Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,70

didn’t stop.

Another hour passed, the town well behind us, and the bridge came in sight, flat black arcing across the drop, spikes and curls of glass below, brilliant red, intense yellow, ultramarine, and jagged stubs of others. The chasm walls were striated, black, green-gray, and blue, frosted here and there with ice. Below, the bottom of the chasm was lost in cloud. A sign in five languages proclaimed it to be a protected monument, access permitted only to a certain class of license holders—what license, to what purpose, was mysterious to me, as I did not recognize all the words on the sign. A low barrier blocked the entrance, nothing I could not easily step over, and there was no one here but me and Seivarden. The bridge itself was five meters wide, like all the others, and while the wind blew strong, it wasn’t strong enough to endanger me. I strode forward and stepped over the barrier and out onto the bridge.

Had heights troubled me, I might have found it dizzying. Fortunately they did not, and my only discomfort was the feeling of open spaces behind and under me that I could not see unless I turned my attention away from other places. My boots thunked on the black glass, and the whole structure swayed slightly, and shuddered in the wind.

A new pattern of vibrations told me Seivarden had followed me.

What happened next was largely my own fault.

We were halfway across when Seivarden spoke. “All right, all right. I get it. You’re angry.”

I stopped, but did not turn. “How much did it get you?” I asked, finally, only one of the things I had considered saying.

“What?” Though I hadn’t turned, I could see the motion as she leaned over, hands on her knees, could hear her still breathing hard, straining to be heard against the wind.

“How much kef?”

“I only wanted a little,” she said, not quite answering my question. “Enough to take the edge off. I need it. And it’s not like you paid for that flier to begin with.” For an instant I thought she had remembered how I had acquired the flier, unlikely as that seemed. But she continued, “You’ve got enough in that pack to buy ten fliers, and none of it’s yours, it belongs to the Lord of the Radch, doesn’t it? Making me walk like this is just you being pissy.”

I stood, still facing forward, my coat flattened against me in the wind. Stood trying to understand what her words meant, about who or what she thought I was. Why she thought I had troubled myself about her.

“I know what you are,” she said, as I stood silent. “No doubt you wish you could leave me behind, but you can’t, can you? You’ve got orders to bring me back.”

“What am I?” I asked, still without turning. Loud, against the wind.

“Nobody, that’s who.” Seivarden’s voice was scornful. She was standing upright now, just behind my left shoulder. “You tested into military, in the aptitudes, and like a million other nobodies these days, you think that makes you somebody. And you practiced the accent and how to hold your utensils, and knelt your way to Special Missions and now I’m your special mission, you’ve got to bring me home in one piece even though you’d rather not, wouldn’t you? You’ve got a problem with me, at a guess your problem is that try all you like, whoever you kneel to, you’ll never be what I was born to be, and people like you hate that.”

I turned toward her. I’m certain my face was without expression, but when my eyes met hers she flinched—no edge taken off, none at all—and took three quick, reflexive steps backward.

Over the edge of the bridge.

I stepped to the edge, looked down. Seivarden hung six meters below, hands clenched around a complicated swirl of red glass, her eyes wide, mouth open slightly. She looked up at me and said, “You were going to hit me!”

The calculations came easily to me. All my clothes knotted would only reach 5.7 meters. The red glass was connected somewhere under the bridge I couldn’t see, no sign of anything she could climb. The colored glass wasn’t as strong as the bridge itself—I guessed the red spiral would shatter under Seivarden’s weight sometime in the next three to seven seconds. Though that was only a guess. Still, any help I might call would certainly arrive too late. Clouds still veiled the bottom reaches of the chasm. Those