“These people are citizens.” I replied, my voice as calm and even as I could make it, without reaching the dead tonelessness of an ancillary. “When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”
“You don’t understand, Fleet Captain, this isn’t like—”
I cut her off, heedless of propriety. “And what does it cost you to consider the possibility?” In fact, it might well cost her a great deal. The admission, to herself, that she was not as just as she had always thought herself to be. “We need things running here in such a way that no matter what happens outside this system—even if we never hear from the Lord of the Radch again, even if every gate in Radchaai space goes down—no matter what happens elsewhere, this system is safe and stable. We will not be able to do that by threatening tens or hundreds of citizens with armed soldiers.”
“And if the Valskaayans decide to riot? Or, gods forbid, the Ychana just outside your door here?”
Honestly, some moments I despaired of Governor Giarod. “I will not order soldiers to fire on citizens.” Would, in fact, explicitly order them not to. “People don’t riot for no reason. And if you’re finding you have to deal with the Ychana carefully now, it’s because of how they’ve been treated in the past.”
“I should look from their point of view, should I?” she asked, eyebrow raised, voice just the slightest bit sardonic.
“You should,” I agreed. “Your only other choice is rounding them all up and either reeducating or killing every one of them.” The first was beyond the resources of Station Security. And I had already said I would not help with the second.
She grimaced in horror and disgust. “What do you take me for, Fleet Captain? Why would you think anyone here would even consider such a thing?”
“I am older than I look,” I replied. “I have been in the middle of more than one annexation. I have seen people do things that a month or a year before they would have sworn they would never, ever do.” Lieutenant Tisarwat sat at supper with her companions: the grandniece of the chief of Station Security, the young third cousin of a tea grower—not Fosyf, but one of those whose tea Fosyf had condescendingly declared “acceptable.” Skaaiat Awer’s cousin. And Citizen Piat. Tisarwat complained of my stern, unbendable nature, impervious to any appeal. Basnaaid, of course, wasn’t there. She didn’t move in this social circle, and I had, after all, ordered Tisarwat away from her.
System Governor Giarod spoke across the table in the dining room in my Undergarden quarters. “Why, Fleet Captain, do you think I would be one of those people?”
“Everyone is potentially one of those people, Governor,” I replied. “It’s best to learn that before you do something you’ll have trouble living with.” Best to learn it, really, before anyone—perhaps dozens of anyones—died to teach it to you.
But it was a hard lesson to learn any other way, as I knew from very personal experience.
19
Seivarden understood my instructions about transportee storage immediately. “You don’t seriously think,” she said, aloud, sitting on the edge of her bunk in her quarters, her voice sounding in my ear where I sat in the Undergarden, “that someone has managed to steal bodies.” She paused. “Why would anyone do that? And how could they manage it? I mean, during an annexation”—she gestured, half dismissing, half warding—“all sorts of things happen. If you told me someone was selling to slavers that way, at a time like that, I wouldn’t be that surprised.”
But once a person had been tagged, labeled, accounted for, it became another matter entirely. I knew as well as Seivarden what happened to people during annexations—people who weren’t Radchaai. I also knew that cases where people had been sold that way were vanishingly rare—no Radchaai soldier could so much as take a breath without her ship knowing it.
Of course, the past several centuries, the Lord of the Radch had been visiting ships and altering their accesses, had, I suspected, been handing out access codes to people she had thought would support her, so that they could act secretly, unseen by ships and stations that would otherwise have reported them to authorities. To the wrong half of Anaander Mianaai. “If you need ancillaries,” I said, quietly, alone in my sitting room on Athoek Station, now that Governor Giarod had left, “those bodies might well be useful.”
Seivarden was silent a moment, considering that. Not liking the conclusions she was coming to. “The other side has a network here. That’s what you’re saying.”
“We’re not on either side,” I reminded her. “And of course they do. Everywhere one side is, the other side is. Because they’re the same. It’s not a surprise that agents for that part of the tyrant have been active here.” Anaander Mianaai was inescapable, everywhere in Radch space. “But I admit I didn’t expect something like this.”
“You need more than bodies,” she pointed out. Leaned back against the wall. Crossed her arms. Uncrossed them. “There’s equipment you need to install.” And then, apologetic, “You know that. But still.”
“They could be stockpiling that, too. Or they may be depending on a troop carrier.” A troop carrier could manufacture that, given time and the appropriate materials. Some of the Swords and Mercies that still had ancillaries had some in stock, for backup. In theory, there wasn’t anyplace else to get such things. Not anymore. That was part of why the Lord of the Radch had had the problem with Tisarwat that she did—she could not easily get the right tech, had had to modify her own. “And maybe you’ll get there and find everything is in order.”
Seivarden scoffed. Then said, “There aren’t many people here who could do something like that.”
“No,” I acknowledged.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be the governor, since she gave you the keys to the place. Though now I think of it she couldn’t have done much else.”
“You have a point.”
“And you,” she said, sighing, “aren’t going to tell me who you’ve got your eye on. Breq, we’ll be days away. Unless we gate there.”
“No matter where you are you won’t be able to rush to my rescue if anything were to happen.”
“Well,” replied Seivarden. “Well.” Tense and unhappy. “Probably everything will be very dull for the next few months. It’s always like that.” It had been, for both of our lives. Frantic action, then months or even years waiting for something to happen. “And even if they come to Athoek”—by they she meant, presumably, the part of the Lord of the Radch that had lost the battle at Omaugh Palace, whose supporters were destroying gates with ships in them—“they won’t come right away. It won’t be the first place on their list.” And travel between systems could take weeks, months. Even years. “Probably nothing will happen for ages.” A thought struck her then. “Why don’t you send Sword of Atagaris? It’s not like it’s doing much where it is.” I didn’t answer right away, but didn’t need to. “Oh, Aatr’s tits. Of course. I should have realized right away, but I didn’t think that person…”—the choice of word, which was one that barely acknowledged humanity, communicated Seivarden’s disdain for Captain Hetnys—“was smart enough to pull something like that off.” Seivarden had had a low opinion of Sword of Atagaris’s captain ever since Translator Dlique’s death. “But now I think of it, isn’t it odd, Sword of Atagaris being so intent on picking up that supply locker. Maybe we need to take a look on the other side of that Ghost Gate.”