Ancillary Sword (14 page)

And the presence and attention of the Presger might be turned to advantage. In the past hundred years or so the Presger had begun to sell high-quality medical correctives, significantly cheaper than the ones made inside the Radch. Governor Giarod had said Athoek didn’t make its own medical supplies. And the Presger wouldn’t care if Athoek was part of the Radch or not. They would only care if Athoek could pay, and while the Presger idea of “pay” could be somewhat eccentric, I didn’t doubt we could find something suitable.

So why had the system governor locked Translator Dlique in the governor’s residence? And then said nothing to me about it? I could imagine Captain Hetnys doing such a thing—she had known Captain Vel, who had believed that Anaander Mianaai’s current fractured state was a result of Presger infiltration. I was fairly sure Translator Dlique’s arrival here was a coincidence—but coincidences were
meaningful, to Radchaai. Amaat was the universe, and anything that happened, happened because Amaat willed it. God’s intentions could be discerned by the careful study of even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant events. And the past weeks’ events were anything but small and insignificant. Captain Hetnys would be alert for strange occurrences, and this one would have set off a multitude of alarms for her. No, her concealment of Translator Dlique’s presence only confirmed what I had already suspected about the captain’s position.

But Governor Giarod. I had come away from dinner at Citizen Fosyf’s, and the meeting after in the governor’s office, with the impression that Governor Giarod was not only an intelligent, able person, but also that she understood that Anaander Mianaai’s current conflict with herself originated in herself, and not anywhere else. I didn’t think I could possibly have misjudged her so badly. But clearly I had missed something, didn’t understand something about her position.

“Station,” I transmitted, silently.

“Yes, Fleet Captain,” replied Station, in my ear.

“Kindly let Governor Giarod know I intend to call on her first thing in the morning.” Nothing else. If Station didn’t know I knew about Translator Dlique’s existence, let alone that she’d had dinner with me and then gone off again, my mentioning it would only panic Governor Giarod and Captain Hetnys. In the meantime I would have to try to find some way to handle this suddenly even more complicated situation.

On
Mercy of Kalr
, Seivarden sat in Command. Talking with
Sword of Atagaris
’s Amaat lieutenant, also apparently on watch on her own ship. “So,” she was saying, Ship sending her words directly into Seivarden’s ear. “Where are you from?”

“Someplace we don’t fuck around while we’re on watch,” Seivarden said, but silently, to Ship. Aloud, she said, “Inais.”

“Really!” It was plain that the
Sword of Atagaris
lieutenant had never heard of it. Which was hardly surprising, given the extent of Radch space, but didn’t help Seivarden’s already low estimation of her. “Have all your officers changed? Your predecessor was all right.” Ekalu (at that moment asleep, breathing deep and even) had painted the former
Mercy of Kalr
Amaat lieutenant as an unbearable snob. “But that medic wasn’t very friendly at all. Thought quite a lot of herself, I’d say.” (Medic sat in
Mercy of Kalr
’s decade room, frowning at her lunch of skel and tea. Calm, in a fairly good mood.)

In many ways, Seivarden had in her youth been just as unbearable as the former
Mercy of Kalr
Amaat lieutenant. But Seivarden had served on a troop carrier—which meant she’d spent actual time in combat, and knew what counted when it came to doctors. “Shouldn’t you be looking out for enemy ships?”

“Oh, Ship will tell me if it sees anything,” said the
Sword of Atagaris
lieutenant, breezily. “That fleet captain is very intimidating. Though I suppose she would be. She’s ordered us closer to the station. So we’ll be neighbors, at least for a bit. We should have tea.”

“Fleet captain is a bit less intimidating when you’re not threatening to destroy her ship.”

“Oh, well. That was a misunderstanding. Once you identified yourselves everything was cleared up. You don’t think she’ll hold it against me, though, do you?”

On Athoek Station, in the Undergarden, Kalr Five put away dishes in the room next to where I sat, and fussed to Eight about Translator Dlique’s sudden, discomfiting appearance.
In another room yet, Bo pulled off an unconscious Tisarwat’s boots. I said, to Ship, “Ekalu wasn’t exaggerating, about
Sword of Atagaris
’s Amaat lieutenant.”

“No,”
Mercy of Kalr
replied. “She wasn’t.”

Next morning, I was dressing—trousers on, still bootless, fastening my shirt—when I heard an urgent shouting from the corridor, a voice calling, “Fleet Captain! Fleet Captain, sir!” Ship showed me, through the Kalr standing watch in the corridor, a seven- or eight-year-old child in grubby loose shirt and trousers, no shoes or gloves. “Fleet Captain!” she shouted, insistent. Ignoring the guard.

I grabbed my gloves, went quickly out of my room to the antechamber, through the door Five opened for me at my gesture. “Fleet Captain, sir!” the child said, still loud though I was standing in front of her. “Come right away! Someone painted on the wall again! If those corpse soldiers see it first it’ll be
bad
!”

“Citizen,” began Five.

I cut her off. “I’m coming.” The child took off running, and I headed down the shadowed corridor after her.
Someone painted on the wall again
. Minor enough. Small enough to ignore, one might think, but Captain Hetnys had overreacted before—how badly clear to read in this child’s urgency, either her own conclusions about what might happen when
Sword of Atagaris
Var arrived, or conveyed to her by some adult who’d sent her as messenger. Serious enough. And if it turned out to be nothing, well, I would only have delayed my breakfast by a few minutes.

“What did they paint?” I asked, climbing up a ladder in an access well, the only way between levels here.

“Some kind of words,” the child replied, above me. “It’s
words
!”

So she either hadn’t seen them or couldn’t read them, and I guessed it was the second. Probably not Radchaai then, or Raswar, which I’d learned over the past two days was read and spoken by most of the Ychana here. Station had told me, my first night here, when I’d asked it for some information, some history, that most of the residents in the Undergarden were Ychana.

It was Xhi, though rendered phonetically in Radchaai script. Whoever had done it had used the same pink paint that had been used to decorate the tea shop door, that had been left sitting at the side of the small, makeshift concourse. I recognized the words, not because I knew more than a few phrases of Xhi at this point but because it dated from the annexation, had been emblematic of a particular resistance movement Station had told me about, two nights before.
Not tea but blood!
It was a play on words. The Radchaai word for “tea” bore a passing resemblance to the Xhi word for “blood,” and the implication was that the revolutionaries, rather than submitting to the Radch and drinking tea, would resist and drink (or at least spill) Radchaai blood. Those revolutionaries were several hundred years dead, that clever slogan no more than trivia in a history lesson.

The child, having seen me stop in front of the paint, not far from the tea shop entrance, took off running again, eager to be safely away. The rest of the Undergarden’s residents had done the same—the small concourse was deserted, though I knew that at this hour there should be if nothing else a steady stream of customers into the tea shop. Anyone passing this way had taken one look at that
Not tea but blood!
and
turned right around to find somewhere safe and out of the way of
Sword of Atagaris
’s Var lieutenant and her ancillaries. I was alone, Kalr Five still climbing up the access well, having been a good deal slower than I was.

A now-familiar voice spoke behind me. “That vomiting, purple-eyed child was right.” I turned. Translator Dlique, dressed as she had been last night, when she’d visited me.

“Right about what, Translator?” I asked.

“Raughd Denche really
is
a horrible person.”

At that moment, two
Sword of Atagaris
ancillaries came rushing onto the concourse. “You, there, halt!” said one, loud and emphatic. I realized, in that instant, that they might very well not recognize Translator Dlique—she was supposed to be locked in the governor’s residence, she was dressed like an Ychana, and like all of the Undergarden this space was erratically lit. I myself wasn’t in full uniform, wore only trousers, gloves, and partially fastened shirt. It was going to take
Sword of Atagaris
a moment to realize who we were.

“Oh,
sporocarps
!” Translator Dlique turned, I assumed to flee before
Sword of Atagaris
could see who she was and detain her.

She had not turned all the way, and I had only had the briefest moment to begin wondering at her using “sporocarp” as an obscenity, when a single gunshot popped, loud in the confined space, and Translator Dlique gasped, and tumbled forward to the ground. Unthinking, I raised my armor, yelled “
Sword of Atagaris
, stand down!” At the same moment I transmitted to Station, urgently, “Medical emergency on level one of the Undergarden!” Dropped to my knees beside Translator Dlique. “Station, Translator Dlique’s been shot in the back. I need medics here
right now
.”

“Fleet Captain,” said Station’s calm voice in my ear. “Medics don’t go to the—”

“
Right now
, Station.” I dropped my armor, looked up at the two
Sword of Atagaris
Vars, beside me now. “Your medkit, Ship, quickly.” I wanted to ask,
What do you think you’re doing, firing on people?
But keeping Translator Dlique from bleeding out was more immediately important. And this wouldn’t be entirely
Sword of Atagaris
’s fault, it would have been following Captain Hetnys’s orders.

“I’m not carrying medkits, Fleet Captain,” said one of the
Sword of Atagaris
ancillaries. “This is not a combat situation, and this station does have medical facilities.” And I, of course, didn’t have one. We’d brought them, as a matter of routine, but they were still in a packing case three levels down. If the bullet had hit, say, the translator’s renal artery—a distinct possibility, considering where the wound was—she could bleed out in minutes, and even if I ordered one of my Kalrs to bring me a kit, it would arrive too late.

I sent the order anyway, and pressed my hands over the wound on Translator Dlique’s back. Likely it wouldn’t do any good, but it was the only thing I
could
do. “Station, I need those medics!” I looked up at
Sword of Atagaris
. “Bring me a suspension pod.
Now
.”

“Aren’t any around here.” The tea shop proprietor—she must have been the only person who’d stayed nearby when they’d seen that slogan painted on the wall. Now she called out from the door of her shop. “Medical never comes here, either.”

“They’d better come this time.” My compression had reduced the blood coming out of the translator, but I couldn’t control internal bleeding, and her breathing had gone quick and shallow. She was losing blood fast, then, faster than I
could see. Down on level three Kalr Eight was opening the case where the medkits were stored. She’d moved the instant the order had come, was working quickly, but I didn’t think she would be here in time.

I still pressed uselessly on the translator’s back, while she lay gasping on the ground, facedown. “Blood stays
inside
your arteries, Dlique,” I said.

She gave a weak, shaky
hah
. “See…” She paused for a few shallow breaths. “Breathing. Stupid.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, breathing is stupid and boring, but keep on doing it, Dlique. As a favor to me.” She didn’t answer.

By the time Kalr Eight arrived with a medkit and Captain Hetnys came running onto the scene, a pair of medics behind her and
Sword of Atagaris
behind them, dragging an emergency suspension pod, it was too late. Translator Dlique was dead.

I knelt on the ground beside Translator Dlique’s body. Blood soaked my bare feet, my knees, my hands, still pressing down on the wound on her back, and the cuffs of my shirtsleeves were wet with it. It was not the first time I had been covered in someone else’s blood. I had no horror of it. The two
Sword of Atagaris
ancillaries were motionless and impassive, having set down the suspension pod they had dragged this far to no purpose. Captain Hetnys stood frowning, puzzled, not quite sure, I thought, of what had just happened.

I rose to make way for the medics, who went immediately to work on Translator Dlique. “Cit… Fleet Captain,” said one of them after a while. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”

“Never is,” said the proprietor of the tea shop, who was still standing in her doorway.
Not tea but blood!
scrawled only meters away from where she stood. That was a problem. But not, I suspected, the problem Captain Hetnys thought it was.

I peeled off my gloves. Blood had soaked through them,
my hands were sticky with it. I stepped quickly over to Captain Hetnys faster than she could back away and grabbed her uniform jacket with my bloody hands. Dragged her stumbling over to where Translator Dlique lay, the two medics scrambling out of our way, and before Captain Hetnys could regain her balance or resist, I threw her down onto the corpse. I turned to Kalr Eight. “Fetch a priest,” I said to her. “Whoever you find who’s qualified to do purifications and funerals. If she says she won’t come to the Undergarden, inform her that she may come willingly or not, but she will come regardless.”

“Sir,” Eight acknowledged, and departed.

Captain Hetnys had meanwhile managed to get to her feet, with the assistance of one of her ancillaries.

“How did this happen, Captain? I said not to use violence against citizens unless it was absolutely necessary.” Translator Dlique wasn’t a citizen, but
Sword of Atagaris
couldn’t have known it was the translator they were shooting at.

“Sir,” said Captain Hetnys. Voice shaking either with rage at what I’d just done, or distress generally. “
Sword of Atagaris
queried Station, and it said it had no knowledge of this person and there was no tracker. She was not, therefore, a citizen.”

“So that made it fine to shoot her, did it?” I asked. But of course, I myself had followed exactly that logic on a nearly uncountable number of occasions. It was such compelling logic, to someone like
Sword of Atagaris—
to someone like me—that it had never occurred to me that
Sword of Atagaris
would even think of firing guns here, on a station full of citizens, a station that had been part of the Radch for centuries.

It should have occurred to me. I was responsible for everything that happened under my command.

“Fleet Captain,” replied Captain Hetnys, indignant and not trying as hard as she might have to hide it. “Unauthorized persons pose a danger to—”

“This,” I said, each word deliberate, emphatic, “is Presger Translator Dlique.”

“Fleet Captain,” said Station, in my ear. I had left the connection to Station open, so it had heard what I had said. “With all respect, you are mistaken. Translator Dlique is still in her rooms in the governor’s residence.”

“Look again, Station.
Send
someone to look. Captain Hetnys, neither you nor any of your crew or ancillaries will go armed on this station under any circumstances, beginning now. Nor will your ship or any of your crew enter the Undergarden again without my explicit permission.
Sword of Atagaris
Var and its lieutenant will return to
Sword of Atagaris
as soon as a shuttle can take them. Do not”—she had opened her mouth to protest—“say a single word to me. You have deliberately concealed vital information from me. You have endangered the lives of residents of this station. Your troops have caused the death of the diplomatic representative of the Presger. I am trying to think of some reason why I shouldn’t shoot you where you stand.” Actually, there were at least three compelling reasons—the two armed ancillaries standing beside Captain Hetnys and the fact that in my haste I had left my own gun behind in my quarters, three levels below this one.

I turned to the proprietor of the tea shop. “Citizen.” It took extra effort not to speak in my flat, ancillary’s voice. “Will you bring me tea? I’ve had no breakfast, and I’m going to have to fast today.” Wordlessly, she turned and went into her shop.

While I waited for tea, Governor Giarod arrived. Took one
look at Translator Dlique’s body, at Captain Hetnys standing mute and blood-smeared by
Sword of Atagaris
’s ancillaries, took a breath, and then said, “Fleet Captain. I can explain.”

I looked at her. Then turned to see the tea shop proprietor set a bowl of tea-gruel on the ground a meter from where I stood. I thanked her, went to pick it up. Saw revulsion on the face of Captain Hetnys and Governor Giarod as I held it with bare, bloody hands and drank from it. “This is how it will be,” I said, after I’d drunk half of the thick tea. “There will be a funeral. Don’t speak to me of keeping this secret, or of panic in the corridors. There will be a funeral, with offerings and suitable tokens, and a period of mourning for every member of Station Administration. The body will be kept in suspension so that when the Presger come for the translator, they may take it and do whatever it is they do with dead bodies.

“For the moment,
Sword of Atagaris
will tell me the last time it saw this wall free of paint, and then Station will name for me every person who stopped in front of it from then until I saw it just now.” Station might not have been able to see if someone was painting, but it would know where everyone was, and I suspected very few people would have stood right next to this wall, in that window of time, who had not been the painter herself.

“Begging the fleet captain’s very great indulgence.” Captain Hetnys dared, against all wisdom, to speak to me. “That’s already done, and Security has arrested the person responsible.”

I raised an eyebrow. Surprised. And skeptical. “Security has arrested Raughd Denche?”

Now Captain Hetnys was astonished. “No, sir!” she protested. “I don’t know why you would assume Citizen Raughd
would do something like this. No, sir, it can only have been Sirix Odela. She passed here on her way to work this morning and stopped quite close to the wall for some fifteen seconds. More than enough time to paint this.”

If she passed by on her way to work, she lived in the Undergarden. Most of the Undergarden residents were Ychana, but this name was Samirend. And familiar. “This person works in the Gardens, above?” I asked. Captain Hetnys gestured assent. I thought of the person I’d met when I’d first arrived. Who I had found standing in the lake in the Gardens, so distressed at the thought of expressing anger. It wasn’t possible she had done this. “Why would a Samirend paint a Xhi slogan in Radchaai script? Why wouldn’t she write it in Liost since she’s Samirend, or Raswar, that more people here could read?”

“Historically, Fleet Captain—” began Governor Giarod.

I cut her off. “
Historically
, Governor, quite a lot of people have good reason to resent the annexation. But right here, right now, none of them will find any profit in more than token rebellion.” It would have been that way for several centuries. Nobody in the Undergarden who valued her life (not to mention the lives of anyone else in the Undergarden) would have painted that slogan on that wall, not knowing how this station’s administration would react. And I’d be willing to bet that everyone in the Undergarden knew how this station’s administration would react.

“The creation of the Undergarden was no doubt unintended,” I continued, as
Mercy of Kalr
showed me a brief flash of Kalr Eight speaking sternly to a junior priest, “but as it has benefited you, you tell yourselves that its condition is also just and proper.” That constant trio, justice, propriety, and benefit. They could not, in theory, exist alone. Nothing just was improper, nothing beneficial was unjust.

“Fleet Captain,” began Governor Giarod. Indignant. “I hardly think—”

“Everything necessitates its opposite,” I said, cutting her off. “How can you be civilized if there is no uncivilized?” Civilized. Radchaai. The word was the same. “If it did not benefit someone, somehow, there’d be plumbing here, and lights, and doors that worked, and medics who would come for an emergency.” Before the system governor could do more than blink in response, I turned to the tea shop proprietor, still standing in her doorway. “Who sent for me?”

“Sirix,” she said. “And see what it got her.”

“Citizen,” began Captain Hetnys, stern and indignant.

“Be silent, Captain.” My tone was even, but Captain Hetnys said nothing further.

Radchaai soldiers who touch dead bodies dispose of their impurities by means of a bath and a brief prayer—I never knew any to bathe without muttering or subvocalizing it. I didn’t, myself, but all my officers did, when I was a ship. I presumed civilian medics availed themselves of something similar.

That bath and that prayer sufficed, for anything short of making temple offerings. But with most Radchaai civilians, near contact with death was entirely another matter.

If I had been in a slightly more spiteful mood I would have gone deliberately around the small makeshift concourse, indeed around this entire level of the Undergarden, touching things and smearing blood so that what priests came would be forced to spend days on it. But I had never noticed that anyone profited from needless spite, and besides I suspected that the entire Undergarden was already in a dire state, as far as ritual uncleanness went. If Medical never came here, others had certainly died here before, and if priests would not
come, then that impurity had certainly lingered. Assuming one subscribed to such beliefs, in any event. The Ychana probably didn’t. Just one more reason to consider them foreign and not worth basic amenities every Radchaai supposedly took for granted.

A senior priest arrived, accompanied by two assistants. She stopped two meters from Translator Dlique’s corpse in its puddle of blood, and stood staring at it and us with wide-eyed horror.

“How do they dispose of bodies here?” I asked no one in particular.

Governor Giarod answered. “They drag them into the corridors around the Undergarden and leave them.”

“Disgusting,” muttered Captain Hetnys.

“What else are they supposed to do?” I asked. “There’s no facility here for dealing with dead bodies. Medical doesn’t come here, and neither do priests.” I looked at the senior priest. “Am I right?”

“No one is supposed to be here, Fleet Captain,” she replied primly, and cast a glance at the governor.

“Indeed.” I turned to Kalr Five, who had returned with the priests. “This suspension pod is functional?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then Captain Hetnys and I will put the translator in it. Then you”—indicating the priests with a gesture that my barehandedness made offensive—“will do what is necessary.”

Captain Hetnys and I spent twenty minutes washing in blessed water, saying prayers, and being sprinkled with salt and fumigated with three kinds of incense. It did not dispense with all of our contamination, only mitigated it so that we could walk through corridors or be in a room without
anyone needing to call a priest. The soldier’s bath and prayer would have done as well. Better, in fact, strictly speaking, but it would not have satisfied most of the residents of Athoek Station.

“If I go into full, traditional mourning,” Governor Giarod pointed out, when that was finished, and Captain Hetnys and I were dressed in clean clothes, “I won’t be able to go into my office for two weeks. The same goes for the rest of Administration. I agree, though, Fleet Captain, someone should.” As the rite had gone on, she had lost the harried expression she’d arrived with, and now seemed quite calm.

“Yes,” I agreed, “you’ll all have to be lesser cousins. Captain Hetnys and I will act as immediate family.” Captain Hetnys looked none too pleased about that but was not in any position to protest. I dispatched Kalr Five to bring a razor so that Captain Hetnys and I could shave our heads for the funeral, and also to see a jeweler about memorial tokens.

“Now,” I said to Governor Giarod, when Five was away and I’d sent Captain Hetnys to my quarters to prepare for the fast, “I need to know about Translator Dlique.”

“Fleet Captain, I hardly think this is the best place…”

“I can’t go to your office as I am.” Not so obviously just after a death that put me in full mourning, when I should be fasting at home. The impropriety would be obvious, and this funeral had to be absolutely, utterly proper. “And there’s no one near.” The tea seller was inside her shop, out of view. The priests had fled as soon as they thought they could. The
Sword of Atagaris
ancillaries had left the Undergarden at my order. My two Mercy of Kalrs, standing nearby, didn’t count. “And keeping things secret hasn’t been a very good choice so far.”

Governor Giarod gestured rueful resignation. “She arrived
with the first wave of rerouted ships.” The ships that neighboring systems had sent here either in the hope that they could find a different route to their original destinations, now the gates they needed to traverse were down, or because their own facilities were overwhelmed. “Just her, in a tiny little one-person courier barely the size of a shuttle. I’m not sure how it could even carry as much air as she needed for the trip she said she was making. And the timing was just…” She gestured her frustration. “I couldn’t send to the palace for advice. I cast omens. Privately. The results were disturbing.”

“Of course.” No Radchaai was immune to the suspicion of coincidence. Nothing happened by pure accident, no matter how small. Every event, therefore, was potentially a sign of God’s intentions. Unusual coincidences could only be a particularly pointed divine message. “I understand your apprehension. I even, to a certain extent, understand your wanting to confine the translator and conceal her presence from most station residents. None of that troubles me. What does trouble me is your failure to mention this alarming and potentially dangerous situation to me.”