After the scorched, eviscerated planetary corpse of Peloa-2, she’d been convinced that these aliens were nihilistic, resource-destroying, and covetous of territory more than power or colonization. But attrition—picking at the edges of the Fleet, at the few ships which Sixteen Moonrise had sent out to do reconnoitering—that was something else. That was something smart. Letting the vast tide of Teixcalaan find no purchase, no solid targets.
Only funerals; six so far today, two Shard pilots and the four-person crew of one of Forty Oxide’s scout-gunners. She watched the replay of the death of that ship on holo. The aliens hadn’t bothered with their ship-dissolving spit. They’d simply appeared, with the peculiar vision distortion that accompanied the end of their cloaking system, and tore the ship to pieces with energy weapon fire. The pilot and his crew hadn’t even had time to react before they were burnt and shattered. Which, of course, meant that those three-ringed prowling alien ships could be anywhere.
There were too many deaths. Every time she dipped into Shard-sight she saw another one, another Teixcalaanlitzlim gone dark, felt an echo of the collective flinch, the sharpness of grief, the deeper burn of fury—that we could so easily be lost, how dare these enemies act with such impunity—
All that, and a scrim-afterimage of each death. She wondered how much worse it would be for the Shard pilots who had proprioception as well as visual linkage. Much worse. Almost certainly.
She was going to have to move with overwhelming force, and soon, and still blind—overwhelm them—wherever they were—
Twenty Cicada tapped her on the shoulder, and she startled. Spun on him, had her hand up to shove him in the throat and away, as if they were in a sparring ring. She hadn’t reacted like that in years. He backed off, his hands up.
“Mallow,” he said, so soft—her cadet nickname, when she’d been softer. No one else would remember it now, let alone use it to such effect. Shame was a slow surge; so was the distant fear that she was not in control of herself, or of this Fleet.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
He shook himself, an infinitesimal shuddering resettlement of shoulders. Straightened the collar of his uniform back to regulation-perfect. Smiled at her, a flicker of widened eyes, curving mouth. “You were listening to the funerals,” he said, which was a way of forgiving her. “I would have been startled too.”
“They do keep going,” said Nine Hibiscus. “I should turn it off, or at least down, and actually get some work done.”
“Our casualty rates are too high,” Twenty Cicada agreed. “We can’t wait much longer; losing our most adventurous and fastest ships is rotting morale, yaotlek. We need to—do something.”
“You sound like Sixteen Moonrise.”
Twenty Cicada winced. “I wish I didn’t. But what we are up against is an obscenity, and our people know it. They need to stop having to see it, be hurt by it, and not strike back.”
“We still don’t know what’s out there,” Nine Hibiscus said, hating the bitterness in her own voice. “I can commit the Fleet to all-out attack, but if we go into a slaughtering field, without supplies and reinforcements—”
“They’d go for you. Everyone on this ship.”
“I know,” Nine Hibiscus said. That was the problem.
Twenty Cicada nodded, a short acknowledgment, but didn’t stop talking. “Trust is not an endlessly renewable resource. Loyalty might be. For longer. Especially when we are up against something that doesn’t even bother to use what it takes—”
“I think they do. I think we just don’t understand how yet.”
“I don’t want to understand how what they did to Peloa-2 is useful,” said Twenty Cicada, as softly as when he’d said her old nickname. “I think understanding would stain me indelibly.”
How could she even answer that? She shrugged, her hands open. “I won’t wait much longer. I promise.”
Just until the envoy came. She was supposed to be arriving on the Jasmine Throat, scheduled for two shifts from now. That was only, oh, four more funerals away.
The inside of the Jasmine Throat was shocking, like being thrown into thick humidity after a long time in clear processed air. Not that there was any discernible difference to Mahit in the actual atmosphere: the Jasmine Throat was a spacecraft, and it was precisely climate-controlled and oxygen-regulated like every other spacecraft, including Lsel Station itself. The difference was that it was Teixcalaanli.
The walls were metal and plastisteel, yes—but covered in inlays of gold and green and rich pinks, all the formality and structure of a military supply ship layered over with Teixcalaanli symbolism. Green things, growing things, bright stars. Flowers. Fuck, how could she have forgotten flowers everywhere, white jasmine patterns painted on the ceiling of the hangar bay, the Teixcalaanlitzlim dressed in grey and gold Fleet uniforms, cloudhooks over every eye. No wonder she felt like she was breathing heavy air.
“Welcome back,” Three Seagrass said, still a step behind her and to the left as they exited the shuttle and made their way through the hangar toward the passenger deck, that achingly familiar positioning. “Or—welcome to the war?”
She hadn’t said much to Mahit the entire time they’d been in transit to the Jasmine Throat. Just looked at her, and murmured, “That was interesting,” and shut up, a silent flame-orange presence, Teixcalaanli blank. They’d both thought the encounter with Amnardbat was going to have ended differently, Mahit suspected. And neither of them was sure why it hadn’t. It made for uncomfortable company. Neither of them knew how to talk about a disaster that hadn’t been a disaster, not without explaining to each other why it might have been disastrous. And explaining felt too dangerous to Mahit. Probably to Three Seagrass, as well.
Now, having arrived on the Jasmine Throat proper, with two-jumpgates-and-the-sublight-crawl-between-them’s worth of travel time before they came to the Fleet—call it seven hours subjective time—Mahit realized that she and Three Seagrass were going to have to start all over again. Back to the beginning. Back to let’s assume that I’m not going to try to sabotage you and let’s assume I’m not an idiot.
It seemed a long distance to fall back. Especially since she was (possibly—nothing, nothing was decided, she kept telling herself that, or telling Yskandr that, to stave off the stabs of neuropathic pain radiating through her palms) the saboteur this time. And Three Seagrass had never been an idiot.
When they weren’t thinking about Darj Tarats, Yskandr was a quiet, humming, pleased presence in the back of her mind: he’d never been on a Teixcalaanli military ship, neither supply-line reinforcement nor attack vessel, and Mahit leaned into his intent and curious observation with some relief. She needed that. She needed anything that would remind her that this experience was new, and not quite a return. Not in any sense a coming-home.
“We’re not at the war yet,” she told Three Seagrass. “We have half a day before the war happens to us. We should get ready for it.”