Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1)(98)

If I had been human, I would have laughed. Two Mianaais before me. Neither trusted the other to hold this interview unsupervised, unobstructed. Neither knew the details of the destruction of Justice of Toren, each no doubt suspected the other’s involvement. I might be an instrument of either, neither trusting the other. Which was which?

The Mianaai on the right said, “You’ve done a fairly decent job concealing your origin. It was Inspector Adjunct Ceit who first made me suspect.” I haven’t heard that song since I was a child, she’d said. That song, that had obviously come from Shis’urna. “I admit it took me an entire day to piece everything together, and even then I could hardly believe it. You hid your implants reasonably well. Station was completely deceived. But the humming would likely have given you away eventually, I imagine. Are you aware you do it almost constantly? I suspect you’re making an effort not to do it now. Which I do appreciate.”

Still facedown on the floor, Seivarden said, in a small voice, “Breq?”

“Not Breq,” said the Mianaai on the left. “Justice of Toren.”

“Justice of Toren One Esk,” I corrected, dropping all pretense of a Gerentate accent, or human expression. I was done pretending. It was terrifying, because I knew I couldn’t live long past this, but also, oddly, a relief. A weight gone.

The right-hand Mianaai gestured the obviousness of my statement. “Justice of Toren is destroyed,” I said. Both Mianaais seemed to stop breathing. Stared at me. Again I might have laughed, if I were capable of it.

“Begging my lord’s indulgence,” said Seivarden from the floor, voice tentative. “Surely there’s some mistake. Breq is human. She can’t possibly be Justice of Toren One Esk. I served in Justice of Toren’s Esk decade. No Justice of Toren medic would give One Esk a body with a voice like Breq’s. Not unless she wanted to seriously annoy the Esk lieutenants.”

Silence, thick and heavy, for three seconds.

“She thinks I’m Special Missions,” I said, breaking that silence. “I never told her I was. I never told her I was anything, except Breq from the Gerentate, and she never believed that. I wanted to leave her where I found her, but I couldn’t and I don’t know why. She was never one of my favorites.” I knew that sounded insane. A particular sort of insane, an AI insanity. I didn’t care. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

The right-hand Mianaai lifted an eyebrow. “Then why is she here?”

“No one could ignore her arrival here. Since I arrived with her, no one could ignore or conceal mine. And you already know why I couldn’t just come straight to you.”

The slight twitch of a frown on the right-hand Mianaai.

“Citizen Seivarden Vendaai,” said the Mianaai on the left, “it is now clear to me that Justice of Toren deceived you. You didn’t know what it was. It would be best, I think, if you left now. Without, of course, speaking of this to anyone else.”

“No?” breathed Seivarden into the floor, as though she were asking a question. Or as though she was surprised to hear the word come out of her mouth. “No,” she said again, more certainly. “There’s a mistake somewhere. Breq jumped off a bridge for me.”

My hip hurt, thinking of it. “No sane human being would have done that.”

“I never said you were sane,” Seivarden said, quietly, sounding slightly choked.

“Seivarden Vendaai,” said the left-hand Mianaai, “this ancillary—and it is an ancillary—isn’t human. The fact you thought it was explains a good deal of your behavior that was unclear to me before. I’m sorry for its deception and your disappointment, but you need to leave. Now.”

“Begging my lord’s indulgence.” Seivarden still lay facedown, speaking into the floor. “Whether you give it or not. I’m not leaving Breq.”

“Go away, Seivarden,” I said, expressionless.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding almost blithe except her voice still shook slightly. “You’re stuck with me.”

I looked down at her. She turned her head to look up at me, her expression a mix of fear and determination. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” I told her. “You don’t understand what’s happening here.”

“I don’t need to.”

“Fair enough,” said the Mianaai on the right, seeming almost amused. The left-hand one seemed less so. I wondered why that was. “Explain yourself, Justice of Toren.”

Here it was, the moment I had worked toward for twenty years. Waited for. Feared would never come. “First,” I said, “as I’m sure you already suspect, you were aboard Justice of Toren, and it was you yourself who destroyed it. You breached the heat shield because you discovered you had already suborned me yourself, some time previously. You’re fighting yourself. At least two of you, maybe more.”

Both Mianaais blinked and shifted their stances a fraction of a millimeter, in a way I recognized. I’d seen myself do it, in Ors, when communications cut out. Another of those communications-blocking boxes—part of Anaander Mianaai, at least, must have worried about what I might say, must have been waiting with her hand on the switch. I wondered how far the effect reached, and which Mianaai had triggered it, trying, too late, to hide my revelation from herself. Wondered what that must have been like, knowing that facing me this way could only lead to disaster, and yet obligated by the nature of her struggle with herself to do so. The thought amused me briefly.