A Memory Called Empire

by Arkady Martine

  Nineteen Adze had that same expression as she’d had when Mahit had wished aloud for a joyous reunion with her predecessor back when they’d all stood in the morgue around what was left of Yskandr. That twist of emotion that Mahit couldn’t parse. “The asekreta is right. Such a citizen is remembered as long as sacrifices are named in sun temples. You should attend a service, Mahit, and hear the litany of names. It’d be a cultural experience.” She settled back onto the couch. “All aside from its memorial applications, dying in a temple is not in fashion. It is an extreme response to perceived threat.”

  “Domestic terrorism is perceived threat,” Three Seagrass said.

  “So are rumors of impending war,” said Nineteen Adze.

  Three Seagrass nodded. “The situation in Odile—the troop movements lately—everyone knows someone in the fleet, and everyone in the fleet knows the fleet is mobilizing.”

  “Even so,” Mahit interjected, thinking again Odile, thinking the Empire is less stable than it seems, “I didn’t know you held One Lightning’s shouting partisans in such high esteem—they can’t force the yaotlek to begin a war, just wish he’d already had one to celebrate.” When Nineteen Adze nodded to her, acknowledging the point, she was savagely pleased—pleased, and then angry at herself for being pleased. Nineteen Adze was using her; was using the both of them to think through the politics aloud. They weren’t her retinue.

  They were her guests. Her hostages. And how many stories, in Teixcalaanli literature, described the fate of children traded to one court or another before the Empire, one system to another within the Empire, hostages and guests both, made Teixcalaanli enough and then discarded when it was politically expedient. Enough that Mahit should stop trying to impress the ezuazuacat. There wasn’t a point. There was the narrative which said she was being used—

  Three Seagrass had no such qualms. “A blood death in a temple was how we used to ensure the success of a war, Mahit,” she said. “One death from every regiment, hand-selected by the yaotlek. No one does it anymore. Not for hundreds of years. It’s terribly selfish, for one citizen to take away the responsibility of calling on the favor of the stars from everyone else.”

  “Selfish” wasn’t how Mahit would have described it. She’d say “barbaric,” if she was speaking a language where that would be an intelligible sequence of words to describe a Teixcalaanli religious practice.

  “What I’d like to know,” she said, “is where the war will be, considering those troop movements that Three Seagrass mentioned.” Some of those troop movements were detailed in those unsigned-but-sealed documents that had been in her initial pile of infofiche: requests to move Teixcalaanli warships through the Lsel jumpgates, on the way to somewhere.

  “You’re not alone in wondering,” said Nineteen Adze. “His Brilliance has been remarkably closemouthed about his current thinking on that matter.” She looked pointedly at Three Seagrass, as if she was a synecdoche for all of the secrets held by the Information Ministry, and might have an opinion.

  “Your Excellency, even if I knew where His Brilliance had decided Teixcalaan was next looking to expand, I couldn’t say. I’m an asekreta.”

  Nineteen Adze spread her hands wide, one palm-up, one palm-down, like a set of scales. “But the Empire expands. First principles, asekreta, not to mention evidence. So there is a where.”

  “There is always a where, Your Excellency.”

  A where and a why now. Mahit thought she knew the why now—the uncertainty around Six Direction’s succession. Three equal associated-heirs, each with their own agenda—and one a child who was too young to have an agenda—was no stable mode of government. Something would have to bend; Thirty Larkspur or Eight Loop would emerge with the chief share of authority, or declare themselves regent for the ninety-percent clone, or—

  Or One Lightning would declare himself Emperor by right of conquest and public acclamation.

  (And somewhere in the midst of it, Yskandr had tried to intervene—she knew him too well to think he could have left this alone. She was turning it over and over, like tumbling a stone inside her mouth, and Yskandr was more political than she was. More political and more dead. The inheritor of an imago-line was supposed to learn from her predecessor’s mistakes.)

  “Perhaps we’ll find out at the banquet tomorrow,” Mahit said.

  “We’ll find out something,” Three Seagrass replied, with some of that same brittle delight Mahit had heard in her voice earlier. “And as long as I don’t actually get you blown up this time—”

  Nineteen Adze laughed. “Of course you both are attending.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” said Three Seagrass. “The Ambassador was invited. And I wouldn’t miss one.”

  “Certainly not. Are you presenting a composition?”

  “My work is in no way the equal of someone like Two Calendar,” Three Seagrass said, theatrically self-deprecating in her comparison to the poet whose work was providing the mail decryption cipher this month, “and more importantly I’m not at the banquet as an orator, but as Mahit’s cultural liaison.”

  “The sacrifices work asks of us,” said Nineteen Adze. Mahit couldn’t tell if she was joking.

  “Will we see you there?” Three Seagrass inquired.

  “Naturally. You both can join me on the walk to Palace-Earth tomorrow evening.”

  When Mahit, envisioning the political statement that entering the banquet in Nineteen Adze’s company would make, opened her mouth to protest, Nineteen Adze gestured to cut her off and said, “Ambassador, the City is quite disturbed. I have plenty of guest space. Did you really think you would be leaving?”

  INTERLUDE

  AGAIN, the vast reach of space: the void and the pinpoint brilliantine stars. Ignore the map; leave it behind. No maps are adequate for what has happened here, at the Anhamemat Gate in Lsel Station’s sector of space. Surrounding the discontinuity which marks the existence of the jumpgate—that small stretch of unseeable space, the place the eye and the instrumentation glance off of—there is wreckage. Some ships have died here, along with their pilots. Some ships have been killed here.

  The thing which has killed them is vast, and shaped like a wheel within a wheel within a wheel; it has tripartite spin and a sleek dark grey metallic sheen, and a sort of intelligence. Enough for hunger, at least. That the dead ships attest to: hunger and violence. What they do not attest to is an intelligence that can be spoken to or negotiated with. Not yet. As of yet, what Lsel Station has learned from the predator beyond the Anhamemat Gate is how to run. The last ship to see it has made it all the way back to the Station, and not led it after them, either: if it hunts, it does not chase prey back to the den. It has some other purpose for the ships it kills with such impunity.

  Dekakel Onchu, Councilor for the Pilots, sits in the medical facility across from the pilot who has seen that hunting thing: he is being very thoroughly examined by a doctor, but he has the wherewithal to tell Onchu exactly what he saw, three times. She makes him repeat it three times. She will need to remember every word. She will remember also the drawn horror in her man’s face, how the shadows under his eyes have spread in deep pools. She knew this man—Pilot Jirpardz—before he was himself; she knew also the imago he carried, a brave woman named Vardza Ndun. Vardza Ndun, who had trained Onchu herself, before she died and gave her memories to the imago-line that Jirpardz inherited. Onchu is having trouble imagining anyone even partially made up of Vardza Ndun being this frightened, and that frightens her. (It frightens as well Onchu’s own imago, long-absorbed into an echo-flicker of warmth and a voice she thinks of as her better self, her better reflexes—the man who taught her not to fly but to soar through space, who knew his ship like he knew his own body, and who gave to her that skill. Now she feels him like a spasm, an ache of upset in her gut: gravity’s wrong, something is out of phase.)

  What frightens her more: just this morning she had news come to her desk from a freighter captain who had docked briefly at Lsel to refuel and take on
a cargo of molybdenum, and had just enough time to discreetly inquire if there had been any reports of large, three-ringed ships moving through this sector, like they were moving—like they were massing—in the sector he had come from, three jumpgates away.

  It isn’t just Lsel Station’s problem, Onchu thinks, her hand wrapped around Jirpardz’s hand, pressing it in thanks. The freighter captain hadn’t figured out how to talk to the three-ringed devouring ships either. But he was adamant that they weren’t human enough to talk to, and Onchu isn’t entirely sure anything’s not human enough to talk to.

  There’s only one other Councilor she can bring this information to and have hope of keeping it secret while they decide what to do with it, and she wishes it was anyone but the one she’s got. She is going to have to speak to Darj Tarats. She needs what allies she can get, even suspicious ones.

  Dekakel Onchu is not a conspiracy theorist: she is a practical, experienced woman in her sixth decade, infused with the memory of ten pilots before her, and she thinks she can manage Darj Tarats, even if he is playing games with Teixcalaan, and has been for decades. He sent the Empire an ambassador, and Aghavn had sent back—oh, an open line of trade, which had enriched Lsel—and an open line of imperial culture, flooding back through the jumpgate, which had aligned Lsel more closely with Teixcalaan than ever before. And yet, Tarats—if she gets the man alone, or tipsy and alone—has a vicious, philosophically grounded hatred of Teixcalaan. He is playing some kind of very long game, and Onchu wishes she could have nothing to do with it. But she needs an ally: the Pilots and the Miners have traditionally been allies, from the inception of the Lsel Council. Pilots, Miners, and Heritage. The representatives of the oldest imago-lines, spaceflight and resource extraction, and the representative whose purpose was to guard imago-lines and Lsel culture in general.

  Lately, Heritage under Aknel Amnardbat has realigned itself. Not philosophically, Onchu thinks, walking grimly away from the medical facilities and toward her offices, taking the longest loop around the outer edge of the station, just to feel the faint play of gravitational forces against her body. Not philosophically realigned: Amnardbat is as pro-Lsel as anyone Onchu has ever met, and fierce in her defense of it; nor has she made choices of imago-assignment which are disturbing or even unusual. What Onchu has discovered about her is worse than ideological or philosophical differences.

  Heritage should never attempt to damage what it is meant to preserve. Onchu believes this, and thus she has sent a warning to Yskandr Aghavn, if he is still capable of receiving warnings: What we have sent to you may be a weapon pointed at you.

  But right now, while Aghavn takes his own sweet time in replying, Onchu needs someone to help her deal with what is coming through the Anhamemat Gate, and if Heritage is not to be trusted, Tarats will have to do, games with empire or not.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  the heart of our stars is rotten

  don’t put weight on it

  solidarity with Odile!

  —flyer, with graphic illustration of defaced imperial war flag, collected as part of cleanup efforts after the 247.3.11 incident in Plaza Central Nine; to be destroyed along with all other seditious literature

  * * *

  […] while Teixcalaanli literature and media remain a mainstay of the 15–24 age group’s entertainment preferences, this survey also reports large numbers of Lsel youth whose primary reading material is by Lsel or Stationer authors. Particular emphasis should be placed on short fiction, both prose and graphic, distributed in pamphlets or perfect-bound codexes, both of which are easily constructed by every tier’s plastifilm printer. These pamphlets and codexes are often composed by the same people who consume them as entertainment (i.e., the 15–24 age group), without the approval or intervention of the Heritage Board for Literature …

  —report on “Trends in Media Consumption,” commissioned by Aknel Amnardbat for Heritage, excerpt

  THE fan-vaulted roof of the Palace-Earth ballroom was full of streaming lights: each rib made of some translucent material that a river of gold sparks rushed through. Teardrop chandeliers hung from the apexes, like suspended starlight. The black marble of the floor had been polished to a mirror sheen. Mahit could see her own reflection in it; she looked as if she’d been set in a starfield.

  So did everyone else. The room was as crowded with patricians as it was with lights, clustering and unclustering in conversational knots, one enormous Teixcalaanli organism that shifted only in configuration. At Mahit’s elbow, Three Seagrass—impeccable in her asekreta’s cream-and-flame suit, but deliberately dimmed to a functionary’s normalcy in the vastness of the room and the sparkle of its inhabitants—asked, “Ready?”

  Mahit nodded. She drew her shoulders back, straightened her spine; shook out the cuffs of the grey formal jacket she wore. Nineteen Adze had had someone fetch it from her luggage that morning, and wasn’t she glad that the only state secrets she had were inside her own body and not hidden in one of her suitcases. It was drab, compared to the riot of metallics and mirrors the Teixcalaanli court displayed, but at least she looked like the Ambassador from Lsel, and not anything else. Even if she had walked over with Nineteen Adze, glittering in ice-white, and her entire entourage—even if spies and rumormongers and gossips would remember that walk and not this one down into the company of the court.

  “The Ambassador Mahit Dzmare of Lsel Station!”

  Three Seagrass was loud when she wanted to be. She’d planted her feet, lifted her chin, and called out Mahit’s name like she was beginning a verse of a song—one long, clear, pitched shout. Orator, Mahit thought. She did say if it wasn’t for me she’d be reading poetry tonight. There was a gratifying and intimidating stir of interest from the massed courtiers—a shifting of attention, hundreds of cloudhook-obscured eyes settling on her. She held still just long enough for them to look—long enough for a first impression. A tall, narrow person in a barbarian’s foreign-cut trousers and coat, her reddish-brown hair cropped low-grav short, her forehead high and bare. Different from the last one of her kind: female, unknown, unpredictable. Young. Smiling, for whatever reasons an ambassador might smile.

  (Also, not dead. That was another difference.)

  Mahit moved out of the raised central doorway and descended the stairs to the floor, Three Seagrass just in front of her and to her left, just as she’d promised she’d be. She oriented herself toward the rear-center of the ballroom, the place where she knew the Emperor would appear. She had to get there by the evening’s end; and she had to make her way across all of this glittering space without committing any social or geopolitical errors that she didn’t intend to make. Somewhere the Science Minister, Ten Pearl, was waiting to have their oh-so-public meeting. Every time Mahit thought of him now she remembered that flash of Yskandr, of the two of them arguing—talking—negotiating around the nature of the City and the City’s mind, if it had one. She kept coming back to it, how the memory had flooded her, interrupted her. She couldn’t afford to have that happen again now, in front of all of the assembled court of Teixcalaan, and she also had absolutely no idea how to prevent it.

  Behind her, Nineteen Adze had framed herself in the entranceway like a pillar of white fire, and Mahit could feel the attention in the room shift. She exhaled.

  She liked parties—a certain level of extroversion and sociability was a basic part of the aptitude tests that had made her compatible with Yskandr—but she was still grateful for the chance to catch her breath, to make an approach of her own choosing. To not have all those eyes on her in case something went wrong in a more visible fashion than it had done thus far.

  “Where to?” asked Three Seagrass.

  “Introduce me to someone who writes poetry you like,” Mahit said.

  Three Seagrass laughed. “Really.”

  “Yes,” Mahit said. “And if they have an official dislike of our most-esteemed ezuazuacat hostess, so much the better.”

  “Literary merit and diversifying poli
tical options,” Three Seagrass said. “Got it. We are going to have fun, aren’t we?”

  “I am trying not to bore you,” Mahit said dryly.

  “Don’t worry. The hospital trip was sufficient to relieve me of boredom, Mahit, and this part is what I’m for.” Three Seagrass’s eyes were bright, a little glassy, like she’d drunk too much of Nineteen Adze’s stimulant tea. Mahit worried about her, and wished she had the time or energy to do something about that worry. “Come this way, I think I saw Nine Maize, and if Nine Maize is giving a new epigram tonight, Thirty Larkspur will be there to hear it. All the political diversity you could want.”

  * * *

  Three Seagrass’s friends were a mix of patricians and asekretim, some in Information Ministry cream and some in gleaming court dress that showed no particular affiliation that Mahit could decode—this was what she needed Yskandr for, even fifteen years’ worth of out-of-date fashion observation would be better than it’s all very shiny and a suspicion about anyone wearing purple flowers as a decorative motif. There were too many of them: worked in as embroidery on sashes, made of mother-of-pearl or quartz on jeweled hairpieces and lapel pins, more sophisticated versions of the one that helpful stranger in Central Nine had been wearing. They meant something. Three Seagrass wasn’t commenting on it, which didn’t tip the balance of meaning in any direction at all.

  Instead she introduced Mahit formally, and Mahit bowed over her fingertips and was an extremely proper barbarian—respectful, occasionally clever, mostly quiet in the midst of the sharp chatter of ambitious young people. She could follow about half of the allusions and quotations that slipped in and out of their speech. It made her jealous in a way she recognized as childish: the dumb longing of a noncitizen to be acknowledged as a citizen. Teixcalaan was made to instill the longing, not to satisfactorily resolve it, she knew that. And yet it wormed into her every time she bit her tongue, every time she didn’t know a word or the precise connotations of a phrase.