A Desolation Called Peace

by Arkady Martine

  “What, because they think younger members of the species are more expendable?” Three Seagrass asked. It was a very interesting idea. Except it didn’t make sense with how First and Second had looked. “If so, then their adults must be very large. The two that came down to the desert were—oh, as big or bigger than the one you were autopsying, yaotlek.”

  “So either all their soldiers are neonates…” Two Foam began, consideringly.

  “… or they have another language we still can’t hear,” Mahit finished for her. “An impenetrable language.”

  Three Seagrass didn’t think Mahit knew that she’d quoted Eleven Lathe’s Asymptote/Fragmentation just then. As far as she was aware, Mahit still had never read Three Seagrass’s favorite poet-diplomat, who had lived six years amongst the Ebrekti and come back still human, his tongue loosened and made strange, his poetry full of images Three Seagrass had never quite been able to comprehend. The motion of a swift is an impenetrable language, he’d written, attempting to describe the shifting, protean hierarchies of how the Ebrekti moved and ran, their predatory herds, the physicality of their social behavior. It was so strange to hear Mahit say the same words and not know—she was almost sure she didn’t know—the deep resonance of them. The echo of Teixcalaan’s history with what could not be understood, what was too alien to stay with long. Eleven Lathe had come home, after his long exile. And written, after he was home, in language worth remembering.

  “If their language is impenetrable,” said Nine Hibiscus, serene in command, serene in instruction, “then go around it.”

  Mahit opened her mouth, probably to explain all of the ways that that command would be next to impossible to achieve—and she wouldn’t be wrong—but it was the wrong thing to say, and Three Seagrass knew that order was as good as permission to keep trying to talk with the aliens—so she opened her mouth, too, and said, “Of course, yaotlek. We’ll be back on Peloa-2 in nine hours for the next rendezvous,” and bowed so deeply over her fingertips that her queue of braided hair brushed the floor.

  “See to it that you are,” the yaotlek said—and then, softer, went on. “Sleep first, if you can. If you both keel over of heatstroke or exhaustion, Twenty Cicada will write up the most irate report he is capable of, and I will be honor-bound to read all of it.”

  She waved one of her wide-palmed, well-fleshed hands in dismissal. Three Seagrass had to stop herself from grinning, all Stationer-like, and scaring the comms officer. They’d get their next diplomatic meeting. And they’d get some time now, before it. Time where—if she and Mahit didn’t have another stupid, horrible, miserable fight—the two of them could think through the politics of what they were trying to do.

  And whether or not it matched the politics of what Mahit’s Station wanted her to do—

  But if Three Seagrass brought that up, they would absolutely have another fight. Or—have another iteration of the same fight. No. Better to think of Mahit Dzmare quoting Eleven Lathe as if his words belonged in her clever mouth.

  It wasn’t that Three Seagrass was unaware that she was allowing herself to not acquire information about her associate’s loyalties and plans, information that might be vital, all for the sake of her own emotional peace. Really. She was extremely aware. But possibly being aware would be enough in and of itself: if she knew she was missing information, her analysis of the situation could account for its lack. She’d always managed that before. She just had to imagine Lsel Station’s influence on Mahit as a kind of negative space that still had gravity. Diplomatic dark matter.

  Her metaphors were getting more extraplanetary every hour she spent on a Fleet ship. That might be a good sign for her poetry, or just exactly the opposite. Cliché wouldn’t help her, even if it was scenically appropriate cliché.

  * * *

  After she’d sent the envoy and her politically complicated companion away—after that, and before she had a real chance to think about what they had brought her (half a negotiation and a lot of unanswered questions, not anything solid enough to put weight on), Nine Hibiscus took stock of the bridge of Weight for the Wheel, and the Fleet beyond it. She was not in a position she liked.

  Six legions. A single yaotlek’s six, far too few to fight a war with no current goals but attrition and jumpgate defense, no enemy strongholds to overwhelm. Two of those legions—the Seventeenth under Forty Oxide and the Twenty-Fourth under Sixteen Moonrise—already weakened with guerrilla-warfare casualties, ships lost at their edges to the marauding three-ringed enemy vessels. Three of those legions (the aforementioned two and the Sixth under Two Canal) chafing at her authority, being driven by politics originating somewhere in the Ministry of War, politics Nine Hibiscus couldn’t see clearly from where she was. One Information agent, who was effective but possibly compromised, and one linguist-ambassador, who was certainly a barbarian with barbarian desires, even if they coincided with the Fleet’s at this particular moment.

  Supply lines stretched over too many jumpgates.

  A funeral for an entire planet.

  An enemy that might, or might not, be open to negotiation. That might, or might not, understand the concept of negotiation.

  And a visiting Fleet Captain, that selfsame Sixteen Moonrise of too-many-recently-killed-in-action-soldiers and undermining-Nine-Hibiscus’s-authority as well as the Twenty-Fourth Legion, who was haunting her flagship like a rogue AI haunts a comms system.

  Not in a position she liked at all. At least her people here on the bridge were still hers, and doing their jobs exactly as they were supposed to.

  Eighteen Chisel, the navigation officer, had come up to stand next to her. He was almost as broad as she was: a barrel of a man, with a gut that looked soft and was nothing of the kind. The sort of soldier who was built for endurance, and who had somehow ended up being the most competent celestial mechanic she had ever encountered even after he’d spent the first fifteen years of his service as ground operations infantry. (He’d had the navigation aptitudes down pat, he’d told her once, over drinks in the officer’s mess. He’d just wanted to feel the weight of soldiering first, before he spent all his time staring into the stars.) She turned to him, a fractional motion, a gesture—go on, report.

  “Yaotlek,” he murmured. Low. This wasn’t for everyone, then. This was something he wanted to tell her quietly, so she’d have a chance to react. To decide how to react. She nodded to him to go on.

  “One of the scout-ships—the Gravity Rose, with Captain Eighty-Four Twilight in command—is reporting on narrowcast that they’ve found something. Something that looks like a home base for these things we’re fighting.”

  Nine Hibiscus’s heart thudded against her chest wall like she was being rocked by cannon fire. “Planet, station, or just a really big ship?” she asked, equally soft. “And where?”

  “Planet,” said Eighteen Chisel. “Planet and one satellite, both inhabited. Lots of civilian traffic, like a proper system would have. Eighty-Four Twilight didn’t give me much detail, just that the ships are definitely in the same style, but not military. Or don’t look it. The place is—out, far out. Past where Fleet Captain Forty Oxide’s stationed the Seventeenth. But that’s why the angle of attack they’re using is coming from that direction.” His smile was tight, wired, glittering-sharp. “I think we have them, yaotlek. I think if we could get Five Thistle over there with the number of nuclear scatterbombs in our hangar bay … well, we could blow them out of their sky, at least in that system. Send a message.”

  “If we can get there without them seeing us,” Nine Hibiscus said. The scatterbombs would do exactly what Eighteen Chisel was imagining. They would, yes, blow anyone out of their sky. And then they’d poison that sky, and the planets below it. The scatterbombs were deathrain. A last resort. Almost never used where people lived—because after them, people didn’t live there anymore. She’d only used a scatterbomb barrage once, and that had been against another ship, safe in the blackness of space. The idea of using them on the aliens was—

>   She liked it too much, was what. Liked it too much, too fast. Such a simple solution. So much easier than the rest of the situation she’d been detailing for herself.

  “Tell Eighty-Four Twilight to get the Gravity Rose out of there,” she said. “Quiet and quick. Make sure she knows I don’t want to let the enemy know we know where they are. I want to make the most of this, Eighteen Chisel. Plan it right. Keep it quiet here, too. For now.”

  He nodded again and went back to his console. Satisfied. Anticipatory. (And wasn’t she the same? Anticipatory? Eager?)

  And then she thought again of Sixteen Moonrise, somewhere in the bowels of her ship, wandering and watching with an agenda of her own, and decided that some things, some things—well, some things even other Fleet Captains didn’t need to know about until their yaotlek decided they needed to know. She wanted Sixteen Moonrise off Weight for the Wheel. Now. So that she would have time to plan at all.

  * * *

  The Minister of War was extremely good at push-ups. Also handstand balances, lunges, punching a bag of sand, and running very fast without getting out of breath. Eight Antidote had watched her do these things in sequence three times now from his perch on the balcony level of the Outreaching Palms’ training gymnasium, and was beginning to despair about the prospects of his own physical fitness.

  When the Minister rounded the corner of the track again, moving away from him in even, quick strides, her cheeks flushed red and the scar of her ear flushed redder, Eight Antidote sighed and headed down to intercept her. Not by running, of course. Even if he could keep up with her—and he wasn’t unfit, his genetics were pretty good for basic athleticism, it was just that mostly he never ran anywhere—he didn’t want to talk to her while panting. It seemed undignified. Also embarrassing. And he really didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of Three Azimuth, to a degree which was unexpectedly overwhelming. So instead he took himself over to the mats where she’d been doing the calisthenic portion of her training cycle and began, gamely and not without a certain dizzy thrill, to try to figure out a handstand balance himself.

  He could do a handstand. If he sort of—threw himself forward onto his hands and kicked up, and squeezed his core muscles together very hard so he didn’t overbalance. But he’d never done a balance, going from kneeling on the ground, palms flat to the padded matting, and unfolding into the air. It was much harder. He was sure he was missing some vital instruction. He kept getting partially up and then collapsing, or tipping over. But that was the point. Of course he was missing vital instruction. That was what Three Azimuth was going to give him.

  “Kid,” she said, and he tried very hard not to startle, and only succeeded in falling out of his latest attempt onto his back with a thump. The Minister of War was staring down at him, her breathing fast but regular from her run, an expression of complete amusement on her face. Eight Antidote refused to cringe. He wanted her to be interested in him. Amusement was a sort of interest, right? And it was funny that he kept falling over. (He was blushing anyway, which was dumb of him.)

  “Good morning, Minister,” he said, from his prone position. “I think I’m not very good at balances.”

  She sat down beside him, a graceful fold to crossed legs. Her eyebrows had climbed halfway up her forehead. “… You’re quite spectacularly bad at them, in fact,” she said. “Why are you trying to do push-handstands when you’re too young to have even started the Fleet training regimen?”

  “I saw you do them,” said Eight Antidote, and sat up—it was too embarrassing to be flat, he couldn’t handle that and keep talking—“and I can do a normal handstand fine, so…”

  Now she did laugh. He thought it was kind laughter. He hoped it was. (It was so inconvenient and awful that he liked the Minister of War and wanted her to like him too.) “So you thought you’d try, with your little arms. You are a dangerously ambitious child, Your Excellency. I’m sure you know that.”

  Eight Antidote made his face as still as possible and said, “I have been told so. Though not in such direct terms before just now.”

  “Stars,” said Three Azimuth. “I don’t know how they raise children in the palace, but they’ve done a number on you. All right. What do you want with push-handstands, aside from trying something you don’t know how to do?”

  “To learn how to do something I don’t know how to do,” Eight Antidote said. “You do them. You’re the Minister of War. They must be useful.”

  Three Azimuth sputtered with snickering, a delighted and uncontrolled noise. (Maybe that meant he was getting somewhere?) She said, “Not everything I do is useful, kid. The office does not confer usefulness on my morning gymnasium routine.”

  “What does?” he asked.

  She paused. Thought about it. (Let him see that she was thinking about it.) “It keeps me strong and agile, even at this desk job. And I know it well enough that I can do it without thinking too much, so it’s easy to maintain. That’s why it’s useful to me. Here. Come on, let me show you one of the things you’re doing wrong. Start again, hands on the mat.”

  He started again. Hands flat on the mat, his legs tucked under him, balanced on the balls of his feet. Three Azimuth made a considering sound. And then she touched him—her hands over his hands, pressing his fingers apart and his palms into the mat. His mouth went dry. “Make your hands stars,” she said. “All the points spread out, and stars have heavy gravity pull, right? That gravity sinks your palms into the mat. Press. And then bend your elbows—good—lean forward—and put your knees on your elbows.”

  What? Eight Antidote thought, utterly confused, and then tried anyway—hopping, his ass in the air, trying to land his knees onto his bent elbows.

  He missed. The momentum took him into a forward roll, which at least let him come up to sitting and not flop over again.

  “Sorry,” he said to the Minister of War.

  She shook her head. “Hilarious, but not bad for a first try. Next time, one knee and then the other. And hold that balance before you try pushing up to a handstand. Got it?”

  He nodded. He didn’t get it, but he thought he could probably figure it out—

  “Now. What else do you want, kid, besides free lessons in strength exercises? You’ve been up in the balcony for my whole workout.”

  Really, he needed to learn how not to blush. But it was so hard, when he got caught. And when it was Three Azimuth that caught him. He’d really thought he’d been quiet, unobserved, careful, and yet—

  “I wanted to ask you about the Lsel Ambassador,” he blurted out, not knowing what else to do or how to talk to this woman at all. “Um. I met her once. And I don’t—I wanted to know what you thought of her, because I’m not sure, and at that meeting—thank you for allowing me to be there, Minister, I meant to say—”

  She’d gone quite still, like a bird about to dive, prey-seeking. He shut his mouth. Swallowed against the dryness there.

  The Minister ran a hand through her own hair, pushing it back in slick black strands from her forehead. “Did Eleven Laurel tell you to ask me that?”

  “No,” Eight Antidote said. Not Eleven Laurel. The Emperor, the Edgeshine of a Knife.

  “Are you lying to me, Your Excellency?”

  He shook his head, a fast harsh motion.

  “Be sure you don’t lie to me. I’ll find out, Your Excellency. I’ll find out eventually.” Her voice was slow, serene, utterly determined. He felt hypnotized. Terrified. “Tell me, now: did Eleven Laurel put you up to this little scheme?”

  “I swear,” Eight Antidote said, “he didn’t.” He wasn’t sure what he’d do if Three Azimuth asked him who had put him up to it. He wasn’t sure she’d believe a lie, wasn’t sure if telling the truth would be the beginning of an unfolding disaster like what had happened with the last Minister of War, Nine Propulsion, during the—insurrection—that had ended his ancestor-the-Emperor’s reign. Who wasn’t Minister of War any longer. Who had sided—probably, Eight Antidote wasn’t sure, everything about three mont
hs ago was confusing and he’d been ten then, not eleven, and hadn’t been told a lot of information—with the yaotlek One Lightning in his usurpation bid. Which was probably why the Emperor Herself had brought in someone from very far away, like Three Azimuth. Her external graft. But—he was spying on the Minister, for the Emperor. Would letting Three Azimuth know that Nineteen Adze had sent him here somehow start a new civil war? He could see ways it might. Ways that the strategy table which was the City and the palace might shift to land in that hideous outcome. If Three Azimuth had been brought in to be loyal and now she thought the Emperor didn’t trust her, she might do anything. Anything at all.

  But Three Azimuth didn’t ask him who sent you? She’d only wanted to know whether it had been Eleven Laurel. Who was supposed to be her subordinate. She wanted to know if Eleven Laurel was using Eight Antidote to find out things from her—

  Abruptly he wondered if Eleven Laurel had already found out things about her that she didn’t want him to know. She’d called him my spymaster. Spies didn’t just gather information. Spies sometimes held it over people’s heads, to get them to do what they wanted.

  Three Azimuth seemed to have decided he wasn’t lying to her while he was thinking. She said, “All right. I think Ambassador Dzmare is one of those people who destabilize whatever situation they find themselves in, Eight Antidote. This is my professional opinion. I’m giving it to you so that you begin to learn what these people look like. What they behave like. Are you listening?”

  He nodded. Kept quiet.

  “You’ll meet them all over Teixcalaan, as you get older,” she went on. “Here in the palace, in the City, on whatever ship you serve on, if you join the Fleet. On every planet and at the heart of every disaster. There’s always at least one. These people can have the best of intentions or the worst. They may be clever or remarkably stupid, barbarian or citizen … but what they always, always are, Your Excellency, are people who put themselves and their desires before the needs of Teixcalaan. Who haven’t any sense of real loyalty. They shift and change.”