Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(72)

Once again, Lieutenant Awn struggled to speak. “That is correct, my lord,” she finally managed.

“I can offer you,” said Mianaai in reply, “the opportunity to prove her innocence. And to better your situation. I can manipulate your assignment so that you can be close to her again. You need only take clientship when Skaaiat offers—oh, she’ll offer,” the Lord of the Radch said, seeing, I’m sure, Lieutenant Awn’s despair and doubt at her words. “Awer has been collecting people like you. Upstarts from previously unremarkable houses who suddenly find themselves in positions advantageous for business. Take clientship, and observe.” And report was left unsaid.

The Lord of the Radch was trying to turn her enemy’s instrument into her own. What would happen if she couldn’t do that?

But what would happen if she did? No matter what choice Lieutenant Awn made now, she would be acting against Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch.

I had already seen her choice once, when faced with death. She would choose the path that kept her alive. And she—and I—could puzzle out the implications of that path later, would see what the options were when matters were less immediately urgent.

In the Esk decade room Lieutenant Dariet asked, alarmed, “Ship, what’s wrong with One Esk?”

“My lord,” said Lieutenant Awn, her voice shaking with fear, face, as ever, to the floor. “Do you order me?”

“Stand by, Lieutenant,” I said, directly into Lieutenant Dariet’s ear, because I could not make One Esk speak.

Anaander Mianaai laughed, short and sharp. Lieutenant Awn’s answer had been as bald a refusal as a plain Never would have been. Ordering such a thing would be useless.

“Interrogate me when we reach Valskaay,” Lieutenant Awn said. “I demand it. I am loyal. So is Skaaiat Awer, I swear it, but if you doubt her, interrogate her as well.”

But of course Anaander Mianaai couldn’t do that. Any interrogation would have witnesses. Any skilled interrogator—and there would be no point in using an unskilled one—would hardly fail to understand the drift of the questions put to either Lieutenant Awn or Lieutenant Skaaiat. It would be too open a move, spread information this Mianaai didn’t want spread.

Anaander Mianaai sat silent for four seconds. Impassive.

“One Var,” she said, when those four seconds had passed, “shoot Lieutenant Awn.”

I was not, now, a single fragmentary segment, alone and unsure what I might do if I received that order. I was all of myself. Taken as separate from me, One Esk was fonder of Lieutenant Awn than I was. But One Esk was not separate from me. It was, at the moment, very much part of me.

Still, One Esk was only one small part of me. And I had shot officers before. I had even, under orders, shot my own captain. But those executions, distressing and unpleasant as they had been, had clearly been just. The penalty for disobedience is death.

Lieutenant Awn had never disobeyed. Far from it. And worse, her death was meant to hide the actions of Anaander Mianaai’s enemy. The entire purpose of my existence was to oppose Anaander Mianaai’s enemies.

But neither Mianaai was ready to move openly. I must conceal from this Mianaai the fact that she herself had already bound me to the opposing cause, until all was in readiness. I must, for the moment, obey as though I had no other choice, as though I desired nothing else. And in the end, in the great scheme of things, what was Lieutenant Awn, after all? Her parents would grieve, and her sister, and they would likely be ashamed that Lieutenant Awn had disgraced them by disobedience. But they wouldn’t question. And if they questioned, it would do no good. Anaander Mianaai’s secret would be safe.

All this I thought in the 1.3 seconds it took for Lieutenant Awn, shocked and terrified, to reflexively raise her head. And in that same time, the segment of One Var said, “I am unarmed, my lord. It will take me approximately two minutes to acquire a sidearm.”

It was betrayal, to Lieutenant Awn, I saw it plainly. But she must have known I had no other choice. “This is unjust,” she said, head still up. Voice unsteady. “It’s improper. No benefit will accrue.”

“Who are your fellow conspirators?” asked Mianaai, coldly. “Name them and I may spare your life.”

Half lifted up, hands under her shoulders, Lieutenant Awn blinked in complete confusion, bewilderment that was surely as visible to Mianaai as it was to me. “Conspirators? I have never conspired with anyone. I have always served you.”

Above, on the command deck, I said in Captain Rubran’s ear, “Captain, we have a problem.”

“Serving me,” said Anaander Mianaai, “is no longer sufficient. No longer sufficiently unambiguous. Which me do you serve?”

“Wh—” began Lieutenant Awn, and “Th—” And then, “I don’t understand.”

“What problem?” asked Captain Rubran, bowl of tea halfway to her mouth, only mildly alarmed.

“I am at war with myself,” said Mianaai, in the Var decade room. “I have been for nearly a thousand years.”

To Captain Rubran I said, “I need One Esk to be sedated.”

“At war,” Anaander Mianaai continued on Var deck, “over the future of the Radch.”

Something must have come suddenly clear for Lieutenant Awn. I saw a sharp, pure rage in her. “Annexations and ancillaries, and people like me being assigned to the military.”