Nineteen Adze laughed, a single sharp sound. “No, but we come in types. Your asekreta here, for example. She’s the precise model of the orator-diplomat Eleven Lathe, except a woman, and too thin through the chest. Ask her; she’ll recite his entire oeuvre for you, even the parts where he unwisely got involved with barbarians.”
Three Seagrass gestured with one hand, the motion both rueful and flattered. “I didn’t think Your Excellency had been paying attention,” she said.
“Never think that, Three Seagrass,” said Nineteen Adze. Mahit couldn’t quite tell if she meant to be threatening. It might just be how she said everything.
“I am fascinated to meet you, Mahit,” she went on. “I’m sure this won’t be the last time.”
“I’m sure.”
“You ought to return to your vigil, don’t you think? I sincerely wish you a joyous union with your predecessor.”
Mahit felt quite near to hysterical laughter. “I wish that also for myself,” she said. “You honor Yskandr with your presence.”
Nineteen Adze seemed to be having some sort of complex internal reaction to that idea. Mahit wasn’t familiar enough with Teixcalaanli facial expressions to decipher hers. “Goodnight, Mahit,” she said. “Asekretim.” She turned on her heel and walked out as unhurriedly as she’d come in.
Once the door was shut behind her, Three Seagrass asked, “How much of that was true, Ambassador?”
“Some of it,” Mahit said wryly. “The end bit, where she wished me a joyous union and I agreed. That part, absolutely.” She paused, mentally gritted her teeth, and got on with it. “I appreciate your participation. Both of you.”
“It’s quite unusual for an ezuazuacat to be in the morgue,” said Three Seagrass. “Especially her.”
“I wanted to see what you’d do,” Twelve Azalea added. “Interrupting you would have ruined the effect.”
“I could have told her the truth,” Mahit said. “Here I am, new to the City, being led astray by my own cultural liaison and a stray courtier.”
Twelve Azalea folded his hands together in front of his chest. “We could have told her the truth,” he said. “Her friend, the dead Ambassador, has mysterious and probably illegal neurological implants.”
“How nice for us, that everyone lies,” Three Seagrass said cheerfully.
“Cultural exchange by mutually beneficial deception,” said Mahit. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
“It won’t stay mutually beneficial for long,” said Twelve Azalea, “unless we three make an agreement to keep it so. I still want to know what this implant does, Ambassador.”
“And I want to know what my predecessor was doing being friends with Her Excellency the ezuazuacat and also the Emperor Himself.”
Three Seagrass slapped both her hands down on the morgue table, one on each side of the corpse’s head. Her rings clicked on the metal. “We can trade truths just as well as lies,” she said. “One from each of us, for a pact.”
“That is out of Eleven Lathe,” Twelve Azalea said. “The truth pact between him and the sworn band of aliens in book five of Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier.”
Three Seagrass did not look embarrassed, though Mahit thought she might have reason to. Allusions and references were the center of Teixcalaanli high culture, but were they supposed to be so obvious that any one of your old friends could pick up the precise citation? Not that she’d read Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier. It wasn’t a text that had ever reached Lsel Station. It sounded like one which probably hadn’t got past the Teixcalaanli censors—religious texts, or texts that could be read as statecraft manuals or unsanitized accounts of Teixcalaanli diplomacy or warfare, rarely did.
“Nineteen Adze isn’t wrong about me,” Three Seagrass said, serenely enough. “It worked for Eleven Lathe. It’ll work for us.”
“One truth each,” Mahit said. “And we keep each other’s secrets.”
“Fine,” said Twelve Azalea. He shoved a hand backward through his slicked-down hair, disarraying it. “You first, Reed.”
“Why me first,” Three Seagrass said, “you’re the one who got us into this.”
“Her first, then.”
Mahit shook her head. “I hardly know the rules of truth pacts,” she said, “not being a citizen, and never having the pleasure of reading Eleven Lathe. So you’ll have to demonstrate.”
“You’re really enjoying that, aren’t you,” said Three Seagrass. “When you can make a point of being uncivilized.”
Mahit was, in fact. It was the only enjoyable part about being alone and alternately entranced and terrified by being surrounded by Teixcalaanlitzlim, who up until today had been both much less upsetting and much more approachable by virtue of primarily appearing in literature. She shrugged at Three Seagrass. “How could I be anything but distressed at the great distance which separates me from a Teixcalaanli citizen?”
“Exactly like that,” Three Seagrass said. “Fine, I’ll go first. Petal, ask me.”
Twelve Azalea tipped his head slightly to the side, as if he was considering. Mahit was almost sure he’d already come up with his question and was delaying for effect. Finally, he asked, “Why did you request to be Ambassador Dzmare’s cultural liaison?”
“Oh, unfair,” Three Seagrass said. “Clever, and unfair! You’re better at this game than you used to be.”
“I’m older than I used to be, and less awestruck by your charms. Now go on. Tell a truth.”
Three Seagrass sighed. “Vainglorious personal ambition,” she began, ticking off her reasons on her fingers, beginning with the thumb, “genuine curiosity about the former Ambassador’s rise to the highest favor of His Majesty—your station is very nice but it is quite small, Mahit, there is no sensible reason for the Emperor’s attention to have come so firmly upon your predecessor’s shoulders, however nice the shoulders—and, mm.” She paused. The hesitation was dramatic, but Mahit suspected it was also genuine. All the embarrassment that had been lacking in Three Seagrass earlier was now visible in the set of her chin, in how she avoided everyone’s eyes, even those of the corpse. “And, I like aliens.”
“You like aliens,” Twelve Azalea exclaimed, delighted, at the same time as Mahit said, “I’m not an alien.”
“You’re pretty close,” Three Seagrass said, ignoring Twelve Azalea entirely. “And human enough that I can talk to you, which makes it even better. Now it is absolutely no longer my turn.”
Clearly Three Seagrass hadn’t wanted to admit that in front of another member of the Information Ministry, and Mahit could almost imagine why—to like, in the sense of having a preference for, persons who weren’t civilized. It was practically admitting to being uncivilized herself. (Never mind how it was also suggestive. That verb was distressingly flexible. Mahit would think about it later.) She decided to be merciful, and go on with her part of the game, and leave Three Seagrass alone.
“Twelve Azalea,” she said. “What was my predecessor’s political situation directly before his death?”
“That’s not a truth, that’s a university thesis,” Twelve Azalea said. “Narrow it down to something I know, Ambassador.”
Mahit clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Something you know.”
“Something only he knows,” Three Seagrass suggested. “For parity.”