He probably should have been scared.
Not being scared was fun.
He bowed, fingertips pressed together, pushing the shockstick into his chest. Then he said, “I am the imperial-associate Eight Antidote, sir, and I would like to see the progress of our war.”
The shockstick went away so fast it might as well have never been there. “Please forgive my impertinence,” said the soldier, and Eight Antidote waved one hand, dismissive. Magnanimous, he thought. Be magnanimous.
“It’s nothing. I appreciate your efforts to keep the Ministry secure.” And then he smiled, wide-eyed, and remembered how he had made himself look like Six Direction when he’d been talking to Nineteen Adze. Tried it again. Remember me? I’m the Emperor, just in kid shape. Just wait, and I might be the Emperor again.
It worked. “This way, Your Excellency,” the soldier said, having received some sort of confirmation on his cloudhook—Eight Antidote had seen the rapid flicker of messages behind the glass. “You are in luck—the Minister Three Azimuth, she who kindles enmity in the most oath-sworn heart—she herself is at the strategy table right now.”
Which was a little more significant of a success than he’d particularly planned. He’d thought he’d just—see the strategy room, hang around, maybe meet some generals, another Undersecretary—if Eleven Laurel was there, that wouldn’t be bad, he’d be showing initiative and creativity—but the Minister of War herself? That was—a lot. He’d met her, but only once, right when she’d arrived two months ago. She hadn’t paid him any attention then, not after the obligatory good-morning-your-Excellencies, just gone in to speak with Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze. She had a poetic epithet that made her sound dangerous and frightening, but that was what poetic epithets were supposed to do.
The soldier took him into the center point of the Ministry’s star. He knew that the strategy rooms were there—Eleven Laurel had explained that a long time back—all of them except for the one for the Emperor, which was in Palace-Earth instead. Everyone stared at him as he passed, trying to look confident in the soldier’s wake, and wishing so much that he was taller already. He wasn’t going to be taller until he was thirteen at least. Holographs of Six Direction only started looking like a man in his midteens. Sometimes Eight Antidote wished his genetics came from someone who was more physically impressive. At least he was going to be able to put on muscle easily and stay as agile as he was now—
The door to Central Strategy Two irised open for him at his escort’s gesture, and beyond was twilight laced so thickly with stars that for a moment he thought the air had turned into a net. Then he blinked and saw the cartograph table—huge, wider than he imagined they could be, set into the floor instead of raised above it—was projecting four entire sectors of space at once, and that the Ministry analysts and generals had dimmed the lights to see the vector trajectories better. Minister of War Three Azimuth was at the far side of it, her hands moving in sweeping gestures, lightening some stars and darkening others. She made a fist, twisted her hand, and shook out a tiny fleet of gunnery ships from her fingertips, holoimages that she flicked out into the starscape and adjusted with minute nudges. It looked like dancing, like she was dancing the battlefield into existence.
I want to do that, Eight Antidote thought. I want to do that more than almost anything I can think of.
Three Azimuth was small and paler than most Teixcalaanlitzlim, with short sleek hair as dark and thick and straight as Eight Antidote’s own, and narrow almond-shaped eyes. She’d taken off her jacket and was arranging the battlefield bare-armed. She had the kind of muscles that came from lifting herself and heavier things, and putting them down again: ropy and defined. Somehow Eight Antidote always thought of her as being taller. Before Nineteen Adze had become Emperor, Three Azimuth had been the military governor of Nakhar System, and Nakhar hadn’t rebelled while she was in control of it, and Nakhar rebelled every indiction or so usually, according to his political history lessons. He still didn’t know why she’d been the one to become Minister of War, or why Nine Propulsion had retired early, but he was pretty sure that Nineteen Adze had made a really good choice.
It took her a while to notice him. She had more ships to place first, and a whole set of supply-line vectors to adjust, her fingers plucking at the lines of light like they were the strings of some instrument. When she was satisfied, she said, “Barring our scouts locating their supply-line bases, this is where we are,” and brought her hands together in a clap. The whole enormous projection began slowly to move, running its simulation.
“His Excellency the imperial heir Eight Antidote is here, Minister,” said Eight Antidote’s soldier. “He would like to see the war, he says.”
“Well, bring the kid over, then,” said Three Azimuth. “He can’t see a bloody thing from that side of the room.”
Eight Antidote went. He tried to skirt around the edges of the projection, but he still walked through star systems, blanking them out for brief moments in his wake, as if he was the aliens who were destroying Teixcalaanli communications. They were in the simulation too—a spreading blackness, like ink. There were a lot of eyes on him: all the advisors and commanders and analysts here to see Three Azimuth simulate the war were watching him traverse a starscape instead. He tried to walk as cheerfully as he had when he’d waved to the camera-eye. The camera-eyes were so much easier than so many pairs of real ones attached to people. (At least none of them were Eleven Laurel. He didn’t know where Eleven Laurel was. Shouldn’t the Third Undersecretary be here too?)
When he got to Three Azimuth’s side—she was only a few inches taller than him, which made him feel very strange, he was a kid and she was the Minister of War—he said, “Thank you for allowing me to see the strategy simulation, Minister,” in the second-highest form of politeness he knew. (Highest was for talking to the Emperor Herself, formally and in public, and he only knew that one because he’d grown up hearing it. It didn’t get used much.)
“I expected you’d find your way in here eventually,” said the Minister. “You’ve been in the Palms enough, and kids your age get curious. I know I was. Watch.”
Eight Antidote nodded, quickly, and turned to look at the simulation. Three Azimuth made a tiny gesture with one finger, and everything which had been paused began to move again, the alien darkness encroaching, the pinpoint-holograms of Teixcalaanli ships arcing through the air. Three Azimuth knew about his visits—of course she did. Did she know what Eleven Laurel had been teaching him? Did she think he was doing a good job?
Abruptly the scope of the strategy projection felt like a test, the biggest one Eight Antidote had ever taken. He watched closely. He hadn’t seen the positioning of their fleet before, not in this detail—a single six of legions, with Nine Hibiscus’s Tenth Legion in the lead, arrayed like a wave about to crest over the blank-dark systems the aliens had touched already. They held position for a long time—shifted, some ships from the Twenty-Fourth Legion coming forward, sending tendrils of light into one of those darkened spaces until it relit in dull grey, Peloa System back inside the world but—damaged? He checked the datestamp on the projection where it floated at the corner of his vision. This was all what had already happened. There was a brief stutter-pause—Three Azimuth opened one of her hands like a flower blooming—and suddenly all that black nothing was replaced by a force of spinning three-wheeled ships that Eight Antidote had never seen before.