A week. “I take it the palace is still here.”
“Yes,” said Seivarden, as though my question hadn’t been completely foolish but deserved an answer. “Thanks to you. Security and the dock crew managed to seal off all the exits before any other Lords of the Radch made it out onto the hull. If you hadn’t stopped the ones that did…” She made an averting gesture. “Two gates have gone down.” Out of twelve, that would be. That would cause enormous headaches, both here and at the other ends of those gates. And any ships in them when they’d gone might or might not have made it to safety. “Our side won, though, that’s good.”
Our side. “I don’t have a side in this,” I said.
From somewhere behind her Seivarden produced a bowl of tea. She kicked something below me, and the bed inclined itself, slowly. She held the bowl to my mouth and I took one small, cautious sip. It was wonderful. “Why,” I asked, when I’d taken another, “am I here? I know why the idiot who hauled me in did it, but why did the medics bother with me?”
Seivarden frowned. “You’re serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
“That’s true.” She stood, opened a drawer and brought out a blanket, which she laid over me, and carefully tucked around my bare hands.
Before she could answer my question, Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat came partway into the small room. “Medic said you were awake.”
“Why?” I asked. And in answer to her puzzled expression, “Why am I awake? Why am I not dead?”
“Did you want to be?” asked Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat, still looking as though she didn’t understand me.
“No.” Seivarden offered the tea again, and I drank, a larger sip than before. “No, I don’t want to be dead, but it seems like a lot of work just to revive an ancillary.” And cruel to have brought me back just so the Lord of the Radch could order me destroyed.
“I don’t think anyone here thinks of you as an ancillary,” said Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat.
I looked at her. She seemed entirely serious.
“Skaaiat Awer,” I began, flat-voiced.
“Breq,” said Seivarden before I could speak further, voice urgent. “The doctor said lie still. Here, have more tea.”
Why was Seivarden even here? Why was Skaaiat? “What have you done for Lieutenant Awn’s sister?” I asked, flat and harsh.
“Offered her clientage, actually. Which she wouldn’t take. She was sure her sister held me in high regard but she herself didn’t know me and wasn’t in need of my assistance. Very stubborn. She’s in horticulture, two gates away. She’s doing fine, I keep an eye on her, best I can from this distance.”
“Have you offered it to Daos Ceit?”
“This is about Awn,” Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat said. “I can see it is, but you won’t come out and say it. And you’re right. There was a great deal more that I could have said to her before she left, and I should have said it. You’re the ancillary, the non-person, the piece of equipment, but to compare our actions, you loved her more than I ever did.”
Compare our actions. It was like a slap. “No,” I said. Glad of my expressionless ancillary’s voice. “You left her in doubt. I killed her.” Silence. “The Lord of the Radch doubted your loyalty, doubted Awer, and wanted Lieutenant Awn to spy on you. Lieutenant Awn refused, and demanded to be interrogated to prove her loyalty. Of course Anaander Mianaai didn’t want that. She ordered me to shoot Lieutenant Awn.”
Three seconds of silence. Seivarden stood motionless. Then Skaaiat Awer said, “You didn’t have a choice.”
“I don’t know if I had a choice or not. I didn’t think I did. But the next thing I did, after I shot Lieutenant Awn, was to shoot Anaander Mianaai. Which is why—” I stopped. Took a breath. “Which is why she breached my heat shield. Skaaiat Awer, I have no right to be angry with you.” I couldn’t speak further.
“You have every right to be as angry as you wish,” said Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat. “If I had understood when you first came here, I would have spoken differently to you.”
“And if I had wings I’d be a sail-pod.” Ifs and would-haves changed nothing. “Tell the tyrant,” I used the Orsian word, “that I will see her as soon as I can get out of bed. Seivarden, bring me my clothes.”
Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat had, it turned out, actually come to see Daos Ceit, who’d been badly injured in the last convulsions of Anaander Mianaai’s struggle with herself. I walked slowly down a corridor lined with corrective-swathed injured lying on hastily made pallets, or encased in pods that would hold them suspended until the medics could get to them. Daos Ceit lay on a bed, in a room, unconscious. Looking smaller and younger than I knew she was. “Will she be all right?” I asked Seivarden. Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat hadn’t waited for me to make my slow way down the corridor, she’d had to get back to the docks.