Ancillary Justice (24 page)

The Lord of the Radch watched my Esk lieutenants fencing over breakfast. Three times. With no visible change of expression. One Var set tea at the elbow of each of the two identical black-clad bodies in the Var decade room.

“Lieutenant Awn,” said one Anaander. “Has she been out of your presence at all since the incident?” She hadn’t specified which incident she meant, but she could only have meant the business in the temple of Ikkt.

“She has not, my lord,” I said, using One Var’s mouth.

On my central access deck, the Lord of the Radch keyed accesses and overrides that would allow her to change nearly anything about my mind she wished.
Invalid, invalid, invalid.
One after another. But each time I flashed acknowledgment, confirmed access she didn’t actually have. I felt something like nausea, beginning to realize what must have happened, but having no accessible memory of it to confirm my suspicions, to make the matter clear and unambiguous to me.

“Has she at any time discussed this incident with anyone?”

This much was clear—Anaander Mianaai was acting against
herself
. Secretly. She was divided in two—at least two. I could only see traces of the other Anaander, the one who had changed the accesses, the accesses she thought she was only now changing to favor herself.

“Has she at any time discussed this incident with anyone?”

“Briefly, my lord,” I said. Truly frightened for the first time in my long life. “With Lieutenant Skaaiat of
Justice of Ente
.” How could my voice—One Var—speak so calmly? How could I even know what words to say, what answer to make, when the whole basis for all my actions—even my reason for existence—was thrown into doubt?

One Mianaai frowned—not the one that had been speaking. “Skaaiat,” she said, with slight distaste. Seeming unaware of my sudden fear. “I’ve had my suspicions about Awer for some time.” Awer was Lieutenant Skaaiat’s house name, but what that had to do with events in the temple of Ikkt, I had no idea. “I never could find any proof.” This, also, was mysterious to me. “Play me the conversation.”

When Lieutenant Skaaiat said,
If you’re going to do something that crazy, save it for when it’ll make a difference
, one body leaned forward sharply and gave a breathy
ha
, an angry sound. Moments later, at the mention of Ime, eyebrows twitched. I feared momentarily that my dismay at the incautious, frankly dangerous tenor of that conversation would be detectable to the Lord of the Radch, but she made no mention of it. Had not seen it, perhaps, as she had not seen my profound disturbance at realizing she was no longer one person but two, in conflict with each other.

“Not proof. Not enough,” Mianaai said, oblivious. “But dangerous. Awer
ought
to tip my way.” Why she thought this, I didn’t immediately understand. Awer had come from
the Radch itself, from the start had had wealth and influence enough to allow it to criticize, and criticize it did, though generally with shrewdness enough to keep itself out of real trouble.

I had known Awer House for a long time, had carried its young lieutenants, known them as captains of other ships. Granted, no Awer suited for military service exhibited her house’s tendencies to their utmost extent. An overly keen sense of injustice or a tendency to mysticism didn’t mesh well with annexations. Nor with wealth and rank—any Awer’s moral outrage inevitably smelled slightly of hypocrisy, considering the comforts and privileges such an ancient house enjoyed, and while some injustices were unignorably obvious to them, some others they never saw.

In any event, Lieutenant Skaaiat’s sardonic practicality wasn’t foreign to her house. It was only a milder, more livable version of Awer’s tendency to moral outrage.

Doubtless each Anaander thought her cause was the more just. (The more proper, the more beneficial. Certainly.) Assuming Awer’s penchant for just causes, the citizens of that house ought to support the proper side. Given they knew anything like sides were involved at all.

This assumed, of course, that any part at all of Anaander Mianaai thought any Awer was guided by a passion for justice and not by self-interest covered over with self-righteousness. And any given Awer could, at various times, be guided by either.

Still. It was possible some part of Anaander Mianaai thought that Awer (or any particular Awer) needed only to be convinced of the justice of her cause to champion it. And surely she knew that if Awer—any Awer—could not be convinced, it would be her implacable enemy.

“Suleir, now…” Anaander Mianaai turned to One Var, standing silent at the table. “Dariet Suleir seems to be an ally of Lieutenant Awn. Why?”

The question troubled me for reasons I couldn’t quite identify. “I can’t be entirely certain, my lord, but I believe Lieutenant Dariet considers Lieutenant Awn to be an able officer, and of course she defers to Lieutenant Awn as decade senior.” And, perhaps, was secure enough in her own standing not to resent Lieutenant Awn’s having authority over her. Unlike Lieutenant Issaaia. But I didn’t say that.

“Nothing to do with political sympathies, then?”

“I am at a loss to understand what you mean, my lord,” I said, quite sincerely but with growing alarm.

Another Mianaai body spoke up. “Are you playing stupid with me, Ship?”

“Begging my lord’s pardon,” I answered, still speaking through One Var, “if I knew what my lord was looking for I would be better able to supply relevant data.”

In answer, Mianaai said, “
Justice of Toren
, when did I last visit you?”

If those accesses and overrides had been valid, I would have been utterly unable to conceal anything from the Lord of the Radch. “Two hundred three years, four months, one week, and five days ago, my lord,” I lied, now sure of the significance of the question.

“Give me your memories of the incident in the temple,” Mianaai commanded, and I complied.

And lied again. Because while nearly every instant of each of those individual streams of memory and data was unaltered, that moment of horror and doubt when one segment feared it might have to shoot Lieutenant Awn was, impossibly, missing.

It seems very straightforward when I say “I.” At the time, “I” meant
Justice of Toren
, the whole ship and all its ancillaries. A unit might be very focused on what it was doing at that particular moment, but it was no more apart from “me” than my hand is while it’s engaged in a task that doesn’t require my full attention.

Nearly twenty years later “I” would be a single body, a single brain. That division, I–
Justice of Toren
and I–One Esk, was not, I have come to think, a sudden split, not an instant before which “I” was one and after which “I” was “we.” It was something that had always been possible, always potential. Guarded against. But how did it go from potential to real, incontrovertible, irrevocable?

On one level the answer is simple—it happened when all of
Justice of Toren
but me was destroyed. But when I look closer I seem to see cracks everywhere. Did the singing contribute, the thing that made One Esk different from all other units on the ship, indeed in the fleets? Perhaps. Or is
anyone’s
identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?

I don’t know the answer. But I do know that, though I can see hints of the potential split going back a thousand years or more, that’s only hindsight. The first I noticed even the bare possibility that I–
Justice of Toren
might not also be I–One Esk, was that moment that
Justice of Toren
edited One Esk’s memory of the slaughter in the temple of Ikkt. The moment I—“I”—was
surprised
by it.

It makes the history hard to convey. Because still, “I” was me, unitary, one thing, and yet I acted against myself, contrary to my interests and desires, sometimes secretly,
deceiving myself as to what I knew and did. And it’s difficult for me even now to know who performed what actions, or knew which information. Because
I
was
Justice of Toren
. Even when I wasn’t. Even if I’m not anymore.

Above, on Esk, Lieutenant Dariet asked for admittance to Lieutenant Awn’s quarters, found Lieutenant Awn lying on her bunk, staring sightlessly up, gloved hands behind her head. “Awn,” she began, stopped, made a rueful smile. “I’m here to pry.”

“I can’t talk about it,” answered Lieutenant Awn, still staring up, dismayed and angry but not letting it reach her voice.

In the Var decade room, Mianaai asked, “What are Dariet Suleir’s political sympathies?”

“I believe she has none to speak of,” I answered, with One Var’s mouth.

Lieutenant Dariet stepped into Lieutenant Awn’s quarters, sat on the edge of the bed, next to Lieutenant Awn’s unbooted feet. “Not about that. Have you heard from Skaaiat?”

Lieutenant Awn closed her eyes. Still dismayed. Still angry. But with a slightly different feel. “Why should I have?”

Lieutenant Dariet was silent for three seconds. “I like Skaaiat,” she said, finally. “I know she likes you.”

“I was
there
. I was there and convenient. You know, we all know we’ll be moving some time soon, and once we do Skaaiat has no reason to care whether or not I exist anymore. And even if…” Lieutenant Awn stopped. Swallowed. Breathed. “Even if she did,” she continued, her voice just barely less steady than before, “it wouldn’t matter. I’m not anyone she wants to be connected with, not anymore. If I ever was.”

Below, Anaander Mianaai said, “Lieutenant Dariet seems pro-reform.”

That puzzled me. But One Var had no opinion, of course, being only One Var, and it had no physical response to my puzzlement. I saw suddenly, clearly, that I was using One Var as a mask, though I didn’t understand why or how I would do such a thing. Or why the idea would occur to me now. “Begging my lord’s pardon, I don’t see that as a political stance.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, my lord. You ordered the reforms. Loyal citizens will support them.”

That Mianaai smiled. The other stood, left the decade room, to walk the Var corridors, inspecting. Not speaking to or acknowledging in any way the segments of One Var it passed.

Lieutenant Awn said, to Lieutenant Dariet’s skeptical silence, “It’s easy for you. Nobody thinks you’re kneeling for advantage when you go to bed with someone. Or getting above yourself. Nobody wonders what your partner could be thinking, or how you ever got here.”

“I’ve told you before, you’re too sensitive about that.”

“Am I?” Lieutenant Awn opened her eyes, levered herself up on her elbows. “How do you know? Have you experienced it much? I have. All the time.”

“That,” said Mianaai, in the decade room, “is a more complicated issue than many realize. Lieutenant Awn is pro-reform, of course.” I wished I had physical data from Mianaai, so I could interpret the edge in her voice when she named Lieutenant Awn. “And Dariet, perhaps, though how strongly is a question. And the rest of the officers? Who here are pro-reform, and who anti-?”

In Lieutenant Awn’s quarters, Lieutenant Dariet sighed. “I just think you worry too much about it. Who cares what people like that say?”

“It’s easy not to care when you’re rich, and the social equal of
people like that
.”

“That sort of thing shouldn’t matter,” Lieutenant Dariet insisted.

“It shouldn’t. But it does.”

Lieutenant Dariet frowned. Angry, and frustrated. This conversation had happened before, had gone the same way each time. “Well. Regardless. You should send Skaaiat a message. What is there to lose? If she doesn’t answer, she doesn’t answer. But maybe…” Lieutenant Dariet lifted one shoulder, and her arm just slightly. A gesture that said,
Take a chance and see what fate deals you
.

If I hesitated in answering Anaander Mianaai’s question for even the smallest instant, she would know the overrides weren’t working. One Var was very, very impassive. I named a few officers who had definite opinions one way or the other. “The rest,” I finished, “are content to follow orders and perform their duties without worrying too much about policy. As far as I can tell.”

“They might be swayed one way or the other,” Mianaai observed.

“I couldn’t say, my lord.” My sense of dread increased, but in a detached way. Perhaps the absolute unresponsiveness of my ancillaries made the feeling seem distant and unreal. Ships I knew who had exchanged their ancillary crews for human ones had said their experience of emotion had changed, though this didn’t seem quite like the data they had shown me.

The sound of One Esk singing came faintly to Lieutenant Awn and Lieutenant Dariet, a simple song with two parts.

“I’m glad One Esk is itself again,” said Lieutenant Dariet. “That first day was eerie.”

“Two Esk didn’t sing,” Lieutenant Awn pointed out.

“Right, but…” Lieutenant Dariet gestured doubt. “It wasn’t right.” She looked speculatively at Lieutenant Awn.

“I can’t talk about it,” said Lieutenant Awn, and lay back down, crossing her arms over her eyes.

On the command deck Hundred Captain Rubran met with the decade commanders, drank tea, talked about schedules and leave times.

“You haven’t mentioned Hundred Captain Rubran,” said Mianaai, in the Var decade room.

I hadn’t. I knew Captain Rubran extremely well, knew her every breath, every twitch of every muscle. She had been my captain for fifty-six years. “I have never heard her express an opinion on the matter,” I said, quite truthfully.

“Never? Then it’s certain she has one and is concealing it.”

This struck me as something of a double bind. Speak and your possession of an opinion was plain, clear to anyone. Refrain from speaking and still this was proof of an opinion. If Captain Rubran were to say,
Truly, I have no opinion on the matter
, would that merely be another proof she had one?