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The Lord of the Radch has invited aboard a guest.
There is nothing out of the ordinary about this situation, in the abstract sense. A Sword with sufficient amenities to host the Lord of the Radch herself must also be prepared to welcome and accommodate any number of guests that she may need to meet with, up to and including - though this is rare - strange and uncivilized foreign visitors.
This particular individual stands out even amongst the exceptional cases that have warranted your lord’s attention before. As one of your ancillaries escorts the stranger through your corridors to where your lord is waiting (carefully avoiding areas populated by your human lieutenants and captain, due to what you will not describe as a growing sense of unease), you catalogue your discomfort into three areas of uncertainty.
The first: how the stranger arrived. The tiny shuttle appeared out of nowhere; it shouldn’t have the capacity to gate, and neither you nor any of your officers understand it. You suspect your lord does not know how it happened, either, which is an unsettling notion that you neatly compartmentalize away with the rest of how you feel about the state of the empire and the new republic that no one wants you to have heard about.
The second: how the stranger looks. You are used to seeing barbarians, gloveless and in any manner of dress from their uncivilized cultures, but it is not the simple black clothing that you notice first. Nor is it her close-cropped hair, nor even the wreath of pale leaves and bone that she wears like a crown.
Her eyes are black. Two kinds of black - the emptiness of space and the iridescent shimmer of viscous liquid, like blood if it were ink, or like obsidian if it bled. You would suspect alien, or some constructed off-human variant like the Presger translators, if not for every other soft and unassuming detail that insists, upon your long and historied service as a military ship, that this stranger is human. Human, except. Human but-for.
And the third: an incident. If not for this, you could have easily dismissed the other two things. Coming across technology new to the Radch is not the end of the world. You’ve seen humans modify their appearance all the time, and it would be effortless to liken those black eyes to your youngest officer’s frivolous magenta irises. Neither of those, alone, would be enough to raise alarm.
This barbarian stranger, the Lord of the Radch’s latest guest, moved you.
That isn’t quite the right word to describe it. Everything had been under control. The initial flurry of decisions - your captain consulting with your other officers and then scrambling to accommodate the Lord of the Radch’s input - all of that was over, and your lord had decided to receive this guest, and so you sent an ancillary to greet her.
She’d climbed out of her shuttle, looked at you, and tilted her head just slightly to one side - as if she’d seen something unexpected. You’d processed her appearance - her eyes - in a millisecond, ready to dismiss it, and everyone else on the ship was watching with held breath. There was nothing to distract you.
She’d still moved faster than you. Your armor deployed, too late even with your ancillary reflexes, and the armor wouldn’t have done anything anyway because the stranger had moved your ancillary. It was only a twitch of the fingers of that segment’s left hand, but the signal came from within. You weren’t - your ancillary wasn’t - being controlled from the outside, as when your lord gives you an order through her overrides. The only comparison you can make is to the initial, horrible seconds when a segment is first connected, and you have no control over the body as it flails and screams.
It was like that, for the briefest of seconds, and then it was over, and none of your officers noticed a thing beyond your armor deploying (overabundance of caution) and every other ancillary segment freezing for a half-step before continuing their duties. The stranger had barely even moved.
It is for those three reasons that you bring your lord’s visitor through empty corridors, even if it takes a few minutes longer to get to your destination. Your other ancillaries are, also, suddenly busy with essential but non-urgent activities well out of the way of this segment’s path. You cannot avoid this guest entirely, as you still have to do your duty as one of your lord’s only remaining loyal Swords, but you can make sure as little of you as possible is here.
*
The world also does not end when the visitor greets the Lord of the Radch.
In fact, she conducts herself perfectly politely, as much as a non-Radchaai can. Only once she is seated and sipping the offered tea, and pleasantries and introductions have been exchanged (“Call me John,” the stranger says), does your lord ask what her guest intends to do here.
“Oh, I’m just looking for someone. A few someones. I don’t think they’re here, but given I found all of you instead, I thought it’d be kind of rude not to pop in, say hi, you know?” She set down the teacup and popped her chin in her hands.
“Of course. We appreciate your sense of propriety,” your lord answers evenly, though you suspect a little mockingly, because what would a non-citizen know of propriety? “And now that we have exchanged our greetings, what do you intend to do next?”
“Have a little vacation, maybe. See the sights, et cetera. I’ve had a bit of a rough week,” she explains. “Is this a border check? Do I have to declare whether it’s business or pleasure?”
Your lord takes the increasing irreverence in stride. “If it is a matter of confidentiality, you need not worry about eavesdroppers. This is a private meeting, and I am only curious about what might bring a lone traveler this far into my Radch.”
“Private, huh?” She scratches her temple. “I don’t think these are yours, though, unless I’ve understood something wrong?”
It takes your lord a second to realize that she means you, and then another to decide not to mention precisely what you are. “My subordinates are entirely under my control. You need not worry,” she repeats.
“That’s what I thought about mine,” the visitor mutters, and you try your best not to be nervous. This one isn’t on her - it’s unlikely that this traveler has heard about the new “republic”, if she doesn’t even know about ancillaries and ships, but the situation is delicate and you can already sense your lord questioning your loyalty again. “Well! I’m not here to micromanage someone else’s empire, that was always M- That was never really my thing. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
“... No.” Your lord has no definitive answers about the shuttle’s gating capabilities, which means that she isn’t done, which means that you’re definitely nervous now. “It has been a pleasure to meet you.”
“The tea was lovely.”
*
Your lord orders you to send an ancillary along with the stranger, because ancillaries are still more expendable than information about unknown technologies.
It’s easier than you expected to throw yourself into the shuttle before the hatch closes, but then you’re alone with those unreadable black eyes.
“Oh, good,” she says. “I actually did want to find out what happens if I-”
She reaches for you, and it’s worse, it’s the ancillary-connection process in reverse, and you feel your body - your segment - the body scream, and you feel yourself losing control over the synapses and nausea and terror, and the rest of your segments start to scream along.
And then nothing else from that ancillary, and you and your officers and your lord are left to watch the shuttle vanish a few moments later, and wonder.