by Ann Leckie
“I’m sorry,” I said, into the tense silence that greeted her observation. “I know that even if I could tell you for certain that it wasn’t me, that wouldn’t help.”
“It wasn’t you,” she said. “It wasn’t in Surimto. But you’re right, it doesn’t help.” She shoved her chair back, looked at Grandfather. “Excuse me,” she said. “Things to do.” Grandfather gestured permission to go, and she left. As she went out the kitchen door, someone else came in. She was in her twenties, one of the people I’d seen under the arbor the day we’d arrived. The lines of her face suggested she was genetically related to Grandfather, though her skin was darker. Her eyes and her tightly curled hair that she’d twisted and bound with a bright green scarf were lighter. And by the set of her shoulders, and the frozen silence that descended when she’d entered, she was who I’d come to see.
I rose. “Miss Queter,” I said, and bowed. She said nothing, did not move. “I want to thank you for deciding not to kill me.” Silence, still, from Grandfather, from the others at the table. I wondered if the hallways outside were full of eavesdroppers, or if everyone else had fled, hiding anywhere that might be safe until I left. “Will you sit?” She didn’t answer.
“Sit, Queter,” said Grandfather.
“I won’t,” said Queter, and folded her arms and stared at me. “I could have killed you, Radchaai. You’d probably have deserved it, but Raughd deserved it more.”
I gestured resignation and reseated myself. “She threatened your sister, I take it?” An incredulous look told me my mistake. “Your brother. Is he all right?”
She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head. “The rescuer of the helpless.” Her voice was acid.
“Queter,” warned Grandfather.
I raised a gloved hand, palm out—the gesture would have been rude, to most Radchaai, but meant something else to a Valskaayan. Hold. Be calm. “It’s all right, Grandfather. I know justice when I hear it.” A small, incredulous noise from one of the others sitting at the table, quickly silenced. Everyone pretended not to have noticed it. “Citizen Raughd had a taste for tormenting your brother. She’s quite shrewd in some ways. She knew what lengths you’d go to, to protect him. She also knew that you have some technical ability. That if she managed to filch some explosives from a construction site and provided you with the instructions for how to use them, you’d be able to follow them. She didn’t, I suspect, realize that you might come up with ways to improve their use. The scrap metal was your idea, wasn’t it?” I had no evidence for that, beyond the repeated signs that Raughd rarely thought things through. Queter’s expression didn’t change. “And she didn’t realize you might decide to use them on her instead of me.”
Head still tilted, expression still sardonic, she said, “Don’t you want to know how I did it?”
I smiled. “Most esteemed Queter. For nearly all of my life I have been among people who were very firmly convinced that the universe would be the better for my absence. I doubt very much that you have any surprises for me. Still, it was well done, and if your timing hadn’t been just that smallest bit off, you would have succeeded. Your talents are wasted here.”
“Oh, of course they are.” Her tone became, if possible, even more cutting than before. “There’s no one else here but superstitious savages.” The last words in Radchaai.
“The information you would need to make something like that is not freely available,” I said. “If you’d gone looking for it you would have been denied access, and possibly had Planetary Security looking closely at you. If you attended school here you’d have learned to recite passages of scripture, and some cleaned-up history, and very little more. Raughd herself likely knew no more than that explosives can kill people. You worked the details out yourself.” Had, perhaps, been pondering the question long before Raughd made her move. “Sorting tea leaves and fixing the machines in the manufactory! You must have been bored beyond belief. If you’d ever taken the aptitudes, the assigners would have been sure to send you somewhere your talents were better occupied, and you’d have had no time or opportunity to dream up trouble.” Queter’s lips tightened, and she drew breath as though to reply. “And,” I forestalled her, “you would not have been here to protect your brother.” I gestured, acknowledging the irony of such things.
“Are you here to arrest me?” Queter asked, without moving, her face not betraying the tension that had forced that question into the open. Only the barest hint of it in her voice. Grandfather, and the others around the table, sat still as stone, hardly daring to breathe.
“I am,” I replied.
Queter unfolded her arms. Closed her hands into fists. “You are so civilized. So polite. So brave coming here alone when you know no one here would dare to touch you. So easy to be all those things, when all the power is on your side.”
“You’re right,” I agreed.
“Let’s just go!” Queter crossed her arms again, hands still fists.
“Well,” I replied calmly. “As to that, I walked here, and I think it’s raining by now. Or have I lost count of the days?” No reply, just tense silence from the people around the table, Queter’s determined glare. “And I wanted to ask you what happened. So that I can be sure the weight of this falls where it should.”
“Oh!” cried Queter, at the frayed edge of her patience finally. “You’re the just one, the kind one, are you? But you’re no different from the daughter of the house.” She lapsed, there, into Radchaai. “All of you! You take what you want at the end of a gun, you murder and rape and steal, and you call it bringing civilization. And what is civilization, to you, but us being properly grateful to be murdered and raped and stolen from? You said you knew justice when you heard it. Well, what is your justice but you allowed to treat us as you like, and us condemned for even attempting to defend ourselves?”
“I won’t argue,” I said. “What you say is true.”
Queter blinked, hesitated. Surprised, I thought, to hear me say so. “But you’ll grant us justice from on high, will you? You’ll bring salvation? Are you here for us to fall at your feet and sing your praise? But we know what your justice is, we know what your salvation is, whatever face you put on it.”
“I can’t bring you justice, Queter. I can, however, bring you personally into the presence of the district magistrate so that you can explain to her why you did what you did. It won’t change things for you. But you knew from the moment Raughd Denche told you what she wanted that there would be no other ending to this, not for you. The daughter of the house was too convinced of her own cleverness to have realized what that would mean.”
“And what good will that do, Radchaai?” asked Queter, defiant. “Don’t you know we’re dishonest and deceitful? Resentful where we should be docile and grateful? That what intelligence we superstitious savages have is mere cunning? Obviously, I would lie. I might even tell a lie you created for me, because you hate the daughter of the house. And me in particular. In the strikes—your pet Samirend will have told you of the strikes?” I gestured acknowledgment. “She’ll have told you how she and her cousins nobly educated us, made us aware of the injustice we suffered, taught us how to organize and induced us to act? Because we could not possibly have done those things ourselves.”
“She herself,” I said, “was reeducated afterward, and as a result can’t speak directly about it. Citizen Fosyf, on the other hand, told me the story in such terms.”
“Did she,” answered Queter, not a question. “And did she tell you that my mother died during those strikes? But no, she’ll have spoken of how kind she is to us, and how gentle she was, not bringing in soldiers to shoot us all as we sat there.”
Queter could not have been more than ten when it had happened. “I can’t promise the district magistrate will listen,” I said. “I can only give you the opportunity to speak.”
“And then what?” asked Grandfather. “What then, Soldier? From a child I was taught to forgive and forget, but it’s difficult to forget these things, the lo
ss of parents, of children and grandchildren.” Her expression was unchanged, blank determination, but her voice broke slightly at that last. “And we are all of us only human. We can only forgive so much.”
“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place. With Queter’s help I can remove Raughd from this place, permanently. I will try to do more if I can.”
“Really?” asked another person at the table, who had been silent till now. “Fair pay? Can you do that, Soldier?”
“Pay at all!” added Queter. “Decent food you don’t have to go in debt for.”
“A priest,” someone suggested. “A priest for us, and a priest for the Recalcitrants, there are some over on the next estate.”
“They’re called teachers,” Grandfather said. “Not priests. How many times have I said so?” And Recalcitrant was an insult. But before I could say that, Grandfather said to me, “You won’t be able to keep such promises. You won’t be able to keep Queter safe and healthy.”
“That’s why I make no promises,” I said, “and Queter may come out of this better than we fear. I will do what I can, though it may not be much.”
“Well,” said Grandfather after a few moments more of silence. “Well. I suppose we’ll have to give you supper, Radchaai.”
“If you would be so kind, Grandfather,” I said.
17
Queter and I walked to Fosyf’s house before the sun rose, while the air was still damp and smelling of wet soil, Queter striding impatiently, her back stiff, her arms crossed, repeatedly drawing ahead of me and then pausing for me to catch up, as though she were eager to reach her destination and I was inconsiderately delaying her. The fields, the mountains, were shadowed and silent. Queter was not in a mood to talk. I drew breath and sang, in a language I was sure no one here understood.
Memory is an event horizon
What’s caught in it is gone but it’s always there.
It was the song Tisarwat’s Bos had sung, in the soldiers’ mess. Oh, tree! Bo Nine had been singing it to herself just now, above, on the Station.
“Well, that one’s escaped,” said Queter, a meter ahead of me on the road, not looking back at me.
“And will again,” I replied.
She paused, waited for me to catch up. Still didn’t turn her head. “You lied, of course,” she said, and began walking again. “You won’t let me speak to the district magistrate, and no one will believe what I have to say. But you didn’t bring soldiers to the house, so I suppose that’s something. Still, no one will believe what I have to say. And I’ll be gone through Security or dead, if there’s even any difference, but my brother will still be here. And so will Raughd.” She spat, after saying the name. “Will you take him away?”
“Who?” The question took me by surprise, so that I hardly understood it. “Your brother?” We were still speaking Delsig.
“Yes!” Impatient, still angry. “My brother.”
“I don’t understand.” The sky had paled and brightened, but where we walked was still shadowed. “Is this something you’re afraid I’ll do, or something you want?” She didn’t answer. “I’m a soldier, Queter, I live on a military ship.” I didn’t have the time or the resources to take care of children, not even mostly grown ones.
Queter gave an exasperated cry. “Don’t you have an apartment somewhere, and servants? Don’t you have retainers? Don’t you have dozens of people to see to your every need, to make your tea and straighten your collar and strew flowers in your path? Surely there’s room for one more.”
“Is that something your brother wants?” And after a few moments with no reply, “Would your grandfather not be grieved to lose both of you?”
She stopped, then, suddenly, and wheeled to face me. “You think you know about us but you don’t understand anything.”
I thought of telling her that it was she who did not understand. That I was not responsible for every distressed child on the planet. That none of this had been my fault. She stood there tense, frowning, waiting for me to answer. “Do you blame your brother? For not fighting harder, for putting you in the position you’re in?”
“Oh!” she cried. “Of course! It’s nothing to do with the fact that your civilized self brought Raughd Denche down here. You knew enough about the daughter of the house to realize what had happened, you knew enough about her to realize what she was doing to us. But it wasn’t serious enough for you to stir yourself until some Radchaai nearly got killed. And there won’t be anything for you to worry about once you’re gone and the daughter of the house and her mother are still here.”
“I didn’t cause this, Queter. And I can’t fix every injustice I find, no matter how much I’d like to.”
“No, of course you can’t.” Her contempt was acid. “You can only fix the ones that really inconvenience you.” She turned, and began walking again.
If I were given to swearing, I would have sworn now. “How old is your brother?”
“Sixteen,” she said. The sarcasm returned to her voice. “You could rescue him from this terrible place and bring him to real civilization.”
“Queter, I only have my ship and some temporary quarters on Athoek Station. I have soldiers, and they see to my needs and even make my tea, but I don’t have a retinue. And your idea about the flowers is charming, but it would make a terrible mess. I don’t have a place in my household for your brother. But I will ask him if he wants to leave here, and if he does, I’ll do my best for him.”
“You won’t.” She didn’t turn as she spoke, just continued walking. “Do you even know,” she said, and I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was about to cry, “can you even imagine what it’s like to know that nothing you can do will make any difference? That nothing you can do will protect the people you love? That anything you could possibly ever do is less than worthless?”
I could. “And yet you do it anyway.”
“Superstitious savage that I am.” Definitely crying now. “Nothing I do will make any difference. But I will make you look at it. I will make you see what it is you’ve done, and ever after, if you would look away, if you would ever claim to be just, or proper, you’ll have to lie to yourself outright.”
“Most esteemed Queter,” I said, “idealist that you are, young as you are, you can have no idea just how easy it is for people to deceive themselves.” By now the tops of the mountains were bright, and we were nearly over the ridge.
“I’ll do it anyway.”
“You will,” I agreed, and we walked the rest of the way in silence.
We stopped at the smaller house first. Queter refused tea or food, stood by the door, arms still crossed. “No one at the main house will be awake yet,” I told her. “If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’d like to dress and see to a few things, and then we’ll go up to the house and wait for the magistrate.” She lifted an elbow and a shoulder, conveying her lack of concern over what I did or didn’t do.
Sword of Atagaris was in Captain Hetnys’s sitting room, still facedown on the tabletop on the floor. Its back was covered with the thick black shell of a corrective. I squatted down beside it. “Sword of Atagaris,” I said quietly, in case it should be asleep, and not wanting to disturb Captain Hetnys.
“Fleet Captain,” it replied.
“Are you comfortable? Is there anything you need?”
I thought it hesitated just the smallest moment before replying. “I’m in no pain, Fleet Captain, and Kalr Five and Kalr Eight have been very helpful.” Another pause. “Thank you.”
“Please let either of them know if you need anything. I’m going to get dressed, now, and go up to the main house. I think it very likely we’ll want to leave before tomorrow. Do you think we’ll be able to move you?”
“I believe so, Fleet Captain.” That pause again. “Fleet Captain. Sir. If I may ask a question.”
“Of course, Ship.”<
br />
“Why did you call the doctor?”
I had acted without thinking much about why. Had only done what had, at the moment, seemed to be the right and obvious thing to do. “Because I didn’t think you wanted to be too far from your captain. And I see no reason to waste ancillaries.”
“With all respect, sir, unless the gates open soon, this system only has a limited number of specialized correctives. And I do have a few backups in storage.”
Backups. Human beings in suspension waiting to die. “Would you have preferred I left this segment to be disposed of?”
Three seconds of silence. Then, “No, Fleet Captain. I would not.”
The inner door opened, and Captain Hetnys came out, half dressed, looking as though she’d just woken. “Fleet Captain,” she said. Taken somewhat aback, I thought.
“I was just checking on Sword of Atagaris, Captain. I’m sorry if I woke you.” I rose. “I’m going up to the main house to meet with the district magistrate as soon as I’ve dressed and had something to eat.”
“Sir. Did you find the person who did this?” Captain Hetnys asked.
“I did.” I would not elaborate.
But she didn’t ask for details. “I’ll be down myself in a few minutes, Fleet Captain, with your indulgence.”
“Of course, Captain.”
Queter was still standing by the door when I came back downstairs. Sirix sat at the table, with a piece of bread and a bowl of tea in front of her. “Good morning, Fleet Captain,” she said when she saw me. “I’d like to come up to the house with you.” Queter scoffed.
“Whatever you like, Citizen.” I took my own piece of bread, poured myself a bowl of tea. “We’re only waiting for Captain Hetnys to be ready.”
Captain Hetnys came down the stairs a few minutes later. She said nothing to Sirix, looked quickly at Queter and then away. Came over to the sideboard to pour herself some tea.
“Kalr Eight will stay behind to look after Sword of Atagaris,” I said, and then, to Queter, in Radchaai, “Citizen, are you sure you don’t want anything?”