Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,102
Supervisor Skaaiat looked at me. I raised one eyebrow and a shoulder, as if to say, That’s how she is.
“Breq has been very patient with me,” said Seivarden, astonishing me utterly. “And very generous.” She looked at me. “I don’t need money.”
“Whatever you like,” I said.
Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had watched the whole exchange intently, frowning just slightly. Curious, I thought, not only about who and what I was, but what I was to Seivarden. “Well,” she said now, “let me take you to the palace. Honored Breq Ghaiad, I’ll have your things delivered to your lodgings.” She rose.
I stood as well, and Seivarden beside me. We followed Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat to the outer office—empty, Daos Ceit (Inspector Adjunct Ceit, I would have to remember) likely gone for the day, given the hour. Instead of taking us through the front of the offices, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat led us through a back corridor, through a door that opened at no perceptible cue from her—Station, that would be, the AI that ran this place, was this place, paying close attention to the inspector supervisor of its docks.
“Are you all right, Breq?” asked Seivarden, looking at me with puzzlement and concern.
“Fine,” I lied. “Just a little tired. It’s been a long day.” I was sure my expression hadn’t changed, but Seivarden had noticed something.
Through the door was more corridor, and a bank of lifts, one of which opened for us, then closed and moved with no signal. Station knew where Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat wanted to go. Which turned out to be the main concourse.
The lift doors slid open onto a broad and dazzling view—an avenue paved in black stone veined with white, seven hundred meters long and twenty-five wide, the roof sixty meters above. Directly ahead stood the temple. The steps were not really steps, but an area marked out on the paving with red and green and blue stones; actions on the steps of the temple potentially had legal significance. The entrance was itself forty meters high and eight wide, framed with representations of hundreds of gods, many human-shaped, some not, a riot of colors. Just inside the entrance lay a basin for worshippers to wash their hands in, and beyond that containers of cut flowers, a swath of yellow and orange and red, and baskets of incense, for purchase as offerings. Away down either side of the concourse, shops, offices, balconies with flowered vines snaking down. Benches, and plants, and even at an hour when most Radchaai would be at supper hundreds of citizens walked or stood talking, uniformed (white for the Translators Office, light brown for Station Security, dark brown for military, green for Horticulture, light blue for Administration) or not, all glittering with jewelry, all thoroughly Civilized. I saw an ancillary follow its captain into a crowded tea shop, and wondered which ship it was. What ships were here. But I couldn’t ask, it wasn’t the sort of thing Breq from the Gerentate would care about.
I saw them all, suddenly, for just a moment, through non-Radchaai eyes, an eddying crowd of unnervingly ambiguously gendered people. I saw all the features that would mark gender for non-Radchaai—never, to my annoyance and inconvenience, the same way in each place. Short hair or long, worn unbound (trailing down a back, or in a thick, curled nimbus) or bound (braided, pinned, tied). Thick-bodied or thin-, faces delicate-featured or coarse-, with cosmetics or none. A profusion of colors that would have been gender-marked in other places. All of this matched randomly with bodies curving at breast and hip or not, bodies that one moment moved in ways various non-Radchaai would call feminine, the next moment masculine. Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn’t need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.
This was home that had never been home, for me. I had spent my life at annexations, and stations in the process of becoming this sort of place, leaving before they did, to begin the whole process again somewhere else. This was the sort of place my officers came from, and departed to. The sort of place I had never been, and yet it was completely familiar to me. Places like this were, from one point of view, the whole reason for my existence.