“Formality,” Three Seagrass said smoothly, “is for the imperial court; this is a battlefield. I look forward to speaking with the yaotlek whenever she has time to spare. We’ll be on board shortly, adjutant—we’ll come in with your supplies on the Jasmine Throat’s shuttle.”
“We?” asked that voice, and Mahit thought, Well, so much for this being simple.
“We!” Three Seagrass agreed, enthusiastically. “I’ve brought a consultant linguist. She’s a barbarian, but don’t hold it against her. She’s brilliant.”
And then she cut the connection on the adjutant. On the man who was the second-most powerful person in the entire Tenth Legion. Mahit couldn’t decide if she was horrified, proud, or simply, deliciously, hideously intrigued. She watched Three Seagrass straighten up, flash a wide-eyed Teixcalaanli smile at the comms officer, and crack her spine, leaning back with her hands laced together behind her. Getting ready, Mahit thought. I should, too.
“Consultant linguist, mm? Is that what I am now?” she asked.
Three Seagrass shrugged, one shoulder and one hand in brief motion. “If you’d rather be the Lsel Ambassador to Teixcalaan, I can reintroduce you when we get there.” She brushed Mahit’s wrist with warm fingertips as she passed by, and Mahit followed her easily, thinking of flowers that turned toward sunlight, and less pleasant tropisms—gravity wells, the attraction of insects to rot. “Which reminds me, Mahit—if you want to be the Lsel Ambassador, do you have the authority to negotiate with our screaming aliens on behalf of your Station?”
<I don’t see why not,> Yskandr murmured to her. <No one else is going to, and you’re right here.>
Oh, fuck it, why not be an ambassador and a diplomat—be useful again, have authority and room to use it and use it for Lsel as well as for Teixcalaan—do something more than escape and be Tarats’s corroding agent. Do something.
The supply shuttle in the Jasmine Throat’s hangar was being loaded with practiced efficiency—grey-metal case after grey-metal case heaved inward by a small assembly line of Teixcalaanlitzlim. Three Seagrass and Mahit joined the line, as if they were cargo themselves, though Mahit doubted they’d be tossed bodily inside.
“Of course I have that authority,” said Mahit. “No one un-Ambassadored me, Three Seagrass, no matter what the Councilor for Heritage implied.”
“She didn’t,” said Three Seagrass, sounding quite interested indeed, and slipped inside the shuttle. Over her shoulder she added, “Imply that.”
Fuck.
Mahit said, “Well, that’s unexpectedly pleasant, all considered,” and didn’t go on any further. She didn’t want to—she couldn’t tell Three Seagrass that she was here to spy on the war for Darj Tarats, in order to escape Aknel Amnardbat’s surgeons. To do worse things for Darj Tarats, if there was an opportunity. She couldn’t. So she got into the shuttle instead, settling amongst the supply crates and strapping herself into some freefall-control webbing. There were similar webbings on all of the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It was an efficient, well-designed ship. It must make a hundred of these short hops in a month—
“Quite,” said Three Seagrass, all edges, interest and wariness and a sort of invitation deferred: We can play, Mahit, even if we don’t play just now, if playing’s what you want.
The shuttle door sealed behind them with a hiss of vacuum, and Mahit shut her eyes against acceleration.
It took too long to approach Weight for the Wheel—longer than Mahit expected, given how huge the flagship was. It had seemed very close from the bridge of the Jasmine Throat. Now it was growing larger and larger through the small viewport inside the supply shuttle until it was horizon and sky and ground all at once, a solid wall of ship that seemed to be the entire visible universe. A solid wall of ship with a discontinuity, a maw, black and wide, a hangar bay—and that too was too large and growing larger all the time, gaining color and dimension as the shuttle approached it. A hangar bay which could contain not only this sizeable supply shuttle but hundreds of tiny triangular ships, arrayed in racks awaiting their pilots, and other large vessels besides, and still have room for at least ten shuttles the size of this one—a hangar bay with a ceiling as high as some buildings had been, in Palace-Central down on the City.
They landed with hardly a shudder, and Mahit was on a Teixcalaanli warship for the first time in her life.
The shuttle doors opened immediately, and as Mahit and Three Seagrass released their webbing-harnesses, they were swarmed by enterprising Teixcalaanlitzlim: soldiers in stripped-down and functional uniform, grey and gold coveralls with reinforced patches at the knee, their name glyphs and the insignia of the Tenth Legion on the left shoulder. Swarmed, and ignored in favor of the supply crates. It was like being inside an enormous machine that had absolutely no interest in you, since you weren’t shaped like the sort of object the machine preferred to ingest and spit out again on the other side.
Three Seagrass flashed her a smile, lightning-quick widening of the eyes, the barest hint of white teeth. “Ready?”
“As I’m going to be,” said Mahit, and just as she had once before, stepped off a shuttle and into Teixcalaanli space to see what was waiting for her there.
The hangar was busy—this shuttle wasn’t the only one being unloaded—and there were so very many soldiers. The Fleet was enormous. Mahit thought of the thirty thousand Stationers on Lsel and how that had once, when she was a small child, seemed like a very large number of people. There were probably three thousand Teixcalaanlitzlim on this flagship. Maybe more. And at least ten ships this size only on this battlefront—there was Lsel entire, rendered in Teixcalaanli battle flags. And so many other ships besides, all over the galaxy, on the other side of nearly every jumpgate. Some of the soldiers were obviously injured—one ship in this hangar was scorched almost black, partially absent, and the people climbing out of it were bleeding, or burnt, or being carried on stretchers by efficient medical personnel.
<That’s what a ship looks like after it gets brushed with energy-cannon fire,> Yskandr murmured to her, horrified and fascinated, as horrified and fascinated as she felt herself. <That’s what these aliens can do to this fleet—no matter how many soldiers there are in Teixcalaan, all ships burn the same.>
All ships burn the same, Mahit thought, echo, stutter-thought—and then Three Seagrass tapped her lightly on the shoulder, gesturing across the crowds with her chin, pointing out that they had clearly, clearly been expected.
She and Three Seagrass had been sent an escort, and that escort was waiting for them. A man and a woman, each in full Fleet uniform instead of the hangar-worker coveralls. The man was tall, terrifyingly thin, and had shaved his head absolutely bald; the first bald Teixcalaanlitzlim that Mahit had ever seen who wasn’t also old. The woman was all the same color all over, an electrum shade, hair and skin only fractionally different. She wore a Fleet Captain’s sunburst on her shoulder, and Mahit wondered for a moment if this was the yaotlek herself—but no, it couldn’t be Nine Hibiscus, this woman’s legion insignia was different, the glyph for Twenty-Four turned into a stylized parabola. Not this legion’s Fleet Captain, but on this legion’s flagship nevertheless—and coming to greet the Information agent, too—