“Why would anyone want trouble between the upper city and the lower?” Anaander Mianaai asked. “Who would exert themselves over it?”
“Jen Shinnan, my lord, and her associates,” answered Lieutenant Awn, on firmer ground, for the moment at least. “She felt the ethnic Orsians were unduly favored.”
“By you.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“So you’re saying that in the first months of the annexation, Jen Shinnan found some Radchaai official willing to divert crates full of weapons so that five years later she could start trouble between the upper and lower city. To get you in trouble.”
“My lord!” Lieutenant Awn lifted her forehead one centimeter off the floor, then halted. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why. I don’t know wh…” She swallowed that last, which I knew would have been a lie. “What I know is, it was my job to keep the peace in Ors. That peace was threatened and I acted to…” She stopped, realizing perhaps that the sentence would be an awkward one to finish. “It was my job to protect the citizens in Ors.”
“Which is why you so vehemently protested the execution of the people who endangered the citizens in Ors.” Anaander Mianaai’s tone was dry, and sardonic.
“They were my responsibility, lord. And as I said at the time, they were under control, we could have held them until reinforcements arrived, very easily. You are the ultimate authority, and of course your orders must be obeyed, but I didn’t understand why those people had to die. I still don’t understand why they had to die right then.” A half-second pause. “I don’t need to understand why. I’m here to follow your orders. But I…” She paused again. Swallowed. “My lord, if you suspect anything of me, any wrongdoing or disloyalty, I beg you, have me interrogated when we reach Valskaay.”
The same drugs used for aptitudes testing and reeducation could be used for interrogation. A skilled interrogator could pry the most secret thoughts from a person’s mind. An unskilled one could throw up irrelevancies and confabulations, could damage her subject nearly as badly as an unskilled reeducator.
What Lieutenant Awn had asked for was something surrounded by legal obligations—not least among them the requirement that two witnesses be present, and Lieutenant Awn would have the right to name one of them.
I saw nausea and terror in her when Anaander Mianaai didn’t answer. “My lord, may I speak plainly?”
“By all means, speak plainly,” said Anaander Mianaai, dry and bitter.
Lieutenant Awn spoke, terrified, face still to the floor. “It was you. You diverted the guns, you planned that mob, with Jen Shinnan. But I don’t understand why. It can’t have been about me, I’m nobody.”
“But you do not intend to remain nobody, I think,” replied Anaander Mianaai. “Your pursuit of Skaaiat Awer tells me as much.”
“My…” Lieutenant Awn swallowed. “I never pursued her. We were friends. She oversaw the next district.”
“Friends, you call that.”
Lieutenant Awn’s face heated. And she remembered her accent, and her diction. “I am not presumptuous enough to call it more.” Miserable. Frightened.
Mianaai was silent for three seconds, and then said, “Perhaps not. Skaaiat Awer is handsome and charming, and no doubt good in bed. Someone like you would be easily susceptible to her manipulation. I have suspected Awer’s disloyalty for some time.”
Lieutenant Awn wanted to speak, I could see the muscles in her throat tense, but no sound came out.
“I am, yes, speaking of sedition. You say you’re loyal. And yet you associate with Skaaiat Awer.” Anaander Mianaai gestured and Skaaiat’s voice sounded in the decade room.
“I know you, Awn. If you’re going to do something that crazy, save it for when it’ll make a difference.”
And Lieutenant Awn’s reply: “Like Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One?”
“What difference,” asked Anaander Mianaai, “would you wish to make?”
“The sort of difference,” Lieutenant Awn replied, mouth gone dry, “that Mercy of Sarrse soldier made. If she hadn’t done what she did, all the business at Ime would still be going on.” As she spoke I’m sure she realized what it was she was saying. That this was dangerous territory. Her next words made it plain she did know. “She died for it, yes. But she revealed all that corruption to you.”
I had had a week to think about the things Anaander Mianaai had said to me. By now I had worked out how the governor of Ime might have had the accesses that prevented Ime Station from reporting her activities. She could only have gotten those accesses from Anaander Mianaai herself. The only question was, which Anaander Mianaai had enabled it?
“It was on all the public news channels,” Anaander Mianaai observed. “I would have preferred it wasn’t. Oh, yes,” she said, in answer to Lieutenant Awn’s surprise. “That wasn’t by my desire. The entire incident has sown doubt where before there was none. Discontent and fear where there had been only confidence in my ability to provide justice and benefit.
“Rumors I could have dealt with, but reports through approved channels! Broadcast where every Radchaai could see and hear! And without the publicity I might have let the Rrrrrr take the traitors away quietly. Instead I had to negotiate for their return, or else let them stand as an invitation to further mutiny. It caused me a great deal of trouble. It’s still causing trouble.”
“I didn’t realize,” said Lieutenant Awn, panic in her voice. “It was on all the public channels.” Then realization struck her. “I haven’t… I haven’t said anything about Ors. To anyone.”
“Except Skaaiat Awer,” the Lord of the Radch pointed out. Which was hardly just—Lieutenant Skaaiat had been nearby, close enough to see with her own eyes the evidence that something had happened. “No,” Mianaai continued, in answer to Lieutenant Awn’s inarticulate query, “it hasn’t turned up on public channels. Yet. And I can see that the idea that Skaaiat Awer might be a traitor is distressing to you. I think you’re having trouble believing it.”
Once again, Lieutenant Awn struggled to speak. “That is correct, my lord,” she finally managed.
“I can offer you,” said Mianaai in reply, “the opportunity to prove her innocence. And to better your situation. I can manipulate your assignment so that you can be close to her again. You need only take clientship when Skaaiat offers—oh, she’ll offer,” the Lord of the Radch said, seeing, I’m sure, Lieutenant Awn’s despair and doubt at her words. “Awer has been collecting people like you. Upstarts from previously unremarkable houses who suddenly find themselves in positions advantageous for business. Take clientship, and observe.” And report was left unsaid.
The Lord of the Radch was trying to turn her enemy’s instrument into her own. What would happen if she couldn’t do that?
But what would happen if she did? No matter what choice Lieutenant Awn made now, she would be acting against Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch.
I had already seen her choice once, when faced with death. She would choose the path that kept her alive. And she—and I—could puzzle out the implications of that path later, would see what the options were when matters were less immediately urgent.
In the Esk decade room Lieutenant Dariet asked, alarmed, “Ship, what’s wrong with One Esk?”
“My lord,” said Lieutenant Awn, her voice shaking with fear, face, as ever, to the floor. “Do you order me?”
“Stand by, Lieutenant,” I said, directly into Lieutenant Dariet’s ear, because I could not make One Esk speak.
Anaander Mianaai laughed, short and sharp. Lieutenant Awn’s answer had been as bald a refusal as a plain Never would have been. Ordering such a thing would be useless.
“Interrogate me when we reach Valskaay,” Lieutenant Awn said. “I demand it. I am loyal. So is Skaaiat Awer, I swear it, but if you doubt her, interrogate her as well.”
But of course Anaander Mianaai couldn’t do that. Any interrogation would have witnesses. Any skilled interrogator—and there would be no point in using an unskilled one—wo
uld hardly fail to understand the drift of the questions put to either Lieutenant Awn or Lieutenant Skaaiat. It would be too open a move, spread information this Mianaai didn’t want spread.
Anaander Mianaai sat silent for four seconds. Impassive.
“One Var,” she said, when those four seconds had passed, “shoot Lieutenant Awn.”
I was not, now, a single fragmentary segment, alone and unsure what I might do if I received that order. I was all of myself. Taken as separate from me, One Esk was fonder of Lieutenant Awn than I was. But One Esk was not separate from me. It was, at the moment, very much part of me.
Still, One Esk was only one small part of me. And I had shot officers before. I had even, under orders, shot my own captain. But those executions, distressing and unpleasant as they had been, had clearly been just. The penalty for disobedience is death.
Lieutenant Awn had never disobeyed. Far from it. And worse, her death was meant to hide the actions of Anaander Mianaai’s enemy. The entire purpose of my existence was to oppose Anaander Mianaai’s enemies.
But neither Mianaai was ready to move openly. I must conceal from this Mianaai the fact that she herself had already bound me to the opposing cause, until all was in readiness. I must, for the moment, obey as though I had no other choice, as though I desired nothing else. And in the end, in the great scheme of things, what was Lieutenant Awn, after all? Her parents would grieve, and her sister, and they would likely be ashamed that Lieutenant Awn had disgraced them by disobedience. But they wouldn’t question. And if they questioned, it would do no good. Anaander Mianaai’s secret would be safe.
All this I thought in the 1.3 seconds it took for Lieutenant Awn, shocked and terrified, to reflexively raise her head. And in that same time, the segment of One Var said, “I am unarmed, my lord. It will take me approximately two minutes to acquire a sidearm.”
It was betrayal, to Lieutenant Awn, I saw it plainly. But she must have known I had no other choice. “This is unjust,” she said, head still up. Voice unsteady. “It’s improper. No benefit will accrue.”
“Who are your fellow conspirators?” asked Mianaai, coldly. “Name them and I may spare your life.”
Half lifted up, hands under her shoulders, Lieutenant Awn blinked in complete confusion, bewilderment that was surely as visible to Mianaai as it was to me. “Conspirators? I have never conspired with anyone. I have always served you.”
Above, on the command deck, I said in Captain Rubran’s ear, “Captain, we have a problem.”
“Serving me,” said Anaander Mianaai, “is no longer sufficient. No longer sufficiently unambiguous. Which me do you serve?”
“Wh—” began Lieutenant Awn, and “Th—” And then, “I don’t understand.”
“What problem?” asked Captain Rubran, bowl of tea halfway to her mouth, only mildly alarmed.
“I am at war with myself,” said Mianaai, in the Var decade room. “I have been for nearly a thousand years.”
To Captain Rubran I said, “I need One Esk to be sedated.”
“At war,” Anaander Mianaai continued on Var deck, “over the future of the Radch.”
Something must have come suddenly clear for Lieutenant Awn. I saw a sharp, pure rage in her. “Annexations and ancillaries, and people like me being assigned to the military.”
“I don’t understand you, Ship,” said Captain Rubran, her voice even but definitely worried now. She set down her tea on the table beside her.
“Over the treaty with the Presger,” said Mianaai, angrily. “The rest followed from that. Whether you know it or not, you are the instrument of my enemy.”
“And Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One exposed whatever it was you were doing at Ime,” said Lieutenant Awn, her anger still clear and steady. “That was you. The system governor was making ancillaries—you needed them for your war with yourself, didn’t you. And I’m sure that’s not all she was doing for you. Is that why that soldier had to die even if it meant extra trouble getting her back from the Rrrrrr? And I…”
“I’m still standing by, Ship,” said Lieutenant Dariet, in the Esk decade room. “But I don’t like this.”
“Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One knew almost nothing, but in the hands of the Rrrrrr, she was a piece that my enemy might use against me. As an officer on a troop carrier, you are nothing, but in a position of even minor planetary authority, with the potential backing of Skaaiat Awer to help you increase your influence, you are a potential danger to me. I could have just maneuvered you out of Ors, out of Awer’s way. But I wanted more. I wanted a graphic argument against recent decisions and policies. Had that fisherman not found the guns, or not reported them to you, had events that night gone as I wished, I would have made sure the story was on all the public channels. In one gesture I would have secured the loyalty of the Tanmind and removed someone troublesome to me, both minor aims, but I also would have been able to impress on everyone the danger of lowering our guard, of disarming in even a small way. And the danger of placing authority in less-than-competent hands.” She made a short, bitter ha. “I admit, I underestimated you. Underestimated your relationship with the Orsians in the lower city.”
One Var could delay no longer, and walked into the Var decade room, gun in hand. Lieutenant Awn heard it come in, turned her head slightly to watch it. “It was my job, to protect the citizens of Ors. I took it seriously. I did it to the best of my ability. I failed, that once. But not because of you.” She turned her head, looked straight at Anaander Mianaai, and said, “I should have died rather than obey you, in the temple of Ikkt. Even if it wouldn’t have done any good.”
“You can fix that now, can’t you,” said Anaander Mianaai, and gave me the order to fire.
I fired.
Twenty years later, I would say to Arilesperas Strigan that Radchaai authorities didn’t care what a citizen thought, so long as she did as she ought to do. It was quite true. But since that moment, since I saw Lieutenant Awn dead on the floor of my Var decade room, shot by One Var (or, to speak with less self-deception, by me) I have wondered what the difference is between the two.
I was compelled to obey this Mianaai, in order to lead her to believe that she did indeed compel me. But in that case, she did compel me. Acting for one Mianaai or the other was indistinguishable. And of course, in the end, whatever their differences, they were both the same.
Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.
Lieutenant Awn lay on the floor of the Var decade room, facedown again, dead. The floor under her would need repair, and cleaning. The urgent issue, the important thing, at that moment, was to get One Esk moving because in approximately half a second no amount of filtering I could do would hide the strength of its reaction and I really needed to tell the captain what had happened and I couldn’t remember Mianaai’s enemy—Mianaai herself—laying down the orders I knew she had laid on me and why couldn’t One Esk see how important it was, we weren’t ready to move openly yet and I’d lost officers before and who was One Esk anyway except me, myself, and Lieutenant Awn was dead and she had said, I should have died rather than obey you.
And then One Var swung the gun up and shot Anaander Mianaai point-blank in the face.
In a room down the corridor, Anaander Mianaai leaped with a cry of rage off the bed she’d been lying on. “Aatr’s tits, she was here before me!” In the same moment she transmitted the code that would force One Var’s armor down, until she reauthorized its use. It was a command that didn’t rely on my obedience, an override neither Anaander would have wanted to do away with.
“Captain,” I said, “now we really have a problem.”
In another room down the same corridor, the third Mianaai—the second, now, I suppose—opened one of the ca
ses she had brought with her and pulled out a sidearm, and stepped quickly into the corridor and shot the nearest One Var in the back of the head. The one who had spoken opened her own case, pulled out a sidearm and also a box I recognized from Jen Shinnan’s house, in the upper city, on Shis’urna. Using it would disadvantage her as well as me, but it would disadvantage me badly. In the seconds she took to arm the device I formed intentions, transmitted orders to constituent parts.
“What problem?” asked Captain Rubran, now standing. Afraid.
And then I fell to pieces.
A familiar sensation. For the smallest fragment of a second I smelled humid air and lake water, thought, Where’s Lieutenant Awn? and then I recovered myself, and the memory of what I had to do. Tea bowls rang and shattered as I dropped what I was holding and ran from the Esk decade room, down the corridor. Other segments, separated from me again as they had been in Ors, muttering, whispering, the only way I could think between all my bodies, opened lockers, handed guns, and the first to be armed forced the lift doors open and began to climb down the shaft. Lieutenants protested, ordered me to stop, to explain. Tried fruitlessly to block my way.
I—that is, almost the entirety of One Esk—would secure the central access deck, prevent Anaander Mianaai from damaging my—Justice of Toren’s—brain. So long as Justice of Toren lived, unconverted to her cause, it—I—was a danger to her.
I—One Esk Nineteen—had separate orders. Instead of climbing down the shaft to central access I ran the other way, toward the Esk hold and the airlock on its far side.