Free Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

They approve of your ancillaries and disapprove of your antecedents. Jen Shinnan gets a very ambivalent picture of you.” Her voice was quiet, pitched so that only someone standing very near could hear it, though the houses we passed were closed up, and dark on the lower levels. It was very unlike the lower city, where even late into the night people sat nearly in the street, even small children.
    “Besides,” Lieutenant Skaaiat said, “she’s right. Oh, not that foolishness about Orsians, no, but she’s right to be suspicious about the aptitudes. You know yourself the tests are susceptible to manipulation.” Lieutenant Awn felt a sick, betrayed indignation at Lieutenant Skaaiat’s words, but said nothing, and Lieutenant Skaaiat continued. “For centuries only the wealthy and well-connected tested as suitable forcertain jobs. Like, say, officers in the military. In the last, what, fifty, seventy-five years, that hasn’t been true. Have the lesser houses suddenly begun to produce officer candidates where they didn’t before?”
    “I don’t like where you’re headed with this,” snapped Lieutenant Awn, tugging slightly at their linked arms, trying to pull away. “I didn’t expect it from you.”
    “No, no,” protested Lieutenant Skaaiat, and didn’t let go, drew her closer. “The question is the right one, and the answer the same. The answer is no, of course. But does that mean the tests were rigged before, or rigged now?”
    “And your opinion?”
    “Both. Before and now. And our friend Jen Shinnan doesn’t fully understand that the question can even be asked—she just knows that if you’re going to succeed you’ve got to have the right connections, and she knows the aptitudes are part of that. And she’s utterly shameless—you heard her imply the Orsians were being rewarded for collaboration, and in nearly the same breath imply her people would be even better collaborators! And you notice neither she nor her cousin are sending their
own
children for testing, just this orphaned niece. Still, they’re invested in her doing well. If we’d asked for a bribe to ensure it, she’d have handed it over, no question. I’m surprised she didn’t offer one, actually.”
    “You wouldn’t,” protested Lieutenant Awn. “You won’t. You can’t deliver anyway.”
    “I won’t need to. The child will test well, likely get herself sent to the territorial capital for training to take a nice civil service post. If you ask me, the Orsians
are
being rewarded for collaborating—but they’re a minority in this system. And now the unavoidable unpleasantness of the annexation is over, we want people to start realizing that being Radchaaiwill benefit them. Punishing local houses for not being quick enough to surrender won’t help.”
    They walked in silence for a bit, and stopped at the edge of the water, arms still linked.
    “Walk you home?” asked Lieutenant Skaaiat. Lieutenant Awn didn’t answer, but looked away over the water, still angry. The green skylights in the temple’s slanted roof shone, and light poured out the open doors onto the plaza and reflected on the water—this was a season of nightly vigils. Lieutenant Skaaiat said, with an apologetic half-smile, “I’ve upset you, let me make it up to you.”
    “Sure,” said Lieutenant Awn, with a small sigh. She never could resist Lieutenant Skaaiat, and indeed there was no real reason to do so. They turned and walked along the water’s edge.
    “What’s the difference,” Lieutenant Awn said, so quietly it didn’t seem like a break in the silence, “between citizens and noncitizens?”
    “One is civilized,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat with a laugh, “and the other isn’t.” The joke only made sense in Radchaai—
citizen
and
civilized
are the same word. To be Radchaai is to be civilized.
    “So in the moment the Lord of Mianaai bestowed citizenship on the Shis’urnans, in that very instant they became civilized.” The sentence was a