Ancillary Justice

19

Next morning I bought clothes. The proprietor of the shop Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had recommended was on the verge of throwing me out when my bank balance flashed onto her console, unbidden I suspected, Station sparing her embarrassment—and simultaneously telling me how closely it was watching me.

I needed gloves, certainly, and if I was going to play the part of the spendthrift wealthy tourist I would need to buy more than that. But before I could speak up to say so, the proprietor brought out bolts of brocade, sateen, and velvet in a dozen colors. Purple and orange-brown, three shades of green, gold, pale yellow and icy blue, ash gray, deep red.

“You can’t wear those clothes,” she told me, authoritative, as a subordinate handed me tea, managing to mostly conceal her disgust at my bare hands. Station had scanned me and provided my measurements, so I needed do nothing. A half-liter of tea, two excruciatingly sweet pastries, and a dozen insults later, I left in an orange-brown jacket and trousers, an icy white, stiff shirt underneath, and dark-gray gloves so thin and soft I might almost have still been barehanded. Fortunately current fashion favored jackets and trousers cut generously enough to hide my weapon. The rest—two more jackets and pairs of trousers, two pairs of gloves, half a dozen shirts, and three pairs of shoes—would be delivered to my lodgings by the time, the proprietor told me, I was done visiting the temple.

I exited the shop, turned a corner onto the main concourse, crowded at this hour with a throng of Radchaai going in and out of the temple or the palace proper, visiting the (no doubt expensive and fashionable) tea shops, or merely being seen in the right company. When I had walked through before, on my way to the clothes shop, people had stared and whispered, or just raised their eyebrows. Now, it seemed, I was mostly invisible, except for the occasional similarly well-dressed Radchaai who dropped her gaze to my jacket front looking for signs of my family affiliation, eyes widening in surprise to see none. Or the child, one small gloved hand clutching the sleeve of an accompanying adult, who turned to frankly stare at me until she was drawn past and out of sight.

Inside the temple, citizens crowded the flowers and incense, junior priests young enough to look like children to my eyes bringing baskets and boxes of replacements. As an ancillary I wasn’t supposed to touch temple offerings, or make them myself. But no one here knew that. I washed my hands in the basin and bought a handful of bright yellow-orange flowers, and a piece of the sort of incense I knew Lieutenant Awn had favored.

There would be a place within the temple set aside for prayers for the dead, and days that were auspicious for making such offerings, though this wasn’t such a day, and as a foreigner I shouldn’t have Radchaai dead to remember. Instead I walked into the echoing main hall, where Amaat stood, a jeweled Emanation in each hand, already knee-deep in flowers, a hill of red and orange and yellow as high as my head, growing incrementally as worshippers tossed more blooms on the pile. When I reached the front of the crowd I added my own, made the gestures and mouthed the prayer, dropped the incense into the box that, when it filled, would be emptied by more junior priests. It was only a token—it would return to the entrance, to be purchased again. If all the incense offered had been burned, the air in the temple would have been too thick with smoke to breathe. And this wasn’t even a festival day.

As I bowed to the god, a brown-uniformed ship’s captain came up beside me. She made to throw her handful of flowers, and then stopped, staring at me. The fingers of her empty left hand twitched, just slightly. Her features reminded me of Hundred Captain Rubran Osck, though where Captain Rubran had been lanky, and worn her hair long and straight, this captain was shorter and thick-bodied, hair clipped close. A glance at her jewelry confirmed this captain was a cousin of hers, a member of the same branch of the same house. I remembered that Anaander Mianaai hadn’t been able to predict Captain Rubran’s allegiance, and didn’t want to tug too hard on the web of clientage and contacts the hundred captain belonged to. I wondered if that was still true, or if Osck had come down on one side or the other.

It didn’t matter. The captain still stared, presumably receiving by now answers to her queries. Station or her ship would tell her I was a foreigner and the captain would, I presumed, lose interest. Or not, if she learned about Seivarden. I didn’t wait to see which was the case, but finished my prayer and turned to work my way through the people waiting to make offerings.

Off the sides of the temple were smaller shrines. In one, three adults and two children stood around an infant they had laid at the breast of Aatr—the image being constructed to allow this, its arm crooked under the god’s often-sworn-by breasts—hoping for an auspicious destiny, or at least some sign of what the future might hold for the child.

All the shrines were beautiful, glittering with gold and silver, glass and polished stone. The whole place rumbled and roared with the echoes of hundreds of quiet conversations and prayers. No music. I thought of the nearly empty temple of Ikkt, the Divine of Ikkt telling me of hundreds of singers long gone.

I was nearly two hours in the temple admiring the shrines of subsidiary gods. The entire place must have taken up whatever part of this side of the station was not occupied by the palace proper. The two were certainly connected, since Anaander Mianaai acted as priest here at regular intervals, though the accesses wouldn’t be obvious.

I left the mortuary shrine for last. Partly because it was the part of the temple most likely to be crowded with tourists, and partly because I knew it would make me unhappy. It was larger than the other subsidiary shrines, nearly half the size of the vast main hall, filled with shelves and cases crowded with offerings for the dead. All food or flowers. All glass. Glass teacups holding glass tea, glass steam rising above. Mounds of delicate glass roses and leaves. Two dozen different kinds of fruit, fish and greens that nearly gave off a phantom aroma of my supper the night before. You could buy mass-produced versions of these in shops well away from the main concourse, and put them in your home shrine, for gods or for the dead, but these were different, each one a carefully detailed work of art, each one conspicuously labeled with the names of the living donor and the dead recipient, so every visitor could see the pious mourning—and wealth and status—on display.

I probably had enough money to commission such an offering. But if I did so, and labeled it with the appropriate names, it would be the last thing I ever did. And doubtless the priests would refuse it. I had already considered sending money to Lieutenant Awn’s sister, but that, too, would attract unwelcome curiosity. Maybe I could arrange it so that whatever was left would go to her, once I had done what I’d come here to do, but I suspected that would be impossible. Still, thinking it, and thinking of my luxurious room and expensive, beautiful clothes, gave me a twinge of guilt.

At the temple entrance, just as I was about to step out onto the concourse, a soldier stepped into my path. Human, not an ancillary. She bowed. “Excuse me. I have a message from the citizen Vel Osck, captain of Mercy of Kalr.”

The captain who had stared at me as I made my offering to Amaat. The fact she’d sent a soldier to accost me said she thought me worth more trouble than a message through Station’s systems, but not enough to send a lieutenant, or approach me herself. Though that might also have been due to a certain social awkwardness she preferred to push off onto this soldier. It was hard not to notice the slight clumsiness of a sentence designed to avoid a courtesy title. “Your pardon, citizen,” I said. “I don’t know the citizen Vel Osck.”

The soldier gestured, slight, deferential apology. “This morning’s cast indicated the captain would have a fortuitous encounter today. When she noticed you making your offering she was sure you were who was meant.”

Noticing a stranger in the temple, in a place as big as this, was hardly a fortuitous encounter. I was slightly offended that the captain hadn’t even tried to put more effort into it. Mere seconds of thought would have produced something better. “What is the message, citizen?”

“The captain customarily takes tea in the afternoons,” said the soldier, bland and polite, and named a shop just off the concourse. “She would be honored if you would join her.”

The time and place suggested the sort of “social” meeting that was, in reality, a display of influence and associations, and where ostensibly unofficial business would be done.

Captain Vel had no business with me. And she would gain no advantage in being seen with me. “If the captain wants to meet citizen Seivarden…” I began.

“It wasn’t Captain Seivarden the captain encountered in the temple,” the solder answered, again slightly apologetic. Surely she knew how transparent her errand was. “But of course if you wanted to bring Captain Seivarden, Captain Vel would be honored to meet her.”

Of course. And even houseless and broke, Seivarden would get a personal invitation from someone she knew, not a message through station systems, or a this-edge-of-insulting invite from Captain Vel’s errand-runner. But it was exactly what I had wanted. “I can’t speak for Citizen Seivarden, of course,” I said. “Do please thank Captain Vel for the invitation.” The soldier bowed, and left.

Off the concourse I found a shop selling cartons of what was advertised merely as “lunch,” which turned out to be fish again, stewed with fruit. I took it back to my room and sat at the table, eating, considering that console on the wall, a visible link with Station.

Station was as smart as I had ever been, when I had still been a ship. Younger, yes. Less than half my age. But not to be dismissed, not at all. If I was discovered, it would almost certainly be because of Station.

Station hadn’t detected my ancillary implants, all of which I had disabled and hidden as best I could. If it had, I would have already been under arrest. But Station could see at least the basics of my emotional state. Could, with enough information about me, tell when I was lying. Was, certainly, watching me closely.

But emotional states, from Station’s view, from mine when I was Justice of Toren, were just assemblages of medical data, data that were meaningless without context. If, in my present dismal mood, I had just stepped off a ship, Station would possibly see it, but not understand why I felt the way I did, and would not be able to draw any conclusions from it. But the longer I was here, the more of me Station saw, the more data Station would have. It would be able to assemble its own context, its own picture of what I was. And would be able to compare that to what it thought I ought to be.

The danger would be if those two didn’t match. I swallowed a mouthful of fish, looked at the console. “Hello,” I said. “The AI who’s watching me.”

“Honored Ghaiad Breq,” said Station from the console, a placid voice. “Hello. I am usually addressed as Station.”

“Station, then.” Another bite of fish and fruit. “So you are watching me.” I was, genuinely, worried about Station’s surveillance. I wouldn’t be able to hide that from Station.

“I watch everyone, honored. Is your leg still troubling you?” It was, and doubtless Station could see me favor it, see the effects of it in the way I sat now. “Our medical facilities are excellent. I’m sure one of our doctors could find a solution to your problem.”

An alarming prospect. But I could make that look entirely understandable. “No, thank you. I’ve been warned about Radchaai medical facilities. I’d rather endure a little inconvenience and still be who I am.”

Silence, for a moment. Then Station asked, “Do you mean the aptitudes? Or reeducation? Neither would change who you are. And you aren’t eligible for either one, I assure you.”

“All the same.” I set my utensil down. “We have a saying, where I come from: Power requires neither permission nor forgiveness.”

“I have never met anyone from the Gerentate before,” said Station. I had, of course, been depending on that. “I suppose your misapprehension is understandable. Foreigners often don’t understand what the Radchaai are really like.”

“Do you realize what you’ve just said? Literally that the uncivilized don’t understand civilization? Do you realize that quite a lot of people outside Radch space consider themselves to be civilized?” The sentence was nearly impossible in Radchaai, a self-contradiction.

I waited for That wasn’t what I meant, but it didn’t come. Instead, Station said, “Would you have come here if not for Citizen Seivarden?”

“Possibly,” I answered, knowing I could not lie outright to Station, not with it watching me so closely. Knowing that now any anger or resentment—or any apprehension about Radchaai officials—that I felt would be attributed to my being resentful and fearful of the Radch. “Is there any music in this very civilized place?”

“Yes,” answered Station. “Though I don’t think I have any music from the Gerentate.”

“If I only ever wanted to hear music from the Gerentate,” I said, acid, “I would never have left there.”

This did not seem to faze Station. “Would you prefer to go out or stay in?”

I preferred to stay in. Station called up an entertainment for me, new this year but a comfortably familiar sort of thing—a young woman of humble family with hopes of clientage to a more prestigious house. A jealous rival who undermines her, deceiving the putative patron as to her true, noble nature. The eventual recognition of the heroine’s superior virtue, her loyalty through the most terrible trials, even uncontracted as she is, and the downfall of her rival, culminating in the long-awaited clientage contract and ten minutes of triumphant singing and dancing, the last of eleven such interludes over four separate episodes. It was a very small-scale work—some of these ran for dozens of episodes that added up to days or even weeks. It was mindless, but the songs were nice and improved my mood considerably.

I had nothing urgent to do until word came of Seivarden’s appeal, and if Seivarden’s request for an audience, and for me to accompany her, was granted, that would mean another, even longer wait. I rose, brushed my new trousers straight, put on shoes and jacket. “Station,” I said. “Do you know where I can find the citizen Seivarden Vendaai?”

“The citizen Seivarden Vendaai,” answered Station from the console, in its always even voice, “is in the Security office on sublevel nine.”

“Excuse me?”

“There was a fight,” said Station. “Normally Security would have contacted her family, but she has none here.”

I wasn’t her family, of course. And she could have called for me if she’d wanted me. Still. “Can you direct me to the Security office on sublevel nine, please?”

“Of course, honored.”

The office on sublevel nine was tiny: nothing more, really, than a console, a few chairs, a table with mismatched tea things, and some storage lockers. Seivarden sat on a bench at the back wall. She wore gray gloves and an ill-fitting jacket and trousers of some stiff, coarse fabric, the sort of thing extruded on demand, not sewn, and probably produced in a preset range of sizes. My own uniforms, when I had been a ship, had been made that way, but had looked better. Of course I’d sized each one properly, it had been a simple thing for me to do at the time.

The front of Seivarden’s gray jacket was spattered with blood, and one glove was soaked with it. Blood was crusted on her upper lip, and the small clear shell of a corrective sat across the bridge of her nose. Another corrective lay across a bruise forming on one cheek. She stared dully ahead, not looking up at me, or at the Security officer who had admitted me. “Here’s your friend, citizen,” said Security.

Seivarden frowned. Looked up, around the small space. Then she looked more closely at me. “Breq? Aatr’s tits, that’s you. You look…” She blinked. Opened her mouth to finish the sentence, stopped again. Took another, somewhat ragged breath. “Different,” she concluded. “Really, really different.”

“I only bought clothes. What happened to you?”

“There was a fight,” said Seivarden.

“Just happened on its own, did it?” I asked.

“No,” she admitted. “I was assigned a place to sleep, but there was already someone living there. I tried to talk to her but I could hardly understand her.”

“Where did you sleep last night?” I asked.

She looked down at the floor. “I managed.” Looked up again, at me, at the Security officer beside me. “But I wasn’t going to be able to keep managing.”

“You should have come to us, citizen,” said Security. “Now you’ve got a warning on your record. Not something you want.”

“And her opponent?” I asked.

Security made a negating gesture. It wasn’t something I was supposed to ask.

“I’m not managing very well on my own, am I,” said Seivarden, miserably.

Heedless of Skaaiat Awer’s disapproval, I bought Seivarden new gloves and jacket, dark green, still the sort of thing that was extruded on demand, but at least it fit better, and the higher quality was obvious. The gray ones were past laundering, and I knew the supply office wouldn’t issue more clothes so soon. When Seivarden had put them on, and sent the old ones for recycling, I said, “Have you eaten? I was planning to offer you supper when Station told me where you were.” She’d washed her face, and now looked more or less reputable, give or take the bruising under the corrective on her cheek.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. A flicker of something—regret? Annoyance? I couldn’t quite tell—flashed across her face. She crossed her arms and quickly uncrossed them again, a gesture I hadn’t seen in months.

“Can I offer you tea, then, while I eat?”

“I would love tea,” she said with emphatic sincerity. I remembered that she had no money, had refused to let me give her any. All that tea we had carried with us was in my luggage, she had taken none of it with her when we’d parted the night before. And tea, of course, was an extra. A luxury. Which wasn’t really a luxury. Not by Seivarden’s standards, anyway. Likely not by any Radchaai’s standards.

We found a tea shop, and I bought something rolled in a sheet of algae, and some fruit and tea, and we took a table in a corner. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?” I asked. “Fruit?”

She feigned lack of interest in the fruit, and then took a piece. “I hope you had a better day than I did.”

“Probably.” I waited a moment, to see if she wanted to talk about what had happened, but she said nothing, just waited for me to continue. “I went to the temple this morning. And ran into some ship’s captain who stared quite rudely and then sent one of her soldiers after me to invite me to tea.”

“One of her soldiers.” Seivarden realized her arms were crossed, uncrossed them, picked up her tea cup, set it down again. “Ancillary?”

“Human. I’m pretty sure.”

Seivarden lifted an eyebrow briefly. “You shouldn’t go. She should have invited you herself. You didn’t say yes, did you?”

“I didn’t say no.” Three Radchaai entered the tea shop, laughing. All wore the dark blue of dock authority. One of them was Daos Ceit, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat’s assistant. She didn’t seem to notice me. “I don’t think the invitation was on my account. I think she wants me to introduce her to you.”

“But…” She frowned. Looked at the bowl of tea in one green-gloved hand. Brushed the front of the new jacket with the other. “What’s her name?”

“Vel Osck.”

“Osck. Never heard of them.” She took another drink of tea. Daos Ceit and her friends bought tea and pastries, sat at a table on the other side of the room, talking animatedly. “Why would she want to meet me?”

I raised an eyebrow, incredulous. “You’re the one who believes any unlikely event is a message from God,” I pointed out. “You’re lost for a thousand years, found by accident, disappear again, and then turn up at a palace with a rich foreigner. And you’re surprised when that gets attention.” She made an ambiguous gesture. “Absent Vendaai as a functioning house, you need to establish yourself somehow.”

She looked so dismayed, just for the shortest instant, that I thought my words had offended her in some way. But then she seemed to recover herself. “If Captain Vel wanted my good will, or cared at all about my opinion, she made a bad start by insulting you.” Her old arrogance lurked behind those words, a startling difference from her barely suppressed dejection up to now.

“What about that inspector supervisor?” I asked. “Skaaiat, right? She seemed polite enough. And you seemed to know who she was.”

“All the Awers seem polite enough,” Seivarden said, disgustedly. Over her shoulder I watched Daos Ceit laugh at something one of her companions had said. “They seem totally normal at first,” Seivarden went on, “but then they go having visions, or deciding something’s wrong with the universe and they have to fix it. Or both at once. They’re all insane.” She was silent a moment, and then turned to see what I was looking at. Turned back. “Oh, her. Isn’t she kind of… provincial-looking?”

I turned my full attention on Seivarden. Looked at her.

She looked down at the table. “I’m sorry. That was… that was just wrong. I don’t have any…”

“I doubt,” I interrupted, “that her pay allows her to wear clothes that make her look… ‘different.’ ”

“That’s not what I meant.” Seivarden looked up, distress and embarrassment obvious in her expression. “But what I meant was bad enough. I just… I was just surprised. All this time, I guess I’ve just assumed you were an ascetic. It just surprised me.”

An ascetic. I could see why she would have assumed that, but not why it would have mattered that she was wrong. Unless… “You’re not jealous?” I asked, incredulous. Well-dressed or not, I was just as provincial-looking as Daos Ceit. Just from a different province.

“No!” And then the next moment, “Well, yes. But not like that.”

I realized, then, that it wasn’t just other Radchaai who might get the wrong impression from that gift of clothes I’d just made. Even though Seivarden surely knew I couldn’t offer clientage. Even though I knew that if she thought about it for longer than thirty seconds, she would never want from me what that gift implied. Surely she couldn’t think that I’d meant that. “Yesterday the inspector supervisor told me I was in danger of giving you false expectations. Or of giving others the wrong impression.”

Seivarden made a scornful noise. “That would be worth considering if I had the remotest interest in what Awer thinks.” I raised an eyebrow, and she continued, in a more contrite tone, “I thought I’d be able to handle things by myself, but all last night, and all today, I’ve just been wishing I’d stayed with you. I guess it’s true, all citizens are taken care of. I didn’t see anyone starving. Or naked.” Her face momentarily showed disgust. “But those clothes. And the skel. Just skel, all the time, very carefully measured out. I didn’t think I’d mind. I mean, I don’t mind skel, but I could hardly choke it down.” I could guess the mood she’d been in, when she’d gotten into that fight. “I think it was knowing I wasn’t going to get anything else for weeks and weeks. And,” she said, with a rueful smile, “knowing I’d have had better if I’d asked to stay with you.”

“So you want your old job back, then?” I asked.

“Fuck yes,” she said, emphatic and relieved. Loud enough for the party across the room to hear and turn disapproving glances our way.

“Language, citizen.” I took another bite of my algae roll. Relieved, I discovered, on several counts. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take your chances with Captain Vel?”

“You can have tea with whoever you want,” said Seivarden. “But she should have invited you herself.”

“Your manners are a thousand years old,” I pointed out.

“Manners are manners,” she said, indignant. “But like I said, you can have tea with whoever you want.”

Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat entered the shop, saw Daos Ceit and nodded to her, but came over to where Seivarden and I sat. Hesitated, just an instant, noticing the correctives on Seivarden’s face, but then pretended she hadn’t seen them. “Citizen. Honored.”

“Inspector Supervisor,” I replied. Seivarden merely nodded.

“I’m hosting a small get-together tomorrow evening.” She named a place. “Just tea, nothing formal. I’d be honored if you both came.”

Seivarden laughed outright. “Manners,” she said again, “are manners.”

Skaaiat frowned, nonplussed.

“Yours is the second such invitation today,” I explained. “Citizen Seivarden tells me the first was less than entirely courteous.”

“I hope mine met her exacting standards,” Skaaiat said. “Who failed them?”

“Captain Vel,” I answered. “Of Mercy of Kalr.”

To someone who didn’t know her well, Skaaiat probably looked as though she had no real opinions about Captain Vel. “Well. I admit I intended to introduce you, citizen, to friends of mine who might be useful to you. But you might find Captain Vel’s acquaintance more congenial.”

“You must have a low opinion of me,” Seivarden said.

“It’s possible,” said Skaaiat, and oh how strange it was to hear her speak with such gravity, as I had known her twenty years ago but different, “that Captain Vel’s approach was less than entirely respectful toward the honored Breq. But in other respects I suspect you’d find her sympathetic.” Before Seivarden could answer, Skaaiat continued, “I have to go. I hope to see you both tomorrow evening.” She looked over at the table where her assistant sat, and all three of the adjunct inspectors there stood, and left the shop behind her.

Seivarden was silent a moment, watching the door they had exited from.

“Well,” I said. Seivarden looked back to me. “I guess if you’re coming back I’d better pay you so you can buy some more decent clothes.”

An expression I couldn’t quite read flashed across Seivarden’s face. “Where did you get yours?”

“I don’t think I’ll pay you that much,” I said.

Seivarden laughed. Took a drink of her tea, another piece of fruit.

I wasn’t at all certain she’d really eaten. “Are you sure you don’t want anything else?” I asked.

“I’m sure. What is that thing?” She looked toward the last bit of my algae-covered supper.

“No idea.” I hadn’t ever seen anything quite like it in the Radch, it must have been recently invented, or an idea imported from some other place. “It’s good, though, do you want one? We can take it back to the room if you like.”

Seivarden made a face. “No, thanks. You’re more adventurous than I am.”

“I suppose I am,” I agreed, pleasantly. I finished the last of my supper, drained my tea. “But you wouldn’t know it to look at me, today. I spent the morning in the temple, like a good tourist, and the afternoon watching an entertainment in my room.”

“Let me guess!” Seivarden raised an eyebrow, sardonic. “The one everyone is talking about. The heroine is virtuous and loyal, and her potential patron’s lover hates her. She wins through because of her unswerving loyalty and devotion.”

“You’ve seen it.”

“More than once. But not for a very long time.”

I smiled. “Some things never change?”

Seivarden laughed in response. “Apparently not. Songs any good?”

“Pretty good. You can watch back at the room, if you like.”

But back in the room she folded down the servant’s cot, saying, “I’m just going to sit down a moment,” and was asleep two minutes and three seconds later.