A Memory Called Empire

by Arkady Martine

  “My condolences on the loss of your predecessor, Mahit,” said the woman in white with perfect sincerity.

  No one else in the City had called Mahit by her given name without considerable prompting. She felt suddenly exposed.

  “Her Excellency, the ezuazuacat Nineteen Adze,” Three Seagrass went on, and then murmured, “whose gracious presence illuminates the room like the edgeshine of a knife,” one fifteen-syllable-long participial phrase in Teixcalaanli, as if the woman in white came with her own premade poetic epithet. Perhaps she did. The ezuazuacatlim were the Emperor’s sworn confidantes, his closest advisors and table companions. Millennia ago, when the Teixcalaanli had been planetbound, the ezuazuacatlim had also been his personal war band. It was, according to the histories available on Lsel, a less violent title in recent centuries.

  Mahit was not so sure of “less violent,” considering the epithet. She bowed. “I am grateful for Your Excellency’s sympathies,” she said, during the process of bending from the waist and getting upright again, and then pulled herself straight, imagined herself as someone who could loom, perhaps even loom over unfashionably tall Teixcalaanlitzlim with dangerous titles, and asked, “What brings a person of your responsibilities to, as you said, visit the dead?”

  “I liked him,” said Nineteen Adze, “and I heard you were going to burn him.”

  She came closer. Mahit found herself standing elbow to elbow with her, looking down at the corpse. Nineteen Adze straightened out Yskandr’s head from how it had been turned and pushed back his hair from his forehead with gentle and familiar hands. Her signet ring glinted on her thumb.

  “You’ve come to say good-bye,” Mahit said, implying the doubt she genuinely felt. An ezuazuacat did not need to sneak around like a common ambassador and her miscreant asekretim companions, not to look at a corpse. She had some other reason. Something had shifted for her when Mahit had arrived, or when Mahit had informed the ixplanatl that Yskandr’s body should be burnt. She had expected that the presence of a new ambassador would certainly set off some political maneuvering—she wasn’t an idiot—but she hadn’t thought the ripples of disturbance would reach as high as the Emperor’s inner circle. Yskandr, she thought, what were you trying to do here?

  “Never good-bye,” Nineteen Adze said. She looked at Mahit sidelong, a brief gap of smiling white visible between her lips. “How impolite, to imagine a permanent farewell for such a distinctive person, let alone a friend.”

  Were her hands, so careful on the corpse’s flesh, looking for that same imago-machine Twelve Azalea had noticed? She could be implying that she knew all about the imago process; perhaps she imagined she was even talking to Yskandr, inside Mahit’s body. Too bad for the ezuazuacat that he wasn’t hearing her; too bad for Mahit, too.

  “You’ve certainly picked an unusual hour for it,” Mahit said, as neutrally as she could manage.

  “Certainly no more unusual than you. And with such fascinating company.”

  “I assure Your Excellency,” Twelve Azalea broke in, “that—”

  “—that I have brought my cultural liaison and her fellow asekreta here to be witnesses in a Lsel ritual of personal mourning,” Mahit said.

  “You have?” said Nineteen Adze. Behind her, Three Seagrass gave Mahit a look which clearly expressed, despite fundamental cultural differences in habitual facial expressions, a chagrined admiration of her nerve.

  “I have,” Mahit said.

  “How does it work?” Nineteen Adze inquired, in the most formal and delicately polite mode Mahit had ever heard someone use out loud.

  Perhaps when Mahit received a fifteen-syllable poetic epithet of her own it would involve following through on initial poor ideas. “It’s a vigil,” she said, inventing as she went. “The successor attends the body of her predecessor for a full half rotation of the station—nine of your hours—in order to commit to memory the features of the person she will become, before those features are rendered to ash. Two witnesses to the vigil are required, which is why I have brought along Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea. After the vigil the successor consumes whatever of the burnt remains she desires to keep.” As imaginary rituals went, it wasn’t a bad one. Mahit might even have liked to have such a ceremony done as part of the integration process with an imago. If she ever went back to Lsel she might even suggest it. Not that it would have made a difference for her.

  “Wouldn’t a holograph do just as well?” Nineteen Adze inquired. “Not to disparage your culture’s habitus. I am merely curious.”

  Mahit just bet she was. “The physicality of the actual corpse adds verisimilitude,” she said.

  Twelve Azalea made a small, choked noise. “Verisimilitude,” he repeated.

  Mahit nodded with solemnity. Apparently she was trusting the asekretim after all, or at least trusting them to not break character. Her heart was racing. Nineteen Adze glanced with undisguised delight between her and Three Seagrass, who looked entirely composed aside from the wideness of her eyes. Mahit was sure that the entire invention was about to come crashing down around her. At least she was already inside the Judiciary; if the ezuazuacat decided to arrest her, there wasn’t all that far to go.

  “Yskandr never mentioned such a thing,” Nineteen Adze said, “but he was always reticent about death on Lsel.”

  “It’s usually much more private than this,” said Mahit, which was only partially a lie. Death was private except for where it was the beginning of the most intimate contact two people could have.

  Nineteen Adze pulled the covering sheet midway up the corpse’s chest, smoothed it once, and stepped away. “You’re so little like him,” she said. “Perhaps the same sense of humor, but that’s all. I’m surprised.”

  “Are you?”

  “Very.”

  “Not all Teixcalaanli are the same, either.”

  Nineteen Adze laughed, a single sharp sound. “No, but we come in types. Your asekreta here, for example. She’s the precise model of the orator-diplomat Eleven Lathe, except a woman, and too thin through the chest. Ask her; she’ll recite his entire oeuvre for you, even the parts where he unwisely got involved with barbarians.”

  Three Seagrass gestured with one hand, the motion both rueful and flattered. “I didn’t think Your Excellency had been paying attention,” she said.

  “Never think that, Three Seagrass,” said Nineteen Adze. Mahit couldn’t quite tell if she meant to be threatening. It might just be how she said everything.

  “I am fascinated to meet you, Mahit,” she went on. “I’m sure this won’t be the last time.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You ought to return to your vigil, don’t you think? I sincerely wish you a joyous union with your predecessor.”

  Mahit felt quite near to hysterical laughter. “I wish that also for myself,” she said. “You honor Yskandr with your presence.”

  Nineteen Adze seemed to be having some sort of complex internal reaction to that idea. Mahit wasn’t familiar enough with Teixcalaanli facial expressions to decipher hers. “Goodnight, Mahit,” she said. “Asekretim.” She turned on her heel and walked out as unhurriedly as she’d come in.

  Once the door was shut behind her, Three Seagrass asked, “How much of that was true, Ambassador?”

  “Some of it,” Mahit said wryly. “The end bit, where she wished me a joyous union and I agreed. That part, absolutely.” She paused, mentally gritted her teeth, and got on with it. “I appreciate your participation. Both of you.”

  “It’s quite unusual for an ezuazuacat to be in the morgue,” said Three Seagrass. “Especially her.”

  “I wanted to see what you’d do,” Twelve Azalea added. “Interrupting you would have ruined the effect.”

  “I could have told her the truth,” Mahit said. “Here I am, new to the City, being led astray by my own cultural liaison and a stray courtier.”

  Twelve Azalea folded his hands together in front of his chest. “We could have told her the truth,” he said. “Her friend, th
e dead Ambassador, has mysterious and probably illegal neurological implants.”

  “How nice for us, that everyone lies,” Three Seagrass said cheerfully.

  “Cultural exchange by mutually beneficial deception,” said Mahit. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

  “It won’t stay mutually beneficial for long,” said Twelve Azalea, “unless we three make an agreement to keep it so. I still want to know what this implant does, Ambassador.”

  “And I want to know what my predecessor was doing being friends with Her Excellency the ezuazuacat and also the Emperor Himself.”

  Three Seagrass slapped both her hands down on the morgue table, one on each side of the corpse’s head. Her rings clicked on the metal. “We can trade truths just as well as lies,” she said. “One from each of us, for a pact.”

  “That is out of Eleven Lathe,” Twelve Azalea said. “The truth pact between him and the sworn band of aliens in book five of Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier.”

  Three Seagrass did not look embarrassed, though Mahit thought she might have reason to. Allusions and references were the center of Teixcalaanli high culture, but were they supposed to be so obvious that any one of your old friends could pick up the precise citation? Not that she’d read Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier. It wasn’t a text that had ever reached Lsel Station. It sounded like one which probably hadn’t got past the Teixcalaanli censors—religious texts, or texts that could be read as statecraft manuals or unsanitized accounts of Teixcalaanli diplomacy or warfare, rarely did.

  “Nineteen Adze isn’t wrong about me,” Three Seagrass said, serenely enough. “It worked for Eleven Lathe. It’ll work for us.”

  “One truth each,” Mahit said. “And we keep each other’s secrets.”

  “Fine,” said Twelve Azalea. He shoved a hand backward through his slicked-down hair, disarraying it. “You first, Reed.”

  “Why me first,” Three Seagrass said, “you’re the one who got us into this.”

  “Her first, then.”

  Mahit shook her head. “I hardly know the rules of truth pacts,” she said, “not being a citizen, and never having the pleasure of reading Eleven Lathe. So you’ll have to demonstrate.”

  “You’re really enjoying that, aren’t you,” said Three Seagrass. “When you can make a point of being uncivilized.”

  Mahit was, in fact. It was the only enjoyable part about being alone and alternately entranced and terrified by being surrounded by Teixcalaanlitzlim, who up until today had been both much less upsetting and much more approachable by virtue of primarily appearing in literature. She shrugged at Three Seagrass. “How could I be anything but distressed at the great distance which separates me from a Teixcalaanli citizen?”

  “Exactly like that,” Three Seagrass said. “Fine, I’ll go first. Petal, ask me.”

  Twelve Azalea tipped his head slightly to the side, as if he was considering. Mahit was almost sure he’d already come up with his question and was delaying for effect. Finally, he asked, “Why did you request to be Ambassador Dzmare’s cultural liaison?”

  “Oh, unfair,” Three Seagrass said. “Clever, and unfair! You’re better at this game than you used to be.”

  “I’m older than I used to be, and less awestruck by your charms. Now go on. Tell a truth.”

  Three Seagrass sighed. “Vainglorious personal ambition,” she began, ticking off her reasons on her fingers, beginning with the thumb, “genuine curiosity about the former Ambassador’s rise to the highest favor of His Majesty—your station is very nice but it is quite small, Mahit, there is no sensible reason for the Emperor’s attention to have come so firmly upon your predecessor’s shoulders, however nice the shoulders—and, mm.” She paused. The hesitation was dramatic, but Mahit suspected it was also genuine. All the embarrassment that had been lacking in Three Seagrass earlier was now visible in the set of her chin, in how she avoided everyone’s eyes, even those of the corpse. “And, I like aliens.”

  “You like aliens,” Twelve Azalea exclaimed, delighted, at the same time as Mahit said, “I’m not an alien.”

  “You’re pretty close,” Three Seagrass said, ignoring Twelve Azalea entirely. “And human enough that I can talk to you, which makes it even better. Now it is absolutely no longer my turn.”

  Clearly Three Seagrass hadn’t wanted to admit that in front of another member of the Information Ministry, and Mahit could almost imagine why—to like, in the sense of having a preference for, persons who weren’t civilized. It was practically admitting to being uncivilized herself. (Never mind how it was also suggestive. That verb was distressingly flexible. Mahit would think about it later.) She decided to be merciful, and go on with her part of the game, and leave Three Seagrass alone.

  “Twelve Azalea,” she said. “What was my predecessor’s political situation directly before his death?”

  “That’s not a truth, that’s a university thesis,” Twelve Azalea said. “Narrow it down to something I know, Ambassador.”

  Mahit clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Something you know.”

  “Something only he knows,” Three Seagrass suggested. “For parity.”

  “Truthfully,” Mahit said, choosing each word carefully, “what have you to gain from knowing what sort of implants the Lsel Station Ambassador has in his brainstem or anywhere else?”

  “Someone murdered him and I want to know why,” Twelve Azalea said. “Oh, don’t look so shocked, Ambassador! As if you weren’t thinking the same thing yourself, no matter what Reed and the ixplanatl told you this morning. I know better. It’s all over your face, you barbarians can’t hide a thing. Someone murdered an ambassador, and no one was admitting it. Even Information isn’t talking about it, and I do have some medical training—I was almost an ixplanatl, once—so I thought I’d be the best possible candidate to find out why the court was covering it up. Especially if the cover-up came from Science rather than Judiciary; Ten Pearl in Science has been feuding with Two Rosewood for years—”

  “That’s the Minister of Science and our Minister for Information,” Three Seagrass murmured, quite imago-like in her adroit filling in of information.

  Twelve Azalea nodded, waved a hand for quiet, went on. “I got myself assigned to this investigation to make sure Ten Pearl wasn’t pulling one over on Information, and I came down here and investigated on my own because ixplanatl Four Lever was annoyingly aboveboard and I still didn’t know why the Ambassador was dead. Finding the implant was chance. Now that I’ve enticed you down here I think the one is connected to the other, but that’s hardly where I started.” He shook out his sleeves, set his palms flat on the table. “And now it’s my turn to ask.”

  Mahit braced herself. She was more prepared to tell the truth—she was even predisposed to confess, just now, with the relief of Twelve Azalea admitting that Yskandr had been murdered coming close on the heels of Three Seagrass being so publicly embarrassed, being so un-Teixcalaanli and recognizably human—she was falling into the Teixcalaanli patterns, now, dividing everyone into civilized and uncivilized except inverse, backward. She was as human as they were. They were as human as she was.

  She’d tell some of the truth, then. When Twelve Azalea inevitably asked. And deal with the consequences afterward. It was better than making a blanket decision that no one could be trusted because they were Teixcalaanli. What an absurd premise, from someone who’d spent their whole childhood wishing she could be an imperial citizen, if only for the poetry …

  “What does the implant do, Ambassador?”

  Hey, Yskandr, Mahit thought, reaching for the silence where the imago should be, watch me. I can commit sedition too.

  “It makes a record,” she said. “A copy. A person’s memories and their patterns of thought. We call it an imago-machine, because it makes an imago, a version of the person that outlives their body. His is probably useless now. He’s dead, and it’s been recording brain decay for three months.”

  “If it wasn’t useless,”
Three Seagrass said carefully, “what would you do with it?”

  “I wouldn’t do anything. I’m not a neurosurgeon. Or an ixplanatl of any kind. But if I was, I’d put the imago inside someone, and nothing Yskandr had learned in the last fifteen years would ever be lost.”

  “That’s obscene,” Twelve Azalea said. “A dead person taking over the body of a living one. No wonder you eat your corpses—”

  “Try not to be insulting,” Mahit snapped. “It’s not a replacement. It’s a combination. There aren’t that many of us on Lsel Station. We have our own ways of preserving what we know.”

  Three Seagrass had come around the table and now she laid two fingers on the outside of Mahit’s wrist. The touch felt shockingly invasive. “Do you have one?” she asked.

  “Truth pact time is over, Three Seagrass,” Mahit said. “Guess. Would my people send me to the Jewel of the World without one?”

  “I could present convincing arguments for both options.”

  “That’s what you’re for, aren’t you? Both of you.” Mahit knew she should stop talking—emotional outbursts weren’t appropriate in Teixcalaanli culture and were a sign of immaturity in her own—and yet she wasn’t stopping. All the helpful, mitigating voices she ought to have had with her were silent anyhow. “You asekretim. Convincing arguments and oratory and truth pacts.”

  “Yes,” said Three Seagrass. “That’s what we’re for. And information extraction, and getting our charges out of unfortunate or incriminating situations. Which this is becoming. Are we done here, Petal? Did you get what you wanted?”

  “Part of it,” said Twelve Azalea.

  “Good enough. Let’s go back to your quarters, Mahit.”

  She was being gentle, which was … There was no part of that which was good. Mahit took her wrist back, stepped away from her. “Don’t you want to extract more information?”

  “Yes, of course,” Three Seagrass said, as if saying so didn’t matter. “But I’ve also got professional integrity.”