Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(80)

Still leaning against the bulkhead, Seivarden closed her eyes and began to hum. Wobbling, pitch sinking or rising by turns as she mis-sang intervals. But still recognizable. My heart is a fish. “Aatr’s tits,” she swore after a verse and a half, eyes still closed. “Now you’ve got me doing it.”

The door chime sounded. “Enter,” I said. Seivarden opened her eyes, sat straight. Suddenly tense. The boredom had been a pose, I suspected.

The door slid open to reveal a person in the dark-blue jacket, gloves, and trousers of a dock inspector. She was slight, and young, maybe twenty-three or -four. She looked familiar, though I couldn’t think who it was she reminded me of. The sparser-than-usual scatter of jewelry and memorial pins might tell me, if I stared closely enough to read names. Which would be rude. Across from me, Seivarden tucked her bare hands behind her back.

“Honored Breq,” the inspector adjunct said, with a slight bow. She seemed unfazed by my own bare hands. Used to dealing with foreigners, I supposed. “Citizen Seivarden. Would you please accompany me to the inspector supervisor’s office?”

And there should have been no need for us to visit the inspector supervisor herself. This adjunct could pass us onto the station on her own authority. Or order our arrest.

We followed her past the lock into the loading bay, past another lock into a corridor busy with people—dock inspectors in dark blue, Station Security in light brown, here and there the darker brown of soldiers, and spots of brighter color—a scatter of non-uniformed citizens. This corridor opened into a wide room, a dozen gods along the walls to watch over travelers and traders, on one end the entrance to the station proper, and opposite, the doorway into the inspector’s office.

The adjunct escorted us through the outermost office, where nine blue-uniformed minor adjuncts dealt with complaining ship captains, and beyond them were offices for likely a dozen major adjuncts and their crews. Past those and into an inner office, with four chairs and a small table, and a door at the back, closed.

“I am sorry, cit… honored, and citizen,” said the adjunct who had led us here, fingers twitching as she communicated with someone—likely the station AI, or the inspector supervisor herself. “The inspector supervisor was available, but something’s come up. I’m sure it won’t be more than a few minutes. Please have a seat. Will you have tea?”

A reasonably long wait, then. And the courtesy of tea implied this wasn’t an arrest. That no one had discovered my credentials were forged. Everyone here—including Station—would assume I was what I said I was, a foreign traveler. And possibly I would have a chance to discover just who this young inspector adjunct reminded me of. Now she’d spoken at a bit more length, I noticed a slight accent. Where was she from? “Yes, thank you,” I said.

Seivarden didn’t respond to the offer of tea right away. Her arms were folded, her bare hands tucked under her elbows. She likely wanted the tea but was embarrassed about her ungloved hands, couldn’t hide them holding a bowl. Or so I thought until she said, “I can’t understand a word she’s saying.”

Seivarden’s accent and way of speaking would be familiar to most educated Radchaai, from old entertainments and the way Anaander Mianaai’s speech was widely emulated by prestigious—or hopefully prestigious—families. I hadn’t thought changes in pronunciation and vocabulary had been so extreme. But I’d lived through them, and Seivarden’s ear for language had never been the sharpest. “She’s offering tea.”

“Oh.” Seivarden looked briefly at her crossed arms. “No.”

I took the tea the adjunct poured from a flask on the table, thanked her, and took a seat. The office had been painted a pale green, the floor tiled with something that had probably been intended to look like wood and might have succeeded if the designer had ever seen anything but imitations of imitations. A niche in the wall behind the young adjunct held an icon of Amaat and a small bowl of bright-orange, ruffle-petaled flowers. And beside that, a tiny brass copy of the cliffside in the temple of Ikkt. You could buy them, I knew, from vendors in the plaza in front of the Fore-Temple water, during pilgrimage season.

I looked at the adjunct again. Who was she? Someone I knew? A relative of someone I’d met?

“You’re humming again,” Seivarden said in an undertone.

“Excuse me.” I took a sip of tea. “It’s a habit I have. I apologize.”

“No need,” said the adjunct, and took her own seat by the table. This was, fairly clearly, her own office and so she was direct assistant to the inspector supervisor—an unusual place for someone so young. “I haven’t heard that song since I was a child.”

Seivarden blinked, not understanding. If she had, she likely would have smiled. A Radchaai could live nearly two hundred years. This inspector adjunct, probably a legal adult for a decade, was still impossibly young.

“I used to know someone else who sang all the time,” the adjunct continued.

I knew her. Had probably bought songs from her. She would have been maybe four, maybe five, when I’d left Ors. Maybe slightly older, if she remembered me with any clarity.

The inspector supervisor behind that door would be someone who had spent time on Shis’urna—in Ors itself, most likely. What did I know about the lieutenant who had replaced Lieutenant Awn as administrator there? How likely was it she’d resigned her military assignment and taken one as a dock inspector? It wasn’t unheard of.