As before I received no data from Mianaai that she did not deliberately send me. I had no information about her internal state. She seemed calm. Impassive, emotionless. I was sure that surface impression was a lie, though I didn’t understand why I thought that, except that she had yet to speak favorably of Lieutenant Awn, when in my opinion she should have. “Tell me, Lieutenant,” said Mianaai, after a long silence, “where those guns came from, and what you think happened in the temple of Ikkt.”
A combination of relief and fear washed through Lieutenant Awn. She had, in the moments available to process Anaander Mianaai’s presence here, formed an expectation that this question would be asked. “My lord, the guns could only have come from someone with sufficient authority to divert them and prevent their destruction.”
“You, for instance.”
A sharp stab of startlement and terror. “No, my lord, I assure you. I did disarm noncitizens local to my assignment, and some of them were Tanmind military.” The police station in the upper city had been quite well-armed, in fact. “But I had those disabled on the spot, before I sent them on. And according to their inventory numbers, these had been collected in Kould Ves.”
“By Justice of Toren troops?”
“So I understand, my lord.”
“Ship?”
I answered with one of One Var’s mouths. “My lord, the guns in question were collected by Sixteen and Seventeen Inu.” I named their lieutenant at the time, who had since been reassigned.
Anaander Mianaai made the barest hint of a frown. “So as far back as five years ago, someone with access—perhaps this Inu lieutenant, perhaps someone else, prevented these weapons from being destroyed, and hid them. For five years. And then, what, planted them in the Orsian swamp? To what end?”
Face still to the floor, blinking in confusion, Lieutenant Awn took one second to frame a reply. “I don’t know, my lord.”
“You’re lying,” said Mianaai, still sitting, leaning back in her chair as though quite relaxed and unconcerned, but her eyes had not left Lieutenant Awn. “I can see plainly that you are. And I’ve heard every conversation you’ve had, since the incident. Who did you mean when you spoke of someone else who would benefit from the situation?”
“If I’d known what name to put there, my lord, I would have used it. I only meant by it that there must be a specific person who acted, who caused it…” She stopped, took a breath, abandoned that sentence. “Someone conspired with the Tanmind, someone who had access to those guns. Whoever it was, they wanted trouble between the upper city and the lower. It was my job to prevent that. I did my best to prevent that.” Certainly an evasion. From the moment Anaander Mianaai had ordered the hasty execution of those Tanmind citizens in the temple, the first, most obvious suspect had been the Lord of the Radch herself.
“Why would anyone want trouble between the upper city and the lower?” Anaander Mianaai asked. “Who would exert themselves over it?”
“Jen Shinnan, my lord, and her associates,” answered Lieutenant Awn, on firmer ground, for the moment at least. “She felt the ethnic Orsians were unduly favored.”
“By you.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“So you’re saying that in the first months of the annexation, Jen Shinnan found some Radchaai official willing to divert crates full of weapons so that five years later she could start trouble between the upper and lower city. To get you in trouble.”
“My lord!” Lieutenant Awn lifted her forehead one centimeter off the floor, then halted. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why. I don’t know wh…” She swallowed that last, which I knew would have been a lie. “What I know is, it was my job to keep the peace in Ors. That peace was threatened and I acted to…” She stopped, realizing perhaps that the sentence would be an awkward one to finish. “It was my job to protect the citizens in Ors.”
“Which is why you so vehemently protested the execution of the people who endangered the citizens in Ors.” Anaander Mianaai’s tone was dry, and sardonic.
“They were my responsibility, lord. And as I said at the time, they were under control, we could have held them until reinforcements arrived, very easily. You are the ultimate authority, and of course your orders must be obeyed, but I didn’t understand why those people had to die. I still don’t understand why they had to die right then.” A half-second pause. “I don’t need to understand why. I’m here to follow your orders. But I…” She paused again. Swallowed. “My lord, if you suspect anything of me, any wrongdoing or disloyalty, I beg you, have me interrogated when we reach Valskaay.”
The same drugs used for aptitudes testing and reeducation could be used for interrogation. A skilled interrogator could pry the most secret thoughts from a person’s mind. An unskilled one could throw up irrelevancies and confabulations, could damage her subject nearly as badly as an unskilled reeducator.
What Lieutenant Awn had asked for was something surrounded by legal obligations—not least among them the requirement that two witnesses be present, and Lieutenant Awn would have the right to name one of them.
I saw nausea and terror in her when Anaander Mianaai didn’t answer. “My lord, may I speak plainly?”