Work Text:
Upon arriving at Omaugh Palace, they had been told to expect a month-long wait until their hearing with the Lord of the Radch, but Seivarden was unsurprised when it took only a matter of days.
Before, the source of that lack of surprise would have been because she was her. Because she was Captain Seivarden Vendaai, who bore the full weight of her House's name. The last three years of loss and humiliation had mostly shaken her of that certainty. Now the source of that certainty was Breq.
Breq certainly looked unsurprised by the summons. But then, she almost always did.
Escorted by security from Skaaiat’s quarters to the Palace, Seivarden's mind once again turned to the question of her companion's mission. Not that it ever drifted far from it. It was the concept she had essentially been orbiting for the last year, like a moon round a sun. Sometimes she would turn away from it, just as a moon’s face sometimes would, but the gravitational pull was nevertheless inescapable.
She had considered and discarded numerous guesses towards the mission which had brought Breq to the wasteland of Nilt. Perhaps that odd doctor had possessed information on some sort of unusual medical procedure? But no, surely there was nothing some foreign doctor knew that Radchaai science could not discover itself. Perhaps something to do with the Rrrrrr or the Geck or the Presger? But no, from all that Seivarden had heard, those who associated with aliens were quite hard to mistake, and for as foreign as she had been, the doctor had seemed quite human. Perhaps Breq had simply been on an intelligence gathering mission for an annexation. But no, those had apparently ended some twenty years back... And even if they were to start up again, Seivarden had to believe that across the bright glittering tapestry of Amaat’s universe, there had to be better options than the ice-blasted hellscape of Nilt.
There had to be an explanation. If she had been more sober when she’d met Breq, or else had better understood the modern political landscape, Seivarden might have been able to piece it together herself.
She was more than a little frustrated that she could not.
As the pair fell into stride beside one another, Breq started humming a tune. It was a familiar refrain, although at a faster tempo than usual. That was the only real giveaway that the Special Missions Operative was at all tense.
(Amaat knew Seivardenwas tense. Amaat knew she wanted some kef. Just enough to take off the edge.)
They were not led to the front entrance, but rather a meandering route through the temple into the side of the Palace. Seivardensaid, "I hadn't realised I rated the secret entrance."
Breq simply continued humming.
Yes, Seivarden wanted an explanation. And yes, she thought the chances were now good that she was going to receive one.
But truthfully, she did not care about the answer, not as long as she would be permitted to continue serving at Breq’s side. Clientage or no clientage.
They came to a wide set of doors. The guards peeled away, one gesturing them forward. This would be the audience chamber, then.
Side by side, the two of them stepped in.
Seivarden had been in the presence of the Lord of the Radch three times over the course of her life.
Once had been at a ball in her childhood. It had been held on the planet-side family estates of House Deliventi, which though middling in the grand scheme of things, had nonetheless come into the possession of a great deal of land during the system's annexation some four-hundred years prior. The ballroom had been large, and of course as an eight-year-old she'd been kept far away from the visiting Anaander Mianaai, but Seivarden had nonetheless seen her Lord from the other side of the hall, wide and regal and beautiful, and pressed the moment into her memory like a leaf between the pages of a book.
The second had been at her graduation from basic training. That was not standard protocol; even with her many bodies, Anaander Mianaai would not have time to see-off every fresh new batch of soldiers. But two instances of the Lord of the Radch happened to be visiting that military base, and the castings had been fortuitous, and so she had given an off-the-cuff speech, commending the bravery and dedication of the newest generation who would carry Amaat’s light deeper into the dark void of space.
The third had been aboard Sword of Nathtas, where the Lord of the Radch had come to personally issue orders on the next step of the campaign, using Ship's systems as a relay to the rest of the fleet. It had been perhaps the proudest day of Seivarden’s career.
And now, this was the fourth. The Lord of the Radch stood before her, twice over, beautiful as she had ever been. So much else had changed, the shape and composition of the Empire shifting over the millennia, but Anaander Mianaai was eternal.
In a single graceful movement, Seivarden Vendaai fell to the floor and prostrated herself before her Lord.
Beside her, Breq did not.
If Seivarden had been less well-bred or less well-trained, she might have flinched, might have said something. Instead she remained crouched, head pressed to the cold marble. What was Breq doing? She might claim to be non-Radchaai, but that was obviously a lie... And even non-Radchaai would surely know to give Anaander Mianaai her proper dues...
... Unless she was directly part of Mianaai House? The Lord’s daughter, or cousin, or even client? Then, and only then, might one be allowed to more casually greet the Lord of the Radch.
Seivarden hoped so. She hoped Breq knew what she was doing.
"Citizen Seivarden Vendaai." Even without her title as Captain, hearing her name spoken by the Lord of the Radch sent a thrill down her spine. "What exactly do you think you're playing at?"
Her blood ran cold. Seivarden's worst fears slammed into her, the ones she'd been carefully pushing to the back of her head. She had lost her ship; lost her papers; lost her dignity. It had been an embarrassment of the highest order for her to come crawling back to civilization, and the Lord of the Radch wanted her to know it.
Seivarden was just preparing to beg for forgiveness, when Anaander Mianaaisaid something completely unexpected: "Justice of Toren's behaviour has been alarming and perplexing enough." Justice of Toren? What did Seivarden's old Ship have to do with anything? It had apparently been destroyed some twenty years or so. "Entering the Temple and defiling the offerings? Whatever could you have meant by it? What am I meant to say to the priests?"
Like an old console throwing up an error, Seivarden simply did not compute at first. She had not entered the Temple, let alone done anything to the offerings.
But those last sentences had not been directed at her.
Glancing to the side, Seivarden saw Breq's expression to be completely smooth and untroubled.
"If my Lord pleases—" Breq had not done anything improper to the offerings— or had she? Seivarden hadn’t been there to see. But what could Breq have possibly done? Pissed on them? But of course, that line of inquiry ignored the black hole in the system. Seivarden tried to voice her true question— What in Amaat’s will do you mean?— but all that came out was a splutter.
"Ha. Citizen Seivarden is surprised and doesn't understand me." It took all of her willpower not to flinch at the ironic tone in her Lord's voice. Again, she wishes desperately for a hit of kef. Just enough for her to clear her head.
"And you, Justice of Toren, intended to deceive me. Why?" From anyone else, what came next out of the Lord of the Radch was what Seivarden would have called a conspiratorial ramble, about omens and implants and humming...
The humming.
Aatr’s tits. The humming.
Suddenly Seivarden was twenty again. Twenty, a fresh-faced lieutenant, and music was all around her; as she bathed, as she ate, as she questioned prisoners. Always accompanied by at least one ancillary, who sang and sang and sang-
Just as Breq sang.
Choked, Seivarden asked: "Breq?"
Anaander Mianaai responded instead. "Not Breq. Justice of Toren."
But the idea was ridiculous. Patently ridiculous. Ships were ships. People were people. Breq was people. Or a person, of course, and by the Four Emanations, she was even babbling in her mind.
"Justice of Toren One-Esk," Breq, and just like that, she changed. It was like when she had suddenly appeared wearing proper Radchaai clothing, only the transformation was even more complete and stark. Her bearing shifted, her accent vanished, and her expression too. Perfectly, politely blank, like an ancillary.
No. No, no, no.
"Justice of Toren is destroyed," Breq continued, and any other time, Seivarden would have been keen to listen, wanted answers to what had happened to the ship that had been her home for so many years.
But now it all felt distant, like rain against a window. "Begging my Lord's indulgence, surely there's some mistake. Breq is human." You could recognise a human. "She can't possibly be Justice of Toren One-Esk." The twenty bodies, a messy collection of foreign skin tones and features, made whole by the plain brown uniform. "I served on Justice of Toren's Esk decade." The Esk ancillaries had bathed her, clothed her, carried her to medical, served her tea. There was no imagining the bold, demanding Breq in their place. "No Justice of Toren medic would give One Esk a body with a voice like Breq's." Raspy and off-pitch and almost impossibly shrill. "Not unless you wanted to seriously annoy the Esk lieutenants."
A long, terrible silence stretched out.
All of that evidence now felt awfully flimsy.
"She thinks I'm Special Missions," Breq said, and how could a voice so even somehow also be dry? "I never told her I was." Breq had never told Seivarden anything, besides the fact she had not come to Nilt on her account. "I never told her anything except I was Breq from the Gerentate, and she never believed that." And Seivarden had thought herself so clever for having seen through it. "I wanted to leave her where I found her but I couldn't and I don't know why. She was never one of my favourites."
That brought back a memory. A small moment, but one which Seivarden had revisited again and again, in the earliest hours of the morning when she couldn't sleep. That off-hand comment Breq had made, about ships having officers they disliked, and how no one would ever notice, until they left and life suddenly got oh so much more comfortable.
She was never one of my favourites.
And hadn't she recalled then, that old frustration, about how her tea had always seemed cold? How she had needed to chase up freshly-pressed uniforms? About how the songs One-Esk sang in her presence seemed to be the most irritating ones in Ship's repertoire?
She was never one of my favourites.
And how it had felt like shedding a previously unknown weight, after settling into Sword of Nathtas?
She was never one of my favourites.
Ah. Ah, ah, ah.
"She doesn't have anything to do with this," Breq said, and Seivarden supposed she didn't.
"Then why is she here?" Anaander Mianaaii pressed.
Because she had been a pathetic druggie that Breq had taken pity on out of some ancient sense of obligation, apparently.
"No one could ignore her arrival here. Because I arrived with her, no one could ignore or conceal mine."
Surely Breq hadn't been thinking that far ahead, back in the snow?
But why not? If she really was a ship- really was Justice of Toren— she must be quite familiar in thinking in timelines that stretched not just years or decades, but centuries.
The Lord of the Radch said, “Citizen Seivarden Vendaai. It is now clear to me that Justice of Toren deceived you. You did not know what it was. It would be best, I think, if you left now, of course without speaking of this to anyone else."
"No?" That hadn't been what she intended to say, but then, she hadn't really been intending anything. "No." Firmer now. Never say anything you weren't willing to commit to. "There's a mistake somewhere." Granted, Seivarden could not tell where, but it had to be there. "Breq jumped off a bridge for me."
"My hip hurts thinking of it. No sane human being would have done that."
"I never said you were sane!"
It should have been impossible to forget that Anaander Mianaai was present in the room. Somehow Seivarden almost had. One of her bodies said: "Seivarden Vendaai. This ancillary— and it is an ancillary— is not human. The fact you thought it was explains a good deal of your behaviour which was unclear to me before. I'm sorry for its deception and your disappointment but you need to leave. Now."
Leave? To go where?
Back to an overcrowded cell of a dorm? Back to unseasoned skel? Back to kef?
No, maybe not. This wasn't some backwater provincial palace. This was somewhere sophisticated. People here were interested in her; Captain Vel's invitation, as ungraceful as it was, made that quite plain. Seivarden could leverage that. Find a comfortable administrative position, if not a way back into the military itself.
If she just followed the direct orders of her Lord, and left now, and kept her mouth shut, she could do quite well for herself. Do well for her House, make her mothers and grandmothers, rest their souls, proud.
"Begging my Lord's indulgence— whether you give it or not— I'm not leaving Breq."
As if any mother of House Vendaai could be proud of a daughter who turned her back on a blood debt.
"Go away, Seivarden."
Something seemed caught in her throat. “"Sorry. You're stuck with me."
Finally, Breq turned to look at her. Seivarden met her gaze as steadily as she could.
"You don't know what you're doing," Breq said. "You don't understand what's happening here."
As if soldiers usually had that luxury. "I don't need to."
The next few hours passed in a blur of confusion, which was good, in a sense, because it left Seivarden with very little time to second guess any of the madness.
But now it was all over, for a given value of ‘over’. The fighting had stopped. The Palace was safe.
One could almost be forgiven for forgetting they were now in the midst of a civil war.
Finally with a moment of quiet, Seivarden had a chance to think. (And she could imagine Breq's response to that: Never a good sign. Not that she would actually say that, not so bluntly, but she'd fix her with an expression which heavily suggested it.)
Instead Breq lay, unconscious, in a bed in Medical. Seivarden had refused to leave except to piss, and even that, with great reluctance and greater speed. Anaander Mianaai wanted Breq dead, or at least part of her did, and Seivarden was prepared to do all she could to prevent any potential assassination attempts.
Which was still inadequate. It would not be so hard for a medic to slip the wrong medicine into the cocktail of drugs Breq was on, or even the correct drug but in the wrong dosage. Seivarden would not know until it was too late.
She closed her eyes, braced against a now familiar pain. Opened them again. Never mind. She'd do what she could.
People came and went. Sometimes they spoke to her. Sometimes they brought tea, or food. Each time Seivarden accepted it, but otherwise went uninterrupted in her vigil.
At one point— a point where it had grown quite late and she was fighting sleep— the whole situation struck Seivarden as deeply hilarious, and she laughed. A human soldier, standing watch over an ancillary! Ridiculous.
But maybe it wasn't. After all, what soldier would not go down fighting in defense of her ship?
Seivarden took a long drag of her tea, found it had grown cold, and swallowed anyway. Justice of Toren had not been her ship, not for a long time. And by all accounts, she had not been a particularly good lieutenant to it when it had.
No. It was not Justice of Toren she was doing this for. It was Breq. The fact that they were the same person just... Complicated the situation. And at the same time, did not complicate it at all.
Messages poured into her hand-held. Some were for Seivarden; a great deal of them were for Breq. Some of these could wait until she woke (and she would wake), but others Seivarden could handle. Sitting up straighter in the medical bay’s uncomfortable chair (and wasn’t that one of those things which had not changed in a thousand years), Seiverdan began drafting a response to Skaaiat Awer's office to reassure her that they had both survived.
This was something else that Seivarden found grimly amusing. She had feared she wouldn't be given permission to continue in her service to Breq. After all, it wasn't as if the service she provided was anything particularly special. If Breq wanted someone better at laundry, it would not be hard to find one.
But Breq would need her. Would need someone who knew who— what— she was. Knew how to guard against the unique weaknesses it presented.
Be afraid of the person with weapons! Seivarden had seen the way Breq's face had changed in the face of Anaander Mianaai song, Anaander Mianaai’s secret access code. It had gone completely blank. Not blank like an ancillary, but blank like someone high on kef, so high they were lost to themself, driven by a compulsion now beyond them, horrified by it, but unable to stop.
Breq had been able to stop Seivarden. Perhaps Seivarden would now be able to return the favour.
In her bed, Breq stirred. Seivarden stood up and rushed to her bed-side, but the ancillary did not wake. Seivarden brushed sweat-logged hair out of her companion's face, re-adjusted the blanket around Breq's shoulder.
It was time to make good on the second chance she had been given.