Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,42

the houses, but I don’t really want to find out how hard those are to breach. If,” she added, seeing Anaander Mianaai come into the temple, walking slowly, as though nothing unusual were happening, “my lord permits.”

The Lord of the Radch gestured a silent assent.

The head priest clearly didn’t like the suggestion, but she agreed. By now my segments on the plaza were seeing hand lights sporadically visible in the nearest upper-city streets.

Within moments Lieutenant Awn had me behind the large temple doors, ready to close them on her signal, and a few of me dispatched to the streets around the plaza to help herd Tanmind toward the temple. The rest of me stood in the shadows around the perimeter inside the temple itself, and the priests returned to their prayers, their backs to the wide and inviting entrance.

More than a hundred Tanmind came down from the upper city. Most of them did precisely as we wished, and rushed in a swirling, shouting mass into the temple, except for twenty-three, a dozen of whom veered off down a dark, empty avenue. The other eleven, who had already been trailing the larger group, saw one segment of me standing quiet nearby, and thought better of their actions. They stopped, muttered among themselves for a moment, watching the mass of Tanmind run into the temple, the others rushing, shouting, down the street. They watched me close the temple doors, the segments posted there not uniformed, covered only with the silver of my own generated armor, and maybe it reminded them of the annexation. Several of them swore, and they turned and ran back to the upper city.

Eighty-three Tanmind had run into the temple; their angry voices echoed and reechoed, magnified. At the sound of the doors slamming closed, they turned and tried to rush back the way they had come, but I had surrounded them, my guns drawn and aimed at whoever was nearest each segment.

“Citizens!” shouted Lieutenant Awn, but she didn’t have the trick of making herself heard.

“Citizens!” the various fragments of me shouted, my own voices echoing and then dying down. Along with the Tanmind’s tumult: Jen Shinnan, and Jen Taa, and a few others I knew were friends or relations of theirs, shushed those near them, urged them to calm themselves, to consider that the Lord of the Radch herself was here, and they could speak directly to her.

“Citizens!” Lieutenant Awn shouted again. “Have you lost your minds? What are you doing?”

“Murder!” shouted Jen Shinnan, who was at the front of the crowd, shouting over my head at Lieutenant Awn where she stood behind me, beside the Lord of the Radch and the Divine. The junior priests stood huddled together, seemingly frozen. The Tanmind voices grumbled, echoing, in support of Jen Shinnan. “We won’t get justice from you so we’ll take it ourselves!” Jen Shinnan cried. The grumbling from the crowd rolled around the stone walls of the temple.

“Explain yourself, citizen,” said Anaander Mianaai, voice pitched to sound above the noise.

The Tanmind hushed each other for five seconds, and then, “My lord,” said Jen Shinnan. Her respectful tone sounded almost sincere. “My young niece has been staying in my house for the past week. She was harassed and threatened by Orsians when she came to the lower city, which I reported to Lieutenant Awn, but nothing was done. This evening I found her room empty, the window broken, blood everywhere! What am I to conclude? The Orsians have always resented us! Now they mean to kill us all, is it any wonder we should defend ourselves?”

Anaander Mianaai turned to Lieutenant Awn. “Was this reported?”

“It was, my lord,” said Lieutenant Awn. “I investigated and found that the young person in question had never left sight of Justice of Toren One Esk, who reported that she had spent all her time in the lower city alone. The only words that passed between her and anyone else were routine business transactions. She was not harassed or threatened at any time.”

“You see!” cried Jen Shinnan. “You see why we are compelled to take justice into our own hands!”

“And what leads you to believe all your lives are threatened?” asked Anaander Mianaai.

“My lord,” said Jen Shinnan, “Lieutenant Awn would have you believe everyone in the lower city is loyal and law-abiding, but we know from experience that the Orsians are anything but paragons of virtue. The fishermen go out on the water at night, unseen. Sources…” She hesitated, just a moment, whether because of