Some of them had placards.
They were shouting. The sound came through the feed like a distant roar, indistinct.
“Can you—” Mahit started.
“Turn it up, yes,” said Five Agate. “A little. It’ll depend on what they’re shouting, how clear it is—”
“They’ll be shouting ‘One Lightning,’” Nineteen Adze said. “I will buy you a new suit for the Emperor’s banquet this week if I’m wrong, Five Agate. But turn it up.”
They were shouting “One Lightning”—the name of the yaotlek who had been mentioned by the Sunlit while they’d been trying to arrest her. The yaotlek who was commander of the fleet nearest to the City right now. They were shouting his name, and a four-line snatch of iambic doggerel that Mahit made out primarily as rhythm, built around an excited repetition of “Teixcalaan! Teixcalaan! Teixcalaanli!” that ended the verse.
“Are they trying to acclaim him without a military triumph?” asked Five Agate wonderingly.
Nineteen Adze said, “Not yet.” She spread her fingers away from her palm like a starburst, and the feed zoomed in, onto the faces of the demonstrators. Some of them had streaked their foreheads horizontally with red paint. Mahit thought of the sacrificial crowns that returning Teixcalaanli generals wore in poetic epics: not paint but blood, their own mixed with that of whoever they’d defeated. Entirely symbolic, now, in this age of interplanetary conquests.
“I was under the impression that such things were illegal,” she said.
“Ineffective, not illegal,” Nineteen Adze said. “Five Agate, the purpose of military acclamation. For the edification of the Ambassador.”
Five Agate coughed and caught Mahit’s eyes sidelong. Mahit thought she looked slightly apologetic. “To confer legitimacy upon a prospective emperor of Teixcalaan, who does not ascend by congruence of blood or by the appointment of the previous emperor, a military acclamation is public demonstration of his virtue—which is to say, public demonstration of the favor of the ever-burning stars.”
“And the form of that favor?” asked Nineteen Adze, prompting.
“Traditionally, a major military victory. Or a great number of them. Preferably a great number.”
Nineteen Adze nodded. “Quite right. The great number of victories is the proof; all else is shouting, and a functional bureaucracy or a marginally intelligent citizenry—both of which we are blessed with—can strip all legitimacy from mere shouting.”
“You’d like me to ask why they’re shouting for One Lightning anyway,” Mahit said. “Since he does not have the military achievements that would make him a viable emperor. Or at least such achievements have not reached the distant and uninformed regions where Lsel Station lies.”
Five Agate’s expression looked slightly shocked; more than slightly intrigued. “He’s ambitious,” she said, and when Nineteen Adze nodded at her she went on. “He’s the sort of ambitious which looks for opportunities. He’s won skirmishes out in some of the wilder sectors, not to mention a small campaign or two to quell local unrest or head off out-Empire incursions—and his troops have spectacular morale reports. He wasn’t at Odile, but he trained the commander who is there, Three Sumac, and she remembers to thank him every time she is on the newsfeeds. He wants significant military achievements, and he has enough backing to assure his soldiers that they’ll have an opportunity to get them under his command.”
“An acclamation based on belief in the future,” Mahit said dryly. An acclamation based on needing a war to fight. “I wish him the greatest of personal success. Since he apparently lacks significant military achievements aside from taking credit for there not being more than one bomb in Plaza Central Nine today.”
“A person might suspect you of being a diplomat, Ambassador,” said Nineteen Adze.
“A person might.”
“And she’d be right, if she suspected. But there is one significant factor you are missing, diplomat or no—and you’ve missed it only by having spent your first forty-eight hours here so eventfully.”
Mahit tried to navigate between feeling insulted and feeling amused, and came up with sarcastic. “Enlighten me, ezuazuacat. If it wouldn’t trouble you too much to skip to the end.” After the conversation over the tea she oughtn’t to have been able to manage sarcasm—but perhaps that was part of the point of Nineteen Adze: that the glittering quick-spoken politician who made you want to toss quips back and forth with her was the same creature who could slice a conversation to ribbons and make you want to weep that she understood.
She wished for Three Seagrass again: for anyone at all who could be a distraction or a covering shield. A friend. Her own friend, not some ghost-emotion friend of Yskandr’s.
Nineteen Adze had zoomed the camera feed out. The whole mass of cheering Teixcalaanlitzlim hung in the center of the air between them and rotated slowly around a central axis when she inscribed the turn with a twist of her wrist. “The Emperor Six Direction, our light-emitting starlike ruler, brighter than jewels and more kind, he to whom I am sworn and for whose sake I would spill the last drop of my blood: he is eighty-four years old and has no biological offspring. That is what you’re missing, Ambassador.”
“You have a succession problem,” Mahit said, because she couldn’t say I’m so sorry that you’ll soon lose your friend; it seemed—unkind. Unnecessary. Not on topic. And how was she to know whether an ezuazuacat was really a friend of the Emperor, or just a symbolic one? This was the problem with an entire society that obsessively re-created its own classical literature, and wouldn’t she have liked to explain that to herself two weeks ago. Or to talk to Yskandr about it. She was sure he’d have something to say.
“One Lightning’s shouters certainly think we do,” Nineteen Adze said. She flicked her hand at the feed and it folded in on itself and faded out. “I am reserving judgment, myself. But you picked a fascinating moment to arrive at court, Ambassador.”
“I didn’t pick,” Mahit said. “I was summoned.”
Nineteen Adze tilted her head to the side. “With urgency?” she asked.
“With unseemly urgency,” Mahit said, thinking of herself and Yskandr, shoved together with only hope and three months of meditation to make them one agent of the Station.
“If I were you,” said Nineteen Adze, “I would find out who authorized your entrance permit. I suspect it would be quite revelatory.”
Was it a leading question? Did she intend to have Mahit go through some laborious investigative process only to come up with the ezuazuacat Nineteen Adze as her answer? No, Mahit decided—she was too canny to want to watch Mahit squirm on the long-line of a tether. Tricks like that were for stock villains, melodramas, and even Teixcalaanli obsession with narrative was mostly reserved for good narrative. This was worse: this was Nineteen Adze giving her an assignment, like she’d give one of her servants. Go find out, tell me what you know. As if Mahit belonged to her. (As if Yskandr had belonged to her—but she was beginning to believe he hadn’t, not entirely, not even if she’d shared her bed with him, and that had been part of the problem the two of them had had with one another.)