Shorts Stories: Imperial Radch Read online

  “What did you do?” asked Awt Emnys. “Not put water on to boil I presume.”

  “I panicked,” said Kels. For a few, blinking moments he’d stood trying to understand what had happened, coldness creeping up his hand towards his wrist, and then his mind had registered the tea vonda fastened to his hand, berry-purple bleeding away from it. Its center was dead white, shot with streaks of silver. Its surrounding membrane pulsed and fluttered, the convoluted edges turning pink and then red as it dug its proboscis deeper into his hand. As he watched, his hand went numb, and the ice continued to inch past his wrist towards his elbow. He tried to scream, but no sound would issue from his throat. “I froze.”

  “What should you have done?” asked Awt Emnys.

  “I should have taken the largest knife in the kitchen and cut off my hand.” And he’d thought that far, had run along the length of the room to open the cabinet and draw out the knife, heavy-handled, with a blade three inches wide and fifteen inches long. Then he stood there unable to do what needed to be done, no coherent thought settling out of the whirl of fear and panic in his mind. His sister came into the kitchen then. She closed the distance between them at a dead run, grabbed the knife out of his hand and shoved him against the counter. Then, as though she were dressing game for a feast, she jerked his arm straight and swung the knife down in a fierce blow, crunching through bone and severing his arm just below the shoulder.

  Then he’d screamed.

  “What happened?” asked Awt.

  “My sister found me and cut my arm off. It was very fortunate. I had been very foolish.”

  “Indeed.” The skirted woman, from Faunt, spoke up. “Had I been your sister I would have left you to die.”

  “Come now, Honored,” said her opponent. “Surely not. Anyone might panic in such a situation.”

  “Not anyone fit to survive,” said the woman, with a curled lip. “It speaks poorly of the Watch that such a one would be selected.”

  “Surely your people would not be so cruel,” said the man. “Surely not.”

  “Cruel? We are practical,” she replied.

  “I can’t blame him,” said Awt Emnys. “It’s easy enough to tell yourself the doctor can replace it, but when it comes to actually doing it… ” He shook his head. “It only makes sense that we should be reluctant to injure ourselves so grievously.”

  The woman scoffed. “I am now convinced that the Gerentate will fall to Anaander Mianaai the moment he turns his attention that way. You are all of you far too sentimental. Ghaon as well, despite the Crawl and the efforts of the Watch.” Here she looked directly at Kels.

  “Honored,” said Kels. “There is no need to be rude.”

  “I say what I think,” said the woman. “My people don’t hide behind masks.”

  “You certainly do,” said Awt, equably. “Your mask is rudeness and offensively plain speech. We only see how you wish to appear, not your true self. Mask or not, Watchman Inarakhat has been more honest than you.”

  The woman made her disgusted noise again, but said nothing further.

  Kels looked out the viewing port for a moment, gathering his thoughts, settling himself. He wanted to leave the lounge, but felt that it would be a retreat of some kind. “Honored Awt, do you intend to approach your grandmother’s agnate?” It wasn’t what he had intended to say.

  Awt Emnys seemed unsurprised by the question. “I don’t know. Do you advise it?”

  Yes and no and I didn’t mean collided, tangled, blocked his speech. Ghem, who had balked at any association with his own ruined agnate, would be no more charitable towards Awt, and the thought distressed Kels. And also pleased him. Let Ghem see what they rejected!

  Or perhaps they would be at least courteous to him. “One could hardly say, Honored. Only… ”

  “Yes?”

  “If you do, buy a mask. Not at the shops near the shuttle port, nor even along the riverbank. Find a place on the third hill, behind the jeweler’s district. And be sure to choose one that is neither very elaborate, nor very brightly colored.”

  “That would have been my own inclination,” said Awt. “I thank you again for your advice.” He paused a moment, as though undecided about something. “The merchant Chis is an inveterate gossip.”

  Behind the mask, Kels frowned.

  Awt continued, quietly. “She tells a fantastic and romantic story of your youthful disappointment in love. Not, I’m sure… ” Awt made a small, ironic gesture, “out of any disrespect for you, but to further discourage me from approaching my grandmother’s agnate. Whichever that might be. But when I heard your story just now, I wondered. Have you held to something you should have let go? The daughter of a wealthy, noble agnate might not have chosen her first husband, or even her second. But the third would have been her heart’s choice. Perhaps you didn’t know her as well as you thought. She certainly behaved very badly, if what Honored Chis says is true.” He bowed slightly, apologetic. “Forgive my presumption.”

  “Her agnate,” Kels began, and Awt raised an eyebrow. Kels was glad of the mask. “It was a long time ago, Honored.”

  “I’ve offended you. Please believe it wasn’t my intention.”

  “No, Honored,” said Kels, in his most even voice, and then, at a loss, bowed and left the lounge.

  Six months on a small ship is a long time. The view out the ports of the Jewel of Athat was the same as any ship. One can only play at counters so much, and one has only a limited number of potential opponents. Even betting on the games loses its charm a month in.

  “It’s fashionable to have a Ghaonish ancestor six or seven generations back,” Awt said to Kels near the end of the first month. The Faunt woman had retreated in silent pique, Awt having defeated her at counters the third time in a row, and they were alone in the lounge. “Even farther back is better. Too near—and poor—and you’re half-foreign, an outsider in your own family. My mother’s relatives always suspected my half-Ghaonish father of mercenary impulses. They cared for me when my parents died, but more out of their sense of propriety than anything else.”

  “How different your childhood would have been, had your grandmother never left Ghaon!” Kels said, thinking as much of himself as of Awt.

  “True, but then I wouldn’t have been Awt Emnys.”

  By the second month of the voyage, the library of recorded entertainments that seems so large and varied at the start of the voyage becomes monotonous and dull. Fellow passengers who had seemed either exotically foreign or companionably familiar lose all their charms and become objects of irritation. The small spaces become ever-narrowing traps.

  Ever since he had known them, Ninan and Tris, Inarakhat Kels’ fellow Watch officers, had been more or less pleasant company, despite a certain distrust on their part; even ruined, his agnate was far superior to theirs. Near the end of the second month, their dismissive observations about the passengers became a burden to Kels, particularly their assessment of Awt Emnys. It was no different from jibes directed at previous Gerentate travelers looking for Ghaonish ancestors, and those had amused Kels in the past. But now he realized that his disdain had a different source and direction than theirs.

  In the third month it seems as though there has never been any world but the ship, and the endless progress through the blackness. Life before the voyage is a distant memory, unreal and strangely textured. The idea of disembarking at some final destination seems untenable. During this month the wreck of the last ship to defy the ban on communications takes on an interest out of proportion to its significance.

  “Just as you promised,” Awt said to Kels as he watched the dead ship drift. Quietly, because the others—the fierce Faunt, the tourist from Semblance, even Chis Sulca, who had seen it before, were silent. “I wonder why they did it.”

  “They were fools,” said Chis.

  “They were driven mad by isolation,” said the tourist from Semblance, by his tone of voice meaning a joke, but it lacked conviction.r />
  In the fourth month desperate boredom sets in. The beige, undecorated walls, the black view out the ports, the nourishing but unvaried diet, become an undifferentiated background, and sensory deprivation forces the mind to produce all sorts of fantasies in an attempt to ward off starvation.

  “Have you read Thersay?” asked Kels. He and Awt were alone in the lounge.

  “The Consolation of Insanity?” Awt smiled. “No, I never have. And I’ve probably never met anyone who has, either, highly regarded as it is.”

  “I’ve tried,” confessed Kels.

  Awt smiled. “That bored?”

  “You laugh,” Kels said. “She began the work here, on this very ship, at that table, there, at just about this point in the voyage. What a strange and sprawling thing it is! She must have been half mad.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Awt said.

  The fifth month is much the same as the fourth, time having contracted into a single eternal moment.

  In the sixth month, the mind awakes slowly to the realization that there will indeed be an end to the endless voyage. When the Watch announces that only one day remains before the ship will exit the Crawl and increase speed, feverish excitement runs through the passengers. The day ahead, and the few days after that it will take to reach the station orbiting Ghaon, seem unbearably long. In vain do passengers remind themselves that the time will surely pass without their watching. Everyone, whether openly or surreptitiously, will mark each interminable second and anxiously await the thunk and jar of docking.

  It was during the last day inside the Crawl that disaster struck.

  Kels had endured his shift, and a silent, tense supper with Ninan and Tris. He’d retired early, but after several hours of uncomfortable tossing he rose and dressed and went to the lounge. It was empty; he was vaguely surprised and disappointed that Awt Emnys wasn’t there, though he’d known that the passengers were likely asleep at that hour.

  Once Awt disembarked Kels might never see him again. It had been true of every passenger over the years, but it had never mattered to him before. This, then, was why he couldn’t sleep. There were things he wanted to say, that he didn’t know if he should say, or even if he possibly could.

  He traced the path he would have on his rounds, but met no one, not even his counterpart on third watch. The passengers’ cabins were shut, the ship felt deserted and lonely. He wished someone would come out and nod, or give some perfunctory greeting, just to break the unsettling feeling that he was invisible, a disembodied ghost alone on an abandoned and drifting ship.

  It was because of this feeling that he did something he almost never did—he approached the two Watch officers standing outside the door behind which the pilot guided the ship.

  He raised a hand in greeting, expected the same gesture in return, and questions about why he roamed the corridors at this hour. A perfunctory sentence or two about not being able to sleep was on his tongue, ready for the question, but the two officers stood masked and unmoving at the end of the narrow corridor.

  He stopped, bewildered. “The days are longer near the end, are they not?” he essayed.

  No answer. The feeling of invisibility increased, and for a moment Kels wasn’t so much alarmed at the thought that something might be wrong with the guards as he was despairing of his own substantial existence. But common sense exerted itself. He put a hand on one silent watchman’s shoulder. “Honored!” Nothing. He pushed gently, and the man turned slowly to the side, as though he were in some sort of suggestible trance.

  Kels drew his gun, and pushed past the two unresponding men to open the door to the pilots’ station.

  The pilot was in his seat, back to the door, and before him were the ship’s controls. A dark-haired figure in kilt and embroidered blouse bent over him, a small recorder in his hand. They were both close enough that Kels might have reached out to touch either man. Kels was on the verge of firing when Awt Emnys straightened and looked at him with Ghem Echend’s eyes.

  The moment of hesitation was enough. Awt grabbed the gun, pulling it upwards and away, twisting Kels’ arm around painfully until he was forced to let go his weapon. Awt pointed the gun at Kels, and pushed him against the bulkhead.

  “Why?” Kels gasped, his arm still hurting from Awt’s grip.

  “It’s my job,” Awt said. “Did you think warehouse inventory suited me?”

  “Have you no regard for your own people?” asked Kels. “Or is the Gerentate truly our enemy?”

  Awt smiled, a little sadly. “The Gerentate is not your enemy. The Radch, on the other hand… ” He shrugged.

  “Radchaai,” Kels whispered in horror. “We are destroyed.”

  “On the contrary. To destroy any part of the world would be to destroy its value. No one who submits will be harmed. Those who don’t submit… ” He shrugged, gun still aimed at Kels. “They choose their own fate. But if you mean some indefinable quality of being Ghaonish, or that splendid pride and isolation… I would have thought that you of all people would have understood that it wasn’t worth preserving.” He cocked an eyebrow, sardonic. “It wasn’t only you the Ghem agnate treated badly. I know more of my grandmother than I said.”

  Kels was dizzy, and breathing was difficult, as though the air had turned to water and he was drowning. Awt had understood, had already known the things that Kels had so wanted to say to him.

  “I owe Ghaon nothing,” Awt continued. “Nor the Gerentate. And the Radchaai pay me well for my services.” He let go of Kels, who didn’t move, still frozen with the revelation, and the threat of the gun. “Don’t accuse yourself. Nothing would be gained if you had killed me. Do you think this is the first successful attempt? None of you will remember anything, just like every other time an agent has made this run.” Awt put a hand on Kels’ shoulder, gave a consoling squeeze. “I won’t kill you unless you make me. And I would regret that very much.” Then he turned away, gun still in hand, and resumed his quiet questioning of the pilot.

  Kels’ arm hurt, but distantly, as though the pain was part of some dream he would wake from shortly. He tried to make his breaths deeper, but only felt even more starved for air. Had he himself ever stood entranced beside the pilot’s station as a Radchaai spy carefully probed for the keys to Ghaon’s strongest defense? How many times? His failure was galling, even more so the thought that he had failed over and over again, and never known it. He was afraid to die, afraid to risk his life and indeed his death might well be purposeless, as his life had been. But what difference would it make? If what Awt had said was true, Ghaon was already doomed, and he himself would have no memories to reproach himself with.

  Awt spoke to the pilot, quietly, and the pilot murmured in response. He recalled Awt speaking to him in the lounge, six months back. Have you held to something you should have let go? Awt had judged him well. It speaks poorly of the Watch that such a one would be selected.

  “Awt Emnys.”

  Awt turned, one ear still towards the murmuring pilot.

  “Don’t do this. Destroy the recording, return to your cabin. I will tell no one.” Without answering, Awt turned back again.

  No more hesitation. This was the moment. Kels shoved himself away from the bulkhead, grabbed Awt’s arm as he turned. The gun fired, the bullet grazing Kels’ ear and burying itself in the bulkhead behind him. Alarms sounded, faint and distant beneath the pounding of Kels’ heart. He brought his knee up hard between Awt’s legs, yanked the gun from his hand, brought the muzzle up to Awt’s head, and fired.

  The alarms brought first and second watches. Blood was splattered on Kels, the still senseless pilot’s body, the deck. Ninan was speaking but Kels could only hear the roaring silence that had followed the gunshot.

  “… in shock,” said a distant voice. But Awt wasn’t in shock, he was dead.

  “He’s not injured.” Ninan’s mouth moved with the sound. Ninan speaking. His mask was askew. “None of this blood’s his. Iraon
! Look at it all!” Someone made retching noises, and the need to vomit was overpowering for a moment, but Kels managed to suppress it.

  “Lying bastard!” Tris. Kels couldn’t see him. “I bet there’s no Ghaonish grandmother at all. I knew he was no good, that kind never are.”

  “Inarakhat Kels, you’re a hero!” said Ninan, and patted Kels lightly on his jaw. “Caught a spy!”

  Kels drew in a long, ragged breath. Ninan was saying something about promotions and pay raises, and someone said, “Now they’ll know they can’t fool the Watch.” They were all familiar and foreign at the same moment.

  “Let’s get you to your bunk,” said Ninan.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Kels.

  Ninan was pulling him up by his arm. “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t worth it.” Ninan looked at him, uncomprehending. “None of you are worth it.” Kels shook his head. Ninan would never understand, or Tris, or any of them. Awt Emnys might, but Awt Emnys was dead.

  “Of course,” said Ninan reassuringly. “It’s upsetting. But he chose his own fate. You did nothing more than your duty.”

  “He wouldn’t submit,” said Kels.

  “Exactly. A fatal mistake.” Ninan clapped Kels on the shoulder. “But enough of this. Let’s get you to your bunk. And something strong to drink.”

  “One thinks,” said Inarakhat Kels, “that a cup of tea would be sufficient.”

  She Commands Me and I Obey

  Residents of Noage Itray could look up and see the ballcourt hanging ten miles overhead, four meters wide and fifty long from goal line to goal line. Stands stretched along each side, row upon row of seats slanting up and back. For the station's entire thirty-five-mile cylindrical length, buildings and gardens clung to its curving interior walls, bright with reflected sunlight. Noage Itray was the largest and wealthiest of the four stations in its Precinct—the second oldest of the four Precincts.