Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,28

I know who he is. But who are you? What are you? Don’t tell me Breq from the Gerentate. You’re as Radchaai as that one.” She gestured slightly toward Seivarden with her elbow.

“I came here to buy something,” I said, determined to keep from staring at the gun she held. “He’s incidental.” Since we weren’t speaking Radchaai I had to take gender into account—Strigan’s language required it. The society she lived in professed at the same time to believe gender was insignificant. Males and females dressed, spoke, acted indistinguishably. And yet no one I’d met had ever hesitated, or guessed wrong. And they had invariably been offended when I did hesitate or guess wrong. I hadn’t learned the trick of it. I’d been in Strigan’s own apartment, seen her belongings, and still wasn’t sure what forms to use with her now.

“Incidental?” asked Strigan, disbelieving. I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, except I knew it to be true. Strigan said nothing else, likely realizing that to say much more would be extremely foolish, if I was what she feared I was.

“Coincidence,” I said. Glad on at least one count that we weren’t speaking Radchaai, where the word implied significance. “I found him unconscious. If I’d left him where he was he’d have died.” Strigan didn’t believe that either, from the look she gave me. “Why are you here?”

She laughed, short and bitter—whether because I’d chosen the wrong gender for the pronoun, or something else, I wasn’t certain. “I think that’s my question to ask.”

She hadn’t corrected my grammar, at least. “I came to talk to you. To buy something. Seivarden was ill. You weren’t here. I’ll pay you for what we’ve eaten, of course.”

She seemed to find that amusing, for some reason. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“I’m alone,” I said, answering her unspoken question. “Except for him.” I nodded at Seivarden. My hand was still on my gun, and Strigan likely knew why I kept that hand so still, under my coat. Seivarden still feigned sleep.

Strigan shook her head slightly, disbelieving. “I’d have sworn you were a corpse soldier.” An ancillary, she meant. “When you arrived I was certain of it.” She’d been hiding nearby, then, waiting for us to leave, and the entire place had been under her surveillance. She must have trusted her hiding place quite extravagantly—if I had been what she feared, staying anywhere near would have been extremely foolish. I would certainly have found her. “But when you saw there was no one here you wept. And him…” She shrugged toward Seivarden, slack and motionless on the pallet.

“Sit up, citizen,” I said to Seivarden, in Radchaai. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

“Fuck off,” she answered, and pulled a blanket over her head. Then shoved it off again and rose, slightly shaky, and went into the sanitary facility and closed the door.

I turned back to Strigan. “That business with the flier rental. Was that you?”

She shrugged ruefully. “He told me a couple of Radchaai were coming out this way. Either he badly underestimated you, or you’re even more dangerous than I thought.”

Which would be considerably dangerous. “I’m used to being underestimated. And you didn’t tell her… him why you thought I was coming.”

Her gun hadn’t wavered. “Why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here.” A quick change in her expression, instantly suppressed. I continued. “Not to kill you. Killing you would defeat the purpose.”

She raised an eyebrow, tilted her head slightly. “Would it.”

The fencing, the feinting, frustrated me. “I want the gun.”

“What gun?” Strigan would never be so foolish as to admit the thing existed, that she knew what gun I was talking about. But her pretended ignorance didn’t convince. She knew. If she had what I thought she had, what I had gambled my life she had, further specificity would be unnecessary. She knew.

Whether she would give it to me was another question. “I’ll pay you for it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Garseddai did everything in fives. Five right actions, five principal sins, five zones times five regions. Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch.”

For three seconds Strigan was utterly still. Even her breathing seemed to have stopped. Then she spoke. “Garsedd, is it? What does that have to do with me?”

“I’d never have guessed if you’d stayed where you were.”

“Garsedd was a thousand years ago, and very, very far away from here.”

“Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch,” I repeated. “And twenty-four guns recovered or