Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,114

be taken for appreciation of a compliment, but almost certainly wasn’t.

“These lower houses and provincials, with their accents and their slang,” agreed Captain Vel. “Really, my own ship, fine soldiers but to hear them talk you’d think they’d never gone to school.”

“Pure laziness,” opined a lieutenant behind Seivarden.

“You don’t have that with ancillaries,” said someone, possibly another captain behind me.

“A lot of things you don’t have with ancillaries,” said someone else, a comment that might be taken two ways, but I was fairly sure I knew which way was meant. “But that’s not a safe topic.”

“Not safe?” I asked, all innocence. “Surely it isn’t illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.”

“And surely,” added Seivarden with a slight sneer, her mask finally cracking, “it’s always safe to complain about lower houses and provincials.”

“You’d think,” said Rose-and-Azure beside me, mistaking Seivarden’s intent. “But we are sadly changed, Captain, from your day. It used to be you could depend on the aptitudes to send the right citizen to the right assignment. I can’t fathom some of the decisions they make these days. And atheists given privileges.” She meant Valskaayans, who were, as a rule, not atheists but exclusive monotheists. The difference was invisible to many Radchaai. “And human soldiers! People nowadays are squeamish about ancillaries, but you don’t see ancillaries drunk and puking on the concourse.”

Seivarden made a sympathetic noise. “I’ve never known officers to be puking drunk.”

“In your day, maybe not,” answered someone behind me. “Things have changed.”

Rose-and-Azure tipped her head toward Captain Vel, who to judge by her expression had finally understood Seivarden’s words as Rose-and-Azure had not. “Not to say, Captain, that you don’t keep your ship in order. But you wouldn’t have to keep ancillaries in order, would you?”

Captain Vel waved the point away with an empty hand, her bowl of tea in the other. “That’s command, citizen, it’s just my job. But there are more serious issues. You can’t fill troop carriers with humans. The human-crewed Justices are all half-empty.”

“And of course,” interjected Rose-and-Azure, “those all have to be paid.”

Captain Vel gestured assent. “They say we don’t need them anymore.” They being, of course, Anaander Mianaai. No one would name her while being critical of her. “That our borders are proper as they are. I don’t pretend to understand policy, or politics. But it seems to me it’s less wasteful to store ancillaries than it is to train and pay humans and rotate them in and out of storage.”

“They say,” said Rose-and-Azure beside me, taking a pastry from the table in front of her, “that if it hadn’t been for Justice of Toren’s disappearance they’d have scrapped one of the other carriers by now.” My surprise at hearing my own name couldn’t have been visible to anyone here, but surely Station could see it. And that surprise, that startlement, wasn’t something that would fit into the identity I’d constructed. Station would be reevaluating me, I was sure. So would Anaander Mianaai.

“Ah,” said a civilian behind me. “But our visitor here is doubtless glad to hear our borders are fixed.”

I barely turned my head to answer. “The Gerentate would be a very large mouthful.” I kept my voice even. No one here could see my continuing consternation at that startlement moments ago.

Except, of course, Station and Anaander Mianaai. And Anaander Mianaai—or part of her, at least—would have very good reasons for noticing talk about Justice of Toren, and reactions to it.

“I don’t know, Captain Seivarden,” Captain Vel was saying, “if you’ve heard about the mutiny at Ime. An entire unit refused their orders and defected to an alien power.”

“Certainly wouldn’t have happened on an ancillary-crewed ship,” said someone behind Seivarden.

“Not too big a mouthful for the Radch, I imagine,” said the person behind me.

“I daresay”—again I leaned just slightly on my Gerentate accent—“sharing a border with us this long, you’ve learned better table manners.” I refused to turn all the way around to see whether the answering silence was amused, indignant, or merely distracted by Seivarden and Captain Vel. Tried not to think too hard about what conclusions Anaander Mianaai would draw from my reaction to hearing my name.

“I think I heard something about it,” said Seivarden, frowning thoughtfully. “Ime. That was where the provincial governor and the captains of the ships in the system murdered and stole, and sabotaged the ships and station so they couldn’t