Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,82

didn’t answer. “When we got to the bottom,” she continued, as though it was logically connected to what she had said before, “you were unconscious. And obviously badly injured, and I was afraid to move you much, because I couldn’t see if maybe bones were broken. I didn’t have any way to call for help, but I thought maybe you had something I could use to help climb out, or maybe some first-aid correctives I could use, but of course that was foolish, your armor was still up, which was how I knew you were still alive. I did take your handheld out of your coat, but there was no signal, I had to climb up to the top before I could reach anyone. When I got back your armor was down and I was afraid you were dead. Everything’s still in there.”

“If the gun is gone,” I said, voice calm and neutral, “I won’t just break your legs.”

“It’s there,” she insisted. “But this can’t possibly be personal business, can it?”

“It’s personal.” It was just that with me personal affected a great many others. But how could I explain that, without revealing more than I wanted to just now?

“Tell me.”

This was not a good time. Not a good moment. But there was a great deal to explain, especially since Seivarden’s knowledge of the past thousand years of history was sure to be patchy and superficial. Years of previous events leading up to this, which she would almost certainly be ignorant of, which would take time to explain, before I ever got to who I was and what I intended.

And that history would make a difference. Without understanding it, how could Seivarden understand anything? Without that context, how could she understand why anyone had acted as they did? If Anaander Mianaai had not reacted with such fury to the Garseddai, would she have done the things she’d done in the thousand years since then? If Lieutenant Awn had never heard of the events at Ime five years before, twenty-five years ago now, would she have acted as she did?

When I imagined it, the moment that Mercy of Sarrse soldier had chosen to defy her orders, I saw her as a segment of an ancillary unit. She had been number One of Mercy of Sarrse’s Amaat unit, its senior member. Even though she had been human, had had a name beyond her place on her ship, beyond Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One. But I had never seen a recording, had never seen her face.

She had been human. She had endured events at Ime—perhaps even enforced the corrupt dictates of the governor herself, when ordered. But something about that particular moment had changed things. Something had been too much for her.

What had it been? The sight, perhaps, of a Rrrrrr, dead or dying? I’d seen pictures of the Rrrrrr, snake-long, furred, multi-limbed, speaking in growls and barks; and the humans associated with them, who could speak that language and understand it. Had it been the Rrrrrr who had knocked Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One off her expected path? Did she care so much for the threat of breaking the treaty with the Presger? Or had it been the thought of killing so many helpless human beings? If I had known more about her, perhaps I could have seen why in that moment she had decided that she would rather die.

I knew almost nothing about her. Probably by design. But even the little I had known, the little Lieutenant Awn had known, had made a difference. “Did anyone tell you about what happened at Ime Station?”

Seivarden frowned. “No. Tell me.”

I told her. About the governor’s corruption, her preventing Ime Station or any of the ships from reporting what she was doing, so far from anywhere else in Radch space. About the ship that had arrived one day—they’d assumed it was human, no one knew of any aliens anywhere nearby, and it obviously wasn’t Radchaai and so it was fair game. I told Seivarden as much as I knew about the soldiers from Mercy of Sarrse who boarded the unknown ship with orders to take it and kill anyone aboard who resisted, or who obviously couldn’t be made into ancillaries. I didn’t know much—only that once the One Amaat unit had boarded the alien ship, its One had refused to continue to follow orders. She had convinced the rest of One Amaat to follow her, and they had defected to the Rrrrrr and