Ancillary Justice

Most of the peoples the Radchaai encounter have well-developed religions, which the Radchaai are in the practice of assimilating into their own during the process of annexation. They fit these new gods into “an already blindingly complex genealogy,” reasoning that “the supreme, creator deity was Amaat under another name” and content to let the rest “sort themselves out” (175). Religion serves to codify a people’s world view and values and to reassure them that they represent a norm from which other people deviate. The Radchaai have Amaat, whose four arms each hold an Emanation: Light/Darkness, Beginning/Ending, Movement/Stillness, and Existence/Nonexistence: “Everything that is, emanates from Amaat,” and to carry out one’s duties as a Radchaai officer is to participate in the will of Amaat.

The Tanmind of Shis’urna believe that only those who have reached space are fully human. They view the planet’s gravity field as “the land of dead” and feel justified in treating those who live there only, like the Orsians, as less than human. Beyond inhabited space is the Black, “the home of God and everything holy” (54). Little is shared of the details of Orsian religion, but the Divine of Ikkt is clearly a person of great authority in the community, and the temple of Ikkt is the goal of a great annual pilgrimage. The Garseddai, for whom the number five was sacred and the pentagon the basis of all design, followed the Five Right Actions. Despite these differences, most people prove willing to accept the amalgamation of their own religion with that of the Radchaai as long as they can keep their familiar symbols alongside the new ones. An exception is the strict monotheism of the Valskaayans, who are willing to fight and die for their “insistently separate religion” (175).

This mixing of religions has generated a vast number of gods and saints, and images or other artifacts of these divine figures are part of the furniture of Radchaai life. Each Radchaai prays in front of her own collection of icons, which may include the gods their ancestors worshipped prior to annexation. Lieutenant Awn’s collection of icons includes “a few gods particular to Lieutenant Awn’s family” (42), and on Omaugh Palace station, Daos Ceit keeps “a tiny brass copy of the cliffside in the temple of Ikkt” (272) next to her icon of Amaat.

Carrying a somewhat different significance are the two mysterious icons owned by Breq which depict a figure strongly resembling Breq herself holding a severed head in one hand and a knife in the other. In one image she has four arms in total. Each icon takes the form of a gold disk that unfolds like a flower to reveal the central image. Strigan finds the smaller of the icons in the pack Breq has brought into her house. Seivarden finds the other, larger icon in the luggage Breq reclaims as she prepares to leave Nilt. Both comment on the central figure’s resemblance to Breq, but Breq offers no explanation.

Breq does confirm to Seivarden that the icon depicts a saint, but she notes that the saint is the severed head, not the figure holding the head. The child version of Anaander Mianaai recognizes the icons as coming from “the Itran Tetrarchy,” where Breq says she got the money to buy the Garseddai gun. The child Mianaai asks Breq if “they really practice human sacrifice there” or if the head is “just metaphorical” (174). Breq responds, “It’s complicated” (174), refusing to say anything further. The icons represent a phase in her life between the destruction of the Justice of Toren and her appearance on Nilt, when she was forging a new sense of identity and purpose. The icons depict Breq as a killer, one who performs a sacred role, as opposed to an anonymous and interchangeable piece of equipment.

Tea is both a staple of the Radchaai diet and an important symbol of civility. Radchaai expect to drink tea with every meal and are unhappy when it is not available: “What sort of place doesn’t have tea?” (72) moans Seivarden, when she learns that the usual drink on Nilt is fermented milk thinned with water. One of the hardships of life on Shis’urna is that officers only have the tea they brought with them. Lieutenant Awn, taking “tea” with the Divine of Ikkt, forces herself to drink “what Shis’urnans call tea, a thick liquid, lukewarm and sweet, that bears almost no relationship to the real thing” (13). She perseveres because of its importance as a social ritual.

In Radchaai space, a complex etiquette surrounds the offering of tea, as making the offer indicates that one thinks the person is of high enough status to merit favorable attention. The consular agent issuing Breq’s visas does not offer Seivarden tea because she is a servant but then fears she has made a mistake when she hears Seivarden’s accent. Later, the agent’s servant gives Seivarden half a kilo of real tea leaves, a gift Breq suspects is intended to make up for the slight. Breq herself has not developed a taste for tea because ancillaries, as non-humans, only receive water.

On the palace station, Breq offers to buy Seivarden tea, as Seivarden has no money to buy tea, and tea is not included in the basic rations offered to indigent citizens. Breq reflects that “tea, of course, was an extra. A luxury. Which wasn’t really a luxury. Not by Seivarden’s standards, anyway. Likely not by any Radchaai’s standards” (302). Drinking tea not only satisfies a taste most Radchaai have developed, it reassures them of their place in the world. At the end of the novel, when Breq awakes from her coma, Seivarden offers her tea: “She held the bowl to my mouth and I took one small, cautious sip. It was wonderful” (368). This offer demonstrates the bond between Seivarden and Breq and implies that Mianaai has given Breq her citizenship, a declaration of Breq’s humanity.

Radchaai wear gloves at all times and find bare hands improper. Keeping one’s hands covered shows that one is civilized. Breq tells Strigan that she can convince the Radchaai she is a foreigner just by “showing up with no gloves, or the wrong ones” (164). Even ancillaries wear gloves, though they are not allowed to drink tea or touch offerings made in the temple. Lieutenant Awn continues to wear gloves even with her Orsian clothes. At the musical performance on Nilt, Breq reflects that it’s rare to see stringed instruments played publicly in Radchaai space: Such performances are considered “risqué,” as they require bare fingers or gloves so thin as to be useless. Buying someone gloves indicates a formal offer of clientage, a form of relationship that plays a key role in Radchaai society. On the palace station, Skaaiat warns Breq not to buy gloves for Seivarden unless she wants their relationship to be misinterpreted.

Beautiful gloves imply that one does not do any heavy or unpleasant tasks, that, to use Lieutenant’s Skaaiat’s words, “someone else is paying the cost of your life” (63). In Chapter 17, the consular agent’s “pristine white gloves” suggest to Breq that the agent “either had a servant or spent a good deal of her free time attempting to appear as though she did” (263). The elegant friend of Captain Vel’s, to whom Breq refers as Rose-and-Azure, wears “delicate satin gloves that suggested she never handled anything rougher or heavier than a bowl of tea” (312). Ancillaries, who count as human, must also wear gloves, suggesting that the Radchaai want to be protected from reminders of the costs they make others pay.

Almost all Radchaai wear a selection of jewelry on their jacket, “gifts from friends or lovers, memorials to the dead, marks of family or clientage associations” (14). When Breq meets Daos Ceit again on the palace station, she can tell from looking at Daos Ceit’s jewelry that she has “three close friends, all three of whom had incomes and positions similar to hers” (275). Additionally, Breq deduces that Daos Ceit had “[t]wo lovers intimate enough to exchange tokens with but not sufficiently so to be considered very serious” (275). Breq recognizes Daos Ceit by the pin Mianaai gave her as a child to commemorate having served as a temple assistant for the Lord of the Radch.

Jewelry is also given out at funerals as memorials. The former Lieutenant Skaaiat, now Inspector Supervisor of the Omaugh Palace station docks, wears a “cheap, machine-stamped gold tag” (322). This piece is strikingly different from the rest of her jewelry, pinned to the cuff of her jacket where it is always in sight. Breq deduces correctly that the pin was a memorial issued by Lieutenant Awn’s family at the time of her death. In the final chapter, Mianaai hands the memorial pin to Breq, saying Skaaiat wants Breq to have it.