Ancillary Justice (15 page)

Lieutenant Awn froze, for two seconds. “M… my lord?”

Anaander Mianaai’s voice, which had been dispassionate, perhaps slightly stern, turned chill and severe. “Are you refusing an order, Lieutenant?”

“No, my lord, only… they’re
citizens
. And we’re in a temple. And we have them under control, and I’ve sent
Justice of Toren
One Esk to the next division to ask for reinforcements.
Justice of Ente
Seven Issa should be here in an hour, perhaps two, and we can arrest the Tanmind and assign them to reeducation very easily, since you’re here.”

“Are you,” asked Anaander Mianaai, slowly and clearly, “refusing an order?”

Jen Shinnan’s amusement, her willingness—even eagerness—to speak to the Lord of the Radch, it fell into a pattern for my listening segment. Someone very high up had made those guns available, had known how to cut off communications. No one was higher up than Anaander Mianaai. But it made no sense. Jen Shinnan’s motivation was obvious, but how could the Lord of the Radch possibly profit by it?

Lieutenant Awn was likely having the same thoughts. I could read her distress in the tension of her jaw, the stiff set of her shoulders. Still, it seemed unreal, because the external signs were all I could see. “I won’t refuse an order, my lord,” she said after five seconds. “May I protest it?”

“I believe you already have,” said Anaander Mianaai, coldly. “Now shoot them.”

Lieutenant Awn turned. I thought she was the slightest bit shaky as she walked toward the surrounded Tanmind.

“
Justice of Toren
,” Mianaai said, and the segment of me that had been about to follow Lieutenant Awn stopped. “When was the last time I visited you?”

I remembered the last time the Lord of the Radch had boarded
Justice of Toren
very clearly. It had been an unusual visit—unannounced, four older bodies with no entourage. She had mostly stayed in her quarters talking to me—
Justice of Toren
–me, not One Esk–me, but she had asked One Esk to sing for her. I had obliged with a Valskaayan piece. It had been ninety-four years, two months, two weeks, and six days before, shortly after the annexation of Valskaay. I opened my
mouth to say so, but instead heard myself say, “Two hundred three years, four months, one week, and one day ago, my lord.”

“Hmm,” said Anaander Mianaai, but she said nothing else.

Lieutenant Awn approached me, where I ringed the Tanmind. She stood there, behind a segment, for three and a half seconds, saying nothing.

Her distress must have been obvious to more than just me. Jen Shinnan, seeing her stand there silent and unhappy, smiled. Almost triumphantly. “Well?”

“One Esk,” Lieutenant Awn said, clearly dreading the finish of her sentence. Jen Shinnan’s smile grew slightly larger. Expecting Lieutenant Awn to send the Tanmind home, no doubt. Expecting, in the fullness of time, Lieutenant Awn’s dismissal and the decline of the lower city’s influence. “I didn’t want this,” Lieutenant Awn said to her, quietly, “but I have a direct order.” She raised her voice. “One Esk. Shoot them.”

Jen Shinnan’s smile disappeared, replaced by horror, and, I thought, betrayal, and she looked, plainly, directly, toward Anaander Mianaai. Who stood impassive. The other Tanmind clamored, crying out in fear and protest.

All my segments hesitated. The order made no sense. Whatever they had done, these were citizens, and I had them under control. But Lieutenant Awn said, loud and harsh, “Fire!” and I did. Within three seconds all the Tanmind were dead.

No one in the temple at that moment was young enough to be surprised at what had happened, though perhaps the several years since I’d executed anyone had lent the memories some distance, maybe even engendered some confidence that
citizenship meant an end to such things. The junior priests stood where they had since this had begun, not moving, saying nothing. The head priest wept openly, soundlessly.

“I think,” said Anaander Mianaai into the vast silence that surrounded us, once the echoes of gunfire had died down, “there won’t be any more trouble from the Tanmind here.”

Lieutenant Awn’s mouth and throat twitched slightly, as though she were about to speak, but she didn’t. Instead she walked forward, around the bodies, tapping four of my segments on the shoulder as she passed and gesturing to them to follow. I realized she simply could not bring herself to speak. Or perhaps she feared what would come out of her mouth if she attempted it. Having only visual data from her was frustrating.

“Where are you going, Lieutenant?” asked the Lord of the Radch.

Her back to Mianaai, Lieutenant Awn opened her mouth, and then closed it again. Closed her eyes, took a breath. “With my lord’s permission, I intend to discover whatever it is that’s blocking communications.” Anaander Mianaai didn’t answer, and Lieutenant Awn turned to my nearest segment.

“Jen Shinnan’s house,” that segment said, since it was clear Lieutenant Awn was still in emotional distress. “I’ll look for the young person as well.”

Just before sunrise I found the device there. The instant I disabled it I was myself again—minus one missing segment. I saw the silent, barely twilit streets of the upper and lower city, the temple empty of anyone but myself and eighty-three silent, staring corpses. Lieutenant Awn’s grief and distress and shame were suddenly clear and visible, to my combined relief and discomfort. And with a moment’s willing it, the
tracker signals of all the people in Ors flared into life in my vision, including the people who had died and still lay in the temple of Ikkt; my missing segment in an upper city street, neck broken; and Jen Shinnan’s niece—in the mud at the bottom of the northern edge of the Fore-Temple water.

Strigan came out of the infirmary, undercoat bloody, and the girl and her mother, who had been talking quietly in a language I didn’t understand, fell silent and looked expectantly to her.

“I’ve done what I can,” Strigan said, with no preamble. “He’s out of danger. You’ll need to take him to Therrod to have the limbs regrown, but I’ve done some of the prep work, and they should grow back fairly easily.”

“Two weeks,” said the Nilter woman, impassive. As though it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

“Can’t be helped,” said Strigan, answering something I hadn’t heard or understood. “Maybe someone’s got a few extra hands they can spare.”

“I’ll call some cousins.”

“You do that,” said Strigan. “You can see him now if you like, but he’s asleep.”

“When can we move him?” the woman asked.

“Now, if you like,” answered Strigan. “The sooner the better, I suppose.”

The woman made an affirmative gesture, and she and the girl rose and went into the infirmary without another word.

Not long after, we brought the injured person out to the girl’s flier and saw them off, and trudged back into the house and shed our outer coats. Seivarden had by now returned to her pallet on the floor and sat, knees drawn up, arms tight around her legs as if she were holding them back and it took work.

Strigan looked at me, an odd expression on her face, one I couldn’t read. “She’s a good kid.”

“Yes.”

“She’ll get a good name out of this. A good story to go with it.”

I had learned the lingua franca that I thought would be most useful here, and done the sort of cursory research one needs to navigate unfamiliar places, but I knew almost nothing about the people who herded bov on this part of the planet. “Is it an adulthood thing?” I guessed.

“Sort of. Yes.” She went to a cabinet, pulled out a cup and a bowl. Her movements were quick and steady, but I got somehow an impression of exhaustion. From the set of her shoulders perhaps. “I didn’t think you’d be much interested in children. Aside from killing them, I mean.”

I refused the bait. “She let me know she wasn’t a child. Even if she did have a Tiktik set.”

Strigan sat at her small table. “You played two hours straight.”

“There wasn’t much else to do.”

Strigan laughed, short and bitter. Then she gestured toward Seivarden, who seemed to be ignoring us. She couldn’t understand us anyway, we weren’t speaking Radchaai. “I don’t feel sorry for him. It’s just that I’m a doctor.”

“You said that.”

“I don’t think you feel sorry for him either.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t make anything easy, do you?” Strigan’s voice was half-angry. Exasperated.

“It depends.”

She shook her head slightly, as though she hadn’t heard quite clearly. “I’ve seen worse. But he needs medical attention.”

“You don’t intend to give it,” I said. Not asking.

“I’m still figuring you out,” Strigan said, as though her statement was related to mine, though I was sure it wasn’t. “As a matter of fact, I’m considering giving him something more to keep him calm.” I didn’t answer. “You disapprove.” It wasn’t a question. “I don’t feel sorry for him.”

“You keep saying that.”

“He lost his ship.” Very likely her interest in her Garseddai artifacts had led her to learn what she could about the events that had led to the destruction of Garsedd. “Bad enough,” Strigan continued, “but Radchaai ships aren’t just ships, are they? And his crew. It was a thousand years ago for us, but for him—one moment everything is the way it should be, next moment
everything’s
gone.” With one hand she made a frustrated, ambivalent gesture. “He needs medical attention.”

“If he hadn’t fled the Radch, he’d have received it.”

Strigan cocked one gray eyebrow, sat on a bench. “Translate for me. My Radchaai isn’t good enough.”

One moment an ancillary had shoved Seivarden into a suspension pod, next she’d found herself freezing and choking as the pod’s fluids exited through her mouth and nose, drained away, and she found herself in the sick bay of a patrol
ship. When Seivarden described it, I could see her agitation, her anger, barely masked. “Some dingy little Mercy, with a shabby, provincial captain.”

“Your face is almost perfectly impassive,” Strigan said to me. Not in Radchaai, so Seivarden didn’t understand. “But I can see your temperature and heart rate.” And probably a few other things, with the medical implants she likely had.

“The ship was human-crewed,” I said to Seivarden.

That distressed her further—whether it was anger, or embarrassment, or something else, I couldn’t tell. “I didn’t realize. Not right away. The captain took me aside and explained.”

I translated this for Strigan, and she looked at Seivarden in disbelief, and then at me with speculation. “Is that an easy mistake to make?”

“No,” I answered, shortly.

“That was when she finally had to tell me how long it had been,” Seivarden said, unaware of anything but her own story.

“And what had happened after,” suggested Strigan.

I translated, but Seivarden ignored it, and continued as though neither of us had spoken. “Eventually we put in to this tiny border station. You know the sort of thing, a station administrator who’s either in disgrace or a jumped-up nobody, an officious inspector supervisor playing tyrant on the docks, and half a dozen Security whose biggest challenge is chasing chickens out of the tea shop.

“I’d thought the Mercy captain had a terrible accent, but I couldn’t understand anyone on the station at all. The station AI had to translate for me, but my implants didn’t work. Too antiquated. So I could only talk to it using wall consoles.” Which would have made it extremely difficult to hold any
sort of conversation. “And even when Station explained, the things people were saying didn’t make sense.

“They assigned me an apartment, a room with a cot, hardly large enough to stand up in. Yes, they knew who I said I was, but they had no record of my financial data, and it would be weeks before it could possibly arrive. Maybe longer. Meantime I got the food and shelter any Radchaai was guaranteed. Unless, of course, I wanted to retake the aptitudes so I could get a new assignment. Because they didn’t have my aptitudes data and even if they did it was certainly out of date.
Out of date
,” she repeated, her voice bitter.

“Did you see a doctor?” Strigan asked. Watching Seivarden’s face, I guessed what had finally sent her from Radchaai space. She must have seen a doctor, who had opted to wait and watch. Physical injuries weren’t an issue, the medic of whatever Mercy had picked her up would have taken care of those, but psychological or emotional ones—they might resolve on their own, and if they didn’t, the doctor would need that aptitudes data to work effectively.

“They said I could send a message to my house lord asking for assistance. But they didn’t know who that was.” Obviously Seivarden had no intention of talking about the station doctor.

“House lord?” asked Strigan.

“Head of her extended family,” I explained. “It sounds very elevated in translation, but it isn’t, unless your house is very wealthy or prestigious.”

“And hers?”

“Was both.”

Strigan didn’t miss that. “
Was.
”

Seivarden continued as though we hadn’t spoken. “But it turned out, Vendaai was gone. My whole house didn’t even
exist
anymore. Everything, assets and contracts, everything absorbed by
Geir
!” It had surprised everyone at the time, some five hundred years ago. The two houses, Geir and Vendaai, had hated each other. Geir’s house lord had taken malicious advantage of Vendaai’s gambling debts, and some foolish contracts.

“Catch up with current events?” I asked Seivarden.

She ignored my question. “Everything was
gone
. And what was left, it was like it was
almost
right. But the colors were wrong, or everything was turned slightly to the left of where it should be. People would say things and I couldn’t understand them at all, or I knew they were real words but my mind couldn’t take them in. Nothing seemed real.”

Maybe it had been an answer to my question after all. “How did you feel about the human soldiers?”

Seivarden frowned, and looked directly at me for the first time since she’d awoken. I regretted asking the question. It hadn’t really been the question I’d wanted to ask.
What did you think when you heard about Ime?
But maybe she hadn’t. Or if she had it might have been incomprehensible to her.
Did anyone come to you whispering about restoring the rightful order of things?
Probably not, considering. “How did you leave the Radch without permits?” That couldn’t have been easy. It would at the very least have cost money she wouldn’t have had.