“The Garseddai did everything in fives. Five right actions, five principal sins, five zones times five regions. Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch.”
For three seconds Strigan was utterly still. Even her breathing seemed to have stopped. Then she spoke. “Garsedd, is it? What does that have to do with me?”
“I’d never have guessed if you’d stayed where you were.”
“Garsedd was a thousand years ago, and very, very far away from here.”
“Twenty-five representatives to surrender to the Lord of the Radch,” I repeated. “And twenty-four guns recovered or otherwise accounted for.”
She blinked, drew in a breath. “Who are you?”
“Someone ran. Someone fled the system before the Radchaai arrived. Maybe she was afraid the guns wouldn’t work as advertised. Maybe she knew that even if they did it wouldn’t help.”
“On the contrary, no? Wasn’t that the point? No one defies Anaander Mianaai.” She spoke bitterly. “Not if they want to live.”
I said nothing.
Strigan’s hold on the gun didn’t waver. Even so, she was in danger from me, if I decided to harm her, and I thought she suspected that. “I don’t know why you think I have this gun you’re talking about. Why would I have it?”
“You collected antiques, curiosities. You already had a small collection of Garseddai artifacts. They’d made their way to Dras Annia Station, somehow. Others might do so as well. And then one day you disappeared. You took care you wouldn’t be followed.”
“That’s a very slight basis for such a large assumption.”
“So why this?” I gestured carefully with my free hand, the other still under my coat, holding my gun. “You had a comfortable post on Dras Annia, patients, plenty of money, associations and reputation. Now you’re in the icy middle of nowhere, giving first aid to bov herders.”
“Personal crisis,” she said, the words carefully, deliberately pronounced.
“Certainly,” I agreed. “You couldn’t bring yourself to destroy it, or pass it on to someone who might not be wise enough to realize what a danger it presented. You knew, as soon as you realized what you had, that if Radch authorities ever even dreamed of half-imagining it existed, they would track you down and kill you, and anyone else who might have seen it.”
While the Radch wanted everyone to remember what had happened to the Garseddai, they wanted no one to know just how the Garseddai had managed to do what they’d done, what no one had managed to do for a thousand years before or another thousand years after—destroy a Radchaai ship. Almost no one alive remembered. I knew, and any still-extant ships that had been there. Anaander Mianaai certainly did. And Seivarden, who had seen for herself what the Lord of the Radch wanted no one to think was possible—that invisible armor and gun, those bullets that defeated Radchaai armor—and her ship’s heat shield—so effortlessly.
“I want it,” I told Strigan. “I’ll pay you for it.”
“If I had such a thing… if! It’s entirely possible no amount of money in the world would be sufficient.”
“Anything is possible,” I agreed.
“You’re Radchaai. And you’re military.”
“Was,” I corrected. And when she scoffed, I added, “If I still were, I wouldn’t be here. Or if I were, you would already have given me whatever information I wanted, and you’d be dead.”
“Get out of here.” Strigan’s voice was quiet, but vehement. “Take your stray with you.”
“I’m not leaving until I have what I came for.” There would be little point in doing so. “You’ll have to give it to me, or shoot me with it.” As much as admitting I still had armor. Implying I was precisely what she feared, a Radchaai agent come to kill her and take the gun.
Frightened of me as she must be, she could not avoid her own curiosity. “Why do you want it so badly?”
“I want,” I told her, “to kill Anaander Mianaai.”
“What?” The gun in her hand trembled, moved slightly aside, then steadied again. She leaned forward three millimeters, and cocked her head as though she was certain she hadn’t heard me correctly.
“I want to kill Anaander Mianaai,” I repeated.
“Anaander Mianaai,” she said, bitterly, “has thousands of bodies in hundreds of locations. You can’t possibly kill him. Certainly not with one gun.”
“I still want to try.”
“You’re insane. Or is that even possible? Aren’t all Radchaai brainwashed?”
It was a common misconception. “Only criminals, or people who aren’t functioning well, are reeducated. Nobody really cares what you think, as long as you do what you’re supposed to.”
She stared, dubious. “How do you define ‘not functioning well’?”
I made an indefinite, not my problem gesture with my free hand. Though perhaps it was my problem. Perhaps that question did concern me now, insofar as it might very well concern Seivarden. “I’m going to take my hand out of my coat,” I said. “And then I’m going to go to sleep.”