Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(30)

A public slight. An inexplicable one—there was no reason the Lord of the Radch could not have turned aside for a few urgent words with the officer who was chief of local security. And Lieutenant Awn had done nothing to deserve such a slight. At first I thought that was the only reason for the distress I read coming from Lieutenant Awn. The matter of the guns could be communicated in the morning just as well as now, and there seemed no other difficulty. But as the Lord of the Radch had walked through the upper city, word of Anaander Mianaai’s presence had spread, as of course it would, and the residents of the upper city had come out of their houses and begun gathering on the northern edge of the Fore-Temple water to watch the Lord of the Radch, dressed like an Orsian, stand in front of the temple of Ikkt with the Divine. And listening to the mutterings of the watching Tanmind, I realized that at this particular instant the guns were only a secondary concern.

The Tanmind residents of the upper city were wealthy, well-fed, the owners of shops and farms and tamarind orchards. Even in the precarious months following the annexation, when supplies had been scarce and food expensive, they had managed to keep their families fed. When Jen Shinnan had said, a few evenings earlier, that no one here had starved, she had likely believed that to be true. She had not, nor had anyone she knew well, nearly all of them wealthy Tanmind. As much as they complained, they had come out of the annexation relatively comfortably. And their children did well when they took the aptitudes, and would continue to do so, as Lieutenant Skaaiat had said.

And yet these same people, when they saw the Lord of the Radch walk straight through the upper city to the temple of Ikkt, concluded that this gesture of respect to the Orsians was a calculated insult to them. This was clear in their expressions, in their indignant exclamations. I had not foreseen it. Perhaps the Lord of the Radch had not foreseen it. But Lieutenant Awn had realized it would happen, when she saw the Divine on the ground in front of the Lord of the Radch.

I left the plaza, and some of the upper city streets, and went to where the Tanmind were standing, a half-dozen of me. I didn’t draw any weapons, didn’t make any threats. I said, merely, to anyone near me, “Go home, citizens.”

Most turned away and left, and if their expressions weren’t pleasant, they offered no actual protest. Others took longer to leave, testing my authority, perhaps, though not far—anyone with the stomach to do such a thing had been shot sometime in the last five years, or at least had learned to restrain such a near-suicidal impulse.

The Divine, rising to escort Anaander Mianaai into the temple, cast an unreadable look at Lieutenant Awn, where she still knelt on the plaza stones. The Lord of the Radch did not even glance at her.





7


“And then,” Strigan said as we ate, latest in a long list of grievances against the Radchaai, “there’s the treaty with the Presger.”

Seivarden lay still, eyes closed, breathing even, blood caked on her lip and chin, spattered on the front of her coat. Across her nose and forehead lay a corrective.

“You resent the treaty?” I asked. “You’d prefer the Presger felt free to do as they always have done?” The Presger didn’t care if a species was sentient or not, conscious or not, intelligent or not. The word they used—or the concept, at any rate, as I understood they didn’t speak in words—was usually translated as significance. And only the Presger were significant. All other beings were their rightful prey, property, or playthings. Mostly they just didn’t care about humans, but some of them liked to stop ships and pull them—and their contents—apart.

“I’d prefer the Radch not make binding promises on behalf of all humanity,” Strigan answered. “Not dictate policy for every single human government and then tell us we’re supposed to be grateful.”

“The Presger don’t recognize such divisions. It was all or none.”

“It was the Radch extending control yet another way, one cheaper and easier than outright conquest.”

“It might surprise you to learn that some high-ranking Radchaai dislike the treaty as much as you do.”

Strigan raised an eyebrow, set down her cup of stinking fermented milk. “Somehow I doubt I’d find these high-ranking Radchaai sympathetic.” Her tone was bitter, slightly sarcastic.

“No,” I answered. “I don’t think you’d like them much. They certainly wouldn’t have much use for you.”

She blinked and looked intently at my face, as though trying to read something from my expression. Then she shook her head and made a dismissing gesture. “Do tell.”

“When one is the agent of order and civilization in the universe, one doesn’t stoop to negotiate. Especially with nonhumans.” Which included quite a number of people who considered themselves human, but that was a topic best left undiscussed just now. “Why make a treaty with such an implacable enemy? Destroy them and be done.”

“Could you?” Strigan asked, incredulous. “Could you have destroyed the Presger?”

“No.”

She folded her arms, leaned back in her chair. “So why any debate at all?”

“I would think it was obvious,” I answered. “Some find it difficult to admit the Radch might be fallible, or that its power might have limits.”

Strigan glanced across the room, toward Seivarden. “But this is meaningless. Debate. There’s no real debate possible.”