Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(34)

Just before the siren blew, Jen Shinnan ran out of her house in the upper city shouting, “Murder! Murder!” Lights came on in the houses around her, but further noise was drowned out by the shrieking of the siren. My nearest segment was four streets away.

All around the lower city, storm shutters rattled down. The priests in the temple ceased their prayers, and the head priest looked at me, but I had no information for her, and gestured my helplessness. “My communications are cut off, Divine,” said that segment. The head priest blinked, uncomprehending. Speech was useless while the siren blew.

The Lord of the Radch hadn’t reacted at the moment I had fragmented, though she was connected to the rest of herself in much the same way I ordinarily was. Her apparent lack of surprise was strange enough for my segment nearest her to notice it. But it might have been no more than self-possession; the siren elicited no more than an upward glance and a raised eyebrow. Then she stood and walked out onto the plaza.


It was the third worst thing that has ever happened to me. I had lost all sense of Justice of Toren overhead, all sense of myself. I had shattered into twenty fragments that could barely communicate with each other.

Just before the siren had blown, Lieutenant Awn had sent a segment to the temple, with orders to sound the alarm. Now that segment came running into the plaza, where it stood, hesitating, looking at the rest of itself, visible but not there as far as my sense of myself was concerned.

The siren stopped. The lower city was silent, the only sound was my footsteps, and my armor-filtered voices, trying to talk to myself, to get organized so I could function at least in some small way.

The Lord of the Radch raised one graying eyebrow. “Where is Lieutenant Awn?”

That was, of course, the question uppermost in the minds of all my segments that didn’t already know, but now the one of me who had arrived with the order from Lieutenant Awn had something it knew it could do. “Lieutenant Awn is on her way, my lord,” it said, and ten seconds later Lieutenant Awn and most of the rest of me that had been in the house arrived, rushing into the plaza.

“I thought you had this area under control.” Anaander Mianaai didn’t look at Lieutenant Awn as she spoke, but the direction of her words was clear.

“So did I.” And then Lieutenant Awn remembered where she was, and to whom she was speaking. “My lord. Begging your pardon.” Each of me had to restrain itself from turning entirely to watch Lieutenant Awn, to be sure she was really there, because I couldn’t sense her otherwise. A few whispers sorted out which of my segments would keep close to her, and the rest would have to trust that.

My Ten segment came around the Fore-Temple water at a dead run. “Trouble in the upper city!” it called, and came to a halt in front of Lieutenant Awn, where I cleared the path for myself. “People are gathering at Jen Shinnan’s house, they’re angry, they’re talking about murder, and getting justice.”

“Murder. Oh, f*ck!”

All the segments near Lieutenant Awn said, in unison, “Language, Lieutenant!” Anaander Mianaai turned a disbelieving look on me, but said nothing.

“Oh, f*ck!” Lieutenant Awn repeated.

“Are you,” asked Anaander Mianaai, calm and deliberate, “going to do anything except swear?”

Lieutenant Awn froze for half a second, then looked around, across the water, toward the lower city, at the temple. “Who’s here? Count!” And when we had done so, “One through Seven, out here. The rest, with me.” I followed her into the temple, leaving Anaander Mianaai standing in the plaza.

The priests stood near the dais, watching us approach. “Divine,” said Lieutenant Awn.

“Lieutenant,” said the head priest.

“There’s a mob bent on violence headed here from the upper city. I’m guessing we have five minutes. They can’t do much damage with the storm shutters down, I’d like to bring them in here, keep them from doing anything drastic.”

“Bring them in here,” the head priest repeated, doubtfully.

“Everything else is dark and shut. The big doors are open, it’s the most obvious place to come, when most of them are in here we close the doors and One Esk surrounds them. We could just shut the temple doors and let them try their luck with the shutters on the houses, but I don’t really want to find out how hard those are to breach. If,” she added, seeing Anaander Mianaai come into the temple, walking slowly, as though nothing unusual were happening, “my lord permits.”

The Lord of the Radch gestured a silent assent.

The head priest clearly didn’t like the suggestion, but she agreed. By now my segments on the plaza were seeing hand lights sporadically visible in the nearest upper-city streets.

Within moments Lieutenant Awn had me behind the large temple doors, ready to close them on her signal, and a few of me dispatched to the streets around the plaza to help herd Tanmind toward the temple. The rest of me stood in the shadows around the perimeter inside the temple itself, and the priests returned to their prayers, their backs to the wide and inviting entrance.

More than a hundred Tanmind came down from the upper city. Most of them did precisely as we wished, and rushed in a swirling, shouting mass into the temple, except for twenty-three, a dozen of whom veered off down a dark, empty avenue. The other eleven, who had already been trailing the larger group, saw one segment of me standing quiet nearby, and thought better of their actions. They stopped, muttered among themselves for a moment, watching the mass of Tanmind run into the temple, the others rushing, shouting, down the street. They watched me close the temple doors, the segments posted there not uniformed, covered only with the silver of my own generated armor, and maybe it reminded them of the annexation. Several of them swore, and they turned and ran back to the upper city.