“Time to find out,” she said. “I’ll have them brought to the medical deck, and we’ll see.”
Everything else would have to wait until afterward.
Mahit woke warm—blood-heat warm, sharing-space warm, the deep primal comfort of being wrapped around another living person in a small space. There was no moment of confusion, no sensation of let me feel this a little longer before I think about how I got here: she knew at the first flicker of consciousness exactly where she was. She was curled around Three Seagrass in the lower bunk of their quarters on the Teixcalaanli flagship Weight for the Wheel: her knees behind Three Seagrass’s knees, her face pressed into the loose dark tangle of Three Seagrass’s hair, her naked hips a cup for Three Seagrass’s naked hips. Her hand curled over Three Seagrass’s rib cage, pulling her close. The sweet used ache between her thighs.
Oh, Mahit knew exactly where she was, and exactly what they had done, and how much she had enjoyed it, and how at the moment of orgasm, with half of Three Seagrass’s hand inside her, almost to the knuckle, she had seen in an explosion of gold the blurred faces of Nineteen Adze and the Emperor Six Direction and remembered an entirely different physical experience of climax. And how she—hadn’t minded that, either, just found her way back to herself enough to press Three Seagrass into the mattress and see if Yskandr had known any tricks for oral sex that she hadn’t figured out herself.
<Only by virtue of having twenty years on you, Mahit,> he murmured to her now. <I don’t think anyone is complaining about your current technique.>
It was amazing how prurient he could sound in the privacy of their own mind. She was blushing, hot-faced, glad that Three Seagrass was either really asleep or pretending to be asleep the same as she was, so that she didn’t have to explain.
It would have been nice if they could stay right here. And not have to explain anything. Or figure out just how bad of an idea this had been.
Reed, she thought, as deliberately as she would direct a thought to Yskandr, if you weren’t compromised before in the eyes of all these soldiers, you will be now.
And Yskandr murmured back to her, <You’re just as compromised, Mahit. However will you explain this to Darj Tarats?>
Just like that, all vestiges of desire vanished: she felt cold and clear and faintly nauseated, like she had been plunged into icy water and released again. She had managed to not think about what she had promised Darj Tarats for almost a whole twenty-four hours, lost in culture shock, disappointed fury, first-contact protocols, heat exhaustion, and really good sex—in that order. It had been very nice, not thinking about Darj Tarats, and how her eyes were his eyes now. How she was a spy here, embedded in this ship like a shrapnel shard, working her way slowly through to its heart. How she was a spy, and had been commanded to be a saboteur as well, even if she hadn’t figured out what to sabotage exactly—
<Everything,> Yskandr murmured. <That’s the problem. Tarats wants—to see Teixcalaan, to know it so well that it can be led to its own destruction … >
He’ll like this, then, Mahit thought, deliberate and bitter. Look how much Teixcalaan trusts me. Admittedly, she’s not an Emperor, so you’re still a little ways ahead.
She could feel how she’d hurt him, feel it in the hollowness of her own chest, the ache of grief as vivid as tears. She tried not to be sorry, and was sorry, and didn’t know if she was sorry because she’d hurt him or because she was hurt, too. One more thing that integration therapists never warned you about: having two people’s heartsickness to evoke with a misplaced slice of self-recrimination.
<I failed Tarats when I bargained our imago-technology away to Six Direction in exchange for peace,> Yskandr said, finally. <And I failed Six Direction too, in the end. Mahit—do better than I did; the line of us should amount to something worthwhile.>
She’d never heard him so clearly describe the shape of his own despair, his own sense of self-hatred. It was like looking into a mirror that went on forever, a hole in the world abruptly made real. She was afraid when she asked him, quiet in the vault of their mind, hesitant: Darj Tarats would like Teixcalaan to smash itself against these aliens until they are both dead. I could tell him about Sixteen Moonrise—and then sabotage our negotiations on Peloa-2—I could get us all killed. Should I?
<Oh, Mahit,> Yskandr said. <How the fuck should I know?>
And because he had said that, her eyes were leaking tears when Three Seagrass turned over in her arms and pressed cool fingers to her cheek, tracing the wet.
“Surely,” she said, “you don’t regret me this much?”
She sounded devastated, which was not at all what Mahit wanted. She wasn’t sure what she wanted, but it wasn’t this: Three Seagrass looking like Mahit had hit her, just by weeping.
“No,” she said, and hated how her voice sounded thick and choked. “No, it’s not you, Reed, it’s not you at all, I—”
Words took too long, and were all in Teixcalaanli anyway. She kissed her instead.
It was still a good kiss, and Three Seagrass continued to be very good at kissing (when she wasn’t having an existential crisis over watching her Emperor commit ritual suicide on empire-wide holocast, at least). When they broke apart, Three Seagrass was tucked easily against Mahit’s shoulder, like they were designed to fit together.
“So,” she said, brisk and bright and with a gentleness that reminded Mahit terribly of Nineteen Adze (or reminded Yskandr of Nineteen Adze, which was probably closer to the truth), “if it’s not me you regret, Mahit, what is it? We did so well yesterday.”
“We did,” Mahit agreed. “We did, and we have such a long way to go, and—”
“Don’t tell me you’re doubting your own capabilities. You figured out how to sing to them. We really need a name for them besides the enemy, don’t you think?”
“—Probably, yes, and no, I’m not doubting my own capabilities, I’m—” She stopped. Her tongue felt like lead in her mouth. All of the neuropathic pain was back in her hands, a continuous sparkling flare, like being pricked by glass splinters. She didn’t know what to do, and Yskandr didn’t know what to do, and Three Seagrass was going to keep hurting her like she had yesterday, keep thinking of her as my clever barbarian and not as Mahit Dzmare, no matter how many times they kissed, and there was no such thing as safety and no such thing as going home.
“Mahit?” Three Seagrass asked, and cupped her cheek in a narrow palm. “I don’t like using interrogation techniques on gorgeous people I’ve just slept with, but you’re worrying me and also not providing me with much to go on, and eventually the training just kicks in.”
This was almost certainly a horrible, delicious, and representative example of Information Ministry humor. It was funny. And it was everything, absolutely everything, wrong with how the two of them were going to be together, and Mahit was tired. Tired of—