Ancillary Justice Read Free Page B

well upriver from Ors and nearby Kould Ves. Far enough upriver that the air was often cool and dry, and things didn’t smell of mildew all the time. “What does the district magistrate know about Ors? For all I know the district magistrate doesn’t exist!” She continued, explaining to me the long history of her house’s association with the buoy-enclosed area, which was off-limits and certainly closed to fishing for the next three years.
    And as always, in the back of my mind, a constant awareness of being in orbit overhead.
    “Come now, Lieutenant,” said the head priest. “No one likes Ors except those of us unfortunate enough to be born here. Most Shis’urnans I know, let alone Radchaai, would rather be in a city, with dry land and actual seasons besides rainy and not rainy.”
    Lieutenant Awn, still sweating, accepted a cup of so-called tea, and drank without grimacing—a matter of practice and determination. “My superiors are asking for my return.”
    On the relatively dry northern edge of the town, two brown-uniformed soldiers passing in an open runabout saw me, raised hands in greeting. I raised my own, briefly. “One Esk!” one of them called. They were common soldiers, from
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’s Seven Issa unit, under Lieutenant Skaaiat. They patrolled the stretch of land between Ors and the far southwestern edge of Kould Ves, the city that had grown up around the river’s newer mouth. The
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Seven Issas were human, and knew I was not. They always treated me with slightly guarded friendliness.
    “I would prefer you stay,” said the head priest, to Lieutenant Awn. Though Lieutenant Awn had already known that. We’d have been back on
Justice of Toren
two years before, but for the Divine’s continued request that we stay.
    “You understand,” said Lieutenant Awn, “they would much prefer to replace One Esk with a human unit. Ancillaries can stay in suspension indefinitely. Humans…” She set down her tea, took a flat, yellow-brown cake. “Humans have families they want to see again, they have lives. They can’t stay frozen for centuries, the way ancillaries sometimes do. It doesn’t make sense to have ancillaries out of the holds doing work when there are human soldiers who could do it.” Though Lieutenant Awn had been here five years, and routinely met with the head priest, it was the first time the topic had been broached so plainly. She frowned, and changes in her respiration and hormone levels told me she’d thought of something dismaying. “You haven’t had problems with
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Seven Issa, have you?”
    “No,” said the head priest. She looked at Lieutenant Awnwith a wry twist 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
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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. “
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Issa did many things One Esk did not. It’s true, One Esk killed as many people as the soldiers of
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’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
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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