60 pages • 2 hours read
Ann LeckieAncillary Justice
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 17-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary
Instead of immediately returning to Breq and Seivarden’s experiences on Nilt, Chapter 17 continues the story of One Esk Nineteen/Breq. After the destruction of the Justice of Toren and her linked bodies, she finds herself “on the fringes of a backwater, non-Radchaai system” (255). To meet the demanding Radchaai standards of space, people have extensively modified their bodies and are no longer human. One Esk/Breq discovers that these people now inhabit her. Living among these “silent, clannish, self-contained” people, Breq spends six months learning “how to walk and breathe and sleep and eat as [her]self” (256).
In her hospital room on Nilt, Breq tells Seivarden that their next destination is Omaugh Palace, one of the thirteen palaces of Anaander Mianaai, in hopes of granting an audience with the Lord of the Radch. As Seivarden left Radchaai space without permission, she will face legal complications on her return. Breq thinks she can gain access by appearing as a witness for Seivarden when the latter exercises her right to make a personal appeal to Anaander Mianaai.
However, Breq still questions Seivarden’s commitment. After leaving the hospital, she offers Seivarden money and tells her she can stay on in their rented room for another 10 days. Seivarden refuses the offer. Seivarden also refrains from expressing any surprise and disapproval when Breq takes an icon out of her reclaimed luggage and performs a small blood sacrifice before praying to the icon. Breq explains that the icon, depicting a figure holding a severed head, represents a god she met traveling.
During the seven-month long journey to Omaugh Palace Station, Seivarden takes on the role of Breq’s servant. Despite her occasional mood swings, Seivarden becomes such a competent servant that a fellow passenger tries to hire her away from Breq. The Radchaai consular agent who processes their application to enter Radchaai space treats Breq, a non-citizen, with disdain until Breq reveals how much money she is carrying. The agent is confused as to why a non-citizen would have a Radchaai servant, and her confusion increases when she hears Seivarden’s elegant but archaic upper-class speech. Breq’s visas and Seivarden’s travel permits come through quickly and without comment, but nevertheless, Breq wonders if they have already aroused curiosity or suspicion at the station.
Breq reflects that in seeking an audience with Anaander Mianaai, she is carrying out Justice of Toren’s final order to One Esk Nineteen: Seek an official audience with the Lord of the Radch and tell her what happened, forcing her to confront the fact she has become divided against herself. But this mission has altered, as Breq now wants to defy the Lord of the Radch openly and avenge the death of Lieutenant Awn, even if the gesture proves futile.
Waiting to disembark, Breq finds herself humming the Orsian tune beginning “My heart is a fish,” which Seivarden points out Breq often does when preoccupied. On disembarking, a young adjunct of the station’s Inspector Supervisor meets them. Breq finds something oddly familiar about the adjunct. She recognizes the adjunct’s memorial pin: The young temple attendant Daos Ceit received the pin for aiding Mianaai in performing the daily rites at Lieutenant Awn’s house on Ors. Breq realizes that an officer serving in Ors must have brought Daos Ceit with her to the palace station. Breq recognizes another, more valuable pin worn by Daos Ceit as a token from the house of Awer, so she is not surprised when the Inspector Supervisor turns out to be Lieutenant Skaaiat.
Chapter 18 Summary
Lieutenant—now Inspector Supervisor—Skaaiat, like most Radchaai, wears an assortment of commemorative jewelry recalling the important relationships in her life and memorializing the dead. Breq notices that, apart from the jewelry expected of someone in her position, Skaaiat wears a cheap, machine-made gold pin on her cuff. Breq later identifies this pin as a memorial to Lieutenant Awn. Breq fears that her intense reaction to meeting again with someone she feels failed Lieutenant Awn will draw Skaaiat’s attention, but Skaaiat is only interested in Seivarden. Seivarden makes it clear that she expects only the basic necessities and lodging granted free to every Radchaai citizen. Skaaiat, intrigued by Seivarden’s history and her aristocratic origins, seems to feel she deserves better but fears that it would be a violation of protocol for a foreigner to spend money on a Radchaai servant or act as her patron.
Seivarden puts in a request at the palace for a personal audience with Anaander Mianaai, an audience that Skaaiat tells them will not likely occur for several months. Seivarden leaves for her assigned lodging, while Breq rents a luxurious room and takes in the spectacle of life on a palace station, effectively a small city. While Breq was created to protect the way of life enjoyed in such places, she has never experienced it. Breq, alone in her room, finds herself missing Seivarden’s company. Aware that she, like everyone else on the station, is under the constant surveillance of the station’s artificial intelligence, she performs her Gerentate prayers.
Chapter 19 Summary
The next morning, Breq buys clothes from a shopkeeper who hesitates to serve a gloveless foreigner until Station (as Breq refers to the station AI) flashes Breq’s bank balance on her screen. Breq takes this as confirmation that she is being closely watched. Leaving the store, she notes that her fashionable new clothes make her almost invisible to the people who previously stared at her and whispered. Breq visits the station temple and makes an offering to Amaat of flowers and incense in memory of Lieutenant Awn, even though as an ancillary, she is technically forbidden to make or even touch temple offerings. As Breq makes her offering, she notices a ship’s captain watching her intently. Breq looks at the glass offerings to the dead in the mortuary shrine, thinking that if she commissioned such an offering with her name and Lieutenant Awn’s on it, “it would be the last thing [she] ever did” (296).
Outside the temple, a soldier serving under Captain Vel, the captain who was watching Breq in the temple, approaches Breq. The soldier tells Breq that Captain Vel hopes Breq will join her for tea at the shop she visits each afternoon, though sending a mere solider to make the invitation is, as Breq notes, borderline insulting. She accepts but makes it clear she realizes that Captain Vel’s real interest is in Seivarden, as a long-lost member of a vanished aristocratic house.
Breq returns to her room and speaks to Station through the room’s console, confirming that Station is indeed watching her closely. While Station cannot read Breq’s thoughts, it can detect physical changes reflecting Breq’s moods, and Breq fears that her intense and anomalous reactions may give her away. After watching an entertainment Station selected, Breq asks Station to contact Seivarden for her. Station informs Breq that security is holding Seivarden because she got into a fight with someone already occupying her assigned lodging: “I’m not managing very well on my own” (302), observes Seivarden. Breq buys Seivarden new clothes to replace her government-issued ones, now bloodstained, and takes Seivarden for tea. Breq mentions the invitation from Captain Vel, and Seivarden is offended on Breq’s behalf when she learns a soldier delivered the invitation. Breq agrees to takes Seivarden on again as her servant, regardless of protocol.
Chapter 20 Summary
The next day, Breq and Seivarden meet Captain Vel and her friends for tea. The captain makes clear that her interest is in Seivarden, but her dismissive treatment of Breq merely angers Seivarden. To the surprise of both Breq and Seivarden, Captain Vel and her fashionable friends openly criticize government policy, especially the replacement of ancillaries by human troops and the promotion of provincials. One argues that is unfair to expect Seivarden to take the aptitudes again, suggesting that the aptitudes are now rigged in favor of certain candidates. She also expresses distaste at the official toleration of “atheists” such as the Valskaayans. Seivarden can barely conceal her scorn for the group’s opinions, though she herself held similar opinions only a year before. Breq fears that her own intense emotional reactions to their statements, especially to a chance mention of the disappearance of Justice of Toren, will bring her to the attention not only of Station but of Anaander Mianaai.
After Breq and Seivarden leave the tea shop, Breq detects that at least four people seem to be following them. Breq and Seivarden proceed to the quarters of Skaaiat, who has invited them to supper. Daos Ceit greets them and brings them into Skaaiat, whose manner is far more serious and thoughtful than when Breq knew her before. Skaaiat notes that her house has always opposed the endless cycle of annexations and the use of ancillaries. While human troops may be less predictable and more inclined to commit atrocities, the making of ancillaries was “an atrocity in itself” (324). Seivarden speculates that the rebellion at Ime thwarted a plan to take the empire backwards, in the direction desired by Captain Vel and her friends. Seivarden also wonders if she would have had the same courage to act as the human soldier who led the rebellion.
Station security appears at the door, interrupting the conversation, and requests that Breq and Seivarden accompany them to the palace immediately. As the security leads them away, Breq realizes they are under arrest. The security then takes them to the palace via a secret entrance concealed in the temple.
Chapters 17-20 Analysis
In the closing section of the novel, the narrative changes form as the alternating storylines of the previous chapters fuse into a single narrative unfolding on the Omaugh Palace station. Although less action occurs in these chapters, the narrative bridges the time between Breq and Seivarden’s arrival on the station and their arrest via Mianaai’s agents. However, the chapters provide a picture of Radchaai life as lived by those who enjoy the benefits of the cycle of annexations (now coming to an end), which ships like Justice of Toren were created to carry out. As Skaaiat points out, the end of annexations will bring dramatic changes to Radchaai society. Captain Vel and her friends do not fully anticipate these changes and believe a simple return to the old ways can prevent a societal shift.
Numerous themes and motifs introduced in previous chapters come into play in this section. For example, Seivarden complains throughout their time on Nilt about the absence of proper tea. Breq later takes Seivarden to a shop selling tea supplies during their journey to the station and admits that she is not in the habit of drinking tea. However, Breq does not tell Seivarden why: “[T]ea was for officers. For humans. Ancillaries drank water.” (260). When they apply for visas and permits, the Radchaai consular agent does not offer tea until she sees how much money Breq carries. Seivarden, as a servant, is not offered tea, but the agent’s servant later gives Seivarden half a kilo of tea leaves “to make up for her employer’s unintentional slight” (265) in failing to give tea to someone whose accent identifies her as a wellborn Radchaai citizen. When Daos Ceit offers Breq and Seivarden tea in her office on their arrival at the station, the offer reassures Breq that they are not under arrest. On the station, Seivarden is initially thrilled to find herself in a place where proper tea is everywhere, but when she and Breq actually take tea with Captain Vel and her friends, Seivarden registers her disapproval of them by not even tasting the tea they offer her. This gesture indicates how much her underlying attitudes have changed in the past year.
Clothes, especially gloves, and jewelry play a similar role in communicating status. When they arrive at the station, Breq’s bare hands mark her as a foreigner, whereas Seivarden’s mark her as someone who has lost her place in Radchaai society. As Breq observes, those who want to indicate that they do not work with their hands advertise this by wearing especially delicate and expensive gloves. Radchaai also use memorial jewelry to advertise their connections. Breq not only recognizes Daos Ceit by the pin Mianaai gave to her years prior, but she can also read much of Daos Ceit’s subsequent history in her jewelry: Breq can speculate about the depth of Daos Ceit’s relationship with Skaaiat based on the jewel quality of the Awer house emblem Skaaiat gave her. Skaaiat’s own pin commemorating Lieutenant Awn, noticeably cheaper than the rest of her jewelry and worn to make it as visible to the wearer as to others, clearly indicates how deeply Skaaiat feels her death and the degree to which it has changed her.
Breq’s memories of the heavily modified, half-machine people she lived among after the destruction of Justice of Toren indicate that, in Radchaai eyes, one’s degree of body alteration marks one’s relative humanity. She is careful to disable as many of her own implants as possible before reaching the station, as they would identify her as an ancillary. Once on the station, Breq realizes she is under observation, just as she used to monitor her own officers. The station AI can discern her emotional state from changes in her vital signs, just as she once discerned Lieutenant Awn’s reactions.
