Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(35)

Eighty-three Tanmind had run into the temple; their angry voices echoed and reechoed, magnified. At the sound of the doors slamming closed, they turned and tried to rush back the way they had come, but I had surrounded them, my guns drawn and aimed at whoever was nearest each segment.

“Citizens!” shouted Lieutenant Awn, but she didn’t have the trick of making herself heard.

“Citizens!” the various fragments of me shouted, my own voices echoing and then dying down. Along with the Tanmind’s tumult: Jen Shinnan, and Jen Taa, and a few others I knew were friends or relations of theirs, shushed those near them, urged them to calm themselves, to consider that the Lord of the Radch herself was here, and they could speak directly to her.

“Citizens!” Lieutenant Awn shouted again. “Have you lost your minds? What are you doing?”

“Murder!” shouted Jen Shinnan, who was at the front of the crowd, shouting over my head at Lieutenant Awn where she stood behind me, beside the Lord of the Radch and the Divine. The junior priests stood huddled together, seemingly frozen. The Tanmind voices grumbled, echoing, in support of Jen Shinnan. “We won’t get justice from you so we’ll take it ourselves!” Jen Shinnan cried. The grumbling from the crowd rolled around the stone walls of the temple.

“Explain yourself, citizen,” said Anaander Mianaai, voice pitched to sound above the noise.

The Tanmind hushed each other for five seconds, and then, “My lord,” said Jen Shinnan. Her respectful tone sounded almost sincere. “My young niece has been staying in my house for the past week. She was harassed and threatened by Orsians when she came to the lower city, which I reported to Lieutenant Awn, but nothing was done. This evening I found her room empty, the window broken, blood everywhere! What am I to conclude? The Orsians have always resented us! Now they mean to kill us all, is it any wonder we should defend ourselves?”

Anaander Mianaai turned to Lieutenant Awn. “Was this reported?”

“It was, my lord,” said Lieutenant Awn. “I investigated and found that the young person in question had never left sight of Justice of Toren One Esk, who reported that she had spent all her time in the lower city alone. The only words that passed between her and anyone else were routine business transactions. She was not harassed or threatened at any time.”

“You see!” cried Jen Shinnan. “You see why we are compelled to take justice into our own hands!”

“And what leads you to believe all your lives are threatened?” asked Anaander Mianaai.

“My lord,” said Jen Shinnan, “Lieutenant Awn would have you believe everyone in the lower city is loyal and law-abiding, but we know from experience that the Orsians are anything but paragons of virtue. The fishermen go out on the water at night, unseen. Sources…” She hesitated, just a moment, whether because of the gun pointed directly at her, or Anaander Mianaai’s continued impassivity, or something else, I couldn’t tell. But it seemed to me something had amused her. Then she recovered her composure. “Sources I prefer not to name have seen the boatmen of the lower city depositing weapons in caches in the lake. What would those be for, except to finally take their revenge on us, who they believe have mistreated them? And how could those guns have come here without Lieutenant Awn’s collusion?”

Anaander Mianaai turned her dark face toward Lieutenant Awn and raised one grayed eyebrow. “Do you have an answer for that, Lieutenant Awn?”

Something about the question, or the way it was asked, troubled all the segments that heard it. And Jen Shinnan actually smiled. She had expected the Lord of the Radch to turn on Lieutenant Awn, and was pleased by it.

“I do have an answer, my lord,” said Lieutenant Awn. “Some nights ago, a local fisherman reported to me that she had found a cache of weapons under the lake. I removed them and took them to my house, and upon searching, discovered two more caches, which I also removed. I had intended to search further this evening, but events have, as you see, prevented me. My report is written but not yet sent, because I, too, wondered how the guns could have come here without my knowledge.”

Perhaps it was only because of Jen Shinnan’s smile, and the oddly accusatory questions from Anaander Mianaai—and the slight earlier, in the temple plaza—but in the charged air of the temple, the echoes of Lieutenant Awn’s words themselves felt like an accusation.

“I have also wondered,” Lieutenant Awn said, in the silence after those echoes died away, “why the young person in question would falsely accuse residents of the lower city of harassing her, when they assuredly did not. I am quite certain no one from the lower city has harmed her.”

“Someone has!” shouted a voice in the crowd, and mutterings of assent started, and grew and echoed around the vast stone space.

“What time did you last see your cousin?” asked Lieutenant Awn.

“Three hours ago,” said Jen Shinnan. “She told us good night, and went to her room.”

Lieutenant Awn addressed the segment of me that was nearest her. “One Esk, did anyone cross from the lower city to the upper in the last three hours?”

The segment that answered—Thirteen—knew I should be careful about my answer, which by necessity everyone would hear. “No. No one crossed in either direction. Though I can’t be certain about the last fifteen minutes.”

“Someone might have come earlier,” Jen Shinnan pointed out.