Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,105

a liter of my water allowance to fill the flask, and then sat down to eat.

The fish was as delicious as it smelled, and improved my mood slightly. I was, at least, better able to confront my situation once I’d eaten it, and had a cup of tea.

Station could certainly see a large percentage of its residents with the same intimate view I’d had of my officers. The rest—including me, now—it saw in less detail. Temperature. Heart rate. Respiration. Less impressive than the flood of data from more closely monitored residents, but still a great deal of information. Add to that a close knowledge of the person observed, her history, her social context, and likely Station could very nearly read minds.

Nearly. It couldn’t actually read thoughts. And Station didn’t know my history, had no prior experience with me. It would be able to see the traces of my emotions, but wouldn’t have many grounds for guessing accurately why I felt as I did.

My hip had in fact been hurting. And Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat’s words to me had been, in Radchaai terms, incredibly rude. If I had reacted with anger, visible to Station if it was looking (visible to Anaander Mianaai if she had been looking), that was entirely natural. Neither one could do more than guess what had angered me. I could play the part now of the exhausted traveler, pained by an old injury, in need of nothing more than food and rest.

The room was so quiet. Even when Seivarden had been in one of her sulking moods it hadn’t seemed this oppressively silent. I hadn’t grown as used to solitude as I had thought. And thinking of Seivarden, I saw suddenly what I had not seen, there on the concourse and blind-angry with Skaaiat Awer. I had thought then that Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had been the only person I had met who might know me, but that wasn’t true. Seivarden would have.

But Lieutenant Awn had never expected anything from Seivarden, had never stood to be hurt or disappointed by her. If they had ever met, Seivarden would surely have made her disdain clear. Lieutenant Awn would have been stiffly polite, with an underlying anger that I would have been able to see, but she would never have had that sinking dismay and hurt she felt when then–Lieutenant Skaaiat said, unthinkingly, something dismissive.

But perhaps I was wrong to think my reactions to the two, Skaaiat Awer and Seivarden Vendaai, were very different. I had already put myself in danger once, out of anger with Seivarden.

I couldn’t untangle it. And I had a part to play, for whoever might be watching, an image I had carefully built on the way here. I set my empty cup beside the tea flask, and knelt on the floor before the icon, hip protesting slightly, and began to pray.

19

Next morning I bought clothes. The proprietor of the shop Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had recommended was on the verge of throwing me out when my bank balance flashed onto her console, unbidden I suspected, Station sparing her embarrassment—and simultaneously telling me how closely it was watching me.

I needed gloves, certainly, and if I was going to play the part of the spendthrift wealthy tourist I would need to buy more than that. But before I could speak up to say so, the proprietor brought out bolts of brocade, sateen, and velvet in a dozen colors. Purple and orange-brown, three shades of green, gold, pale yellow and icy blue, ash gray, deep red.

“You can’t wear those clothes,” she told me, authoritative, as a subordinate handed me tea, managing to mostly conceal her disgust at my bare hands. Station had scanned me and provided my measurements, so I needed do nothing. A half-liter of tea, two excruciatingly sweet pastries, and a dozen insults later, I left in an orange-brown jacket and trousers, an icy white, stiff shirt underneath, and dark-gray gloves so thin and soft I might almost have still been barehanded. Fortunately current fashion favored jackets and trousers cut generously enough to hide my weapon. The rest—two more jackets and pairs of trousers, two pairs of gloves, half a dozen shirts, and three pairs of shoes—would be delivered to my lodgings by the time, the proprietor told me, I was done visiting the temple.

I exited the shop, turned a corner onto the main concourse, crowded at this hour with a throng of Radchaai going in and out of the temple or the palace proper, visiting the (no