“Naturally, Ambassador,” said Three Seagrass. “Ixplanatl. Twelve Azalea. Twenty-Nine Infograph. As ever, your company is a pleasure.”
“As is yours, Three Seagrass,” said Twelve Azalea. “Enjoy the Ambassador.”
Three Seagrass did that one-shoulder shrug again, as if nothing anyone had said could affect an asekreta of the court in a fashion that mattered. Mahit liked her, abruptly, and was aware that the liking was more of a desperate grasp at an ally than anything else. She was so alone, without the imago talking to her. Surely he’d come back in a moment. Once the shock was over. Once the emotion-spike had faded. It was fine. She was fine. She wasn’t even dizzy anymore.
“Shall we, then?” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
urgently direct your attention! / novelty and importance characterize what comes next / IMMEDIATELY on Channel Eight!
Tonight, Seven Chrysoprase and Four Sycamore bring you a report from Odile-1 in the Odile System, where the Twenty-Sixth Legion under sub-yaotlek Three Sumac are preparing to break orbit now that the insurrection in Odile-1’s capital city has been quelled—in a moment we will have Four Sycamore, on site in the capital’s central square, with an interview with the newly reinstated planetary governor Nine Shuttle—trade through the Odile Gate is expected to return to normal levels within the next two weeks …
JUMPGATE APPROACH PROTOCOL LIST, PAGE TWO OF TWO
… reduce speed to 1/128th of craft’s maximum sublight, to enable evasive maneuvering if the jumpgate is simultaneously being accessed by non-Stationer ships from the far side.
17. Signal impending jump by local radio broadcast
18. Signal impending jump to crew and passengers
19. At 1/128th speed, approach area of greatest visual distortion …
THE ambassadorial suite was as full of Yskandr as Mahit felt empty of him: like she had been turned inside out, surrounded by the things of her imago rather than suffused with his memory. The suite had been aired out before Mahit arrived—or at least she hoped it had, and assumed it had by virtue of the open windows and the antiseptic scent of cleaning fluid that the air coming in through those windows and blowing their draperies back hadn’t managed to dispel—but it was nevertheless very much a place someone had lived in, and for a long time.
Yskandr-the-man had liked the color blue, and expensive-looking furniture in some dark sheeny metal. The industrial lines of the workdesk and low couch would’ve made anyone who grew up on a station or a ship, unplaneted, feel right at home, but the floor was covered in silky deep-piled rugs run through with patterns. Mahit thought—gleeful fleeting desire—of going barefoot at home for the sheer physical pleasure of it, and thought again about how imago-successors matched even on aesthetic preferences with their predecessors. Yskandr had liked being barefoot on woven fiber; apparently she did, too, despite having never before had the opportunity.
Beyond the suite’s inner door was a sleeping chamber. Yskandr had hung a metalwork mosaic of the Teixcalaanli star-chart for Stationer space on the ceiling over his bed like an advertisement. Sleep here and you’ll be sleeping with the resources of this entire sector!
It was such a beautiful piece of work that it almost didn’t seem gauche. Almost.
On the bedside table was a small pile of codex-books and plastic infofilm sheets, neatly squared. Mahit doubted Yskandr was the type to line up the edges of his bedtime reading material, as she certainly wasn’t. It would be easier if he were here to ask, and what was she supposed to do if he didn’t come back? If that horrible spike of emotion had burnt out the connections between her imago-machine and her brainstem, before she and Yskandr had ever had a chance to fully become one person? If they’d had longer, the machine wouldn’t matter—she’d be Yskandr, or Yskandr would be her, or they’d be a new, more complete thing called Mahit Dzmare which knew what Yskandr Aghavn had known, intimately, muscle memory and compiled skill and instinct and his voice and hers in a blend—how it should be, a new link in the imago-line. But now? What was she supposed to do? Write home for repair instructions? Go home, and leave all this work undone, including understanding why he’d died? At least she wasn’t going to have language problems without his help—she dreamed in Teixcalaanli half the time; had dreamed of the City often enough—but reaching for the place where she’d felt the weight of him since he’d been joined to her made her feel that dizzying, horrible falling sensation again. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the squared-off edges of the codexes until she was sure she wasn’t going to faint. Whoever had cleaned the rooms had arranged them, which implied that anything obviously incriminating had been removed.
She was already thinking about incriminating.
Of course she was thinking incriminating. Assume deception, she told herself. Assume foul play and double meanings. Choked on the air. Allergies, or breathing something too rarefied. Politics, always. This was the City. Every person here had a cloudhook whispering a story into their eyes. Intrigue and triple-crosses and she’d spent her childhood reading those same stories and telling them herself—oh pale imitation, talking in perfect meter to the blank dumb metal of station walls, and hadn’t that made her a popular and cheerful childhood companion—not that it mattered.
Think like a Teixcalaanlitzlim.
Incriminating information would have been removed or made innocuous.
Or Yskandr had hidden it, if he’d known what was about to happen to him, or suspected. If he was smart. (The imago was smart; but the imago was out of date. A man might change in fifteen years.)
Mahit wondered what she’d be like, if she lived that long in this place. Especially without the imago—more important than out of date, the imago was gone. Unless he came back (of course he’d come back, this was a minor flicker, an error, she’d wake up tomorrow and he’d be here) she was going to have to think about sabotage right along with incriminating. Something had gone wrong with her imago-machine—either sabotage or mechanical failure. Or personal failure to integrate. It could be her own fault. Her own psychology, rejecting his. She shuddered. Her hands still felt prickly and strange.
“Your luggage is processed and yours again,” said Three Seagrass, coming through the irised door of Yskandr’s bedroom. Mahit sat up very straight and tried to look like she was absolutely not having a possible neurological incident. “Not a single bit of contraband. You are a very dull barbarian so far.”
“Were you expecting excitement?” Mahit asked.
“You’re my very first barbarian,” Three Seagrass said. “I am expecting everything.”
“Surely you’ve met noncitizens before. This is the Jewel of the World.”