I spent the months of travel considering just what I wanted to do about that. How to use it. How to counter its disadvantages, or turn them to my favor. And considering just what it was I hoped to accomplish.
It’s hard for me to know how much of myself I remember. How much I might have known, that I had hidden from myself all my life. Take, for instance, that last order, the instruction I–Justice of Toren had given to me–One Esk Nineteen. Get to Irei Palace, find Anaander Mianaai, and tell her what’s happened. What did I mean by that? Over and above the obvious, the bare fact I’d wanted to get the message to the Lord of the Radch?
Why had it been so important? Because it had been. It hadn’t been an afterthought, it had been an urgent necessity. At the time it had seemed clear. Of course I needed to get the message out, of course I needed to warn the right Anaander.
I would follow my orders. But in the time I’d spent recovering from my own death, the time working my way toward Radch space, I had decided I would do something else as well. I would defy the Lord of the Radch. And perhaps my defiance would amount to nothing, a feeble gesture she would barely notice.
The truth was, Strigan was right. My desire to kill Anaander Mianaai was unreasonable. Any actual attempt to do such a thing was not sane. Even given a gun that I could carry into the very presence of the Lord of the Radch herself without her knowing until I chose to reveal it—even given that, all I could hope to accomplish was a pitiful cry of defiance, gone as soon as made, easily disregarded. Nothing that could possibly make any difference.
But. All that secret maneuvering against herself. Designed, certainly, to avoid open conflict, to avoid damaging the Radch too badly. To avoid, perhaps, too badly fracturing Anaander Mianaai’s conviction that she was unitary, one person. Once the dilemma had been clearly stated, could she pretend things were otherwise?
And if there were now two Anaander Mianaais, might there not also be more? A part, perhaps, that didn’t know about the feuding sides of herself? Or told herself she didn’t? What would happen if I said straight out the thing the Lord of the Radch had been concealing from herself? Something dire, surely, or she would not have gone to such lengths to hide herself from herself. Once the thing was open and acknowledged, how could she help tearing herself apart?
But how could I say anything straight out to Anaander Mianaai? Granted I could reach Omaugh Palace, granted I could leave the ship, step onto the station—if I could do that much then I could stand in the middle of the main concourse and shout my story aloud for everyone to hear.
I might begin to do that, but I would never finish. Security would come for me, maybe even soldiers, and that day’s news would say a traveler had lost her mind on the concourse, but Security had dealt with the situation. Citizens would shake their heads, and mutter about uncivilized foreigners, and then forget all about me. And whichever part of the Lord of the Radch noticed me first could no doubt easily dismiss me as damaged and insane—or at least, convince the various other parts of herself that I was.
No, I needed the full attention of Anaander Mianaai, when I said what I had to say. How to get it was a problem I had worried at for nearly twenty years. I knew that it would be harder to ignore someone whose erasure would be noticed. I could visit the station and try to be seen, to become familiar, so that any part of Anaander couldn’t just dispose of me without comment. But I didn’t think that would be enough to force the Lord of the Radch—all of the Lord of the Radch—to listen to me.
But Seivarden. Captain Seivarden Vendaai, lost a thousand years, found by chance, lost again. Appearing now at Omaugh Palace. Any Radchaai would be curious about that, with a curiosity that carried a religious charge. And Anaander Mianaai was Radchaai. Perhaps the most Radchaai of Radchaai. She couldn’t help but notice that I had returned in company with Seivarden. Like any other citizen she would wonder, even if only at the back of her mind, what, if anything, that might mean. And she being who she was, the back of her mind was a substantial thing.
Seivarden would ask for an audience. Would be, eventually, granted one. And that audience would have all of Anaander’s attention; no part of her would ignore such an event.
And surely Seivarden would have the attention of the Lord of the Radch from the moment we stepped off the ship. So, arriving in Seivarden’s company, would I. Tremendously risky. I might not have concealed my nature well enough, might be recognized for what I was. But I was determined to try.
I sat on the bunk waiting for permission to leave the ship at Omaugh Palace, my pack at my feet, Seivarden leaning negligently against the wall across from me, bored.