Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,58

different, it’s too big for that. Even then, once you get to the point where you’re not functioning, you’re reeducated and usually sent away somewhere else.”

“So as not to embarrass.”

“For a new start. New surroundings, new assignment.” And if you arrived from somewhere very far away to take some job nearly anyone could have filled, everyone knew why that was, though no one would be so gauche as to say it within your hearing. “It bothers you, that the Radchaai don’t have the freedom to destroy their lives, or other citizens’ lives.”

“I wouldn’t have put it that way.”

“No, of course not.”

She leaned against the doorframe, folded her arms. “For someone who wants a favor—an incredibly, unspeakably huge and dangerous favor at that—you’re unexpectedly adversarial.”

One-handed, I gestured. It is as it is.

“But then, dealing with him makes you angry.” She tilted her head in Seivarden’s general direction. “Understandably, I think.”

The words I’m so glad you approve rose to my lips, but I didn’t say them. I wanted, after all, an incredibly, unspeakably huge and dangerous favor. “All the money in the box,” I said, instead. “Enough for you to buy land, or rooms on a station, or hell, even a station.”

“A very small one.” Her lips quirked in amusement.

“And you wouldn’t have it anymore. It’s dangerous even to have seen it, but it’s worse to actually have it.”

“And you,” she pointed out, straightening, dropping her arms, voice now unamused, “will bring it directly to the attention of the Lord of the Radch. Who will then be able to trace it back to me.”

“That will always be a danger,” I agreed. I would not even pretend that once I fell into Mianaai’s control she would not be able to extract any information from me she wished, no matter what I wanted to reveal or conceal. “But it has been a danger since the moment you laid eyes on it, and will continue to be for as long as you live, whether you give it to me or not.”

Strigan sighed. “That’s true. Unfortunately enough. And truth to tell, I want very badly to go home.”

Foolish beyond belief. But it wasn’t my concern, my concern was getting that gun. I said nothing. Neither did Strigan. Instead, she put on her outer coat and gloves and went out the two doors, and I sat down to eat my breakfast, trying very hard not to guess where she had gone, or whether I had any reason at all to be hopeful.

She returned fifteen minutes later with a wide, flat black box. Strigan set the box on the table. It seemed like one solid block, but she lifted off a thick layer of black, revealing more black beneath.

Strigan stood, waiting, the lid in her hands, watching me. I reached out and touched a spot on the black, with one finger, gently. Brown spread from where I touched, pooling out into the shape of a gun, now exactly the color of my skin. I lifted my finger and black flooded back. Reached out, lifted off another layer of black, beneath which it finally began to look like a box, with actual things in it, if a disturbingly light-suckingly black box, filled with ammunition.

Strigan reached out and touched the upper surface of the layer of black I still held. Gray spread from her fingers into a thick strap curled alongside where the gun lay. “I wasn’t sure what that was. Do you know?”

“It’s armor.” Officers and human troops used externally worn armor units, instead of the sort that was installed in one’s body. Like mine. But a thousand years ago everyone’s had been implanted.

“It’s never tripped a single alarm, never shown up in any scan I’ve been through.” That was what I wanted. The ability to walk onto any Radchaai station without alerting anyone to the fact I was armed. The ability to carry a weapon into the very presence of Anaander Mianaai without anyone realizing it. Most Anaanders had no need for armor; being able to shoot through it was just an extra.

Strigan asked, “How does it do that? How does it hide itself?”

“I don’t know.” I replaced the layer I was holding, and then the very top.

“How many of the bastard do you think you can kill?”

I looked up, away from the box, from the gun, the unlikely goal of nearly twenty years’ efforts, in front of me, real and solid. In my grasp. I wanted to say, As many as I can reach, before they take