Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(60)
The other two of her stowed their bags in quarters, and went to the newly lit and slowly warming Var decade room. Both of her sat at the table, the silent colored-glass Valskaayan saint smiling mildly down. Without speaking aloud she requested information from me—a random sample of memories from that five-year span that had so attracted her attention, above on the central access deck. Silent, expressionless—unreal, in a sense, since I could only see her exteriors—she watched as my memories played out before her visions, in her ears. I began to doubt the truth of my memory of that other visit. There seemed to be no trace of it in the information Anaander Mianaai was accessing, nothing during that time but routine operations.
But something had attracted her attention to that stretch of time. And there was that Invalid access to account for—none of Anaander Mianaai’s accesses were ever invalid, never could be. And why had I opened to an invalid access? And when one Anaander, in the Var decade room, frowned and said, “No, nothing,” and the Lord of the Radch turned her attention to more recent memories, I found myself tremendously relieved.
In the meantime my captain and all my other officers went about the routine business of the day—training, exercising, eating, talking—completely unaware that the Lord of the Radch was aboard. The whole thing was wrong.
The Lord of the Radch watched my Esk lieutenants fencing over breakfast. Three times. With no visible change of expression. One Var set tea at the elbow of each of the two identical black-clad bodies in the Var decade room.
“Lieutenant Awn,” said one Anaander. “Has she been out of your presence at all since the incident?” She hadn’t specified which incident she meant, but she could only have meant the business in the temple of Ikkt.
“She has not, my lord,” I said, using One Var’s mouth.
On my central access deck, the Lord of the Radch keyed accesses and overrides that would allow her to change nearly anything about my mind she wished. Invalid, invalid, invalid. One after another. But each time I flashed acknowledgment, confirmed access she didn’t actually have. I felt something like nausea, beginning to realize what must have happened, but having no accessible memory of it to confirm my suspicions, to make the matter clear and unambiguous to me.
“Has she at any time discussed this incident with anyone?”
This much was clear—Anaander Mianaai was acting against herself. Secretly. She was divided in two—at least two. I could only see traces of the other Anaander, the one who had changed the accesses, the accesses she thought she was only now changing to favor herself.
“Has she at any time discussed this incident with anyone?”
“Briefly, my lord,” I said. Truly frightened for the first time in my long life. “With Lieutenant Skaaiat of Justice of Ente.” How could my voice—One Var—speak so calmly? How could I even know what words to say, what answer to make, when the whole basis for all my actions—even my reason for existence—was thrown into doubt?
One Mianaai frowned—not the one that had been speaking. “Skaaiat,” she said, with slight distaste. Seeming unaware of my sudden fear. “I’ve had my suspicions about Awer for some time.” Awer was Lieutenant Skaaiat’s house name, but what that had to do with events in the temple of Ikkt, I had no idea. “I never could find any proof.” This, also, was mysterious to me. “Play me the conversation.”
When Lieutenant Skaaiat said, If you’re going to do something that crazy, save it for when it’ll make a difference, one body leaned forward sharply and gave a breathy ha, an angry sound. Moments later, at the mention of Ime, eyebrows twitched. I feared momentarily that my dismay at the incautious, frankly dangerous tenor of that conversation would be detectable to the Lord of the Radch, but she made no mention of it. Had not seen it, perhaps, as she had not seen my profound disturbance at realizing she was no longer one person but two, in conflict with each other.
“Not proof. Not enough,” Mianaai said, oblivious. “But dangerous. Awer ought to tip my way.” Why she thought this, I didn’t immediately understand. Awer had come from the Radch itself, from the start had had wealth and influence enough to allow it to criticize, and criticize it did, though generally with shrewdness enough to keep itself out of real trouble.
I had known Awer House for a long time, had carried its young lieutenants, known them as captains of other ships. Granted, no Awer suited for military service exhibited her house’s tendencies to their utmost extent. An overly keen sense of injustice or a tendency to mysticism didn’t mesh well with annexations. Nor with wealth and rank—any Awer’s moral outrage inevitably smelled slightly of hypocrisy, considering the comforts and privileges such an ancient house enjoyed, and while some injustices were unignorably obvious to them, some others they never saw.
In any event, Lieutenant Skaaiat’s sardonic practicality wasn’t foreign to her house. It was only a milder, more livable version of Awer’s tendency to moral outrage.
Doubtless each Anaander thought her cause was the more just. (The more proper, the more beneficial. Certainly.) Assuming Awer’s penchant for just causes, the citizens of that house ought to support the proper side. Given they knew anything like sides were involved at all.
This assumed, of course, that any part at all of Anaander Mianaai thought any Awer was guided by a passion for justice and not by self-interest covered over with self-righteousness. And any given Awer could, at various times, be guided by either.