“I’m not the right people.” Lieutenant Awn set down her empty cup, and Lieutenant Skaaiat refilled it.
“You’re only one of thousands, but you’re a noticeable one, to someone. And this annexation is different, it’s the last one. Last chance to grab property, to make connections on the sort of scale the upper houses have always been accustomed to. They don’t like to see any of those last chances go to houses like yours. And to make it worse, your subverting the local hierarchy—”
“I used the local hierarchy!”
“Lieutenants,” I cautioned. Lieutenant Awn’s outburst had been loud enough to be heard in the street, if anyone had been on the street this evening.
“If the Tanmind were running things here, that was as things must be in Amaat’s mind. Right?”
“But they…” Lieutenant Awn stopped. I wasn’t sure what she had been about to say. Perhaps that they had imposed their authority over Ors relatively recently. Perhaps that they were, in Ors, a numerical minority and Lieutenant Awn’s goal had been to reach the largest number of people she could.
“Careful,” warned Lieutenant Skaaiat, though Lieutenant Awn hadn’t needed the warning. Any Radchaai soldier knew not to speak without thinking. “If you hadn’t found those weapons, someone would have had an excuse not only to toss you out of Ors, but to come down hard on the Orsians and favor the upper city. Restoring the universe to its proper order. And then, of course, anyone inclined could have used the incident as an example of how soft we’ve gotten. If we’d stuck to so-called impartial aptitudes testing, if we’d executed more people, if we still made ancillaries…”
“I have ancillaries,” Lieutenant Awn pointed out.
Lieutenant Skaaiat shrugged. “Everything else would have fit, they could ignore that. They’ll ignore anything that doesn’t get them what they want. And what they want is anything they can grab.” She seemed so calm. Even almost relaxed. I was used to not seeing data from Lieutenant Skaaiat, but this disjunction between her demeanor and the seriousness of the situation—Lieutenant Awn’s still-extreme distress, and, to be honest, my own discomfort at events—made her seem oddly flat and unreal to me.
“I understand Jen Shinnan’s part in this,” Lieutenant Awn said. “I do, I get that. But I don’t understand how… how anyone else would benefit.” The question she couldn’t ask directly was, of course, why Anaander Mianaai would be involved, or why she would want to return to some previous, proper order, given she herself had certainly approved any changes. And why, if she wanted such a thing, she didn’t merely order the things she desired. If questioned, both lieutenants could, and likely would, say they weren’t speaking of the Lord of the Radch, but about some unknown person who must be involved, but I was certain that wouldn’t hold up under an interrogation with drugs. Fortunately, such an event was unlikely. “And I don’t see why anyone with that sort of access couldn’t just order me gone and put someone they preferred in my place, if that was all they wanted.”
“Maybe that wasn’t all they wanted,” answered Lieutenant Skaaiat. “But clearly, someone did at the very least want those things, and thought they would benefit from doing it this particular way. And you did as much as you could to avoid people getting killed. Anything else wouldn’t have made any difference.” She emptied her own cup. “You’re going to stay in touch with me,” she said, not a question, not a request. And then, more gently, “I’ll miss you.”
For a moment I thought Lieutenant Awn might cry again. “Who’s replacing me?”
Lieutenant Skaaiat named an officer, and a ship.
“Human troops then.” Lieutenant Awn was momentarily disquieted, and then sighed, frustrated. I imagine she was remembering that Ors was no longer her problem.
“I know,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat. “I’ll talk to her. You watch yourself. Now annexations are a thing of the past, ancillary troop carriers are crowded with the useless daughters of prestigious houses, who can’t be assigned to anything lower.” Lieutenant Awn frowned, clearly wanting to argue, thinking, maybe, of her fellow Esk lieutenants. Or of herself. Lieutenant Skaaiat saw her expression and smiled ruefully. “Well. Dariet is all right. It’s the rest I’m warning you to look out for. Very high opinions of themselves and very little to justify it.” Skaaiat had met some of them during the annexation, had always been entirely, correctly polite to them.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” said Lieutenant Awn.
Lieutenant Skaaiat poured more arrack, and for the rest of the night their conversation was the sort that needs no reporting.
At length Lieutenant Awn slept again, and by the time she woke I had hired boats to take us to the mouth of the river, near Kould Ves, and loaded them with our scant luggage, and my dead segment. In Kould Ves the mechanism that controlled its armor, and a few other bits of tech, would be removed for another use.