Seivarden made a breathy huh, pieces falling into place.
“So then,” I continued, “the entire One Amaat unit of Mercy of Sarrse had defected to the Rrrrrr. They were out of reach, safe with the aliens, but to the Radchaai they were guilty of treason. It might have been better just to leave them where they were, but instead the Radch demanded them back, so they could be executed. And of course the Rrrrrr didn’t want to do that. The One Amaat unit had saved their lives. Things were very tense for several years, but eventually they compromised. The Rrrrrr handed over the unit leader, the one who’d started the mutiny, in exchange for immunity for the others.”
“But…” Seivarden stopped.
After seven seconds of silence, I said, “You’re thinking that of course she had to die, no disobedience can be tolerated, for very good reasons. But at the same time, her treason exposed the governor of Ime’s corruption, which otherwise would have continued unabated, so ultimately she did the Radch a service. You’re thinking that any fool knows better than to speak up and criticize a government official for any reason. And you’re thinking that if anyone who speaks up to criticize something obviously evil is punished merely for speaking, civilization will be in a bad way. No one will speak who isn’t willing to die for her speech, and…” I hesitated. Swallowed. “There aren’t many willing to do that. You’re probably thinking that the Lord of the Radch was in a difficult spot, deciding how to handle the situation. But also that these particular circumstances were extraordinary, and Anaander Mianaai is, in the end, the ultimate authority and might have pardoned her if she wished.”
“I’m thinking,” said Seivarden, “that the Lord of the Radch could have just let them stay with the Rrrrrr and been free of the whole mess.”
“She could have,” I agreed.
“I’m also thinking that if I were the Lord of the Radch, I would never have let that news get much farther than Ime.”
“You’d use accesses to prevent ships and stations from talking about it, maybe. You’d forbid any citizens who knew to say anything.”
“Yes. I would.”
“But it would still spread by rumor.” Though that rumor would of necessity be vague and slow-moving. “And you’d lose the very instructive example you could make, letting everyone watch you line up nearly all of Ime’s Administration on the station concourse and shoot them in the head, one after the other.” And, of course, Seivarden was a single person, who was thinking of Anaander Mianaai as a single person who could be undecided about such things, but then choose a single course of action, without dividing herself over her decision. And there was a great deal more behind Anaander Mianaai’s dilemma than Seivarden had grasped.
Seivarden was silent for four seconds, and then said, “Now I’m going to make you angry again.”
“Really?” I asked, drily. “Aren’t you getting tired of that?”
“Yes.” Simply. Seriously.
“The governor of Ime was wellborn and well-bred,” I said, and named her house.
“Never heard of them,” said Seivarden. “There’ve been so many changes. And now things like this happening. You honestly don’t think there’s a connection?”
I turned my head away, without lifting it. Not angry, just very, very tired. “You mean to say, none of this would have happened if jumped-up provincials hadn’t been jumped up. If the governor of Ime had been from a family of real proven quality.”
Seivarden had wit enough not to answer.
“You’ve honestly never known anyone born better to be assigned or promoted past their ability? To crack under pressure? Behave badly?”
“Not like that.”
Fair enough. But she’d conveniently forgotten that Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One—human, not an ancillary—would also have been “jumped up” by her definition, was part of the very change Seivarden had mentioned. “Jumped-up provincials and the sort of thing that happened at Ime are both results of the same events. One did not cause the other.”
She asked the obvious question. “What caused it, then?”
The answer was too complicated. How far back to begin? It started at Garsedd. It started when the Lord of the Radch multiplied herself and set out to conquer all of human space. It started when the Radch was built. And further back. “I’m tired,” I said.
“Of course,” said Seivarden, more equably than I had expected. “We can talk about it later.”
16
I spent a week moving in the non-space between Shis’urna and Valskaay—isolated, self-contained—before the Lord of the Radch made her move. No one else suspected anything, I had given no hint, no trace, not the faintest indication that anyone at all was on Var deck, that anything at all might be wrong.
Or so I had thought. “Ship,” Lieutenant Awn said to me, a week in, “is something wrong?”