Ancillary Sword (21 page)

Basnaaid blinked, began just barely to frown, but stopped herself. It might have been the idea of my having read her poetry that brought on the frown, or it may have been the tension in Lieutenant Tisarwat, in her voice, where before she
had been relaxed and smiling. “I’m glad she didn’t throw that in my face.”

“She never would,” said Tisarwat, her voice still intense.

“Lieutenant.” Basnaaid put her bowl of tea down on the makeshift table beside her seat. “I meant what I said that day. And I wouldn’t be here, except it’s important. I hear it’s the fleet captain’s doing that the Undergarden is being repaired.”

“Y…” Tisarwat reconsidered the simple
yes
she’d been about to give as not entirely politic. “It is, of course, entirely at the order of Station Administrator Celar, Horticulturist, but the fleet captain has had a hand in it, yes.”

Basnaaid gestured acknowledgment, perfunctory. “The lake in the Gardens above—Station can’t see the supports that are holding that water up and keeping it from flooding the Undergarden. It’s supposed to be inspected regularly, but I don’t think that’s happening. And I can’t say anything to the chief horticulturist. It’s a cousin of hers who’s supposed to do it, and the last time I said something there was a lot of noise about me minding my own business and how dare I cast aspersions.” And likely if she went over the chief horticulturist’s head and straight to Station Administrator Celar, she’d find herself in difficulties. Which might be worth it if the station administrator would listen, but there were no guarantees there.

“Horticulturist!” Tisarwat exclaimed, just managing, with difficulty, not to shout her eagerness to help. “I’ll take care of it! All it wants is some diplomacy.”

Basnaaid blinked, taken a bit aback. “I don’t want… please understand, I really don’t want to be asking the fleet captain for favors. I wouldn’t be here, except it’s so dangerous. If those supports were to fail…”

“Fleet Captain Breq won’t be involved at all,” said Tisarwat,
solemnly. Inwardly ecstatic. “Have you mentioned this to Citizen Piat?”

“She was there when I brought it up the first time. Not that it did any good. Lieutenant, I know that you and Piat have been friendly these past several days. And I don’t mean to criticize her…” She trailed off, looking for a way to say what she wanted to say.

“But,” said Tisarwat into the silence, “generally she doesn’t seem to care much about her job. Half the time Raughd is hanging around distracting her, and the other half she’s moping. But Raughd has been downwell for the past four or five days, and if Fleet Captain Breq has anything to say about it, she’s not coming back up anytime soon. I think you’re going to see a difference in Piat. I think,” she continued, “that she’s been made to feel that she’s not capable. That her own judgment is unreliable. I think she could use your support, at work.”

Basnaaid tilted her head and frowned further, looked intently at Tisarwat as though she’d seen something completely, puzzlingly unexpected. “Lieutenant, how old
are
you?”

Sudden confusion, in Tisarwat. Guilt, self-loathing, a thrill of… something like triumph or gratification. “Horticulturist. I’m seventeen.” A lie that wasn’t exactly a lie.

“You didn’t seem seventeen just now,” said Basnaaid. “Did Fleet Captain Breq bring you along so you could find the weaknesses of the daughters of the station’s most prominent citizens?”

“No,” Tisarwat said, openly mournful. Inwardly despairing. “I think she brought me along because she thought I’d get into trouble if she wasn’t watching me.”

“If you’d told me that five minutes ago,” said Basnaaid, “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Downwell, on the path through the woods by the lake, the sky had brightened to a more vivid blue. The brightness in the east had intensified, leaving the peak blocking the sun a jagged black silhouette. Sirix still walked beside me, silent. Patient. When she had not struck me as a patient person, except by the necessity of her situation, unable as she was to express anger without considerable discomfort, likely some of it physical. So, almost certainly a pose. “You’re as good as a concert, Fleet Captain,” she said, slightly mocking, confirming my suspicion. “Do the songs you’re always humming have anything to do with what you’re thinking about, or is it random?”

“It depends.” I had been humming the song the Kalr had been singing the day before, in Medical. “Sometimes it’s just a song I recently heard. It’s an old habit. I apologize for annoying you.”

“I didn’t say I was annoyed. Though I wouldn’t have thought cousins of the Lord of the Radch cared much if they were annoying.”

“I didn’t say I would stop,” I pointed out. “Do you think all that happened—transportees being sold off, I mean—and the Lord of the Radch didn’t become aware of it?”

“If she’d known,” Sirix said, “if she’d truly understood what was happening, it would have been like Ime.” Where the system administration had been entirely corrupt, had murdered and enslaved citizens, nearly started a war with the alien Rrrrrr until the matter had been brought directly to Anaander Mianaai’s attention. Or at least, the attention of the right part of Anaander Mianaai. But Sirix didn’t know that part of the story. “The news would have been everywhere, and the people involved would have been held accountable.”

I wondered when Anaander Mianaai had become aware
of it, of people, potential citizens, being sold away for profit here. It would not have surprised me at all to discover that part of Anaander knew, or that a part of her had continued or restarted it, hidden from the rest of herself. The question then became, which Anaander was it, and what use was she making of it? I couldn’t help but think of Anaander stripping ships of their ancillaries. Ships like
Mercy of Kalr.
Troop carriers like
Justice of Ente
, which Skaaiat Awer had served on. Human soldiers might not be relied on to fight for the side that wanted them replaced. Ancillaries, on the other hand, were just extensions of their ship, would do exactly what a ship was ordered to make them do. The Anaander who objected to her own dismantling of Radchaai military force might well find those bodies useful.

“You disagree,” Sirix said into my silence. “But isn’t justice the whole reason for civilization?”

And propriety, and benefit. “So if there is injustice here, it is only because the Lord of the Radch isn’t sufficiently present.”

“Can you imagine Radchaai, in the normal course of events, practicing indentured slavery, or selling indentures away, like the Xhai did?”

Behind us, in the building where we stayed, Captain Hetnys was likely eating breakfast, attended by a human body slaved to the warship
Sword of Atagaris
. One of dozens just like it. I myself had been one of thousands of such, before the rest of me had been destroyed. Sirix didn’t know that, but she surely knew of the existence of other, still surviving troop carriers, still crewed by ancillaries. And over the ridge lived dozens of Valskaayans, they or their parents or grandparents transported here for no better reason than to clear a planet for Radchaai occupation, and to provide cheap labor here.
Sirix herself was descended from transportees. “Ancillaries and transportees are of course an entirely different sort of thing,” I said drily.

“Well, my lord has stopped that, hasn’t she?” I said nothing. She continued, “So the suspension failure rate among Valskaayan transportees seems high to you?”

“It does.” I’d stored the thousands of bodies I’d once had in suspension pods. I had long, extensive experience with suspension failures. “Now I’m curious to know if the traffic in transportees stopped altogether, a hundred fifty years ago, or if it just seemed to.”

“I wish my lord had come with you,” Sirix said. “So she could see this for herself.”

Above us, in the Undergarden, Bo Nine came into the room where Tisarwat and Basnaaid sat drinking tea. “Sir,” said Bo, “there’s a difficulty.”

Tisarwat blinked. Swallowed her tea. Gestured Bo to explain.

“Sir, I went up to level one to get your br… your lunch, sir.” I had left instructions for the household to purchase as much of its food (and other supplies) as possible in the Undergarden itself. “There are a lot of people around the tea shop right now. They’re… they’re angry, sir, about the repairs the fleet captain has ordered.”

“Angry!” Tisarwat was taken completely aback. “At maybe having water, and light? And
air
?”

“I don’t know, sir. But there are more and more people coming to the tea shop, and nobody leaving. Not to speak of.”

Tisarwat stared up at Bo Nine. “But you’d think they’d be
grateful
!”

“I don’t know, sir.” Though I could tell, from what Ship showed me, that she agreed with her lieutenant.

Tisarwat looked at Basnaaid, still sitting across from her. Was suddenly struck by something that filled her with chagrin. “No,” she said, though in answer to what I couldn’t tell. “No.” She looked up again at Bo Nine. “What would the fleet captain do?”

“Something only Fleet Captain would do,” said Bo. And then, remembering Basnaaid’s presence, “Your indulgence, sir.”

Ship
, Tisarwat messaged silently,
can Fleet Captain give me some help?

“Fleet Captain Breq is in mourning, Lieutenant,” came the answer in her ear. “I can pass on messages of condolence or greeting. But it would be most improper of her to involve herself in this just now.”

Downwell, Sirix was saying, “Everyone here is too involved. The Lord of the Radch can be above all that, but she can’t be here herself. But you have your authority from her personally, don’t you?”

In the Undergarden, Lieutenant Tisarwat said, “What was this morning’s cast, in the temple?”

“No Gain Without Loss,” replied Bo Nine. Of course the associated verses were more complicated than that, but that was the essence of it.

Downwell, under the trees by the lake, Sirix continued. “Do you know, Emer said you were like ice that day.” The woman who ran the tea shop, in the Undergarden, that was. “That translator shot right in front of you, dying under your hands, blood everywhere, and you collected and dispassionate, not a sign of any of it in your voice or your face. She said you turned around and asked her for tea.”

“I hadn’t had breakfast yet.”

Sirix laughed, a short, sharp
hah
. “She said she thought the
bowl would freeze solid when you touched it.” Then, noticing, “You’re distracted again.”

“Yes.” I stopped walking. In the Undergarden, Tisarwat had come to some conclusion. She was saying, to Bo,
Escort Horticulturist Basnaaid back to the Gardens
. Downwell by the lake, I said to Sirix, “I’m very sorry, Citizen. I find I have a lot to think about right now.”

“No doubt.”

We walked about thirty meters in silence (Tisarwat strode out of our Undergarden rooms and down the corridor), and then Sirix said, “I hear the daughter of the house left in a huff last night, and hasn’t come back.”

“So Eight is giving you the house gossip,” I replied, as in the Undergarden Tisarwat began the climb to level one. “She must like you. Did she say why Raughd left?”

Sirix raised a skeptical eyebrow. “She did not. But anyone with eyes can guess. Anyone with any sense would know from the start she was a fool to set her sights on you like she did.”

“You dislike Raughd, I think.”

Sirix exhaled, short and sharp. Scoffing. “She’s always in the offices of the Gardens. Her favorite thing is to pick someone to make fun of and get everyone else to laugh while she does it. Half the time it’s Assistant Director Piat. But it’s all right, you see, because she’s only joking! Me being arrested for something she did is really just an extra.”

“You figured that out, did you?” Upwell, in the Undergarden, Bo Nine helped Basnaaid over the pieces of shipping crate that held the level four section door open. Tisarwat climbed toward level one.

By the lake, Sirix gave me a look that communicated her contempt for the idea that she might not have known about
Raughd’s involvement. “She probably flew into town. Or possibly she went to the field workers’ house to roust some poor Valskaayan out of bed to amuse her.”

I hadn’t stopped to think that in turning Raughd down so coldly I might be inflicting her on someone else. “Amuse her how?”

Another eloquent look. “I doubt there’s much you could do about it just now. Anyone you ask will swear they’re more than happy to gratify the daughter of the house however she likes. How could they do otherwise?”

And likely if she’d come down here without me she’d have gone straight there, as the easiest available source of amusement and gratification. Doubtless a version of amusement and gratification that was common among the tea-growing households here. I might find some way to move Raughd somewhere else, or prevent her from doing the things she did, but the same things were likely happening in dozens of other places, to other people.

Upwell, in the level one concourse outside the tea shop, Tisarwat stepped up onto a bench. A few people outside the tea shop had noticed her arrival, and moved away, but most were intent on someone speaking inside the shop. She took a deep breath. Resolved. Certain. Whatever it was she had decided on was a relief to her, a source of desire and anticipation, but there was something about it that troubled me. “Ship,” I said silently, walking beside Sirix.

“I see it, Fleet Captain,”
Mercy of Kalr
replied. “But I think she’s all right.”

“Mention it to Medic, please.”

Standing on the bench, Tisarwat called out, “Citizens!” It didn’t carry well, and she tried again, pitching her voice higher. “Citizens! Is there a problem?”

Silence descended. And then someone near the tea shop door said something in Raswar I strongly suspected was an obscenity.

“It’s just me,” Tisarwat continued. “I heard there was a problem.”

The crowd in the tea shop shifted, and someone came out, walked over to where Tisarwat stood. “Where are your soldiers, Radchaai?”

Tisarwat had been so sure of herself coming here, but now she was suddenly terrified. “Home washing dishes, Citizen,” she said, managing to keep her fear out of her voice. “Out running errands. I only want to talk. I only want to know what the problem is.”