Who is the Tyrant?

"Oh, that's Orsian for the Lord of the Radch. They don't like her."

"And when she gets bored, what are they expecting to happen?"

"I assume they expect the Radch to begin annexations again."

"Ah." Sigh. "How long ago was the last one?"

"Fifteen years."

"Uh-huh."

"So we can move out and stay moved out till she decides she wants magic real bad after all or just wants another planet which she does all the time anyway?"

"And pay a boatload for the privilege, yep."

"The announced policy of the Radch is that the annexations are over."

"Is there a principled reason for that to be the case? Was that ever announced before?"

"That has never been announced before. The reason given was that it is time to focus on internal growth."

"Hm."

"It wasn't politically popular."

"No? Everybody wants to annex more planets?"

"Annexations create new government and military roles, new land available, new opportunities to distinguish yourself."

"Uh-huh."

"I want to go home."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a teleporter, it doesn't matter how pretty you get me, we just have to figure out how to live with this."

"It might be that the principles underlying magic can be understood somehow and that we can engineer a way to send you home," offers the tablet, but not with a lot of confidence.

"People've worked on it at home. I guess somebody here might get farther but I'm the only available test subject, so."

"I'm sorry."

She pats the tablet's edge. "Thank you."

"I want you to not be scared."

"That's very sweet of you."