Ancillary Sword (31 page)

And I had gone beyond my ability to remain silent, to seem as though I was untouched by any of it. “Citizen,” I replied, hearing my own voice go flat. “I
was
there when it happened,
and I was no help to your sister at all. I told you I used another name when I knew her, and that name was
Justice of Toren
. I was the ship she served on, and at the command of Anaander Mianaai herself, I shot your sister in the head. What happened next ended in my own destruction, and I am all that’s left of that ship. I am not human, and you were right to speak to me as you did, when we first met.” I turned my face away, before Basnaaid would see even the small signs I might give of my feelings at having said it.

Everyone in the shuttle had heard me. Basnaaid seemed shocked into silence. Seivarden already knew, of course, and Medic. I didn’t want to know what Seivarden’s Amaats thought. Didn’t want to see or hear
Sword of Atagaris
’s opinion. I turned to the only person who seemed unaware of me—Lieutenant Tisarwat, who had no attention for anything but what a failure she’d been, at living and dying both.

I pulled myself into the seat beside her, strapped myself in. For a moment I seriously considered telling her just how stupid she’d been, back in the Gardens, and how lucky we all were to have survived her stupidity. Instead, I unhooked her seat strap with my good hand—my left arm was immobilized by the corrective on my shoulder—and pulled her to me. She clung to me and leaned her face into my neck, and began sobbing.

“It’s all right,” I said, my arm awkwardly around her shaking shoulders. “It’ll be all right.”

“How can you say that?” she demanded into my neck, between sobs. A tear escaped, one tiny, trembling sphere floating away. “How could it possibly?” And then, “No one would ever dare offer
you
such a platitude.”

Over three thousand years old. Infinitely ambitious. And still only seventeen. “You assume incorrectly.” If she thought about it, if she was capable just now of thinking clearly, she
might have guessed who it was who might have said such a thing to me. If she had, she didn’t say it. “It’s so hard, at first,” I said, “when they hook you up. But the rest of you is around you, and you know it’s only temporary, you know it will be better soon. And when you are better, it’s so amazing. To have such reach, to see so much, all at once. It’s…” But there was no describing it. Tisarwat herself would have seen it, if only for a few hours, distressed or else blunted by meds. “She never let you have that. It was never part of her plan to let you have that.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” And of course she’d known. How could she not? “She hated the way I felt, she dosed me up as fast as she could. She didn’t care if…” The sobs that had died down began afresh. More tears escaped and floated off. Bo Nine, near all this time, horrified by my revelation minutes before, horror that was not at all relieved by my conversation with Tisarwat now, caught them with a cloth, which she then folded, and pushed it between Tisarwat’s face and my neck.

Seivarden’s Amaats hung motionless, blinking, confused. What sense the universe had made to them had disappeared with my words, and they were unsure of how to fit what they’d heard me say into a reality they understood. “What are you hanging around for?” Seivarden snapped, sterner than I’d ever heard her with them, but it seemed to break whatever had held them until now. “Get moving!” And they moved, relieved to find something they understood.

By then Tisarwat had calmed again somewhat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t get it back for either of us. But it will be all right. Somehow it will.” She didn’t answer, and five minutes later, exhausted from events and from her despair and her grief, she fell asleep.

Once the repair crew arrived, the shuttle could leave the hole it had cut in the dome. I ordered us back to
Mercy of Kalr
. Station Medical didn’t need to know what I was, and anyway they were busy enough with problems caused or exacerbated by the lack of gravity, which couldn’t be turned on until the lake water had been contained. And truth to tell, I was glad to get back to
Mercy of Kalr
, even if only for a little while.

Medic wanted me where she could frown at me and tell me not to get up without her permission, and I was happy enough to indulge her, at least for a day. So Seivarden reported to me where I lay on a bed in Medical. Holding a bowl of tea. “It’s like old times,” said Seivarden, smiling. But tense. Anticipating what I might say to her, now things were calmer.

“It is,” I agreed, and took a drink of my tea. Definitely not Daughter of Fishes. Good.

“Our Tisarwat got banged up pretty badly,” Seivarden observed, when I said nothing further. Tisarwat was in an adjoining cubicle, attended by Bo Nine, who had explicit orders never to leave her lieutenant alone. Her ribs were still
healing, and Medic had her confined to Medical until she could decide what else Tisarwat might need. “What was she thinking, charging an ancillary like that without her armor?”

“She was trying to draw
Sword of Atagaris
’s fire, so that I would have time to shoot it before it shot Horticulturist Basnaaid. She was lucky it didn’t shoot her outright.” It must have been more taken aback by Translator Dlique’s death than I had imagined. Or just reluctant to kill an officer without a legal order.

“Horticulturist Basnaaid, is it?” Seivarden asked. Her experience with very young lieutenants might not have been as extensive as mine, but it was extensive nonetheless. “Is there any interest in return? Or is that what the self-sacrifice and the tears were about?” I raised an eyebrow, and she continued, “It never occurred to me until now how many baby lieutenants must have cried on your shoulders over the years.”

Seivarden’s tears had never wetted any of my uniform jackets, when I had been a ship. “Are you jealous?”

“I think I am,” she said. “I’d rather have cut my right arm off than shown weakness, when I was seventeen.” And when she was twenty-seven, and thirty-seven. “I regret that, now.”

“It’s in the past.” I drained the last of my tea. “
Sword of Atagaris
has admitted that Captain Hetnys sold transportees to someone beyond the Ghost Gate.” It had been Governor Giarod who had let fall what errand I’d sent
Mercy of Kalr
on.

“But who?” Seivarden frowned, genuinely puzzled. “
Sword of Atagaris
said Hetnys thought she was dealing with the Lord of the Radch. But if it’s the other Lord of the Radch on the other side of the Ghost Gate, why hasn’t she done anything?”

“Because it’s not the Lord of the Radch on the other side
of the Ghost Gate,” I said. “That tea set—you haven’t seen it, but it’s three thousand years old, at the least. Very obviously Notai. And someone had very carefully removed the name of its owner. It was Hetnys’s payment, for the transportees. And you remember the supply locker, that was supposedly just debris, but
Sword of Atagaris
insisted on picking up.”

“Where the ship name should have been was all scorched.” She’d seen the connection, but not made a pattern out of it yet. “But there wasn’t anything in it, we found it aboard
Sword of Atagaris
.”

“It wasn’t empty when
Sword of Atagaris
pulled it in, depend on it.” I was sure something—or someone—had been inside it. “The locker is also a good three thousand years old. It’s fairly obvious there’s a ship on the other side of that gate. A Notai ship, one that’s older than Anaander Mianaai herself.”

“But, Breq,” Seivarden protested, “those were all destroyed. Even the ones that were loyal have been decommissioned by now. And we’re nowhere near where any of those battles were fought.”

“They weren’t all destroyed.” Seivarden opened her mouth to protest, and I gestured to forestall her. “Some of them fled. The makers of entertainments have wrung hours of dramatic adventure out of that very fact, of course. But it’s assumed that by now they’re all dead, with no one to maintain them. What if one fled to the Ghost System? What if it’s found a way to replenish its store of ancillaries? You recall,
Sword of Atagaris
said the person Hetnys dealt with looked like an Ychana, but spoke like a high-status Radchaai. And the Athoeki used to sell indentured Ychana away to outsystem slavers, before the annexation.”

“Aatr’s tits,” Seivarden swore. “They were dealing with an ancillary.”

“The other Anaander has her people here, but I imagine events at Ime have made her cautious. Perhaps she doesn’t stay in contact, doesn’t interfere much. After all, the more she does, the more likely she is to be detected. Maybe our neighbor in the Ghost System took advantage of it. That’s why Hetnys didn’t move until she was desperate. She was waiting for orders from the Lord of the Radch.”

“Who she thought was just beyond the Ghost Gate. But, Breq, what will the other Anaander’s supporters do when they realize?”

“I doubt we’ll have to wait long to find out.” I took a drink of my tea. “And I may be wrong.”

“No,” said Seivarden, “I don’t think you are. It fits. So we have a mad warship on the other side of the Ghost Gate—”

“Not mad,” I corrected. “When you’ve lost everything that matters to you, it makes perfect sense to run and hide and try to recover.”

“Yes,” she replied, abashed. “I should know better, of all people, shouldn’t I. So, not mad. But hostile. An enemy warship on the other side of the Ghost Gate, half of the Lord of the Radch maybe about to attack, and the Presger likely to show up demanding to know what we’ve done with their translator. Is that all, or is there more?”

“That’s probably enough for now.” She laughed. I asked, “Are you ready for your reprimand, Lieutenant?”

“Sir.” She bowed.

“When I’m not aboard, you are acting captain of this ship. If you had failed to rescue me, and anything had happened to you, Lieutenant Ekalu would have been left in command. She’s a good lieutenant, and she may well make a fine captain someday, but you are the more experienced officer, and you should not have risked yourself.”

It was not what she had expected to hear. Her face heated with anger and indignation. But she had been a soldier a long time—she did not protest. “Sir.”

“I think you should talk to Medic about your history of drug use. I think you’ve been under stress, and maybe not thinking as clearly as you might.”

The muscles in her arms twitched, the desire to cross them suppressed. “I was worried.”

“Do you anticipate not ever being worried again?”

She blinked, startled. The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “About you? No.” She gave a short, breathy laugh, and then was flooded with an odd mix of regret and embarrassment. “Do you see what Ship sees?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I ask Ship to show me, or it shows me something it thinks I should see. Some of it is the same sort of thing your own ship would have shown you, when you were a captain. Some of the data wouldn’t make sense to you, the way it does to me.”

“You’ve always seen right through me.” She was still embarrassed. “Even when you found me on Nilt. I suppose you already know that Horticulturist Basnaaid is on her way here?”

Basnaaid had insisted on going over to the dome repair crew’s vehicle, back at the station. She had requested to be brought here while I slept, and Seivarden had acceded, with some surprise and dismay. “Yes. I’d have done just as you did, had I been awake.” She’d known that, but still was gratified to hear it. “Is there anything else?” There wasn’t, or at least not anything she wanted to bring up, so I dismissed her.

Thirty seconds after Seivarden left, Tisarwat came into my cubicle. I shifted my legs over, gestured an invitation to sit. “Lieutenant,” I said, as she settled herself, gingerly. There
were still correctives around her torso, cracked ribs and other injuries still healing. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said. “I think Medic has me dosed up. I can tell because I’m not wishing every ten minutes or so that you’d thrown me out the airlock when you found me.”

“That’s recent, I think?” I hadn’t thought she’d been suicidal before now. But I had, perhaps, not been paying as much attention as I should have.

“No, it’s always been there. Just… just not so real. Not so intense. It was when I saw what Captain Hetnys had done, threatened to kill Horticulturist Basnaaid to get to you. I knew it was my fault.”

“
Your
fault?” I didn’t think it had been the fault of anyone in particular, except of course Hetnys herself. “I don’t doubt your politicking alarmed her. It was obvious that you were angling for influence. But it’s also true that I knew about it from the start, and would have prevented you if I’d disapproved.”

Relief—just a bit. Her mood was calm, stable. She was entirely correct in her guess that Medic had given her something. “That’s the thing. If I may speak very frankly, sir.” I gestured permission. “Do you understand, sir, that we’re both doing exactly what she wants?”
She
could only be Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch. “She
sent
us here to do exactly what we’re doing. Doesn’t it bother you, sir, that she took something she knew you wanted and used it to make you do what
she
wanted?”

“Sometimes it does,” I admitted. “But then I remember that what she wants isn’t terribly important to me.”

Before Tisarwat could answer, Medic came frowning into the room. “I have you here so you can rest, Fleet Captain, not take endless meetings.”

“What meetings?” I affected an innocent expression. “The lieutenant and I are both patients here, and both resting, as you see.”

Medic
hmphed
.

“And you can’t blame me for being impatient with it,” I continued. “I just rested for two weeks, downwell. There’s a lot to catch up on.”

“You call that rest, do you?” asked Medic.

“Up until the bomb went off, yes.”

“Medic,” said Tisarwat. “Am I going to be on meds the rest of my life?”

“I don’t know,” replied Medic. Seriously. Honestly. “I hope not, but I can’t promise that.” Turned to me. “I’d say no more visitors, Fleet Captain, but I know you’ll overrule me for Horticulturist Basnaaid.”

“Basnaaid’s coming?” Tisarwat, already sitting straight because of the corrective around her rib cage, seemed to straighten even more. “Fleet Captain, can I go back to the station with her?”

“Absolutely
not
,” Medic said.

“You might not want to,” I said. “She might not want to spend much time with any of us. You weren’t listening, I think, on the shuttle when I told her I’d killed her sister.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t heard. Had been too preoccupied with her own misery. Understandably.

“Bed, Lieutenant,” Medic insisted. Tisarwat looked to me for reprieve, but as I gave none, she sighed and left for her own cubicle, trailed by Medic.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Basnaaid was a good twenty minutes from docking.
Sword of Atagaris
’s engines were off-line. All its officers were in suspension. Along with nearly all its ancillaries, only a last few locking
things down while a handful of my own Amaats watched. Since its bitter words to me in the shuttle,
Sword of Atagaris
had said nothing beyond the absolutely necessary and functional. Straightforward answers to questions of fact.
Yes
.
No
. Nothing more.

Where I sat in Medical, Kalr Twelve came into the room, right up to the bed. Reluctant. Intensely embarrassed. I sat up straight, opened my eyes.

“Sir,” Twelve said, quiet and tense. Almost a whisper. “I’m Ship.” Reached out to lay an arm across my shoulders.

“Twelve, you know by now that I’m an ancillary.” Surprise. Dismay. She knew, yes, but my saying it took her aback. Before she could say anything, I added, “Please don’t tell me it doesn’t matter because you don’t really think of me as an ancillary.”

A swift consultation, between Twelve and Ship. “Your indulgence, sir,” said Twelve then, with Ship’s encouragement. “I don’t think that’s entirely fair. We haven’t known until now, so it would be difficult for us to think of you any other way than we have been.” She had a point. “And we haven’t had very long to get used to the idea. But, sir, it does explain some things.”

No doubt it did. “I know that Ship appreciates it when you act for it, and your ancillary façade lets you feel safe and invisible. But being an ancillary isn’t something to play at.”

“No, sir. I can see that, sir. But like you said, Ship appreciates it. And Ship takes care of us, sir. Sometimes it feels like it’s us and Ship against everyone else.” Self-conscious. Embarrassed.

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I haven’t tried to stop it.” I took a breath. “So, are you all right with this, right now?”

“Yes, sir,” Twelve said. Still embarrassed. But sincere.

I closed my eyes, and leaned my head against her shoulder, and she wrapped both arms around me. It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t me holding myself, though I could feel not only Twelve’s uniform jacket against my cheek, but the weight of my own head against her shoulder. I reached for it, for as much as I could have, Twelve’s embarrassment, yes, but also concern for me. The other Kalrs moving about the ship. Not the same. It couldn’t be the same.

We were both silent a moment, and then Twelve said, for Ship, “I suppose I can’t blame
Sword of Atagaris
for caring about its captain. I would have expected better taste, though, from a
Sword
.”

The
Swords
were so arrogant, so sure they were better than the
Mercies
and the
Justices
. But some things you just can’t help. “Ship,” I said, aloud, “Twelve’s arm is getting uncomfortable. And I have to get ready to receive Horticulturist Basnaaid.” We disengaged, Twelve stepping back, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Medic.” Medic was down the corridor, but I knew she would hear me. “I’m not receiving Horticulturist Basnaaid like this. I’m going back to my quarters.” I would need to wash my face, and dress, and make sure there was tea and food to offer her, even if I was certain she would refuse it.