Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(14)

“N-not much,” said Denz Ay. And then, irritation flashing across her face, just for an instant: “The best fishing, you know, is near the breeding areas, and those are all prohibited.”

“Yes,” said Lieutenant Awn. “I’m sure your friend would never fish illegally.”

“No, no, of course not,” Denz Ay protested. “But… I don’t want to get her in trouble… but maybe sometimes she digs tubers. Near the prohibited zones.”

There weren’t really any plants that produced edible tubers near the prohibited zones—they’d all been dug up months ago, if not longer. Poachers were more careful about the ones inside—if the plants decreased too noticeably, or disappeared entirely, we’d be forced to find out who was taking them, and guard them much more closely. Lieutenant Awn knew this. Everyone in the lower city knew it.

Lieutenant Awn waited for the rest of the story, not for the first time annoyed at the Orsian tendency to approach topics by stealth, but managing mostly not to show it. “I’ve heard they’re very good,” she ventured.

“Oh, yes!” agreed Denz Ay. “They’re best right out of the mud!” Lieutenant Awn suppressed a grimace. “But you can slice them and grill them too…” Denz Ay stopped, with a shrewd look. “Perhaps my friend can get some for you.”

I saw Lieutenant Awn’s dissatisfaction with her rations, the momentary desire to say, Yes, please, but instead she said, “Thank you, there’s no need. You were saying?”

“Saying?”

“Your… friend.” As she spoke Lieutenant Awn was asking me questions, with minute twitches of her fingers. “Was digging tubers near a prohibited zone. And?”

I showed Lieutenant Awn the spot this person was most likely to have been digging in—I patrolled all of Ors, saw the boats go in and out, saw where they were at night when they doused lights and maybe even thought they were running invisible to me.

“And,” said Denz Ay, “they found something.”

Anyone missing? Lieutenant Awn asked me, silently, alarmed. I replied in the negative. “What did they find?” Lieutenant Awn asked Denz Ay, aloud.

“Guns,” said Denz Ay, so quietly Lieutenant Awn almost didn’t hear. “A dozen, from before.” From before the annexation, she meant. All the Shis’urnan militaries had been relieved of their weapons, no one on the planet should have had any guns we didn’t already know about. The answer was so surprising that for a blinking two seconds Lieutenant Awn didn’t react at all.

Then came puzzlement, alarm, and confusion. Why is she telling me this? Lieutenant Awn asked me silently.

“There’s been some talk, Lieutenant,” said Denz Ay. “Perhaps you’ve heard it.”

“There’s always talk,” acknowledged Lieutenant Awn, the answer so formulaic I didn’t need to translate it for her, she could say it in the local dialect. “How else are people to pass the time?” Denz Ay conceded this conventional point with a gesture. Lieutenant Awn’s patience frayed, and she attacked directly. “They might have been put there before the annexation.”

Denz Ay made a negative motion with her left hand. “They weren’t there a month ago.”

Did someone find a pre-annexation cache, and hide them there? Lieutenant Awn asked me, silently. Aloud she asked, “When people talk, do they say things that might account for the appearance of a dozen guns underwater in a prohibited zone?”

“Such guns are no good against you.” Because of our armor, Denz Ay meant. Radchaai armor is an essentially impenetrable force shield. I could extend mine at a thought, the moment I desired to do so. The mechanism that generated it was implanted in each of my segments, and Lieutenant Awn had it as well—though hers was an externally worn unit. It didn’t make us completely invulnerable, and in combat we sometimes wore actual pieces of armor under it, lightweight and articulated, covering head and limbs and torso, but even without that a handful of guns wouldn’t do much damage to either of us.

“So who would those guns be meant for?” asked Lieutenant Awn.

Denz Ay considered, frowning, biting her lip, and then said, “The Tanmind are more like the Radchaai than we are.”

“Citizen,” said Lieutenant Awn, laying noticeable, deliberate stress on that word, which was only what Radchaai meant in the first place, “if we were going to shoot anyone here, we’d already have done it.” Had already done it, in fact. “We wouldn’t need secret stashes of weapons.”

“This is why I came to you,” said Denz Ay, emphatic, as though explaining something in very simple terms, for a child. “When you shoot a person, you say why and do it, without excuse. This is how the Radchaai are. But in the upper city, before you came, when they would shoot Orsians, they would always be careful to have an excuse. They wanted someone dead,” she explained, to Lieutenant Awn’s uncomprehending, appalled expression, “they did not say, You are trouble we want you gone and then shoot. They said, We are only defending ourselves and when the person was dead they would search the body or a house and discover weapons, or incriminating messages.” Not, the implication was clear, genuine ones.

“Then how are we alike?”

“Your gods are the same.” They weren’t, not explicitly so, but the fiction was encouraged, in the upper city and elsewhere. “You live in space, you go all wrapped up in clothes. You are rich, the Tanmind are rich. If someone in the upper city”—and by this I suspected she meant a specific someone—“cries out that some Orsian threatens them, most Radchaai will believe her, and not some Orsian who is surely lying to protect her own.”