“I also have come to bring you trouble,” she said.
“I hardly expected any less, from Lsel Station.” Six Direction smiled at her, Lsel-smile, with mouth and teeth, and she didn’t know what to do with how much she felt, all at once. It would be so useful if she felt nothing. If she could be purely a political tool, purely an instrument of preventing Teixcalaan from annexing Lsel. It would be so easy, to be cold and clear and—
<Talk, Mahit, or I will.>
For a moment Mahit considered slipping, letting Yskandr have her, letting Yskandr talk to his Emperor one more time—and then she felt sickly horrified. Get the fuck out of my neurology and out of my limbic system, Yskandr. I am not you reborn. That is not how we are.
A hiss, like static on a wire. Then: <Talk.>
“Your Brilliance,” Mahit began, “I have received actionable intelligence from my government on Lsel which describes a grave threat to Teixcalaan; graver, I am afraid to say, than the current unpleasant chaos outside this room.”
“Do go on,” said Six Direction. “I could use a distracting problem, one slightly less intractable than my current situation. However grave.”
Mahit went on. She explained the entire message—explained it as she had to Nineteen Adze, including its blatant political maneuver. And then she waited, to see what the Emperor would say.
He was quiet for the space of a few breaths. She could hear the faint bubbling in his lungs. Then he looked to Nineteen Adze. “And do you think our latest Lsel Ambassador is as credible as the last one?” he asked her.
Nineteen Adze, standing next to Three Seagrass nearer the door, nodded. “I wouldn’t have brought her here if I didn’t believe her. I think she’s reporting exactly what she was told by her government, and I think she’s reporting her biases honestly. If this was at any other moment, my lord, I’d suggest she was coming to us for help; a fair diplomatic trade, vital information for her Station’s continued lack of being formally Teixcalaanli.”
“It is not any other moment,” said Six Direction. He turned back to Mahit. “I will ask you what I asked you before, Mahit Dzmare, and with appreciation and thankfulness at being informed of this danger—will you agree to what your predecessor agreed to? Give me what Yskandr would have given me if not for my lovely friend Nineteen Adze and the arrayed forces of Science and Judiciary; trade me my life reborn, and you will not even need this danger to protect your interests in Lsel.”
“Can’t we be done with this, Six Direction,” Nineteen Adze said, and there was an aching, exhausted anguish in her voice. “I want you to live and to hold the throne forever; I will miss you all the days of my life when you are gone, but the sun-spear throne is not a barbarian medical experiment and should not be—look at Mahit, your Brilliance. She has Yskandr in her and she is not Yskandr.”
The Emperor affixed his eyes on Mahit’s. She felt like she was drowning. All the supernatural power she’d imagined a blood ritual to evoke for her was right here, and all it was was reflected limbic system response, a trick of neurology. And yet there was a soapbubble–thin hook behind her sternum, an ache. Six Direction lifted one of his hands—they did not shake, and she had time to wonder at his strength—and cupped her cheek in his hand.
She let Yskandr—the sequence of responses, continuity of memory and its reflection on emotion, on pattern, that used to be Yskandr—lean into that palm. Let him shut her eyes in a deep, slow flutter.
And then took it all back, sat up straight with her eyes wide open, and said, “Your Brilliance, he loved you. I have met you thrice.”
In the shocked little silence that followed, she went on: “Besides. I do not have an imago-machine for you. And I cannot—even in a better situation than this—get you one in time to preserve your memory before your life is over. I am sorry, Six Direction. But my answer is no.”
The Emperor smudged his thumb along the curve of her cheekbone. “There’s one in you,” he said, “isn’t there.”
“If you wanted,” Mahit told him, swallowing hard against bright fear, he was the Emperor, if he wanted to carve her open he could wave a hand and one of the grey-clad guards would do it right here on the floor, with Five Portico’s surgical scar to guide them, “you could put me and Yskandr—two versions of Yskandr, even, it’s complicated, it’s all so very fucking complicated—into your mind. Or into the mind of anyone you like. But there is no imago-machine, Your Brilliance, which will bring you and only you into another person’s mind. None for two months’ worth of travel.”
Six Direction sighed, and let her go. She felt the afterimage of his hand like a brand, glowing-hot, hypersensitive. “It does not change very much, I suppose,” he said. “I have not been counting on the hope of resurrection since your predecessor’s death. I was not expecting you to bring me hope. I had only … wished for it.” He waved a finger, and Nineteen Adze came to him, sank to the floor at his side on her knees. He put a hand to the back of her neck, and she leaned up into it.
Mahit had thought of her as an enormous tiger, clawed and dangerous, and yet—she knelt. She leaned into that hand.
<Nothing empire touches remains itself,> Yskandr murmured to her.
Or perhaps that was her own voice, casting itself in a tone she’d be most likely to believe.
“How goes this very stupid rebellion, Nineteen Adze?” asked the Emperor.
“Stupidly,” Nineteen Adze said, “but badly for everyone. One Lightning is killing civilians; Thirty Larkspur is trying to unseat you via flat-out internal coup, I believe because he thinks if you die Eight Loop and Eight Antidote will cut him out of the government—so he’s using One Lightning as an excuse to take preemptive power while you’re still alive, and doing it by sending instigators into the streets with his ridiculous little badges of floral honor—we’ve lost Two Rosewood in Information, she’s dead, or as good as, and I don’t have much hope about Nine Propulsion in War; if she hasn’t gone over to One Lightning already she might, at any time, if she thinks it will get her an ezuazuacat’s position in his government…”
“Would you like to be Information Minister, Nineteen Adze, since you know everything already?”
“… I like my current title. As I’ve said, multiple times,” said Nineteen Adze. And sighed a little. “If you need me to be, though, I will.”
“That’s not what I need from you,” Six Direction said. Mahit found absolutely no comfort in his phrasing. Neither, from her expression, did Nineteen Adze.
“Where is Eight Antidote?” Nineteen Adze asked. “If you can tell me. I am—concerned, my lord, for his welfare.”
It would matter very much where the ninety-percent clone was; even at ten years old—Was he conceived when you and Six Direction finally agreed on your trade, Yskandr, or was he already an insurance policy?—he was likely to be the first of the three co-emperors, by virtue of his genetic heritage, when Six Direction died. If Six Direction died before the child reached his majority.