Ancillary Mercy (Imperial Radch) by Ann Leckie

Author:Ann Leckie [Leckie, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / Science Fiction / Space Opera, Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2015-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

11

An hour later I returned from a Medic-approved trip down the corridor and back, and found Seivarden, hair still damp from the bath, rooting through the cupboard where the tea things were stowed. Kalr Five, who had followed me, saw Seivarden, felt a surge of pure outraged resentment. Then reconsidered. “Lieutenant,” Five said, watching me settle myself onto the bed, “they’re all the way in the back.”

Seivarden made an irritated noise. Pulled out my old enamel tea flask and its two bowls, one chipped. Began making tea, as Five fussed with the cushions around me, and then, once each one was exactly where she thought it should be, left.

At length Seivarden brought two bowls of tea, and sat down beside me on the bed. “You know,” she said after her first taste, “that flask really doesn’t brew right.”

“It’s from outside the Radch,” I pointed out. “It’s made for a different sort of tea.”

I saw that she was counting her breaths, carefully timing them. She said, after a bit, “Breq, do you ever wish you’d left me where you found me?”

“Not for a while,” I replied, truthfully enough.

And then, after a few more breaths, “Is Ekalu a lot like Lieutenant Awn?”

I wondered, for an instant, where that question had come from. Then I remembered Seivarden, close against me in the bed in Medical as I told Mercy of Kalr that I could see myself liking Ekalu quite extravagantly, if I had still been a ship. “Not really. But would it matter if she was?”

“I suppose not.”

We drank a while in silence and then Seivarden said, “I’ve already apologized to Ekalu. I can’t exactly go back to her now and say, I only said what Ship told me I ought to before, but this time I really mean it.” I didn’t answer. Seivarden sighed. “I just wanted her to stop being angry with me.” More silence. She leaned close, shoulder up against mine again. “I still want to take kef. But the thought of taking it makes me sick to my stomach.” Even saying that did, I could see. “Medic told me it would. I didn’t think I’d mind. I thought it wouldn’t matter, because even if I took it, it wouldn’t do me any good. No, that’s not right. I’m feeling sorry for myself again, aren’t I.”

Briefly I considered saying, I’m used to it. Said nothing instead.

For several minutes Seivarden sat beside me. Silent, drinking tea in measured sips. Still feeling sorry for herself, but only mildly now, and trying, it seemed, to concentrate on something else. Eventually she said, “Our Tisarwat has suddenly displayed quite a few unexpected abilities.”

“Has she?” I asked, voice bland.

“She knows how to make a message look like an official communication, does she? She can access an official gate relay? She’s been talking to Station, and thinks Station is going to give her sensitive information? And you seem entirely unsurprised by any of it.” She took a swallow of tea. “Granted, you’re difficult to surprise. But still.

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