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 Justice of Ente’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 Justice of Ente 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 Justice of Ente Seven Issa, have you?”
“No,” said the head priest. She looked at Lieutenant Awn with 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 Justice of Ente 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. “Justice of Ente Issa did many things One Esk did not. It’s true, One Esk killed as many people as the soldiers of Justice of Ente’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 Justice of Ente 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 treated!”
Lieutenant Awn’s face heated, her distress and anger plain to me. I couldn’t read her mind, but I could read every twitch of her every muscle, so her emotions were as transparent to me as glass.
“Forgive me,” said the head priest, though Lieutenant Awn’s expression had not changed, and her skin was too dark to show the flush of her anger. “Since the Radchaai have bestowed citizenship on us…” She stopped, seemed to reconsider her words. “Since their arrival, Seven Issa has given me nothing to complain of. But I’ve seen what your human troops did during what you call the annexation. The citizenship you granted may be as easily taken back, and…”
“We wouldn’t…” protested Lieutenant Awn.
The head priest stopped her with a raised hand. “I know what Seven Issa, or at least those like them, do to people they find on the wrong side of a dividing line. Five years ago it was noncitizen. In the future, who knows? Perhaps not-citizen-enough?” She waved a hand, a gesture of surrender. “It won’t matter. Such boundaries are too easy to create.”
“I can’t blame you for thinking in such terms,” said Lieutenant Awn. “It was a difficult time.”
“And I can’t help but think you inexplicably, unexpectedly naive,” said the head priest. “One Esk will shoot me if you order it. Without hesitation. But One Esk would never beat me or humiliate me, or rape me, for no purpose but to show its power over me, or to satisfy some sick amusement.” She looked at me. “Would you?”