The Lord of the Radch hadn’t reacted at the moment I had fragmented, though she was connected to the rest of herself in much the same way I ordinarily was. Her apparent lack of surprise was strange enough for my segment nearest her to notice it. But it might have been no more than self-possession; the siren elicited no more than an upward glance and a raised eyebrow. Then she stood and walked out onto the plaza.
It was the third worst thing that has ever happened to me. I had lost all sense of Justice of Toren overhead, all sense of myself. I had shattered into twenty fragments that could barely communicate with each other.
Just before the siren had blown, Lieutenant Awn had sent a segment to the temple, with orders to sound the alarm. Now that segment came running into the plaza, where it stood, hesitating, looking at the rest of itself, visible but not there as far as my sense of myself was concerned.
The siren stopped. The lower city was silent, the only sound was my footsteps, and my armor-filtered voices, trying to talk to myself, to get organized so I could function at least in some small way.
The Lord of the Radch raised one graying eyebrow. “Where is Lieutenant Awn?”
That was, of course, the question uppermost in the minds of all my segments that didn’t already know, but now the one of me who had arrived with the order from Lieutenant Awn had something it knew it could do. “Lieutenant Awn is on her way, my lord,” it said, and ten seconds later Lieutenant Awn and most of the rest of me that had been in the house arrived, rushing into the plaza.
“I thought you had this area under control.” Anaander Mianaai didn’t look at Lieutenant Awn as she spoke, but the direction of her words was clear.
“So did I.” And then Lieutenant Awn remembered where she was, and to whom she was speaking. “My lord. Begging your pardon.” Each of me had to restrain itself from turning entirely to watch Lieutenant Awn, to be sure she was really there, because I couldn’t sense her otherwise. A few whispers sorted out which of my segments would keep close to her, and the rest would have to trust that.
My Ten segment came around the Fore-Temple water at a dead run. “Trouble in the upper city!” it called, and came to a halt in front of Lieutenant Awn, where I cleared the path for myself. “People are gathering at Jen Shinnan’s house, they’re angry, they’re talking about murder, and getting justice.”
“Murder. Oh, fuck!”
All the segments near Lieutenant Awn said, in unison, “Language, Lieutenant!” Anaander Mianaai turned a disbelieving look on me, but said nothing.
“Oh, fuck!” Lieutenant Awn repeated.
“Are you,” asked Anaander Mianaai, calm and deliberate, “going to do anything except swear?”
Lieutenant Awn froze for half a second, then looked around, across the water, toward the lower city, at the temple. “Who’s here? Count!” And when we had done so, “One through Seven, out here. The rest, with me.” I followed her into the temple, leaving Anaander Mianaai standing in the plaza.
The priests stood near the dais, watching us approach. “Divine,” said Lieutenant Awn.
“Lieutenant,” said the head priest.
“There’s a mob bent on violence headed here from the upper city. I’m guessing we have five minutes. They can’t do much damage with the storm shutters down, I’d like to bring them in here, keep them from doing anything drastic.”
“Bring them in here,” the head priest repeated, doubtfully.
“Everything else is dark and shut. The big doors are open, it’s the most obvious place to come, when most of them are in here we close the doors and One Esk surrounds them. We could just shut the temple doors and let them try their luck with the shutters on the houses, but I don’t really want to find out how hard those are to breach. If,” she added, seeing Anaander Mianaai come into the temple, walking slowly, as though nothing unusual were happening, “my lord permits.”
The Lord of the Radch gestured a silent assent.
The head priest clearly didn’t like the suggestion, but she agreed. By now my segments on the plaza were seeing hand lights sporadically visible in the nearest upper-city streets.
Within moments Lieutenant Awn had me behind the large temple doors, ready to close them on her signal, and a few of me dispatched to the streets around the plaza to help herd Tanmind toward the temple. The rest of me stood in the shadows around the perimeter inside the temple itself, and the priests returned to their prayers, their backs to the wide and inviting entrance.
More than a hundred Tanmind came down from the upper city. Most of them did precisely as we wished, and rushed in a swirling, shouting mass into the temple, except for twenty-three, a dozen of whom veered off down a dark, empty avenue. The other eleven, who had already been trailing the larger group, saw one segment of me standing quiet nearby, and thought better of their actions. They stopped, muttered among themselves for a moment, watching the mass of Tanmind run into the temple, the others rushing, shouting, down the street. They watched me close the temple doors, the segments posted there not uniformed, covered only with the silver of my own generated armor, and maybe it reminded them of the annexation. Several of them swore, and they turned and ran back to the upper city.
Eighty-three Tanmind had run into the temple; their angry voices echoed and reechoed, magnified. At the sound of the doors slamming closed, they turned and tried to rush back the way they had come, but I had surrounded them, my guns drawn and aimed at whoever was nearest each segment.
“Citizens!” shouted Lieutenant Awn, but she didn’t have the trick of making herself heard.
“Citizens!” the various fragments of me shouted, my own voices echoing and then dying down. Along with the Tanmind’s tumult: Jen Shinnan, and Jen Taa, and a few others I knew were friends or relations of theirs, shushed those near them, urged them to calm themselves, to consider that the Lord of the Radch herself was here, and they could speak directly to her.
“Citizens!” Lieutenant Awn shouted again. “Have you lost your minds? What are you doing?”
“Murder!” shouted Jen Shinnan, who was at the front of the crowd, shouting over my head at Lieutenant Awn where she stood behind me, beside the Lord of the Radch and the Divine. The junior priests stood huddled together, seemingly frozen. The Tanmind voices grumbled, echoing, in support of Jen Shinnan. “We won’t get justice from you so we’ll take it ourselves!” Jen Shinnan cried. The grumbling from the crowd rolled around the stone walls of the temple.
“Explain yourself, citizen,” said Anaander Mianaai, voice pitched to sound above the noise.
The Tanmind hushed each other for five seconds, and then, “My lord,” said Jen Shinnan. Her respectful tone sounded almost sincere. “My young niece has been staying in my house for the past week. She was harassed and threatened by Orsians when she came to the lower city, which I reported to Lieutenant Awn, but nothing was done. This evening I found her room empty, the window broken, blood everywhere! What am I to conclude? The Orsians have always resented us! Now they mean to kill us all, is it any wonder we should defend ourselves?”
Anaander Mianaai turned to Lieutenant Awn. “Was this reported?”
“It was, my lord,” said Lieutenant Awn. “I investigated and found that the young person in question had never left sight of Justice of Toren One Esk, who reported that she had spent all her time in the lower city alone. The only words that passed between her and anyone else were routine business transactions. She was not harassed or threatened at any time.”
“You see!” cried Jen Shinnan. “You see why we are compelled to take justice into our own hands!”
“And what leads you to believe all your lives are threatened?” asked Anaander Mianaai.
“My lord,” said Jen Shinnan, “Lieutenant Awn would have you believe everyone in the lower city is loyal and law-abiding, but we know from experience that the Orsians are anything but paragons of virtue. The fishermen go out on the water at night, unseen. Sources…” She hesitated, just a moment, whether because of the gun pointed directly
at her, or Anaander Mianaai’s continued impassivity, or something else, I couldn’t tell. But it seemed to me something had amused her. Then she recovered her composure. “Sources I prefer not to name have seen the boatmen of the lower city depositing weapons in caches in the lake. What would those be for, except to finally take their revenge on us, who they believe have mistreated them? And how could those guns have come here without Lieutenant Awn’s collusion?”
Anaander Mianaai turned her dark face toward Lieutenant Awn and raised one grayed eyebrow. “Do you have an answer for that, Lieutenant Awn?”
Something about the question, or the way it was asked, troubled all the segments that heard it. And Jen Shinnan actually smiled. She had expected the Lord of the Radch to turn on Lieutenant Awn, and was pleased by it.
“I do have an answer, my lord,” said Lieutenant Awn. “Some nights ago, a local fisherman reported to me that she had found a cache of weapons under the lake. I removed them and took them to my house, and upon searching, discovered two more caches, which I also removed. I had intended to search further this evening, but events have, as you see, prevented me. My report is written but not yet sent, because I, too, wondered how the guns could have come here without my knowledge.”
Perhaps it was only because of Jen Shinnan’s smile, and the oddly accusatory questions from Anaander Mianaai—and the slight earlier, in the temple plaza—but in the charged air of the temple, the echoes of Lieutenant Awn’s words themselves felt like an accusation.
“I have also wondered,” Lieutenant Awn said, in the silence after those echoes died away, “why the young person in question would falsely accuse residents of the lower city of harassing her, when they assuredly did not. I am quite certain no one from the lower city has harmed her.”
“Someone has!” shouted a voice in the crowd, and mutterings of assent started, and grew and echoed around the vast stone space.
“What time did you last see your cousin?” asked Lieutenant Awn.
“Three hours ago,” said Jen Shinnan. “She told us good night, and went to her room.”
Lieutenant Awn addressed the segment of me that was nearest her. “One Esk, did anyone cross from the lower city to the upper in the last three hours?”
The segment that answered—Thirteen—knew I should be careful about my answer, which by necessity everyone would hear. “No. No one crossed in either direction. Though I can’t be certain about the last fifteen minutes.”
“Someone might have come earlier,” Jen Shinnan pointed out.
“In that case,” answered Lieutenant Awn, “they’re still in the upper city, and you ought to be looking for them there.”
“The guns…” Jen Shinnan began.
“Are no danger to you. They’re locked under the top floor of my house, and One Esk has disabled most of them by now.”
Jen Shinnan cast an odd, appealing look to Anaander Mianaai, who had stood silent and impassive through this exchange. “But…”
“Lieutenant Awn,” said the Lord of the Radch. “A word.” She gestured aside, and Lieutenant Awn followed her to a spot fifteen meters off. One of my segments followed, which Mianaai ignored. “Lieutenant,” she said in a quiet voice. “Tell me what you think is happening.”
Lieutenant Awn swallowed, took a breath. “My lord. I’m certain no one from the lower city has harmed the young person in question. I am also certain the guns were not cached by anyone from the lower city. And the weapons were all ones which had been confiscated during the annexation. This can only originate from a very high level. That’s why I haven’t filed the report. I was hoping to speak directly to you about this when you arrived, but never had the opportunity.”
“You were afraid if you reported it through regular channels, whoever did this would realize their plan had been detected, and cover their tracks.”
“Yes, my lord. When I heard you were coming, my lord, I planned to speak to you about it immediately.”
“Justice of Toren.” The Lord of the Radch addressed my segment without looking at me. “Is this true?”
“Entirely, my lord,” I answered. The junior priests still huddled, the head priest standing apart from them, looking at Lieutenant Awn and the Lord of the Radch where they conferred, an expression on her face that I couldn’t read.
“So,” said Anaander Mianaai. “What’s your assessment of this situation?”
Lieutenant Awn blinked in astonishment. “I… it looks very much to me as though Jen Shinnan is involved with the weapons. How would she have known of their existence otherwise?”
“And this murdered young person?”
“If she is murdered, no one from the lower city did it. But can they have killed her themselves to have an excuse to…” Lieutenant Awn stopped, appalled.
“An excuse to come down to the lower city and murder innocent citizens in their beds. And then use the existence of the weapons caches to support their assertion that they were only acting in self-defense and you had refused to do your duty and protect them.” She cast a glance at the Tanmind, ringed by my still-armed and -silver-armored segments. “Well. We can concern ourselves with details later. Right now we need to deal with these people.”
“My lord,” acknowledged Lieutenant Awn, with a slight bow.
“Shoot them.”
To noncitizens, who only ever see Radchaai in melodramatic entertainments, who know nothing of the Radch besides ancillaries and annexations and what they think of as brainwashing, such an order might be appalling, but hardly surprising. But the idea of shooting citizens was, in fact, extremely shocking and upsetting. What, after all, was the point of civilization if not the well-being of citizens? And these people were citizens now.
Lieutenant Awn froze, for two seconds. “M… my lord?”
Anaander Mianaai’s voice, which had been dispassionate, perhaps slightly stern, turned chill and severe. “Are you refusing an order, Lieutenant?”
“No, my lord, only… they’re citizens. And we’re in a temple. And we have them under control, and I’ve sent Justice of Toren One Esk to the next division to ask for reinforcements. Justice of Ente Seven Issa should be here in an hour, perhaps two, and we can arrest the Tanmind and assign them to reeducation very easily, since you’re here.”
“Are you,” asked Anaander Mianaai, slowly and clearly, “refusing an order?”
Jen Shinnan’s amusement, her willingness—even eagerness—to speak to the Lord of the Radch, it fell into a pattern for my listening segment. Someone very high up had made those guns available, had known how to cut off communications. No one was higher up than Anaander Mianaai. But it made no sense. Jen Shinnan’s motivation was obvious, but how could the Lord of the Radch possibly profit by it?
Lieutenant Awn was likely having the same thoughts. I could read her distress in the tension of her jaw, the stiff set of her shoulders. Still, it seemed unreal, because the external signs were all I could see. “I won’t refuse an order, my lord,” she said after five seconds. “May I protest it?”
“I believe you already have,” said Anaander Mianaai, coldly. “Now shoot them.”
Lieutenant Awn turned. I thought she was the slightest bit shaky as she walked toward the surrounded Tanmind.
“Justice of Toren,” Mianaai said, and the segment of me that had been about to follow Lieutenant Awn stopped. “When was the last time I visited you?”
I remembered the last time the Lord of the Radch had boarded Justice of Toren very clearly. It had been an unusual visit—unannounced, four older bodies with no entourage. She had mostly stayed in her quarters talking to me—Justice of Toren –me, not One Esk–me, but she had asked One Esk to sing for her. I had obliged with a Valskaayan piece. It had been ninety-four years, two months, two weeks, and six days before, shortly after the annexation of Valskaay. I opened my mouth to say so, but instead heard myself say, “Two hundred three years, four months, one week, and one day ago, my lord.”
“Hmm,” said Anaander Mianaai, but she said nothing
else.
Lieutenant Awn approached me, where I ringed the Tanmind. She stood there, behind a segment, for three and a half seconds, saying nothing.
Her distress must have been obvious to more than just me. Jen Shinnan, seeing her stand there silent and unhappy, smiled. Almost triumphantly. “Well?”
“One Esk,” Lieutenant Awn said, clearly dreading the finish of her sentence. Jen Shinnan’s smile grew slightly larger. Expecting Lieutenant Awn to send the Tanmind home, no doubt. Expecting, in the fullness of time, Lieutenant Awn’s dismissal and the decline of the lower city’s influence. “I didn’t want this,” Lieutenant Awn said to her, quietly, “but I have a direct order.” She raised her voice. “One Esk. Shoot them.”
Jen Shinnan’s smile disappeared, replaced by horror, and, I thought, betrayal, and she looked, plainly, directly, toward Anaander Mianaai. Who stood impassive. The other Tanmind clamored, crying out in fear and protest.
All my segments hesitated. The order made no sense. Whatever they had done, these were citizens, and I had them under control. But Lieutenant Awn said, loud and harsh, “Fire!” and I did. Within three seconds all the Tanmind were dead.
No one in the temple at that moment was young enough to be surprised at what had happened, though perhaps the several years since I’d executed anyone had lent the memories some distance, maybe even engendered some confidence that citizenship meant an end to such things. The junior priests stood where they had since this had begun, not moving, saying nothing. The head priest wept openly, soundlessly.
“I think,” said Anaander Mianaai into the vast silence that surrounded us, once the echoes of gunfire had died down, “there won’t be any more trouble from the Tanmind here.”
Lieutenant Awn’s mouth and throat twitched slightly, as though she were about to speak, but she didn’t. Instead she walked forward, around the bodies, tapping four of my segments on the shoulder as she passed and gesturing to them to follow. I realized she simply could not bring herself to speak. Or perhaps she feared what would come out of her mouth if she attempted it. Having only visual data from her was frustrating.