I smiled, calm and pleasant. “What fun would that be?”
She laughed, seeming truly amused at my answer. Which I thought a hopeful sign. “So when are you leaving?”
“When you give me the gun.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A lie. Manifestly a lie. “Your apartment, on Dras Annia Station. It’s untouched. Just as you left it, so far as I could tell.”
Every one of Strigan’s motions became deliberate, just slightly slowed—blinks, breaths. The hand carefully brushing dust from her coat sleeve. “That a fact.”
“It cost me a great deal to get in.”
“Where did a corpse soldier get all that money anyway?” Strigan asked, still tense, still concealing it. But genuinely curious. Always that.
“Work,” I said.
“Lucrative work.”
“And dangerous.” I had risked my life to get that money.
“The icon?”
“Not unrelated.” But I didn’t want to talk about that. “What do I need to do, to convince you? Is the money insufficient?” I had more, elsewhere, but saying so would be foolish.
“What did you see in my apartment?” Strigan asked, curiosity and anger in her voice.
“A puzzle. With pieces missing.” I had deduced the existence and nature of those pieces correctly, I must have, because here I was, and here was Arilesperas Strigan.
Strigan laughed again. “Like you. Listen.” She leaned forward, hands on her thighs. “You can’t kill Anaander Mianaai. I wish to all that’s good it were possible, but it’s not. Even with… even if I had what you think I have you couldn’t do it. You told me that twenty-five of these guns were insufficient…”
“Twenty-four,” I corrected.
She waved that away. “Were insufficient to keep the Radchaai away from Garsedd. Why do you think one would be anything more than a minor irritant?”
She knew better, or she wouldn’t have run. Wouldn’t have asked the local toughs to take care of me before I got to her.
“And why are you so determined to do such a ridiculous thing? Everyone outside the Radch hates Anaander Mianaai. If by some miracle he died, the celebrations would last a hundred years. But it won’t happen. It certainly won’t happen because of one idiot with a gun. I’m sure you know that. You probably know it far better than I could.”
“True.”
“Then why?”
Information is power. Information is security. Plans made with imperfect information are fatally flawed, will fail or succeed on the toss of a coin. I had known, when I first knew I would have to find Strigan and obtain the gun from her, that this would be such a moment. If I answered Strigan’s question—if I answered it fully, as she would certainly demand—I would be giving her something she could use against me, a weapon. She would almost certainly hurt herself in the process, but that wasn’t always much of a deterrent, I knew.
“Sometimes,” I began, and then corrected myself. “Quite frequently, someone will learn a little bit about Radchaai religion, and ask, If everything that happens is the will of Amaat, if nothing can happen that is not already designed by God, why bother to do anything?”
“Good question.”
“Not particularly.”
“No? Why bother, then?”
“I am,” I said, “as Anaander Mianaai made me. Anaander Mianaai is as she was made. We will both of us do the things we are made to do. The things that are before us to do.”
“I doubt very much that Anaander Mianaai made you so that you would kill him.”
Any reply would reveal more than I wished, at the moment.
“And I,” continued Strigan, after a second and a half of silence, “am made to demand answers. It’s just God’s will.” She made a gesture with her left hand, not my problem.
“You admit you have the gun.”
“I admit nothing.”
I was left with blind chance, a step into unguessable dark, waiting to live or die on the results of the toss, not knowing what the chances were of any result. My only other choice would be to give up, and how could I give up now? After so long, after so much? And I had risked as much, or more, before now, and gotten this far.
She had to have the gun. Had to. But how could I make her give it to me? What would make her choose to give it to me?
“Tell me,” Strigan said, watching me intently. No doubt seeing my frustration and doubt through her medical implants, fluctuations of my blood pressure and temperature and respiration. “Tell me why.”
I closed my eyes, felt the disorientation of not being able to see through other eyes that I knew I had once had. Opened them again, took a breath to begin, and told her.
10
I had thought that perhaps the morning’s temple attendants would (quite understandably) choose to stay home, but one small flower-bearer, awake before the adults in her household, arrived with a handful of pink-petaled weeds and stopped at the edge of the house, startled to see Anaander Mianaai kneeling in front of our small icon of Amaat.
Lieutenant Awn was dressing, on the upper floor. “I can’t serve today,” she said to me, her voice impassive as her emotions were not. The morning was already warm, and she was sweating.
“You didn’t touch any of the bodies,” I said as I adjusted her jacket collar, sure of the fact. It was the wrong thing to say.
Four of my segments, two on the northern edge of the Fore-Temple and two standing waist-deep in the lukewarm water and mud, lifted the body of Jen Taa’s niece onto the ledge, and carried her to the medic’s house.
On the ground floor of Lieutenant Awn’s house, I said to the frightened, frozen flower-bearer, “It’s all right.” There was no sign of the water-bearer, and I was ineligible.
“You’ll have to at least bring the water, Lieutenant,” I said, above, to Lieutenant Awn. “The flower-bearer is here, but the water-bearer isn’t.”
For a few moments Lieutenant Awn said nothing, while I finished wiping her face. “Right,” she said, and went downstairs and filled the bowl, and brought it to the flower-bearer, where she stood next to me, still frightened, clutching her handful of pink petals. Lieutenant Awn held the water out to her, and she set the flowers down and washed her hands. But before she could pick the flowers up again, Anaander Mianaai turned to look at her, and the child started back and grabbed my gloved hand with her bare one. “You’ll have to wash your hands again, citizen,” I whispered, and with a bit more encouragement she did so, and picked up the flowers again and performed her part of the morning’s ritual correctly, if nervously. No one else came. I was not surprised.
The medic, speaking to herself and not to me, though I stood three meters away from her, said, “Throat cut, obviously, but she was also poisoned.” And then, with disgust and contempt, “A child of their own house. These people aren’t civilized.”
Our one small attendant left, a gift from the Lord of the Radch clutched in one hand—a pin in the shape of a four-petaled flower, each petal holding an enameled image of one of the four Emanations. Anywhere else, a Radchaai who received one would treasure it, and wear it nearly constantly, a badge of having served in the temple with the Lord of the Radch herself. This child would probably toss it in a box and forget about it. When she was out of sight (of Lieutenant Awn and the Lord of the Radch, if not of me) Anaander Mianaai turned to Lieutenant Awn and said, “Aren’t those weeds?”
A wave of embarrassment overcame Lieutenant Awn, mixed a moment later with disappointment, and an intense anger I had never seen in her before. “Not to the children, my lord.” She was unable to keep the edge out of her voice completely.
Anaander Mianaai’s expression didn’t change. “This icon, and this set of omens. They’re your personal property, I think. Where are the ones that belong to the temple?”
“Begging my lord’s pardon,” Lieutenant Awn said, though I knew at this point she meant to do no such thing, and the fact was audible in her tone. “I used the funds fo
r their purchase to supplement the term-end gifts for the temple attendants.” She had also used her own money for the same purpose, but she didn’t say that.
“I’m sending you back to Justice of Toren,” said the Lord of the Radch. “Your replacement will be here tomorrow.”
Shame. A fresh flare of anger. And despair. “Yes, my lord.”
There wasn’t much to pack. I could be ready to move in less than an hour. I spent the rest of the day delivering gifts to our temple attendants, who were all home. School had been canceled, and hardly anyone came out onto the streets. “Lieutenant Awn doesn’t know,” I told each one, “if the new lieutenant will make different appointments, or if she’ll give the year-end gifts without your having served a whole year. You should come to the house anyway, her first morning.” The adults in each house eyed me silently, not inviting me in, and each time I laid the gift—not the usual pair of gloves, which didn’t yet matter much here, but a brightly colored and patterned skirt, and a small box of tamarind sweets. Fresh fruit was customary, but there was no time to obtain any. I left each small stack of gifts in the street, on the edge of the house, and no one moved to take them, or spoke any word to me.
The Divine spent an hour or two behind screens in the temple residence, and then emerged looking entirely unrested, and went into the temple, where she conferred with the junior priests. The bodies had been cleared away. I had offered to clean the blood, not knowing if my doing so would be permissible, but the priests had declined my assistance. “Some of us,” said the Divine to me, still staring at the area of floor where the dead had lain, “had forgotten what you are. Now they are reminded.”
“I don’t think you forgot, Divine,” I said.
“No.” She was silent for two seconds. “Is the lieutenant going to see me before she leaves?”
“Possibly not, Divine,” I said. I was at that moment doing what I could to encourage Lieutenant Awn to sleep, something she badly needed to do but was finding difficult.
“It’s probably better if she doesn’t,” the head priest said, bitterly. She looked at me then. “It’s unreasonable of me. I know it is. What else could she have done? It’s easy for me to say—and I say it—that she could have chosen otherwise.”
“She could have, Divine,” I acknowledged.
“What is it you Radchaai say?” I wasn’t Radchaai, but I didn’t correct her, and she continued. “Justice, propriety, and benefit, isn’t it? Let every act be just, and proper, and beneficial.”
“Yes, Divine.”
“Was that just?” Her voice trembled, for just an instant, and I could hear she was on the edge of tears. “Was it proper?”
“I don’t know, Divine.”
“More to the point, who benefited?”
“No one, Divine, so far as I can see.”
“No one? Really? Come, One Esk, don’t play the fool with me.” That look of betrayal on Jen Shinnan’s face, plainly directed at Anaander Mianaai, had been obvious to everyone there.
Still, I couldn’t see what the Lord of the Radch had stood to gain from those deaths. “They would have killed you, Divine,” I said. “You, and anyone else they found undefended. Lieutenant Awn did what she could to prevent bloodshed last night. It wasn’t her fault she failed.”
“It was.” Her back was still to me. “God forgive her for it. God forbid that I may ever be faced with such a choice.” She made an invocatory gesture. “And you? What would you have done, if the lieutenant had refused, and the Lord of the Radch ordered you to shoot her? Could you have? I thought that armor of yours was impenetrable.”
“The Lord of the Radch can force our armor down.” But the code Anaander Mianaai would have had to transmit to force down Lieutenant Awn’s armor—or mine, or any other Radchaai soldier’s—would have to have been delivered over communications that had been blocked at the time. Still. “Speculating about such things does no good, Divine,” I said. “It didn’t happen.”
The head priest turned, and looked intently at me. “You didn’t answer the question.”
It wasn’t an easy question for me to answer. I had been in pieces, and at the time only one segment had even known that such a thing was possible, that for an instant Lieutenant Awn’s life had hung, uncertain, on the outcome of that moment. I wasn’t entirely sure that segment wouldn’t have turned its gun on Anaander Mianaai instead.
It probably wouldn’t have. “Divine, I am not a person.” If I had shot the Lord of the Radch nothing would have changed, I was sure, except that not only would Lieutenant Awn still be dead, I would be destroyed, Two Esk would take my place, or a new One Esk would be built with segments from Justice of Toren’s holds. The ship’s AI might find itself in some difficulty, though more likely my action would be blamed on my being cut off. “People often think they would have made the noblest choice, but when they find themselves actually in such a situation, they discover matters aren’t quite so simple.”
“As I said—God forbid. I will comfort myself with the delusion that you would have shot the Mianaai bastard first.”
“Divine!” I cautioned. She could say nothing in my hearing that might not eventually reach the ears of the Lord of the Radch.
“Let her hear. Tell her yourself! She instigated what happened last night. Whether the target was us, or the Tanmind, or Lieutenant Awn, I don’t know. I have my suspicions which. I’m not a fool.”
“Divine,” I said. “Whoever instigated last night’s events, I don’t think things happened the way they wished. I think they wanted open warfare between the upper and lower cities, though I don’t understand why. And I think that was prevented when Denz Ay told Lieutenant Awn about the guns.”
“I think as you do,” said the head priest. “And I think Jen Shinnan knew more, and that was why she died.”
“I’m sorry your temple was desecrated, Divine,” I said. I wasn’t particularly sorry Jen Shinnan was dead, but I didn’t say so.
The Divine turned away from me again. “I’m sure you have a lot to do, getting ready to leave. Lieutenant Awn needn’t trouble herself calling on me. You can give her my farewells yourself.” She walked away from me, not waiting for any acknowledgment.
Lieutenant Skaaiat arrived for supper, with a bottle of arrack and two Seven Issas. “Your relief won’t even reach Kould Ves until midday,” she said, breaking the seal on the bottle. Meanwhile the Seven Issas stood stiff and uncomfortable on the ground floor. They had arrived just before I’d restored communications. They’d seen the dead in the temple of Ikkt, had guessed without being told what had happened. And they had only been out of the holds for the last two years. They hadn’t seen the annexation itself.
All of Ors, upper and lower, was similarly quiet, similarly tense. When people left their houses they avoided looking at me or speaking to me. Mostly they only went out to visit the temple, where the priests led prayers for the dead. A few Tanmind even came down from the upper city, and stood quietly at the edges of the small crowd. I kept myself in the shadows, not wanting to distract or distress any further.
“Tell me you didn’t almost refuse,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat, in the house on the upper floor, with Lieutenant Awn, behind screens. They sat on fungal-smelling cushions, facing each other. “I know you, Awn, I swear when I heard what Seven Issa saw when they got to the temple I was afraid I’d hear next that you were dead. Tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” said Lieutenant Awn, miserable and guilty. Her voice bitter. “You can see I didn’t.”
“I can’t see that. Not at all.” Lieutenant Skaaiat poured a hefty slug of liquor into the cup I held out, and I handed it to Lieutenant Awn. “Neither can One Esk, or it wouldn’t be so silent this evening.” She looked at the nearest segment. “Did the Lord of the Radch forbid you to sing?”
“No, Lieutenant.” I hadn’t wanted to disturb Anaander Mianaai, when she was here, or interrupt what sleep Lieutenant Awn could get. And anyway, I hadn’t much felt like it.
Lieutenant S
kaaiat made a frustrated sound and turned back to Lieutenant Awn. “If you’d refused, nothing would have changed, except you’d be dead too. You did what you had to do, and the idiots… Hyr’s cock, those idiots. They should have known better.”
Lieutenant Awn stared at the cup in her hand, not moving.
“I know you, Awn. If you’re going to do something that crazy, save it for when it’ll make a difference.”
“Like Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One?” She was talking about events at Ime, about the soldier who had refused her order, led that mutiny five years before.
“She made a difference, at least. Listen, Awn, you and I both know something was going on. You and I both know that what happened last night doesn’t make sense unless…” She stopped.
Lieutenant Awn set her cup of arrack down, hard. Liquor sloshed over the lip of the cup. “Unless what? How does it make sense?”
“Here.” Lieutenant Skaaiat picked up the cup and pressed it into Lieutenant Awn’s hand. “Drink this. And I’ll explain. At least as much as makes sense to me.
“You know how annexations work. I mean, yes, they work by sheer, undeniable force, but after. After the executions and the transportations and once all the last bits of idiots who think they can fight back are cleaned up. Once all that’s done, we fit whoever’s left into Radchaai society—they form up into houses, and take clientage, and in a generation or two they’re as Radchaai as anybody. And mostly that happens because we go to the top of the local hierarchy—there pretty much always is one—and offer them all sorts of benefits in exchange for behaving like citizens, offer them clientage contracts, which allows them to offer contracts to whoever is below them, and before you know it the whole local setup is tied into Radchaai society, with minimal disruption.”
Lieutenant Awn made an impatient gesture. She already knew this. “What does that have to do with—”
“You fucked that up.”
“I…”
“What you did worked. And the local Tanmind were going to have to swallow that. Fair enough. If I’d done what you did—gone straight to the Orsian priest, set up house in the lower city instead of using the police station and jail already built in the upper city, set about making alliances with lower city authorities and ignoring—”