“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The Garseddai did everything in fives. Five right actions, five principal sins, five zones times five regions. Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch.”
For three seconds Strigan was utterly still. Even her breathing seemed to have stopped. Then she spoke. “Garsedd, is it? What does that have to do with me?”
“I’d never have guessed if you’d stayed where you were.”
“Garsedd was a thousand years ago, and very, very far away from here.”
“Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch,” I repeated. “And twenty-four guns recovered or otherwise accounted for.”
She blinked, drew in a breath. “Who are you?”
“Someone ran. Someone fled the system before the Radchaai arrived. Maybe she was afraid the guns wouldn’t work as advertised. Maybe she knew that even if they did it wouldn’t help.”
“On the contrary, no? Wasn’t that the point? No one defies Anaander Mianaai.” She spoke bitterly. “Not if they want to live.”
I said nothing.
Strigan’s hold on the gun didn’t waver. Even so, she was in danger from me, if I decided to harm her, and I thought she suspected that. “I don’t know why you think I have this gun you’re talking about. Why would I have it?”
“You collected antiques, curiosities. You already had a small collection of Garseddai artifacts. They’d made their way to Dras Annia Station, somehow. Others might do so as well. And then one day you disappeared. You took care you wouldn’t be followed.”
“That’s a very slight basis for such a large assumption.”
“So why this?” I gestured carefully with my free hand, the other still under my coat, holding my gun. “You had a comfortable post on Dras Annia, patients, plenty of money, associations and reputation. Now you’re in the icy middle of nowhere, giving first aid to bov herders.”
“Personal crisis,” she said, the words carefully, deliberately pronounced.
“Certainly,” I agreed. “You couldn’t bring yourself to destroy it, or pass it on to someone who might not be wise enough to realize what a danger it presented. You knew, as soon as you realized what you had, that if Radch authorities ever even dreamed of half-imagining it existed, they would track you down and kill you, and anyone else who might have seen it.”
While the Radch wanted everyone to remember what had happened to the Garseddai, they wanted no one to know just how the Garseddai had managed to do what they’d done, what no one had managed to do for a thousand years before or another thousand years after—destroy a Radchaai ship. Almost no one alive remembered. I knew, and any still-extant ships that had been there. Anaander Mianaai certainly did. And Seivarden, who had seen for herself what the Lord of the Radch wanted no one to think was possible—that invisible armor and gun, those bullets that defeated Radchaai armor—and her ship’s heat shield—so effortlessly.
“I want it,” I told Strigan. “I’ll pay you for it.”
“If I had such a thing… if! It’s entirely possible no amount of money in the world would be sufficient.”
“Anything is possible,” I agreed.
“You’re Radchaai. And you’re military.”
“Was,” I corrected. And when she scoffed, I added, “If I still were, I wouldn’t be here. Or if I were, you would already have given me whatever information I wanted, and you’d be dead.”
“Get out of here.” Strigan’s voice was quiet, but vehement. “Take your stray with you.”
“I’m not leaving until I have what I came for.” There would be little point in doing so. “You’ll have to give it to me, or shoot me with it.” As much as admitting I still had armor. Implying I was precisely what she feared, a Radchaai agent come to kill her and take the gun.
Frightened of me as she must be, she could not avoid her own curiosity. “Why do you want it so badly?”
“I want,” I told her, “to kill Anaander Mianaai.”
“What?” The gun in her hand trembled, moved slightly aside, then steadied again. She leaned forward three millimeters, and cocked her head as though she was certain she hadn’t heard me correctly.
“I want to kill Anaander Mianaai,” I repeated.
“Anaander Mianaai,” she said, bitterly, “has thousands of bodies in hundreds of locations. You can’t possibly kill him. Certainly not with one gun.”
“I still want to try.”
“You’re insane. Or is that even possible? Aren’t all Radchaai brainwashed?”
It was a common misconception. “Only criminals, or people who aren’t functioning well, are reeducated. Nobody really cares what you think, as long as you do what you’re supposed to.”
She stared, dubious. “How do you define ‘not functioning well’?”
I made an indefinite, not my problem gesture with my free hand. Though perhaps it was my problem. Perhaps that question did concern me now, insofar as it might very well concern Seivarden. “I’m going to take my hand out of my coat,” I said. “And then I’m going to go to sleep.”
Strigan said nothing, only twitched one gray eyebrow.
“If I found you, Anaander Mianaai certainly can,” I said. We were speaking Strigan’s language. What gender had she assigned to the Lord of the Radch? “He hasn’t, yet, possibly because he is currently preoccupied with other matters, and for reasons that ought to be clear to you, he is likely hesitant to delegate in this affair.”
“I’m safe, then.” She sounded more convinced of that than she could possibly be.
Seivarden came noisily out of the bathroom and sank back onto her pallet, hands trembling, breathing quick and shallow.
“I’m taking my hand out of my coat now,” I said, and then did that. Slowly. Empty.
Strigan sighed and lowered her gun. “I probably couldn’t shoot you anyway.” Because she was sure I was Radchaai military, and hence armored. Of course, if she could take me unawares, or fire before I could extend my armor, she could indeed shoot me.
And of course, she had that gun. Though she might not have it near to hand. “Can I have my icon back?”
She frowned, and then remembered she was still holding it. “Your icon.”
“It belongs to me,” I clarified.
“That’s quite a resemblance,” she said, looking at it again. “Where’s it from?”
“Very far away.” I held out my hand. She returned it, and one-handed I brushed the trigger and the image folded into itself, and the base closed into its gold disk.
Strigan looked over at Seivarden intently, and frowned. “Your stray is having some anxiety.”
“Yes.”
Strigan shook her head, frustrated or exasperated, and went into her infirmary. She returned, went to where Seivarden sat, leaned over, and reached for her.
Seivarden started, shoving herself up and back, grabbing Strigan’s wrist in a move I knew was meant to break it. But Seivarden wasn’t what she had once been. Dissipation and what I suspected was malnutrition had taken a toll. Strigan left her arm in Seivarden’s grasp, and with her other hand plucked a small white tab out of her own fingers and stuck it to Seivarden’s forehead. “I don’t feel sorry for you,” she said, in Radchaai. “It’s just that I’m a doctor.” Seivarden looked at her with an unaccountable expression of horror. “Let go of me.”
“Let go, Seivarden, and lie down.” I said, sharply. She stared two seconds more at Strigan, but then did as she was told.
“I’m not taking him as my patient,” Strigan said to me, as Seivarden’s breathing slowed and her muscles slackened. “It isn’t more than first aid. And I don’t want him panicking and breaking my things.”
“I’m going to sleep now,” I answered. “We can talk more in the morning.”
“It is morning.” But she didn’t argue further.
She wouldn’t be foolish enough to search my person while I slept. She would know how dangerous that would be.
&nbs
p; She wouldn’t shoot me in my sleep either, though it would be a simple and effective way to be rid of me. Asleep, I would be an easy target for a bullet, unless I extended my armor now and left it up.
But there was no need. Strigan wouldn’t shoot me, at least not until she had the answers to her many questions. Even then she might not. I was too good a puzzle.
Strigan wasn’t in the main room when I woke, but the door into the bedroom was closed, and I assumed she was either asleep or wanted privacy. Seivarden was awake, staring at me, fidgeting, rubbing her arms and shoulders. A week earlier I’d had to prevent her from scraping her skin raw. She’d improved a great deal.
The box of money lay where Strigan had left it. I checked it—it was undisturbed—put it away, latched my pack closed, thinking the while what my next step should be.
“Citizen,” I said to Seivarden, brisk and authoritative. “Breakfast.”
“What?” She was surprised enough to stop moving for a moment.
I lifted the corner of my lip, just slightly. “Shall I ask the doctor to check your hearing?” The stringed instrument lay beside me, where I had set it the night before. I picked it up, plucked a fifth. “Breakfast.”
“I’m not your servant,” she protested. Indignant.
I increased my sneer, just the smallest increment. “Then what are you?”
She froze, anger visible in her expression, and then very visibly debated with herself how best to answer me. But the question was, now, too difficult for her to answer easily. Her confidence in her superiority had apparently taken too severe a blow for her to deal with just now. She didn’t seem to be able to find a response.
I bent to the instrument and began to pick out a line of music. I expected her to sit where she was, sullen, until at the very least hunger drove her to prepare her own meal. Or maybe, much delayed, find something to say to me. I found I half-hoped she’d take a swing at me, so I could retaliate, but perhaps she was still under the influence of whatever Strigan had given her last night, even if only slightly.
The door to Strigan’s room opened, and she walked into the main living space, stopped, folded her arms, and cocked an eyebrow. Seivarden ignored her. None of us said anything, and after five seconds Strigan turned and strode to the kitchen and swung open a cabinet.
It was empty. Which I’d known the evening before. “You’ve cleaned me out, Breq from the Gerentate,” Strigan said, without rancor. Almost as though she thought it was funny. We were in very little danger of starving—even in summer here, the outdoors effectively functioned as a huge freezer, and the unheated storage building held plenty of provisions. It was only a matter of fetching some, and thawing them.
“Seivarden.” I spoke in the casually disdainful tone I had heard from Seivarden herself in the distant past. “Bring some food from the shed.”
She froze, and then blinked, startled. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Language, citizen,” I chided. “And I might ask you the same question.”
“You… you ignorant nobody.” The sudden intensity of her anger had brought her close to tears again. “You think you’re better than me? You’re barely even human.” She didn’t mean because I was an ancillary. I was fairly sure she hadn’t yet realized that. She meant because I wasn’t Radchaai, and perhaps because I might have implants that were common some places outside Radch space and that would, in Radchaai eyes, compromise my humanity. “I wasn’t bred to be your servant.”
I can move very, very quickly. I was standing, and my arm halfway through its swing, before I registered my intention to move. The barest fraction of a second passed during which I could have possibly checked myself, and then it was gone, and my fist connected with Seivarden’s face, too quickly for her to even look surprised.
She dropped, falling backward onto her pallet, blood pouring from her nose, and lay unmoving.
“Is he dead?” asked Strigan, still standing in the kitchen, her voice mildly curious.
I made an ambiguous gesture. “You’re the doctor.”
She walked over to where Seivarden lay, unconscious and bleeding. Gazed down at her. “Not dead,” she pronounced. “Though I’d like to make sure the concussion doesn’t turn into anything worse.”
I gestured resignation. “It is as Amaat wills,” I said, and put on my coat and went outside to bring in food.
6
On Shis’urna, in Ors, the Justice of Ente Seven Issa who had accompanied Lieutenant Skaaiat to Jen Shinnan’s sat with me in the lower level of the house. She had a name beyond her designation—one I never used, though I knew it. Even Lieutenant Skaaiat sometimes addressed individual human soldiers under her command as merely “Seven Issa.” Or by their segment numbers.
I brought out a board and counters, and we played a silent two games. “Can’t you let me win a time or two?” she asked, when the second was concluded, and before I could answer a thump sounded from the upper floor and she grinned. “It looks like Lieutenant Stiff can unbend after all!” and she cast me a look intended to share the joke, her amusement at the contrast between Awn’s usual careful formality and what was obviously going on upstairs between her and Lieutenant Skaaiat. But the instant after Seven Issa had spoken, her smile faded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just what we…”
“I know,” I said. “I took no offense.”
Seven Issa frowned, and made a doubtful gesture with her left hand, awkwardly, her gloved fingers still curled around half a dozen counters. “Ships have feelings.”
“Yes, of course.” Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It’s just easier to handle those with emotions. “But as I said, I took no offense.”
Seven Issa looked down at the board, and dropped the counters she held into one of its depressions. She stared at them a moment, and then looked up. “You hear rumors. About ships and people they like. And I’d swear your face never changes, but…”
I engaged my facial muscles, smiled, an expression I’d seen many times.
Seven Issa flinched. “Don’t do that!” she said, indignant, but still hushed lest the lieutenants hear us.
It wasn’t that I’d gotten the smile wrong—I knew I hadn’t. It was the sudden change, from my habitual lack of expression to something human, that some of the Seven Issas found disturbing. I dropped the smile.
“Aatr’s tits,” swore Seven Issa. “When you do that it’s like you’re possessed or something.” She shook her head, and scooped up the counters and began to distribute them around the board. “All right, then, you don’t want to talk about it. One more game.”
The evening grew later. The neighbors’ conversations turned slow and aimless and finally ceased as people picked up sleeping children and went to bed.
Denz Ay arrived four hours before dawn, and I joined her, stepping into her boat without speaking. She did not acknowledge my presence, and neither did her daughter, sitting in the stern. Slowly, nearly noiselessly, we slid away from the house.
The vigil at the temple continued, the priests’ prayers audible on the plaza as an intermittent shushing murmur. The streets, upper and lower, were silent except for my own footsteps and the sound of the water, dark but for the stars brilliant overhead, the blinking of the prohibited zones’ encircling buoys, and the light from the temple of Ikkt. The Seven Issa who had accompanied us back to Lieutenant Awn’s house slept on a pallet on the ground floor.
Lieutenant Awn and Lieutenant Skaaiat lay together on the upper floor, still and on the edge of sleep.
No one else was out on the water with us. In the bottom of the boat I saw rope, nets, breathers, and a round, covered basket tied to an anchor. The daughter saw me look at it, and she kicked it under her seat, with studied nonchalance. I looked away, over the water, toward the blinking buoys, and said nothing. The fiction that they could hide or alter the information coming from their trackers was a useful one, even if no one a
ctually believed it.
Just inside the buoys, Denz Ay’s daughter put a breather in her mouth and slid over the edge, a rope in her hand. The lake wasn’t terribly deep, especially at this time of year. Moments later she reemerged and climbed back aboard, and we pulled the crate up—a relatively easy job until it reached the surface, but the three of us managed to tip it into the boat without taking on too much water.
I wiped mud off the lid. It was of Radchaai manufacture, but that wasn’t too alarming in itself. I found the latch and popped it open.
The guns within—long, sleek, and deadly—were the sort that had been carried by Tanmind troops before the annexation. I knew each one would have an identifying mark, and the marks of any guns confiscated by us would have been listed and reported, so that I could consult the inventory and determine more or less immediately if these were confiscated weapons, or ones we had missed.
If they were confiscated weapons, this situation would suddenly become a great deal more complicated than it seemed at the moment—and it was already a complicated situation.
Lieutenant Awn was in stage one of NREM sleep. Lieutenant Skaaiat seemed to be as well. I could consult the inventory on my own initiative. Indeed, I should. But I didn’t—partly because I had just been reminded, yesterday, of the corrupt authorities at Ime, the misuse of accesses, the most appalling abuse of power, something any citizen would have thought was impossible. That reminder itself was enough to make me cautious. But also, after Denz Ay’s assertions about residents of the upper city planting evidence in the past, and the evening’s dinner conversation with its clear reminder of resentment in that upper city, something didn’t seem quite right. No one in the upper city would know I had requested information about confiscated weapons, but what if someone else was involved? Someone who could set alerts to notify her if certain questions were asked in certain places? Denz Ay and her daughter sat quietly in the boat, to all appearances unconcerned and not particularly eager to be anywhere, or to be doing anything else.
Within a few moments I had Justice of Toren’s attention. I had seen no few of those confiscated weapons—not I, One Esk, but I, Justice of Toren, whose thousands of ancillary troops had been on the planet during the annexation. If I could not consult an official inventory without alerting an authority to the fact that I had found this cache, I could consult my own memory to see if any of them had passed under my own eyes.