“I see,” said Mahit. She thought she did, actually. When Six Direction had made Thirty Larkspur an imperial associate, he was shoring up his support from the wealthy inhabitants of the Western Arc systems. Thirty Larkspur’s family, along with the other patrician families who made the Western Arc— a distant string of resource- and manufacturing-wealthy systems all linked heavily together with jumpgates—would be assured of having a voice not only in the current government but in the next one. And—if Mahit understood the centripetal nature of the kind of usurpation attempt that did get celebrated in Teixcalaanli histories—the Emperor was also preventing those wealthy-but-distant aristocrats from throwing their support behind anyone but Thirty Larkspur. Revolts led by yaotlekim (like One Lightning’s almost-revolt happening right now, being shouted about in the City) came from the outer corners of the Empire, where people were more loyal to their own commanders than to some distant figure in the palace. They were often bankrolled by just the sort of people like the Western Arc families. By giving Thirty Larkspur power, the Emperor ensured that his family was loyal to the man who had given him that power: His Brilliance Six Direction.
“You’ll see if you meet Thirty Larkspur, Ambassador.”
“And the other successors? You said there were three.”
“Eight Loop, of the Judiciary—she is nearly as old as His Brilliance Himself, they were crèchesibs together—”
Mahit had read enough novelizations of Six Direction’s early life to recognize Eight Loop; his sister by either blood or emotion, the brutal politician behind Six Direction’s military brilliance and sun-given favor. She nodded. “Of course, Eight Loop.”
“And Eight Antidote, who is hardly older than my Map,” said Five Agate. “But who is a child of Six Direction’s genetics. A ninety-percent clone.”
“A very disparate crowd.”
From behind them, Nineteen Adze said, “Who could replace His Brilliant Majesty, after all?”
Mahit scrambled to her feet. “It takes three people?” she said, trying to feel less like she’d just been caught.
“At least,” Nineteen Adze said. “Have you been interrogating my assistant?”
“Mildly,” Mahit said. It seemed better to lead with self-awareness.
“Did you learn what you wanted?”
“Some of it.”
“What else would you like to know?”
That was a trap, baited and set with something as sweet and easy as the infinite weight of Nineteen Adze’s concerned regard, and Mahit decided to step into it anyhow. “How a succession would work in an ideal time, at an ideal place. The histories, Your Excellency, tend to focus on the exciting variants.”
Nineteen Adze smiled, as if Mahit had answered entirely sufficiently. “An emperor has a child, of their body or their genetics, and the child is of age and mental capacity, and the emperor crowns them co-emperor. And thus, when the old emperor dies, there is already a new emperor, who the stars know and love and favor; made in blood, acclaimed in sunlight.”
“How often does that happen,” Mahit said dryly.
“Less often than some military commander backed by a hundred thousand loyal legionary soldiers claiming that the good regard of the universe has designated them emperor. The histories, Ambassador, are both exciting and all too accurate.”
And how often does an emperor appoint a ruling council of three to succeed him? Not very often, I suspect, Mahit thought. Only when there is something not quite right. No suitable successor. Not entirely. Even if Thirty Larkspur and Eight Loop are meant to stand as regents for the ninety-percent clone, that’s going to be a long and contentious regency.
“If you’ve had enough of politics,” said Nineteen Adze, “there’s tea. And you have acquired a visitor. In the front office.”
“I have?” Mahit asked, surprised.
“Go see,” Nineteen Adze said, and snapped her wrist, as if Mahit was an infograph in the wrong place.
Three Seagrass looked terrible, but it was a version of terrible that had improved relative to the last time Mahit had seen her, half catatonic after a City-induced seizure. Now she was ashen in the face and bruised under the eyes, but upright, impeccably dressed in her Information Ministry suit, her hair raked back from her forehead and knotted in an unfashionable but functional tail. Mahit had no idea what had possessed her to come here after the hospital had let her out instead of going home like a sensible person who had suffered a substantial neurological event.
Nevertheless, seeing her standing in the middle of Nineteen Adze’s front office hit Mahit with a wave of relief—some small bit of familiarity here in Mahit’s new prison-sanctuary, some kind of continuity. And she had apparently cared enough to come find Mahit, instead of going home, however unsensible it might be.
“You’re not dead!” Mahit said.
“Not yet,” said Three Seagrass, “but it’s only a matter of time.”
Mahit stopped short. “Are you serious? You should go back to the hospital—”
“Mahit, I am making a joke in poor taste about the inevitability of mortality,” Three Seagrass said with a brittle gaiety. “And here you were telling me you were fluent in Teixcalaan.”
“Humor is the last thing anyone learns in a second language,” Mahit said, but she knew she was blushing, embarrassed—as much for the overt concern as for the linguistic slip. “What are you doing here?”
“When he came to pick me up at the hospital, Twelve Azalea implied you were being held against your will and forced to send unsigned infofiche messages through the palace maildrop. I thought I’d—rescue you? Being as you’re my responsibility, and I nearly got you blown up yesterday.”
“Twelve Azalea may have overstated slightly,” Mahit said.
“Only slightly,” said Three Seagrass, with a pointed look at Mahit’s all-white borrowed outfit.
Mahit protested, “I was covered in Fifteen Engine’s blood. It’s not—”
“You’ve spent the night with the most dangerous woman at court and you’re wearing her clothes.”
Mahit pressed two fingers to the space between her eyebrows, trying not to laugh. “I swear, Three Seagrass, between your insinuations of impropriety and Twelve Azalea’s unsigned messages, I really will feel like I’m a character in Red Flowerbuds for Thirty Ribbon.”
“Putting aside how I’m not sure how that ever got past the imperial censors and out to Lsel,” Three Seagrass said dryly, “and that I would never accuse an ezuazuacat of taking advantage of a foreign dignitary, at least not while in the recording range of that same ezuazuacat’s own front office, and certainly not an ezuazuacat who I personally respect and admire—Her Excellency isn’t letting you leave, is she?”
There was a hectic flush in Three Seagrass’s cheeks, beneath the hollow shadows under her eyes. Mahit wished she’d sit down. But no, she stood in the center of the room like the reed Twelve Azalea called her, narrow and wind-whipped and still doing her job: warning Mahit that they were most certainly being observed. Mahit said, “There were demonstrations in Plaza Central Seven. Acclamations.”
“A very good excuse to keep you off the streets. I’m not arguing, Mahit. It’s … the City is strange this morning, even this close to the center. Bombings do that, I imagine.”