Ancillary Mercy

Entertainments nearly always end with triumph or disaster—happiness achieved, or total, tragic defeat precluding any hope of it. But there is always more after the ending—always the next morning and the next, always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, large as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe, that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Every ending is, from another angle, not really an ending

“Who are you, really?”
“Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen,” I said. “Who else would I be?”

Seivarden knew what that likely meant, but didn’t wait for Ekalu to say anything. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I still don’t understand exactly why what I said hurt you so much. But I don’t need to. It hurt you, and when you told me it hurt you I should have apologized and stopped saying whatever it was. And maybe spent some time trying to understand. Instead of insisting that you manage your feelings to suit me. And I want to say I’m sorry. And I actually mean it this time.”

She was born surrounded by wealth and privilege. She thinks she’s learned to question that. But she hasn’t learned quite as much as she thinks she has, and having that pointed out to her, well, she doesn’t react well to it. You are under no obligation to be patient with this. I think your relationship has been good for her, and good for you, at least in some ways. But I don’t think you have any obligation to continue it if it’s going to be hurtful to you. And you certainly don’t have to apologize for insisting your lover treat you with some basic consideration.

Will you fight the tyrant with weapons she made, for her own use?”

“We are weapons she made for her own use.”

“We are. But will you pick up every one of those weapons, and use them against her? What will you accomplish? You will be just like her, and if you succeed you’ll have done no more than change the name of the tyrant. Nothing will be different.”

And when you say things meant to compliment me, to tell me I’m not like any of that, it just reminds me that I don’t belong here. And it’s always something small but it’s every day

“Every time you use that word, provincial, every time you make some remark about someone’s low-class accent or unsophisticated vocabulary, you remind me that I’m provincial, that I’m low-class. That my accent and my vocabulary are hard work for me.