Ancillary Justice (36 page)

Did the captain of
Mercy of Kalr
also take that neutral stance? Or had something changed in that balance during the time I had been gone? And what did it mean that Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat disliked her? I was certain dislike was the expression I had seen on her face when I had mentioned the name. Military ships weren’t subject to dock authorities—except of course in the matter of arrivals and departures—and the relationship between the two usually involved some contempt on one side and mild resentment on the other, all covered over with guarded courtesy. But Skaaiat Awer had never been given to resentment, and besides she knew both sides of the game. Had Captain Vel offended her personally? Did she merely dislike her, as happened sometimes?

Or did her sympathies place her on the other side of some political dividing line? And after all, where was Skaaiat Awer likely to fall, in a divided Radch? Unless something had happened to change her personality and opinions drastically, I thought I knew where Skaaiat Awer would land in that toss. Captain Vel—and for that matter
Mercy of Kalr
—I didn’t know well enough to say.

As for Seivarden, I was under no illusions as to where
her
sympathies would lie, given a choice between citizens who kept their proper places along with an expanding, conquering Radch, or no more annexations and the elevation of citizens with the wrong accents and antecedents. I was under no illusions as to what Seivarden’s opinion of Lieutenant Awn would have been, had they ever met.

The place where Captain Vel customarily took tea was not prominently marked. It didn’t need to be. It was probably not
at the very top of fashion and society—not unless Osck’s fortunes had soared in the last twenty years. But it was still the sort of place that if you didn’t already know it was there you were almost certainly not welcome. The place was dark and the sound muffled—rugs and hangings absorbed echoes or unwanted noises. Stepping in from the noisy corridor it was as though I had suddenly put my hands over my ears. Groups of low chairs surrounded small tables. Captain Vel sat in one corner, flasks and bowls of tea and a half-empty tray of pastries on the table in front of her. The chairs were full, and an outer circle had been pulled around.

They had been here for at least an hour. Seivarden had said to me before we left the room, blandly, still irritated, that of course I wouldn’t want to rush out to tea. If she’d been in a better mood she would have told me straight out that I should arrive late. It had been my own inclination even before she spoke, so I said nothing and let her have the satisfaction of thinking she’d influenced me, if she wished to have it.

Captain Vel saw me and rose, bowing. “Ah, Breq Ghaiad. Or is it Ghaiad Breq?”

I made my own bow in return, taking care that it was precisely as shallow as hers had been. “In the Gerentate we put our house names first.” The Gerentate didn’t have houses the way Radchaai did, but it was the only term Radchaai had for a name that indicated family relationship. “But I am not in the Gerentate at the moment. Ghaiad is my house name.”

“You’ve already put it in the right order for us then!” Captain Vel said, falsely jovial. “Very thoughtful.” I couldn’t see Seivarden, who stood behind me. I wondered briefly what expression was on her face, and also why Captain Vel had invited me here if her every interaction with me was going to be mildly insulting.

Station was certainly watching me. It would see at least traces of my annoyance. Captain Vel would not. And likely would not care if she could have.

“And Captain Seivarden Vendaai,” Captain Vel continued, and made another bow, noticeably deeper than the one before. “An honor, sir. A distinct honor. Do sit.” She gestured to chairs near her own, and two elegantly attired and bejeweled Radchaai rose to make way for us, no complaint or expression of resentment apparent.

“Your pardon, Captain,” said Seivarden. Bland. The correctives from the day before had come off, and she looked very nearly what she had been a thousand years ago, the wealthy and arrogant daughter of a highly placed house. In a moment she would sneer and say something sarcastic, I was sure, but she didn’t. “I no longer deserve the rank. I am the honored Breq’s servant.” Slight stress on
honored
, as though Captain Vel might be ignorant of the appropriate courtesy title and Seivarden meant merely to politely and discreetly inform her. “And I thank you for the invitation she was good enough to convey to me.” There it was, a hint of disdain, though it was possible only someone who knew her well would hear it. “But I have duties to attend to.”

“I’ve given you the afternoon off, citizen,” I said before Captain Vel could answer. “Spend it however you like.” No reaction from Seivarden, and still I couldn’t see her face. I took one of the seats cleared for us. A lieutenant had sat there previously, doubtless one of Captain Vel’s officers. Though I saw more brown uniforms here than a small ship like
Mercy of Kalr
could account for.

The person next to me was a civilian in rose and azure, delicate satin gloves that suggested she never handled anything rougher or heavier than a bowl of tea, and an
ostentatiously large brooch of woven and hammered gold wire set with sapphires—not, I was sure, glass. Likely the design advertised whatever wealthy house she belonged to, but I didn’t recognize it. She leaned toward me and said, loudly, as Seivarden took the seat opposite me, “How fortunate you must have thought yourself, to find Seivarden Vendaai!”

“Fortunate,” I repeated, carefully, as though the word were unfamiliar to me, leaning just slightly more heavily on my Gerentate accent. Almost wishing the Radchaai language concerned itself with gender so I could use it wrongly and sound even more foreign. Almost. “Is that the word for it?” I had guessed correctly why Captain Vel had approached me the way she had. Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had done something similar, addressing Seivarden even though she knew Seivarden had come as my servant. Of course, the inspector supervisor had seen her mistake almost immediately.

Across from me, Seivarden was explaining to Captain Vel about the situation with her aptitudes. I was astonished at her icy calm, given I knew she’d been angry ever since I told her I’d intended to come. But this was, in some ways, her natural habitat. If the ship that had found her suspension pod had brought her somewhere like this, instead of a small, provincial station, things would have gone very differently for her.

“Ridiculous!” exclaimed Rose-and-Azure beside me, while Captain Vel poured a bowl of tea and offered it to Seivarden. “As though you were a child. As though no one knew what you were suited for. It used to be you could depend on officials to handle things properly.”
Justly
, rang the silent companion of that last word.
Beneficially.

“I did, citizen, lose my ship,” Seivarden said.

“Not your fault, Captain,” protested another civilian somewhere behind me. “Surely not.”

“Everything that happens on my watch is my fault, citizen,” answered Seivarden.

Captain Vel gestured agreement. “Still, there shouldn’t have been any question of you taking the tests
again
.”

Seivarden looked at her tea, looked over at me sitting empty-handed across from her, and set her bowl down on the table in front of her without drinking. Captain Vel poured a bowl and offered it to me, as though she hadn’t noticed Seivarden’s gesture.

“How do you find the Radch after a thousand years, Captain?” asked someone behind me as I accepted the tea. “Much changed?”

Seivarden didn’t retrieve her own bowl. “Changed some. The same some.”

“For the better, or for the worse?”

“I could hardly say,” replied Seivarden, coolly.

“How beautifully you speak, Captain Seivarden,” said someone else. “So many young people these days are careless about their speech. It’s lovely to hear someone speak with real refinement.”

Seivarden’s lips quirked in what might be taken for appreciation of a compliment, but almost certainly wasn’t.

“These lower houses and provincials, with their accents and their slang,” agreed Captain Vel. “Really, my own ship, fine soldiers but to hear them talk you’d think they’d never gone to school.”

“Pure laziness,” opined a lieutenant behind Seivarden.

“You don’t have that with ancillaries,” said someone, possibly another captain behind me.

“A lot of things you don’t have with ancillaries,” said someone else, a comment that might be taken two ways, but I
was fairly sure I knew which way was meant. “But that’s not a safe topic.”

“Not safe?” I asked, all innocence. “Surely it isn’t illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.”

“And surely,” added Seivarden with a slight sneer, her mask finally cracking, “it’s
always
safe to complain about lower houses and provincials.”

“You’d
think
,” said Rose-and-Azure beside me, mistaking Seivarden’s intent. “But we are sadly changed, Captain, from your day. It used to be you could depend on the aptitudes to send the
right
citizen to the
right
assignment. I can’t fathom some of the decisions they make these days. And atheists given privileges.” She meant Valskaayans, who were, as a rule, not atheists but exclusive monotheists. The difference was invisible to many Radchaai. “And human soldiers! People nowadays are squeamish about ancillaries, but you don’t see ancillaries drunk and puking on the concourse.”

Seivarden made a sympathetic noise. “I’ve
never
known officers to be puking drunk.”

“In your day, maybe not,” answered someone behind me. “Things have changed.”

Rose-and-Azure tipped her head toward Captain Vel, who to judge by her expression had finally understood Seivarden’s words as Rose-and-Azure had not. “Not to say, Captain, that you don’t keep
your
ship in order. But you wouldn’t have to
keep
ancillaries in order, would you?”

Captain Vel waved the point away with an empty hand, her bowl of tea in the other. “That’s command, citizen, it’s just my job. But there are more serious issues. You can’t fill
troop carriers with humans. The human-crewed Justices are all half-empty.”

“And of course,” interjected Rose-and-Azure, “those all have to be
paid
.”

Captain Vel gestured assent. “They say we don’t need them anymore.”
They
being, of course, Anaander Mianaai. No one would name her while being critical of her. “That our borders are proper as they are. I don’t pretend to understand policy, or politics. But it seems to me it’s less wasteful to store ancillaries than it is to train and pay humans and rotate them in and out of storage.”

“They say,” said Rose-and-Azure beside me, taking a pastry from the table in front of her, “that if it hadn’t been for
Justice of Toren
’s disappearance they’d have scrapped one of the other carriers by now.” My surprise at hearing my own name couldn’t have been visible to anyone here, but surely Station could see it. And that surprise, that startlement, wasn’t something that would fit into the identity I’d constructed. Station would be reevaluating me, I was sure. So would Anaander Mianaai.

“Ah,” said a civilian behind me. “But our visitor here is doubtless glad to hear our borders are fixed.”

I barely turned my head to answer. “The Gerentate would be a very large mouthful.” I kept my voice even. No one here could see my continuing consternation at that startlement moments ago.

Except, of course, Station and Anaander Mianaai. And Anaander Mianaai—or part of her, at least—would have very good reasons for noticing talk about
Justice of Toren
, and reactions to it.

“I don’t know, Captain Seivarden,” Captain Vel was
saying, “if you’ve heard about the mutiny at Ime. An entire unit refused their orders and defected to an alien power.”

“Certainly wouldn’t have happened on an ancillary-crewed ship,” said someone behind Seivarden.

“Not too big a mouthful for the Radch, I imagine,” said the person behind me.

“I daresay”—again I leaned just slightly on my Gerentate accent—“sharing a border with us this long, you’ve learned better table manners.” I refused to turn all the way around to see whether the answering silence was amused, indignant, or merely distracted by Seivarden and Captain Vel. Tried not to think too hard about what conclusions Anaander Mianaai would draw from my reaction to hearing my name.

“I think I heard something about it,” said Seivarden, frowning thoughtfully. “Ime. That was where the provincial governor and the captains of the ships in the system murdered and stole, and sabotaged the ships and station so they couldn’t report to higher authorities. Yes?” No point worrying what Station—or the Lord of the Radch—would make of my reaction to
that
. It would fall where it fell. I needed to stay calm.

“That’s beside the point,” answered Rose-and-Azure. “The point is, it was mutiny. Mutiny winked at, but one can’t make a plain statement of fact about the dangers of promoting the ill-bred and vulgar to positions of authority, or policies that encourage the most vile sort of behavior, and even undermine everything civilization has always stood for, without losing business contacts or promotions.”

“You must be very brave, then, to speak so,” I observed. But I was sure Rose-and-Azure wasn’t particularly brave. She spoke as she did because she could do so without danger to herself.

Calm. I could control my breathing, keep it smooth and regular. My skin was too dark to show a flush, but Station would see the temperature change. Station might just think I was angry about something. I had good reason to be angry.

“Honored,” Seivarden said abruptly. From the set of her jaw and shoulders, she was suppressing an urge to cross her arms. Would be, quite soon, in one of those silently-facing-the-wall moods. “We’ll be late to our next engagement.” She rose, more abruptly than was strictly polite.

“Indeed,” I acknowledged, and set down my untasted tea. Hoped her action was on her own account, and not because she’d seen any sign of my agitation. “Captain Vel, thank you for your very kind invitation. It was an honor to meet you all.”