Ancillary Justice

12

Except for those hours when communications had been cut off, I had never really lost the sense of being part of Justice of Toren. My kilometers of white-walled corridor, my captain, the decade commanders, each decade’s lieutenants, each one’s smallest gesture, each breath, was visible to me. I had never lost the knowledge of my ancillaries, twenty-bodied One Amaat, One Toren, One Etrepa, One Bo, and Two Esk, hands and feet for serving those officers, voices to speak to them. My thousands of ancillaries in frozen suspension. Never lost the view of Shis’urna itself, all blue and white, old boundaries and divisions erased by distance. From that perspective events in Ors were nothing, invisible, completely insignificant.

In the approaching shuttle I felt the distance decrease, felt more forcefully the sensation of being the ship. One Esk became even more what it had always been—one small part of myself. My attention was no longer commanded by things apart from the rest of the ship.

Two Esk had taken One Esk’s place while One Esk was on the planet. Two Esk prepared tea in the Esk decade room for its lieutenants—my lieutenants. It scrubbed the white-walled corridor outside Esk’s baths, mended uniforms torn on leave. Two of my lieutenants sat over a game board in the decade room, placing counters around, swift and quiet, three others watching. The lieutenants of the Amaat, Toren, Etrepa, and Bo decades, the decade commanders, Hundred Captain Rubran, administrative officers, and medics, talked, slept, bathed, according to their schedules and inclinations.

Each decade held twenty lieutenants and its decade commander, but Esk was now my lowest occupied deck. Below Esk, from Var down—half of my decade decks—was cold and empty, though the holds were still full. The emptiness and silence of those spaces where officers had once lived had disturbed me at first, but I was used to it by now.

On the shuttle, in front of One Esk, Lieutenant Awn sat silent, jaw clenched. She was in some respects more physically comfortable than she had ever been in Ors—the temperature, twenty degrees C, was more suitable for her uniform jacket and trousers. And the stink of swamp water had been replaced by the more familiar and more easily tolerable smell of recycled air. But the tiny spaces—which when she had first come to Justice of Toren had excited pride in her assignment and anticipation of what the future might hold—now seemed to trap and confine her. She was tense and unhappy.

Esk Decade Commander Tiaund sat in her tiny office. It held only two chairs and a desk close against one wall, barely more than a shelf, and space for perhaps two more people to stand. “Lieutenant Awn has returned,” I said to her, and to Hundred Captain Rubran on the command deck. The shuttle docked with a thunk.

Captain Rubran frowned. She had been surprised and dismayed at the news of Lieutenant Awn’s sudden return. The order had come directly from Anaander Mianaai, who was not to be questioned. Along with it had come orders not to ask what had happened.

In her office on the Esk deck, Commander Tiaund sighed, closed her eyes, and said, “Tea.” She sat silent till Two Esk brought her a cup and a flask, poured, and set both at the commander’s elbow. “She’ll see me at her earliest convenience.”

One Esk’s attention was mostly on Lieutenant Awn, threading her way through the lift and the narrow white corridors that would take her to the Esk decade, to her own quarters. I read relief when she found those corridors empty except for Two Esk.

“Commander Tiaund will see you at your earliest convenience,” I said to Lieutenant Awn, transmitting directly to her. She acknowledged with a brief twitch of her fingers as she entered the Esk corridors.

Two Esk vacated the deck, filing down the corridor to the hold and its waiting suspension pods, and One Esk took up whatever tasks Two Esk had been doing, and also followed Lieutenant Awn. Above, on Medical, a tech medic began to lay out what she needed to replace One Esk’s missing segment.

At the door of her own small quarters—the same that more than a thousand years before had belonged to Lieutenant Seivarden—Lieutenant Awn turned to say something to the segment that followed her, and then stopped. “What?” she asked after an instant. “Something’s wrong, what is it?”

“Please excuse me, Lieutenant,” I said. “In the next few minutes the tech medic will connect a new segment. I might be unresponsive for a short while.”

“Unresponsive,” she said, feeling momentarily overwhelmed for some reason I couldn’t quite understand. And then guilty, and angry. She stood before the unopened door of her quarters, took two breaths, and then turned and went back down the corridor toward the lift.

A new segment’s nervous system has to be more or less functional for the hookup. They’d tried it in the past with dead bodies, and failed. The same with fully sedated bodies—the connection was never made properly. Sometimes the new segment is given a tranquilizer, but sometimes the tech medic prefers to thaw the new body out and tie it down quickly, without any sedation at all. This eliminates the chancy step of sedating just the right amount, but it always makes for an uncomfortable hookup.

This particular tech medic didn’t care much about my comfort. She wasn’t obliged to care, of course.

Lieutenant Awn entered the lift that would bring her to Medical just as the tech medic triggered the release on the suspension pod that held the body. The lid swung up, and for a hundredth of a second the body lay still and icy within its pool of fluid.

The tech medic rolled the body out of the pod onto a neighboring table, the fluid sliding and sheeting off it, and in the same moment it awoke, convulsive, choking and gagging. The preserving medium slides out of throat and lungs easily on its own, but the first few times the experience is a discomfiting one. Lieutenant Awn exited the lift, strode down the corridor toward Medical with One Esk Eighteen close behind her.

The tech medic went swiftly to work, and suddenly I was on the table (I was walking behind Lieutenant Awn, I was taking up the mending Two Esk had set down on its way to the holds, I was laying myself down on my small, close bunks, I was wiping a counter in the decade room) and I could see and hear but I had no control of the new body and its terror raised the heart rates of all One Esk’s segments. The new segment’s mouth opened and it screamed and in the background it heard laughter. I flailed, the binding came loose and I rolled off the table, fell a meter and a half to the floor with a painful thud. Don’t don’t don’t, I thought at the body, but it wasn’t listening. It was sick, it was terrified, it was dying. It pushed itself up and crawled, dizzy, where it didn’t care so long as it got away.

Then hands under my arms (elsewhere One Esk was motionless) urging me up, and Lieutenant Awn. “Help,” I croaked, not in Radchaai. Damn medic pulled out a body without a decent voice. “Help me.”

“It’s all right.” Lieutenant Awn shifted her grip, put her arms around the new segment, pulled me in closer. It was shivering, still cold from suspension, and from terror. “It’s all right. It’ll be all right.” The segment gasped and sobbed for what seemed forever and I thought maybe it was going to throw up until… the connection clicked home and I had control of it. I stopped the sobbing.

“There,” said Lieutenant Awn. Horrified. Sick to her stomach. “Much better.” I saw that she was newly angry, or perhaps this was another edge of the distress I’d seen since the temple. “Don’t injure my unit,” Lieutenant Awn said curtly, and I realized that though she was still looking at me, she was talking to the tech medic.

“I didn’t, Lieutenant,” answered the tech medic, with a trace of scorn in her voice. They’d had this conversation at greater and more acrimonious length, during the annexation. The medic had said, It’s not like it’s human. It’s been in the hold a thousand years, it’s nothing but a part of the ship. Lieutenant Awn had complained to Commander Tiaund, who hadn’t understood Lieutenant Awn’s anger, and said so, but thereafter I hadn’t dealt with that particular medic. “If you’re so squeamish,” the medic continued, “maybe you’re in the wrong place.”

Lieutenant Awn turned, angry, and left the room without saying anything further. I turned and walked back to the table with some trepidation. The segment was already resisting, and I knew that this tech medic wouldn’t care if it hurt when she put in my armor, and the rest of my implants.

Things were always a bit clumsy while I got used to a new segment—it would occasionally drop things, or fire off disorienting impulses, random jolts of fear or nausea. Things always seemed off-kilter for a bit. But after a week or two it would usually settle down. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes a segment simply would not function properly, and then it would have to be removed and replaced. They screen the bodies, of course, but it’s not perfect.

The voice wasn’t the sort I preferred, and it didn’t know any interesting songs. Not ones I didn’t already know, anyway. I still can’t shake the slight, and definitely irrational, suspicion that the tech medic chose that particular body just to annoy me.

After a quick bath, in which I assisted, and a change into a clean uniform, Lieutenant Awn presented herself to Commander Tiaund.

“Awn.” The decade commander waved Lieutenant Awn to the opposite chair. “I’m glad to have you back, of course.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Lieutenant Awn, sitting.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon. I was sure you’d be downside for a while longer.” Lieutenant Awn didn’t answer. Commander Tiaund waited for five seconds in silence, and then said, “I would ask what happened, but I’m ordered not to.”

Lieutenant Awn opened her mouth, took a breath to speak, stopped. Surprised. I had said nothing to her about the orders not to ask what had happened. Corresponding orders to Lieutenant Awn not to tell anyone had not come. A test, I suspected, which I was quite confident Lieutenant Awn would pass.

“Bad?” asked Commander Tiaund. Wanting very much to know more, pushing her luck asking even that much.

“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Awn looked down at her gloved hands, resting in her lap. “Very.”

“Your fault?”

“Everything on my watch is my responsibility, isn’t it, sir?”

“Yes,” Commander Tiaund acknowledged. “But I’m having trouble imagining you doing anything… improper.” The word was weighted in Radchaai, part of a triad of justice, propriety, and benefit. Using it, Commander Tiaund implied more than just that she expected Lieutenant Awn to follow regulations or etiquette. Implied she suspected some injustice was behind events. Though she could certainly not say so plainly—she possessed none of the facts of the matter and surely did not wish to give anyone the impression she did. And if Lieutenant Awn were to be punished for some breach, she wouldn’t want to have publicly taken Lieutenant Awn’s part no matter what her private opinion.

Commander Tiaund sighed, perhaps out of frustrated curiosity. “Well,” she continued, with feigned cheerfulness. “Now you’ve got plenty of time to catch up on gym time. And you’re way behind on renewing your marksmanship certification.”

Lieutenant Awn forced a humorless smile. There had been no gym in Ors, nor anyplace remotely resembling a firing range. “Yes, sir.”

“And Lieutenant, please don’t go up to Medical unless you really need to.”

I could see Lieutenant Awn wanted to protest, to complain. But that, too, would have been a repeat of an earlier conversation. “Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

By the time Lieutenant Awn finally entered her quarters, it was nearly time for supper—a formal meal, eaten in the decade room in the company of the other Esk lieutenants. Lieutenant Awn pled exhaustion—no lie, as it happened: she had barely slept six hours since she’d left Ors nearly three days before.

She sat on her bunk, slumped and staring, until I entered, eased off her boots, and took her coat. “All right,” she said then, closed her eyes and swiveled her legs up onto the bunk. “I get the hint.” She was asleep five seconds after she laid her head down.

The next morning eighteen of my twenty Esk lieutenants stood in the decade room, drinking tea and waiting for breakfast. By custom they couldn’t sit without the senior-most lieutenant.

The Esk decade room’s walls were white, with a blue-and-yellow border painted just under the ceiling. On one wall, opposite a long counter, were secured various trophies of past annexations—scraps of two flags, red and black and green; a pink clay roof tile with a raised design of leaves molded into it; an ancient sidearm (unloaded) and its elegantly styled holster; a jeweled Ghaonish mask. An entire window from a Valskaayan temple, colored glass arranged to form a picture of a woman holding a broom in one hand, three small animals at her feet. I remembered taking it out of the wall myself and carrying it back here. Every decade room on the ship had a window from that same building. The temple’s vestments and equipment had been thrown into the street, or found their way to other decade rooms on other ships. It was normal practice to absorb any religion the Radch ran across, to fit its gods into an already blindingly complex genealogy, or to say merely that the supreme, creator deity was Amaat under another name and let the rest sort themselves out. Some quirk of Valskaayan religion made this difficult for them, and the result had been destructive. Among the recent changes in Radch policy, Anaander Mianaai had legalized the practice of Valskaay’s insistently separate religion, and the governor of Valskaay had given the building back. There had been talk of returning the windows, since we had still at that time been in orbit around Valskaay itself, but ultimately they were replaced with copies. Not long after, the decades below Esk were emptied and closed, but the windows still hung on the walls of the empty, dark decade rooms.

Lieutenant Issaaia entered, walked straight to the icon of Toren in its corner niche, and lit the incense waiting in the red bowl at the icon’s feet. Six officers frowned, and two made a very quiet, surprised murmur. Only Lieutenant Dariet spoke. “Is Awn not coming to breakfast?”

Lieutenant Issaaia turned toward Lieutenant Dariet, showed an expression of surprise that did not, so far as I could tell, mirror her actual feelings, and said, “Amaat’s grace! I completely forgot Awn was back.”

At the back of the group, safely shielded from Lieutenant Issaaia’s view, one very junior lieutenant cast a look at another very junior lieutenant.

“It’s been so very quiet,” Lieutenant Issaaia continued. “It’s difficult to believe she is back.”

“Silence and cold ashes,” quoted the junior lieutenant who had received the other’s meaningful glance, more daring than her companion. The poem quoted was an elegy for someone whose funeral offerings had been deliberately neglected. I saw Lieutenant Issaaia react with an instant of ambivalence—the next line spoke of food offerings not made for the dead, and the junior lieutenant conceivably might have been criticizing Lieutenant Awn for not coming to supper the night before, or breakfast on time this morning.

“It really is One Esk,” said another lieutenant, concealing her smirk at the very junior lieutenant’s cleverness, looking closely at the segments that were at the moment laying out plates of fish and fruit on the counter. “Maybe Awn broke it of its bad habits. I hope so.”

“Why so quiet, One?” asked Lieutenant Dariet.

“Oh, don’t get it started,” groaned another lieutenant. “It’s too early for all that noise.”

“If it was Awn, good for her,” said Lieutenant Issaaia. “A little late though.”

“Like now,” said a lieutenant at Lieutenant Issaaia’s elbow. “Give me food while yet I live.” Another quote, another reference to funeral offerings and a rebuttal in case the junior lieutenant had intended insult in the wrong direction. “Is she coming or not? If she isn’t coming she should say so.”

At that moment Lieutenant Awn was in the bath, and I was attending her. I could have told the lieutenants that Lieutenant Awn would be there soon, but I said nothing, only noted the level and temperature of the tea in the black glass bowls various lieutenants held, and continued to lay out breakfast plates.

Near my own weapons storage, I cleaned my twenty guns, so I could stow them, along with their ammunition. In each of my lieutenants’ quarters I stripped the linen from their beds. The officers of Amaat, Toren, Etrepa, and Bo were all well into breakfast, chattering, lively. The captain ate with the decade commanders, a quieter, more sober conversation. One of my shuttles approached me, four Bo lieutenants returning from leave, strapped into their seats, unconscious. They would be unhappy when they woke.

“Ship,” said Lieutenant Dariet, “will Lieutenant Awn be joining us for breakfast?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” I said, with One Esk Six’s voice. In the bath I poured water over Lieutenant Awn, who stood, eyes closed, on the grating over the drain. Her breathing was even, but her heart rate was slightly elevated, and she showed other signs of stress. I was fairly sure her tardiness was deliberate, designed to give her the bath to herself. Not because she couldn’t handle Lieutenant Issaaia—she certainly could. But because she was still distressed from the past days’ events.

“When?” asked Lieutenant Issaaia, frowning just slightly.

“About five minutes, Lieutenant.”

A chorus of groans went up. “Now, Lieutenants,” Lieutenant Issaaia admonished. “She is our senior. And we should all have patience with her right now. Such a sudden return, when we all thought the Divine would never agree to her leaving Ors.”

“Found out she wasn’t such a good choice, eh?” sneered the lieutenant at Lieutenant Issaaia’s elbow. She was close to Lieutenant Issaaia in more than one sense. None of them knew what had happened, and couldn’t ask. And I, of course, had said nothing.

“Not likely,” said Lieutenant Dariet, her voice a shade louder than usual. She was angry. “Not after five years.” I took the tea flask, turned from the counter, went over to where Lieutenant Dariet stood, and poured eleven milliliters of tea into the nearly full bowl she held.

“You like Lieutenant Awn, of course,” said Lieutenant Issaaia. “We all do. But she doesn’t have breeding. She wasn’t born for this. She works so very hard at what comes naturally to us. I would hardly be surprised if five years was all she could take without cracking.” She looked at the empty bowl in her gloved hand. “I need more tea.”

“You think you’d have done a better job, in Awn’s place,” observed Lieutenant Dariet.

“I don’t trouble myself with hypotheticals,” answered Lieutenant Issaaia. “The facts are what they are. There’s a reason Awn was senior Esk lieutenant long before any of us got here. Obviously Awn has some ability or she’d never have done as well as she has, but she’s reached her limit.” A quiet murmur of agreement. “Her parents are cooks,” Lieutenant Issaaia continued. “I’m sure they’re excellent at what they do. I’m sure she would manage a kitchen admirably.”

Three lieutenants snickered. Lieutenant Dariet said, her voice tight and edged, “Really?” Finally dressed, uniform as perfect as I could make it, Lieutenant Awn stepped out of the dressing room, into the corridor, five steps away from the decade room.

Lieutenant Issaaia noticed Lieutenant Dariet’s mood with a familiar ambivalence. Lieutenant Issaaia was senior, but Lieutenant Dariet’s house was older, wealthier than Lieutenant Issaaia’s, and Lieutenant Dariet’s branch of that house were direct clients to a prominent branch of Mianaai itself. Theoretically that didn’t matter here. Theoretically.

All the data I had received from Lieutenant Issaaia that morning had had an underlying taste of resentment, which grew momentarily stronger. “Managing a kitchen is a perfectly respectable job,” said Lieutenant Issaaia. “But I can only imagine how difficult it must be, to be bred to be a servant and instead of taking an assignment that truly suits, to be thrust into a position of such authority. Not everyone is cut out to be an officer.” The door opened, and Lieutenant Awn stepped in just as the last sentence left Lieutenant Issaaia’s mouth.

Silence engulfed the decade room. Lieutenant Issaaia looked calm and unconcerned, but felt abashed. She had clearly not intended—would never have dared—to say such things openly to Lieutenant Awn.

Only Lieutenant Dariet spoke. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Awn didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her, but went to the corner of the room where the decade shrine sat, with its small figure of Toren and bowl of burning incense. Lieutenant Awn made her obeisance to the figure and then looked at the bowl with a slight frown. As before, her muscles were tense, her heart rate elevated, and I knew she guessed at the content or at least the drift of the conversation before she had entered, knew who it was who wasn’t cut out to be an officer.

She turned. “Good morning, Lieutenants. I apologize for having kept you waiting.” And launched without any other preamble into the morning prayer. “The flower of justice is peace…” The others joined, and when they were finished Lieutenant Awn went to her place at the head of the table, sat. Before the others had time to settle themselves, I had tea and breakfast in front of her.

I served the others, and Lieutenant Awn took a sip of her tea and began to eat.

Lieutenant Dariet picked up her utensil. “It’s good to have you back.” Her voice was just slightly edged, only barely managing to conceal her anger.

“Thank you,” said Lieutenant Awn, and took another bite of fish.

“I still need tea,” said Lieutenant Issaaia. The rest of the table was tense and hushed, watching. “The quiet is nice, but perhaps there’s been a decline in efficiency.”

Lieutenant Awn chewed, swallowed, took another drink of tea. “Pardon?”

“You’ve managed to silence One Esk,” explained Lieutenant Issaaia, “but…” She raised her empty bowl.

At that moment I was behind her with the flask, and poured, filling the bowl.

Lieutenant Awn raised one gloved hand, gesturing toward the mootness of Lieutenant Issaaia’s point. “I haven’t silenced One Esk.” She looked at the segment with the flask and frowned. “Not intentionally, anyway. Go ahead and sing if you want, One Esk.” A dozen lieutenants groaned. Lieutenant Issaaia smiled insincerely.

Lieutenant Dariet stopped, a bite of fish halfway to her mouth. “I like the singing. It’s nice. And it’s a distinction.”

“It’s embarrassing is what it is,” said the lieutenant close to Lieutenant Issaaia.

“I don’t find it embarrassing,” said Lieutenant Awn, a bit stiffly.

“Of course not,” said Lieutenant Issaaia, malice concealed in the ambiguity of her words. “Why so quiet, then, One?”

“I’ve been busy, Lieutenant,” I answered. “And I haven’t wanted to disturb Lieutenant Awn.”

“Your singing doesn’t disturb me, One,” said Lieutenant Awn. “I’m sorry you thought it did. Please, sing if you want.”

Lieutenant Issaaia raised an eyebrow. “An apology? And a please? That’s a bit much.”

“Courtesy,” said Lieutenant Dariet, her voice uncharacteristically prim, “is always proper, and always beneficial.”

Lieutenant Issaaia smirked. “Thank you, Mother.”

Lieutenant Awn said nothing.

Four and a half hours after breakfast, the shuttle bearing those four Second Bo lieutenants home from their leave docked.

They’d been drinking for three days, and had continued right up to the moment they left Shis’urna Station. The first of them through the lock staggered slightly, and then closed her eyes. “Medic,” she breathed.

“They expect you,” I said through the segment of One Bo I’d placed there. “Do you need help onto the lift?”

The lieutenant made a feeble attempt to wave my offer away, and moved off slowly down the corridor, one shoulder against the wall for support.

I boarded the shuttle, kicking off past the boundary of my artificially generated gravity—the shuttle was too small to have its own. Two of the officers, still drunk themselves, were trying to wake the fourth, passed out cold in her seat. The pilot—the most junior of the Bo officers—sat stiff and apprehensive. I thought at first her discomfort was due to the reek of spilled arrack and vomit—thankfully the former had apparently been spilled onto the lieutenants themselves, on Shis’urna Station, and nearly all of the latter had gone into the appropriate receptacles—but then I looked (One Bo looked) toward the stern and saw three Anaander Mianaais sitting silent and impassive in the rear seats. Not there, to me. She would have boarded at Shis’urna Station, quietly. Told the pilot to say nothing to me. The others had, I suspected, been too intoxicated to notice her. I thought of her asking me, on the planet, when she had last visited me. Of my inexplicable and reflexive lie. The real last time had been a good deal like this.

“My lord,” I said when all the Bo lieutenants were out of earshot. “I’ll notify the hundred captain.”

“No,” said one Anaander. “Your Var deck is empty.”

“Yes, my lord,” I acknowledged.

“I’ll stay there while I’m on board.” Nothing further, no why or how long. Or when I could tell the captain what I was doing. I was obliged to obey Anaander Mianaai, even over my own captain, but I rarely had an order from one without the knowledge of the other. It was uncomfortable.

I sent segments of One Esk to retrieve One Var from the hold, started one section of Var deck warming. The three Anaander Mianaais declined my offer of assistance with their luggage, carried their things down to Var.

This had happened before, at Valskaay. My lower decks had been mostly empty, because many of my troops had been out of the hold and working. She had stayed on the Esk deck that time. What had she wanted then, what had she done?

To my dismay I found my thoughts slipping around the answer, which remained vague, invisible. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all.

Between the Esk and Var decks was direct access to my brain. What had she done, at Valskaay, that I couldn’t remember, and what was she preparing to do now?