Ancillary Sword

by Ann Leckie

  “Ghaonish in general?” The station that Administrator Celar had served on was only just starting to be built when I’d last been there, centuries ago. “There were at least three different political entities on Ghaon at the time of the annexation, depending how you count, and something like seven different major languages, each of which had its own various styles of music.”

  “You understand,” she replied, having lost in an instant nearly all her wariness of me. “All of that, and so few really Ghaonish songs left.”

  “What would you give me,” I asked, “for a Ghaonish song you’ve never heard?”

  Her eyes widened, disbelief apparent. “Sir,” she said, indignant. Offended. “You’re making fun of me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I assure you not, Administrator. I had several from a ship that was there during the annexation.” I didn’t mention that I had been the ship in question.

  “You met Justice of Toren!” she exclaimed. “What a loss that was! Did you serve on it? I’ve so often wished I could meet someone who did. One of our horticulturists here had a sister who served on Justice of Toren, but that was long before she came here. She was just a child when…” She shook her head regretfully. “Such a shame.”

  Time to turn that topic aside. I turned to address Governor Giarod. “May one, Governor,” I asked, “properly inquire about this temple ritual that has kept you so occupied all day?” My accent as elegant as any high-born officer, my tone overtly courteous but underneath just the hint of an edge.

  “One may,” Governor Giarod replied, “but I’m not sure how many answers anyone can properly provide.” Like Station Administrator Celar, she picked up a piece of dredgefruit and then apparently set it in her lap.

  “Ah,” I ventured. “Temple mysteries.” I’d seen several, over my two-thousand-year lifetime. None of them had been allowed to continue, unless they admitted Anaander Mianaai to their secrets. The survivors were all quite nonexclusive as a result. Or at least theoretically so—they could be fantastically expensive to join.

  Governor Giarod slipped another piece of fruit under the table. To some child harder to exhaust and possibly more enterprising than her siblings and cousins, I guessed. “The mysteries are quite ancient,” the governor said. “And very important to the Athoeki.”

  “Important to the Athoeki, or just the Xhai? And it is, somehow, connected to this story about the Athoeki who had penises pretending to cut them off?”

  “A misunderstanding, Fleet Captain,” said Governor Giarod. “The Genitalia Festival is much older than the annexation. The Athoeki, particularly the Xhai, are a very spiritual people. So much is metaphor, an inadequately material way to speak of immaterial things. If you have any interest in the spiritual, Fleet Captain, I do encourage you to become an initiate.”

  “I greatly fear,” Citizen Fosyf said before I could answer, “that the fleet captain’s interests are musical rather than spiritual. She’s only interested if there’s singing.” Quite rudely presumptuous. But true enough.

  Under the table a tiny, bare hand clutched my trouser leg—whoever was there had lost patience with the governor’s absorption in the conversation and had decided to try her luck with me. She wasn’t much more than a year old, and was, as far as I could see, completely naked. I offered her a piece of dredgefruit—clearly a favorite—and she took it with one sticky hand, put it in her mouth, and chewed with frowning absorption, leaning against my leg. “Citizen Fosyf tells me the workers on her estate sing a great deal,” I remarked.

  “Oh, yes!” agreed Station Administrator Celar. “In the past they were mostly Samirend transportees, but these days they’re all Valskaayans.”

  That struck me as odd. “All your field workers are Valskaayan?” I slipped another piece of dredgefruit under the table. Kalr Five would have reason to complain about the sticky handprints on my trousers. But Radchaai generally indulged small children greatly, and there would be no real resentment.

  “Samir was annexed some time ago, Fleet Captain,” said Fosyf. “All the Samirend are more or less entirely civilized now.”

  “More or less,” muttered Captain Hetnys, beside me.

  “I’m quite familiar with Valskaayan music,” I confessed, ignoring her. “Are these Delsig-speakers?”

  Fosyf frowned. “Well, of course, Fleet Captain. They don’t speak much Radchaai, that’s for certain.”

  Valskaay had an entire temperate, habitable planet, not to mention dozens of stations and moons. Delsig had been the language a Valskaayan would have needed to speak if she wanted to do much business beyond her own home, but it was by no means certain that any Valskaayan would speak it. “Have they retained their choral tradition?”

  “Some, Fleet Captain,” Celar replied. “They also improvise a bass or a descant to songs they’ve learned since they arrived. Drones, parallels, you know the sort of thing, very primitive. But not terribly interesting.”

  “Because it’s not authentic?” I guessed.

  “Just so,” agreed Station Administrator Celar.

  “I have, personally, very little concern for authenticity.”

  “Wide-ranging taste, as you said,” Station Administrator Celar said, with a smile.

  I raised my utensil in acknowledgment. “Has anyone imported any of the written music?” In certain places on Valskaay—particularly the areas where Delsig was most often a first language—choral societies had been an important social institution, and every well-educated person learned to read the notation. “So they aren’t confined to primitive and uninteresting drones?” I put the smallest trace of sarcasm into my voice.

  “Grace of Amaat, Fleet Captain!” interjected Citizen Fosyf. “These people can barely speak three words of Radchaai. I can hardly imagine my field workers sitting down to learn to read music.”

  “Might keep them busy,” said Raughd, who had been sitting silent so far, smiling insincerely. “Keep them from stirring up trouble.”

  “Well, as to that,” said Fosyf, “I’d say it’s the educated Samirend who give us the most problems. The field supervisors are nearly all Samirend, Fleet Captain. Generally an intelligent sort. And mostly dependable, but there’s always one or two, and let those one or two get together and convince more, and next thing you know they’ve got the field workers whipped up. Happened about fifteen, twenty years ago. The field workers in five different plantations sat down and refused to pick the tea. Just sat right down! And of course we stopped feeding them, on the grounds they’d refused their assignments. But there’s no point on a planet. Anyone who doesn’t feel like working can live off the land.”

  It struck me as likely that living off the land wasn’t so easy as all that. “You brought workers in from elsewhere?”

  “It was the middle of the growing season, Fleet Captain,” said Citizen Fosyf. “And all my neighbors had the same difficulties. But eventually we rounded up the Samirend ringleaders, made some examples of them, and the workers themselves, well, they came back soon after.”

  So many questions I could ask. “And the workers’ grievances?”

  “Grievances!” Fosyf was indignant. “They had none. No real ones. They live a pleasant enough life, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I’d been assigned to pick tea.”

  “Are you staying, Fleet Captain?” asked Governor Giarod. “Or on your way back to your ship?”

  “I’m staying in the Undergarden,” I said. Immediate, complete silence descended, not even the chink of utensils on porcelain. Even the servants, arranging platters on the pale, gilded sideboards, froze. The infant under the table chewed the latest piece of dredgefruit, oblivious.

  Then Raughd laughed. “Well, why not? None of those dirty animals will mess with you, will they?” Good as her façade had been so far, her contempt reached her voice. I’d met her sort before, over and over again. A few of those had even turned out to be decent officers, once they’d learned what they needed to learn. Some, on the other hand, had not.

  “Really, Raughd,
” said her mother, but mildly. In fact, no one at the table seemed surprised or shocked at Raughd’s words. Fosyf turned to me. “Raughd and her friends like to go drinking in the Undergarden. I’ve told her repeatedly that it’s not safe.”

  “Not safe?” I asked. “Really?”

  “Pickpockets aren’t uncommon,” said Station Administrator Celar.

  “Tourists!” said Raughd. “They want to be robbed. It’s why they go there to begin with. All the wailing and complaining to Security.” She waved a dismissive, blue-gloved hand. “It’s part of the fun. Otherwise they’d take better care.”

  Quite suddenly, I wished I was back on Mercy of Kalr. Medic, on watch, was saying something brief and acerbic to one of the Kalrs with her. Lieutenant Ekalu inspected as her Etrepas worked. Seivarden, on the edge of her bed, said, “Ship, how’s Fleet Captain doing?”

  “Frustrated,” replied Mercy of Kalr, in Seivarden’s ear. “Angry. Safe, but playing, as they say, with fire.”

  Seivarden almost snorted. “Like normal, then.” Four Etrepas, in a corridor on another deck, began to sing a popular song, raggedly, out of tune.

  In the ocher-walled dining room, the child, still clutching my trouser leg, began to cry. Citizen Fosyf and Citizen Raughd both evinced surprise—they had not, apparently, realized there was anyone under the table. I reached under, picked the child up, and set her on my lap. “You’ve had a long day, Citizen,” I said, soberly.

  A servant rushed forward, anxious, and lifted the wailing child away with a whispered, “Apologies, Fleet Captain.”

  “None needed, Citizen,” I said. The servant’s anxiety surprised me—it had been clear that even if Fosyf and Raughd hadn’t realized the child was there, everyone else had, and no one had objected. I’d have been quite surprised if anyone had. But then, while I had known adult Radchaai for some two thousand years, seen and heard all the messages they’d ever sent home or received, and while I’d interacted with children and infants in places the Radch had annexed, I had never been inside a Radchaai household, never spent much time at all with Radchaai children. I wasn’t actually a very good judge of what was normal or expected.

  Supper ended with a round of arrack. I considered several polite ways to extricate myself, and Governor Giarod with me, but before I could choose one Lieutenant Tisarwat arrived—ostensibly to tell me our quarters were ready, but really, I suspected, hoping for leftovers. Which of course Fosyf immediately directed a servant to pack for her. Lieutenant Tisarwat thanked her prettily and bowed to the seated company. Raughd Denche looked her over, mouth quirked in a tiny smile—amused? Intrigued? Contemptuous? All three, perhaps. Straightening, Tisarwat caught Raughd’s look and was, it seemed, intrigued herself. Well, they were close in age, and much as I found I disliked Raughd, a connection there might benefit me. Might bring me information. I pretended to ignore it. So, I saw, did Piat, the station administrator’s daughter. I rose and said, pointedly, “Governor Giarod?”

  “Quite,” the system governor said, with still impressive aplomb. “Fosyf, delicious supper as always, do thank that cook of yours again, she’s a marvel.” She bowed. “And what delightful company. But duty beckons.”

  Governor Giarod’s office was across the concourse from Fosyf’s apartment. The same view of the concourse, but from the other side. Cream-colored silk hangings painted with a pattern of leaves draped the walls. Low tables and chairs scattered around, an icon of Amaat in the typical wall niche, a bowl before it but no smell of incense—of course, the governor hadn’t come in to work today.

  I’d sent Tisarwat back to the Undergarden with her prize—enough food to fill even a seventeen-year-old comfortably and then some, and the governor’s compliments for Fosyf’s cook had been entirely deserved—and I had also dismissed Captain Hetnys, with orders that she report to me in the morning.

  “Sit, please, Fleet Captain.” Governor Giarod gestured to some wide, cushioned chairs well back from the window. “What must you think of us? But from the beginning of this… crisis, I’ve tried to keep everything as calm and routine as possible. And of course religious observances are very important in times of stress. I can only thank you for your patience.”

  I sat, and so did the governor. “I am,” I admitted, “approaching the limits of that patience. But then, you are as well, I suspect.” I had thought, all those days on the way here, of what I should say to Governor Giarod. Of how much I should reveal. Had decided, in the end, on the truth, as unvarnished as I could produce it. “So. This is the situation: two factions of Anaander Mianaai have been in conflict with each other for a thousand years. Behind the scenes, hidden even from herself.” Governor Giarod frowned. It didn’t make much sense, on the surface. “Twenty-eight days ago, at Omaugh Palace, it became open conflict. The Lord of the Radch herself blocked all communications coming from the palace, in an attempt to hide that conflict from the rest of herself. She failed, and now that information is on its way across Radch space, to all the other palaces.” It was probably reaching Irei Palace—the one farthest from Omaugh—just about now. “The conflict at Omaugh appears to be resolved.”

  Governor Giarod’s obvious dismay had grown with every word I’d spoken. “In whose favor?”

  “Anaander Mianaai’s, of course. How else? We are all of us in an impossible position. To support either faction is treason.”

  “As is,” agreed the governor, “not supporting either faction.”

  “Indeed.” I was relieved that the governor had enough wit to see that immediately. “In the meantime, factions in the military—also fostered by the Lord of the Radch, with an eye toward an advantage if this ever came to actual physical battle—have begun fighting. One in particular has begun attacking gates. Which is why, even though communications from Omaugh Palace are now functioning, you’re still isolated from them. Every route any message would take has had a gate somewhere along it destroyed.” Or at least the routes that wouldn’t take months.

  “There were dozens of ships in the Hrad-Omaugh Gate! Eighteen of them are still unaccounted for! What could possibly…”

  “I suspect they’re still trying to keep information back. Or at least make it difficult for any but military ships to travel between systems. And they don’t particularly care how many citizens die in the process.”

  “I can’t… I can’t believe that.”

  It was, nonetheless, true. “Station will have shown you my remit. I have command of all military resources in this system, and orders to ensure the safety of the citizens here. I also bring an order to forbid all travel through the gates for the foreseeable future.”

  “Who gave this order?”

  “The Lord of the Radch.”

  “Which one of her?” I said nothing. The governor gestured resignation. “And this… argument she’s having with herself?”

  “I can tell you what she has told me. I can tell you what I think it’s about. More than that…” I gestured ambiguity, uncertainty. Governor Giarod waited, silent and expectant. “The trigger, the precipitating event, was the destruction of the Garseddai.” The governor winced, barely perceptibly. No one liked talking about that, about the time Anaander Mianaai had, in a fury, ordered the destruction of all life in an entire solar system. Even though it was a thousand years in the past, by now, and easier to forget about than it once had been. “When you do something like that, how do you react?”

  “I hope I would never do anything like that,” said Governor Giarod.

  “Life is unpredictable,” I said, “and we are not always the people we think we are. If we’re unlucky, that’s when we discover it. When something like that happens, you have two choices.” Or, more than two, but distilled, they came down to two. “You can admit the error and resolve never to repeat it, or you can refuse to admit error and throw every effort behind insisting you were right to do what you did, and would gladly do it again.”

  “Yes. Yes, you’re right. But Garsedd was a thousand years ago. Surely that’s time to have
resolved on one or another of those. And if you’d asked me before now, I’d have said my lord had chosen the first. Without, of course, publicly admitting error.”

  “It must be more complicated than that,” I agreed. “I think there were already other issues that events at Garsedd exacerbated. What those were I can only guess. Certainly the Lord of the Radch couldn’t continue expanding forever.” And if expansion stopped, what to do with all those ships and ancillary soldiers? The officers that commanded them? Keeping them was a drain on resources, to no purpose. Dismantle them, and systems on the periphery of Radch space were vulnerable to attack. Or revolt. “I think it wasn’t merely admitting error that the Lord of the Radch has been resisting, but admitting her own mortality.”

  Governor Giarod sat considering that, silent for twenty-four seconds. “I don’t like that thought, Fleet Captain. If you had asked me even ten minutes ago I’d have told you the Lord of the Radch was the next thing to immortal. How can she not be? Constantly growing new bodies to replace the old, how could she ever die?” Another frowning three seconds of silence. “And if she dies, what will be left of the Radch?”

  “I don’t think we can concern ourselves with anything beyond Athoek.” Possibly the most dangerous thing I could say, just now, depending on the governor’s sympathies. “My orders only involve the safety of this system.”

  “And if they were otherwise?” Governor Giarod was no fool. “If some other part of my lord ordered you to take one side or another, or use this system in some way for her advantage?” I didn’t reply. “No matter what you do it’s sedition, rebellion, so you may as well do as you like, is that it?”

  “Something like that,” I agreed. “But I really do have orders.”

  She shook her head, as though clearing away some obstruction. “But what else is there to do? You don’t think, do you, that there’s been any… outside interference?”