Ancillary Justice

23

Something rough and writhing surged up out of my throat and I retched, and gasped convulsively. Someone held me by the shoulders, gravity pulled me forward. I opened my eyes, saw the surface of a medical bed, and a shallow container holding a bile-covered tangled mass of green and black tendrils that pulsed and quivered, that led back to my mouth. Another retch forced me to close my eyes and the thing came all the way free with an audible plop into the container. Someone wiped my mouth and turned me over, laid me down. Still gasping, I opened my eyes.

A medic stood beside the bed I lay on, the slimy green-and-black thing I had just vomited up dangling from her hand. She stared at it, frowning. “Looks good,” she said, and then dropped it back into its dish. “That’s unpleasant, citizen, I know,” she said, apparently to me. “Your throat will be raw for a few minutes. You…”

“Wh…” I tried to speak, but ended up retching again.

“You don’t want to try to talk just yet,” said the medic as someone—another medic—rolled me over again. “You had a close call. The pilot who brought you in got you just in time, but she only had a basic emergency kit.” That stupid, stubborn sail-pod. It must have been. She hadn’t known I wasn’t human, hadn’t known saving me would be pointless. “And she couldn’t get you here right away,” the medic continued. “We were worried for a little bit there. But the pulmonary corrective’s come all the way out, and the readings are good. Very minimal brain damage, if any, though you might not quite feel like yourself for a while.”

That actually struck me as funny, but the retching had subsided again and I didn’t want to restart it, so I refused to acknowledge it. I kept my eyes closed and lay as still and quiet as I could while I was rolled over and laid down again. If I opened my eyes I would want to ask questions.

“She can have tea in ten minutes,” said the medic, to whom I didn’t know. “Nothing solid just yet. Don’t talk to her for the next five.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Seivarden. I opened my eyes, turned my head. Seivarden stood at my bedside. “Don’t talk,” she said to me. “The sudden decompression…”

“It will be easier for her to keep silent,” admonished the medic, “if you don’t talk to her.”

Seivarden fell silent. But I knew what the sudden decompression would have done to me. Dissolved gasses in my blood would have come out of solution, suddenly and violently. Very possibly violently enough to kill me even without the complete lack of air. But an increase in pressure—say, being hauled back into atmosphere—would have sent those bubbles back into solution.

The pressure difference between my lungs and the vacuum might have injured me. And I had been surprised when the tank blew, and preoccupied with shooting Anaander Mianaais, and might not have exhaled as I should have. And that had probably been the least of my injuries, given the explosion that had propelled me into the vacuum to begin with. A sail-pod would have had only the most rudimentary means of treating such injuries, and the pilot had probably shoved me into a bare-bones version of a suspension pod to hold me until I could get to a medic.

“Good,” said the medic. “Stay nice and quiet.” She left.

“How long?” I asked Seivarden. And didn’t retch, though my throat was, as the medic had promised, still raw.

“About a week.” Seivarden pulled a chair over and sat.

A week. “I take it the palace is still here.”

“Yes,” said Seivarden, as though my question hadn’t been completely foolish but deserved an answer. “Thanks to you. Security and the dock crew managed to seal off all the exits before any other Lords of the Radch made it out onto the hull. If you hadn’t stopped the ones that did…” She made an averting gesture. “Two gates have gone down.” Out of twelve, that would be. That would cause enormous headaches, both here and at the other ends of those gates. And any ships in them when they’d gone might or might not have made it to safety. “Our side won, though, that’s good.”

Our side. “I don’t have a side in this,” I said.

From somewhere behind her Seivarden produced a bowl of tea. She kicked something below me, and the bed inclined itself, slowly. She held the bowl to my mouth and I took one small, cautious sip. It was wonderful. “Why,” I asked, when I’d taken another, “am I here? I know why the idiot who hauled me in did it, but why did the medics bother with me?”

Seivarden frowned. “You’re serious.”

“I’m always serious.”

“That’s true.” She stood, opened a drawer and brought out a blanket, which she laid over me, and carefully tucked around my bare hands.

Before she could answer my question, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat came partway into the small room. “Medic said you were awake.”

“Why?” I asked. And in answer to her puzzled expression, “Why am I awake? Why am I not dead?”

“Did you want to be?” asked Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat, still looking as though she didn’t understand me.

“No.” Seivarden offered the tea again, and I drank, a larger sip than before. “No, I don’t want to be dead, but it seems like a lot of work just to revive an ancillary.” And cruel to have brought me back just so the Lord of the Radch could order me destroyed.

“I don’t think anyone here thinks of you as an ancillary,” said Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat.

I looked at her. She seemed entirely serious.

“Skaaiat Awer,” I began, flat-voiced.

“Breq,” said Seivarden before I could speak further, voice urgent. “The doctor said lie still. Here, have more tea.”

Why was Seivarden even here? Why was Skaaiat? “What have you done for Lieutenant Awn’s sister?” I asked, flat and harsh.

“Offered her clientage, actually. Which she wouldn’t take. She was sure her sister held me in high regard but she herself didn’t know me and wasn’t in need of my assistance. Very stubborn. She’s in horticulture, two gates away. She’s doing fine, I keep an eye on her, best I can from this distance.”

“Have you offered it to Daos Ceit?”

“This is about Awn,” Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat said. “I can see it is, but you won’t come out and say it. And you’re right. There was a great deal more that I could have said to her before she left, and I should have said it. You’re the ancillary, the non-person, the piece of equipment, but to compare our actions, you loved her more than I ever did.”

Compare our actions. It was like a slap. “No,” I said. Glad of my expressionless ancillary’s voice. “You left her in doubt. I killed her.” Silence. “The Lord of the Radch doubted your loyalty, doubted Awer, and wanted Lieutenant Awn to spy on you. Lieutenant Awn refused, and demanded to be interrogated to prove her loyalty. Of course Anaander Mianaai didn’t want that. She ordered me to shoot Lieutenant Awn.”

Three seconds of silence. Seivarden stood motionless. Then Skaaiat Awer said, “You didn’t have a choice.”

“I don’t know if I had a choice or not. I didn’t think I did. But the next thing I did, after I shot Lieutenant Awn, was to shoot Anaander Mianaai. Which is why—” I stopped. Took a breath. “Which is why she breached my heat shield. Skaaiat Awer, I have no right to be angry with you.” I couldn’t speak further.

“You have every right to be as angry as you wish,” said Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat. “If I had understood when you first came here, I would have spoken differently to you.”

“And if I had wings I’d be a sail-pod.” Ifs and would-haves changed nothing. “Tell the tyrant,” I used the Orsian word, “that I will see her as soon as I can get out of bed. Seivarden, bring me my clothes.”

Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had, it turned out, actually come to see Daos Ceit, who’d been badly injured in the last convulsions of Anaander Mianaai’s struggle with herself. I walked slowly down a corridor lined with corrective-swathed injured lying on hastily made pallets, or encased in pods that would hold them suspended until the medics could get to them. Daos Ceit lay on a bed, in a room, unconscious. Looking smaller and younger than I knew she was. “Will she be all right?” I asked Seivarden. Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat hadn’t waited for me to make my slow way down the corridor, she’d had to get back to the docks.

“She will,” answered the medic, behind me. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

She was right. Just dressing, even with Seivarden’s assistance, had left me shaking with exhaustion. I had come down the corridor on sheer determination. Now I felt turning my head to answer the medic would take more strength than I had.

“You just grew a new pair of lungs,” continued the medic. “Among other things. You’re not going to be walking around for a few days. At the very least.” Daos Ceit breathed shallowly and regularly, looking so much like the tiny child I’d known I wondered for a moment that I hadn’t recognized her as soon as I’d seen her.

“You need the space,” I said, and then that clicked together with another bit of information. “You could have left me in suspension until you weren’t so busy.”

“The Lord of the Radch said she needed you, citizen. She wanted you up as soon as possible.” Faintly aggrieved, I thought. The medics, not unreasonably, would have prioritized patients differently. And she hadn’t argued when I’d said she needed the space.

“You should go back to bed,” said Seivarden. Solid Seivarden, the only thing between me and utter collapse just now. I shouldn’t have gotten up.

“No.”

“She gets like this,” said Seivarden, her voice apologetic.

“So I see.”

“Let’s go back to the room.” Seivarden sounded extremely patient and calm. It was a moment before I realized she was talking to me. “You can get some rest. We can deal with the Lord of the Radch when you’re good and ready.”

“No,” I repeated. “Let’s go.”

With Seivarden’s support I made it out of Medical, into a lift, and then what seemed to be an endless length of corridor, and then, suddenly, a tremendous open space, the ground stretching away covered with glittering shards of colored glass that crunched and ground under my few steps.

“The fight spilled over into the temple,” Seivarden said, without my asking.

The main concourse, that’s where I was. And all this broken glass, what was left of that room full of funeral offerings. Only a few people were out, mostly picking through the shards, looking, I supposed, for any large pieces that might be restored. Light-brown-jacketed Security looked on.

“Communications were restored within a day or so, I think,” Seivarden continued, guiding me around patches of glass, toward the entrance to the palace proper. “And then people started figuring out what was going on. And picking sides. After a while you couldn’t not pick a side. Not really. For a bit we were afraid the military ships might attack each other, but there were only two on the other side, and they went for the gates instead, and left the system.”

“Civilian casualties?” I asked.

“There always are.” We crossed the last few meters of glass-strewn concourse and entered the palace proper. An official stood there, her uniform jacket grimy, stained dark on one sleeve. “Door one,” she said, barely looking at us. Sounding exhausted.

Door one led to a lawn. On three sides, a vista of hills and trees, and above, a blue sky streaked with pearly clouds. The fourth side was beige wall, the grass gouged and torn at its base. A plain but thickly padded green chair sat a few meters in front of me. Not for me, surely, but I didn’t much care. “I need to sit down.”

“Yes,” said Seivarden, and walked me there, and lowered me into it. I closed my eyes, just for a moment.

A child was speaking, a high, piping voice. “The Presger had approached me before Garsedd,” said the child. “The translators they sent had been grown from what they’d taken off human ships, of course, but they’d been raised and taught by the Presger and I might as well have been talking to aliens. They’re better now, but they’re still unsettling company.”

“Begging my lord’s pardon.” Seivarden. “Why did you refuse them?”

“I was already planning to destroy them,” said the child. Anaander Mianaai. “I had begun to marshal the resources I thought I’d need. I thought they’d gotten wind of my plans and were frightened enough to want to make peace. I thought they were showing weakness.” She laughed, bitter and regretful, odd to hear in such a young voice. But Anaander Mianaai was hardly young.

I opened my eyes. Seivarden knelt beside my chair. A child of about five or six sat cross-legged on the grass in front of me, dressed all in black, a pastry in one hand, and the contents of my luggage spread around her. “You’re awake.”

“You got icing on my icons,” I accused.

“They’re beautiful.” She picked up the disk of the smaller one, triggered it. The image sprang forth, jeweled and enameled, the knife in its third hand glittering in the false sunlight. “This is you, isn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“The Itran Tetrarchy! Is that where you found the gun?”

“No. It’s where I got my money.”

Anaander Mianaai frankly stared in astonishment. “They let you leave with that much money?”

“One of the tetrarchs owed me a favor.”

“That must have been some favor.”

“It was.”

“Do they really practice human sacrifice there? Or is this,” she gestured to the severed head the figure held, “just metaphorical?”

“It’s complicated.”

She made a breathy hmf. Seivarden knelt silent and motionless.

“The medic said you needed me.”

Five-year-old Anaander Mianaai laughed. “And so I do.”

“In that case,” I said, “go fuck yourself.” Which she could actually, literally do, in fact.

“Half your anger is for yourself.” She ate the last bite of pastry and brushed her small gloved hands together, showering fragments of sugar icing onto the grass. “But it’s such a monumentally enormous anger even half is quite devastating.”

“I could be ten times as angry,” I said, “and it would mean nothing if I was unarmed.”

Her mouth quirked in a half-smile. “I haven’t gotten to where I am by laying aside useful instruments.”

“You destroy the instruments of your enemy wherever you find them,” I said. “You told me so yourself. And I won’t be useful to you.”

“I’m the right one,” the child said. “I’ll sing for you if you like, though I don’t know if it will work with this voice. This is going to spread to other systems. It already has, I just haven’t seen the reply signal from the neighboring provincial palaces yet. I need you on my side.”

I tried sitting up straighter. It seemed to work. “It doesn’t matter whose side anyone is on. It doesn’t matter who wins, because either way it will be you and nothing will really change.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” said five-year-old Anaander Mianaai. “And maybe in some ways you’re right. A lot of things haven’t really changed, a lot of things might stay the same no matter which side of me is uppermost. But tell me, do you think it made no difference to Lieutenant Awn, which of me was on board that day?”

I had no answer for that.

“If you’ve got power and money and connections, some differences won’t change anything. Or if you’re resigned to dying in the near future, which I gather is your position at the moment. It’s the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren’t small at all. What you call no difference is life and death to them.”

“And you care so much for the insignificant and the powerless,” I said. “I’m sure you stay awake nights worrying for them. Your heart must bleed.”

“Don’t come all self-righteous on me,” said Anaander Mianaai. “You served me without a qualm for two thousand years. You know what that means, better than almost anyone else here. And I do care. But in, perhaps, a more abstract way than you do, at least these days. Still, this is all my own doing. And you’re right, I can’t exactly rid myself of myself. I could use a reminder of that. It might be best if I had a conscience that was armed and independent.”

“Last time someone tried to be your conscience,” I said, thinking of Ime, and that Mercy of Sarrse soldier who had refused her orders, “she ended up dead.”

“You mean at Ime. You mean the soldier Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One,” the child said, grinning as if at a particularly delightful memory. “I have never been dressed down like that in my long life. She cursed me at the end of it, and tossed her poison back like it was arrack.”

Poison. “You didn’t shoot her?”

“Gunshot wounds make such a mess,” the child said, still grinning. “Which reminds me.” She reached beside herself and brushed the air with one small gloved hand. Suddenly a box sat there, light-suckingly black. “Citizen Seivarden.”

Seivarden leaned forward, took the box.

“I’m well aware,” said Anaander Mianaai, “that you weren’t speaking metaphorically when you said your anger had to be armed to mean anything. I wasn’t either, when I said my conscience should be. Just so you know I mean what I’m saying. And just so you don’t do anything foolish out of ignorance, I need to explain just what it is you have.”

“You know how it works?” But she’d had the others for a thousand years. More than enough time to figure it out.

“To a point.” Anaander Mianaai smiled wryly. “A bullet, as I’m sure you already know, does what it does because the gun it’s fired from gives it a large amount of kinetic energy. The bullet hits something, and that energy has to go somewhere.” I didn’t answer, didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “The bullets in the Garseddai gun,” five-year-old Mianaai continued, “aren’t really bullets. They’re… devices. Dormant, until the gun arms them. At that point, it doesn’t matter how much kinetic energy they have leaving the gun. From the moment of impact, it makes however much energy it needs to cut through the target for precisely 1.11 meters. And then it stops.”

“Stops.” I was aghast.

“One point eleven meters?” asked Seivarden, kneeling beside me. Puzzled.

Mianaai made a dismissive gesture. “Aliens. Different standard units, I assume. Theoretically, once it was armed, you could toss one of those bullets gently against something and it would burn right through it. But you can only arm them with the gun. As far as I can tell there’s nothing in the universe those bullets can’t cut through.”

“Where does all that energy come from?” I asked. Still aghast. Appalled. No wonder I had only needed one shot to take out that oxygen tank. “It has to come from somewhere.”

“You’d think,” said Mianaai. “And you’re about to ask me how it knows how much it needs, or the difference between air and what you’re shooting at. And I don’t know that either. You see why I made that treaty with the Presger. And why I’m so anxious to keep its terms.”

“And anxious,” I said, “to destroy them.” The aim, the fervent desire, of the other Anaander, I guessed.

“I didn’t get where I am by having reasonable goals,” said Anaander Mianaai. “You’re not to speak of this to anyone.” Before I could react, she continued, “I could force you to keep quiet. But I won’t. You’re clearly a significant piece in this cast, and it would be improper of me to interfere with your trajectory.”

“I hadn’t thought you would be superstitious,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say superstitious. But I have other things to attend to. Few of me are left here—few enough that the exact number is sensitive information. And there’s a lot to do, so I really don’t have time to sit here talking.

“Mercy of Kalr needs a captain. And lieutenants, actually. You can probably promote them from your own crew.”

“I can’t be a captain. I’m not a citizen. I’m not even human.”

“You are if I say you are,” she said.

“Ask Seivarden.” Seivarden had set the box on my lap, and now once again knelt silent beside my chair. “Or Skaaiat.”

“Seivarden isn’t going anywhere you aren’t going,” said the Lord of the Radch. “She made that clear to me while you were asleep.”

“Then Skaaiat.”

“She already told me to fuck off.”

“What a coincidence.”

“And really, I do need her here.” She clambered to her feet, barely tall enough to meet my eyes without looking up, even sitting as I was. “Medical says you need a week at the least. I can give you a few additional days to inspect Mercy of Kalr and take on whatever supplies you might need. It’ll be easier for everyone if you just say yes now and appoint Seivarden your first lieutenant and let her take care of things. But you’ll manage it the way you want.” She brushed grass and dirt off her legs. “As soon as you’re ready I need you to get to Athoek Station as quickly as you can. It’s two gates away. Or it would be if Sword of Tlen hadn’t taken that gate down.” Two gates away, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had said, of Lieutenant Awn’s sister. “What else are you going to do with yourself?”

“I actually have another option?” She might have named me a citizen, but she could take it back as easily. “Besides death, I mean.”

She made a gesture of ambiguity. “As much as any of us. Which is to say, possibly none at all. But we can talk philosophy later. We’ve both got things to do right now.” And she left.

Seivarden gathered my things, repacked them, and helped me to my feet, and out. She didn’t speak until we were on the concourse. “It’s a ship. Even if it is just a Mercy.”

I had slept for some time, it seemed, long enough for the shards of glass to be cleared away, long enough for people to come out, though not in great numbers. Everyone looked slightly haggard, looked as though they’d be easily startled. Any conversations were low, subdued, so the place felt deserted even with people there. I turned my head to look at Seivarden, and raised an eyebrow. “You’re the captain here. Take it if you want it.”

“No.” We stopped by a bench, and she lowered me onto it. “If I were still a captain someone would owe me back pay. I officially left the service when I was declared dead a thousand years ago. If I want back in, I have to start all over again. Besides.” She hesitated, and then sat beside me. “Besides, when I came out of that suspension pod, it was like everyone and everything had failed me. The Radch had failed me. My ship had failed me.” I frowned, and she made a placatory gesture. “No, it’s not fair. None of it’s fair, it’s just how I felt. And I’d failed myself. But you hadn’t. You didn’t.” I didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t seem to expect an answer.

“Mercy of Kalr doesn’t need a captain,” I said, after four seconds of silence. “Maybe it doesn’t want one.”

“You can’t refuse your assignment.”

“I can if I have enough money to support myself.”

Seivarden frowned, took a breath as though she wanted to argue, but didn’t. After another moment of silence, she said, “You could go into the temple and ask for a cast.”

I wondered if the image of foreign piety I’d constructed had convinced her I had some sort of faith, or if she was merely too Radchaai not to think the toss of a handful of omens would answer any pressing question, persuade me toward the right action. I made a small, doubtful gesture. “I really don’t feel the need. You can, if you want. Or toss right now.” If she had something with a front and a back, she could make a throw. “If it comes up heads you stop bothering me about it and get me some tea.”

She made a quick, amused ha. And then said, “Oh,” and reached into her jacket. “Skaaiat gave me this to give you.” Skaaiat. Not that Awer.

Seivarden opened her hand, showed me a gold disk two centimeters in diameter. A tiny, leafy border stamped around its edge, slightly off center, surrounding a name. AWN ELMING.

“I don’t think you want to throw it, though,” Seivarden said. And, when I didn’t answer, “She said you really should have it.”

While I was still trying to find something to say, and a voice to say it with, a Security officer approached, cautious. Said, voice deferential, “Excuse me, citizen. Station would like to speak with you. There’s a console right over there.” She gestured aside.

“Don’t you have implants?” Seivarden asked.

“I concealed them. Disabled some. Station probably can’t see them.” And I didn’t know where my handheld was. Probably somewhere in my luggage.

I had to get up and walk to the console, and stand while I spoke. “You wanted to speak to me, Station, here I am.” The week of rest Anaander Mianaai had spoken of became more and more inviting.

“Citizen Breq Mianaai,” said Station in its flat, untroubled voice.

Mianaai. My hand still curled around Lieutenant Awn’s memorial pin, I looked at Seivarden coming behind me with my luggage. “There was no point in making you any more upset than you already were,” she said, as though I’d spoken.

The Lord of the Radch had said independent, and I was unsurprised to discover she hadn’t meant it. But the move she’d chosen to undercut it did surprise me.

“Citizen Breq Mianaai,” Station said again, from the console, voice as smooth and serene as ever, but I thought the repetition was slightly malicious. My suspicion was confirmed when Station continued. “I would like you to leave here.”

“Would you.” No answer more cogent than that came to my mind. “Why?”

A half second of delay, and then the answer. “Look around you.” I didn’t have the energy to actually do that, so I took the imperative as rhetorical. “Medical is overwhelmed with injured and dying citizens. Many of my facilities are damaged. My residents are anxious and afraid. I am anxious and afraid. I don’t even mention the confusion surrounding the palace proper. And you are the cause of all this.”

“I’m not.” I reminded myself that, childish and petty as it seemed now, Station wasn’t very different from what I had been, and in some ways the job it did was far more complicated and urgent than mine, caring as it did for hundreds of thousands, even millions of citizens. “And my leaving won’t change any of that.”

“I don’t care,” said Station, calm. The petulance I detected was certainly my imagination. “I advise you to leave now, while it’s possible. It may become difficult at some point in the near future.”

Station couldn’t order me to leave. Strictly speaking it shouldn’t have spoken to me the way it had, not if I was, in fact, a citizen. “It can’t make you leave,” Seivarden said, echoing part of my thoughts.

“But it can express its disapproval.” Quietly. Subtly. “We do it all the time. Mostly nobody notices, except they visit another ship or station and suddenly find things inexplicably more comfortable.”

A second of silence from Seivarden, and then, “Oh.” From the sound, she was remembering her days on Justice of Toren, and the move to Sword of Nathtas.

I leaned forward, my forehead against the wall adjoining the console. “Are you finished, Station?”

“Mercy of Kalr would like to speak with you.”

Five seconds of silence. I sighed, knowing I couldn’t win this game, shouldn’t even try to play it. “I will speak to Mercy of Kalr now, Station.”

“Justice of Toren,” said Mercy of Kalr from the console.

The name caught me by surprise, started exhausted tears. I blinked them away. “I’m only One Esk,” I said. And swallowed. “Nineteen.”

“Captain Vel is under arrest,” said Mercy of Kalr. “I don’t know if she’s going to be reeducated or executed. And my lieutenants as well.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault. They made their own choices.”

“So who’s in command?” I asked. Beside me Seivarden stood silent, one hand on my arm. I wanted to lie down and sleep, just that, nothing else.

“One Amaat One.” The senior soldier in Mercy of Kalr’s highest ranking unit, that would be. Unit leader. Ancillary units hadn’t needed leaders.

“She can be captain, then.”

“No,” said Mercy of Kalr. “She’ll make a good lieutenant but she’s not ready to be captain. She’s doing her best but she’s overwhelmed.”

“Mercy of Kalr,” I said. “If I can be a captain, why can’t you be your own?”

“That would be ridiculous,” answered Mercy of Kalr. Its voice was calm as ever but I thought it was exasperated. “My crew needs a captain. But then, I’m just a Mercy, aren’t I. I’m sure the Lord of the Radch would give you a Sword if you asked. Not that a Sword captain would be any happier to be sent to a Mercy, but I suppose it’s better than no captain at all.”

“No, Ship, it’s not…”

Seivarden interrupted, voice severe. “Cut it out, Ship.”

“You’re not one of my officers,” said Mercy of Kalr from the console, and now the impassivity of its voice audibly broke, if only slightly.

“Not yet,” Seivarden replied.

I began to suspect a setup, but Seivarden wouldn’t have made me stand like this in the middle of the concourse. Not right now. “Ship, I can’t be what you’ve lost. You can’t ever have that back, I’m sorry.” And I couldn’t have back what I’d lost, either. “I can’t stand here anymore.”

“Ship,” said Seivarden, stern. “Your captain is still recovering from her injuries and Station has her standing here in the middle of the concourse.”

“I’ve sent a shuttle,” said Mercy of Kalr after a pause that was, I supposed, meant to express what it thought of Station. “You’ll be more comfortable aboard, Captain.”

“I’m not…” I began, but Mercy of Kalr had already signed off.

“Breq,” said Seivarden, pulling me away from the wall I was leaning on. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“You know you’ll be more comfortable aboard. More comfortable than here.”

I didn’t answer, just let Seivarden pull me along.

“All that money won’t mean much if more gates go and ships are stranded and supplies are cut off.” We were headed, I saw, toward a bank of lifts. “It’s all falling apart. This isn’t going to just be happening here, it’s going to fall apart all over Radch space, isn’t it?” It was, but I didn’t have the energy to contemplate it. “Maybe you think you can stand aside and watch everything happen. But I don’t really think you can.”

No. If I could, I wouldn’t have been here. Seivarden wouldn’t have been here, I’d have left her in the snow on Nilt, or never have gone to Nilt to begin with.

The lift doors closed us in, briskly. A little more briskly than usual, though perhaps it was just my imagination that Station was expressing its eagerness to see me gone. But the lift didn’t move. “Docks, Station,” I said. Defeated. There was, in truth, nowhere else for me to go. It was what I was made to do, what I was. And even if the tyrant’s protestations were insincere, which they ultimately had to be, no matter her intentions at this moment, still she was right. My actions would make some sort of difference, even if small. Some sort of difference, maybe, to Lieutenant Awn’s sister. And I had already failed Lieutenant Awn once. Badly. I wouldn’t a second time.

“Skaaiat will give you tea,” Seivarden said, voice unsurprised, as the lift moved.

I wondered when I’d eaten last. “I think I’m hungry.”

“That’s a good sign,” said Seivarden, and grasped my arm more securely as the lift stopped, and the doors opened on the god-filled lobby of the docks.

Choose my aim, take one step and then the next. It had never been anything else.