“Breq,” said Seivarden, as though testing the sound of the name in her mouth, “I want to leave.”
“Soon,” I answered. “Be patient.” To my utter surprise she didn’t object, but leaned back against a bench and put her arms around her knees.
Strigan looked speculatively at her for a moment, then turned to me. “I need to think.” I gestured acknowledgment and she rose and went into her room and shut the door.
“What’s her problem?” asked Seivarden, apparently innocent of irony. Voice just slightly contemptuous. I didn’t answer, only looked at her, not changing my expression. The blankets had marked a line across her cheek, fading now, and her clothes, the Nilter trousers and quilted shirt under the unfastened inner coat, were wrinkled and disheveled. In the past several days of regular food, and no kef, her skin had regained a slightly healthier-looking color, but she still looked thin and tired. “Why are you bothering with her?” she asked me, undisturbed by my scrutiny. As though something had shifted and she and I were suddenly comrades. Fellows.
Surely not equals. Not ever. “Business I need to attend to.” More explanation would be useless, or foolish, or both. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”
Something subtle in her expression communicated withdrawal, closure. I wasn’t on her side anymore. She sat silent for ten seconds, and I thought she wouldn’t speak to me anymore that night, but instead she drew a long breath and let it out. “Yeah. I… I need to move around. I’m going to go outside.”
Something had definitely changed, but I didn’t know quite what it was, or what had caused it.
“It’s night,” I said. “And very cold. Take your outer coat and gloves and don’t go too far.”
She gestured acquiescence, and even more astonishingly, put on her outer coat and gloves before going out the two doors without a single bitter word, or even a resentful glance.
And what did I care? She would wander off and freeze, or she would not. I arranged my own blankets and lay down to sleep, without waiting to see if Seivarden came back safe or not.
When I woke, Seivarden was asleep on her own pile of blankets. She hadn’t thrown her coat on the floor, but instead hung it beside the others, on a hook near the door. I rose and went to the cupboard to find she had also replenished the food stores—more bread, and a bowl on the table holding a block of slushy, slowly melting milk, another beside it holding a chunk of bov fat.
Behind me Strigan’s door clicked open. I turned. “He wants something,” she said to me, quietly. Seivarden didn’t stir. “Or anyway there’s some angle he’s playing. I wouldn’t trust him if I were you.”
“I don’t.” I dropped a hunk of bread in a bowl of water and set it aside to soften. “But I do wonder what’s come over her.” Strigan looked amused. “Him,” I amended.
“Probably the thought of all the money you’re carrying,” observed Strigan. “You could buy a lot of kef with that.”
“If that’s the case, it’s not a problem. It’s all for paying you.” Except my fare back up the ribbon, and a bit more for emergencies. Which, in this case, would probably mean Seivarden’s fare as well.
“What happens to addicts in the Radch?”
“There aren’t any.” She raised one eyebrow, and then another, disbelieving. “Not on the stations,” I amended. “You can’t get too far down that road with the station AI watching you all the time. On a planet, that’s different, it’s too big for that. Even then, once you get to the point where you’re not functioning, you’re reeducated and usually sent away somewhere else.”
“So as not to embarrass.”
“For a new start. New surroundings, new assignment.” And if you arrived from somewhere very far away to take some job nearly anyone could have filled, everyone knew why that was, though no one would be so gauche as to say it within your hearing. “It bothers you, that the Radchaai don’t have the freedom to destroy their lives, or other citizens’ lives.”
“I wouldn’t have put it that way.”
“No, of course not.”
She leaned against the doorframe, folded her arms. “For someone who wants a favor—an incredibly, unspeakably huge and dangerous favor at that—you’re unexpectedly adversarial.”
One-handed, I gestured. It is as it is.
“But then, dealing with him makes you angry.” She tilted her head in Seivarden’s general direction. “Understandably, I think.”
The words I’m so glad you approve rose to my lips, but I didn’t say them. I wanted, after all, an incredibly, unspeakably huge and dangerous favor. “All the money in the box,” I said, instead. “Enough for you to buy land, or rooms on a station, or hell, even a station.”
“A very small one.” Her lips quirked in amusement.
“And you wouldn’t have it anymore. It’s dangerous even to have seen it, but it’s worse to actually have it.”
“And you,” she pointed out, straightening, dropping her arms, voice now unamused, “will bring it directly to the attention of the Lord of the Radch. Who will then be able to trace it back to me.”
“That will always be a danger,” I agreed. I would not even pretend that once I fell into Mianaai’s control she would not be able to extract any information from me she wished, no matter what I wanted to reveal or conceal. “But it has been a danger since the moment you laid eyes on it, and will continue to be for as long as you live, whether you give it to me or not.”
Strigan sighed. “That’s true. Unfortunately enough. And truth to tell, I want very badly to go home.”
Foolish beyond belief. But it wasn’t my concern, my concern was getting that gun. I said nothing. Neither did Strigan. Instead, she put on her outer coat and gloves and went out the two doors, and I sat down to eat my breakfast, trying very hard not to guess where she had gone, or whether I had any reason at all to be hopeful.
She returned fifteen minutes later with a wide, flat black box. Strigan set the box on the table. It seemed like one solid block, but she lifted off a thick layer of black, revealing more black beneath.
Strigan stood, waiting, the lid in her hands, watching me. I reached out and touched a spot on the black, with one finger, gently. Brown spread from where I touched, pooling out into the shape of a gun, now exactly the color of my skin. I lifted my finger and black flooded back. Reached out, lifted off another layer of black, beneath which it finally began to look like a box, with actual things in it, if a disturbingly light-suckingly black box, filled with ammunition.
Strigan reached out and touched the upper surface of the layer of black I still held. Gray spread from her fingers into a thick strap curled alongside where the gun lay. “I wasn’t sure what that was. Do you know?”
“It’s armor.” Officers and human troops used externally worn armor units, instead of the sort that was installed in one’s body. Like mine. But a thousand years ago everyone’s had been implanted.
“It’s never tripped a single alarm, never shown up in any scan I’ve been through.” That was what I wanted. The ability to walk onto any Radchaai station without alerting anyone to the fact I was armed. The ability to carry a weapon into the very presence of Anaander Mianaai without anyone realizing it. Most Anaanders had no need for armor; being able to shoot through it was just an extra.
Strigan asked, “How does it do that? How does it hide itself?”
“I don’t know.” I replaced the layer I was holding, and then the very top.
“How many of the bastard do you think you can kill?”
I looked up, away from the box, from the gun, the unlikely goal of nearly twenty years’ efforts, in front of me, real and solid. In my grasp. I wanted to say, As many as I can reach, before they take me down. But realistically I could only expect to meet one, a single body out of thousands. Then again, realistically I could never have expected to find this gun. “That depends,” I said.
“If you’re going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.”
I gestur
ed my agreement. “I plan to ask for an audience.”
“Will you get one?”
“Probably. Any citizen can ask for one, and will almost certainly receive it. I wouldn’t be going as a citizen…”
Strigan scoffed. “How are you going to pass as non-Radchaai?”
“I will walk onto the docks of a provincial palace with no gloves, or the wrong ones, announce my foreign origin, and speak with an accent. Nothing more will be required.”
She blinked. Frowned. “Not really.”
“I assure you. As a noncitizen my chances of obtaining an audience will depend on my reasons for asking.” I hadn’t thought that part all the way through yet. It would depend on what I found when I got there. “Some things can’t be planned too far in advance.”
“And what are you going to do about…” She waved an ungloved hand toward unconscious Seivarden.
I had avoided asking myself that question. Avoided, from the moment I found her, thinking more than one step ahead when it came to what I was going to do about Seivarden.
“Watch him,” she said. “He might have reached the point where he’s ready to give up the kef for good, but I don’t think he has.”
“Why not?”
“He hasn’t asked me for help.”
It was my turn to raise a skeptical eyebrow. “If he asked, would you help?”
“I’d do what I could. Though of course, he’d need to address the problems that led him to use in the first place, if it was going to work long-term. Which I don’t see any sign of him doing.” Privately I agreed, but I didn’t say anything.
“He could have asked for help anytime,” Strigan continued. “He’s been wandering around for, what, at least five years? Any doctor could have helped him, if he’d wanted it. But that would mean admitting he had a problem, wouldn’t it? And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”
“It would be best if sh—if he went back to the Radch.” Radch medics could solve all her problems. And would not trouble themselves with whether or not Seivarden had asked for their help, or wanted it in any way.
“He won’t go back to the Radch unless he admits he has a problem.”
I gestured, not my concern. “He can go where he likes.”
“But you’re feeding him, and no doubt you’ll pay his fare up the ribbon, and to whatever system you take ship for next. He’ll stay with you as long as it’s to his advantage, as long as there’s food and shelter. And he’ll steal anything he thinks will get him another hit of kef.”
Seivarden wasn’t as strong as she had once been, or as clear, mentally. “Do you think he’ll find that easy?”
“No,” admitted Strigan, “but he’ll be very determined.”
“Yes.”
Strigan shook her head, as though to clear it. “What am I doing? You won’t listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
But she clearly didn’t believe me. “It’s none of my concern, I know. Just…” She pointed to the black box. “Just kill as many of Mianaai as you can. And don’t send him after me.”
“You’re leaving?” Of course she was, there was no need to answer such a foolish question, and she didn’t bother. Instead she went back into her room, saying nothing else, and closed the door.
I opened my pack, took out the money and set it on the table, slid the black box into its place. Touched it in the pattern that would make it disappear, nothing but folded shirts, a few packets of dried food. Then I went over to where Seivarden lay, and prodded her with one booted foot. “Wake up.” She started, sitting suddenly, and flung her back against the nearby bench, breathing hard. “Wake up,” I said again. “We’re leaving.”
12
Except for those hours when communications had been cut off, I had never really lost the sense of being part of Justice of Toren. My kilometers of white-walled corridor, my captain, the decade commanders, each decade’s lieutenants, each one’s smallest gesture, each breath, was visible to me. I had never lost the knowledge of my ancillaries, twenty-bodied One Amaat, One Toren, One Etrepa, One Bo, and Two Esk, hands and feet for serving those officers, voices to speak to them. My thousands of ancillaries in frozen suspension. Never lost the view of Shis’urna itself, all blue and white, old boundaries and divisions erased by distance. From that perspective events in Ors were nothing, invisible, completely insignificant.
In the approaching shuttle I felt the distance decrease, felt more forcefully the sensation of being the ship. One Esk became even more what it had always been—one small part of myself. My attention was no longer commanded by things apart from the rest of the ship.
Two Esk had taken One Esk’s place while One Esk was on the planet. Two Esk prepared tea in the Esk decade room for its lieutenants—my lieutenants. It scrubbed the white-walled corridor outside Esk’s baths, mended uniforms torn on leave. Two of my lieutenants sat over a game board in the decade room, placing counters around, swift and quiet, three others watching. The lieutenants of the Amaat, Toren, Etrepa, and Bo decades, the decade commanders, Hundred Captain Rubran, administrative officers, and medics, talked, slept, bathed, according to their schedules and inclinations.
Each decade held twenty lieutenants and its decade commander, but Esk was now my lowest occupied deck. Below Esk, from Var down—half of my decade decks—was cold and empty, though the holds were still full. The emptiness and silence of those spaces where officers had once lived had disturbed me at first, but I was used to it by now.
On the shuttle, in front of One Esk, Lieutenant Awn sat silent, jaw clenched. She was in some respects more physically comfortable than she had ever been in Ors—the temperature, twenty degrees C, was more suitable for her uniform jacket and trousers. And the stink of swamp water had been replaced by the more familiar and more easily tolerable smell of recycled air. But the tiny spaces—which when she had first come to Justice of Toren had excited pride in her assignment and anticipation of what the future might hold—now seemed to trap and confine her. She was tense and unhappy.
Esk Decade Commander Tiaund sat in her tiny office. It held only two chairs and a desk close against one wall, barely more than a shelf, and space for perhaps two more people to stand. “Lieutenant Awn has returned,” I said to her, and to Hundred Captain Rubran on the command deck. The shuttle docked with a thunk.
Captain Rubran frowned. She had been surprised and dismayed at the news of Lieutenant Awn’s sudden return. The order had come directly from Anaander Mianaai, who was not to be questioned. Along with it had come orders not to ask what had happened.
In her office on the Esk deck, Commander Tiaund sighed, closed her eyes, and said, “Tea.” She sat silent till Two Esk brought her a cup and a flask, poured, and set both at the commander’s elbow. “She’ll see me at her earliest convenience.”
One Esk’s attention was mostly on Lieutenant Awn, threading her way through the lift and the narrow white corridors that would take her to the Esk decade, to her own quarters. I read relief when she found those corridors empty except for Two Esk.
“Commander Tiaund will see you at your earliest convenience,” I said to Lieutenant Awn, transmitting directly to her. She acknowledged with a brief twitch of her fingers as she entered the Esk corridors.
Two Esk vacated the deck, filing down the corridor to the hold and its waiting suspension pods, and One Esk took up whatever tasks Two Esk had been doing, and also followed Lieutenant Awn. Above, on Medical, a tech medic began to lay out what she needed to replace One Esk’s missing segment.
At the door of her own small quarters—the same that more than a thousand years before had belonged to Lieutenant Seivarden—Lieutenant Awn turned to say something to the segment that followed her, and then stopped. “What?” she asked after an instant. “Something’s wrong, what is it?”
“Please excuse me, Lieutenant,” I said. “In the next few minutes the tech medic will connect a new segment. I might be unresponsive for a short while.”
“Unresponsive,” she said,
feeling momentarily overwhelmed for some reason I couldn’t quite understand. And then guilty, and angry. She stood before the unopened door of her quarters, took two breaths, and then turned and went back down the corridor toward the lift.
A new segment’s nervous system has to be more or less functional for the hookup. They’d tried it in the past with dead bodies, and failed. The same with fully sedated bodies—the connection was never made properly. Sometimes the new segment is given a tranquilizer, but sometimes the tech medic prefers to thaw the new body out and tie it down quickly, without any sedation at all. This eliminates the chancy step of sedating just the right amount, but it always makes for an uncomfortable hookup.
This particular tech medic didn’t care much about my comfort. She wasn’t obliged to care, of course.
Lieutenant Awn entered the lift that would bring her to Medical just as the tech medic triggered the release on the suspension pod that held the body. The lid swung up, and for a hundredth of a second the body lay still and icy within its pool of fluid.
The tech medic rolled the body out of the pod onto a neighboring table, the fluid sliding and sheeting off it, and in the same moment it awoke, convulsive, choking and gagging. The preserving medium slides out of throat and lungs easily on its own, but the first few times the experience is a discomfiting one. Lieutenant Awn exited the lift, strode down the corridor toward Medical with One Esk Eighteen close behind her.
The tech medic went swiftly to work, and suddenly I was on the table (I was walking behind Lieutenant Awn, I was taking up the mending Two Esk had set down on its way to the holds, I was laying myself down on my small, close bunks, I was wiping a counter in the decade room) and I could see and hear but I had no control of the new body and its terror raised the heart rates of all One Esk’s segments. The new segment’s mouth opened and it screamed and in the background it heard laughter. I flailed, the binding came loose and I rolled off the table, fell a meter and a half to the floor with a painful thud. Don’t don’t don’t, I thought at the body, but it wasn’t listening. It was sick, it was terrified, it was dying. It pushed itself up and crawled, dizzy, where it didn’t care so long as it got away.