Ancillary Justice (38 page)

“Of course,” Seivarden answered, all calm courtesy. Of course. She knew she was innocent of any wrongdoing, she was sure I was Special Missions and working for Anaander herself, why should she worry? But I knew that finally the moment had come. The omens that had been in the air for twenty years were about to come down and show me—show Anaander Mianaai—what pattern they made.

This Security officer didn’t even twitch an eyebrow as she answered. “The Lord of the Radch wishes to speak with you privately, citizen.” Not a glance at me. She likely didn’t know why she’d been sent to escort us to the Lord of the Radch, didn’t realize I was dangerous, that she needed the backup that awaited us out in the station’s corridors. If she even knew it was there.

The gun still sat under my jacket, and extra magazines tucked here and there, wherever the bulge wouldn’t show. Anaander Mianaai almost certainly didn’t know what I intended.

“Is this my audience I requested, then?” asked Seivarden.

The Security officer gestured ambiguity. “I couldn’t say, citizen.”

Anaander Mianaai couldn’t have known my object in coming, knew only that I had disappeared some twenty years ago. Part of her might know that she’d been aboard my last voyage, but none of her could know what had happened after I’d gated out of Shis’urna’s system.

“I did ask,” said Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat, “if you might have tea and supper first.” The fact she’d asked said something about her relationship with Security. The fact she’d been refused said something about the urgency behind this arrest—it was an arrest, I was sure.

Security, oblivious, made an apologetic gesture. “My orders, Inspector Supervisor. Citizen.”

“Of course,” said Skaaiat, smooth and unruffled, but I knew her, heard worry hidden in her voice. “Citizen Seivarden. Honored Breq. If there’s any assistance I can provide please don’t hesitate to call on me.”

“Thank you, Inspector Supervisor,” I said, and bowed. My fear and uncertainty, my near panic, drained away. The omen Stillness had flipped, become Movement. And Justice was about to land before me, clear and unambiguous.

The Security officer escorted us not to the main entrance of the palace proper, but into the temple, quiet at this hour when many people were visiting, or sitting home with family and a bowl of tea. A young priest sat behind the now-half-empty baskets of flowers, bored and sullen. She gave us a resentful glance as we entered, but didn’t even turn her head as we passed.

We went through the main hall, four-armed Amaat looming, the air still smelling of incense and the heap of flowers at the god’s feet and knees, back to a tiny chapel tucked into a corner, dedicated to an old and now-obscure provincial god, one of those personifications of abstract concepts so many pantheons hold, in this case a deification of legitimate political authority. No doubt when the palace had been built there had been no question of this god’s placement next to Amaat, but she seemed to have fallen out of favor, the demographic of the station, or perhaps just fashion, having changed. Or perhaps something more ominous had caused it.

In the wall behind the image of the god a panel slid open. Behind it an armed and armored guard, her weapon holstered but not far from her hand, silver-smooth armor covering her
face. Ancillary, I thought, but there was no way to be sure. I wondered, as I had occasionally over the past twenty years, how that worked. Surely the palace proper wasn’t guarded by Station. Were Anaander Mianaai’s guards just another part of herself?

Seivarden looked at me, irritated, and, I thought, a bit afraid. “I didn’t think I rated the secret entrance.” Though it probably wasn’t all that secret, just slightly less public than the one outside on the concourse.

The Security officer made that ambiguous gesture again, but said nothing.

“Well,” I said, and Seivarden gave me an expectant look. Clearly she thought this was due to whatever special status she had decided I had. I stepped through the door, past the unmoving guard, who didn’t acknowledge me at all, nor Seivarden coming behind me. The panel slid shut behind us.

Beyond the short stretch of blank corridor, another door opened onto a room four meters by eight, its ceiling three meters above. Leafy vines snaked across the walls, trailing from supports rising from the floor. Pale blue walls suggested vast distances beyond the greenery, making the room feel larger than it was, the last vestige of a fashion for false vistas, more than five hundred years out of date. At the far end a dais, and behind it images of the four Emanations hung in the vines.

On the dais stood Anaander Mianaai—two of her. The Lord of the Radch was so curious about us she wanted more than one part of herself here to question us, I guessed. Though likely she had rationalized it to herself some other way.

We walked to within three meters of the Lord of the Radch, and Seivarden knelt, and then prostrated herself. I was, supposedly, not Radchaai, not subject to Anaander Mianaai. But Anaander Mianaai knew, she had to know, who I really was. She had not summoned us this way without knowing. Still, I
didn’t kneel, or even bow. Neither Mianaai betrayed any surprise or indignation at this.

“Citizen Seivarden Vendaai,” said the Mianaai on the right. “What exactly do you think you’re playing at?”

Seivarden’s shoulders twitched, as though, facedown on the floor, she had momentarily wanted to cross her arms.

The Mianaai on the left said, “
Justice of Toren
’s behavior has been alarming and perplexing enough, just on its own. Entering the temple and defiling the offerings! Whatever could you have meant by it? What am I to say to the priests?”

The gun still lay against my side, under my jacket, unremarked. I was an ancillary. Ancillaries were notorious for their expressionless faces. I could easily keep from smiling.

“If my lord pleases,” said Seivarden into the pause that followed Anaander Mianaai’s words. Her voice was slightly breathy, and I thought maybe she was hyperventilating slightly. “Wh… I don’t…”

The Mianaai on the right let out a sardonic
ha
. “Citizen Seivarden is surprised, and doesn’t understand me,” that Mianaai continued. “And you,
Justice of Toren
. You intended to deceive me. Why?”

“When I first suspected who you were,” said the Mianaai on the left before I could answer, “I almost didn’t believe it. Another long-lost omen fetching up at my feet. I watched you, to see what you would do, to try to understand what you were intending by your rather extraordinary behavior.”

If I had been human, I would have laughed. Two Mianaais before me. Neither trusted the other to hold this interview unsupervised, unobstructed. Neither knew the details of the destruction of
Justice of Toren
, each no doubt suspected the
other’s involvement. I might be an instrument of either, neither trusting the other. Which was which?

The Mianaai on the right said, “You’ve done a fairly decent job concealing your origin. It was Inspector Adjunct Ceit who first made me suspect.”
I haven’t heard that song since I was a child
, she’d said. That song, that had obviously come from Shis’urna. “I admit it took me an entire day to piece everything together, and even then I could hardly believe it. You hid your implants reasonably well. Station was completely deceived. But the humming would likely have given you away eventually, I imagine. Are you aware you do it almost constantly? I suspect you’re making an effort not to do it now. Which I do appreciate.”

Still facedown on the floor, Seivarden said, in a small voice, “Breq?”

“Not Breq,” said the Mianaai on the left. “
Justice of Toren
.”

“
Justice of Toren
One Esk,” I corrected, dropping all pretense of a Gerentate accent, or human expression. I was done pretending. It was terrifying, because I knew I couldn’t live long past this, but also, oddly, a relief. A weight gone.

The right-hand Mianaai gestured the obviousness of my statement. “
Justice of Toren
is destroyed,” I said. Both Mianaais seemed to stop breathing. Stared at me. Again I might have laughed, if I were capable of it.

“Begging my lord’s indulgence,” said Seivarden from the floor, voice tentative. “Surely there’s some mistake. Breq is human. She can’t possibly be
Justice of Toren
One Esk. I served in
Justice of Toren
’s Esk decade. No
Justice of Toren
medic would give One Esk a body with a voice like Breq’s. Not unless she wanted to seriously annoy the Esk lieutenants.”

Silence, thick and heavy, for three seconds.

“She thinks I’m Special Missions,” I said, breaking that silence. “I never told her I was. I never told her I was anything, except Breq from the Gerentate, and she never believed that. I wanted to leave her where I found her, but I couldn’t and I don’t know why. She was never one of my favorites.” I knew that sounded insane. A particular sort of insane, an AI insanity. I didn’t care. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

The right-hand Mianaai lifted an eyebrow. “Then why is she here?”

“No one could ignore her arrival here. Since I arrived with her, no one could ignore or conceal mine. And you already know why I couldn’t just come straight to you.”

The slight twitch of a frown on the right-hand Mianaai.

“Citizen Seivarden Vendaai,” said the Mianaai on the left, “it is now clear to me that
Justice of Toren
deceived you. You didn’t know what it was. It would be best, I think, if you left now. Without, of course, speaking of this to anyone else.”

“No?” breathed Seivarden into the floor, as though she were asking a question. Or as though she was surprised to hear the word come out of her mouth. “No,” she said again, more certainly. “There’s a mistake somewhere. Breq jumped off a
bridge
for me.”

My hip hurt, thinking of it. “No sane human being would have done that.”

“I never said you were
sane
,” Seivarden said, quietly, sounding slightly choked.

“Seivarden Vendaai,” said the left-hand Mianaai, “this ancillary—and it
is
an ancillary—isn’t human. The fact you thought it was explains a good deal of your behavior that was unclear to me before. I’m sorry for its deception and your disappointment, but you need to leave.
Now.
”

“Begging my lord’s indulgence.” Seivarden still lay facedown, speaking into the floor. “Whether you give it or not. I’m not leaving Breq.”

“Go away, Seivarden,” I said, expressionless.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding almost blithe except her voice still shook slightly. “You’re stuck with me.”

I looked down at her. She turned her head to look up at me, her expression a mix of fear and determination. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” I told her. “You don’t understand what’s happening here.”

“I don’t need to.”

“Fair enough,” said the Mianaai on the right, seeming almost amused. The left-hand one seemed less so. I wondered why that was. “Explain yourself,
Justice of Toren
.”

Here it was, the moment I had worked toward for twenty years. Waited for. Feared would never come. “First,” I said, “as I’m sure you already suspect, you were aboard
Justice of Toren
, and it was you yourself who destroyed it. You breached the heat shield because you discovered you had already suborned me yourself, some time previously. You’re fighting yourself. At least two of you, maybe more.”

Both Mianaais blinked and shifted their stances a fraction of a millimeter, in a way I recognized. I’d seen myself do it, in Ors, when communications cut out. Another of those communications-blocking boxes—part of Anaander Mianaai, at least, must have worried about what I might say, must have been waiting with her hand on the switch. I wondered how far the effect reached, and which Mianaai had triggered it, trying, too late, to hide my revelation from herself. Wondered what that must have been like, knowing that facing me this way could only lead to disaster, and yet
obligated by the nature of her struggle with herself to do so. The thought amused me briefly.

“Second.” I reached into my jacket, pulled out the gun, the dark gray of my glove bleeding into the white the weapon had taken from my shirt. “I’m going to kill you.” I aimed at the right-hand Mianaai.

Who began to sing, in a slightly flat baritone, in a language dead for ten thousand years. “
The person, the person, the person with weapons.
” I couldn’t move. Couldn’t squeeze the trigger.

You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid.

All around the cry goes out, put on armor made of iron.

The person, the person, the person with weapons.

You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid.

She shouldn’t know that song. Why would Anaander Mianaai ever go digging in forgotten Valskaayan archives, why would she trouble to learn a song that very possibly no one but me had sung for longer than she had been alive?

“
Justice of Toren
One Esk,” said the right-hand Mianaai, “shoot the instance of me to the left of the instance that’s speaking to you.”

Muscles moved without my willing them. I shifted my aim to the left and fired. The left-hand Mianaai collapsed to the ground.

The right-hand one said, “Now I just have to get to the docks before I do. And yes, Seivarden, I know you’re confused but you
were
warned.”

“Where did you learn that song?” I asked. Still otherwise frozen.

“From you,” said Anaander Mianaai. “A hundred years ago, at Valskaay.” This, then, was that Anaander who had pushed reforms, begun dismantling Radchaai ships. The one who had first visited me secretly at Valskaay and laid down those orders I could sense but never see. “I asked you to teach me the song least likely to ever be sung by anyone else, and then I set it as an access and hid it from you. My enemy and I are far too evenly matched. The only advantage I have is what might occur to me when I’m apart from myself. And that day it occurred to me that I had never paid close enough attention to you—you, One Esk. To what you might be.”