“Events in Ors didn’t come out precisely the way I wished,” answered Anaander Mianaai. “I never expected anyone would find those guns, but if some Orsian fisherman had found them and said nothing, or even taken them, my purpose would still have been served.” Instead, Denz Ay had reported her find to Lieutenant Awn. The Lord of the Radch hadn’t expected that, I saw, hadn’t thought the Orsians trusted Lieutenant Awn that much. “I didn’t get what I wanted there, but perhaps the results will still serve my purpose. Hundred Captain Rubran is about to receive orders to depart this system for Valskaay. It was past time for you to leave, and you would have a year ago, if not for the Divine of Ikkt’s insistence that Lieutenant Awn stay, and my own opposition. Whether knowingly or not, Lieutenant Awn is the instrument of my enemy, I’m certain of it.”
I did not trust even One Var’s impassivity to answer that, and therefore did not speak. Above, on the central access deck, the Lord of the Radch continued to make changes, give orders, alter my thoughts. Still believing she could in fact do that.
No one was surprised at the order to depart. Four other Justices already had in the last year, to destinations meant to be final. But neither I nor any of my officers had expected Valskaay, six gates away.
Valskaay, that I had been sorry to leave. One hundred years ago, in the city of Vestris Cor, on Valskaay itself, One Esk had discovered volume upon volume of elaborate, multi-voiced choral music, all intended for the rites of Valskaay’s troublesome religion, some of it dating from before humans had ever reached space. Downloaded everything it found so that it hardly regretted being sent away from such a treasure out to the countryside, hard work prying rebels from a reserve, forest and caverns and springs, that we couldn’t just blast because it was a watershed for half the continent. A region of small rivers and bluffs, and farms. Grazing sheep and peach orchards. And music—even the rebels, trapped at last, had sung, either in defiance against us or as consolation for themselves, their voices reaching my appreciative ears as I stood at the mouth of the cave where they hid.
Death will overtake us
In whatever manner already fated
Everyone falls to it
And so long as I’m ready
I don’t fear it
No matter what form it takes.
When I thought of Valskaay, I thought of sunshine and the sweet, bright taste of peaches. Thought of music. But I was sure I wouldn’t be sent down to the planet this time—there would be no orchards for One Esk, no visits (unofficial, as unobtrusive as possible) to choral society meetings.
Traveling to Valskaay I would not, it turned out, take the gates, but generate my own, moving more directly. The gates most travelers used had been generated millennia ago, were held constantly open, stable, surrounded by beacons broadcasting warnings, notifications, information about local regulations and navigation hazards. Not only ships, but messages and information streamed constantly through them.
In the two thousand years I had been alive, I had used them once. Like all Radchaai warships, I was capable of making my own shortcut. It was more dangerous than using the established gates—an error in my calculations could send me anywhere, or nowhere, never to be heard from again. And since I left no structures behind to hold my gate open, I traveled in a bubble of normal space, isolated from everyone and everywhere until I exited at my destination. I didn’t make such errors, and in the course of arranging an annexation the isolation could be an advantage. Now, though, the prospect of months alone, with Anaander Mianaai secretly occupying my Var deck, made me nervous.
Before I gated out, a message came from Lieutenant Skaaiat for Lieutenant Awn. Brief. I said keep in touch. I meant it.
Lieutenant Dariet said, “See, I told you.” But Lieutenant Awn didn’t answer.
15
At some point I opened my eyes again, thinking I had heard voices. All around me, blue. I tried to blink, found I could only close my eyes and leave them closed.
Sometime later I opened my eyes again, turned my head to the right, and saw Seivarden and the girl squatting on either side of a Tiktik board. So I was dreaming, or hallucinating. At least I no longer hurt, which on consideration was a bad sign, but I couldn’t bring myself to care much. I closed my eyes again.
I woke, finally, actual wakefulness, and found myself in a small blue-walled room. I lay in a bed, and on a bench beside it Seivarden sat, leaning against the wall, looking as though she hadn’t slept recently. Or, that is to say, even more as though she hadn’t slept recently than she usually did.
I lifted my head. My arms and legs were immobilized by correctives.
“You’re awake,” said Seivarden.
I set my head back down. “Where’s my pack?”
“Right here.” She bent, lifted it into my line of sight.
“We’re at the medical center in Therrod,” I guessed, and closed my eyes.
“Yes. Do you think you can talk to the doctor? Because I can’t understand anything she says.”
I remembered my dream. “You learned to play Tiktik.”
“That’s different.” So, not a dream.
“You sold the flier.” No answer. “You bought kef.”
“No, I didn’t,” she protested. “I was going to. But when I woke up and you were gone…” I heard her shift uncomfortably on the bench. “I was going to find a dealer, but it bothered me that you were gone and I didn’t know where you were. I started to think maybe you’d left me behind.”
“You wouldn’t have cared once you took the kef.”
“But I didn’t have the kef,” she said, voice surprisingly reasonable. “And then I went to the front and found you’d checked out.”
“And you decided to find me, and not the kef,” I said. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t blame you.” She was silent for five seconds. “I’ve been sitting here, thinking. I accused you of hating me because I was better than you.”
“That’s not why I hate you.”
She ignored that. “Amaat’s grace, that fall… it was my own stupid fault, I was sure I was dead, and if it had been the other way around I’d never have jumped to save anyone’s life. You never knelt to get anywhere. You are where you are because you’re fucking capable, and willing to risk everything to do right, and I’ll never be half what you are even if I tried my whole life, and I was walking around thinking I was better than you, even half dead and no use to anyone, because my family is old, because I was born better.”
“That,” I said, “is why I hate you.”
She laughed, as though I’d said something moderately witty. “If that’s what you’re willing to do for someone you hate, what would you do for someone you loved?”
I found I was incapable of answering. Fortunately the doctor came in, broad, round-faced, pale. Frowning slightly, slightly more when she saw me. “It seems,” she said, in an even tone that seemed impartial but implied disapproval, “that I don’t understand your friend when he tries to explain what happened.”
I looked at Seivarden, who made a helpless gesture and said, “I don’t understand any of it. I tried my best and the whole day she’s been giving me that look, like I’m biological waste she stepped in.”
“It’s probably just her normal expression.” I turned my head back to the doctor. “We fell off the bridge,” I explained.
The doctor’s expression didn’t change. “Both of you?”
“Yes.”
A moment of impassive silence, and then, “It does not pay to be dishonest with your doctor.” And then when I didn’t answer, “You would not be the first tourist to enter a restricted area and be injured. You are, however, the first to claim they’d fallen off the bridge and lived. I don’t know whether to admire the brazenness, or be angry you take me for such a fool.”
Still I said nothing. No story I could invent would account for my injuries in the way the truth did.
“Members of military forces must register on arrival in the system,” the doctor
continued.
“I remember hearing so.”
“Did you register?”
“No, because I am not a member of any military force.” Not quite a lie. I was not a member, I was a piece of equipment. A lone, useless fragment of equipment at that.
“This facility is not equipped,” the doctor said, just a shade more sternly than the moment before, “to deal with the sort of implants and augmentations you apparently have. I can’t predict the results of the repairs I’ve programmed. You should see a doctor when you return home. To the Gerentate.” That last sounded just slightly skeptical, the barest indication of the doctor’s disbelief.
“I intend to go straight home once I leave here,” I said, but I wondered if the doctor had reported us as possible spies. I thought not—if she had, likely she would have avoided expressing any sort of suspicion, merely waited for authorities to deal with us. She had not, then. Why not?
A possible answer stuck her head into the room and called cheerily, “Breq! You’re awake! Uncle’s on the level just above. What happened? Your friend seemed like he was saying you jumped off the bridge but that’s impossible. Do you feel better?” The girl came fully into the room. “Hello, Doctor, is Breq going to be all right?”
“Breq will be fine. The correctives should drop off by tomorrow. Unless something goes wrong.” And with that cheerful observation she turned and left the room.
The girl sat on the edge of my bed. “Your friend is a terrible Tiktik player, I’m glad I didn’t teach him the gambling part or he wouldn’t have had any money to pay the doctor with. And it’s your money, isn’t it? From the flier.”
Seivarden frowned. “What? What is she saying?”
I resolved to check the contents of my pack as soon as I could. “He’d have won it back playing counters.”
From the look on her face, the girl didn’t believe that at all. “You really shouldn’t go under the bridge, you know. I know someone who had a friend whose cousin went under the bridge and someone dropped a piece of bread off, and it was going so fast it hit them in the head and broke their skull open and went into their brain and killed them.”
“I enjoyed your cousin’s singing very much.” I didn’t want to reopen the discussion about what had happened.
“Isn’t she wonderful? Oh!” She turned her head, as though she’d heard something. “I have to go. I’ll visit you again!”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said, and she was out the door and away. I looked at Seivarden. “How much did this cost?”
“About what I got for the flier,” she said, ducking her head slightly, maybe out of embarrassment. Maybe something else.
“Did you take anything out of my pack?”
That brought her head up again. “No! I swear I didn’t.” I didn’t answer. “You don’t believe me. I don’t blame you. You can check, as soon as your hands are free.”
“I intend to. But then what?”
She frowned, not comprehending. And of course she didn’t understand—she had gotten as far as (mistakenly) evaluating me as a human being who might be worthy of respect. She had not, it seemed, come to the point of considering she might not actually be important enough for the Radch to send a Special Missions officer after.
“I was never assigned to find you,” I said. “I found you completely by accident. As far as I know, no one is looking for you.” I wished I could gesture, wave her away.
“Why are you here, then? It’s not groundwork for an annexation, there aren’t any more. That’s what they told me.”
“No more annexations,” I agreed. “But that’s not the point. The point is, you can come or go as you like, I have no orders to bring you back.”
Seivarden considered that for six seconds, and then said, “I tried to quit before. I did quit. This station I was on had a program, you’d quit, they’d give you a job. One of their workers hauled me in and cleaned me up and told me the deal. The job was crap, the deal was bullshit, but I’d had enough. I thought I’d had enough.”
“How long did you last?”
“Not quite six months.”
“You see,” I said, after a two-second pause, “why I don’t exactly have confidence in you this time.”
“Believe me, I do. But this is different.” She leaned forward, earnest. “Nothing quite clarifies your thoughts like thinking you’re about to die.”
“The effect is often temporary.”
“They said, back on that station, that they could give me something to make kef never work on me. But first I had to fix whatever had made me take it to begin with, because otherwise I’d just find something else. Bullshit, like I said, but if I’d really wanted to, really meant to, I’d have done it then.”
Back at Strigan’s she’d spoken as though her reason for starting was simple, clear-cut. “Did you tell them why you started?” She didn’t answer. “Did you tell them who you were?”
“Of course not.”
The two questions were the same in her mind, I guessed. “You faced death back at Garsedd.”
She flinched, just slightly. “And everything changed. I woke up and all I had was past. Not a very good past, either, no one liked telling me what had happened, everyone was so polite and cheerful and it was all fake. And I couldn’t see any kind of future. Listen.” She leaned forward, earnest, breathing slightly harder. “You’re out here on your own, all by yourself, and obviously it’s because you’re suited to it or you wouldn’t have been assigned.” She paused a moment, maybe considering that issue of just who was suited to what, who was assigned where, and dismissing it. “But in the end, you can go back to the Radch and find people who know you, people who remember you, personally, a place where you fit even if you’re not always there. No matter where you go, you’re still part of that pattern, even if you never go back you always know it’s there. But when they opened that suspension pod, anyone who ever had any personal interest in me was already seven hundred years dead. Probably longer. Not even…” Her voice trembled, and she stopped, staring ahead at some fixed point beyond me. “Even the ships.”
Even the ships. “Ships? More than just Sword of Nathtas?”
“My… the first ship I ever served on. Justice of Toren. I thought maybe if I could find where it was stationed I could send a message and…” She made a negating gesture, wiping out the rest of that sentence. “It disappeared. About ten… wait… I’ve lost track of time. About fifteen years ago.” Closer to twenty. “Nobody could tell me what happened. Nobody knows.”
“Were any of the ships you served on particularly fond of you?” I asked, voice carefully even. Neutral.
She blinked. Straightened. “That’s an odd question. Do you have any experience with ships?”
“Yes,” I said. “Actually.”
“Ships are always attached to their captains.”
“Not like they used to be.” Not like when some ships had gone mad on the deaths of their captains. That had been long, long ago. “And even so, they have favorites.” Though a favorite wouldn’t necessarily know it. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? Ships aren’t people, and they’re made to serve you, to be attached, as you put it.”
Seivarden frowned. “Now you’re angry. You’re very good at hiding it, but you’re angry.”
“Do you grieve for your ships,” I asked, “because they’re dead? Or because their loss means they aren’t here to make you feel connected and cared about?” Silence. “Or do you think those are the same thing?” Still no answer. “I will answer my own question: you were never a favorite of any of the ships you served on. You don’t believe it’s possible for a ship to have favorites.”
Seivarden’s eyes widened—maybe surprise, maybe something else. “You know me too well for me to believe you aren’t here because of me. I’ve thought so from the moment I actually started thinking about it.”
“Not too long ago, then,” I said.
She ignored what I had just said. “You’re the first person, since that pod opened
, to feel familiar. Like I recognize you. Like you recognize me. I don’t know why that is.”
I knew, of course. But this was not the moment to say so, to explain, immobilized and vulnerable as I was. “I assure you I’m not here because of you. I’m here on my own personal business.”
“You jumped off that bridge for me.”
“And I’m not going to be your reason for quitting kef. I take no responsibility for you. You’re going to have to do that yourself. If you really are going to do that.”
“You jumped off that bridge for me. That had to be a three-kilometer drop. Higher. That’s… that’s…” She stopped, shaking her head. “I’m staying with you.”
I closed my eyes. “The moment I even think you’re going to steal from me again, I will break both your legs and leave you there, and it will be utter coincidence if you ever see me again.” Except that to Radchaai, there were no coincidences.
“I guess I can’t really argue with that.”
“I don’t recommend it.”
She gave a short laugh, and then was silent for fifteen seconds. “Tell me, then, Breq,” she said after that. “If you’re here on personal business, and nothing at all to do with me, why do you have one of the Garseddai guns in your pack?”
The correctives held my arms and legs completely immobile. I couldn’t even get my shoulders off the bed. The doctor came heavily into the room, pale face flushed. “Lie still!” she admonished, and then turned to Seivarden. “What did you do?”
This was, apparently, comprehensible to Seivarden. She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “Not!” she replied, vehemently, in the same language.
The doctor frowned, pointed at Seivarden, one finger out. Seivarden straightened, indignant at the gesture, which was much ruder to a Radchaai than it was here. “You bother,” the doctor said, sternly, “you go!” Then she turned to me. “You will lie still and heal properly.”
“Yes, Doctor.” I subsided from the very small amount of movement I had managed. Took a breath, attempting to calm myself.