Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(70)

“Surely not, my lord,” I said, at a loss for what else to say, not sure exactly what I was protesting.

“Billions of citizens will die in the process,” she continued, as though I had not spoken. “Through war, or lack of resources. And I…”

She hesitated. Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings. But I did not say so. The most powerful person in the universe didn’t need me to lecture her on religion or philosophy.

“But I am already broken,” she finished. “I can only fight to prevent my breaking further. Remove what is no longer myself.”

I wasn’t sure what I should, or could, say. I had no conscious memory of having this conversation previously, though I was certain now I must have, must have listened to Anaander Mianaai explain and justify her actions, after she used the overrides and changed… something. It must have been quite similar, perhaps even the same words. It had, after all, been the same person.

“And,” Anaander Mianaai continued, “I must remove my enemy’s weapons wherever I find them. Send Lieutenant Awn to me.”


Lieutenant Awn approached the Var decade room with trepidation, not knowing why I had sent her there. I had refused to answer her questions, which had only fed a growing feeling on her part that something was very wrong. Her boots on the white floor echoed emptily, despite One Var’s presence. As she reached it the decade room door slid open, nearly noiseless.

The sight of Anaander Mianaai within hit Lieutenant Awn like a blow, a vicious spike of fear, surprise, dread, shock, doubt, and bewilderment. Lieutenant Awn took three breaths, shallower, I could see, than she liked, and then hitched her shoulders just the slightest bit, stepped in, and prostrated herself.

“Lieutenant,” said Anaander Mianaai. Her accent, and tone, were the prototype of Lieutenant Skaaiat’s elegant vowels, of Lieutenant Issaaia’s thoughtless, slightly sneering arrogance. Lieutenant Awn lay facedown, waiting. Frightened.

As before I received no data from Mianaai that she did not deliberately send me. I had no information about her internal state. She seemed calm. Impassive, emotionless. I was sure that surface impression was a lie, though I didn’t understand why I thought that, except that she had yet to speak favorably of Lieutenant Awn, when in my opinion she should have. “Tell me, Lieutenant,” said Mianaai, after a long silence, “where those guns came from, and what you think happened in the temple of Ikkt.”

A combination of relief and fear washed through Lieutenant Awn. She had, in the moments available to process Anaander Mianaai’s presence here, formed an expectation that this question would be asked. “My lord, the guns could only have come from someone with sufficient authority to divert them and prevent their destruction.”

“You, for instance.”

A sharp stab of startlement and terror. “No, my lord, I assure you. I did disarm noncitizens local to my assignment, and some of them were Tanmind military.” The police station in the upper city had been quite well-armed, in fact. “But I had those disabled on the spot, before I sent them on. And according to their inventory numbers, these had been collected in Kould Ves.”

“By Justice of Toren troops?”

“So I understand, my lord.”

“Ship?”

I answered with one of One Var’s mouths. “My lord, the guns in question were collected by Sixteen and Seventeen Inu.” I named their lieutenant at the time, who had since been reassigned.

Anaander Mianaai made the barest hint of a frown. “So as far back as five years ago, someone with access—perhaps this Inu lieutenant, perhaps someone else, prevented these weapons from being destroyed, and hid them. For five years. And then, what, planted them in the Orsian swamp? To what end?”

Face still to the floor, blinking in confusion, Lieutenant Awn took one second to frame a reply. “I don’t know, my lord.”

“You’re lying,” said Mianaai, still sitting, leaning back in her chair as though quite relaxed and unconcerned, but her eyes had not left Lieutenant Awn. “I can see plainly that you are. And I’ve heard every conversation you’ve had, since the incident. Who did you mean when you spoke of someone else who would benefit from the situation?”

“If I’d known what name to put there, my lord, I would have used it. I only meant by it that there must be a specific person who acted, who caused it…” She stopped, took a breath, abandoned that sentence. “Someone conspired with the Tanmind, someone who had access to those guns. Whoever it was, they wanted trouble between the upper city and the lower. It was my job to prevent that. I did my best to prevent that.” Certainly an evasion. From the moment Anaander Mianaai had ordered the hasty execution of those Tanmind citizens in the temple, the first, most obvious suspect had been the Lord of the Radch herself.

“Why would anyone want trouble between the upper city and the lower?” Anaander Mianaai asked. “Who would exert themselves over it?”

“Jen Shinnan, my lord, and her associates,” answered Lieutenant Awn, on firmer ground, for the moment at least. “She felt the ethnic Orsians were unduly favored.”

“By you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“So you’re saying that in the first months of the annexation, Jen Shinnan found some Radchaai official willing to divert crates full of weapons so that five years later she could start trouble between the upper and lower city. To get you in trouble.”