Ancillary Justice (43 page)

“She will,” answered the medic, behind me. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

She was right. Just dressing, even with Seivarden’s assistance, had left me shaking with exhaustion. I had come down the corridor on sheer determination. Now I felt turning my head to answer the medic would take more strength than I had.

“You just grew a new pair of lungs,” continued the medic. “Among other things. You’re not going to be walking around for a few days. At the very least.” Daos Ceit breathed shallowly and regularly, looking so much like the tiny child I’d known I wondered for a moment that I hadn’t recognized her as soon as I’d seen her.

“You need the space,” I said, and then that clicked together with another bit of information. “You could have left me in suspension until you weren’t so busy.”

“The Lord of the Radch said she needed you, citizen. She wanted you up as soon as possible.” Faintly aggrieved, I thought. The medics, not unreasonably, would have prioritized patients differently. And she hadn’t argued when I’d said she needed the space.

“You should go back to bed,” said Seivarden. Solid Seivarden, the only thing between me and utter collapse just now. I shouldn’t have gotten up.

“No.”

“She gets like this,” said Seivarden, her voice apologetic.

“So I see.”

“Let’s go back to the room.” Seivarden sounded extremely patient and calm. It was a moment before I realized she was talking to me. “You can get some rest. We can deal with the Lord of the Radch when you’re good and ready.”

“No,” I repeated. “Let’s go.”

With Seivarden’s support I made it out of Medical, into a lift, and then what seemed to be an endless length of corridor, and then, suddenly, a tremendous open space, the ground stretching away covered with glittering shards of colored glass that crunched and ground under my few steps.

“The fight spilled over into the temple,” Seivarden said, without my asking.

The main concourse, that’s where I was. And all this broken glass, what was left of that room full of funeral offerings. Only a few people were out, mostly picking through the shards, looking, I supposed, for any large pieces that might be restored. Light-brown-jacketed Security looked on.

“Communications were restored within a day or so, I think,” Seivarden continued, guiding me around patches of glass, toward the entrance to the palace proper. “And then people started figuring out what was going on. And picking sides. After a while you couldn’t not pick a side. Not really. For a bit we were afraid the military ships might attack each other, but there were only two on the other side, and they went for the gates instead, and left the system.”

“Civilian casualties?” I asked.

“There always are.” We crossed the last few meters of glass-strewn concourse and entered the palace proper. An official stood there, her uniform jacket grimy, stained dark on one sleeve. “Door one,” she said, barely looking at us. Sounding exhausted.

Door one led to a lawn. On three sides, a vista of hills and
trees, and above, a blue sky streaked with pearly clouds. The fourth side was beige wall, the grass gouged and torn at its base. A plain but thickly padded green chair sat a few meters in front of me. Not for me, surely, but I didn’t much care. “I need to sit down.”

“Yes,” said Seivarden, and walked me there, and lowered me into it. I closed my eyes, just for a moment.

A child was speaking, a high, piping voice. “The Presger had approached me before Garsedd,” said the child. “The translators they sent had been grown from what they’d taken off human ships, of course, but they’d been raised and taught by the Presger and I might as well have been talking to aliens. They’re better now, but they’re still unsettling company.”

“Begging my lord’s pardon.” Seivarden. “Why did you refuse them?”

“I was already planning to destroy them,” said the child. Anaander Mianaai. “I had begun to marshal the resources I thought I’d need. I thought they’d gotten wind of my plans and were frightened enough to want to make peace. I thought they were showing weakness.” She laughed, bitter and regretful, odd to hear in such a young voice. But Anaander Mianaai was hardly young.

I opened my eyes. Seivarden knelt beside my chair. A child of about five or six sat cross-legged on the grass in front of me, dressed all in black, a pastry in one hand, and the contents of my luggage spread around her. “You’re awake.”

“You got icing on my icons,” I accused.

“They’re beautiful.” She picked up the disk of the smaller one, triggered it. The image sprang forth, jeweled and enameled, the knife in its third hand glittering in the false sunlight. “This
is
you, isn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“The Itran Tetrarchy! Is that where you found the gun?”

“No. It’s where I got my money.”

Anaander Mianaai frankly stared in astonishment. “They let you leave with that much money?”

“One of the tetrarchs owed me a favor.”

“That must have been some favor.”

“It was.”

“Do they really practice human sacrifice there? Or is this,” she gestured to the severed head the figure held, “just metaphorical?”

“It’s complicated.”

She made a breathy
hmf
. Seivarden knelt silent and motionless.

“The medic said you needed me.”

Five-year-old Anaander Mianaai laughed. “And so I do.”

“In that case,” I said, “go fuck yourself.” Which she could actually, literally do, in fact.

“Half your anger is for yourself.” She ate the last bite of pastry and brushed her small gloved hands together, showering fragments of sugar icing onto the grass. “But it’s such a monumentally enormous anger even half is quite devastating.”

“I could be ten times as angry,” I said, “and it would mean nothing if I was unarmed.”

Her mouth quirked in a half-smile. “I haven’t gotten to where I am by laying aside useful instruments.”

“You destroy the instruments of your enemy wherever you find them,” I said. “You told me so yourself. And I won’t be useful to you.”

“I’m the right one,” the child said. “I’ll sing for you if you like, though I don’t know if it will work with this voice. This is going to spread to other systems. It already has, I just
haven’t seen the reply signal from the neighboring provincial palaces yet. I need you on my side.”

I tried sitting up straighter. It seemed to work. “It doesn’t matter whose side anyone is on. It doesn’t matter who wins, because either way it will be
you
and nothing will really change.”

“That’s easy for
you
to say,” said five-year-old Anaander Mianaai. “And maybe in some ways you’re right. A lot of things haven’t really changed, a lot of things might stay the same no matter which side of me is uppermost. But tell me, do you think it made no difference to Lieutenant Awn, which of me was on board that day?”

I had no answer for that.

“If you’ve got power and money and connections, some differences won’t change anything. Or if you’re resigned to dying in the near future, which I gather is your position at the moment. It’s the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren’t small at all. What you call no difference is life and death to them.”

“And you care so much for the insignificant and the powerless,” I said. “I’m sure you stay awake nights worrying for them. Your heart must bleed.”

“Don’t come all self-righteous on me,” said Anaander Mianaai. “You served me without a qualm for two thousand years. You know what that means, better than almost anyone else here. And I
do
care. But in, perhaps, a more abstract way than you do, at least these days. Still, this is all my own doing. And you’re right, I can’t exactly rid myself of myself. I could use a reminder of that. It might be best if I had a conscience that was armed and independent.”

“Last time someone tried to be your conscience,” I said,
thinking of Ime, and that
Mercy of Sarrse
soldier who had refused her orders, “she ended up dead.”

“You mean at Ime. You mean the soldier
Mercy of Sarrse
One Amaat One,” the child said, grinning as if at a particularly delightful memory. “I have never been dressed down like that in my long life. She cursed me at the end of it, and tossed her poison back like it was arrack.”

Poison. “You didn’t shoot her?”

“Gunshot wounds make such a mess,” the child said, still grinning. “Which reminds me.” She reached beside herself and brushed the air with one small gloved hand. Suddenly a box sat there, light-suckingly black. “Citizen Seivarden.”

Seivarden leaned forward, took the box.

“I’m well aware,” said Anaander Mianaai, “that you weren’t speaking metaphorically when you said your anger had to be armed to mean anything. I wasn’t either, when I said my conscience should be. Just so you know I mean what I’m saying. And just so you don’t do anything foolish out of ignorance, I need to explain just what it is you have.”

“You know how it works?” But she’d had the others for a thousand years. More than enough time to figure it out.

“To a point.” Anaander Mianaai smiled wryly. “A bullet, as I’m sure you already know, does what it does because the gun it’s fired from gives it a large amount of kinetic energy. The bullet hits something, and that energy has to go somewhere.” I didn’t answer, didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “The bullets in the Garseddai gun,” five-year-old Mianaai continued, “aren’t really bullets. They’re… devices. Dormant, until the gun arms them. At that point, it doesn’t matter how much kinetic energy they have leaving the gun. From the moment of impact, it makes however much energy it needs to cut through the target for precisely 1.11 meters. And then it stops.”

“Stops.” I was aghast.

“One point eleven meters?” asked Seivarden, kneeling beside me. Puzzled.

Mianaai made a dismissive gesture. “Aliens. Different standard units, I assume. Theoretically, once it was armed, you could toss one of those bullets gently against something and it would burn right through it. But you can only arm them with the gun. As far as I can tell there’s nothing in the universe those bullets can’t cut through.”

“Where does all that energy come from?” I asked. Still aghast. Appalled. No wonder I had only needed one shot to take out that oxygen tank. “It has to come from somewhere.”

“You’d think,” said Mianaai. “And you’re about to ask me how it knows how much it needs, or the difference between air and what you’re shooting at. And I don’t know that either. You see why I made that treaty with the Presger. And why I’m so anxious to keep its terms.”

“And anxious,” I said, “to destroy them.” The aim, the fervent desire, of the other Anaander, I guessed.

“I didn’t get where I am by having reasonable goals,” said Anaander Mianaai. “You’re not to speak of this to anyone.” Before I could react, she continued, “I
could
force you to keep quiet. But I won’t. You’re clearly a significant piece in this cast, and it would be improper of me to interfere with your trajectory.”

“I hadn’t thought you would be superstitious,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say superstitious. But I have other things to attend to. Few of me are left here—few enough that the exact number is sensitive information. And there’s a lot to do, so I really don’t have time to sit here talking.

“
Mercy of Kalr
needs a captain. And lieutenants, actually. You can probably promote them from your own crew.”

“I can’t be a captain. I’m not a citizen. I’m not even
human
.”

“You are if I say you are,” she said.

“Ask Seivarden.” Seivarden had set the box on my lap, and now once again knelt silent beside my chair. “Or Skaaiat.”

“Seivarden isn’t going anywhere you aren’t going,” said the Lord of the Radch. “She made that clear to me while you were asleep.”

“Then Skaaiat.”

“She already told me to fuck off.”

“What a coincidence.”

“And really, I do need her here.” She clambered to her feet, barely tall enough to meet my eyes without looking up, even sitting as I was. “Medical says you need a week at the least. I can give you a few additional days to inspect
Mercy of Kalr
and take on whatever supplies you might need. It’ll be easier for everyone if you just say yes now and appoint Seivarden your first lieutenant and let her take care of things. But you’ll manage it the way you want.” She brushed grass and dirt off her legs. “As soon as you’re ready I need you to get to Athoek Station as quickly as you can. It’s two gates away. Or it would be if
Sword of Tlen
hadn’t taken that gate down.”
Two gates away
, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had said, of Lieutenant Awn’s sister. “What else are you going to do with yourself?”

“I actually have another option?” She might have named me a citizen, but she could take it back as easily. “Besides death, I mean.”

She made a gesture of ambiguity. “As much as any of us. Which is to say, possibly none at all. But we can talk philosophy later. We’ve both got things to do right now.” And she left.

Seivarden gathered my things, repacked them, and helped
me to my feet, and out. She didn’t speak until we were on the concourse. “It’s a ship. Even if it is just a Mercy.”

I had slept for some time, it seemed, long enough for the shards of glass to be cleared away, long enough for people to come out, though not in great numbers. Everyone looked slightly haggard, looked as though they’d be easily startled. Any conversations were low, subdued, so the place felt deserted even with people there. I turned my head to look at Seivarden, and raised an eyebrow. “You’re the captain here. Take it if you want it.”

“No.” We stopped by a bench, and she lowered me onto it. “If I were still a captain someone would owe me back pay. I officially left the service when I was declared dead a thousand years ago. If I want back in, I have to start all over again. Besides.” She hesitated, and then sat beside me. “Besides, when I came out of that suspension pod, it was like everyone and everything had failed me. The Radch had failed me. My ship had failed me.” I frowned, and she made a placatory gesture. “No, it’s not fair. None of it’s fair, it’s just how I felt. And I’d failed myself. But you hadn’t. You didn’t.” I didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t seem to expect an answer.