Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(110)

“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 f*ck 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.”