Ancillary Justice (26 page)

Still I said nothing. No story I could invent would account for my injuries in the way the truth did.

“Members of military forces must register on arrival in the system,” the doctor continued.

“I remember hearing so.”

“Did you register?”

“No, because I am not a member of any military force.”
Not quite a lie. I was not a member, I was a piece of equipment. A lone, useless fragment of equipment at that.

“This facility is not equipped,” the doctor said, just a shade more sternly than the moment before, “to deal with the sort of implants and augmentations you apparently have. I can’t predict the results of the repairs I’ve programmed. You should see a doctor when you return home. To the Gerentate.” That last sounded just slightly skeptical, the barest indication of the doctor’s disbelief.

“I intend to go straight home once I leave here,” I said, but I wondered if the doctor had reported us as possible spies. I thought not—if she had, likely she would have avoided expressing any sort of suspicion, merely waited for authorities to deal with us. She had not, then. Why not?

A possible answer stuck her head into the room and called cheerily, “Breq! You’re awake! Uncle’s on the level just above. What happened? Your friend seemed like he was saying you jumped off the bridge but that’s impossible. Do you feel better?” The girl came fully into the room. “Hello, Doctor, is Breq going to be all right?”

“Breq will be fine. The correctives should drop off by tomorrow. Unless something goes wrong.” And with that cheerful observation she turned and left the room.

The girl sat on the edge of my bed. “Your friend is a terrible Tiktik player, I’m glad I didn’t teach him the gambling part or he wouldn’t have had any money to pay the doctor with. And it’s
your
money, isn’t it? From the flier.”

Seivarden frowned. “What? What is she saying?”

I resolved to check the contents of my pack as soon as I could. “He’d have won it back playing counters.”

From the look on her face, the girl didn’t believe that at all. “You really shouldn’t go under the bridge, you know. I
know someone who had a friend whose cousin went under the bridge and someone dropped a piece of bread off, and it was going so fast it hit them in the head and broke their skull open and went into their brain and
killed
them.”

“I enjoyed your cousin’s singing very much.” I didn’t want to reopen the discussion about what had happened.

“Isn’t she wonderful? Oh!” She turned her head, as though she’d heard something. “I have to go. I’ll visit you again!”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said, and she was out the door and away. I looked at Seivarden. “How much did this cost?”

“About what I got for the flier,” she said, ducking her head slightly, maybe out of embarrassment. Maybe something else.

“Did you take anything out of my pack?”

That brought her head up again. “No! I swear I didn’t.” I didn’t answer. “You don’t believe me. I don’t blame you. You can check, as soon as your hands are free.”

“I intend to. But then what?”

She frowned, not comprehending. And of course she didn’t understand—she had gotten as far as (mistakenly) evaluating me as a human being who might be worthy of respect. She had not, it seemed, come to the point of considering she might not actually be important enough for the Radch to send a Special Missions officer after.

“I was never assigned to find you,” I said. “I found you completely by accident. As far as I know, no one is looking for you.” I wished I could gesture, wave her away.

“Why are you here, then? It’s not groundwork for an annexation, there aren’t any more. That’s what they told me.”

“No more annexations,” I agreed. “But that’s not the point. The point is, you can come or go as you like, I have no orders to bring you back.”

Seivarden considered that for six seconds, and then said,
“I tried to quit before. I
did
quit. This station I was on had a program, you’d quit, they’d give you a job. One of their workers hauled me in and cleaned me up and told me the deal. The job was crap, the deal was bullshit, but I’d had enough. I thought I’d had enough.”

“How long did you last?”

“Not quite six months.”

“You see,” I said, after a two-second pause, “why I don’t exactly have confidence in you this time.”

“Believe me, I do. But this is
different
.” She leaned forward, earnest. “Nothing quite clarifies your thoughts like thinking you’re about to die.”

“The effect is often temporary.”

“They said, back on that station, that they could give me something to make kef never work on me. But first I had to fix whatever had made me take it to begin with, because otherwise I’d just find something else. Bullshit, like I said, but if I’d really wanted to, really meant to, I’d have done it then.”

Back at Strigan’s she’d spoken as though her reason for starting was simple, clear-cut. “Did you tell them why you started?” She didn’t answer. “Did you tell them who you were?”

“Of course not.”

The two questions were the same in her mind, I guessed. “You faced death back at Garsedd.”

She flinched, just slightly. “And everything changed. I woke up and all I had was past. Not a very good past, either, no one liked telling me what had happened, everyone was so polite and cheerful and it was all
fake
. And I couldn’t see any kind of future. Listen.” She leaned forward, earnest, breathing slightly harder. “You’re out here on your own, all by yourself, and obviously it’s because you’re suited to it or you
wouldn’t have been assigned.” She paused a moment, maybe considering that issue of just who was suited to what, who was assigned where, and dismissing it. “But in the end, you can go back to the Radch and find people who know you, people who remember you, personally, a place where you
fit
even if you’re not always there. No matter where you go, you’re still part of that pattern, even if you never go back you always know it’s
there
. But when they opened that suspension pod, anyone who ever had any personal interest in me was already seven hundred years dead. Probably longer. Not even…” Her voice trembled, and she stopped, staring ahead at some fixed point beyond me. “Even the ships.”

Even the ships.
“Ships? More than just
Sword of Nathtas
?”

“My… the first ship I ever served on.
Justice of Toren
. I thought maybe if I could find where it was stationed I could send a message and…” She made a negating gesture, wiping out the rest of that sentence. “It disappeared. About ten… wait… I’ve lost track of time. About fifteen years ago.” Closer to twenty. “Nobody could tell me what happened. Nobody knows.”

“Were any of the ships you served on particularly fond of you?” I asked, voice carefully even. Neutral.

She blinked. Straightened. “That’s an odd question. Do you have any experience with ships?”

“Yes,” I said. “Actually.”

“Ships are always attached to their captains.”

“Not like they used to be.” Not like when some ships had gone mad on the deaths of their captains. That had been long, long ago. “And even so, they have favorites.” Though a favorite wouldn’t necessarily know it. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? Ships aren’t people, and they’re made to serve you, to be attached, as you put it.”

Seivarden frowned. “Now you’re angry. You’re very good at hiding it, but you’re angry.”

“Do you grieve for your ships,” I asked, “because they’re dead? Or because their loss means they aren’t here to make you feel connected and cared about?” Silence. “Or do you think those are the same thing?” Still no answer. “I will answer my own question: you were never a favorite of any of the ships you served on. You don’t believe it’s possible for a ship to have favorites.”

Seivarden’s eyes widened—maybe surprise, maybe something else. “You know me too well for me to believe you aren’t here because of me. I’ve thought so from the moment I actually started thinking about it.”

“Not too long ago, then,” I said.

She ignored what I had just said. “You’re the first person, since that pod opened, to feel
familiar
. Like I recognize you. Like you recognize me. I don’t know why that is.”

I knew, of course. But this was not the moment to say so, to explain, immobilized and vulnerable as I was. “I assure you I’m not here because of you. I’m here on my own personal business.”

“You jumped off that bridge for me.”

“And I’m not going to be your reason for quitting kef. I take no responsibility for you. You’re going to have to do that yourself. If you really are going to do that.”

“You jumped off that
bridge
for me. That had to be a three-kilometer drop. Higher. That’s… that’s…” She stopped, shaking her head. “I’m staying with you.”

I closed my eyes. “The moment I even
think
you’re going to steal from me again, I will break both your legs and leave you there, and it will be utter coincidence if you ever see me again.” Except that to Radchaai, there were no coincidences.

“I guess I can’t really argue with that.”

“I don’t recommend it.”

She gave a short laugh, and then was silent for fifteen seconds. “Tell me, then, Breq,” she said after that. “If you’re here on personal business, and nothing at all to do with me, why do you have one of the Garseddai guns in your pack?”

The correctives held my arms and legs completely immobile. I couldn’t even get my shoulders off the bed. The doctor came heavily into the room, pale face flushed. “Lie still!” she admonished, and then turned to Seivarden. “What did you do?”

This was, apparently, comprehensible to Seivarden. She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “Not!” she replied, vehemently, in the same language.

The doctor frowned, pointed at Seivarden, one finger out. Seivarden straightened, indignant at the gesture, which was much ruder to a Radchaai than it was here. “You bother,” the doctor said, sternly, “you go!” Then she turned to me. “
You
will lie still and heal properly.”

“Yes, Doctor.” I subsided from the very small amount of movement I had managed. Took a breath, attempting to calm myself.

This seemed to mollify her. She watched me a moment, doubtless seeing my heart rate, my breathing. “If you can’t settle, I can give you medication.” An offer, a question, a threat. “I can make him”—with a glance at Seivarden—“leave.”

“I don’t need it. Either one.”

The doctor gave a skeptical
hmph
, and turned and left the room.

“I’m sorry,” said Seivarden when the doctor was gone. “That was stupid. I should have thought before I spoke.” I didn’t answer. “When we got to the bottom,” she continued,
as though it was logically connected to what she had said before, “you were unconscious. And obviously badly injured, and I was afraid to move you much, because I couldn’t see if maybe bones were broken. I didn’t have any way to call for help, but I thought maybe you had something I could use to help climb out, or maybe some first-aid correctives I could use, but of course that was foolish, your armor was still up, which was how I knew you were still alive. I did take your handheld out of your coat, but there was no signal, I had to climb up to the top before I could reach anyone. When I got back your armor was down and I was afraid you were dead. Everything’s still in there.”

“If the gun is gone,” I said, voice calm and neutral, “I won’t just break your legs.”

“It’s there,” she insisted. “But this can’t possibly be personal business, can it?”

“It’s personal.” It was just that with me
personal
affected a great many others. But how could I explain that, without revealing more than I wanted to just now?

“Tell me.”

This was not a good time. Not a good moment. But there was a great deal to explain, especially since Seivarden’s knowledge of the past thousand years of history was sure to be patchy and superficial. Years of previous events leading up to this, which she would almost certainly be ignorant of, which would take time to explain, before I ever got to who I was and what I intended.

And that history would make a difference. Without understanding it, how could Seivarden understand anything? Without that context, how could she understand why anyone had acted as they did? If Anaander Mianaai had not reacted with such fury to the Garseddai, would she have done the things
she’d done in the thousand years since then? If Lieutenant Awn had never heard of the events at Ime five years before, twenty-five years ago now, would she have acted as she did?

When I imagined it, the moment that
Mercy of Sarrse
soldier had chosen to defy her orders, I saw her as a segment of an ancillary unit. She had been number One of
Mercy of Sarrse
’s Amaat unit, its senior member. Even though she had been human, had had a name beyond her place on her ship, beyond
Mercy of Sarrse
One Amaat One. But I had never seen a recording, had never seen her face.

She had been human. She had endured events at Ime—perhaps even enforced the corrupt dictates of the governor herself, when ordered. But something about that particular moment had changed things. Something had been too much for her.

What had it been? The sight, perhaps, of a Rrrrrr, dead or dying? I’d seen pictures of the Rrrrrr, snake-long, furred, multi-limbed, speaking in growls and barks; and the humans associated with them, who could speak that language and understand it. Had it been the Rrrrrr who had knocked
Mercy of Sarrse
One Amaat One off her expected path? Did she care so much for the threat of breaking the treaty with the Presger? Or had it been the thought of killing so many helpless human beings? If I had known more about her, perhaps I could have seen why in that moment she had decided that she would rather die.

I knew almost nothing about her. Probably by design. But even the little I had known, the little Lieutenant Awn had known, had made a difference. “Did anyone tell you about what happened at Ime Station?”

Seivarden frowned. “No. Tell me.”

I told her. About the governor’s corruption, her preventing Ime Station or any of the ships from reporting what she was
doing, so far from anywhere else in Radch space. About the ship that had arrived one day—they’d assumed it was human, no one knew of any aliens anywhere nearby, and it obviously wasn’t Radchaai and so it was fair game. I told Seivarden as much as I knew about the soldiers from
Mercy of Sarrse
who boarded the unknown ship with orders to take it and kill anyone aboard who resisted, or who obviously couldn’t be made into ancillaries. I didn’t know much—only that once the One Amaat unit had boarded the alien ship, its One had refused to continue to follow orders. She had convinced the rest of One Amaat to follow her, and they had defected to the Rrrrrr and taken the ship out of reach.