiguous gesture. “You’re the doctor.”

She walked over to where Seivarden lay, unconscious and bleeding. Gazed down at her. “Not dead,” she pronounced. “Though I’d like to make sure the concussion doesn’t turn into anything worse.”

I gestured resignation. “It is as Amaat wills,” I said, and put on my coat and went outside to bring in food.

On Shis’urna, in Ors, the
Justice of Ente
Seven Issa who had accompanied Lieutenant Skaaiat to Jen Shinnan’s sat with me in the lower level of the house. She had a name beyond her designation—one I never used, though I knew it. Even Lieutenant Skaaiat sometimes addressed individual human soldiers under her command as merely “Seven Issa.” Or by their segment numbers.

I brought out a board and counters, and we played a silent two games. “Can’t you let me win a time or two?” she asked, when the second was concluded, and before I could answer a thump sounded from the upper floor and she grinned. “It looks like Lieutenant Stiff can unbend after all!” and she cast me a look intended to share the joke, her amusement at the contrast between Awn’s usual careful formality and what was obviously going on upstairs between her and Lieutenant Skaaiat. But the instant after Seven Issa had spoken, her smile faded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just what we…”

“I know,” I said. “I took no offense.”

Seven Issa frowned, and made a doubtful gesture with her left hand, awkwardly, her gloved fingers still curled around half a dozen counters. “Ships have feelings.”

“Yes, of course.” Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It’s just easier to handle those with emotions. “But as I said, I took no offense.”

Seven Issa looked down at the board, and dropped the counters she held into one of its depressions. She stared at them a moment, and then looked up. “You hear rumors. About ships and people they like. And I’d swear your face never changes, but…”

I engaged my facial muscles, smiled, an expression I’d seen many times.

Seven Issa flinched. “Don’t
do
that!” she said, indignant, but still hushed lest the lieutenants hear us.

It wasn’t that I’d gotten the smile wrong—I knew I hadn’t. It was the sudden change, from my habitual lack of expression to something human, that some of the Seven Issas found disturbing. I dropped the smile.

“Aatr’s tits,” swore Seven Issa. “When you do that it’s like you’re possessed or something.” She shook her head, and scooped up the counters and began to distribute them around the board. “All right, then, you don’t want to talk about it. One more game.”

The evening grew later. The neighbors’ conversations turned slow and aimless and finally ceased as people picked up sleeping children and went to bed.

Denz Ay arrived four hours before dawn, and I joined her, stepping into her boat without speaking. She did not acknowledge my presence, and neither did her daughter,
sitting in the stern. Slowly, nearly noiselessly, we slid away from the house.

The vigil at the temple continued, the priests’ prayers audible on the plaza as an intermittent shushing murmur. The streets, upper and lower, were silent except for my own footsteps and the sound of the water, dark but for the stars brilliant overhead, the blinking of the prohibited zones’ encircling buoys, and the light from the temple of Ikkt. The Seven Issa who had accompanied us back to Lieutenant Awn’s house slept on a pallet on the ground floor.

Lieutenant Awn and Lieutenant Skaaiat lay together on the upper floor, still and on the edge of sleep.

No one else was out on the water with us. In the bottom of the boat I saw rope, nets, breathers, and a round, covered basket tied to an anchor. The daughter saw me look at it, and she kicked it under her seat, with studied nonchalance. I looked away, over the water, toward the blinking buoys, and said nothing. The fiction that they could hide or alter the information coming from their trackers was a useful one, even if no one actually believed it.

Just inside the buoys, Denz Ay’s daughter put a breather in her mouth and slid over the edge, a rope in her hand. The lake wasn’t terribly deep, especially at this time of year. Moments later she reemerged and climbed back aboard, and we pulled the crate up—a relatively easy job until it reached the surface, but the three of us managed to tip it into the boat without taking on too much water.

I wiped mud off the lid. It was of Radchaai manufacture, but that wasn’t too alarming in itself. I found the latch and popped it open.

The guns within—long, sleek, and deadly—were the sort
that had been carried by Tanmind troops before the annexation. I knew each one would have an identifying mark, and the marks of any guns confiscated by us would have been listed and reported, so that I could consult the inventory and determine more or less immediately if these were confiscated weapons, or ones we had missed.

If they were confiscated weapons, this situation would suddenly become a great deal more complicated than it seemed at the moment—and it was already a complicated situation.

Lieutenant Awn was in stage one of NREM sleep. Lieutenant Skaaiat seemed to be as well. I could consult the inventory on my own initiative. Indeed, I
should
. But I didn’t—partly because I had just been reminded, yesterday, of the corrupt authorities at Ime, the misuse of accesses, the most appalling abuse of power, something any citizen would have thought was impossible. That reminder itself was enough to make me cautious. But also, after Denz Ay’s assertions about residents of the upper city planting evidence in the past, and the evening’s dinner conversation with its clear reminder of resentment in that upper city, something didn’t seem quite right. No one in the upper city would know I had requested information about confiscated weapons, but what if someone else was involved? Someone who could set alerts to notify her if certain questions were asked in certain places? Denz Ay and her daughter sat quietly in the boat, to all appearances unconcerned and not particularly eager to be anywhere, or to be doing anything else.

Within a few moments I had
Justice of Toren
’s attention. I had seen no few of those confiscated weapons—not I, One Esk, but I,
Justice of Toren
, whose thousands of ancillary troops had been on the planet during the annexation. If I could not consult an official inventory without alerting an
authority to the fact that I had found this cache, I could consult my own memory to see if any of them had passed under my own eyes.

And they had.

I went in to where Lieutenant Awn was sleeping and put a hand on her bare shoulder. “Lieutenant,” I said, softly. In the boat I closed the crate with a soft snap and said, “Back to the city.”

Lieutenant Awn jerked awake. “I’m not asleep,” she said blearily. In the boat, Denz Ay and her daughter silently picked up their oars and started back.

“The weapons were confiscated,” I said to Lieutenant Awn, still quiet. Not wanting to wake Lieutenant Skaaiat, not wanting anyone else to hear what I was saying. “I recognized the serial numbers.”

Lieutenant Awn looked at me dazedly for a few moments, uncomprehending. Then I saw her understand. “But…” And then she woke fully, and turned to Lieutenant Skaaiat. “Skaaiat, wake up. I’ve got a problem.”

I brought the guns to the upper level of Lieutenant Awn’s house. Seven Issa didn’t even stir when I went past.

“You’re sure?” asked Lieutenant Skaaiat, kneeling by the open crate, naked but for gloves, a bowl of tea in one hand.

“I confiscated these myself,” I answered. “I remember them.” We were all speaking very quietly, so that no one outside could hear.

“Then they would have been destroyed,” argued Lieutenant Skaaiat.

“Obviously they weren’t,” said Lieutenant Awn. And then, after a brief silence, “Oh,
shit
. This is not good.”

Silently I messaged her.
Language, Lieutenant.

Lieutenant Skaaiat made a short, breathy sound, unamused laughter. “To put it mildly.” She frowned. “But why? Why would anyone go to the trouble?”

“And
how
?” asked Lieutenant Awn. She seemed to have forgotten her own tea, in a bowl on the floor beside her. “They put them there without us seeing them.” I’d looked at the logs for the past thirty days and seen nothing I couldn’t already account for. Indeed, no one had been to that spot at all besides Denz Ay and her daughter thirty days ago, and just the other night.

“
How
is the easy part, if you’ve got the right accesses,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat. “Which might tell us something. It’s not someone who’s got high-level access to
Justice of Toren
, or they’d have made sure it didn’t remember these guns. Or at least couldn’t say it did.”

“Or they didn’t think of that particular detail,” suggested Lieutenant Awn. She was puzzled. And only beginning to be frightened. “Or maybe that’s part of the plan to begin with. But we’re back to
why
, aren’t we? It doesn’t much matter how, not right this moment.”

Lieutenant Skaaiat looked up at me. “Tell me about the trouble Jen Taa’s niece had in the lower city.”

Lieutenant Awn looked at her, frowning. “But…” Lieutenant Skaaiat shushed her with a gesture.

“There was no trouble,” I said. “She sat by herself and threw rocks in the Fore-Temple water. She bought some tea in the shop behind the temple. Beyond that, no one spoke to her.”

“You’re certain?” asked Lieutenant Awn.

“She was in my view the entire time.” And I would take care that she would be on any future visits, but that hardly needed saying.

The two lieutenants were silent a moment. Lieutenant Awn closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was now truly frightened. “They’re lying about that,” she said, eyes still closed. “They want some excuse to accuse someone in the lower city of… something.”

“Sedition,” Lieutenant Skaaiat said. She remembered her tea, and took a sip. “And getting above themselves. That’s easy enough to see.”

“Yes, I can see that,” said Lieutenant Awn. Her accent had slipped entirely, but she hadn’t noticed. “But why the hell would anyone with this sort of access”—she gestured at the crate of guns—“want to help them?”

“That would seem to be the question,” answered Lieutenant Skaaiat. They were silent for several seconds. “What are you going to do?”

The question upset Lieutenant Awn, who presumably had been wondering just that. She looked up at me. “I wonder if this is all.”

“I can ask Denz Ay to take me out again,” I said.

Lieutenant Awn gestured affirmatively. “I’ll write the report, but I won’t file it just yet. Pending our further investigation.” Everything Lieutenant Awn did and said was observed and recorded—but as with the trackers everyone in Ors wore, there wasn’t always someone paying attention.

Lieutenant Skaaiat made a low whistle. “Is someone setting you up, dear?” Lieutenant Awn looked incomprehension at her. “Like maybe,” Lieutenant Skaaiat continued, “Jen Shinnan? I may have underestimated her. Or can you trust Denz Ay?”

“If someone wants me gone, they’re in the upper city,” said Lieutenant Awn, and privately I agreed but I didn’t say it. “But that can’t be it. If anyone who could do this,” she
gestured at the crate, “wanted me out of here, it would be easy enough—just give the order. And Jen Shinnan couldn’t have done this.” Unspoken, hanging behind every word, was the memory of news from Ime. Of the fact that the person who had revealed the corruption there was condemned to die, probably was already dead. “No one in Ors could have, not without…” Not without help, from a very high level, she would surely have said, but she let the sentence trail off.

“True,” mused Lieutenant Skaaiat. Understanding her. “So it’s someone high up. Who would benefit?”

“The niece,” said Lieutenant Awn, distressed.

“Jen Taa’s niece would benefit?” asked Lieutenant Skaaiat, puzzled.

“No, no. The niece is insulted or assaulted—allegedly. I won’t do anything,
I
say nothing happened.”

“Because nothing happened,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat, looking as though something was beginning to come clear to her, but still puzzled.

“They can’t get justice from me, so they come down to the lower city to get it for themselves. It’s the sort of thing that happened before we came.”

“And afterward,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat, “they find all these guns. Or even during. Or…” She shook her head. “It’s not all fitting together. Let’s say you’re right. Still.
Who benefits?
Not the Tanmind, not if they cause trouble. They can accuse all they like, but no matter what anyone finds in the lake, they’re still for reeducation if they riot.”

Lieutenant Awn gestured doubtfully. “Someone who could get those guns here without our seeing them might be able to keep the Tanmind out of trouble. Or believably say they could.”

“Ah.” Lieutenant Skaaiat understood immediately. “A
minor fine, mitigating circumstances. No doubt of it. It’ll be someone high up. Very dangerous. But why?”

Lieutenant Awn looked at me. “Go to the head priest and ask her a favor. Tell her, from me, even though it’s not the rainy season, to station someone near the storm alarm at all times.” The alarm, an earsplitting siren, was on the top of the temple residence. Its sounding would trigger the storm shutters of most of the buildings in the lower city, and would certainly wake the inhabitants of any building not automated in that fashion. “Ask her to be ready to sound it if I ask.”

“Excellent,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat. “Any mob will at least have to work a bit harder to get past the shutters. And then?”