Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,50
And I had risked as much, or more, before now, and gotten this far.
She had to have the gun. Had to. But how could I make her give it to me? What would make her choose to give it to me?
“Tell me,” Strigan said, watching me intently. No doubt seeing my frustration and doubt through her medical implants, fluctuations of my blood pressure and temperature and respiration. “Tell me why.”
I closed my eyes, felt the disorientation of not being able to see through other eyes that I knew I had once had. Opened them again, took a breath to begin, and told her.
10
I had thought that perhaps the morning’s temple attendants would (quite understandably) choose to stay home, but one small flower-bearer, awake before the adults in her household, arrived with a handful of pink-petaled weeds and stopped at the edge of the house, startled to see Anaander Mianaai kneeling in front of our small icon of Amaat.
Lieutenant Awn was dressing, on the upper floor. “I can’t serve today,” she said to me, her voice impassive as her emotions were not. The morning was already warm, and she was sweating.
“You didn’t touch any of the bodies,” I said as I adjusted her jacket collar, sure of the fact. It was the wrong thing to say.
Four of my segments, two on the northern edge of the Fore-Temple and two standing waist-deep in the lukewarm water and mud, lifted the body of Jen Taa’s niece onto the ledge, and carried her to the medic’s house.
On the ground floor of Lieutenant Awn’s house, I said to the frightened, frozen flower-bearer, “It’s all right.” There was no sign of the water-bearer, and I was ineligible.
“You’ll have to at least bring the water, Lieutenant,” I said, above, to Lieutenant Awn. “The flower-bearer is here, but the water-bearer isn’t.”
For a few moments Lieutenant Awn said nothing, while I finished wiping her face. “Right,” she said, and went downstairs and filled the bowl, and brought it to the flower-bearer, where she stood next to me, still frightened, clutching her handful of pink petals. Lieutenant Awn held the water out to her, and she set the flowers down and washed her hands. But before she could pick the flowers up again, Anaander Mianaai turned to look at her, and the child started back and grabbed my gloved hand with her bare one. “You’ll have to wash your hands again, citizen,” I whispered, and with a bit more encouragement she did so, and picked up the flowers again and performed her part of the morning’s ritual correctly, if nervously. No one else came. I was not surprised.
The medic, speaking to herself and not to me, though I stood three meters away from her, said, “Throat cut, obviously, but she was also poisoned.” And then, with disgust and contempt, “A child of their own house. These people aren’t civilized.”
Our one small attendant left, a gift from the Lord of the Radch clutched in one hand—a pin in the shape of a four-petaled flower, each petal holding an enameled image of one of the four Emanations. Anywhere else, a Radchaai who received one would treasure it, and wear it nearly constantly, a badge of having served in the temple with the Lord of the Radch herself. This child would probably toss it in a box and forget about it. When she was out of sight (of Lieutenant Awn and the Lord of the Radch, if not of me) Anaander Mianaai turned to Lieutenant Awn and said, “Aren’t those weeds?”
A wave of embarrassment overcame Lieutenant Awn, mixed a moment later with disappointment, and an intense anger I had never seen in her before. “Not to the children, my lord.” She was unable to keep the edge out of her voice completely.
Anaander Mianaai’s expression didn’t change. “This icon, and this set of omens. They’re your personal property, I think. Where are the ones that belong to the temple?”
“Begging my lord’s pardon,” Lieutenant Awn said, though I knew at this point she meant to do no such thing, and the fact was audible in her tone. “I used the funds for their purchase to supplement the term-end gifts for the temple attendants.” She had also used her own money for the same purpose, but she didn’t say that.
“I’m sending you back to Justice of Toren,” said the Lord of the Radch. “Your replacement will be here tomorrow.”
Shame. A fresh flare of anger. And despair. “Yes, my lord.”