Ancillary Justice (21 page)

Near my own weapons storage, I cleaned my twenty guns, so I could stow them, along with their ammunition. In each of my lieutenants’ quarters I stripped the linen from their beds. The officers of Amaat, Toren, Etrepa, and Bo were all well into breakfast, chattering, lively. The captain ate with the decade commanders, a quieter, more sober conversation. One of my shuttles approached me, four Bo lieutenants returning from leave, strapped into their seats, unconscious. They would be unhappy when they woke.

“Ship,” said Lieutenant Dariet, “will Lieutenant Awn be joining us for breakfast?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” I said, with One Esk Six’s voice. In the bath I poured water over Lieutenant Awn, who stood, eyes closed, on the grating over the drain. Her breathing was even, but her heart rate was slightly elevated, and she showed other signs of stress. I was fairly sure her tardiness was deliberate, designed to give her the bath to herself. Not because she couldn’t handle Lieutenant Issaaia—she certainly could. But because she was still distressed from the past days’ events.

“When?” asked Lieutenant Issaaia, frowning just slightly.

“About five minutes, Lieutenant.”

A chorus of groans went up. “Now, Lieutenants,” Lieutenant Issaaia admonished. “She
is
our senior. And we should all have patience with her right now. Such a sudden return, when we all thought the Divine would
never
agree to her leaving Ors.”

“Found out she wasn’t such a good choice, eh?” sneered the lieutenant at Lieutenant Issaaia’s elbow. She was close to Lieutenant Issaaia in more than one sense. None of them
knew what had happened, and couldn’t ask. And I, of course, had said nothing.

“Not likely,” said Lieutenant Dariet, her voice a shade louder than usual. She was angry. “Not after five years.” I took the tea flask, turned from the counter, went over to where Lieutenant Dariet stood, and poured eleven milliliters of tea into the nearly full bowl she held.

“You like Lieutenant Awn, of course,” said Lieutenant Issaaia. “We all do. But she doesn’t have
breeding
. She wasn’t born for this. She works so very hard at what comes naturally to us. I would hardly be surprised if five years was all she could take without cracking.” She looked at the empty bowl in her gloved hand. “I need more tea.”

“You think you’d have done a better job, in Awn’s place,” observed Lieutenant Dariet.

“I don’t trouble myself with hypotheticals,” answered Lieutenant Issaaia. “The facts are what they are. There’s a reason Awn was senior Esk lieutenant long before any of us got here. Obviously Awn has some ability or she’d never have done as well as she has, but she’s reached her limit.” A quiet murmur of agreement. “Her parents are
cooks
,” Lieutenant Issaaia continued. “I’m sure they’re excellent at what they do. I’m sure she would manage a kitchen admirably.”

Three lieutenants snickered. Lieutenant Dariet said, her voice tight and edged, “Really?” Finally dressed, uniform as perfect as I could make it, Lieutenant Awn stepped out of the dressing room, into the corridor, five steps away from the decade room.

Lieutenant Issaaia noticed Lieutenant Dariet’s mood with a familiar ambivalence. Lieutenant Issaaia was senior, but Lieutenant Dariet’s house was older, wealthier than Lieutenant Issaaia’s, and Lieutenant Dariet’s branch of that house
were direct clients to a prominent branch of Mianaai itself. Theoretically that didn’t matter here. Theoretically.

All the data I had received from Lieutenant Issaaia that morning had had an underlying taste of resentment, which grew momentarily stronger. “Managing a kitchen is a perfectly respectable job,” said Lieutenant Issaaia. “But I can only imagine how difficult it must be, to be bred to be a servant and instead of taking an assignment that truly suits, to be thrust into a position of such authority. Not everyone is cut out to be an officer.” The door opened, and Lieutenant Awn stepped in just as the last sentence left Lieutenant Issaaia’s mouth.

Silence engulfed the decade room. Lieutenant Issaaia looked calm and unconcerned, but felt abashed. She had clearly not intended—would never have dared—to say such things openly to Lieutenant Awn.

Only Lieutenant Dariet spoke. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Awn didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her, but went to the corner of the room where the decade shrine sat, with its small figure of Toren and bowl of burning incense. Lieutenant Awn made her obeisance to the figure and then looked at the bowl with a slight frown. As before, her muscles were tense, her heart rate elevated, and I knew she guessed at the content or at least the drift of the conversation before she had entered, knew who it was who wasn’t cut out to be an officer.

She turned. “Good morning, Lieutenants. I apologize for having kept you waiting.” And launched without any other preamble into the morning prayer. “The flower of justice is peace…” The others joined, and when they were finished Lieutenant Awn went to her place at the head of the table, sat.
Before the others had time to settle themselves, I had tea and breakfast in front of her.

I served the others, and Lieutenant Awn took a sip of her tea and began to eat.

Lieutenant Dariet picked up her utensil. “It’s good to have you back.” Her voice was just slightly edged, only barely managing to conceal her anger.

“Thank you,” said Lieutenant Awn, and took another bite of fish.

“I still need tea,” said Lieutenant Issaaia. The rest of the table was tense and hushed, watching. “The quiet is nice, but perhaps there’s been a decline in efficiency.”

Lieutenant Awn chewed, swallowed, took another drink of tea. “Pardon?”

“You’ve managed to silence One Esk,” explained Lieutenant Issaaia, “but…” She raised her empty bowl.

At that moment I was behind her with the flask, and poured, filling the bowl.

Lieutenant Awn raised one gloved hand, gesturing toward the mootness of Lieutenant Issaaia’s point. “I haven’t silenced One Esk.” She looked at the segment with the flask and frowned. “Not intentionally, anyway. Go ahead and sing if you want, One Esk.” A dozen lieutenants groaned. Lieutenant Issaaia smiled insincerely.

Lieutenant Dariet stopped, a bite of fish halfway to her mouth. “I like the singing. It’s nice. And it’s a distinction.”

“It’s embarrassing is what it is,” said the lieutenant close to Lieutenant Issaaia.

“I don’t find it embarrassing,” said Lieutenant Awn, a bit stiffly.

“Of course not,” said Lieutenant Issaaia, malice concealed in the ambiguity of her words. “Why so quiet, then, One?”

“I’ve been busy, Lieutenant,” I answered. “And I haven’t wanted to disturb Lieutenant Awn.”

“Your singing doesn’t disturb me, One,” said Lieutenant Awn. “I’m sorry you thought it did. Please, sing if you want.”

Lieutenant Issaaia raised an eyebrow. “An apology? And a
please
? That’s a bit much.”

“Courtesy,” said Lieutenant Dariet, her voice uncharacteristically prim, “is always proper, and always beneficial.”

Lieutenant Issaaia smirked. “Thank you, Mother.”

Lieutenant Awn said nothing.

Four and a half hours after breakfast, the shuttle bearing those four Second Bo lieutenants home from their leave docked.

They’d been drinking for three days, and had continued right up to the moment they left Shis’urna Station. The first of them through the lock staggered slightly, and then closed her eyes. “Medic,” she breathed.

“They expect you,” I said through the segment of One Bo I’d placed there. “Do you need help onto the lift?”

The lieutenant made a feeble attempt to wave my offer away, and moved off slowly down the corridor, one shoulder against the wall for support.

I boarded the shuttle, kicking off past the boundary of my artificially generated gravity—the shuttle was too small to have its own. Two of the officers, still drunk themselves, were trying to wake the fourth, passed out cold in her seat. The pilot—the most junior of the Bo officers—sat stiff and apprehensive. I thought at first her discomfort was due to the reek of spilled arrack and vomit—thankfully the former had apparently been spilled onto the lieutenants themselves, on Shis’urna Station, and nearly all of the latter had gone into the appropriate
receptacles—but then I looked (One Bo looked) toward the stern and saw three Anaander Mianaais sitting silent and impassive in the rear seats. Not
there
, to me. She would have boarded at Shis’urna Station, quietly. Told the pilot to say nothing to me. The others had, I suspected, been too intoxicated to notice her. I thought of her asking me, on the planet, when she had last visited me. Of my inexplicable and reflexive lie. The real last time had been a good deal like this.

“My lord,” I said when all the Bo lieutenants were out of earshot. “I’ll notify the hundred captain.”

“No,” said one Anaander. “Your Var deck is empty.”

“Yes, my lord,” I acknowledged.

“I’ll stay there while I’m on board.” Nothing further, no why or how long. Or when I could tell the captain what I was doing. I was obliged to obey Anaander Mianaai, even over my own captain, but I rarely had an order from one without the knowledge of the other. It was uncomfortable.

I sent segments of One Esk to retrieve One Var from the hold, started one section of Var deck warming. The three Anaander Mianaais declined my offer of assistance with their luggage, carried their things down to Var.

This had happened before, at Valskaay. My lower decks had been mostly empty, because many of my troops had been out of the hold and working. She had stayed on the Esk deck that time. What had she wanted then, what had she done?

To my dismay I found my thoughts slipping around the answer, which remained vague, invisible. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all.

Between the Esk and Var decks was direct access to my brain. What had she done, at Valskaay, that I couldn’t remember, and what was she preparing to do now?

Further south the snow and ice became impermanent, though it was still cold by non-Nilt standards. Nilters regard the equatorial region as a sort of tropical paradise, where grain can actually grow, where the temperature can easily exceed eight or nine degrees C. Most of Nilt’s large cities are on or near the equatorial ring.

The same is true of the planet’s one claim to any sort of fame—the glass bridges.

These are approximately five-meter-wide ribbons of black hanging in gentle catenaries across trenches nearly as wide as they are deep—dimensions measured in kilometers. No cables, no piers, no trusses. Just the arc of black attached to each cliff face. Fantastic arrangements of colored glass coils and rods hang from the bottoms of the bridges, sometimes projecting sideways.

The bridges themselves are, according to all observations, also made of glass, though glass could never possibly withstand the sort of stress these bridges do—even their own weight should be too much for them, suspended as they are
with nothing for support. There are no rails or handholds, just the drop, and at the bottom, kilometers down, a cluster of thick-walled tubes, each one just a meter and a half wide, empty and smooth-walled. These are made of the same material as the bridges. No one knows what the bridges and the tubes beneath them were for, or who built them. They were here when humans first colonized Nilt.

Theories abound, each one less likely than the one before. Inter-dimensional beings feature prominently in many of them—these either created or shaped humanity for its own purposes, or left a message for humans to decipher for obscure reasons of their own. Or they were evil, bent on destruction of all life. The bridges were, somehow, part of their plan.

Another whole subfield claims the bridges were built by humans—some ancient, long-lost, fantastically advanced civilization that either died out (slowly, pathetically; or spectacularly as the result of some catastrophic mistake) or moved on to a higher level of existence. Advocates of this sort of theory often make the additional claim that Nilt is, in reality, the birthplace of humans. Nearly everywhere I’ve been, popular wisdom has it that the location of humanity’s original planet is unknown, mysterious. In fact it isn’t, as anyone who troubles to read on the subject will discover, but it
is
very, very,
very
far away from nearly anywhere, and not a tremendously interesting place. Or at the very least, not nearly as interesting as the enchanting idea that your people are not newcomers to their homes but in fact only recolonized the place they had belonged from the beginning of time. One meets this claim anywhere one finds a remotely human-habitable planet.

The bridge outside Therrod wasn’t much of a tourist attraction. Most of the jewel-bright arabesques of glass had
shattered over thousands of years, leaving it nearly plain. And Therrod is still too far north for non-Nilters to endure comfortably. Offworld visitors generally confine themselves to the better-preserved bridges on the equator, buy a bov-hair blanket guaranteed hand-spun and handwoven by masters of the craft in the unbearably cold reaches of the world (though these are almost certainly turned out on machines, by the dozen, a few kilometers from the gift shop), choke down a few fetid swallows of fermented milk, and return home to regale their friends and associates with tales of their adventure.

All this I learned within a few minutes of knowing I would need to visit Nilt to achieve my aim.

Therrod sat on a broad river, chunks of green-and-white ice bobbing and crashing in its current, the first boats of the season already moored at the docks. On the opposite side of the city, the dark slash of the bridge’s huge trough made a definitive stop to the straggling edge of houses. The southern edge of the city was flier-parks, then a wide complex of blue-and-yellow-painted buildings that was, by the look of it, a medical facility, one that must have been the largest of its kind in the area. It was surrounded by squares of lodgings and food shops, and swaths of houses, bright pink, orange, yellow, red, in stripes and zigzags and crosshatches.

We had flown half the day. I might have flown all night, I was capable of it, though it would have been unpleasant. But I saw no need for haste. I set down in the first empty space I found, told Seivarden curtly to get out, and did so myself. I shouldered my pack, paid the parking fee, disabled the flier as I had at Strigan’s, and set off toward the city, not looking to see if Seivarden followed.