Aknel Amnardbat doesn’t make mistakes often. When she does, she admits them to herself and holds herself accountable.
What she’d done to Mahit Dzmare hadn’t been a mistake. Cutting the imago-line of Empire-besotted ambassadors out of the heart of Lsel was right; no one should have been heir to Yskandr Aghavn’s memories at all. Dzmare was acceptable collateral. She was a perfect match on aptitudes for him—she would have been another one just like him, even without his live memory to infect her. Getting them both off-Station had been the best possible idea.
Adjusting—weakening—the imago-machine Dzmare carried in her brainstem was almost as good. Either have the new Ambassador short out somewhere no one could help her—or free her of Yskandr Aghavn entirely, and see what she’d make of herself out there.
(Sabotage, one of the voices of her imago-line murmured, and she ignored it.)
Except Dzmare came back, imago apparently intact, and now Teixcalaan was closer than it had ever been, sucking up Lsel resources into the bellies of its warships as they passed through Bardzravand Sector on the way to their war.
Aknel Amnardbat doesn’t make mistakes that she refuses to acknowledge. She acknowledges this one: her mistake here was imagining that Aghavn and Dzmare were already so different from their fellow Stationers that Lsel would never be a place they’d want to come home to. She’d been wrong: the two of them weren’t so far gone as to want to get away and stay away.
It makes Dzmare more dangerous than she could ever have been off playing Ambassador. Returned, her whole imago-line is capable of spreading its empire-infected, already-colonized ideas to other imago-lines, and live Stationers carrying them. It makes them a vector, a more subtle one than an approaching warship, but just as true and just as poisonous to Lsel. It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts. And what would Lsel Station be, with its memory suborned to the seduction of Teixcalaanli culture? They’re losing enough lines already—mostly pilots, recently, vanished out by the Far Gate, to whatever enemy Teixcalaan is fighting (or, Amnardbat thinks, viciously and sharp, to Teixcalaan itself, under pretense). They can’t afford to lose more to corruption.
If Dzmare misses her appointment with the imago-machine technicians, Amnardbat thinks, she will have her arrested. Even Darj Tarats can’t argue with the legality of arresting someone for disobedience to a direct order from a Councilor. The law is embedded in all of Lsel’s codes, woven into the meat of what Stationer culture is. The Council can give emergency commands, which must be obeyed.
And once Dzmare is arrested, Amnardbat will have her imago-machine under her hands one more time. Once the Lsel Council were captains and commanders, and their words meant death, or life amongst the black between the stars.
Perhaps they should be again.
CHAPTER FIVE
The set of practices derogatorily referred to as the “homeostat-cult” originate in a single planetary system, comprising two inhabited planets (Neltoc and Pozon) and one inhabited satellite (Sepryi), collectively referred to as the Neltoc System. Neltoctlim refer to their heritage religious practice as “homeostatic meditation” or, colloquially, “balancing,” and consider it a cultural artifact (with attendant registration and protections—see entry 32915-A in the Information Ministry’s Approved Cultural Artifacts Registry). However, Neltoc System has been within Teixcalaan for eight generations, and Teixcalaanlitzlim whose planetary origins are located there are certainly not all adherents of the homeostatic meditation practice. An active practitioner can be identified by their green-ink tattoos, which take the form of fractals, mold-growth patterns, and lightning-strike figures, amongst other forms inspired by natural patternings …
PRIORITY MESSAGE—ALL PILOTS—Travel in the direction of the Far Gate is highly discouraged during the period of Teixcalaanli military activity and while the usual interdict on military transport is suspended. Avoid contact with Teixcalaanli vessels. Avoid allowing visual confirmation of numbers, size, and armaments of Lsel ships. This order stands unless specifically rescinded by the Councilor for the Pilots regarding a particular vessel, journey, or communication—assume caution is the better part of valor—authorized by the COUNCILOR FOR THE PILOTS (DEKAKEL ONCHU) … message repeats …
THE last time Nine Hibiscus had flown a Shard was several model generations back. Her cloudhook spent a truly absurd amount of time updating its programming before it would even let her hook in to the collective vision that the Shard pilots shared, and she was completely innocent of the new biofeedback system that let them react like one large organism. That technology had come over from the imperial police into the Fleet, Science Ministry to Ministry of War, around ten years ago. Minister Nine Propulsion—former Minister Nine Propulsion, Nine Hibiscus reminded herself—had been a great proponent of it. She’d seen what it did for the Sunlit down in the Jewel of the World—an instant reactivity, hypercommunication, she’d said once to Nine Hibiscus and some other officers over a long night of drinks—and had it reworked for the Shards. Gotten the Science Ministry to do it—Minister Ten Pearl, of the epithet “he who writes patterns into the world,” the algorithm master himself, had adjusted the code on Nine Propulsion’s behalf. Now the new system was hardwired into how the Shard interfaces interacted with the pilots’ cloudhooks, and into a set of external electrodes and magnetic sensors that were woven into their vacuum suits, providing an artificial sense of collective proprioception as well as vision. Proprioception, vision, and (the rumors went) shared pain and shared instinctive reflexes about danger. Casualty rates had dropped nine percent since the new system came online, and that made the Fifth Palm—armaments and research—very happy. But even if Nine Hibiscus had been inside a Shard and wearing a Shard vacuum suit, she wouldn’t have known what to do with the new proprioception aside from inconveniently vomit, which was apparently the most common training side effect—so it was likely for the best that she’d stick to Shard-sight, which her cloudhook could provide for her by itself, no Shard required. She sat in her captain’s chair on the bridge of Weight for the Wheel, tipped 90 percent horizontal, cloudhook arrayed over both eyes. There was no way she was going to let Sixteen Moonrise attack Peloa-2 without keeping her under extremely direct observation.
Her people could call her out of Shard-sight with a touch, and she’d be back in command. But for now, since her flagship was doing nothing but sitting here receiving recognizance, she’d left Twenty Cicada in official control while her perceptions were elsewhere.
She rode along, an invisible presence, down with the Shard pilots seconded to the small-fighter support craft Dreaming Citadel, following Sixteen Moonrise’s Porcelain Fragment Scorched into the silence that had eaten up Peloa-2. Absently, she wondered if the comms breakdown would affect Shard-sight, and figured with some anticipation that it would be a useful thing to find out.