“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.”