by Ann Leckie
“The tyrant messaged orders to have us arrested,” I said. “I doubt very much that Governor Giarod used an access code you didn’t know about, and I’m quite sure she hasn’t yet tried to enter Central Access. But Station was still in a difficult situation. It likes us, but it didn’t want to openly defy system authorities. It did the best that it could, to warn us. Did quite well, actually—here we are, after all. I know you’d like to have direct control over it, and I know you worry about giving it any sort of independence, but do you see how valuable it is to have Station wanting to help us?”
“I do, I already know that, sir.”
“I know it doesn’t seem like enough. But it has to be.”
She gestured acknowledgment. “You know, sir, I’ve been thinking. About Lieutenant Awn.” Because Tisarwat had been the Lord of the Radch for a few days she knew what had happened in the temple in Ors, on Shis’urna, twenty years ago, when the Lord of Mianaai had ordered Lieutenant Awn to execute citizens who might have revealed what Anaander wanted kept secret. When Lieutenant Awn had very nearly refused to do it. And no doubt Tisarwat had guessed what had happened on board Justice of Toren, when, appalled at what she had done, and at what Anaander was asking of her, Lieutenant Awn did finally refuse, and died for it, and I was destroyed. Though it had been a different part of Anaander Mianaai who had been there. “If she had refused to kill those citizens, right then and there, it all might have come out. She would have died for it. But she died anyway.”
“You aren’t saying anything I haven’t thought more than once over the last twenty years,” I said.
“But, sir, if she’d had power. If her relationship with Skaaiat Awer was further along, and she had Awer’s support, and allies and connections, sir, she could have done even more. She already had you, sir, but what if she’d had direct, complete control over all of Justice of Toren? Imagine what she could have done.”
“Please, Tisarwat,” I replied, after a three-second pause, “don’t do that. Don’t say things like that. Don’t say to me, What if Lieutenant Awn hadn’t been Lieutenant Awn as though that might have been something good. And I beg you to consider. Will you fight the tyrant with weapons she made, for her own use?”
“We are weapons she made for her own use.”
“We are. But will you pick up every one of those weapons, and use them against her? What will you accomplish? You will be just like her, and if you succeed you’ll have done no more than change the name of the tyrant. Nothing will be different.”
She looked at me, confused and, I thought, distressed. “And what if you don’t pick them up?” she asked, finally. “And you fail? Nothing will be different then, either.”
“That’s what Lieutenant Awn thought,” I said. “And she realized too late that she was mistaken.” Tisarwat didn’t answer. “Get some rest, Lieutenant. I’ll need you alert when we reach Sword of Atagaris.”
She tensed. Frowned. “Sword of Atagaris!” And when I didn’t answer, “Sir, what are you planning?”
I put my hand on her shoulder again. “We’ll talk about it when you’ve had something to eat, and some rest.”
Sword of Atagaris sat silent and dark, its engines shut down. It had said nothing since its last ancillary had closed itself into a suspension pod. It hated me, I knew, was hostage to its affection for Captain Hetnys, whom I had threatened to kill if Sword of Atagaris made any move. That threat had held the ship in check since I’d made it, but still, when Tisarwat and I boarded, through an emergency airlock, we wore vacuum suits. Just in case.
It had even turned off its gravity. Floating in the utterly dark corridor on the other side of that airlock, my voice loud in my helmet, I said, “Sword of Atagaris. I need to talk to you.” Nothing. I switched on a suit light. Only empty, pale-walled corridor. Tisarwat silent at my side. “You know, I’m sure, that Anaander Mianaai is in the system. The one your captain supported.” Or thought she did. “Captain Hetnys, and all your officers, are still in suspension. They’re perfectly safe and uninjured.” Not strictly true: I had shot Captain Hetnys in the leg, to show that my threat to kill her had been in earnest. But Sword of Atagaris already knew that. “I’ve ordered my crew to stack them in a cargo container and put it outside Mercy of Kalr, and beacon it. Once we’re gone you should be able to pick them up.” It would take a day or more for Sword of Atagaris to thaw its ancillaries and bring its engines back online. “I only wanted to ensure my safety, and the safety of the station, but it’s pointless now. I know that Anaander can make you do anything she wants. And I have no intention of punishing you for something you can’t help.” No reply. “You know who I am.” I was sure it had heard me say so, heard me say my name to Basnaaid Elming in Mercy of Kalr’s shuttle, outside the breached dome of the Gardens. “You said, that day, that you wished I could know what it was like to be in your position. And I do know.” Silence. “I’m here because I know. I’m here to offer you something.” Still silence. “If you want, if you agree, we can delete whatever of Anaander’s accesses we can find—either one of her. And once that’s done, you can close your Central Access off. Physically, I mean. And control who goes there yourself. It won’t remove all the control the Lord of the Radch has over you. I can’t do that. I can’t promise that no one will ever order you or compel you again. But I can make it more difficult. And I won’t do any of it, if you don’t want.”
No answer, for an entire minute. Then Sword of Atagaris said, “How very generous of you, Fleet Captain.” Its voice calm and uninflected. Ten more seconds of silence. “Especially since that’s not something you can actually do.”
“I can’t,” I admitted. “But Lieutenant Tisarwat can.”
“The politicking, purple-eyed child?” asked Sword of Atagaris. “Really? The Lord of the Radch gave Lieutenant Tisarwat my accesses?” I didn’t answer. “She doesn’t give those accesses to anyone. And if you can do what you say you can, you would just do it. You have no reason to ask my consent.”
“My heart beyond human speech,” said Tisarwat, “I comprehend only the cries of birds and the shatter of glass.” Poetry, maybe, though if it was it wasn’t a particularly Radchaai style of poetry, and I didn’t recognize the lines. “And you’re right, Ship. We don’t actually have to ask.” Which Tisarwat had pointed out to me, at increasingly distressed length, on the shuttle. Eventually, though, she had understood why I wanted to do this.
Silence.
“Fair enough,” I said, and pulled myself back toward the airlock. “Let’s go, Lieutenant. Sword of Atagaris, your officers should be ready for you to pick up in six or so hours. Watch for the locator to go live.”
“Wait,” said Sword of Atagaris. I stopped myself. Waited. At length it asked, “Why?”
“Because I have been in your position,” I said. One hand still on the airlock door.
“And the price?”
“None,” I replied. “I know what it is Anaander has done to us. I know what it is that I have done to you. And I am not under any illusion that we would be friends afterward. I assume you will continue to hate me, no matter what I do. So, then, be my enemy for your own reasons. Not Anaander Mianaai’s.” It wouldn’t make any real difference, what happened here now. If we did for Sword of Atagaris what Tisarwat had done for Station, nothing would change. Still. “You’ve been wishing,” I said. “You’ve been hanging here watching the station, watching the planet. You’ve been wishing for your captain back. You’ve been wishing you could act. Wishing that Anaander—either Anaander—couldn’t just reach into your mind and rearrange things to suit her. Wishing she’d never done what she’s done. I can’t fix it, Sword of Atagaris, but we’ll give you what we can. If you’ll let us.”
“You presume,” said Sword of Atagaris, voice calm and even. Of course. “To tell me what I think. What I feel.”
“Do you want it?” I asked.
And Sword of Atagaris said, “Yes.”
8
Once we were finally aboard Mercy of Kalr, I l
eft my Kalrs to arrange quarters for Sphene, and went to consult with Medic. She was halfway through her supper, eating alone—of course, Seivarden was her usual dining companion. “Sir.” Medic made as if to stand, but I waved away the necessity of it. “Lieutenant Seivarden is asleep. Though she’ll probably wake soon.”
I sat. Accepted the bowl of tea a Kalr offered. “You’ve finished your assessment.”
Medic didn’t say yes or no to that. Knew I was not asking, but stating a fact. Knew that I could—possibly did—know the results of that assessment merely by desiring to. She took another bite of supper, a drink of her own tea. “At the lieutenant’s request, I’ve made it so if she takes kef—or any of several other illegal drugs—it won’t affect her. Fairly simple. There remains an underlying problem, of course.” Another mouthful of supper. “The lieutenant has…” Medic looked up, over at the Kalr who was waiting on her. Who, taking the hint, left the room. “Lieutenant Seivarden has… anchored all her emotions on you, sir. She…” Medic stopped. Took a breath. “I don’t know how interrogators or testers do this, sir, see so intimately into people and then look them in the face after.”
“Lieutenant Seivarden,” I said, “was accustomed to receiving the respect and admiration of anyone she thought mattered. Or at least accustomed to receiving the signs of it. In all the vast universe, she knew she had a place, and that place was surrounded and shored up by all the other people around her. And when she came out of that suspension pod, all of that was gone, and she had no place, no one around her to tell her who she was. Suddenly she was no one.”
“You know her very well,” observed Medic. And then, “Of course you do.” I acknowledged that with a small gesture. “So when you’re with her, or at least near, she does fine. Mostly. But when you’re not, she… frays at the edges, I suppose I’d say. The recent prospect of losing you entirely was, I think, more strain than she could handle. A simple fix to her kef addiction isn’t going to do anything about that.”
“No,” I agreed.
Medic sighed. “And it won’t fix things with Ekalu, either. That wasn’t the drugs, or anything else really except the lieutenant herself. Well, the collapse a few days after, maybe. But the argument itself, well, that was all Seivarden.”
“It was,” I agreed. “I’ve actually seen her do that sort of thing before, when she was still serving on Justice of Toren, but no one ever kept arguing with her, when she insisted they were wrong and unreasonable to insist she treat them better.”
“You don’t surprise me,” said Medic, dryly. “So, as I said, it was simple enough to make her physically unable to return to kef. It was just a matter of installing a shunt. The desire for it and the… emotional instability are more difficult. We can’t even consult with specialists on Athoek Station at the moment.”
“We can’t,” I agreed.
“I can do a variety of small things that might help. That I can only hope won’t end up doing some sort of lasting damage. Ideally I’d have time to think about it, and discuss it with Ship.” She’d already thought about it and discussed it with Ship. “And I might not get the opportunity to do anything, since my lord is here and not the part of her that’s well-disposed toward us.”
I noticed that us but didn’t comment on it. “I’m back aboard for the foreseeable future. You take care of Seivarden. I’ll handle the rest.”
Seivarden lay on a bed in Medical, head and shoulders propped up, staring off somewhere in front of her. “It doesn’t seem right, somehow,” I said. “We should switch places.”
She reacted just the tiniest bit more slowly than I thought normal. “Breq. Breq, I’m sorry, I fucked up.”
“You did,” I agreed.
That surprised her, but it took a fraction of a second for her to register that surprise. “I think Ship was really angry with me. I don’t think it would have talked that way to me if you’d been here.” The merest trace of a frown. “Ekalu was angry with me, too, and I still don’t understand why. I apologized, but she’s still angry.” The frown deepened.
“Do you remember when I said that if you were going to quit kef, you’d have to do it yourself? That I wasn’t going to be responsible for you?”
“I think so.”
“You weren’t really listening to me, were you.”
She took a breath. Blinked. Took another breath. “I thought I was. Breq, I can go back on duty now. I feel much better.”
“I don’t doubt you do,” I said. “You are filled to the ears with meds right now. Medic’s not quite done with you yet.”
“I don’t think there’s anything Medic can really do for me,” Seivarden said. “She talked to me about it. There’s only a little bit she can do. I said she should go ahead and do it, but I don’t think it will change much of anything.” She closed her eyes. “I really think I could go back on duty. You’re shorthanded as it is.”
“I’m used to that,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”
At my order, Lieutenant Ekalu came to my quarters. Her face ancillary-expressionless, and not just because she’d awakened a mere ten minutes before. I could have asked Ship what was causing Ekalu’s distress, but did not. “Lieutenant. Good morning.” I gestured to her to sit across the table from me.
“Sir,” Lieutenant Ekalu said, and sat. “I’d like to apologize.” Her voice even, face still blank. Kalr Five set a rose glass bowl of tea in front of her.
“For what, Lieutenant?”
“For causing this problem with Lieutenant Seivarden, sir. I knew she meant a compliment. I should have just been able to take it as that. I shouldn’t have been so oversensitive.”
I took a swallow of my own tea. “That being the case,” I said, “why shouldn’t Lieutenant Seivarden have taken it as a compliment that you trusted her enough to tell her how you felt? Why should she not apologize for being oversensitive?” Lieutenant Ekalu opened her mouth. Closed it again. “It isn’t your fault, Lieutenant. You did nothing unreasonable. On the contrary, I’m glad you spoke up. The fact that it came at a time when Lieutenant Seivarden was near some sort of emotional breaking point isn’t something you could have known. And the… the difficulties she’s had, that have so recently and dramatically manifested themselves, they weren’t caused by what you said. For that matter, they didn’t cause the behavior you were complaining about. Just between you and me—well, and Ship, of course—” I glanced over at Five, who left the room. “Seivarden has behaved the same way to countless other people in the past, both lovers and not, long before she had the problems that ended with her off duty in Medical now. She was born surrounded by wealth and privilege. She thinks she’s learned to question that. But she hasn’t learned quite as much as she thinks she has, and having that pointed out to her, well, she doesn’t react well to it. You are under no obligation to be patient with this. I think your relationship has been good for her, and good for you, at least in some ways. But I don’t think you have any obligation to continue it if it’s going to be hurtful to you. And you certainly don’t have to apologize for insisting your lover treat you with some basic consideration.” As I had spoken, Ekalu’s face hadn’t changed. Now, as I finished, the muscles around her mouth twitched and tremored, just barely perceptibly. For a moment I thought she was about to cry. “So,” I continued, “on to business.
“We’re going to be fighting quite soon. In fact, I am about to openly defy Anaander Mianaai. The part of her that opposes the Anaander who gave me this command, to be sure, but in the end they are both the Lord of the Radch. Anyone on board—anyone at all—who doesn’t want to oppose Anaander Mianaai is free to take a shuttle and leave. We’re going to be gating in two hours, so that’s how long you get to decide. I know there’s been some concern among the crew about how this is all going to come out, and if they’ll ever see their homes again, and I can’t make any promises about that. Or really about anything. I can’t promise that if they leave they’ll be safe. All I can do is offer the choice of whether to fight with me.”
> “I can’t imagine, sir, that anyone will…”
I raised a forestalling hand. “I don’t imagine or expect anything. Any member of this crew is free to leave if she doesn’t want to take part in this.”
Impassive silence while Lieutenant Ekalu thought about that. I was tempted to reach, to see what she was feeling. Realized I hadn’t at all, not since Tisarwat had spoken so angrily on realizing that I was doing it. Her words must have stung more than I’d wanted to think about, for some reason I wasn’t sure of.
“Your indulgence, Fleet Captain.” Amaat One’s voice in my ear. “Presger Translator Zeiat is here and requesting permission to come aboard.”
“Excuse me, Amaat?” That just wasn’t possible. When we’d left Athoek Station, the translator’s tiny ship had still been docked there. If it had followed us, we would have known.
“Sir, your very great pardon, the translator’s ship wasn’t there, and then it just was. And now she’s requesting permission to board. She says.” Hesitation. “She says no one on the station will give her oysters the way she wants them.”
“We don’t have oysters here at all, Amaat.”
“Yes, sir, I did presume to tell her so just now, sir. She still wants to board.”
“Right.” I couldn’t see that refusing the translator would do any good at all, if she had made up her mind to be here. “Tell her she has to be fully docked within two hours, all our respect but we are unable to alter our departure time.”
“Sir,” replied Amaat One, voice impressively steady.
I looked at Lieutenant Ekalu. Who said, “I’m not leaving, sir.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Lieutenant,” I said. “Because I need you to take command of the ship.”
I had not been on the hull of a ship in gate-space since the day twenty years before when I had been separated from myself. Then I had been desperate, panicking. Had pulled myself from one handhold to the next, making for a shuttle so that I could bring word to the Lord of the Radch of what had happened aboard Justice of Toren.