It began with the Emperor’s-eye view of the City, that shifting panorama—slowly transformed, overlaid with the flowers and spears and sun-petal-gold glow of the imperial seal, the imperial flags—not the battle flag, the peace flag, the one that hung behind the sun-spear throne. There was music. It wasn’t martial—it was old, a folk song, stringed instruments and a low flute like a woman’s voice.
“What is that?” Mahit asked Three Seagrass, and Three Seagrass sat up a little. Her arm was looped around Mahit’s waist.
“It’s—it’s an arrangement of a song from the era of the Emperor Nine Flood, right before we broke solar system—it’s old. Everyone knows it. It’s—fuck, they’re being so good with the propaganda, it makes me feel nostalgic and scared and brave and I know exactly what they’re doing.”
The images on the holoprojection resolved to the inside of a sun temple—far larger and more ornate than any Mahit had seen before, in holograph or infofiche-image: the great central chamber shaped like a belled flask, open at the top and crowned with a lens that scattered bright beams of light around the central platform and its dished bronze bowl of an altar. The entire room was jewel-clear, faceted, glimmering: translucent gold, garnet-red. The music died away, and there was Six Direction, standing just in front of the altar. They’d done brilliant work on him with makeup: he almost looked healthy. Almost, except for the shocking prominence of his cheekbones. Eight Loop was nowhere to be seen, but at his left stood Nineteen Adze, resplendent in bone-white—but it was the same bone-white suit she had been wearing when they left, complete with a smear of Five Agate’s blood on the sleeve. The ezuazuacat bloodied in service. At his right was the ninety-percent clone, Eight Antidote. His small shoulders were very straight; his face had those same high cheekbones as the Emperor, but under healthy pads of childhood flesh.
Emperor, and successor, and advisor: all in the heart of power. As an image, it was reassuring. As a beginning of a message to all Teixcalaan it was frightening: to have gathered them together like this emphasized the seriousness, the necessary conveyance of this particular message. That sun temple was at the very top of Palace-North.
<There are Fleet ships in orbit right this moment,> Yskandr murmured to her. Which meant, if One Lightning wanted, he could blow the temple and the Emperor both to nothing, with a single command.
Every other Teixcalaanlitzlim would know that, too.
Six Direction pressed his fingertips together, and bowed over them—greeting every watcher. He did not smile: this was too serious for smiling. The camera hung about his mouth like a caress, waiting for words. When he spoke it was a relief, a tiny burst of relaxed tension, until the words began to make sense: Through our great work and careful husbandry of civilizations, pruning where necessary, encouraging the flowering of society where it is most beautiful, we have together held this empire, with my hands guiding all of yours—but now, in this moment of fragility, when new blooms are trembling on the verge of unfolding into the light of the stars, we are all endangered. Some of you know this danger in your hearts; some of you have felt it in your bodies, in the sound of soldiers’ feet, in the damage inflicted upon our City, the heart of our civilization, by our own limbs—
Mahit felt like her heart had crept so far up her throat that it rested on the back of her tongue; she was all pulse. This was not the speech she had expected. She had expected a moment of reassurance, and then a quick use of her own footage to prove that there was danger, and it came from outside, was alien forces massing on the edge of Teixcalaanli space—not this careful rhetorical construction which approached renewal as a theme, a dangerous theme for an emperor under threat from his military and his bureaucracy both.
“What is he doing?” she breathed.
“Keep watching,” said Three Seagrass. “Keep watching, and wait a minute. I think I know and I don’t want to be right.”
“You don’t want—”
“Hush, Mahit.”
She hushed. The Emperor kept speaking—asked for calm and for reflection. Before the dawn there is a quiet moment where we can see the approach of both distant threat and the promise of warmth, he said. Next to him Nineteen Adze’s expression had changed from even neutrality to something Mahit recognized as dawning horror—resignation—and then a schooling of herself again to stillness. Something was wrong, and Nineteen Adze had noticed it. Something was happening and Mahit didn’t understand it.
Six Direction was talking about Lsel, now—briefly, alighting on it, a mining station at the edge of Teixcalaanli space, a distant eye that speaks to us of danger observed. Her own image, then, superimposed upon the frame of Nineteen Adze, Six Direction, and Eight Antidote: Mahit Dzmare, looking very barbaric, tall and high-foreheaded and narrow-faced with her long, aquiline nose, explaining the coming invasion from an imperial briefing room. She looked exhausted. She looked honest.
<You did very well,> whispered Yskandr. <Hardly anyone would convict you in a court of law, on either side. You walked right down the center line.>
The face of the Emperor was behind her face; as her mouth moved, on the holograph, the Emperor’s mouth remained a constant still presence, as if he was commanding her performance by sheer force of will.
The whole image—all of them, the entire sun temple—was replaced by a familiar map: Teixcalaanli space, a grand star-chart. The last time Mahit had seen this it had been deployed to show the vectors of the annexation war which would claim Lsel and everything around it. Now those vectors were dimmed, and as she watched, the map lit up with each of the coordinate points Darj Tarats had given to her: the places where the threat was greatest, where the aliens had been spotted in their ships, festooned with weaponry. Inverse stars on that map: bright for a moment and then spreading a deep, dark, threatening red, like a pool of blood.
Mahit thought of Twelve Azalea, and was still thinking of him when the map vanished. She misunderstood what she was seeing in the sun temple for long seconds, lost in memory and connotation.
The Emperor was holding a naked blade, a knife made out of some dark, shining material, translucent grey at its sharpest edges. He’d shed his robe; it pooled around his ankles. All of his bones were visible, even through the light trousers and shirt he wore: every bit of emaciation his illness had wrought upon him rendered up for the eyes of the cameras. Eight Antidote had pressed the side of his hand to his mouth, a child’s gesture of distress—Nineteen Adze was saying something, Mahit only caught the end of it, a wisp of my lord, I—don’t—
Six Direction, speaking: Teixcalaan requires a steady, even hand—a hand star-graced, a tongue prepared, a fist that grasps the sunlight. In the face of what we are about to suffer—I who have served you since I knew what service was—I consecrate this temple and the war which is to come.