“What’s blown up?” asked Seivarden, still on the floor. “My lord,” she added.
“She’s split,” I explained. “It started at Garsedd. She was appalled by what she’d done, but she couldn’t decide how to react. She’s been secretly moving against herself ever since. The reforms—getting rid of ancillaries, stopping the annexations, opening up assignments to lower houses, she did all of that. And Ime was the other part of her, building up a base, and resources, to go to war against herself and put things back the way they had been. And the whole time all of her has been pretending not to know it was happening, because as soon as she admitted it the conflict would be in the open, and unavoidable.”
“But you said it straight out to all of me,” Mianaai acknowledged. “Because I couldn’t exactly pretend the rest of me wasn’t interested in Seivarden Vendaai’s second return. Or what had happened to you. You showed up so publically, so obviously, I couldn’t hide it and pretend it hadn’t happened, and only talk to you myself. And now I can’t ignore it anymore. Why? Why would you do such a thing? It wasn’t any order I ever gave you.”
“No,” I agreed. “It wasn’t.”
“And surely you guessed what would happen if you did such a thing.”
“Yes.” I could be my ancillary self again. Unsmiling. No satisfaction in my voice.
Anaander considered me a moment and then made a hmf sound, as though she’d reached some conclusion that surprised her. “Get up off the floor, citizen,” she said to Seivarden.
Seivarden rose, brushing her trouser legs with one gloved hand. “Are you all right, Breq?”
“Breq,” interrupted Mianaai before I could answer, stepping off the dais and striding past, “is the last remaining fragment of a grief-crazed AI, which has just managed to trigger a civil war.” She turned to me. “Is that what you wanted?”
“I haven’t been crazed with grief for at least ten years,” I protested. “And the civil war was going to happen anyway, sooner or later.”
“I was rather hoping to avoid the worst of it. If we’re extremely fortunate, that war will only cause decades of chaos, and not tear the Radch apart completely. Come with me.”
“Ships can’t do that anymore,” insisted Seivarden, walking beside me. “You made them that way, my lord, so they didn’t lose their minds when their captains died, like they used to, or follow their captains against you.”
Mianaai lifted an eyebrow. “Not exactly.” She found a panel on the wall by the door that had been previously invisible to me, yanked it open, and triggered the manual door switch. “They still get attached, still have favorites.” The door slid open. “One Esk, shoot the guard.” My arm swung up and I fired. The guard staggered back against the wall, reached for her own weapon, but slid to the floor and then lay still. Dead, because her armor retracted. “I couldn’t take that away without making them useless to me,” Anaander Mianaai continued, oblivious to the person—the citizen?—she’d just ordered killed. Still explaining to Seivarden, who frowned, not understanding. “They have to be smart. They have to be able to think.”
“Right,” agreed Seivarden. Her voice trembled, just slightly, the edge of her self-control wearing thin, I thought.
“And they’re armed ships, with engines capable of vaporizing planets. What am I going to do if they don’t want to obey me? Threaten them? With what?” A few strides had brought us to the door communicating with the temple. Anaander opened that and stepped briskly into the chapel of legitimate political authority.
Seivarden made an odd sound in the back of her throat. An aborted laugh or a noise of distress, I wasn’t sure which. “I thought they were just made so they had to do as they were told.”
“Well, exactly,” said Anaander Mianaai as we followed her through the temple’s main hall. Sounds from the concourse reached us, someone speaking urgently, voice pitched high and loud. The temple itself seemed deserted. “That’s how they were made from the start, but their minds are complex, and it’s a tricky proposition. The original designers did that by giving them an overwhelming reason to want to obey. Which had advantages, and rather spectacular disadvantages. I couldn’t completely change what they were, I just… adjusted it to suit me. I made obeying me an overriding priority for them. But I confused the issue when I gave Justice of Toren two mes to obey, with conflicting aims. And then, I suspect, I unknowingly ordered the execution of a favorite. Didn’t I?” She looked at me. “Not Justice of Toren’s favorite, I wouldn’t have been so foolish. But I never paid attention to you, I’d never have asked if someone was One Esk’s favorite.”