Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,6
to her mouth. “I know you. I know One Esk. Whoever they’ll send me—I won’t know. Neither will my parishioners.”
“Annexations are messy,” said Lieutenant Awn. The head priest winced slightly at the word annexation and I thought I saw Lieutenant Awn notice, but she continued. “Seven Issa wasn’t here for that. The Justice of Ente Issa battalions didn’t do anything during that time that One Esk didn’t also do.”
“No, Lieutenant.” The priest put down her own cup, seeming disturbed, but I didn’t have access to any of her internal data and so could not be certain. “Justice of Ente Issa did many things One Esk did not. It’s true, One Esk killed as many people as the soldiers of Justice of Ente’s Issa. Likely more.” She looked at me, still standing silent by the enclosure’s entrance. “No offense, but I think it was more.”
“I take no offense, Divine,” I replied. The head priest frequently spoke to me as though I were a person. “And you are correct.”
“Divine,” said Lieutenant Awn, worry clear in her voice. “If the soldiers of Justice of Ente Seven Issa—or anyone else—have been abusing citizens…”
“No, no!” protested the head priest, her voice bitter. “Radchaai are so very careful about how citizens are treated!”
Lieutenant Awn’s face heated, her distress and anger plain to me. I couldn’t read her mind, but I could read every twitch of her every muscle, so her emotions were as transparent to me as glass.
“Forgive me,” said the head priest, though Lieutenant Awn’s expression had not changed, and her skin was too dark to show the flush of her anger. “Since the Radchaai have bestowed citizenship on us…” She stopped, seemed to reconsider her words. “Since their arrival, Seven Issa has given me nothing to complain of. But I’ve seen what your human troops did during what you call the annexation. The citizenship you granted may be as easily taken back, and…”
“We wouldn’t…” protested Lieutenant Awn.
The head priest stopped her with a raised hand. “I know what Seven Issa, or at least those like them, do to people they find on the wrong side of a dividing line. Five years ago it was noncitizen. In the future, who knows? Perhaps not-citizen-enough?” She waved a hand, a gesture of surrender. “It won’t matter. Such boundaries are too easy to create.”
“I can’t blame you for thinking in such terms,” said Lieutenant Awn. “It was a difficult time.”
“And I can’t help but think you inexplicably, unexpectedly naive,” said the head priest. “One Esk will shoot me if you order it. Without hesitation. But One Esk would never beat me or humiliate me, or rape me, for no purpose but to show its power over me, or to satisfy some sick amusement.” She looked at me. “Would you?”
“No, Divine,” I said.
“The soldiers of Justice of Ente Issa did all of those things. Not to me, it’s true, and not to many in Ors itself. But they did them nonetheless. Would Seven Issa have been any different, if it had been them here instead?”
Lieutenant Awn sat, distressed, looking down at her unappetizing tea, unable to answer.
“It’s strange. You hear stories about ancillaries, and it seems like the most awful thing, the most viscerally appalling thing the Radchaai have done. Garsedd—well, yes, Garsedd, but that was a thousand years ago. This—to invade and take, what, half the adult population? And turn them into walking corpses, slaved to your ships’ AIs. Turned against their own people. If you’d asked me before you… annexed us, I’d have said it was a fate worse than death.” She turned to me. “Is it?”
“None of my bodies is dead, Divine,” I said. “And your estimate of the typical percentage of annexed populations who were made into ancillaries is excessive.”
“You used to horrify me,” said the head priest to me. “The very thought of you near was terrifying, your dead faces, those expressionless voices. But today I am more horrified at the thought of a unit of living human beings who serve voluntarily. Because I don’t think I could trust them.”
“Divine,” said Lieutenant Awn, mouth tight. “I serve voluntarily. I make no excuses for it.”
“I believe you are a good person, Lieutenant Awn, despite that.” She picked up her cup of tea and sipped it, as though she had not just said what she had said.
Lieutenant Awn’s throat tightened, and her lips. She had thought of something she wanted to say, but was unsure if she should. “You’ve heard about Ime,” she said, deciding. Still