Half the wall in front of them was taken up by an enormous holoprojection, the only one still active. It had begun broadcasting the imperial seal and flag, with a countdown timer superimposed—forty-eight minutes until the Emperor would speak to his people. At thirty-seven minutes the attendants, save for a guard at the door, all vanished, the great machine of imperial work lifting away and alighting somewhere else. Mahit had played her part. She’d given her secrets up. There was nothing she could do now but wait.
Three Seagrass put her empty teacup down on the floor. Thirty-five minutes. The quiet was velvet-soft. Mahit couldn’t stand it.
“What do you think they’re doing?” she asked, just to hear sounds that weren’t her own breathing or Three Seagrass’s, lighter and more rapid.
Three Seagrass swallowed, pressed two fingers between her eyebrows, as if she was shoving back tears. “Oh, I’d guess they’re finding Eight Loop,” she said, and her voice was not at all steady—Mahit turned, looked at her with real concern. “For the visual impact of imperial authority, all of them standing together—”
“Three Seagrass, are you all right?”
“Oh, fuck,” Three Seagrass said, “no, I’m not, but I was so hoping you wouldn’t notice?”
They were alone. The door guard was guarding the door, looking away, a silent and still presence. They were suspended out of time, out of the inexorable forward flow of events. Mahit reached out—horribly conscious that this gesture wasn’t hers, wasn’t even Yskandr’s, but belonged to the Emperor—and cupped Three Seagrass’s cheek in her hand.
“I notice,” she said.
It was not unexpected when Three Seagrass burst into tears, but it was awful; Mahit felt guilty, like she’d caused it, this little shattering. Like she’d tapped too hard on the shell of an egg and it had splintered, held together only by the internal membranes inside. “Hey,” she said, “hey, it’s—” It wasn’t all right, and she wasn’t about to say so. Instead, acting on instinct and an upswelling of care, a feeling like her vagus nerve had been expertly struck and was vibrating, she reached to pull Three Seagrass into her arms. She came willingly; the slight weight of her rested against Mahit’s shoulder, and her face was pressed into Mahit’s collarbone. Hot tears dampened her shirt.
Gently, Mahit stroked her hair, still unbraided from its habitual queue. The world was spinning on and on and on—the countdown at thirty-two minutes—and she couldn’t fathom the wrenching depths of what this must feel like to Three Seagrass, who had looked like she would cry at the very mention of civil war, back in Twelve Azalea’s apartment.
“I thought I was fine,” Three Seagrass said, muffled, “but I keep thinking of all the blood. Fuck. I miss Petal so much, already. It’s been three hours and I miss him so much and that was such a stupid way to die—”
Oh. Not civil war at all. Something much deeper, much more immediate. Mahit squeezed her arms around her, and Three Seagrass made a miserable, hiccupping sound. “This is—the whole world is changing and I’m crying over my friend,” she said. “Some poet I am.”
“When this is over,” said Mahit, “you’ll write Twelve Azalea a eulogy that people will sing in the streets; he will be a synecdoche for everything Teixcalaan is suffering right now, needlessly. No one will ever forget him, and that will be your doing, and—oh, I’m just so sorry, this is all my fault—” She was going to cry too, and what good would that do anyone, two people crying on a couch underground?
Three Seagrass picked up her head from Mahit’s shoulder, looked up at her, tearstained, red in the face from crying. There was a brief, strained pause. Mahit could swear she could hear the rushing of blood in her own capillaries. They were breathing exactly in time.
When Three Seagrass kissed her, Mahit opened up for her as if she was a lotus floating in one of the City’s gardens at dawn—slow, inexorable, like she had been waiting a long, long time through the night. Three Seagrass’s mouth was hot; her lips wide and soft. One of her hands settled in Mahit’s short hair, held on tight, almost tight enough to hurt. Mahit found her hands had landed upon Three Seagrass’s shoulder blades—they were sharp under her palms—she pulled her closer, halfway into her lap, without breaking the kiss.
This was a terrible idea. This was lovely. It was the nicest thing that had happened to her in hours—in days—Three Seagrass kissed like she’d made a thorough study of the practice, and Mahit was glad of it, glad that she’d done it, glad of the distraction from everything else.
They broke apart. Three Seagrass’s eyes, inches from hers, were very wide and very dark, and red at the corners where she’d wept.
“Petal was always right about me,” she said. Mahit tucked a stray strand of her hair behind her ear and let her talk. “I do like aliens. Barbarians. Anything new, anything different. But I also—if I’d met you at court, Mahit, if you were one of us, I’d have wanted to do that just the same.”
What she was saying was exquisite, a balm and a comfort, and horrible at the same time: If you were one of us, I would want you just the same, and Mahit wanted simultaneously to climb back inside her mouth and shove her out of her lap. She wasn’t Teixcalaanli, she was … she hardly knew anymore, except that she wasn’t Teixcalaanli and wouldn’t be no matter how many lovely asekretim climbed into her arms, tearstained, wanting to be held. Wanting to be held after sacrificing nearly everything she was for Mahit’s sake.
“I’m glad you did,” she managed, because she was, because it had been sweet. “Come here, let me—let me.” Her hands in Three Seagrass’s hair, on the narrow channel of her spine. Holding her.
They didn’t kiss again, just breathed together in time, until the holoprojection screen chimed—fifteen minutes—and changed, beginning to show a series of aerial images of the City, what someone might see from the vast height of the sun temple on top of Palace-North. The eyes of the Emperor, opening up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
the City rises marching
a thousand starpoints strong
released, we shall speak visions
uneclipsed
I am a spear in the hands of the sun
THE full extent of Teixcalaanli imperial power, even reduced, even under threat from multiple angles, was a crushing onslaught of symbolism. Mahit felt it three ways: first her own longing appreciation, born out of a childhood half in love with Teixcalaan the story, Teixcalaan the empire of poets, all-conquering all-devouring all-singing beast in the garden of her imaginings; second, the echo of Yskandr-doubled, two versions who had come to live here and make themselves into people who could live here, could move in this language and speak and see nothing but Teixcalaan, and still remember Lsel as a distant and beloved home; and last, the quick intake of breath and the full-body tremor of the Teixcalaanli woman Mahit held in her arms as they both watched the theater which was meant to defuse an insurrection.