Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,47

but psychological or emotional ones—they might resolve on their own, and if they didn’t, the doctor would need that aptitudes data to work effectively.

“They said I could send a message to my house lord asking for assistance. But they didn’t know who that was.” Obviously Seivarden had no intention of talking about the station doctor.

“House lord?” asked Strigan.

“Head of her extended family,” I explained. “It sounds very elevated in translation, but it isn’t, unless your house is very wealthy or prestigious.”

“And hers?”

“Was both.”

Strigan didn’t miss that. “Was.”

Seivarden continued as though we hadn’t spoken. “But it turned out, Vendaai was gone. My whole house didn’t even exist anymore. Everything, assets and contracts, everything absorbed by Geir!” It had surprised everyone at the time, some five hundred years ago. The two houses, Geir and Vendaai, had hated each other. Geir’s house lord had taken malicious advantage of Vendaai’s gambling debts, and some foolish contracts.

“Catch up with current events?” I asked Seivarden.

She ignored my question. “Everything was gone. And what was left, it was like it was almost right. But the colors were wrong, or everything was turned slightly to the left of where it should be. People would say things and I couldn’t understand them at all, or I knew they were real words but my mind couldn’t take them in. Nothing seemed real.”

Maybe it had been an answer to my question after all. “How did you feel about the human soldiers?”

Seivarden frowned, and looked directly at me for the first time since she’d awoken. I regretted asking the question. It hadn’t really been the question I’d wanted to ask. What did you think when you heard about Ime? But maybe she hadn’t. Or if she had it might have been incomprehensible to her. Did anyone come to you whispering about restoring the rightful order of things? Probably not, considering. “How did you leave the Radch without permits?” That couldn’t have been easy. It would at the very least have cost money she wouldn’t have had.

Seivarden looked away from me, down and to the left. She wasn’t going to say.

“Everything was wrong,” she said after nine seconds of silence.

“Bad dreams,” said Strigan. “Anxiety. Shaking, sometimes.”

“Unsteady,” I said. Translated it had very little sting, but in Radchaai, for an officer like Seivarden, it said more. Weak, fearful, inadequate to the demands of her position. Fragile. If Seivarden was unsteady, she had never really deserved her assignment, never really been suited to the military, let alone to captain a ship. But of course Seivarden had taken the aptitudes, and the aptitudes had said she was what her house had always assumed she would be: steady, fit to command and conquer. Not prone to doubts or irrational fears.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seivarden half-sneered, half-snarled. Arms still locked around her knees. “No one in my house is unsteady.”

Of course (I thought but did not say), the various cousins who had served a year or so during this annexation or that and retired to take ascetic vows or paint tea sets hadn’t done so because they had been unsteady. And the cousins who hadn’t tested as anticipated, but surprised their parents with assignments in the minor priesthoods, or the arts—this had not indicated any sort of unsteadiness inherent in the house, no, never. And Seivarden wasn’t the least bit afraid or worried about what new assignment a retake of the aptitudes would get her, and what that might say about her steadiness. Of course not.

“Unsteady?” asked Strigan, understanding the word, but not its context.

“The unsteady,” I explained, “lack a certain strength of character.”

“Character!” Strigan’s indignation was plain to read.

“Of course.” I didn’t alter my facial expression, but kept it bland and pleasant, as it had been for most of the past few days. “Lesser citizens break down in the face of enormous difficulties or stress and sometimes require medical attention for it. But some citizens are bred better. They never break down. Though they may take early retirement, or spend a few years pursuing artistic or spiritual interests—prolonged meditation retreats are quite popular. This is how one knows the difference between highly placed families and lesser ones.”

“But you Radchaai are so good at brainwashing. Or so I hear.”

“Reeducation,” I corrected. “If she’d stayed, she’d have gotten help.”

“But she couldn’t face needing the help to begin with.” I said nothing to agree or disagree, though I thought Strigan was right. “How much can… reeducation do?”

“A great deal,” I said. “Though much of what you’ve probably