Three Seagrass was staring at the ezuazuacat as if she’d grown a second head or another pair of arms. “I am terrified of you, Your Excellency,” she said, using the word for “terror” which, in poetry, could also mean “awed.” The sort of adjective that was applied to atrocities or divine miracles. Or emperors, which Mahit assumed were in many ways both at once.
“The perils,” said Nineteen Adze ruefully, “of getting to know someone.” She looked at her brandy glass, as if she wanted to drink the empty air there. Shut her eyes for a moment. The lids were grey with the faint tracery of visible veins. “Now. Enough of this. Tell me what you want to tell my Emperor.”
Mahit framed what she was about to say before she actually said it: tried to say it simply and directly, without pretense or insinuation. The facts. (The politics would come after the facts; would devolve from the nature of the facts, as politics tended to do.) “The Lsel Councilor for the Miners has sent me—under multiple layers of encryption—the locations of increased, threatening, and pernicious alien activity—the sort of activity that presages a conquest—in both our quadrant of local space and two others. The aliens are of a sort unknown to us, and we have not established communication. They are hostile. Both we on Lsel Station and you in all the vast starfield of Teixcalaan are in considerable danger.”
Nineteen Adze clicked her teeth together and made a small, inquisitive noise. “And why did the Lsel Councilor for the Miners want you to know this information?” she asked.
“I believe,” Mahit said carefully, “that Darj Tarats would prefer the beast we know, the empire we have negotiated with for generations, than a force beyond our control in Lsel space.”
“That’s why he wants you to tell us,” Nineteen Adze said. “I’m asking why he wanted you to know.”
What she was asking was closer to By what method did Darj Tarats think you could use this information to influence us? Mahit leaned back against Three Seagrass’s hand. Her eyelids felt heavy; her tongue was still a little brandy-numbed. “I wouldn’t have figured it out,” she said conversationally, “if there hadn’t been all those newspaper articles a few days ago about Eight Loop.”
“Go on,” said Nineteen Adze.
“The ones where she was questioning the legality of the annexation war,” Three Seagrass said, sudden and bright: she’d gotten it. Of course she had.
Mahit nodded. “The ones where she was questioning the legality of the annexation war because the borders of Teixcalaan are not secure,” she said. “She could have meant just that … business you all are having, in Odile. I think that’s what she meant, when she said it. But I know—an actual alien threat is worse than some internal insurrection. If the borders of the Empire are not secure, an annexation war cannot legally be justified, and even a strong emperor at the height of his powers might be overruled by council and ministers and ezuazuacatlim. And now, with this information, I can prove that there is an active threat to the borders of Teixcalaan. We are all in danger from these aliens. And the Councilor for the Miners would like me to use this loophole in Teixcalaanli law to get the Empire to leave my homeland alone. No secure borders, thus no annexation war, and Lsel remains independent. That’s simple language, ezuazuacat. I’m being as clear with you as I can be. As I know how to be.”
It left out entirely whether or not Aknel Amnardbat had tried to sabotage her, and why. That wasn’t for Teixcalaan, Mahit thought. That was for Lsel. For her and Yskandr to think about together, if they lived through this week. She could keep that one thing for herself, in this terrible burst of confession. If she mentioned it now she’d destroy her own credibility. Besides—Amnardbat couldn’t have known Yskandr was dead when she’d sabotaged her. It should have been Yskandr all along, doing what she was doing, carrying this message to Nineteen Adze, a last-ditch effort to save Lsel from annexation.
<I wish I could ask her what she was thinking, doing this to us,> Yskandr murmured, and the bright flash which was all that was left of the other Yskandr raced down Mahit’s arms like a static charge.
You and me both, Mahit thought. When she spoke to me she said we were a perfect match: we understood Teixcalaan. I thought it was a compliment—
<From Amnardbat? No. Amnardbat hates the Empire,> Yskandr said, fascinated, intrigued, and then … interrupted.
“That’s extremely clever as well as somewhat disturbing,” said Nineteen Adze, “whether or not it’s true.”
“Let me tell Six Direction,” Mahit asked. She could talk to Yskandr about sabotage later. “Take me to him. Please. For the sake of what we were, and what he and Yskandr were, and for both of our peoples.”
“You do realize that I can’t just walk you in after dark, like last time,” Nineteen Adze said. “He isn’t even in Palace-Earth—it’s too dangerous there for him right now.”
“I do realize. I know I’m asking you for something very large,” Mahit began, and was interrupted by the return of the aide who had brought the brandy. He was empty-handed, this time, and his face was expressionlessly grave even for a Teixcalaanlitzlim.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “forgive me for interrupting.”
“Did I or did I not give standing orders that any further developments were not interrupting, Forty-Five Sunset?”
The briefest flicker of a smile; his eyes gone wide, and then blinking back to standard. “You did. Your Excellency, I regret to tell you that the yaotlek’s forces are in the city center and marching on the palace; there have been reports of multiple civilian deaths. I have feeds if you need them.”
Nineteen Adze nodded; a short, sharp movement. “The clashes, are they partisan?”
“They’re being instigated by flower-bearers, yes.”
“Must we use Thirty Larkspur’s propaganda language, Forty-Five Sunset?”
“My apologies, Your Excellency. Thirty Larkspur’s agitators, with their purple larkspur pins, are primarily responsible for provoking the yaotlek’s soldiers.”
“Thank you,” said Nineteen Adze. “I assume it’s fractionally better if it’s Thirty Larkspur and not the whole mess of people who want to sing your poetry, Three Seagrass. We might still have their loyalties. I’m not sure.”
“Who is we?” asked Three Seagrass, and Mahit felt the echo in her bones: What is the Teixcalaanli definition of we?
“We are people who would like to see Six Direction on the sun-spear throne for as long as he lives,” said Nineteen Adze.
“I’ll swear to it,” said Three Seagrass. “Right here, if you like. With blood.”
It was an old Teixcalaanli custom: one of the oldest, from before the Empire had been multicontinental, let alone multiplanetary. For luck, for proof of an oath. To swear fealty or bind a person to a task. Blood in a bowl, mixed, and that bowl poured out as a sacrifice to the sun.
“How traditional,” said Nineteen Adze. “Mahit—would you so swear?”
Did you ever, Mahit asked Yskandr, quiet in her mind.
<The once,> Yskandr said, and Mahit remembered the long, curving scar on his hand, below the place where Ten Pearl had stabbed him with his poison needle. <Six Direction asked me if I wanted to, and I told him I wouldn’t be bound to him, that if I served I wanted to serve freely, in what respect I did serve—but that I wouldn’t lie to him, and I’d swear so.>