A Desolation Called Peace
Page 25
[begin security code APOLUNE] Wreath: other hands here than those of the Emperor are at work: the information I coded Hyacinth is only half of what I suspect. Watch for patterns, like you taught me. There are barbarian minds shaping Teixcalaanli policy, and we don’t know what processes they have set in motion. Such things are outside our capacity to easily grasp. The story squirms away and takes incomprehensible forms. Prepare our Minister for rapid and decisive action. I will maintain contact. I remain, as ever, your Ascent. [end security code APOLUNE]
—encrypted message received by the Third Undersecretary of the Ministry of War, Eleven Laurel, from the Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise of the Twenty-Fourth Legion, 95.1.1–19A
* * *
Here’s a question for you, Tarats: how many other imago-lines might our esteemed colleague have compromised? Are we prepared to suffer a plague of Dzmares, right now, while Teixcalaan fights a war of your making over our heads and we wait to see if the Dzmare we are plagued with is of any use at all? Tell me that. And if you can reassure me that I can requisition a new set of pilot imago-lines to replace the ones I am losing, day by day, without worrying about their integrity—well, then, I imagine I’ll owe you a drink.
And I don’t usually owe people drinks.
—private message, handwritten and hand-delivered from the Councilor for the Pilots to the Councilor for the Miners, 95.1.1–19A (Teixcalaanli reckoning)
NINE Hibiscus was on the bridge when the enemy sent their ships close enough to see. There was that, at least. She hadn’t needed to be fetched. When the slick grey three-wheeled rings—two of them, a large ship and a small one—appeared out of the black in a shimmer of discontinuity, just at the farthest edge of Weight for the Wheel’s visual range, she was right there, as shocked as anyone else. They hadn’t come so close before. Which meant they could have come this close all along, and hadn’t—an idea that made her skin crawl even as she held up a hand, arresting, and said, “Hold.”
They’d been playing the envoy’s message on open channels for seven hours, bouncing it off the back side of Peloa-2 and deeper into the alien-controlled area of the sector. Even so, Nine Hibiscus was surprised by having someone answer. If this was an answer, and not an attack force, right here at the heart of her Fleet, as sudden as a shockstick pressed abruptly behind the ear in the dark.
Two ships could mean anything: an advance scout, here to prove that they could in fact materialize right beside a Teixcalaanli Eternal-class warship like Weight for the Wheel without anyone noticing their approach; or a diplomat and an escort, one big and one small; or even an attack strike, if they had some weapon even more destructive than the corrosive semiliquid net that had eaten her Shard pilot. Two ships was not enough information.
“Captain,” said Five Thistle, and then corrected himself hastily. “Yaotlek, they are still coming closer, I have our energy cannons locked on their vector of approach.”
They were all staring at the ring-ships, all her soldiers, all her officers, as if their own eyes could make the ships legible just by seeing. The weight of human attention on an inhuman problem. Nine Hibiscus’s heart thrummed, adrenaline-shimmer. Her chief weapons officer had just slipped and forgotten her rank, called her by the name he’d always known her by, when their enemies had been understandable, manipulable, predictable.
Every last person on this bridge was waiting for her to make a decision. Attack, or hold. Hope that the Information Ministry’s agents were as clever as they seemed, and that no matter how alien and vicious, these aliens were people that could be spoken with—or obliterate them before they could get any closer. She couldn’t stop thinking about the Shard that she’d had shot down. How that pilot had begged to die before she was eaten. How every other Shard pilot she could hear had begged with her, their biofeedback full of terror and blanked-out shock. The echoes of that shock, still rebounding.
And yet. And yet, she’d called for a special envoy. She’d gone to Information, rather than to the Third Palm, who had never liked her methodology with humans, let alone what she might want to do with aliens. Information had prepared a message. And after that message was sent, something had changed.
“Hold,” she repeated. “Wait for my signal. Two Foam, are you recording on all open channels?”
“Yes,” Two Foam said. “Nothing yet but Fleet unencrypted chatter and our outgoing alien message—I’ve got it muted on pickup in here to preserve our ears, but it’s loud as you want outside.”
“Tell me if it changes,” Nine Hibiscus said. “The instant, if it changes. Five Thistle, stay on that vector and wait for me.”
The ring-ships spun. They were closer. Nine Hibiscus noticed how tight and shallow her breathing had become, and inhaled through her nose, out her mouth, old calming exercises from her first year as a Fleet cadet. They hadn’t worked very well for her then and didn’t work very well now. The smaller ring-ship had shifted in front of the larger one. They spun in different directions, like the shells of electrons around an atomic core, a probabilistic cloud, difficult to see. The smaller one was darker. There was a red tinge to its grey-slick metal. Blood on a deck floor that hadn’t been cleaned properly. A stain.
Almost, she dropped her hand and told Five Thistle to fire. Almost.
“I have something,” said Two Foam. “They’re playing our message back at us, yaotlek. It took me a minute to understand—it’s the same message as we sent, so I didn’t realize—but it’s amplified, like a sine wave reinforcing. Louder.”
Bleeding stars, but I hope the envoy knew what she was saying when she sent that, Nine Hibiscus thought, because they’re saying it too. Only one way to find out, though.
“Get the Reflective Prism on the comm,” she said, and was reassured at the serene command in her own voice. Reflective Prism was the nearest of the Tenth Legion warships to her own position, and she needed someone within the arc of audio interference of the ring-ships. “Tell Captain Twelve Caesura or his comms officer to play the envoy’s message too. Aim at the enemy. Let’s let them know we hear them. And for fuck’s sake, if anyone fires a weapon, I will space them.”
“Understood, yaotlek,” Two Foam said, her hands busy in the air, her eyes already tracking back and forth in micromovements, fast enough that she looked as if she was having a seizure instead of manipulating the communications universe of the Fleet that her cloudhook was projecting for her. The entire bridge felt like an extension of Nine Hibiscus’s own skin, that shimmering intensity which was her people paying attention to her, hanging on every word, waiting for her to show them the way out of this impossible situation just like she’d done in so many impossible situations before.
Right now she thought she might manage it. Might. Sunfire and space willing, she might just manage it. If she kept moving. Which meant she needed to keep the aliens talking.
“—Someone get the Information people up here, now,” she added, feeling her mouth stretch into a barbarian parody of a smile. “Go. Go. Eventually we’re going to need to say something else than what we’ve got, and I can’t make those noises, people. Move.”
* * *
The Kauraanian kitten didn’t like being carried in any way Three Seagrass could come up with carrying a kitten. Holding it by the scruff of its neck seemed rude, especially since she didn’t exactly know when she was going to get to put it down, and cradling it like it was a human infant made it puncture her with all of its many, many claws.
Eventually, she stopped carrying it and let it sit on her shoulder instead, which it seemed to enjoy. There was still some puncturing involved, but it was less malicious and more stability-oriented. She still had no idea what to do with it. There was absolutely no way she could bring it to the room she was supposed to share with Mahit, and she didn’t want to go there anyway. Not yet. Maybe not at all.
In the City, this would be when she’d find herself a decent bar and an interesting stranger to amuse herself with for a while. Maybe there were bars and strangers on Fleet ships
. (There would absolutely be strangers. Possibly a stranger would like a Kauraanian kitten. Three Seagrass could hold out hope!) She asked her cloudhook to direct her to the nearest location that was both recreational and not a fitness and training facility (she could think of nothing she wanted to do less than exercise, stars), and followed where it led her.
Which … wasn’t a bar. Exactly.
It probably would have been a bar, if it wasn’t on a Fleet ship. There were tables, and music—something Three Seagrass dimly remembered had been popular last winter, with a lot of synthesizers in—and dimmer lighting than in the corridors, and lots of strangers, and even some food that wouldn’t have been out of place in a bar: fried noodles, maize kernels soaked in spices and vinegar, cassava chips. What there wasn’t was alcohol.
No getting drunk on your off-shift, apparently. Not on the Fleet’s credit chip, at least.
Everyone was sober, which meant everyone turned to look at her when she walked in. It was fairly gratifying. Three Seagrass could imagine the picture she made: Information envoy in coral-orange, the brightest uniform in this sea of Fleet grey-and-gold, with a kitten on her shoulder. An absurd picture. Possibly a threateningly absurd one.
“Hi,” she said, brightly. “What kind of food is the best here? For me, and also for this—creature.”
There was a resounding silence. Three Seagrass waited for it to shatter. It always did. Curiosity and interest would win every time, if she was just patient enough and expressed sufficient bravado.
Still, the ten seconds of détente were excruciating. Then, a woman who had been sitting alone along the not-a-bar—she was wearing the rank sigils of a cuecuelihui, a specialist officer of some kind—said, “Hot-fried noodle cake. Why have you got a cat, Envoy?” and the whole room relaxed.
“The adjutant gave it to me,” said Three Seagrass, and took the empty seat beside the cuecuelihui. “Do you want it? It seems very friendly. If—sharp, on the ends.”
“No,” said the cuecuelihui, “I definitely don’t want a Kauraanian kitten,” and held out her arms for it.
Three Seagrass felt a sharp pang of recognition: this person knew exactly how to take control of a conversation, combine surprise and confusion and generosity to engender rapid trust. How nice! Someone trained in basic interrogation! Like finding a lost asekreta sibling on a Fleet ship. She coaxed the kitten off her shoulder and let it settle on the cuecuelihui’s knee, where it transformed itself into an ovoid of contently vibrating black fur and claws.
“I’m Three Seagrass,” she said, once freed of animalian encumbrances. “Are you serious about the noodle cake, or are you trying to make the Information spook look bad via capsaicin poisoning?”
“I’m serious about the noodle cake, unless you’re especially sensitive to capsaicin poisoning, Envoy.” The cuecuelihui sketched a bow over her fingertips without dislodging the kitten. “Fourteen Spike, of the scout-gunner Knifepoint’s Ninth Blooming, Tenth Legion. We don’t poison spooks unless necessary.”
Knifepoint’s Ninth Blooming was the ship which had brought back the transmission of hideous alien noises. Maybe Three Seagrass had picked the right recreation area after all, even if there wasn’t any alcohol to be served. She said, “Thank you,” in two formality-modes higher than what she’d been using before, and watched Fourteen Spike figure out why she was being thanked. It didn’t take that long. Definitely a trained negotiator. A spy, even! A Fleet spy, but that hardly mattered.
“You’re using that recording,” said Fourteen Spike. “The one Knifepoint took before we got chased back here. Good fucking luck, Envoy. I speak five languages and that stuff isn’t language.”
Three Seagrass nodded. “I’ve noticed,” she said. “But Information makes a habit of speaking to the unspeakable, so one has to try, no?”
“Better you than us.”
“Five languages. What do you use those for on a scout-gunner?”
There was an art to this. Like playing a amalitzli game against a new opponent, gauging skill and speed, but all with words. It was what Three Seagrass was for. It was—so much easier than thinking about Mahit Dzmare.
Fourteen Spike shrugged, a fractional amused motion, and said, “Talking. We do that. Even in the Fleet. It isn’t reserved for spooks.” She had begun petting the Kauraanian kitten, and it purred like it wanted to be a starship engine when it grew up.
“Oh, I’ve heard that the Third Palm of the Fleet is very good at talking,” Three Seagrass said, matching that shrug exactly—and was surprised, delightedly surprised, when Fourteen Spike’s face went still and quiet and cold.
“Not just the Third Palm,” she said.
“Forgive my ignorance,” Three Seagrass told her, and left her the opening to explain herself. She suspected Fourteen Spike wouldn’t be able to resist. She’d touched some nerve, some place of pride at the core of her, and she’d defend it, and Three Seagrass would know something new.
“We’re the Tenth Legion, not Third Palmers,” said Fourteen Spike. “We don’t need political officers to get our missions done, if you understand me. Envoy.”
Unspoken but obvious: We don’t need Information, either. And more importantly: the Tenth Legion under Nine Hibiscus really, really didn’t like being ordered around by the Third Palm of the Ministry of War.
Which was run by Eleven Laurel, he of the have you ever spoken to him interrogation in the spaceport bar back in Inmost Province. He whom the Emperor Herself was worried about. Fascinating.
“Oh, I think I have an idea,” said Three Seagrass. “Forgive the insinuation. We are, of course, only the Information Ministry, and can’t possibly know everything.” She smiled, deliberately wide-eyed. “I think I’d like that noodle cake. And if you don’t mind—and it isn’t classified, naturally—I’d love to hear more about your missions.”
If she played this right, she could stay here all night being useful, and not have to talk to Mahit at all until the morning. It made her feel guilty and faintly ill—she didn’t avoid problems, she really didn’t—but right now, a not-bar with a useful Fleet contact was just so very much easier. Than everything.
* * *
Mahit lay flat on her back in the dark and tried to feel the ship around her, the great engine of it, the hum of live machinery. Her face was a foot from the ceiling. After she’d finished reading The Perilous Frontier! there had really been nothing else to do but go to bed. She’d taken the higher bunk, both out of deference to Three Seagrass if she ever came back to their assigned quarters (it was miserable climbing a bunk-ladder in the dark, everyone knew that), and out of wanting what comfort she could get from enclosure. If she ignored the drop to her right side, the distance to the floor, she could be inside her own sleep-pod on Lsel, safe.
Not that she’d been safe there. But the habits of memory created all kinds of false harbors. Narrow, confined spaces to sleep in, suspended inside the complex shell of metal that was a Station—or a ship, even a Teixcalaanli one—were correct. They felt right. She reached up and brushed the ceiling with her fingertips—and found them numb still, waking to shimmering prickles when they touched its surface.
Neuropathy. It happened more often now. Or—it surprised her more often now, how it could sneak in even when she wasn’t trying to work with her imago. With either version of her imago. She was going to have to learn to live with it, wasn’t she. As a permanent part of herself.
A sensation of sorrow, from very far off: not even a thought, but an emotional echo. How she herself wanted to cry, and didn’t want to want to, and felt also that Yskandr was—sorry, wished that there was an otherwise life for them, where this wasn’t happening—
It is very late at night, and I am on a Teixcalaanli warship, and I have fought so badly with my friend that she won’t come back to a room I am in. Also I am an exile twice over, once from my home and once from Teixcalaan, which could never have been my home. And my hands hurt. I have every ri
ght to wallow.
How are we not?
Anywhere in all the world, in the language they both so habitually spoke in the privacy of their mind—the language which was neither of their own, but was the Empire’s. Mahit couldn’t seem to find a way to stop. It was the language they both thought in best.
I didn’t buy us anything. I made myself a spy, that’s all. Someone else has my eyes: Darj Tarats sees through me. No promises of any reward. And he’ll want worse than spywork if I tell him about the conflict between the yaotlek and Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise. There’s his sabotage. Turn them against each other fully, paralyze this Fleet, make Nineteen Adze have to commit more legions to the war, ones that aren’t at each other’s throats. It wouldn’t be that difficult. Sixteen Moonrise is looking for levers, and I’m a likely one. She left the rest of it alone: she didn’t want to talk about Three Seagrass with Yskandr any more than she wanted to talk about Three Seagrass with Sixteen Moonrise. Which probably meant she didn’t want to think about Three Seagrass, considering that Yskandr was right here inside her head with her.
he said, dry and distant.
Is that how you justified not returning to Lsel? If you couldn’t report, you remained your own person? How fragile a peace that is, Yskandr. And here you said we weren’t in exile.
He was wrong about that, Mahit thought, exile happened in the heart and the mind long before it happened to the body that moved in space, across borders—and thinking this, thinking no, felt the neuropathic pain spike in her hands, right down the ulnar nerve through the elbow, like a punishment. Except it hurt him, too, it hurt them, they were one person, and the neurological damage from Aknel Amnardbat’s sabotage was neither of their faults. Even if it spiked when she found one of the jagged edges between their integration.