Three Seagrass had become very still, poised and frozen at once. Mahit wondered if they needed to run. She wasn’t sure she could.
“She came with the barbarian, and when the barbarian arrived,” said Five Portico, and no one bothered to correct her on the use of the word, “they had an interesting problem and were willing to pay for it to be solved. Two Lemon, you know very well that I deal with who I want to deal with.”
“You could have warned us before we came to your house,” said one of Two Lemon’s companions, the one who was so interested in foreigners, “to have an emergency planning meeting for actions tomorrow—”
Two Lemon affixed him with a flat stare. “Not in front of the spy.”
“I am not a spy,” said Three Seagrass, faintly indignant, “and I do not care what you are planning, or who you are. My assignment in the Ministry has nothing to do with any of you.”
“Oh, but you are a spy, asekreta,” Five Portico said, “though I think you might get better, with proper treatment.”
“Is that a threat?”
Mahit put her hand on Three Seagrass’s arm. “The asekreta is here with me,” she said, “and I claim her for Lsel Station. She is my responsibility.”
<That is amazingly illegal,> Yskandr said admiringly.
Yes, and they don’t know that.
Two Lemon peered at Mahit down the slope of her nose. “You’re the Lsel Ambassador, aren’t you.”
“I am.”
“The newsfeeds from the Judiciary do not like you,” Two Lemon said, with very grudging admiration.
“I wouldn’t know,” Mahit told her, “I was unconscious most of the day. Ask Five Portico.” Under her hand, Three Seagrass trembled faintly, all adrenaline.
Five Portico snickered, and shrugged when Two Lemon looked at her. “The Ambassador isn’t wrong.”
“Is she going to die if she isn’t under medical supervision?” Two Lemon asked.
Mahit thought this was a very good question, and that she’d like to know the answer herself, and had to clamp down on the urge to giggle inappropriately.
“Eventually,” said Five Portico. “But not because of anything I did.”
<How reassuring your mechanic is,> Yskandr noted.
“I want her out of here, Five Portico, and her Information Ministry with her,” Two Lemon went on. A brief, pleased murmur emerged from her companions, and was shut down with a glance. “We have actual work to do.”
So do I, thought Mahit. Though I wish … I wish I knew more about the work being done here. And whether these are the same people who set bombs in restaurants and in theaters, or if they have other methods—are these the people for whom the City is not the City?
<Teixcalaan is more than the palace and the poetry,> Yskandr murmured, <even I realized that by the end. If we get through this … >
If we get through this, I will remember Two Lemon, though I suspect that’s the last thing she wants from me.
“We’ll leave,” Mahit said, cutting off further speculation. “I do wish you luck. With whatever actions you are planning.” She got to her feet, and didn’t even stagger. She might make it back to the train station before she fell over, if someone would actually give her water, instead of standing there with the glass like Twelve Azalea was doing, helpless in the middle of the group of … whatever they were. Resistance leaders. (Resistance to what? To the Empire, to Six Direction specifically? Were they the people who put up the posters in the subway stations in support of the Odile System’s breakaway attempt, or were they concerned with some policy choice that Mahit had no idea about and never would? To the presence of One Lightning, or any yaotlek, on the City’s soil?)
“I’d go fast,” said Five Portico, “One Lightning has legions in the streets already.”
Three Seagrass cursed, a sharp single word that Mahit had never heard her use before. Then she said, “All right, thank you. Come on,” and stood to leave, taking Mahit’s elbow as she did.
“Give me five minutes with my client,” Five Portico said pointedly. “I try to make sure of my work, and last I saw her she was quite thoroughly unconscious.”
Mahit nodded. “In private,” she said. “Five minutes in private.” Gently she detached Three Seagrass from her arm, and walked—trying not to stagger or shake or reveal anything of how sick her headache was making her feel—back into the room where she’d woken up.
Five Portico followed her, and shut the door behind them. “That bad, mm?” she asked. “You don’t want your friends to know?”
“It could be worse,” said Mahit. “I seem to have most of my neurological function intact. I want to know what you found. On the old machine. Was it damaged?”
“A few of the nanocircuits were blown out,” Five Portico said. “On first glance. They looked weak to begin with. It’s a very fragile thing—just touching the circuits could have introduced a short. I’d have to take it apart to know more. A process I am very much looking forward to.”
“That’s interesting,” Mahit managed. It was … something. Maybe sabotage. Or maybe just mechanical failure.
“Very. Now let me look at you.”
Mahit stood still, and let Five Portico peer thoughtfully at the surgical site; followed her directions through a basic neurological examination, no different from the ones she’d had on Lsel. It took less than five minutes. Closer to three.
“I’d tell you to rest, but there’s no point,” Five Portico said when she was finished. “Go get out of my house. Thank you for the fascinating experience.”
“Not every day you operate on barbarians?”
“Not every day a barbarian leaves me with barbarian technology.”
<You are playing such games, Mahit,> Yskandr said in the back of her mind, and she could not tell if he was angry or impressed at what she’d done, in giving away what he’d used to buy an emperor’s favor.
A short while later the three of them were huddled in the shadow of Five Portico’s building, exiled from even that limited safety. Mahit leaned on Three Seagrass, and wished she’d gotten to actually drink the water before they’d left. Her throat ached with dryness. Belltown Six in the small hours between midnight and dawn was simultaneously silent and raucous: the distant sounds of shrieky laughter, breaking glass—a shout, quickly muffled—drifted over the buildings, but the street they stood on was entirely empty, and lit only by the faint neon tracery of the building numbers, written in a glyph font that even Mahit found old-fashioned. New fifty years ago, and not vintage yet.
“When, Petal,” Three Seagrass asked, her voice a narrow, tight murmur, “were you going to tell us that your unlicensed ixplanatl was involved with anti-imperial activists?”
Twelve Azalea had no expression on his face; an insistent, deliberate blankness. A hurt. “She’s an unlicensed ixplanatl in Belltown Six. I don’t know why you thought she wouldn’t be. You’re Information Ministry, Reed, act like it.”
“I am acting like it,” Three Seagrass spat. “I’m questioning the connections of and influences on my own dear friend, is what I’m doing—”