Ancillary Justice

7

“And then,” Strigan said as we ate, latest in a long list of grievances against the Radchaai, “there’s the treaty with the Presger.”

Seivarden lay still, eyes closed, breathing even, blood caked on her lip and chin, spattered on the front of her coat. Across her nose and forehead lay a corrective.

“You resent the treaty?” I asked. “You’d prefer the Presger felt free to do as they always have done?” The Presger didn’t care if a species was sentient or not, conscious or not, intelligent or not. The word they used—or the concept, at any rate, as I understood they didn’t speak in words—was usually translated as significance. And only the Presger were significant. All other beings were their rightful prey, property, or playthings. Mostly they just didn’t care about humans, but some of them liked to stop ships and pull them—and their contents—apart.

“I’d prefer the Radch not make binding promises on behalf of all humanity,” Strigan answered. “Not dictate policy for every single human government and then tell us we’re supposed to be grateful.”

“The Presger don’t recognize such divisions. It was all or none.”

“It was the Radch extending control yet another way, one cheaper and easier than outright conquest.”

“It might surprise you to learn that some high-ranking Radchaai dislike the treaty as much as you do.”

Strigan raised an eyebrow, set down her cup of stinking fermented milk. “Somehow I doubt I’d find these high-ranking Radchaai sympathetic.” Her tone was bitter, slightly sarcastic.

“No,” I answered. “I don’t think you’d like them much. They certainly wouldn’t have much use for you.”

She blinked and looked intently at my face, as though trying to read something from my expression. Then she shook her head and made a dismissing gesture. “Do tell.”

“When one is the agent of order and civilization in the universe, one doesn’t stoop to negotiate. Especially with nonhumans.” Which included quite a number of people who considered themselves human, but that was a topic best left undiscussed just now. “Why make a treaty with such an implacable enemy? Destroy them and be done.”

“Could you?” Strigan asked, incredulous. “Could you have destroyed the Presger?”

“No.”

She folded her arms, leaned back in her chair. “So why any debate at all?”

“I would think it was obvious,” I answered. “Some find it difficult to admit the Radch might be fallible, or that its power might have limits.”

Strigan glanced across the room, toward Seivarden. “But this is meaningless. Debate. There’s no real debate possible.”

“Certainly,” I agreed. “You’re the expert.”

“Oh ho!” she exclaimed, sitting straighter. “I’ve made you angry.”

I was sure I hadn’t changed my expression. “I don’t think you’ve ever been to the Radch. I don’t think you know many Radchaai, not personally. Not well. You look at it from the outside, and you see conformity and brainwashing.” Rank on rank of identical silver-armored soldiers, with no wills of their own, no minds of their own. “And it’s true the lowest Radchaai thinks herself immeasurably superior to any noncitizen. What people like Seivarden think of themselves is past bearing.” Strigan made a brief, amused snort. “But they are people, and they do have different opinions about things.”

“Opinions that don’t matter. Anaander Mianaai declares what will be, and that’s how it is.”

That was a more complicated issue than she realized, I was certain. “Which only adds to their frustration. Imagine. Imagine your whole life aimed at conquest, at the spread of Radchaai space. You see murder and destruction on an unimaginable scale, but they see the spread of civilization, of Justice and Propriety, of Benefit for the universe. The death and destruction, these are unavoidable by-products of this one, supreme good.”

“I don’t think I can muster much sympathy for their perspective.”

“I don’t ask it. Only stand there a moment, and look. Not only your life, but the lives of all your house, and your ancestors for a thousand years or more before you, are invested in this idea, these actions. Amaat wills it. God wills it, the universe itself wills all this. And then one day someone tells you maybe you were mistaken. And your life won’t be what you imagined it to be.”

“Happens to people all the time,” said Strigan, rising from her seat. “Except most of us don’t delude ourselves that we ever had great destinies.”

“The exception is not an insignificant one,” I pointed out.

“And you?” She stood beside the chair, her cup and bowl in her hands. “You’re certainly Radchaai. Your accent, when you speak Radchaai”—we were speaking her own native language—“sounds like you’re from the Gerentate. But you have almost no accent right now. You might just be very good with languages—inhumanly good, I might even say—” She paused. “The gender thing is a giveaway, though. Only a Radchaai would misgender people the way you do.”

I’d guessed wrong. “I can’t see under your clothes. And even if I could, that’s not always a reliable indicator.”

She blinked, hesitated a moment as though what I’d said made no sense to her. “I used to wonder how Radchaai reproduced, if they were all the same gender.”

“They’re not. And they reproduce like anyone else.” Strigan raised one skeptical eyebrow. “They go to the medic,” I continued, “and have their contraceptive implants deactivated. Or they use a tank. Or they have surgery so they can carry a pregnancy. Or they hire someone to carry it.”

None of it was very different from what any other kind of people did, but Strigan seemed slightly scandalized. “You’re certainly Radchaai. And certainly very familiar with Captain Seivarden, but you’re not like him. I wondered from the start if you were an ancillary, but I don’t see much in the way of implants. Who are you?”

She would have to look a good deal closer than she already had to see evidence of what I was—to a casual observer I looked as though I had one or two communications and optical implants, the sort of thing millions of people got as a matter of course, Radchaai or not. And during the last twenty years I’d found ways of concealing the specifics of what I had.

I picked up my own dishes, rose. “I’m Breq, from the Gerentate.” Strigan snorted, disbelieving. The Gerentate was far enough from where I’d been for the last nineteen years to conceal any small mistakes I might make.

“Just a tourist,” Strigan observed, in a tone that made it clear she didn’t believe me at all.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“So what’s the interest in…” She gestured again at Seivarden, still sleeping, breathing slow and even. “Just a stray animal that needed rescuing?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer, truthfully.

“I’ve met people who collect strays. I don’t think you’re one of them. There’s something… something cold about you. Something edged. You’re far more self-possessed than any tourist I’ve ever seen.” And of course I knew she had the gun, which no one but herself and Anaander Mianaai should have known existed. But she couldn’t say that without admitting she had it. “There’s no way in seventeen hells you’re a Gerentate tourist. What are you?”

“If I told you it would spoil your fun,” I said.

Strigan opened her mouth to say something—possibly something angry, to judge from her expression—when an alarm tone sounded. “Visitors,” she said instead.

By the time we got our coats on, and got out the two doors, a crawler had made a ragged path up to the house, dragging a white trench across the moss-tinged snow, its half-spinning halt missing my flier by centimeters.

The door popped open and a Nilter slid out, shorter than many I had met, bundled in a scarlet coat embroidered in bright blue and a screaming shade of yellow, but overlaid with dark stains—snowmoss, and blood. The person halted a moment, and then saw us standing at the entrance to the house.

“Doctor!” she called. “Help!”

Before she was done speaking, Strigan was striding across the snow. I followed.

On closer inspection I saw the driver was only a child, barely fourteen. In the passenger seat lay sprawled an adult, unconscious, clothes torn nearly to shreds, in places all the way through every layer. Blood soaked the cloth, and the seat. Her right leg was missing below the knee, and her left foot.

Among the three of us we got the injured person into the house, into the infirmary. “What happened?” Strigan asked as she removed bloody fragments of coat.

“Ice devil,” said the girl. “We didn’t see it!” Tears welled in her eyes, but didn’t fall. She swallowed hard.

Strigan appraised the makeshift tourniquets the girl had obviously applied. “You did everything you could,” she told the girl. She nodded toward the door to the main room. “I’ll take it from here.”

We left the infirmary, the girl apparently not even aware of my presence, or Seivarden’s, where she still lay on her pallet. She stood for a few seconds in the middle of the room, uncertain, seeming paralyzed, and then she sank down on a bench.

I brought her a cup of fermented milk and she started, as though I had suddenly appeared from nowhere. “Are you injured?” I asked her. No misgendering this time—I had already heard Strigan use the feminine pronoun.

“I…” She stopped, looking at the cup of milk as though it might bite her. “No, not… a little.” She seemed on the verge of collapse. She might well be. By Radchaai standards she was still a child, but she had seen this adult injured—was she a parent, a cousin, a neighbor?—and had the presence of mind to render some small bits of first aid, get her into a crawler, and come here. Small wonder if she was about to fall to pieces now.

“What happened to the ice devil?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She looked up at me, from the milk, still not taking it. “I kicked it. I stabbed it with my knife. It went away. I don’t know.”

It took a few minutes for me to get the information out of her, that she’d left messages for the others at her family’s camp but that no one had been near enough to help, or was near enough to be here terribly soon. While we were talking she seemed to collect herself, at least slightly, at least enough to take the milk I offered and drink it.

Within a few minutes she was sweating, and she removed both her coats and laid them on the bench beside her, and then sat, quiet and awkward. I knew of nothing that might relieve her distress. “Do you know any songs?” I asked her.

She blinked, startled. “I’m not a singer,” she said.

It might have been a language issue. I hadn’t paid much attention to customs in this part of this world, but I was fairly sure there was no division between songs anyone might sing and songs that were, usually for religious reasons, only sung by specialists—not in the cities near the equator. Maybe it was different this far south. “Excuse me,” I said, “I must have used the wrong word. What do you call it when you’re working or playing, or trying to get a baby to sleep? Or just…”

“Oh!” Comprehension animated her, for just a moment. “You mean songs!”

I smiled encouragingly, but she lapsed into silence again. “Try not to worry too much,” I said. “The doctor is very good at what she does. And sometimes you just have to leave things to the gods.”

She curled her lower lip inward and bit it. “I don’t believe in any god,” she said, with a slight vehemence.

“Still. Things will happen as they happen.” She gestured agreement, perfunctory. “Do you play counters?” I asked. Maybe she could show me the game Strigan’s board was meant for, though I doubted it was from Nilt.

“No.” And with that, I had exhausted what small means I might have had to amuse or distract her.

After ten minutes of silence she said, “I have a Tiktik set.”

“What’s Tiktik?”

Her eyes widened, round in her round, pale face. “How can you not know what Tiktik is? You must be from very far away!” I acknowledged that I was, and she answered, “It’s a game. It’s mostly a game for children.” Her tone implied she wasn’t a child, but I’d best not ask why she was carrying a child’s game set. “You’ve really never played Tiktik?”

“Never. Where I come from we mostly play counters, and cards, and dice. But even those are different, in different places.”

She pondered that a moment. “I can teach you,” she said finally. “It’s easy.”

Two hours later, as I was tossing my handful of tiny bov-bone dice, the visitor alarm sounded. The girl looked up, startled. “Someone’s here,” I said. The door to the infirmary stayed shut, Strigan paying no attention.

“Mama,” the girl suggested, hope and relief lending the tiniest tremble to her voice.

“I hope so. I hope it’s not another patient.” Immediately I realized I shouldn’t have suggested it. “I’ll go see.”

It was Mama, unquestionably. She jumped out of the flier she had arrived in, and made for the house with a speed I wouldn’t have thought possible over the snow. She strode past me without acknowledging my existence in any way, tall for a Nilter and broad, as they all were, bundled in coats, the signs of her relationship to the girl inside clear in the lines of her face. I followed her in.

On seeing the girl, now standing by the abandoned Tiktik board, she said, “Well, then, what?”

A Radchaai parent would have put her arms around her daughter, kissed her, told her how relieved she was her daughter was well, maybe even would have wept. Some Radchaai would have thought this parent cold and affectionless. But I was sure that would have been a mistake. They sat down together on a bench, sides touching, as the girl gave her report, what she knew of the patient’s condition, and what had happened out in the snow with the herd, and the ice devil. When she had finished, her mother patted her twice on the knee, briskly, and it was as though she were suddenly a different girl, taller, stronger, now she had, it seemed, not only her mother’s strong, comforting presence, but her approval.

I brought them two cups of fermented milk, and Mama’s attention snapped to me, but not, I thought, because I was of any interest in particular. “You’re not the doctor,” she said, bare statement. I could see her attention was still on her daughter; her interest in me stretched only as far as I might be a threat or a help.

“I’m a guest here,” I told her. “But the doctor is busy, and I thought you might like something to drink.”

Her eyes went to Seivarden, still sleeping, as she had for the last several hours, that black, trembling corrective spread across her forehead, the remains of bruising around her mouth and nose.

“She’s from very far away,” said the girl. “She didn’t know how to play Tiktik!” Her mother’s gaze flicked over the set on the floor, the dice, the board and flat, painted stone pieces halted in midcourse. She said nothing, but her expression changed, just slightly. She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, and took the milk I offered.

Twenty minutes later Seivarden woke, brushed the black corrective off her head, and wiped fretfully at her upper lip, pausing at the flakes of dried blood that rubbed away. She looked at the two Nilters, sitting silent, side by side, on a nearby bench, studiously ignoring both her and me. Neither of them seemed to find it odd that I didn’t go to Seivarden’s side, or say anything to her. I didn’t know if she remembered why I had hit her, or even that I had. Sometimes a blow to the head affects memories of the moments leading up to it. But she must have either remembered or suspected something, because she didn’t look at me at all. After fidgeting a few minutes she rose and went to the kitchen and opened a cabinet. She stared for thirty seconds, and then got a bowl, and hard bread to put in it, and water to pour over it, and then stood, staring, waiting for it to soften, saying nothing, looking at no one.