“It’s sent,” Three Seagrass said. “Under my byline, on every open feed I can find, and a few of the closed ones—the poetry circles, one of the Information Ministry internal memo feeds—”
“Is that a good idea?” Mahit asked. “Thirty Larkspur’s people are reading that one, I’m almost sure.”
“Thirty Larkspur’s people will be monitoring our cloudhooks for any messages, if they’re even the slightest bit good at their jobs,” Three Seagrass said. “I would have confiscated them first thing.”
“How useful that you’re on our side and not theirs, then,” Mahit told her, and found herself smiling despite everything.
“How long do you think we have?” Twelve Azalea asked.
“Before the legions storm the palace or before we no longer have a broadcast platform?” Three Seagrass inquired, all too cheerfully. “Stop watching the news, Petal, and come see how this poem spreads while I’ve still got access.”
She unhooked her cloudhook from its customary position over her right eye and put it on the conference table in front of them, changing its settings so that it acted as a very small infoscreen projector. Mahit watched the poem they’d written spread through the information network of Teixcalaan—shared from cloudhook to cloudhook, reposted and recontextualized, like watching ink spreading in water.
“How much longer?” she asked softly.
“I’d guess three minutes—this is moving quickly—” Three Seagrass said, and then the door of the conference room flew open with a bang. Six Helicopter stood there, and behind him were two more people—but his companions were dressed in Information Ministry cream and orange. Three Seagrass bowed over her fingertips at them.
“How lovely to see you, Three Lamplight, Eight Penknife,” she said. “How is your afternoon of being suborned by a non-ministry politician going?”
Helplessly, Mahit broke into laughter, even as Three Lamplight and Eight Penknife wordlessly took both Twelve Azalea’s and Three Seagrass’s cloudhooks and handed them to Six Helicopter.
“You realize,” he was saying, “that what you just did—sending unauthorized political poetry on the public feeds—might be construed as treasonous? Particularly considering where you were picked up and how Belltown Six is full of anti-imperial protestors this morning, not to mention the rest of the mess in the City?”
“Take it up with the Judiciary,” said Twelve Azalea. Mahit was proud of him. They were all going to die, or … something and yet—they were a we. By whatever language’s definition.
“I have written political poetry appropriate to the current moment of my experience,” said Three Seagrass. “If that’s treason, take it up with our two thousand years of canon. I’m sure you’ll find more treason there.”
Six Helicopter tried not to sputter; failed. With his hands full of cloudhooks, he couldn’t gesture properly, but Mahit could see in the tension of his shoulders and his jaw how much he wanted to wave his hands, or shake Three Seagrass, who sat serene, with her chin cupped in her palms, elbows on the table.
“I am arresting you,” he said finally. “I am … directing these Information Ministry officials to detain you, as acting representative of acting Minister Thirty Larkspur.”
“Bloody stars,” Twelve Azalea said, ignoring Six Helicopter in favor of Three Lamplight, who had visibly winced. “Are you two really going to do that?”
“If you attempt to leave you’ll be stopped,” Three Lamplight said. “That much I guarantee.”
Eight Penknife added, “And your privileges as asekretim are revoked until they might be reviewed by whoever becomes Minister next—”
“I’m terribly disappointed in you, Eight Penknife,” said Three Seagrass with an exquisite little sigh. “You were always such a partisan of Two Rosewood’s policies—”
“Enough,” Six Helicopter snapped. “We have work to do. You do not. Asekretim. Ambassador.” He turned smartly on his heel and left, his Information Ministry loyalists following at his heels. They were alone in the conference room again, with nothing to do, nothing to see—blinded without the cloudhooks and their newsfeeds, confined in windowless fluorescent lighting. Even the carafe of coffee was empty.
Mahit looked at Three Seagrass, and at Twelve Azalea, one on either side of her. “And now,” she said, with far more confidence than she felt, “we wait.”
The waiting was not pleasant. Mahit had the sense of being inside a sealed capsule, protected from radiation and decay, but tumbling over and over in free space—with no guarantee that there would be an outside world to come back to once the capsule was cracked open. There was nothing to see in the Information Ministry’s conference room; no noise from outside, no shouting of soldiers or marching of booted legionary feet. No flooded City streets glittering with the helmets of the Sunlit or a carpet of purple flowers …
Three Seagrass had put her head down on the folded platform of her forearms on the table. Mahit didn’t know if she was napping, or just trying to not think. Either way, she envied her. Not thinking was the province of other people. Not thinking was impossible, and she rather wanted to claw her own skin off. She kept imagining all of the reasons that Nineteen Adze, ezuazuacat or not, wouldn’t challenge Thirty Larkspur for the sake of one Lsel ambassador. The worst of those possibilities was that she and Thirty Larkspur were already allies and she’d merely go along with his decisions about the Information Ministry. The second worst would be if Nineteen Adze had weighed the balance of power, seen that challenging Thirty Larkspur had no chance of success, and opted to stay quiet and ride out the coup, no matter who won …
She probably wouldn’t do that second thing. It didn’t seem like her. That certainty bubbled up in Mahit like a warm tide: not entirely hers, but a composite of Yskandr’s memories and her own, making an evaluation.
“I feel like someone’s cut off my hands,” Twelve Azalea said, into the dull silence. “I keep reaching for the newsfeeds and they’re not there, there’s only me, not the whole Empire ready at a touch.”
<It is lonely, being Teixcalaanlitzlim and without all of Teixcalaan,> Yskandr whispered to Mahit. <It is the one thing I do not envy, without a shred of regret.>
We’re never alone, Mahit thought. You and I. Never again in this life.
<Or the next.>
If there’s a Teixcalaanli ambassador after me.
<If there’s a Teixcalaanli ambassador after you, and our imago-line is worth preserving for them.>
Mahit hoped, a small leaden heated ball in the pit of her stomach, that it would be. That something of this week, of her, of her and Yskandr together, would not go to waste. That what she knew, now—the external threat to Teixcalaan that she carried in her mind like her very own poison flower, the coordinates of massing alien ships—enough of an external threat to cancel any war of annexation—that it would not die with her and Yskandr. Be silenced with her and Yskandr.