You hate us quite profoundly, she thought, addressing the Councilor in her mind with the sort of formality used for precocious crèche-students or new cadets, a calculated and enjoyable and invisible insult. Someday I will find out why.
(Mahit, saying Teixcalaan devours us. But Lsel seemed quite entirely itself and undevoured, even if everyone seemed to understand a bit of Teixcalaanli. And her escort spoke it viciously well, like the language was a knife she’d learned to handle carefully.)
Their arrival in the hangar to meet the Jasmine Throat’s transport shuttle was more abrupt than Three Seagrass expected, and thus she didn’t have the slightest bit of time to prepare: the giant hangar door clanked open, she spotted her baggage (just the one suitcase, she was traveling so light on this entire adventure!) waiting next to Mahit, flanked by her single bag on the left and Dekakel Onchu on the right—and Mahit went white, grey-white like she’d been bleached, as soon as she spotted Three Seagrass.
No. As soon as she spotted Aknel Amnardbat.
Whose hand was on Three Seagrass’s elbow, where it hadn’t been before. Who—was surprisingly strong, and clearly wasn’t expecting to see Mahit, either, and—
Blood and fucking starlight, Three Seagrass hated working without an adequate dossier on current local conditions. Mahit could have told her. Mahit had intimated that she was in political hot water, but she hadn’t bothered to explain what kind, and weren’t they supposed to be partners?
That was an interestingly wrong thought she’d just had, wasn’t it. An interestingly wrong belief, and she’d have to think about it, really she would; she and Mahit weren’t on the same side anymore, hadn’t been since Mahit had left the City. But now Three Seagrass was walking right up to her, with Amnardbat’s fingers pressing indentations into her upper arm, and all she could think was Don’t run, Mahit Dzmare. Stick with me and we’ll get on that shuttle and away. If you run I am comprehensively fucked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Revision of aptitude requirements for further study in non-Stationer languages and literatures: high scores on pattern recognition and memory capacity are no longer sufficient in and of themselves for progress beyond the intermediate levels offered to all Lsel citizens. For promotion to the advanced courses, students should also display high aptitudes in group cohesion and social integration with both peers and adults, and have already completed a preparatory (intermediate-plus) course in Stationer history and culture—preferably the same course recommended to prospective members of the Heritage Board.
Your tongue is a chrysanthemum
Because all your words are petals!
At the heart of language is a stem
That balances a thousand syllables.
Add a prefix to say MINE
Add a suffix to say WHY
Add an infix to say WHAT
And see how tongue becomes language!
MAHIT had let herself think she was going to get off-Station entirely clear if not entirely clean (never clean, getting away clean was an impossibility—Teixcalaan had taught her that, Teixcalaan and Yskandr, and now Darj Tarats was proving it to her again). She might manage to get on that shuttle Three Seagrass had called, and leap from an immediate danger into a merely probable one. She might not die under alien gunfire. Sometimes people didn’t.
And yet, here she was, inches from the just-landed Teixcalaanli shuttle, and staring down Aknel Amnardbat herself. Who had somehow, through ill luck or profound cleverness or both, captured Three Seagrass.
Mahit could hear her heartbeat in her ears like rushing water, too fast and too loud. She was going to faint, or she was going to break and run for the shuttle, one or the other, and Three Seagrass and Amnardbat were coming toward her like a slow and terrible wave, too large a problem to outpace. Even having Dekakel Onchu standing right next to her wouldn’t do her a bit of good—Onchu had made it perfectly clear that Mahit’s usefulness to her was over. It had ended the moment she’d decided to not immediately mention that she’d received Onchu’s secret notes to Yskandr when she’d returned to Lsel a month ago. Onchu would hand her over to Amnardbat if Amnardbat asked nicely—Pilots needed Heritage to keep approving new pilot imago-lines, since so many were being lost to the aliens out by the Anhamemat Gate. Onchu was here because she was supervising the exit of a Teixcalaanli ship from Lsel Station, and making sure it stayed gone. Not for Mahit. This little scene was all politics, and Mahit wasn’t a player here; she was a spent and useless resource to everyone but Darj Tarats, who only cared enough to let her go, not keep her safe, and to Three Seagrass—
—who was looking at her with clear and determined and furious eyes as Amnardbat steered her across the hangar bay. With icy clarity, Mahit thought, If I run, I think they may try to kill her for a spy. And icier stilclass="underline" She might be a spy, and I need to get her off my Station, and me with her.
<You’re a spy yourself, now,> Yskandr murmured, and she ignored him. She couldn’t think about what she’d promised Darj Tarats. Not now. Not until after this, if there was an after this which contained sufficient time to contemplate what a person promised in extremity. What a person promised when they were half letting their imago lead them into choices they would never have made before they were part of a chain of living memory.
“Councilor,” she found herself saying, surprised by the ease of her own voice, the smooth unshaking confidence she felt none of. Her own tonality, this time, not Yskandr. All her, and yet that perfect serenity. “What an unexpected surprise; it will save me leaving a message with your secretary. I’ve been unavoidably called away and will have to postpone my uploading appointment.”
Any minute now, Amnardbat was going to say, No, Mahit, come with me at once, and there would be Heritage security personnel emerging from the shadows like the Teixcalaanli Judiciary’s Mist agents, melting into visibility and taking her away. Any minute now, Amnardbat was going to say, See? Dzmare is compromised, she has allowed this Teixcalaanli agent into our Station, and possibly she wouldn’t even be wrong. Any minute now.