Maybe she’d get to come up with her own opinion. That felt frightening, and a little exhilarating, as a possibility.
She bowed deeply. “Your Excellency,” she said, and then let Three Seagrass run through Thirty Larkspur’s titles for her. He had his own epithet, of course. He who drowns the world in blooms. Mahit wondered if he’d picked it.
Straightening, she said, “It’s an honor to meet a person associated to the Imperium such as yourself.”
Thirty Larkspur said, “I know, it’s the only thing anyone can think when they look at me in this getup. Trust me, Ambassador, Nine Maize’s epigrams are more interesting than a co-heir—I’m sure I’m not the only one you’ll meet tonight.”
“But you’re the first,” Mahit said. It was difficult not to flirt back with the man, no matter how actually uninterested she was in everything but what opinions Thirty Larkspur held concerning her predecessor and Lsel.
“I do have that pleasure, Ambassador. I assume I’ll have to make a decent showing of myself. Is this your liaison?”
“The asekreta Three Seagrass,” Mahit said.
“We miss you at the salons, Three Seagrass,” said Thirty Larkspur, “but I assume everyone has to work sometime.”
“Invite me when I’m off-duty,” said Three Seagrass, serene and too expressionless for Mahit to know if she was flattered or insulted or pleased, “if you can’t do without my orations.”
“Of course.” Thirty Larkspur extended his arm to Mahit. “You won’t be able to hear properly from the center of the floor, Ambassador,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to come with me and stand where the acoustics are better.”
Mahit couldn’t come up with a good reason to refuse, and there were several good reasons to say yes: further distancing herself from being seen as Nineteen Adze’s pet prisoner, a chance to ask Thirty Larkspur something about Yskandr, actually hearing the poetry itself instead of everyone’s commentary on the poetry. She put her palm on Thirty Larkspur’s proffered forearm—the blue-and-silver fabric of his jacket was stiff with metallic thread—and let him pull her away from the group, Three Seagrass at her heels. “It’s very kind of you,” she said.
“Can’t a person want to show off the best of his culture to a stranger?” Thirty Larkspur asked. “This is your first night at court properly.”
“It is.”
“The previous ambassador was such a mainstay! We miss him. But perhaps you like poetry more than he did.”
“Was my predecessor not fond of epigrams?” Mahit said lightly.
They had stopped further toward the central dais. Thirty Larkspur made a gesture that reminded her of nothing so much as Nineteen Adze dismissing an infograph, and summoned up an attendant with a tray of drinks in deep-belled glasses. Mahit bent her head over hers to smell it: violets, and alcohol, and something she thought might be ginger or another aromatic root that only grew in soil.
“I believe Ambassador Aghavn preferred epics,” said Thirty Larkspur. He raised his glass. “To his memory, and to your career, Ambassador Dzmare.”
Mahit imagined drinking and dying, poisoned, in the middle of this enormous room—drank, and was only poisoned so much as to discover that she absolutely hated the taste of violet liqueur. She swallowed and kept her face appropriately expressionless. “To his memory,” she said.
Thirty Larkspur spun his glass in his hand; the violet swirled. “I’m glad that Lsel Station has provided us with a new ambassador,” he said. “Let alone one who is genuinely interested in epigrams. But you should know, Ambassador Dzmare—the deal is off. There’s nothing I can do about it. Do trust me that I made an attempt.”
The deal is off?
What deal? Mahit pressed her lips together—surely she could express disappointment visually—buy time—everything still tasted of violets—What deal, Yskandr! And with who!—and nodded. “I appreciate your candor,” she said.
“I knew you’d be reasonable about it.”
“Could I be otherwise?” Mahit said.
Thirty Larkspur raised both of his eyebrows so that they nearly met his hairline. “Oh, I imagined all sorts of unfortunate reactions.”
“How pleasant for you that I’m not inclined to hysteria,” Mahit said, as if she was operating on autopilot. What deal, and why would Thirty Larkspur be the person to tell me it was off, and all the time just talking in proper high-register Teixcalaanli, like a glittering veneer over her distress.
“I hope I haven’t ruined your evening,” Thirty Larkspur said. “It really is going to be a wonderful epigram—Nine Maize is something special.”
“Perhaps he’ll take my mind off of it,” said Mahit.
“Fantastic. To your enjoyment of your first imperial oration contest, then.” He lifted the violet again, drank again, and Mahit imitated him. She was never going to get the taste out of her mouth.
The glimmering lights in the ribs of the vaulted ceiling dimmed to twilight and then brightened again, a flickering and rapid migration of glowing points. The loud chatter of the courtiers diminished. Mahit looked over her shoulder at Three Seagrass, who nodded reassuringly—this was expected, then—and back over at Thirty Larkspur. He put his drink down on the tray of a passing attendant and murmured, “I ought to go stand in the right part of the room, Ambassador. So good to make your acquaintance!”
“Of course,” Mahit said, “go—”
He did. Three Seagrass came closer. Mahit said, “Please get me another drink?” at approximately the same moment as Three Seagrass said “What deal?”
“I don’t actually know.”
Three Seagrass looked at her with an expression that Mahit hoped wasn’t pity. “A stronger drink than that, then.”
“Also without violets?”
“In a minute,” Three Seagrass said. “You don’t want to miss this.” Very gently she took Mahit’s elbow and turned her to where the imperial dais was—
—to where the imperial dais, which she had thought was a slightly raised oval on a raked floor, was rising from the ground, unfolding. Mahit thought of the City, trapping her in Plaza Central Nine—thought of Thirty Larkspur’s epithet, the world in blooms. The throne rose on soundless hydraulic engines, an unfurling sunburst like a thicket of golden spears, a reified echo of the lights running through the ribbed vault of the ceiling. To the right of it Thirty Larkspur stood exalted in refracted illumination; to the left was a woman Mahit assumed was Eight Loop, stooped in the shoulders and balanced on a silver cane but not any less illuminated—her version of the imperial-associate partial crown glowed bright even against her silvered hair.
In the center of the sun-spear throne, revealed like a seed in a flower or the core in the heart of a burning star, Mahit got her first glimpse of the Emperor Six Direction.
She thought, He’s not imposing except by position—he was short, sunken-cheeked, the long fall of his hair more dirty steel than silver even if his eyes were sharp—and then The position is more than enough, I am being devoured by my own poetic imagination.
Six Direction was old, was small, looked fragile—brittle-boned, too thin, as if he’d been ill and was now just barely recovered. And Six Direction was in command of all this ceremony, or commanded by it—the emperor and the empire were the same, weren’t they? As close as the words for empire and world were, or nearly—and he claimed the attention of every Teixcalaanlitzlim. The exhalation of breath that sagged through the room when he lifted his hand in benediction was like a physical blow.