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 months 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.”
“… And Dzmare is one of them?” he managed to ask.
“You think about it. She comes here, she upsets the whole sugar-crystal-fragile peace between the Ministries, shows up in newsfeeds, writes a poem or two, and gets her patron made Emperor—not that Her Brilliance was a poor choice, Her Brilliance was a perfect choice, and I’d swear to that in a sun temple with blood from both wrists at once—and then she goes away again. But here she is, popping up on a battlefield, and immediately I have one Fleet Captain sending secret reports about a possible breach in the loyalties of another Fleet Captain? Of a yaotlek, no less? That Dzmare is a disruptive person. Whether she means to be or not.”
Eight Antidote said, without quite knowing why he said it, “How did you learn to recognize her? People—like her. I met her in the garden, when she was here—she liked the palace-hummers. She was drunk, I think. And sad.”
Three Azimuth nodded. “She might very well have been. Both drunk and sad. She was a barbarian at court. She doesn’t seem like a person who bears Teixcalaan ill will, not directly. It’s all right, kid, that you didn’t think about her this way. I only do because it’s been my job, for a long time, to notice those people and the situations they create.”
“Is that what the Minister of War is for?”
“Stars, no. The Minister of War is for making sure Teixcalaan’s military supremacy continues without end or interruption. Finding disruptive persons was what I did when I was the military governor of Nakhar System.”
Nakhar System, which Eight Antidote knew hadn’t rebelled even once while Three Azimuth had been its governor. Nakhar System, which usually rebelled every seven years or so, and always had, before Three Azimuth arrived.
Before Three Azimuth had noticed the disruptive people, and had made sure they couldn’t be disruptive any longer.
Mahit remembered this sensation—the feeling of being swept along from moment to moment in a bright haze of exhaustion, bravado, and culture shock: it was how she’d ended up feeling every time she’d been immersed entirely in Teixcalaan. It was as pervasive on a Fleet warship as it had been in the imperial palace, and as intoxicating; as if there was a contaminant in Teixcalaanli air as pervasive and mind-altering as the heat of Peloa-2. She felt like she was flying. Untethered. She had just negotiated, as much as it was possible to describe what she had done as negotiating, given the limitations of language, with incomprehensible beings—
<The aliens or the yaotlek?> Yskandr murmured. He was flying, too—all glitter-shot laughter, the ghost of her sabotaged imago clearer in the blend of the three of them than he’d been in days.
Both, Mahit told him, as the door to the assigned quarters she shared with Three Seagrass hissed shut behind the two of them. Right now she was still vibrating, still gloriously triumphant and terrified at once. But alone in this room with her former cultural liaison, her partner-in-negotiation, who understood nothing and everything about her—she could see the approaching drop. The point where there would no longer be anything she had to do, and the silence and stillness of exhaustion would come down on her like the sudden hand of gravity.
Three Seagrass said, loud in the hush of a room where the only noises were the churning of Weight for the Wheel’s air-purification systems, “Thank you.”
Which wasn’t what Mahit had expected at all.
“For what?” she asked, turning toward her. Three Seagrass was still grey through the cheeks, hollow-eyed, all tension and suppressed giddy hysteria. Heatstruck and half drunk on success.
“You sang their own sounds back to them,” Three Seagrass said. “I wouldn’t have thought of it. Not that way. Not that fast. And look what we did. Think of it, Mahit. No human beings but us right here have ever spoken that language, ever before today. Just us.”
Am I human, then? Mahit thought, bitter-sharp, and shoved the question away, unwanted. Couldn’t she enjoy this? Couldn’t she feel the same victory that Three Seagrass was feeling?
<Just this once,> Yskandr said. Or she said, to herself. She wasn’t sure. It was hard to tell, when she wanted so much to be allowed to keep being immersed in the bright spinning perfection of accomplishment, to stave off the inevitable crash a little longer …
“I still think we’re just picking up some kind of pidgin—they talk to each other, and we’re not hearing it—” She didn’t even know why she wasn’t agreeing with Three Seagrass. Why she had to keep qualifying their work. They weren’t in front of the yaotlek now. She didn’t need to justify a further round of negotiations, or report honestly on her failures, or—