It got—stranger, after that. Stranger being there, stranger listening. Suddenly all of Three Azimuth’s meetings were with members of the Science Ministry who studied xenobiology or the sort of Fleet soldiers who very calmly discussed acceptable casualty rates in an emergency situation. They stretched on into the night, not stopping to eat or drink or rest—and why hadn’t she sent him away, what did she want him to see, why was he staying, anyway?
An Ebrekti expert came in, close to midnight, and had a polite shouting match with the acceptable-casualty-rates woman about how long a first-contact experience could be allowed to go on before someone needed to do something to make sure nobody was dead, and Three Azimuth sat there, watching, making notes. Eight Antidote kept staring at the burnt hole where her ear had been and wondering how she’d been injured so badly. Thinking of which of these people were disruptive and how he’d know if they were.
It had been the darkest, coldest part of the night when he’d gone home, walked across the gardens and into Palace-Earth, shivering in his thin jacket. Gone home, fallen into bed, slept. He didn’t remember those dreams, but he knew he’d had them. And even so, he found himself walking through the dew-glittering grass back into the Ministry of War the next morning just after sunrise. Back into Three Azimuth’s office. He folded up small on the windowsill again, and some Fleet cadet brought him grapefruit and lychee juice for breakfast, and he listened. Listened, while Minister Three Azimuth received a message on fast courier from the yaotlek Nine Hibiscus herself, and watched it with only him, Eleven Laurel, and two of her own close staff in the room. (He shouldn’t have been there. He didn’t leave.) He’d never heard Nine Hibiscus’s voice before, only seen her image on holo, and it was strange to know she sounded like a person, not a threat or a puzzle to solve, just a woman with an easy, confident cadence to her speech and an urgency right behind the reserve with which she reported that her scouts had found an alien planet, a home—one of probably many, but a home—of the enemy that was eating her legions.
Listened, while Three Azimuth and Eleven Laurel calmly discussed historical precedent for massive planetary strikes. He knew of some. They were from eight hundred years ago, or more, when Teixcalaan had been—vicious. Uncompromising in stamping out rebellions.
Eleven Laurel had said lightly, “There are very good reasons the Fleet has shifted to a negotiation-and-subordination modality, Minister, which I know you’re well aware of, considering Nakhar…”
And Three Azimuth had answered, “Massive planetary strikes on people waste resources and goodwill, and create eternal enmity between new-integrated systems and Teixcalaan. As you said, Undersecretary: Nakhar is an excellent example of the success of negotiation and subordination. Do you have some reason to believe I’d revise my methodology so drastically now that I’ve become Minister? Her Illuminate Majesty appointed me to this position for good reasons.” It sounded like a warning.
“So she did!” Eleven Laurel agreed. “And for very good reasons—I am ever so well acquainted with your work on Nakhar. What was it they called you? The butcher of the Nakharese mind? So interesting to find out that there is something even a person with such an elegant epithet finds morally objectionable.”
Eight Antidote was sure he was not supposed to be hearing this. He was equally sure that Eleven Laurel meant him to hear it, meant him to think that only he, Third Undersecretary Eleven Laurel, was trustable in the Ministry of War. That Three Azimuth had done something as governor of Nakhar that was so very wrong that she could be—pressured (blackmailed?) with only the casual mention of it. That Eight Antidote should return to being only Eleven Laurel’s student. (Like Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise had been Eleven Laurel’s student?)
Disruptive persons, he thought again. And then, What happens to them afterward, once Three Azimuth knows who they are? Nothing good. Nothing he wanted to examine too closely.
And at the same time, he wanted with a stupid heartfelt instant want to defend her. Hadn’t her methods—however butcherlike—worked?
Did he want them to have worked, if it meant she’d do the same sort of thing again, to a whole planet?
Three Azimuth sighed, a delicate and annoyed sound. “The question is, Undersecretary, whether these enemies are people for whom morally objectionable applies.”
“We have only Information finding out,” Eleven Laurel said, with elegant distaste.
“Information and a barbarian diplomat. I’m not pleased about it either, trust me.”
Eight Antidote had had to say something then. He couldn’t stay quiet, not when they were considering a first-strike planetary destruction. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, only that he wanted them both to know he was there and listening.
“Why aren’t we—I mean, why isn’t the Fleet doing the negotiation?” he said. He knew he’d slipped when he’d said we. Knew he’d been in this office too long. It was awful, to know all that and to still realize it was a useful slip to have made, aligning himself with the two of them. He was going to learn something now. He missed thinking that mistakes were just mistakes. Since he’d become a spy, he felt bad about good things as much as he did about errors.
“The kid has a point,” said Three Azimuth. “We could—if we used the Shard trick, get one of your own people down in that negotiation, Undersecretary—”
Eight Antidote, confused, thought, the Shard trick? Just as Eleven Laurel shook his head, harsh negation, all of the lines on his face that Eight Antidote used to think were friendly going savage and frowning. “I don’t think that discussion is happening in front of an appropriate audience,” he said.
Which meant—which meant that Eight Antidote had just heard something he wasn’t supposed to hear at all, even more than he hadn’t been meant to hear about the butcher of the Nakharese mind. Something worse. Something stranger. The Shard trick. Something that was faster than fast couriers? He was waiting for Three Azimuth to shut Eleven Laurel down; she was his superior, after all, blackmail or no blackmail, and she’d seemed like she was really interested in the idea—
But all she did was shrug one shoulder a little, and nod, and no one talked about Shards or joining the negotiations again. It was back to endless meetings with Logistics, and Armaments. Supply lines. How to move weapons through jumpgates without breaking too many treaties at once.
Like the Minister of War wouldn’t cross Eleven Laurel at all. Which was backward. Like Eleven Laurel was the one who could identify disruptive persons, and had decided that the Minister herself, and maybe Eight Antidote too, were some of them.