Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(94)

“You must be very brave, then, to speak so,” I observed. But I was sure Rose-and-Azure wasn’t particularly brave. She spoke as she did because she could do so without danger to herself.

Calm. I could control my breathing, keep it smooth and regular. My skin was too dark to show a flush, but Station would see the temperature change. Station might just think I was angry about something. I had good reason to be angry.

“Honored,” Seivarden said abruptly. From the set of her jaw and shoulders, she was suppressing an urge to cross her arms. Would be, quite soon, in one of those silently-facing-the-wall moods. “We’ll be late to our next engagement.” She rose, more abruptly than was strictly polite.

“Indeed,” I acknowledged, and set down my untasted tea. Hoped her action was on her own account, and not because she’d seen any sign of my agitation. “Captain Vel, thank you for your very kind invitation. It was an honor to meet you all.”

Out on the main concourse, Seivarden, walking behind me, muttered, “Fucking snobs.” People passed, mostly not paying any attention to us. That was good. That was normal. I could feel my adrenaline levels dropping.

Better. I stopped and turned to look at Seivarden, raised an eyebrow.

“Well, but they are snobs,” she said. “What do they think the aptitudes are for? The whole point is that anyone can test into anything.”

I remembered twenty-years-younger Lieutenant Skaaiat asking, in the humid darkness of the upper city, if the aptitudes had lacked impartiality before, or lacked them now, and answering, for herself, both. And Lieutenant Awn’s hurt and distress.

Seivarden crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, balled her gloved hands into fists. “And of course someone from a lower house is going to be ill-bred and have a vulgar accent. They can hardly help it.

“And what were they thinking,” Seivarden continued, “to have a conversation like that. In a tea shop. On a palace station. I mean, not just when we were young and provincials are vulgar but the aptitudes are corrupt? The military is badly mismanaged?” I didn’t speak, but she answered as though I had. “Oh, of course, everyone complains things are mismanaged. But not like that. What’s going on?”

“Don’t ask me.” Though of course I knew—or thought I did. And wondered again what it meant that Rose-and-Azure, and others there, had felt so freely able to speak as they had. Which Anaander Mianaai might hold an advantage here? Though such free speaking might only mean the Lord of the Radch preferred to let her enemies identify themselves clearly and unambiguously. “And have you always been in favor of the ill-bred testing into high positions?” I asked, knowing she hadn’t.

Realizing, suddenly, that if Station had never met anyone from the Gerentate, Anaander Mianaai very possibly had. Why had that not occurred to me before? Something programmed into my ship-mind, invisible to me until now, or just the limitations of this one small brain remaining to me?

I might have deceived Station, and everyone else here, but I had not for a moment deceived the Lord of the Radch. She had certainly known from the instant I set foot on the palace docks that I was not what I said I was.

It would fall where it fell, I told myself.

“I thought about what you told me, about Ime,” Seivarden said, as though it answered my question. Oblivious to my renewed distress. “I don’t know if that unit leader did the right thing. But I don’t know what the right thing to do would have been. And I don’t know if I’d have had the courage to die for that right thing if I knew what it was. I mean…” She paused. “I mean, I’d like to think I would. There was a time I’d have been sure I would. But I can’t even…” She trailed off, her voice shaking slightly. She seemed on the verge of breaking into tears, like the Seivarden of a year ago, nearly any feelings at all too raw for her to handle. That sustained politeness, back in the tea shop, must have been the result of considerable effort.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the people passing us as we walked. But now something struck me as wrong. I was suddenly aware of the location and direction of the people around us. Something indefinite troubled me, something about the way certain people moved.

At least four people were watching us, surreptitiously. Had no doubt been following us, and I had not noticed until now. This had to be new, surely. I would have noticed if I had been followed from the moment I’d stepped onto the docks. I was sure I would have.

Station had certainly seen my startlement back in the tea shop, when Rose-and-Azure had said, “Justice of Toren.” Station would certainly have wondered why I had reacted the way I had. Would certainly have begun to watch me even more closely than it had been. Still, Station didn’t need to have me followed to watch me. This was not merely observation.

This was not Station.

I had never been given to panic. I would not panic now. This throw was mine, and if I had miscalculated slightly the trajectory of one piece, I had not miscalculated the others. Keeping my voice very, very even I said to Seivarden, “We’ll be early for the inspector supervisor.”

“Do we have to go to that Awer’s?” Seivarden asked.

“I think we should.” Having said it, immediately wishing I hadn’t. I didn’t want to see Skaaiat Awer, not now, not in this state.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” said Seivarden. “Maybe we should go back to the room. You can meditate or pray or whatever it is, and then we can have supper and listen to some music. I think that would be better.”