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Idézetek
“You’re insane. Or is that even possible? Aren’t all Radchaai brainwashed?”
It was a common misconception. “Only criminals, or people who aren’t functioning well, are reeducated. Nobody really cares what you think, as long as you do what you’re supposed to.”
She stared, dubious. “How do you define ‘not functioning well’?”
chapter 5
Station couldn’t order me to leave. Strictly speaking it shouldn’t have spoken to me the way it had, not if I was, in fact, a citizen. “It can’t make you leave,” Seivarden said, echoing part of my thoughts.
“But it can express its disapproval.” Quietly. Subtly. “We do it all the time. Mostly nobody notices, except they visit another ship or station and suddenly find things inexplicably more comfortable.”
A second of silence from Seivarden, and then, “Oh.” From the sound, she was remembering her days on Justice of Toren, and the move to Sword of Nathtas.
chapter 23
Twenty minutes later Seivarden woke, brushed the black corrective off her head, and wiped fretfully at her upper lip, pausing at the flakes of dried blood that rubbed away. She looked at the two Nilters, sitting silent, side by side, on a nearby bench, studiously ignoring both her and me. Neither of them seemed to find it odd that I didn’t go to Seivarden’s side, or say anything to her. I didn’t know if she remembered why I had hit her, or even that I had. Sometimes a blow to the head affects memories of the moments leading up to it. But she must have either remembered or suspected something, because she didn’t look at me at all. After fidgeting a few minutes she rose and went to the kitchen and opened a cabinet. She stared for thirty seconds, and then got a bowl, and hard bread to put in it, and water to pour over it, and then stood, staring, waiting for it to soften, saying nothing, looking at no one.
chapter 7
“You… you ignorant nobody.” The sudden intensity of her anger had brought her close to tears again. “You think you’re better than me? You’re barely even human.” She didn’t mean because I was an ancillary. I was fairly sure she hadn’t yet realized that. She meant because I wasn’t Radchaai, and perhaps because I might have implants that were common some places outside Radch space and that would, in Radchaai eyes, compromise my humanity. “I wasn’t bred to be your servant.”
I can move very, very quickly. I was standing, and my arm halfway through its swing, before I registered my intention to move. The barest fraction of a second passed during which I could have possibly checked myself, and then it was gone, and my fist connected with Seivarden’s face, too quickly for her to even look surprised.
She dropped, falling backward onto her pallet, blood pouring from her nose, and lay unmoving.
“Is he dead?” asked Strigan, still standing in the kitchen, her voice mildly curious.
I made an ambiguous gesture. “You’re the doctor.”
She walked over to where Seivarden lay, unconscious and bleeding. Gazed down at her. “Not dead,” she pronounced. “Though I’d like to make sure the concussion doesn’t turn into anything worse.”
I gestured resignation. “It is as Amaat wills,” I said, and put on my coat and went outside to bring in food.
chapter 5
“So why this?” I gestured carefully with my free hand, the other still under my coat, holding my gun. “You had a comfortable post on Dras Annia, patients, plenty of money, associations and reputation. Now you’re in the icy middle of nowhere, giving first aid to bov herders.”
“Personal crisis,” she said, the words carefully, deliberately pronounced.
chapter 5
“It never occurred to me until now how many baby lieutenants must have cried on your shoulders over the years.”
Seivarden’s tears had never wetted any of my uniform jackets, when I had been a ship. “Are you jealous?”
“I think I am,” she said. “I’d rather have cut my right arm off than shown weakness, when I was seventeen.” And when she was twenty-seven, and thirty-seven. “I regret that, now.”
CHAPTER 21