One Cyclamen laughed. Eight Antidote thought it was the kind of laughter that was meant to cover being uncomfortable. “Like pirates, Your Excellency? Mail pirates?”
Eight Antidote shrugged. Maybe. Go on. Tell me how this process can be fooled, or accelerated, or stopped.
“… Historically, there have been a few incidents, of course, but we try very hard to prevent them. And truly significant messages go through on Fleet ships, of course, just like the Fleet’s own orders; diplomatic communiqués, imperial proclamations.”
There. “Because Fleet ships have right of way through jumpgates.”
“Quite so, Your Excellency. If something needs to move fastest, it will be on a Fleet ship. But do be assured that the Information Ministry doesn’t lose your letters.”
“I would never think that,” Eight Antidote said, cheerfully. That tension line in One Cyclamen’s forehead deepened. “Thank you so very much for spending time with me and answering all these questions!”
“Of course. Giving out information—well, that’s what we’re for, here in Information.”
Yes, Eight Antidote thought. That’s what you’re for. And I wonder how many of your jumpgate postal offices Sixteen Moonrise skipped right over when she sent that message to the Minister of War. I bet it was most of them. And Eleven Laurel doesn’t mind that kind of circumventing protocols. Not when what’s being circumvented is the Information Ministry.
If she stayed on this ship for much longer, Mahit thought grimly as she turned one last corner and finally arrived at the sealed door of the quarters she and Three Seagrass had been assigned, she was going to have to find some way to requisition a cloudhook. For navigation’s sake, if nothing else. Weight for the Wheel was a tenth of the size of Lsel Station, and many thousands of times smaller than the Jewel of the World, and yet here neither her nor Yskandr’s knowledge of place sufficed for not having to ask, humiliatingly, for directions. More than once. At least she’d been headed away from the more restricted decks, instead of into the ship’s heart: no one asked her why a barbarian was alone, so far away from barbarian territory.
<Either that, or the ship’s AI updated itself, and you show up as a legitimate passenger,> Yskandr said to her. He sounded as pissed off and frustrated as she felt. She wanted to throw something. Break something. Break something lovely, some gorgeous piece of Teixcalaanli décor she could knock off a table and shatter. Maybe there would be one inside the quarters. (How she was going to share a room with Three Seagrass, after what they had done to each other, she wasn’t thinking about right now. It wasn’t the current problem.)
On the touchpad-lock next to the door was a piece of sticky disposable plastifilm, which read your password is VOID: the Teixcalaanli glyph shaped like a giant hollow circle. For a moment, Mahit wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do if her door-unlocking code was already expired—and then she realized it was a preset. An easy glyph to draw, to unlock your room before you could change the code. She unpeeled the plastifilm and drew a VOID on the touchpad, and the door hissed open.
Silhouetted against the light from the room’s single lamp was a tall, narrow figure. It took a step toward Mahit—
She had dropped to her knees on the floor before she quite knew why, a flare of whiteout-panic—and then she was rolling, rolling toward the figure, getting her feet under her and throwing herself at the figure’s legs in a headlong tackling leap. They collided. Her shoulder spasmed like she’d hit it with a hammer—or a knee—and the person she’d hit fell heavily over her, grunting, their palms striking the floor in a slap. Where’s the needle? Mahit thought. I have to get away from the needle, it’s poison—
Whoever it was rolled down her shoulder and somersaulted to their feet, leaving Mahit in a heap on the floor, scrambling away, waiting for the sharp prick and the end of everything—
<Stop it,> Yskandr said, as loud in her mind as if he’d been next to her and shouting, <you’re not dying, you’re not in the City, this isn’t Eleven Conifer. Stop it.>
You’re not dying. How many times had she said that to him, in the middle of the night, when he’d woken them up from dreams of asphyxiation?
“—You do not take surprises well,” said the intruder, and Mahit shoved her hair out of her eyes and managed to look up, focusing.
She had just attacked Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise and come out rather the worse for it. The Fleet Captain looked entirely unperturbed, not a hair out of place. Mahit felt her face go dark with an embarrassed flush.
Just because I was ambushed in my apartment once shouldn’t mean I react like this every time I’m surprised by someone in a room, she thought miserably, and got nothing but Yskandr’s rueful and sympathetic acknowledgment in return.
“… No,” she managed. “I don’t. My apologies, I didn’t intend to—assault you. Fleet Captain.”
A slim pale gold hand appeared in front of her, offering, and Mahit took it. Sixteen Moonrise pulled her up to her feet. “It’s quite understandable,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d been in combat, Ambassador Dzmare. I ought to have left a note on the door. But I did want to talk to you alone.”
“I haven’t been in combat,” Mahit said. “I—oh, for fuck’s sake, I failed the physical combat aptitudes by eighteen points, I’ve never been near combat.”
“One hardly needs good aptitudes to have ended up in situations where combat happens,” Sixteen Moonrise said, dismissively, “and regardless, you have good instincts. Shall we sit down?”
Mahit’s mouth tasted of adrenaline, bitter and metallic, and she was shaking very slightly; there seemed to be no plausible way, barring another attempt at bodily force, to remove the Fleet Captain from the room. And the first attempt had been bad enough. She glanced around, looking for something to sit on, or at, and found that there was a small folding desk which had already been pulled down from the wall, and two stools, one on either side of it. Sixteen Moonrise must have been here for a while. She’d had time to prepare. Probably she hadn’t expected Mahit to get horribly lost in the ship and had gotten bored enough to investigate the furniture—Mahit was being hysterical, even in the privacy of her own mind. What limited privacy her own mind had, anyway.
She sat. Gestured at the other stool. Welcome to my office, such as it is. And folded her hands tightly together in her lap, willing them to stop shaking.
“I imagine you’re wondering why I’ve been waiting for you,” said Sixteen Moonrise, taking the opposite seat. Mahit nodded, a rueful bit of acquiescence. Sixteen Moonrise folded her hands—on the table, where Mahit could see them. Mirroring. Establishing rapport.
I can’t handle an interrogation, she thought, miserably, not now.
<Pull yourself the fuck together,> Yskandr told her, <even if she’s a Third Palmer, or trained that way, and I think she might be—they’re the military spies, the interrogators—she’s a soldier, and she needs you for something. Pay attention, Mahit.>