Ancillary Justice (40 page)

We turned a corner and stopped cold, confronted with Inspector Adjunct Ceit holding a stun stick, the sort of thing Station Security might use. She must have heard us talking in the corridor, because she evinced no surprise at our appearance, just a look of terrified determination. “Inspector Supervisor says I’m not to let anyone past.” Her eyes were wide, her voice unsure. She looked at Anaander Mianaai. “Especially not you.”

Anaander Mianaai laughed. “Quiet,” I said, “or Seivarden will shoot you.”

Anaander Mianaai raised an eyebrow, plainly disbelieving that Seivarden could bring herself to do any such thing, but she was silent.

“Daos Ceit,” I said, in the language I knew had been her first. “Do you remember the day you came to the lieutenant’s
house and found the tyrant there? You were afraid and you grabbed my hand.” Her eyes, impossibly, grew wider. “You must have woken before anyone else in your house or they’d never have let you come, not after what happened the night before.”

“But…”

“I
must
speak with Skaaiat Awer.”

“You’re alive!” she said, eyes still wide, still not quite believing. “Is the lieutenant… Inspector Supervisor will be so…”

“She’s dead,” I interrupted before she could get any further. “
I’m
dead. I’m all that’s left. I have to speak to Skaaiat Awer
right now
. The tyrant will stay here and if she won’t then you should hit her as hard as you can.”

I had thought Daos Ceit was mainly astonished, but now tears welled, and one dropped onto her sleeve, where she held the stick at the ready. “All right,” she said. “I will.” She looked at Anaander Mianaai and lifted the stick just slightly, the threat plain. Though it did strike me as foolhardy to post no one here but Daos Ceit.

“What’s the inspector supervisor doing?”

“She’s sent people to manually lock down all the docks.” That would take a lot of people, and a long time. It explained why Daos Ceit was here by herself. I thought of storm shutters rolling down, in the lower city. “She said it was just like that night in Ors, and the tyrant had to be doing it.”

Anaander Mianaai listened to all this, bemused. Seivarden seemed to have passed into some sort of shocked state, beyond astonishment.

“You stay here,” I said to Anaander Mianaai, in Radchaai. “Or Daos Ceit will stun you.”

“Yes, I got that much,” said Anaander Mianaai. “I see
I didn’t make a very positive impression when last we met, citizen.”

“Everyone knows you killed all those people,” Daos Ceit said. Two more tears escaped. “And blamed the lieutenant for it.”

I had thought she was too young to have such strong feelings about the event. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m scared.” Not taking her eyes off Anaander Mianaai, or lowering the stick.

That struck me as very sensible. “Come on, Seivarden.” I walked past Daos Ceit.

Voices sounded ahead, where the outer office lay, past a turning. One step and then the next. It had never been anything else.

Seivarden let out a convulsive breath. It might have started as a laugh, or something she’d wanted to say. “Well,” she said then. “We survived the bridge.”

“That was easy.” I stopped and checked under my brocaded jacket, counting magazines even though I already knew how many I had. Shifted one from under the waistband of my trousers to a jacket pocket. “This is not going to be easy. Or end half as well. Are you with me?”

“Always,” she said, voice still oddly steady though I was sure she was on the point of collapse. “Haven’t I already said that?”

I didn’t understand what she meant, but now wasn’t the time to wonder, or ask. “Then let’s go.”

We rounded the corner, my gun at the ready, and found the outer office empty. Not silent. Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat’s voice sounded outside, slightly muted through the wall. “I appreciate that, Captain, but I’m ultimately responsible for the safety of the docks.”

An answer, muffled, words indistinguishable, but I thought I recognized the voice.

“I stand by my actions, Captain,” Skaaiat Awer answered as Seivarden and I came through the office and reached the wide lobby just outside.

Captain Vel stood, her back to an open lift shaft, a lieutenant and two troops behind her. The lieutenant still had pastry crumbs on her brown jacket. They must have climbed down the shaft, because I was quite certain Station controlled the lifts. In front of us, facing them and all the lobby’s watching gods, stood Skaaiat Awer and four dock inspectors. Captain Vel saw me, saw Seivarden, and frowned slightly in surprise. “Captain Seivarden,” she said.

Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat didn’t turn around, but I
could guess what she was thinking, that she’d sent Daos Ceit to defend the back way in, all by herself. “She’s fine,” I said, answering her, and not Captain Vel. “She let me past.” And then, not having planned it, the words seeming to come out of my mouth of their own volition, “Lieutenant, it’s me, I’m
Justice of Toren
One Esk.”

As soon as I said it I knew she would turn. I raised the gun to aim it at Captain Vel. “Don’t move, Captain.” But she hadn’t. She and the rest of
Mercy of Kalr
stood puzzling out what I had just said.

Skaaiat Awer turned. “Daos Ceit would never have let me by otherwise,” I said. And remembered Daos Ceit’s hopeful question. “Lieutenant Awn is dead.
Justice of Toren
is destroyed. It’s only me now.”

“You’re lying,” she said, but even with my attention on Captain Vel and the others I could see she believed me.

One of the lift doors came jerkily open and Anaander Mianaai jumped out. And then another. The first turned, fist raised, as the second lunged for her. Soldiers and dock inspectors backed reflexively away from the struggling Anaanders, into my line of fire. “
Mercy of Kalr
stand clear!” I shouted, and the soldiers moved, even Captain Vel. I fired twice, hitting one Anaander in the head and the other in the back.

Everyone else stood frozen. Shocked. “Inspector Supervisor,” I said, “you can’t let the Lord of the Radch reach
Mercy of Kalr
. She’ll breach its heat shield and destroy us all.”

One Anaander still lived, struggled vainly to stand. “You’ve got it backward,” she gasped, bleeding. Dying, I thought, unless she got to a medic soon. But it hardly mattered, this was only one of thousands of bodies. I wondered what was happening in the private center of the palace proper, what
sort of violence had broken out. “I’m not the one you want to shoot.”

“If you’re Anaander Mianaai,” I said, “then I want to shoot you.” Whichever half she represented, this body hadn’t heard all of that conversation in the audience hall, still thought it possible that I was on her side.

She gasped, and for a moment I thought she was gone. Then she said, faintly, “My fault.” And then, “If I were me”—a brief moment of pained amusement—“I’ll have gone to Security.”

Except, of course, unlike Anaander Mianaai’s personal guard (and whoever had shot at me on the concourse), Station Security’s “armed” was stun sticks, and “armored” was helmets and vests. They never had to face opponents with guns. I had a gun, and because of who I was, I was deadly with it. This Mianaai had missed that part of the conversation as well. “Have you noticed my gun?” I asked. “Have you recognized it?” She wasn’t armored, hadn’t realized that the gun I had shot her with was different from any other gun.

Hadn’t had, I thought, time or attention to wonder how anyone on the station could have had a gun she didn’t know about. Or maybe she just assumed I had shot her with a weapon she’d hidden from herself. But she saw now. No one else understood, no one else recognized the weapon, except Seivarden who already knew. “I can stand right here and pick off anyone who comes through the shafts. Just like I did you. I’ve got plenty of ammunition.”

She didn’t answer. Shock would defeat her in a matter of minutes, I thought.

Before any of the Mercy of Kalrs could react, a dozen vested and helmeted Station Security came thunking down
the lift shaft. The first six tumbled out into the corridor, then stopped, shocked and confused by the dead Anaander Mianaais lying on the ground.

I had spoken the truth, I could pick them off, could shoot them in this moment of frozen surprise. But I didn’t want to. “Security,” I said, as firmly and authoritatively as I could. Noting which fresh magazine was nearest to hand. “Whose orders are you following?”

The senior Security officer turned and stared at me, saw Skaaiat Awer and her dock inspectors, facing Captain Vel and her two lieutenants. Hesitated as she tried to put us together in some shape she understood.

“I am ordered by the Lord of the Radch to secure the docks,” she announced. As she spoke I saw on her face the moment she connected the dead Mianaais with the gun I held ready. The gun I shouldn’t have had.

“I have the docks secured,” said Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat.

“All due respect, Inspector Supervisor.” Senior Security sounded reasonably sincere. “The Lord of the Radch has to get to a gate so she can send for help. We’re to ensure she makes it safely to a ship.”

“Why not her own security?” I asked, already knowing the answer, as Senior Security did not. It was plain on her face that the question hadn’t occurred to her.

Captain Vel said, brusque, “My own ship’s shuttle is docked, I’d be more than happy to take my lord where she wants to go.” This with a pointed look at Skaaiat Awer.

Another Anaander Mianaai was almost certainly in that shaft behind those other Security officers. “Seivarden,” I said, “escort Senior Security to where Inspector Adjunct Daos Ceit is.” And to Senior Security’s look of dubious alarm, “It will
make a number of things clear to you. You’ll still outnumber us and if you’re not back within five minutes they can take me down.” Or try to. They had probably never any of them met an ancillary and didn’t know how dangerous I could be.

“And if I won’t?” asked Senior Security.

I had left my face expressionless, but now, in answer, I smiled, as sweetly as I could manage. “Try it and see.”

The smile unnerved her, and she obviously had no idea what was going on, and knew it, knew things weren’t adding up to anything she could make sense of. Likely her entire career had been spent dealing with drunks, and arguments between neighbors. “Five minutes,” she said.

“Good choice,” I said, still smiling. “Do please leave the stun stick behind.”

“This way, citizen.” Seivarden, all elegant servant’s politeness.

When they had gone Captain Vel said, urgently, “Security, we outnumber them, despite the gun.”

“Them.” The apparently next-ranking Security officer was plainly still confused, still hadn’t worked out what was going on. And, I realized, Security was used to thinking of Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat, indeed all of the dock inspectors, as being allies. And of course military officers held both dock authorities and Station Security forces in mild contempt, a fact Security here was certainly aware of. “Why is there a
them
?”

A look of frustrated irritation crossed Captain Vel’s face.

All this time, muttered words had been passing from the Security on solid ground to the Security still hanging in the shaft. I was certain an Anaander Mianaai was with them, and that the only thing that had kept her from herself ordering Security to rush me was her realizing that despite what Station (and certainly her own sensors) had told her, I had
a gun. She needed to protect her own particular body, now she couldn’t rely on any of the others. That and the lag time of questions and information passing from citizen to citizen up and down the shaft had kept her from acting until now, but surely she would move soon. And as if in answer to my thought the whispering in the shaft intensified, and the Security officers shifted their stances, just slightly, in a way that told me they were about to charge.

Just then, Senior Security returned. She turned to look at me as she passed, a horrified expression on her face. Said to her now-hesitating officers, “I don’t know what to do. The Lord of the Radch is back there, and she says the inspector supervisor and this… this person are acting under her direct orders and we’re not to allow even one of her on the docks or onto any ship, under any circumstances.” Her fear and her confusion were evident.

I knew how she felt, but this wasn’t the time to sympathize. “She asked you, and not her own guard, because her own guard is fighting her, and probably each other. Depending on which of them got orders from which of her.”

“I don’t know who to believe,” said Senior Security. But I thought Security’s natural inclination to side with dock authority might tip the balance in our favor.

And Captain Vel and her lieutenant and troops had lost the initiative, lost any chance to disarm me, with Security in the balance but ready to tip my way, them and their stun sticks. Maybe if the Mercy of Kalrs had ever seen combat, ever seen any enemy that wasn’t a training exercise. Hadn’t spent so long on a Mercy, ferrying supplies or running long, dull patrols. Or visiting palaces and eating pastry.

Eating pastry and having tea with associates who had decided political opinions. “You don’t even know,” I said
to Captain Vel, “which one is giving which orders.” She frowned, puzzled. She hadn’t entirely understood the situation, then. I’d assumed she knew more than she did.

“You’re confused,” said Captain Vel. “It isn’t your fault, the enemy has misinformed you, and your mind was never your own to begin with.”

“My lord is leaving!” called a Security officer. As a body, Security looked toward Senior Security. Who looked at me.

None of this distracted Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat. “And just who, Captain, is the enemy?”

“You!” Captain Vel answered, vehement and bitter. “And everyone like you who aids and encourages what’s happened to us in the last five hundred years. Five hundred years of alien infiltration and corruption.” The word she used was a close cousin of the one the Lord of the Radch had used to describe my pollution of temple offerings. Captain Vel turned to me again. “You’re confused, but you were made by Anaander Mianaai to serve Anaander Mianaai. Not her enemies.”