She came closer. The corpse stayed dead, stayed still and limp and empty.
Mahit thought (or Yskandr thought—she was having trouble keeping them apart, and this wasn’t how the integration was supposed to go, she was never supposed to be lost inside his biochemical panic response hijacking her own endocrine system) about how the only place that Yskandr existed now was inside her head. She’d considered that he was dead, when Teixcalaan had demanded a new ambassador, thought about it intellectually, planned for it, and yet—here he was—a corpse, a hollow rotting shell, and she was panicking because her imago was panicking and an emotion-spike was the easiest way to fuck up an integration that wasn’t finished, an emotion-spike would burn out all the tiny microcircuits in the machine in her mind and oh fuck he was dead and oh fuck I am dead and the blur, the nauseating blur of everything.
Yskandr, she tried, aiming for comfort and missing by a long distance.
He moved them before she could decide to do what he asked. It was like she’d blacked out for the space of time it took to approach the corpse, blinked and was there, and this was going so very, very awry, and she couldn’t stop it—
“We burn our dead,” she said, and didn’t know who to thank for the fact that she’d said it in the right language.
“How interesting a custom,” said the courtier in dark grey. Mahit thought he was from the Judiciary itself; this was likely to be his morgue, even if it was the man in red who was the mortician.
Mahit smiled at him, too wide for her face and too uncontrolled for Yskandr’s, an expression that’d horrify any serene Teixcalaanlitzlim. “Afterward,” she said, searching for the correct vocabulary, a spar to cling to through the roiling waves of adrenaline, “we eat the ashes as a sacred thing. His children and successors first. If he had any.”
The courtier had the grace to blanch and the stubbornness to repeat himself. “How interesting a custom.”
“What do you do with yours?” Mahit asked. She came nearer Yskandr’s corpse, drifting. Her mouth seemed to be under her control for the moment, but her feet belonged to Yskandr. “Excuse my inquiry. I am, after all, not a citizen.”
The man in red said, “Burial is common,” as if it was a question he answered every day. “Do you wish to examine the body, Ambassador?”
“Is there some reason I should do so?” Mahit said, but she was already pulling down the sheet. Her fingers were sweating, slick on the fabric. Underneath, the corpse was naked, a fortyish man with all of his skin tinged that same blue at its most translucent points. An injectable preservative, all through him. The injection points were strikingly visible, holes surrounded by a halo of pale, swollen flesh—at the carotid, and in the ulnar veins of both arms. There was an extra injection site at the base of the corpse’s right thumb, distorting the shape of the hand. She found herself staring at it, in another one of those blanked-out moments—she’d been looking at his face, and now she was looking at his wrist, as if the imago needed to see every place his former body had been altered. Even if Mahit had wanted to claim her rights as his successor to the dust of his flesh—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to—she thought that it might be a very stupid idea to ingest whatever the man in red had filled him up with. Three months without rotting. She could taste bile in her throat, under the metallic endocrine cascade. Bodies should decompose, and be recycled.
But the Empire preserved everything, told the same stories over and over again; why not also preserve flesh instead of rendering it up for decent use?
She was touching the wrist, the imago tracing her fingertip over the injection site, and then further, into the palm, following the line of some scar. The flesh was rubbery, plasticky, too much give and not enough all at once—her Yskandr hadn’t gotten that scar yet; her Yskandr wasn’t dead yet—there was another one of those dizzying nauseous waves, the edges of her vision irising to fizz and sparks, and she thought again We are going to blow out all the circuitry, stop it—
Yskandr said again, an enormous negation inside her mind, an avulsion that felt like a spark gone to ground—and then he was gone.
Dead quiet. Not even the feeling of him watching through Mahit’s eyes. She felt gravityless, full of endorphins she hadn’t produced on purpose, and horribly alone. Her tongue was heavy. It tasted like aluminum.
Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.
“How did he die?” she asked, and was amazed that she sounded entirely normal, entirely unfazed; asked for the sake of continuing to talk. None of the Teixcalaanli knew about imagos, none of them would even be able to understand what had just happened to her.
“He choked on the air,” the man in red said, touching the corpse’s neck with a practiced span of two fingers. “His throat closed. It was very unfortunate; but the physiologies of noncitizens are often so different from ours.”
“He ate something he was allergic to?” Mahit asked. This seemed absurd. She was shock-numb, and apparently Yskandr had died of anaphylaxis, and if she wasn’t careful she was going to have a hysterical laughing fit.
“At dinner with the Minister for Science Ten Pearl, no less,” said the last courtier, the one from Information. This one looked like he’d climbed out of a classical Teixcalaanli painting: his features were unbelievably symmetrical: lush mouth, low forehead, perfectly hooked nose; eyes like deep brown pools. “You should have seen the newsfeeds afterward, Ambassador; it was quite the tabloid story.”
“Twelve Azalea means no disrespect,” said Three Seagrass from where she stood by the door. “The news went no farther than the palace complex. It would be inappropriate for the general population.”
Mahit pulled the sheet back up to the corpse’s chin. It didn’t help. He was still there. “Was the story also inappropriate for the stations?” she asked. “The courier who asked for my service within the City was unnecessarily vague.”
Three Seagrass shrugged, a minute shift of one shoulder. “Ambassador, while I am asekreta, not every asekreta is privy to the decisions of the Information Ministry as a whole.”
“What would you like done with his body?” inquired the man in red. Mahit looked up at him; he was tall for a Teixcalaanlitzlim. His eyes, an unnervingly friendly green, were almost even with hers. She had no idea what to do with a corpse. She had never burnt anyone herself; she was too young. Her parents were both still living. And besides, what you did was you called the funeral manager and they handled it, preferably while someone you loved held your hand and cried with you over the mutual loss.
She had less idea what to do with this corpse. No one was going to cry over Yskandr, even her, and there weren’t any funeral managers in Teixcalaanli space who would know where to begin.
She managed, “Nothing yet,” and swallowed hard against the remains of the nausea. Her fingers felt electric, all prickle-shimmer where they had touched the dead man’s skin. “I will of course make arrangements once I am better acquainted with the facilities available. Until then, well, he’s not going to rot, is he?”
“Only very slowly,” the man in red said.
“Sir—” Mahit looked to Three Seagrass for help; she was a cultural liaison so she could damn well liaise—
“Ixplanatl Four Lever,” Three Seagrass said obligingly. “Of the Science Ministry.”
“Four Lever,” Mahit went on, dropping the man’s title—it meant “scientist,” in a very general sense, scientist-with-credentials—entirely on purpose, “when will the rot be noticeable? Another two months, perhaps?”
Four Lever smiled enough to show off a sliver of teeth. “Two years, Ambassador.”
“Excellent,” Mahit said. “That will be plenty of time.”
Four Lever bowed over the triangular press of his fingertips, as if she’d given him an order. Mahit suspec
ted she was being indulged. She’d take it. She had to. She needed space enough to think and she wasn’t going to get it here, in the bowels of the Judiciary with three courtiers and a ixplanatl morgue attendant all waiting for her to make some irrevocable error and end up like Yskandr had.
Betrayed by his own physiology. After twenty years of living in the City, eating what the Teixcalaanlitzlim ate. Did she believe it?
Yskandr, she thought at the blank place where the imago ought to be, what did you get us into before you died?
He didn’t answer. Reaching for the blank spot made her feel like she was falling even though she knew her feet were steady on the floor.
“I would like,” said Mahit to Three Seagrass, slow and even and in the correct language, trying to hide the vertigo and the fear, “to be registered as the legal Ambassador from the stations to Teixcalaan, and also to see to my luggage.” She wanted to get out of here. As fast as possible.
“Naturally, Ambassador,” said Three Seagrass. “Ixplanatl. Twelve Azalea. Twenty-Nine Infograph. As ever, your company is a pleasure.”
“As is yours, Three Seagrass,” said Twelve Azalea. “Enjoy the Ambassador.”
Three Seagrass did that one-shoulder shrug again, as if nothing anyone had said could affect an asekreta of the court in a fashion that mattered. Mahit liked her, abruptly, and was aware that the liking was more of a desperate grasp at an ally than anything else. She was so alone, without the imago talking to her. Surely he’d come back in a moment. Once the shock was over. Once the emotion-spike had faded. It was fine. She was fine. She wasn’t even dizzy anymore.
“Shall we, then?” she said.
CHAPTER
TWO
urgently direct your attention! / novelty and importance characterize what comes next / IMMEDIATELY on Channel Eight!
Tonight, Seven Chrysoprase and Four Sycamore bring you a report from Odile-1 in the Odile System, where the Twenty-Sixth Legion under sub-yaotlek Three Sumac are preparing to break orbit now that the insurrection in Odile-1’s capital city has been quelled—in a moment we will have Four Sycamore, on site in the capital’s central square, with an interview with the newly reinstated planetary governor Nine Shuttle—trade through the Odile Gate is expected to return to normal levels within the next two weeks …
—Channel Eight! nightly newscast, as broadcast on the City’s internal cloudhook network, 245th day, 3rd year in the 11th indiction of the Emperor of all Teixcalaan Six Direction
* * *
JUMPGATE APPROACH PROTOCOL LIST, PAGE TWO OF TWO
… reduce speed to 1/128th of craft’s maximum sublight, to enable evasive maneuvering if the jumpgate is simultaneously being accessed by non-Stationer ships from the far side.
17. Signal impending jump by local radio broadcast
18. Signal impending jump to crew and passengers
19. At 1/128th speed, approach area of greatest visual distortion …
—Lsel Station pilot training manual, page 235
THE ambassadorial suite was as full of Yskandr as Mahit felt empty of him: like she had been turned inside out, surrounded by the things of her imago rather than suffused with his memory. The suite had been aired out before Mahit arrived—or at least she hoped it had, and assumed it had by virtue of the open windows and the antiseptic scent of cleaning fluid that the air coming in through those windows and blowing their draperies back hadn’t managed to dispel—but it was nevertheless very much a place someone had lived in, and for a long time.
Yskandr-the-man had liked the color blue, and expensive-looking furniture in some dark sheeny metal. The industrial lines of the workdesk and low couch would’ve made anyone who grew up on a station or a ship, unplaneted, feel right at home, but the floor was covered in silky deep-piled rugs run through with patterns. Mahit thought—gleeful fleeting desire—of going barefoot at home for the sheer physical pleasure of it, and thought again about how imago-successors matched even on aesthetic preferences with their predecessors. Yskandr had liked being barefoot on woven fiber; apparently she did, too, despite having never before had the opportunity.
Beyond the suite’s inner door was a sleeping chamber. Yskandr had hung a metalwork mosaic of the Teixcalaanli star-chart for Stationer space on the ceiling over his bed like an advertisement. Sleep here and you’ll be sleeping with the resources of this entire sector!
It was such a beautiful piece of work that it almost didn’t seem gauche. Almost.
On the bedside table was a small pile of codex-books and plastic infofilm sheets, neatly squared. Mahit doubted Yskandr was the type to line up the edges of his bedtime reading material, as she certainly wasn’t. It would be easier if he were here to ask, and what was she supposed to do if he didn’t come back? If that horrible spike of emotion had burnt out the connections between her imago-machine and her brainstem, before she and Yskandr had ever had a chance to fully become one person? If they’d had longer, the machine wouldn’t matter—she’d be Yskandr, or Yskandr would be her, or they’d be a new, more complete thing called Mahit Dzmare which knew what Yskandr Aghavn had known, intimately, muscle memory and compiled skill and instinct and his voice and hers in a blend—how it should be, a new link in the imago-line. But now? What was she supposed to do? Write home for repair instructions? Go home, and leave all this work undone, including understanding why he’d died? At least she wasn’t going to have language problems without his help—she dreamed in Teixcalaanli half the time; had dreamed of the City often enough—but reaching for the place where she’d felt the weight of him since he’d been joined to her made her feel that dizzying, horrible falling sensation again. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the squared-off edges of the codexes until she was sure she wasn’t going to faint. Whoever had cleaned the rooms had arranged them, which implied that anything obviously incriminating had been removed.
She was already thinking about incriminating.
Of course she was thinking incriminating. Assume deception, she told herself. Assume foul play and double meanings. Choked on the air. Allergies, or breathing something too rarefied. Politics, always. This was the City. Every person here had a cloudhook whispering a story into their eyes. Intrigue and triple-crosses and she’d spent her childhood reading those same stories and telling them herself—oh pale imitation, talking in perfect meter to the blank dumb metal of station walls, and hadn’t that made her a popular and cheerful childhood companion—not that it mattered.
Think like a Teixcalaanlitzlim.
Incriminating information would have been removed or made innocuous.
Or Yskandr had hidden it, if he’d known what was about to happen to him, or suspected. If he was smart. (The imago was smart; but the imago was out of date. A man might change in fifteen years.)
Mahit wondered what she’d be like, if she lived that long in this place. Especially without the imago—more important than out of date, the imago was gone. Unless he came back (of course he’d come back, this was a minor flicker, an error, she’d wake up tomorrow and he’d be here) she was going to have to think about sabotage right along with incriminating. Something had gone wrong with her imago-machine—either sabotage or mechanical failure. Or personal failure to integrate. It could be her own fault. Her own psychology, rejecting his. She shuddered. Her hands still felt prickly and strange.
“Your luggage is processed and yours again,” said Three Seagrass, coming through the irised door of Yskandr’s bedroom. Mahit sat up very straight and tried to look like she was absolutely not having a possible neurological incident. “Not a single bit of contraband. You are a very dull barbarian so far.”
“Were you expecting excitement?” Mahit asked.
“You’re my very first barbarian,” Three Seagrass said. “I am expecting everything.”
“Surely you’ve met noncitizens before. This is the Jewel of the World.”
“Meeting is not the same as liaising-for. You’re my noncitizen, Ambassador. I open doors for you.”
&n
bsp; The verb form she used was just archaic enough to be idiomatic. Mahit risked sounding less fluent than she hoped she was and said, “Door-opening seems beneath the responsibilities I’d expect of a patrician second-class.”
Three Seagrass’s smile was sharper than most Teixcalaanli expressions; it reached her eyes. “You don’t have a cloudhook. You can’t open some doors, Ambassador. The City doesn’t know you’re real. Besides, without me, how will you decrypt your mail?”
Mahit raised an eyebrow. “My mail is encrypted?”
“And three months late in being answered.”
“That,” said Mahit, standing up and walking out of the bedroom—this door knew her, at least—“is Ambassador Yskandr Aghavn’s mail, not mine.”
Three Seagrass trailed behind her. “There isn’t a difference. Ambassador Dzmare, Ambassador Aghavn,” she said, tilting one hand back and forth. “It’s the Ambassador’s mail.”
There was less of a difference than even Three Seagrass knew. Or would be, if the imago would ever come back. Mahit was, she realized, pissed off at him, besides being worried about mechanical failure. All he’d done was panic at seeing himself dead, run her through an adrenaline crisis, and give her the strangest headache of her life, and now she was alone with all of the unanswered mail his fifteen-years-more-Teixcalaanli self had abandoned via being almost-certainly-murdered, and a cultural liaison with a sense of humor.
“And it’s encrypted.”
“Of course. It wouldn’t be very respectful to not encrypt an ambassador’s mail.” Three Seagrass retrieved a bowl brimming with infofiche sticks, little rectangles of wood or metal or plastic surrounding circuitry, each one elaborately decorated with its sender’s personal iconography. She fished out a fistful, holding them between her fingers like her knuckles had sprouted claws. “What would you like to start with?”
A Memory Called Empire Page 3