“If it helps,” said Mahit, “it isn’t in my portfolio of plausible scenarios I might encounter as a foreign ambassador, either.”
Three Seagrass pressed her palm over her face and exhaled, deliberate and forced. Stifled snickering still escaped from between her fingers. “… no,” she said, “I can’t imagine it would be.”
“If we can’t leave,” Twelve Azalea said, “how are we going to get the Ambassador to the Emperor? Even just across the palace grounds, even if that riot doesn’t spill over. In the best-case scenario.”
And will there still be an emperor for me to get to, once we’re there? Mahit thought, and then had to bite the inside of her cheek against a rush of grief that mostly wasn’t hers; it was Yskandr who felt that impending loss like heartbreak, not her. Not—entirely her. (And yet she remembered the pressure of Six Direction’s hands across her wrists and hoped—useless, biochemical ache in her sternum—that His Brilliance would somehow survive this insurrection, even if he wouldn’t survive much longer than it.)
But who else could she bargain with?
“What if we aren’t trying to get to His Brilliance,” she said. “What if we were trying to get the attention of someone who could get us to him?”
“From inside this conference room,” said Twelve Azalea skeptically, gesturing toward the carafe of coffee. “You know they’re monitoring our cloudhooks, and you don’t even have one—”
“Yes,” Mahit snapped, “I am still aware that I am not a citizen of Teixcalaan, I have not forgotten even once, you don’t have to remind me.”
“That wasn’t what I meant—”
Mahit exhaled hard enough that she could feel it in her surgical site. “No. But it is what you said.”
Three Seagrass had taken her hands away from her face, and the expression which was growing there was one that Mahit had seen before: it was Three Seagrass focusing inward, preparing to bend the universe around her will, because all other options were untenable. It was the expression she’d worn when they’d eaten ice cream in the park, before invading the Judiciary. The expression she’d worn in Nineteen Adze’s front office, determined to walk off physical insult and trauma.
“There are all kinds of things a person can do with a cloudhook, no matter how monitored,” she said. “Mahit—whose attention do you want?”
There was really only one answer to that question. “Her Excellency the ezuazuacat Nineteen Adze,” said Mahit. “Her rank is the same as Thirty Larkspur’s, which means that she probably can walk right in here the same as he did—and I think she still likes me.”
She liked you very much, and she saved my life, Mahit thought. Let’s find out why, shall we?
“All right. Nineteen Adze, she who terrifies me even after all of the other terrifying events currently taking place,” said Three Seagrass. She’d become very cheerful, in the time between having had an idea—whatever that idea would turn out to be—and announcing it. Mahit understood that, too. The power of having any sort of plan, no matter how absurd or impossible. And weren’t all three of them rather emotionally labile, just recently? “For Her Excellency—Mahit, how do you feel about writing some very pointed poetic verse? And posting it on the open newsfeeds.”
“And you said I read too many political romances,” Twelve Azalea muttered.
“I’m not going to leaflet Palace-East to announce my endless love for the Third Judiciary Under-Minister,” Three Seagrass said, her eyes sparkling. “That would be a political romance. This is a known poet posting her newest work in response to current events. With an encoded statement in it.”
“Do you often post poems on open newsfeeds?” Mahit asked, fascinated.
“It’s a little gauche,” said Three Seagrass, “but these are difficult times, and that exquisitely boring Fourteen Spire won the imperial oration contest last week. Clearly anyone can be gauche, and be feted in public.”
“And you think that Nineteen Adze will, what, come get us, if we appeal to her in verse?” It was too clever to be practical; it was all Teixcalaanli symbolic logic and Mahit didn’t trust it.
“I don’t know what she’ll do,” said Three Seagrass. “But I know she’ll read it, and then she’ll know where we are, and what we need. You saw how her staff monitors the newsfeeds—Nineteen Adze pays attention, that’s the first thing in her Ministry briefing file.”
Mahit caught her eyes, shoving away an entirely inappropriate impulse to reach out for her. “Three Seagrass,” she said, knowing she needed to find out how far Three Seagrass was prepared to go for her, if they set out down this trajectory, “how wide is the Teixcalaanli definition of ‘we’? You don’t even know what I need to tell His Brilliance. Are we a ‘we,’ here?”
“I’m your liaison, Mahit,” Three Seagrass said. She almost sounded hurt. “Haven’t I made that clear enough?”
“This is more than you opening doors for me,” Mahit told her. “This is my goals in your words, on the public newsfeeds, in the public memory of Teixcalaan, forever.”
“Sometimes I swear you could be one of us,” Three Seagrass said, quite softly. She smiled a tremulous but creditable Stationer-smile, all her teeth visible. “Now, help me write this, won’t you? I know you have at least a rudimentary sense of scansion, and we need to get this done before Thirty Larkspur’s man-on-the-spot remembers we have cloudhooks.” Then she did reach out to touch Mahit, her fingertips like a ghost, brushing over her cheekbone. Mahit shivered helplessly, and went very still: like she was waiting for a blow.
“Reed,” Twelve Azalea said, theatrically scandalized, “flirt on your own time.”
Mahit wished she wasn’t pale enough that blushing was visible on her cheeks; telltale scarlet flushes, and the heat burning there. “We’re not,” she said. “Flirting. We’re discussing strategies—”
“We’re writing poetry,” Three Seagrass said, and managed, by maintaining an expression of perfect serenity, to make the activity sound profoundly intimate.
* * *
Mahit had written poetry in Teixcalaanli before: she’d written it alone in her capsule room on Lsel, scribbling in notebooks at age seventeen, pretending she could imitate Pseudo-Thirteen River or One Skyhook or any of the other great poets; framing her own unformed ideas in language that didn’t belong to her twice over: she was too barbarian, and too young. Now, sitting with her head bent next to Three Seagrass’s, adjusting scansion and carefully selecting which classical allusions to foreground, she thought: Poetry is for the desperate, and for people who have grown old enough to have something to say.
Grown old enough, or lived through enough incomprehensible experiences. Perhaps she was old enough for poetry now: she had three lives inside her, and a death. When she wasn’t careful she remembered that death too much, her breath coming shorter and shorter until she reminded Yskandr that he was neither dying now nor in charge of her autonomic nervous system.
Three Seagrass, for her part, composed verse like putting on a tailored suit jacket—a process she knew how to make look good, that made her look good in return. Her mental library of glyphs and allusions was vast, and Mahit envied it viciously: if only she’d been raised here, had spent her whole life immersed, she could turn phrases from pedestrian to resonant in a minute’s work, too.
The poem they’d come up with was not long. It couldn’t be—it needed to move quickly through the open newsfeeds, be quotable and express itself clearly: clearly to the populace, and then in a more nuanced, layered fashion to Nineteen Adze and her staff. Mahit ha
d begun it with an image she knew Five Agate would recognize: Five Agate had been there. And Five Agate, clever and loyal and trained in interpretation, would know how desperate Mahit truly was—and tell her ezuazuacat everything.
In the soft hands of a child
even a map of the stars can withstand
forces that pull and crack. Gravity persists.
Continuity persists: uncalloused fingers walk orbital paths, but I am drowning
in a sea of flowers; in violet foam, in the fog of war—
Two Cartograph, in the library at dawn with his mother, playing with a map of a star system. The first signal: You know who I am, Five Agate: I am Mahit Dzmare, who understood your love for your son, and for your mistress. The second: I am under threat, and the threat is from Thirty Larkspur: flowers, violet foam.
“Fog of war” was hardly an allusion. That was more of an inevitable and presently occurring truth, and besides, it fit Three Seagrass’s scansion scheme.
The rest of it was brief: an ekphrasis of the Information Ministry building, all of its architecture described in detail, imagined with garlands of larkspurs thrown over it like a funeral—that was an allusion to a section of The Buildings—to tell Nineteen Adze where they were; and then a promise, in a single couplet:
Released, my tongue will speak visions.
Released, I am a spear in the hands of the sun.
Come rescue us, Nineteen Adze. Come rescue us, and help us preserve the sun-spear throne in its correct and proper orbit.
Mahit looked over the poem one last time. It wasn’t bad. To her eyes—and she knew she was untrained—it looked good, looked effective and elegant. “Send it,” she said to Three Seagrass. “I don’t think we’re going to do better in this limited amount of time.”
“I’d send it now,” Twelve Azalea added. “I’ve been watching the newsfeeds while you’ve been working. This is getting very bad, very quickly—One Lightning’s legions are shooting at the customs officials, claiming that the people need them in the City proper, to quell the rioting. I don’t know who is going to stop them—how do we stop a legion? Our legions are unstoppable.”
“It’s sent,” Three Seagrass said. “Under my byline, on every open feed I can find, and a few of the closed ones—the poetry circles, one of the Information Ministry internal memo feeds—”
“Is that a good idea?” Mahit asked. “Thirty Larkspur’s people are reading that one, I’m almost sure.”
“Thirty Larkspur’s people will be monitoring our cloudhooks for any messages, if they’re even the slightest bit good at their jobs,” Three Seagrass said. “I would have confiscated them first thing.”
“How useful that you’re on our side and not theirs, then,” Mahit told her, and found herself smiling despite everything.
“How long do you think we have?” Twelve Azalea asked.
“Before the legions storm the palace or before we no longer have a broadcast platform?” Three Seagrass inquired, all too cheerfully. “Stop watching the news, Petal, and come see how this poem spreads while I’ve still got access.”
She unhooked her cloudhook from its customary position over her right eye and put it on the conference table in front of them, changing its settings so that it acted as a very small infoscreen projector. Mahit watched the poem they’d written spread through the information network of Teixcalaan—shared from cloudhook to cloudhook, reposted and recontextualized, like watching ink spreading in water.
“How much longer?” she asked softly.
“I’d guess three minutes—this is moving quickly—” Three Seagrass said, and then the door of the conference room flew open with a bang. Six Helicopter stood there, and behind him were two more people—but his companions were dressed in Information Ministry cream and orange. Three Seagrass bowed over her fingertips at them.
“How lovely to see you, Three Lamplight, Eight Penknife,” she said. “How is your afternoon of being suborned by a non-ministry politician going?”
Helplessly, Mahit broke into laughter, even as Three Lamplight and Eight Penknife wordlessly took both Twelve Azalea’s and Three Seagrass’s cloudhooks and handed them to Six Helicopter.
“You realize,” he was saying, “that what you just did—sending unauthorized political poetry on the public feeds—might be construed as treasonous? Particularly considering where you were picked up and how Belltown Six is full of anti-imperial protestors this morning, not to mention the rest of the mess in the City?”
“Take it up with the Judiciary,” said Twelve Azalea. Mahit was proud of him. They were all going to die, or … something and yet—they were a we. By whatever language’s definition.
“I have written political poetry appropriate to the current moment of my experience,” said Three Seagrass. “If that’s treason, take it up with our two thousand years of canon. I’m sure you’ll find more treason there.”
Six Helicopter tried not to sputter; failed. With his hands full of cloudhooks, he couldn’t gesture properly, but Mahit could see in the tension of his shoulders and his jaw how much he wanted to wave his hands, or shake Three Seagrass, who sat serene, with her chin cupped in her palms, elbows on the table.
“I am arresting you,” he said finally. “I am … directing these Information Ministry officials to detain you, as acting representative of acting Minister Thirty Larkspur.”
“Bloody stars,” Twelve Azalea said, ignoring Six Helicopter in favor of Three Lamplight, who had visibly winced. “Are you two really going to do that?”
“If you attempt to leave you’ll be stopped,” Three Lamplight said. “That much I guarantee.”
Eight Penknife added, “And your privileges as asekretim are revoked until they might be reviewed by whoever becomes Minister next—”
“I’m terribly disappointed in you, Eight Penknife,” said Three Seagrass with an exquisite little sigh. “You were always such a partisan of Two Rosewood’s policies—”
“Enough,” Six Helicopter snapped. “We have work to do. You do not. Asekretim. Ambassador.” He turned smartly on his heel and left, his Information Ministry loyalists following at his heels. They were alone in the conference room again, with nothing to do, nothing to see—blinded without the cloudhooks and their newsfeeds, confined in windowless fluorescent lighting. Even the carafe of coffee was empty.
Mahit looked at Three Seagrass, and at Twelve Azalea, one on either side of her. “And now,” she said, with far more confidence than she felt, “we wait.”
* * *
The waiting was not pleasant. Mahit had the sense of being inside a sealed capsule, protected from radiation and decay, but tumbling over and over in free space—with no guarantee that there would be an outside world to come back to once the capsule was cracked open. There was nothing to see in the Information Ministry’s conference room; no noise from outside, no shouting of soldiers or marching of booted legionary feet. No flooded City streets glittering with the helmets of the Sunlit or a carpet of purple flowers …
Three Seagrass had put her head down on the folded platform of her forearms on the table. Mahit didn’t know if she was napping, or just trying to not think. Either way, she envied her. Not thinking was the province of other people. Not thinking was impossible, and she rather wanted to claw her own skin off. She kept imagining all of the reasons that Nineteen Adze, ezuazuacat or not, wouldn’t challenge Thirty Larkspur for the sake of one Lsel ambassador. The worst of those possibilities was that she and Thirty Larkspur were already allies and she’d merely go along with his decisions about the Information Ministry. The second worst would be if Nineteen Adze had weighed the balance of power, seen that challenging Thirty Larkspur had no chance of success, and opted to stay quiet and ride out the coup, no matter who won …
She probably wouldn’t do that second thing. It didn’t seem like her. That certainty bubbled up in Mahit like a warm tide: not entirely hers, but a composite of Yskandr’s memories and her own, making an evaluation.
“I feel like s
omeone’s cut off my hands,” Twelve Azalea said, into the dull silence. “I keep reaching for the newsfeeds and they’re not there, there’s only me, not the whole Empire ready at a touch.”
We’re never alone, Mahit thought. You and I. Never again in this life.
If there’s a Teixcalaanli ambassador after me.
Mahit hoped, a small leaden heated ball in the pit of her stomach, that it would be. That something of this week, of her, of her and Yskandr together, would not go to waste. That what she knew, now—the external threat to Teixcalaan that she carried in her mind like her very own poison flower, the coordinates of massing alien ships—enough of an external threat to cancel any war of annexation—that it would not die with her and Yskandr. Be silenced with her and Yskandr.
Nevertheless she hated the waiting. She could so easily imagine what was going on outside—a hundred different versions of it, assembled from epic poetry and terrible film and the contraband documentary footage of Teixcalaanli annexation wars on planets on the edge of known space. It wouldn’t be different here in the heart of the Empire, once they started shooting. It wouldn’t be different at all. That was the problem. Empire was empire—the part that seduced and the part that clamped down, jaws like a vise, and shook a planet until its neck was broken and it died.
* * *
The first Mahit knew of the end of that long terrible abeyance of time, drifting formless in the blank, unchanging light of the conference room, was a commotion down the hallway—shouting voices, the sound of a door slamming. A pause, and then a great clatter, as if everything on a desk had been swept onto the floor.
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