citizen, but I ought to have spoken more directly. Even so, I wasn’t sure Captain Vel had gone so far. All I knew was that she idealized the past in a way I can’t agree with. The noblest, most well-intentioned people in the world can’t make annexations a good thing. Arguing that ancillaries are efficient and convenient is not, to me, a point in favor of using ancillaries. It doesn’t make it better, it only makes it look a little cleaner.”
And that only if you ignored what ancillaries were to begin with. “Tell me”—I almost said Tell me, Lieutenant, but caught myself in time—“Tell me, Inspector Supervisor, what happens to the people waiting to be made into ancillaries?”
“Some are still in storage, or on troop carriers,” Skaaiat said. “But most have been destroyed.”
“Well, that makes it all better then,” I said, seriously. Evenly.
“Awer was against it from the start,” said Skaaiat. She meant the continual expansion, not any expansion at all. And the Radch had used ancillaries long before Anaander Mianaai had made herself into what she was. There just hadn’t been quite so many of them. “Awer’s lords have said so to the Lord of the Radch, repeatedly.”
“But the lords of Awer have not refused to profit from it.” I kept my voice even. Pleasant.
“It’s so easy to go along with things, isn’t it?” Skaaiat said. “Especially when, as you say, it profits you.” She frowned then, and cocked her head slightly, listened a few seconds to something only she could hear. Looked questioningly at me, at Seivarden. “Station Security is at the door. Asking for Citizen Seivarden.” Asking was certainly more polite than the reality. “Excuse me a moment.” She stepped into the corridor, followed by Daos Ceit.
Seivarden looked at me, oddly calm. “I’m beginning to wish I were still frozen in my escape pod.” I smiled, but apparently it didn’t convince her. “Are you all right? You haven’t been all right since we left that Vel Osck person. Damn Skaaiat Awer for not speaking more directly! Usually you can’t get an Awer to stop saying unpleasant things. She picks now to be discreet!”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
As I spoke, Skaaiat returned with a citizen in the light brown of Station Security, who bowed and said to Seivarden, “Citizen, will you and this person come with me?” The courtesy was, of course, merely a form. One didn’t refuse Station Security’s invitations. Even if we tried there were reinforcements outside, placed there to make sure we didn’t refuse. They wouldn’t be Station Security, those people who had followed us from Captain Vel’s meeting. They would be Special Missions, or even Anaander Mianaai’s own guard. The Lord of the Radch had put all the pieces together and decided to remove me before I could do any serious damage. But it was almost certainly too late for that. All of her was paying attention. The fact that she’d sent Station Security to arrest me, and not some Special Missions officer to kill me quickly and quietly, told me that.
“Of course,” Seivarden answered, all calm courtesy. Of course. She knew she was innocent of any wrongdoing, she was sure I was Special Missions and working for Anaander herself, why should she worry? But I knew that finally the moment had come. The omens that had been in the air for twenty years were about to come down and show me—show Anaander Mianaai—what pattern they made.
This Security officer didn’t even twitch an eyebrow as she answered. “The Lord of the Radch wishes to speak with you privately, citizen.” Not a glance at me. She likely didn’t know why she’d been sent to escort us to the Lord of the Radch, didn’t realize I was dangerous, that she needed the backup that awaited us out in the station’s corridors. If she even knew it was there.
The gun still sat under my jacket, and extra magazines tucked here and there, wherever the bulge wouldn’t show. Anaander Mianaai almost certainly didn’t know what I intended.
“Is this my audience I requested, then?” asked Seivarden.
The Security officer gestured ambiguity. “I couldn’t say, citizen.”
Anaander Mianaai couldn’t have known my object in coming, knew only that I had disappeared some twenty years ago. Part of her might know that she’d been aboard my last voyage, but none of her could know what had happened after I’d gated out of Shis’urna’s system.
“I did ask,” said Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat, “if you might have tea and supper first.” The fact she’d asked said something