Ancillary Justice

9

Strigan came out of the infirmary, undercoat bloody, and the girl and her mother, who had been talking quietly in a language I didn’t understand, fell silent and looked expectantly to her.

“I’ve done what I can,” Strigan said, with no preamble. “He’s out of danger. You’ll need to take him to Therrod to have the limbs regrown, but I’ve done some of the prep work, and they should grow back fairly easily.”

“Two weeks,” said the Nilter woman, impassive. As though it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

“Can’t be helped,” said Strigan, answering something I hadn’t heard or understood. “Maybe someone’s got a few extra hands they can spare.”

“I’ll call some cousins.”

“You do that,” said Strigan. “You can see him now if you like, but he’s asleep.”

“When can we move him?” the woman asked.

“Now, if you like,” answered Strigan. “The sooner the better, I suppose.”

The woman made an affirmative gesture, and she and the girl rose and went into the infirmary without another word.

Not long after, we brought the injured person out to the girl’s flier and saw them off, and trudged back into the house and shed our outer coats. Seivarden had by now returned to her pallet on the floor and sat, knees drawn up, arms tight around her legs as if she were holding them back and it took work.

Strigan looked at me, an odd expression on her face, one I couldn’t read. “She’s a good kid.”

“Yes.”

“She’ll get a good name out of this. A good story to go with it.”

I had learned the lingua franca that I thought would be most useful here, and done the sort of cursory research one needs to navigate unfamiliar places, but I knew almost nothing about the people who herded bov on this part of the planet. “Is it an adulthood thing?” I guessed.

“Sort of. Yes.” She went to a cabinet, pulled out a cup and a bowl. Her movements were quick and steady, but I got somehow an impression of exhaustion. From the set of her shoulders perhaps. “I didn’t think you’d be much interested in children. Aside from killing them, I mean.”

I refused the bait. “She let me know she wasn’t a child. Even if she did have a Tiktik set.”

Strigan sat at her small table. “You played two hours straight.”

“There wasn’t much else to do.”

Strigan laughed, short and bitter. Then she gestured toward Seivarden, who seemed to be ignoring us. She couldn’t understand us anyway, we weren’t speaking Radchaai. “I don’t feel sorry for him. It’s just that I’m a doctor.”

“You said that.”

“I don’t think you feel sorry for him either.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t make anything easy, do you?” Strigan’s voice was half-angry. Exasperated.

“It depends.”

She shook her head slightly, as though she hadn’t heard quite clearly. “I’ve seen worse. But he needs medical attention.”

“You don’t intend to give it,” I said. Not asking.

“I’m still figuring you out,” Strigan said, as though her statement was related to mine, though I was sure it wasn’t. “As a matter of fact, I’m considering giving him something more to keep him calm.” I didn’t answer. “You disapprove.” It wasn’t a question. “I don’t feel sorry for him.”

“You keep saying that.”

“He lost his ship.” Very likely her interest in her Garseddai artifacts had led her to learn what she could about the events that had led to the destruction of Garsedd. “Bad enough,” Strigan continued, “but Radchaai ships aren’t just ships, are they? And his crew. It was a thousand years ago for us, but for him—one moment everything is the way it should be, next moment everything’s gone.” With one hand she made a frustrated, ambivalent gesture. “He needs medical attention.”

“If he hadn’t fled the Radch, he’d have received it.”

Strigan cocked one gray eyebrow, sat on a bench. “Translate for me. My Radchaai isn’t good enough.”

One moment an ancillary had shoved Seivarden into a suspension pod, next she’d found herself freezing and choking as the pod’s fluids exited through her mouth and nose, drained away, and she found herself in the sick bay of a patrol ship. When Seivarden described it, I could see her agitation, her anger, barely masked. “Some dingy little Mercy, with a shabby, provincial captain.”

“Your face is almost perfectly impassive,” Strigan said to me. Not in Radchaai, so Seivarden didn’t understand. “But I can see your temperature and heart rate.” And probably a few other things, with the medical implants she likely had.

“The ship was human-crewed,” I said to Seivarden.

That distressed her further—whether it was anger, or embarrassment, or something else, I couldn’t tell. “I didn’t realize. Not right away. The captain took me aside and explained.”

I translated this for Strigan, and she looked at Seivarden in disbelief, and then at me with speculation. “Is that an easy mistake to make?”

“No,” I answered, shortly.

“That was when she finally had to tell me how long it had been,” Seivarden said, unaware of anything but her own story.

“And what had happened after,” suggested Strigan.

I translated, but Seivarden ignored it, and continued as though neither of us had spoken. “Eventually we put in to this tiny border station. You know the sort of thing, a station administrator who’s either in disgrace or a jumped-up nobody, an officious inspector supervisor playing tyrant on the docks, and half a dozen Security whose biggest challenge is chasing chickens out of the tea shop.

“I’d thought the Mercy captain had a terrible accent, but I couldn’t understand anyone on the station at all. The station AI had to translate for me, but my implants didn’t work. Too antiquated. So I could only talk to it using wall consoles.” Which would have made it extremely difficult to hold any sort of conversation. “And even when Station explained, the things people were saying didn’t make sense.

“They assigned me an apartment, a room with a cot, hardly large enough to stand up in. Yes, they knew who I said I was, but they had no record of my financial data, and it would be weeks before it could possibly arrive. Maybe longer. Meantime I got the food and shelter any Radchaai was guaranteed. Unless, of course, I wanted to retake the aptitudes so I could get a new assignment. Because they didn’t have my aptitudes data and even if they did it was certainly out of date. Out of date,” she repeated, her voice bitter.

“Did you see a doctor?” Strigan asked. Watching Seivarden’s face, I guessed what had finally sent her from Radchaai space. She must have seen a doctor, who had opted to wait and watch. Physical injuries weren’t an issue, the medic of whatever Mercy had picked her up would have taken care of those, but psychological or emotional ones—they might resolve on their own, and if they didn’t, the doctor would need that aptitudes data to work effectively.

“They said I could send a message to my house lord asking for assistance. But they didn’t know who that was.” Obviously Seivarden had no intention of talking about the station doctor.

“House lord?” asked Strigan.

“Head of her extended family,” I explained. “It sounds very elevated in translation, but it isn’t, unless your house is very wealthy or prestigious.”

“And hers?”

“Was both.”

Strigan didn’t miss that. “Was.”

Seivarden continued as though we hadn’t spoken. “But it turned out, Vendaai was gone. My whole house didn’t even exist anymore. Everything, assets and contracts, everything absorbed by Geir!” It had surprised everyone at the time, some five hundred years ago. The two houses, Geir and Vendaai, had hated each other. Geir’s house lord had taken malicious advantage of Vendaai’s gambling debts, and some foolish contracts.

“Catch up with current events?” I asked Seivarden.

She ignored my question. “Everything was gone. And what was left, it was like it was almost right. But the colors were wrong, or everything was turned slightly to the left of where it should be. People would say things and I couldn’t understand them at all, or I knew they were real words but my mind couldn’t take them in. Nothing seemed real.”

Maybe it had been an answer to my question after all. “How did you feel about the human soldiers?”

Seivarden frowned, and looked directly at me for the first time since she’d awoken. I regretted asking the question. It hadn’t really been the question I’d wanted to ask. What did you think when you heard about Ime? But maybe she hadn’t. Or if she had it might have been incomprehensible to her. Did anyone come to you whispering about restoring the rightful order of things? Probably not, considering. “How did you leave the Radch without permits?” That couldn’t have been easy. It would at the very least have cost money she wouldn’t have had.

Seivarden looked away from me, down and to the left. She wasn’t going to say.

“Everything was wrong,” she said after nine seconds of silence.

“Bad dreams,” said Strigan. “Anxiety. Shaking, sometimes.”

“Unsteady,” I said. Translated it had very little sting, but in Radchaai, for an officer like Seivarden, it said more. Weak, fearful, inadequate to the demands of her position. Fragile. If Seivarden was unsteady, she had never really deserved her assignment, never really been suited to the military, let alone to captain a ship. But of course Seivarden had taken the aptitudes, and the aptitudes had said she was what her house had always assumed she would be: steady, fit to command and conquer. Not prone to doubts or irrational fears.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seivarden half-sneered, half-snarled. Arms still locked around her knees. “No one in my house is unsteady.”

Of course (I thought but did not say), the various cousins who had served a year or so during this annexation or that and retired to take ascetic vows or paint tea sets hadn’t done so because they had been unsteady. And the cousins who hadn’t tested as anticipated, but surprised their parents with assignments in the minor priesthoods, or the arts—this had not indicated any sort of unsteadiness inherent in the house, no, never. And Seivarden wasn’t the least bit afraid or worried about what new assignment a retake of the aptitudes would get her, and what that might say about her steadiness. Of course not.

“Unsteady?” asked Strigan, understanding the word, but not its context.

“The unsteady,” I explained, “lack a certain strength of character.”

“Character!” Strigan’s indignation was plain to read.

“Of course.” I didn’t alter my facial expression, but kept it bland and pleasant, as it had been for most of the past few days. “Lesser citizens break down in the face of enormous difficulties or stress and sometimes require medical attention for it. But some citizens are bred better. They never break down. Though they may take early retirement, or spend a few years pursuing artistic or spiritual interests—prolonged meditation retreats are quite popular. This is how one knows the difference between highly placed families and lesser ones.”

“But you Radchaai are so good at brainwashing. Or so I hear.”

“Reeducation,” I corrected. “If she’d stayed, she’d have gotten help.”

“But she couldn’t face needing the help to begin with.” I said nothing to agree or disagree, though I thought Strigan was right. “How much can… reeducation do?”

“A great deal,” I said. “Though much of what you’ve probably heard is greatly exaggerated. It can’t turn you into someone you’re not. Not in any useful way.”

“Erase memories.”

“Suppress them, I think. Add new ones, maybe. You have to know what you’re doing or you could damage someone badly.”

“No doubt.”

Seivarden stared frowning at us, watching us talk, unable to understand what we were saying.

Strigan half-smiled. “You aren’t a product of reeducation.”

“No,” I acknowledged.

“It was surgery. Sever a few connections, make a few new ones. Install some implants.” She paused a moment, waiting for me to answer, but I didn’t. “You pass well enough. Mostly. Your expression, your tone of voice, it’s always right but it’s always… always studied. Always a performance.”

“You think you’ve solved the puzzle,” I guessed.

“Solved isn’t the right word. But you’re a corpse soldier, I’m certain of it. Do you remember anything?”

“Many things,” I said, still bland.

“No, I mean from before.”

It took me nearly five seconds to understand what she meant. “That person is dead.”

Seivarden suddenly, convulsively stood and walked out the inner door and, by the sound of it, through the outer as well.

Strigan watched her go, gave a quick, breathy hm, and then turned back to me. “Your sense of who you are has a neurological basis. One small change and you don’t believe you exist anymore. But you’re still there. I think you’re still there. Why the bizarre desire to kill Anaander Mianaai? Why else would you be so angry with him?” She tilted her head to indicate the exit, Seivarden outside in the cold with only one coat.

“He’ll take the crawler,” I warned. The girl and her mother had taken the flier, and left the crawler outside Strigan’s house.

“No he won’t. I disabled it.” I gestured my approval, and Strigan continued, returning to her previous subject. “And the music. I don’t suppose you were a singer, not with a voice like yours. But you must have been a musician, before, or loved music.”

I considered making the bitter laugh Strigan’s guess called for. “No,” I said, instead. “Not actually.”

“But you are a corpse soldier, I’m right about that.” I didn’t answer. “You escaped somehow or… are you from his ship? Captain Seivarden’s?”

“Sword of Nathtas was destroyed.” I had been there, been nearby. Relatively speaking. Seen it happen, nearly enough. “And that was a thousand years ago.”

Strigan looked toward the door, back at me. Then she frowned. “No. No, I think you’re Ghaonish, and they were only annexed a few centuries ago, weren’t they? I shouldn’t have forgotten that, it’s why you’re passing as someone from the Gerentate, isn’t it? No, you escaped somehow. I can bring you back. I’m sure I can.”

“You can kill me, you mean. You can destroy my sense of self and replace it with one you approve of.”

Strigan didn’t like hearing that, I could see. The outer door opened, and then Seivarden came shivering through the inner. “Put on your outer coat next time,” I told her.

“Fuck off.” She grabbed a blanket off her pallet and wrapped it around her shoulders, and stood, still shivering.

“Very unbecoming language, citizen,” I said.

For a moment she looked as though she might lose her temper. Then she seemed to remember what might happen if she did. “Fuck.” She sat on the nearest bench, heavily. “Off.”

“Why didn’t you leave him where you found him?” asked Strigan.

“I wish I knew.” It was another puzzle for her, but not one I had made deliberately. I didn’t know myself. Didn’t know why I cared if Seivarden froze to death in the storm-swept snow, didn’t know why I had brought her with me, didn’t know why I cared if she took someone else’s crawler and fled, or walked off into the green-stained frozen waste and died.

“And why are you so angry with him?”

That I knew. And truth to tell, it wasn’t entirely fair to Seivarden that I was angry. Still, the facts remained what they were, and my anger as well.

“Why do you want to kill Anaander Mianaai?” Seivarden’s head turned slightly, her attention hooked by the familiar name.

“It’s personal.”

“Personal.” Strigan’s tone was incredulous.

“Yes.”

“You’re not a person anymore. You’ve said as much to me. You’re equipment. An appendage to a ship’s AI.” I said nothing, and waited for her to consider her own words. “Is there a ship that’s lost its mind? Recently, I mean.”

Insane Radchaai ships were a staple of melodrama, inside and outside Radchaai space. Though Radchaai entertainments in that direction were usually historicals. When Anaander Mianaai had taken control of the core of Radch space some few ships had destroyed themselves upon the death or captivity of their captains, and rumor said some others still wandered space in the three thousand years since, half-mad, despairing. “None I know of.”

She very likely followed news from the Radch—it was a matter of her own safety, considering what I was sure she was hiding, and what the consequences would be for her if Anaander Mianaai ever discovered that. She had, potentially, all the information she needed to identify me. But after half a minute she gestured doubtfully, disappointed. “You won’t just tell me.”

I smiled, calm and pleasant. “What fun would that be?”

She laughed, seeming truly amused at my answer. Which I thought a hopeful sign. “So when are you leaving?”

“When you give me the gun.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A lie. Manifestly a lie. “Your apartment, on Dras Annia Station. It’s untouched. Just as you left it, so far as I could tell.”

Every one of Strigan’s motions became deliberate, just slightly slowed—blinks, breaths. The hand carefully brushing dust from her coat sleeve. “That a fact.”

“It cost me a great deal to get in.”

“Where did a corpse soldier get all that money anyway?” Strigan asked, still tense, still concealing it. But genuinely curious. Always that.

“Work,” I said.

“Lucrative work.”

“And dangerous.” I had risked my life to get that money.

“The icon?”

“Not unrelated.” But I didn’t want to talk about that. “What do I need to do, to convince you? Is the money insufficient?” I had more, elsewhere, but saying so would be foolish.

“What did you see in my apartment?” Strigan asked, curiosity and anger in her voice.

“A puzzle. With pieces missing.” I had deduced the existence and nature of those pieces correctly, I must have, because here I was, and here was Arilesperas Strigan.

Strigan laughed again. “Like you. Listen.” She leaned forward, hands on her thighs. “You can’t kill Anaander Mianaai. I wish to all that’s good it were possible, but it’s not. Even with… even if I had what you think I have you couldn’t do it. You told me that twenty-five of these guns were insufficient…”

“Twenty-four,” I corrected.

She waved that away. “Were insufficient to keep the Radchaai away from Garsedd. Why do you think one would be anything more than a minor irritant?”

She knew better, or she wouldn’t have run. Wouldn’t have asked the local toughs to take care of me before I got to her.

“And why are you so determined to do such a ridiculous thing? Everyone outside the Radch hates Anaander Mianaai. If by some miracle he died, the celebrations would last a hundred years. But it won’t happen. It certainly won’t happen because of one idiot with a gun. I’m sure you know that. You probably know it far better than I could.”

“True.”

“Then why?”

Information is power. Information is security. Plans made with imperfect information are fatally flawed, will fail or succeed on the toss of a coin. I had known, when I first knew I would have to find Strigan and obtain the gun from her, that this would be such a moment. If I answered Strigan’s question—if I answered it fully, as she would certainly demand—I would be giving her something she could use against me, a weapon. She would almost certainly hurt herself in the process, but that wasn’t always much of a deterrent, I knew.

“Sometimes,” I began, and then corrected myself. “Quite frequently, someone will learn a little bit about Radchaai religion, and ask, If everything that happens is the will of Amaat, if nothing can happen that is not already designed by God, why bother to do anything?”

“Good question.”

“Not particularly.”

“No? Why bother, then?”

“I am,” I said, “as Anaander Mianaai made me. Anaander Mianaai is as she was made. We will both of us do the things we are made to do. The things that are before us to do.”

“I doubt very much that Anaander Mianaai made you so that you would kill him.”

Any reply would reveal more than I wished, at the moment.

“And I,” continued Strigan, after a second and a half of silence, “am made to demand answers. It’s just God’s will.” She made a gesture with her left hand, not my problem.

“You admit you have the gun.”

“I admit nothing.”

I was left with blind chance, a step into unguessable dark, waiting to live or die on the results of the toss, not knowing what the chances were of any result. My only other choice would be to give up, and how could I give up now? After so long, after so much? And I had risked as much, or more, before now, and gotten this far.

She had to have the gun. Had to. But how could I make her give it to me? What would make her choose to give it to me?

“Tell me,” Strigan said, watching me intently. No doubt seeing my frustration and doubt through her medical implants, fluctuations of my blood pressure and temperature and respiration. “Tell me why.”

I closed my eyes, felt the disorientation of not being able to see through other eyes that I knew I had once had. Opened them again, took a breath to begin, and told her.