Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(23)

Spare clothes. Ammunition, but no gun, so she would know or suspect that I was armed. Three foil-wrapped packets of concentrated rations. Eating utensils, and a bottle for water. A gold disk five centimeters in diameter, one and a half centimeters thick that she puzzled over, frowning, and then set aside. A box, which she opened to find money—she let out an astonished breath when she realized how much, and looked over at me. I didn’t move. I don’t know what she had thought she would find, but she seemed not to have found it, whatever it was.

She picked up the disk that had puzzled her, and sat on a bench from which she had a clear view of both me and Seivarden. Turning the disk over, she found the trigger. The sides fell away, opening like a flower, and the mechanism disgorged the icon, a person nearly naked except for short trousers and tiny jewel-and-enamel flowers. The image smiled, serene. She had four arms. One hand held a ball, the other arm was encased in a cylindrical armguard. Her other hands held a knife and a severed head, which dripped jeweled blood at her bare feet. The head smiled the same smile of saintly utter calm as she did.

Strigan—it had to be Strigan—frowned. The icon had been unexpected. It had piqued her curiosity yet further.

I opened my eyes. She tightened her grip on her gun—the gun I was now looking at as closely as I could, now my eyes were fully open, now I could turn my head toward it.

Strigan held the icon out, raised a steel-gray eyebrow. “Relative?” she asked, in Radchaai.

I kept my face pleasantly neutral. “Not exactly,” I said, in her own language.

“I thought I knew what you were when you came,” she said, after a long silence, thankfully following my language switch. “I thought I knew what you were doing here. Now I’m not so sure.” She glanced at Seivarden, to all appearances completely undisturbed by our talking. “I think I know who he is. But who are you? What are you? Don’t tell me Breq from the Gerentate. You’re as Radchaai as that one.” She gestured slightly toward Seivarden with her elbow.

“I came here to buy something,” I said, determined to keep from staring at the gun she held. “He’s incidental.” Since we weren’t speaking Radchaai I had to take gender into account—Strigan’s language required it. The society she lived in professed at the same time to believe gender was insignificant. Males and females dressed, spoke, acted indistinguishably. And yet no one I’d met had ever hesitated, or guessed wrong. And they had invariably been offended when I did hesitate or guess wrong. I hadn’t learned the trick of it. I’d been in Strigan’s own apartment, seen her belongings, and still wasn’t sure what forms to use with her now.

“Incidental?” asked Strigan, disbelieving. I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, except I knew it to be true. Strigan said nothing else, likely realizing that to say much more would be extremely foolish, if I was what she feared I was.

“Coincidence,” I said. Glad on at least one count that we weren’t speaking Radchaai, where the word implied significance. “I found him unconscious. If I’d left him where he was he’d have died.” Strigan didn’t believe that either, from the look she gave me. “Why are you here?”

She laughed, short and bitter—whether because I’d chosen the wrong gender for the pronoun, or something else, I wasn’t certain. “I think that’s my question to ask.”

She hadn’t corrected my grammar, at least. “I came to talk to you. To buy something. Seivarden was ill. You weren’t here. I’ll pay you for what we’ve eaten, of course.”

She seemed to find that amusing, for some reason. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“I’m alone,” I said, answering her unspoken question. “Except for him.” I nodded at Seivarden. My hand was still on my gun, and Strigan likely knew why I kept that hand so still, under my coat. Seivarden still feigned sleep.

Strigan shook her head slightly, disbelieving. “I’d have sworn you were a corpse soldier.” An ancillary, she meant. “When you arrived I was certain of it.” She’d been hiding nearby, then, waiting for us to leave, and the entire place had been under her surveillance. She must have trusted her hiding place quite extravagantly—if I had been what she feared, staying anywhere near would have been extremely foolish. I would certainly have found her. “But when you saw there was no one here you wept. And him…” She shrugged toward Seivarden, slack and motionless on the pallet.

“Sit up, citizen,” I said to Seivarden, in Radchaai. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

“Fuck off,” she answered, and pulled a blanket over her head. Then shoved it off again and rose, slightly shaky, and went into the sanitary facility and closed the door.

I turned back to Strigan. “That business with the flier rental. Was that you?”

She shrugged ruefully. “He told me a couple of Radchaai were coming out this way. Either he badly underestimated you, or you’re even more dangerous than I thought.”

Which would be considerably dangerous. “I’m used to being underestimated. And you didn’t tell her… him why you thought I was coming.”

Her gun hadn’t wavered. “Why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here.” A quick change in her expression, instantly suppressed. I continued. “Not to kill you. Killing you would defeat the purpose.”