The whole afternoon was—work. Work Mahit was good at, work she had been trained to do, even if the forms of it were obscure and Teixcalaanli and required Three Seagrass’s decryption skills. At sunset Three Seagrass ordered them both small bowls of a spiced meat in dumpling wrappers, covered in a creamy semi-fermented sauce laced with red oil, assuring Mahit that it was extremely unlikely that she would be allergic to anything in the meal.
“It’s ixhui,” she explained. “We feed it to babies!”
“If I die, no one will answer the mail for three more months, and then where will you be,” Mahit said, stabbing a dumpling with the two-pronged fork the meal had come with. It burst when she bit into it, tangy and warm. The red oil was finely spiced, just hot enough to linger on her tongue and make her wonder about neurotoxic effects before it faded to pleasantness. She was abruptly starving. She hadn’t eaten since the cruiser.
It was somewhat gratifying to see Three Seagrass devour her own bowl of ixhui with a similar level of enthusiasm. Mahit waved the fork at her. “This is too good for babies,” she said.
Three Seagrass widened her eyes in a Teixcalaanli version of a grin. “Work food. Anything that’s too delicious to eat slow.”
“And then you get back to the job faster?”
“You’re getting the idea.”
Mahit tilted her head to the side. “You’re the sort of person who works all the time, aren’t you.”
“It’s in the job description, Ambassador.”
“Call me Mahit, please,” Mahit said, “and surely there are cultural liaisons less helpful.”
Three Seagrass nearly looked pleased. “Oh, lots. But cultural liaison’s my assignment. Asekreta’s the job.”
Intelligence, protocol, secrets—and oratory. If all the literature about the City Mahit had ever read hadn’t lied to her. “And that job is?”
“Politics,” said Three Seagrass.
A close enough correspondence to the literature. “Why don’t you tell me about these military transport visas, then?” Mahit started, just as the door to the suite chimed in a chord that made Mahit wince but seemed not to strike Three Seagrass as lacking any euphony.
Three Seagrass went to the door and punched in a code on the wall-keypad next to it. Mahit watched her fingers and tried to internalize as much of the sequence as possible. Surely she would be able to operate the door codes to her own suite. (Unless she was more of a prisoner than she thought. How narrow were the City’s definitions of real people who could move through it? She wished she could ask Yskandr.) The wall-keypad, satisfied, projected an image of the face of the person waiting outside, his name and string of titles floating above his head in blocky gold-limned glyphs. Young, broad-cheeked, bronze skin, a thick dark hairline over the short forehead all the imperial art seemed to prefer. Mahit recognized him from the mortuary viewing hall. Twelve Azalea, Indistinguishable Courtier Number Three, except for how looking at him gave Mahit the impression of being in the presence of some other culture’s impeccably observed standard of masculine beauty. She felt a little peculiar about her lack of response. He was like an art object. Twelve Azalea, patrician first-class, Three Seagrass had said, which meant she knew him by name at least, and possibly by something closer to reputation.
“I haven’t any idea what he wants,” Three Seagrass said, which did suggest that reputation was somewhat of a factor.
Mahit said, “Let him in.”
Three Seagrass pressed her thumb to the wall-keypad firmly (what if it was fingerprint-locked? But surely the Teixcalaanli wouldn’t use technology that primitive) and the door admitted Twelve Azalea in a sweep of orange sleeves and cream lapels. Mahit braced herself for the full sequence of greeting protocols without any help from Yskandr (she was supposed to not have to worry about these things), but had only begun to introduce herself when Twelve Azalea said, “I came to your suite, we really don’t have to bother,” brushed past Three Seagrass, leaving an affectionate kiss on her temple and a look of profound annoyance on her face, and sat down on the divan.
“Ambassador Dzmare,” he said, “welcome to the Jewel of the World. A pleasure.”
Three Seagrass settled next to him, wide-eyed, the corners of her mouth visibly tilted up. “I thought we weren’t doing formalities, Petal,” she said.
“Lacking formalities hasn’t robbed me of being polite, Reed,” Twelve Azalea said, and then turned a large, un-Teixcalaanli smile on Mahit. It made him appear slightly unhinged. “I hope she hasn’t been too rude to you, Ambassador.”
“Petal, must you,” Three Seagrass said.
They had pet names for one another. It was … cute, and simultaneously hilarious and embarrassing. “Not rude at all,” Mahit said, earning her a theatrically grateful look from Three Seagrass. “Welcome to the diplomatic territory of Lsel Station. How might I help you, other than letting you renew your acquaintance with my liaison?”
Twelve Azalea took on an expression of concern, which Mahit suspected was a thin veil over a more unsavory—and more honest—excited interest. It was inconvenient in the utmost that every single Teixcalaanlitzlim was going to assume she was as astute as an airlock door, recognizing only the surface images of people: uniforms, and expressions of concern. She wondered how long it would take before anyone at all would take her seriously.
“I have some worrisome information,” said Twelve Azalea, “concerning the corpse of your predecessor.”
Well. Perhaps seriously began now. (And perhaps she’d been right to immediately assume Yskandr could not have died by accident; it wasn’t like him. And it wasn’t like the City, to be so straightforward.)
“Is there a problem with his body?”
“Possibly?” said Twelve Azalea, gesturing as if to suggest that there was certainly a problem and it was a matter of determining its exact nature.
“As if you’d get involved in my business for just possibly, Petal,” Three Seagrass said.
“I would suggest that the body of my predecessor is my business,” Mahit said.
“We covered this, Mahit,” Three Seagrass said briskly. “Legal equivalency—”
“But not moral or ethical equivalency,” said Mahit, “especially involving a Lsel citizen, as my predecessor certainly was. What is the problem?”
“After ixplanatl Four Lever left the operating theater I stayed a little while with the corpse, and availed myself of the theater’s imaging equipment,” Twelve Azalea said. “My current assignment within the Information Ministry—I have been working with noncitizens on their medical and accessibility needs while they are visiting us here—has made me quite curious about the physiologies of noncitizens—some are quite different from human people! Not that I’m implying Lsel Station isn’t human, Ambassador, nothing of the kind. But I am insatiably curious, you can ask Reed, she’s known me since we were cadet asekretim together.”
“Insatiably curious and often in large amounts of trouble, especially if it involves interesting forensics or peculiar medical practices,” Three Seagrass said. Mahit could see the lines of tension in her jaw, the sharpening angle of her mouth. “Get to the point. Did Two Rosewood send you to check up on me?”
“As if I’d run errands, Reed, even for the Minister for Information. The point is that I stayed behind and examined the corpse of the Ambassador’s predecessor. And that corpse is not entirely organic.”