At the strategy meeting in War, no one had liked the envoy, but he wasn’t sure whose dislike was real and whose was inter-Ministry rivalry. There had been a lot of inter-Ministry rivalry, especially between the people who were left over from Nine Propulsion’s administration (like Eleven Laurel and the Fifth Palm undersecretary, the man who controlled armaments and research) and people who had come in with Three Azimuth, or at least at the same time she had, and were still learning their jobs and deciding where their loyalties would go. So he didn’t know anything about the envoy, not for real. Except—
“The Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise doesn’t trust her,” he said. “Doesn’t trust her maybe because of Mahit Dzmare, but maybe because she just doesn’t.”
“Sixteen Moonrise of the Twenty-Fourth. Did you know, little spy, that she used to be one of Eleven Laurel’s students, too?”
Eight Antidote shook his head. (Of course Eleven Laurel had had students before him; there was no reason to feel jealous of some grown-up faraway Fleet Captain. But he did: squirmingly jealous and a little ashamed. Was that how the Emperor thought of him, now? As Eleven Laurel’s student? Did he want her to think of him that way? Even if Eleven Laurel had threatened him, made him wonder if the Sunlit would protect him, made him wonder if Nineteen Adze didn’t trust her own Minister of War?)
“She was,” Nineteen Adze went on. “A good one. The Third Palm was sad to lose her to command, I believe. Mm. Tell me how you discovered this dislike you mentioned, and then I think I ought to send you to bed. It’s going on for moonset. Have you been sending messages to the Fleet yourself, and hearing back?”
“I’m not that enterprising,” said Eight Antidote, and liked how saying that made Nineteen Adze’s eyes crinkle up at the corners, like she was laughing, silent and appreciative.
“Not yet you aren’t. Go on.”
He tried to remind himself that the Emperor had sent him into the Ministry of War, that she already knew what he was doing there, that he wasn’t betraying anyone’s secrets except possibly Sixteen Moonrise’s, and certainly none of his own. But it was still hard to start. Hard enough that Nineteen Adze tapped her fingertips on the couch arm, once, a little patter of impatience that made Eight Antidote want to apologize for everything, and then resent her for being able to do that to him. It wasn’t fair that he had a child’s emotions, a child’s endocrine system and sympathetic nerves, and that children reacted to authority figures in very predictable ways he had studied with his tutors. It wasn’t fair at all.
Finally, he said, “She sent a priority message—fast, the kind that overrides the jumpgate mail protocols, I think it came through on a Fleet courier—from the Fleet to Minister Three Azimuth. And in that message—the Minister played it for all of the Palms and their staff, and me, I guess—the Fleet Captain pointed out that all the, um. What happened two months ago—” (They hadn’t talked about it. He didn’t want to, not really, it was easier to just call it what happened and be done, instead of saying when my ancestor made you Emperor and died on live newsfeed for the sake of Teixcalaan.) “That Mahit Dzmare was involved in that, and now she was out on the battlefront, and that this was probably not good at all, and Information was involved.”
“Oh, little spy,” said Nineteen Adze, “you are very good at what I asked you to do, aren’t you.”
He wasn’t sure that was a compliment. “Do you think she’s right?” he asked. “The Fleet Captain. I only met the Ambassador once, so I can’t tell.”
Nineteen Adze hesitated—the first time, Eight Antidote thought, that he’d ever seen her hesitate and not do so deliberately, for effect. “To be perfectly clear with you,” she said, at last, “I haven’t decided. And I’m not sure what I think matters as much as what Three Azimuth does. If you get a chance, you should try to find out.”
He had to tell her, now. Or—ask her, if he didn’t want to tell her about what Eleven Laurel had said in the garden. He at least had to ask. (Asking was a way of not telling a secret. That was a useful thing to know.)
“Your Brilliance,” he said, very careful, trying to frame the question right, “do you think Minister Three Azimuth would disagree with you?”
The Emperor looked at him, long enough for one slow eyeblink. He swallowed. His mouth was dry. She asked, “On the matter of Mahit Dzmare, or in general?”
She was treating him like his questions mattered. He tried not to feel either nervous or grateful, and felt both things anyway. Took a breath, and in breathing decided he was going to tell her about what Eleven Laurel had insinuated. Not that he had threatened him. Just that he’d … threatened Minister Three Azimuth, who could probably take care of herself. “In general,” he said. “Because—in that meeting, when we heard the recording, Eleven Laurel kept talking about the old Minister of War. Nine Propulsion. And how she’d retired. And about how you might not trust the new Minister, either.”
“Did he now,” said Nineteen Adze.
Guilt was a squirming uncomfortable feeling in Eight Antidote’s stomach. Eleven Laurel was his teacher, and here he was—doing this. He nodded, though. He couldn’t lie. Not right after he’d told the truth, anyway.
“The technician’s garden of the War Ministry grows all sorts of flowers, little spy,” the Emperor said to him. “But especially the sort that poisons. That’s what a weapon is, Eight Antidote. A poison flower. Whether it’s dangerous or not depends on who is holding it.”
“I don’t understand,” Eight Antidote said, just as guilty, and now embarrassed for not being able to decipher the allusion. “Not without knowing who the poison flower is supposed to be.”
Nineteen Adze laughed, which made him feel worse. “All of them,” she said. “But gardens need outside grafts, sometimes, to keep them healthy. Ask your biology tutors about that, if you have time while you’re finding out what Three Azimuth thinks about Mahit Dzmare.”
The outside graft had to be Three Azimuth. Maybe that meant Nineteen Adze did trust her. Or—thought that she’d be good for War, which wasn’t the same thing at all—
He nodded. “I’ll try,” he said, because he guessed he was the Emperor’s spy before he was anything else except the Emperor’s heir. And he could figure out the rest later. He wasn’t stupid. He read all kinds of poems. He’d find one with poison flowers, and figure it out.
By the time Mahit’s voice had gone completely—a heat-struck rasp, wrung out from attempts at singing and the strangling moistureless air—she and Three Seagrass and the alien, who they were calling Second (as opposed to its somewhat taller and much quieter companion, First) had a mutual vocabulary of approximately twenty words. Most of them were nouns, or things like nouns. Nouns were easy. One pointed at an object, and said its name, and then the alien said its name for the object, and thus they’d acquired energy pistol (or at least “weapon”), shoe, water, sand, and what was either flower or picture or shade, depending on whether Second understood representational objects, and to what degree.