Ancillary Justice

“‘You used to horrify me,’ said the head priest to me. ‘The very thought of you near was terrifying, your dead faces, those expressionless voices. But today I am more horrified at the thought of a unit of living human beings who serve voluntarily. Because I don’t think I could trust them.’” 

The head priest expresses her deep disquiet with ancillaries, soldiers created by linking the body of a prisoner of war to a ship’s artificial intelligence. Ancillaries have no facial expression. Later, to pass as a human, Breq must constantly remember to make appropriate expressions. The head priest also acknowledges that ancillaries are far more predictable than human soldiers, who have begun to replace them. The debate over the use of human soldiers versus ancillaries is a source of great controversy within the Radch.

“One, two, my aunt told me

Three, four, the corpse soldier

Five, six, it’ll shoot you in the eye

Seven, eight, kill you dead

Nine, ten, break it apart and put it back together again.” 

Non-Radchaai, those on the receiving end of the violence of annexation, call ancillaries “corpse soldiers.” This children’s song, overheard by One Esk while patrolling the city of Ors, shows the fear that ancillaries inspire. It also demonstrates how normal their presence has become in five years of occupation. The final line refers to what is done to ancillaries, rather than their victims, when a segment is killed and must be replaced. This grim process is dramatized in a later chapter. One Esk’s close attention to this song reflects its deep interest in singing and in collecting songs on the worlds it visits. 

“I—that is, I—One Esk—first sang to amuse on of my lieutenants, when Justice of Toren had hardly been commissioned a hundred years. She enjoyed music, and had brought an instrument with her as part of her luggage allowance. She could never interest the other officers in her hobby and so she taught me the parts to the songs she played. By the time she was captain of her own ship, I had collected a large library of vocal music—no one was going to give me an instrument, but I could sing anytime—and it was a matter of rumor and some indulgent smiles that Justice of Toren had an interest in singing. Which it didn’t—I—I—Justice of Toren—tolerated the habit because it was harmless and because it was quite possible that one of my captains would appreciate it. Otherwise it would have been prevented.” 

One Esk tells the story of how it first became interested in singing. Ancillaries, who are regarded as pieces of equipment rather than as people, have no access to luxuries such as musical instruments. The lieutenant taught One Esk to perform music, which it learned and enjoyed it, suggesting that ancillaries and their relationships with their officers are more complex than they appear. The confusion over who “I” refers to, and the suggestion that One Esk and Justice of Toren were already somewhat separate, raise the complicated questions of selfhood and identity that the narrator mulls throughout the book.

“My bodies sweated under my uniform jackets, and bored, I opened three of my mouths, all in close proximity to one another on the temple plaza, and sang with those three voices, ‘My heart is a fish, hiding in the watergrass…’ One person walking by looked at me, startled, but everyone else ignored me—they were used to me by now.” 

This passage shows how the 20 segments of One Esk share a single consciousness even as they perform different tasks. The song depicted in the passage becomes a repeated motif, coming into Breq’s mind when she is troubled or reminded of life on Ors. These lines also show the relative closeness between One Esk and the citizen of Ors, as well as the role of music in creating that relationship. A small girl hoping to become a temple assistant taught this song to One Esk. One Esk’s time on Ors prior to the arrival of Anaander Mianaai stands out later as a period of happiness. After leaving Ors, One Esk becomes unhappy and largely falls silent.

“A Radchaai would have tossed that coin. Or more accurately a handful of them, a dozen disks, each with its meaning and import, the pattern of their fall a map of the universe as Amaat willed it to be. Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is. Or, as a Radchaai would say, the universe is the shape of the gods.” 

After her sabotaged flier runs out of fuel on the tundra of Nilt, Breq contemplates what to do next. She reflects on the Radchaai belief in omens and the casting of lots as a way of perceiving the will of the gods. Throwing the dozen disks and interpreting the results is one of the daily duties of a Radchaai priest. The Radchaai believe that there are no accidents or coincidences: Everything that happens is fated as the will of Amaat.

“Or so official Radchaai orthodoxy teaches. I myself have never understood religion very well. It was never required that I should. And though the Radchaai had made me, I was not Radchaai. I knew and cared nothing about the will of the gods. I only knew that I would land where I myself had been cast, wherever that would be.” 

Breq was not programmed to share her creators’ confidence in their destiny, nor have her subsequent experiences led her to think her path has been shaped by the will of the gods. As Justice of Toren One Esk, she simply followed orders. Creating a sense of purpose for herself has been one of the greatest challenges of being human.

“‘It’s the way they live, all out in the open like that, with nothing but a roof,’ Jen Shinnan said. ‘They can’t have any privacy, no sense of themselves as real individuals, you understand, no sense of any sort of separate identity.’” 

Jen Shinnan, the wealthiest member of the Tanmind caste who formerly ruled over the people of Ors, explains her belief that the Orsians have no interior life and are not human in the sense that the Tanmind are. She uses cultural differences, which may relate to the relative poverty of the Orsians, as evidence for her view. The Radchaai make similar judgments about the humanity of other races and classes (including ships and ancillaries). Like Jen Shinnan, they feel justified in using violence against “lesser” peoples. Jen Shinnan makes these remarks in front of Lieutenant Awn, whose humble origins and sense of herself as an outsider within Radchaai society has led her to question these beliefs.

“‘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.” 

After leaving Jen Shinnan’s, Lieutenant Awn continues the conversation with Lieutenant Skaaiat, her lover and a member of an ancient Radchaai house known for its open criticism of policies others take for granted. The word “Radchaai” means both someone who has been granted or born into citizenship in the empire and someone who is “civilized” in the sense of being fully human. This dual meaning shows how closely these concepts are fused in the Radchaai mind. The way in which Lieutenant Awn and Lieutenant Skaaiat share the joke also reflects the intimacy between them.

“‘And you don’t like me saying that, but here’s the truth: luxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience […] When you grow up knowing that you deserve to be on top, that the lesser houses exist to serve your house’s glorious destiny, you take such things for granted. You’re born assuming that someone else is paying the cost of your life […] What happens during annexation is a difference of degree, not a difference of kind.’” 

Lieutenant Skaaiat explains to Lieutenant Awn how natural the sense of privilege enjoyed by members of the Radchaai ruling class feels to them: They feel that their position in society really is the will of the gods. The suffering of others, whether members of the lower classes or of peoples undergoing the violence of annexation, seems natural and inevitable as well. As a member of an ancient house, Lieutenant Skaaiat feels free to express these views. Breq notes that they do not keep Skaaiat from enjoying the benefits of her position in Radchaai society. These ideas are more troubling to Lieutenant Awn, who finds herself identifying with the victims of annexation, including those made into ancillaries.

“Without feelings, insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It’s just easier to handle those with emotion.” 

One Esk explains to a human soldier serving under Lieutenant Skaaiat that ships are programmed to have feelings, which makes them more efficient for decision-making. However, emotions also create complications, as the stories of Radchaai ships driven mad with grief at the loss of their captain show. One Esk’s own emotional attachment to Lieutenant Awn becomes a driving force behind the novel’s subsequent events.

“The Lord of the Radch arrived in the middle of the day, on foot, a single one of her walking down through the upper city, no trace of her in the tracker logs, and went straight to the temple of Ikkt. She was old, gray-haired broad shoulders slightly stooping, the almost-black skin of her face lined—which accounted for the lack of guards. The loss of one body that was more or less near death anyway would not be a large one. The use of such older bodies allowed the Lord of the Radch to walk unprotected, without any sort of entourage, when she wished, without much risk.” 

This passage shows how Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch, makes use of the thousands of genetically identical bodies she occupies. What One Esk does not yet realize is that Mianaai’s consciousness has become divided as well. The “one of her” who appears in Ors represents the opposition to the version of herself who has introduced policy reforms. This version intends to trigger a violent uprising of the Tanmind to discredit Lieutenant Awn, and by extension, other humbly born, progressively minded officers like her.

“Four hours before dawn, things went to pieces. Or, more accurately, I went to pieces. The tracker data I had been monitoring cut out, and suddenly all twenty of me were blind, deaf, immobile. Each segment could see only from a single pair of eyes, hear only through a single pair of eyes, move only that single body.” 

Central to Mianaai’s scheme is the use of a jamming device that breaks the connections between One Esk’s individual segments as well as their connection to Justice of Toren. This is One Esk’s first experience of the fragmentation and isolation that will become Breq’s permanent reality. The next time Mianaai uses the jamming device, only one segment will survive.

“To noncitizens, who only ever see Radchaai in melodramatic entertainments, who know nothing of the Radch besides ancillaries and annexations and what they think of as brainwashing, such an order might be appalling, but hardly surprising. But the idea of shooting citizens was, in fact, extremely shocking and upsetting. What, after all, was the point of civilization if not the well-being of citizens?” 

When Anaander Mianaai’s plan to help the Tanmind rise against the Orsians fails, she covers her tracks by ordering Lieutenant Awn to shoot all the Tanmind rioters inside the temple of Ikkt. However, like the orders to annihilate the Garseddai centuries before, this particular use of violence is a violation of Radchaai norms. The Radchaai justify the violence of annexations because its end is the expansion of civilized society. However, they disapprove of violence that does not serve their civilizing mission as well as violence against their assimilated citizens.

“It was normal practice to absorb any religion that the Radch ran across, to fit its gods into an already blindingly complex genealogy, or to say merely that the supreme, creator deity was Amaat under another name and let the rest sort themselves out. Some quirk of Valskaayan religion had made this difficult for them, and the result had been destructive. Among the recent changes in Radch policy, Anaander Mianaai had legalized the practice of Valskaay’s insistently separate religion.”

This passage describes how the Radchaai are accustomed to assimilating the religions of newly annexed peoples, and how the Valskaayans’ refusal to go along with this practice led them to rebel. One Esk is reminded of these events by the stained-glass windows from a Valskaayan temple that hang with other war booty in the decade rooms on Justice of Toren. However, the more reform-minded version of Anaander Mianaai decided to tolerate the Valskaayans’ separate religion, something deeply shocking to traditionally-minded Radchaai who view the monotheistic Valskaayans as “atheists.” However, Mianaai did not return the stained-glass windows; instead, the Valskaayans were given copies, a clear indication that, despite reforms, the Radchaai still have the upper hand.

“Nearly twenty years later, ‘I’ would be a single body, a single brain. That division, I—Justice of Toren and I—One Esk, was not, I have come to think, a sudden split, not an instant before which ‘I’ was one and after which ‘I’ was ‘we.’ It was something that had always been possible, always potential.” 

Breq speculates that One Esk began to develop a separate identity from Justice of Toren long before the cataclysmic event that left the segment who takes the name Breq as the sole survivor. Rather, that separation merely made total and permanent a change that had begun long before.

“Did the singing contribute, the thing that made One Esk different from all the other units on the ship, indeed in the fleets? Perhaps. Or is anyone’s identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as fiction?” 

Breq wonders if One Esk’s love of music was not merely a sign, but also a cause, of its developing sense of self. On the other hand, Breq realizes that this may only appear to be the case in hindsight, that it may the nature of conscious beings to form their memories into a story that supports and explains their identity.

“You and I, we really can be of two minds, can’t we.” 

Justice of Toren remembers Mianaai making this statement during her first secret visit to the ship, when the reform-minded version of her first tampered with Justice of Toren’s memory. Justice of Toren recalls this conversation when the other Anaander Mianaai undertakes to do the same thing. Each version of Mianaai initially makes the same statements, word for word, and the overpowering of sense of déjà vu the ship experiences awakens its memory of the earlier conversation. In both conversations, Mianaai observes that “each of your ancillary segments is entirely capable of having its own identity” (213), a startling statement that is nevertheless borne out by later events.

Mianaai makes a direct parallel between her own experience of divided consciousness and what she is doing to the ship, though it is surprising for the Lord of the Radch to compare herself to a piece of equipment. However, it is only the somewhat more benevolent version of Mianaai who says that she and Justice of Toren are “of two minds.” At this point in the conversation, the reactionary version of Mianaai speaks more bluntly of an enemy cutting off parts of oneself.

“I spent six months trying to understand how to do anything—not just how to get my message to the Lord of the Radch, but how to walk and talk and breathe and sleep and eat as myself. As a myself that was only a fragment of what I had been, with no conceivable future beyond eternally wishing for what was gone.” 

Breq describes the disorientation and despair she experiences upon finding herself isolated in a single body after the destruction of Justice of Toren. Programmed to obey orders, she finds their absence disturbing. She is also mourning the loss of Lieutenant Awn and dealing with her own sense of guilt, as it was one of her ancillary bodies who shot and killed the lieutenant.

“In the nineteen years since then, I had learned eleven languages and 713 songs. I had found ways to conceal what I was—even, I was fairly sure, from the Lord of the Radch herself. I had worked as a cook, a janitor, a pilot. I had decided on a plan of action. I had joined a religious order, and made a great deal of money. In all that time I only killed a dozen people.” 

Breq summarizes her experiences in the years between the destruction of Justice of Toren and her arrival on Nilt. She lists the different identities she has taken and emphasizes continuities. She has continued to collect songs and learn languages, and she has killed people when she finds it necessary. Now that she makes her own decisions, the number of casualties is smaller than in the days when she served the Radch.

“I would follow my orders. But in the time I’d spent recovering from my own death, the time working my way toward Radch space, I had decided I would do something else as well. I would defy the Lord of the Radch. And perhaps my defiance would amount to nothing, a feeble gesture she would barely notice.” 

One Esk Nineteen’s final orders were to proceed to a royal palace and tell the story of what happened on board Justice of Toren. As Breq, she still intends to carry out these orders. However, her self-appointed mission now is to shoot and kill Anaander Mianaai, or whatever versions of Mianaai she can access. Breq has come to believe in the value of defiant gestures, even if they do not lead anywhere or result in her death, as what happened to Lieutenant Awn and to the soldier at Ime.

“This was the sort of place my officers came from, and departed to. The sort of place I had never been, and yet it was completely familiar to me. Places like this were, from one point of view, the whole reason for my existence.” 

On the Omaugh Palace station, passing as human (though non-Radchaai), Breq finally experiences the way of life that annexations were meant to fund and protect. As a ship and its ancillary bodies, she served the annexation process but never enjoyed its benefits.

“‘And what were they thinking,’ Seivarden continued, ‘to have a conversation like that. In a tea shop. On a palace station. I mean, not just when we were young and provincials are vulgar but the aptitudes are corrupt? The military is badly mismanaged?’” 

The intensity of Seivarden’s response to the reactionary view of Captain Vel and her friends indicates how much Seivarden’s own views have changed over the past year. It also suggests the way in which the conflict between Anaander Mianaai’s divided selves is slowly coming into the open. These factions gauge the opinions of possible allies and move to solidify their support. The behavior of Captain Vel and her friends suggests they enjoy the support of authority figures.

“But I had always been, first and foremost, a weapon. A machine meant for killing.” 

Breq describes the moment at which she fires the Garseddai gun at the version of Anaander Mianaai clinging to the outside of the shuttle. Breq knows that firing the gun will result in the destruction of the shuttle and (most likely) her own death, but she does not hesitate. Her memory of her original function as a weapon and her self-appointed mission of vengeance are fused, even though her cannot be replaced with a new segment.