Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,26

on a bench holding Strigan’s stringed instrument. She stared, unable to conceal her surprise, still shrugging slightly, uncomfortable in the heavy coat, itchy.

“I want to leave,” she said, in a voice oddly half cowed and half arrogant, commanding Radchaai.

“We’ll leave when I’m ready,” I said, and fingered a few notes on the instrument. Her feelings were too raw for her to be able to conceal them just now, and her anger and despair showed plainly on her face. “You are where you are,” I said, in an even tone, “as a result of decisions you made yourself.”

Her spine straightened, her shoulders went back. “You don’t know anything about me, or what decisions I have or haven’t made.”

It was enough to make me angry again. I knew something about making decisions, and not making them. “Ah, I forget. Everything happens as Amaat wills, nothing is your fault.”

Her eyes went wide. She opened her mouth to speak, drew breath, but then blew it out, sharp and shaky. She turned her back, ostensibly to remove her outer coat and drop it on a nearby bench. “You don’t understand,” she said, contemptuous, but her voice trembled with suppressed tears. “You’re not Radchaai.”

Not civilized. “Did you start taking kef before or after you left the Radch?” It shouldn’t have been available in Radchaai territory, but there was always some minor smuggling station authorities might turn a blind eye toward.

She slumped down onto the bench beside where she’d sloppily left her coat. “I want tea.”

“There’s no tea here.” I set the instrument aside. “There’s milk.” More specifically, there was fermented bov milk, which the people here thinned with water and drank warm. The smell—and taste—was reminiscent of sweaty boots. And too much of it would likely make Seivarden slightly sick.

“What sort of place doesn’t have tea?” she demanded, but leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and put her forehead on her wrists, her bare hands palm-up, fingers outstretched.

“This sort of place,” I answered. “Why were you taking kef?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Tears dropped into her lap.

“Try me.” I picked up the instrument again, picked out a tune.

After six seconds of silent weeping, Seivarden said, “She said it would make everything clearer.”

“The kef would?” No answer. “What would be clearer?”

“I know that song,” she said, her face still resting on her wrists. I realized it was very likely the only way she would recognize me, and changed to a different tune. In one region of Valskaay, singing was a refined pastime, local choral associations the center of social activity. That annexation had brought me a great deal of the sort of music I had liked best, when I had had more than one voice. I chose one of those. Seivarden wouldn’t know it. Valskaay had been both before and after her time.

“She said,” Seivarden said finally, lifting her face from her hands, “that emotions clouded perception. That the clearest sight was pure reason, undistorted by feeling.”

“That’s not true.” I’d had a week with this instrument and very little else to do. I managed two lines at once.

“It seemed true at first. It was wonderful at first. It all went away. But then it would wear off, and things would be the same. Only worse. And then after a while it was like not feeling felt bad. I don’t know. I can’t describe it. But if I took more that went away.”

“And coming down got less and less endurable.” I’d heard the story a few times, in the past twenty years.

“Oh, Amaat’s grace,” she moaned. “I want to die.”

“Why don’t you?” I changed to another song. My heart is a fish, hiding in the water-grass. In the green, in the green…

She looked at me as though I were a rock that had just spoken.

“You lost your ship,” I said. “You were frozen for a thousand years. You wake up to find the Radch has changed—no more invasions, a humiliating treaty with the Presger, your house has lost financial and social status. No one knows you or remembers you, or cares whether you live or die. It’s not what you were used to, not what you were expecting out of your life, is it?”

It took three puzzled seconds for the fact to dawn. “You know who I am.”

“Of course I know who you are. You told me,” I lied.

She blinked, tearily, trying, I supposed, to remember if she had or not. But her memories were, of course, incomplete.

“Go to sleep,” I said, and laid my fingers across the strings, silencing