Had they asked, and someone had prevented her from receiving the request? It could be as simple as her lack of access to messages sent on infofiche sticks, but surely someone placed as highly as ixplanatl Four Lever would have noticed that the Lsel Ambassador was quite publicly living in the offices of the ezuazuacat Nineteen Adze, and rerouted the mail. She would assume that if the request had been sent, it had been deliberately mislaid.
Or Four Lever hadn’t asked, assuming that she would make inquiries first. Or hadn’t asked, assuming that until she made an inquiry he could keep hold of Yskandr’s body. Mahit thought of how she’d first met Nineteen Adze, sweeping into the morgue without any sort of retinue or reason for being there. Imagined her hands, unerringly reaching for the imago-machine at the base of Yskandr’s skull to retrieve it before Mahit could have the body properly burnt. Someone had given her access. Perhaps it had been Four Lever. Mahit could imagine many things an ezuazuacat could provide for a Judiciary scientist in exchange for an unsupervised visit to the dead. Worse, she could also imagine many other people who could trade favors or influence or money for an hour or two alone with the body of her predecessor and all of his illegal imported neurological technology.
It was a problem. It was a problem that couldn’t be fixed by simply requisitioning the body, either: Mahit imagined having the undecaying corpse of her predecessor brought into Nineteen Adze’s office complex—perhaps she could prop it up on the couch, or lean it against the wall like a coat rack.
That would certainly make Nineteen Adze herself happy.
There had to be a better solution.
“Three Seagrass?” Mahit asked. “How long have you known Twelve Azalea?”
Three Seagrass extricated herself from her whirl of infographs. “Did he write to the office?” she asked, puzzled. “I thought he was entirely enamored of sending you anonymous messages on infofiche sticks.”
“He didn’t write, no,” Mahit said. “But I might write to him. Do you trust him?”
“That is a very different question than how long I’ve known him.”
“The one leads into the other,” said Mahit.
“Do you trust me?”
She could look so calm and ask such personal questions. Maybe it was a Teixcalaanli trait. It reminded Mahit of Nineteen Adze, which didn’t exactly make her feel more trusting.
Nevertheless, she said, “As much as I trust anyone in the City,” and said it honestly.
“And with us only working together for half a week.” Three Seagrass smiled, the corners of her eyes tilting up. “Not that you are spoiled much for choice, considering! I like Twelve Azalea, Mahit. We’ve been friends since we both joined the Information Ministry as tiny ignorant cadets. But he is conniving and theatrical and convinced he’s immortal.”
“I’ve noticed,” Mahit said dryly.
“So trusting him depends entirely on what you want him to do. What do you want him to do?”
“Something he’ll probably enjoy, as it’s both conniving and theatrical. And … secret.” Mahit gestured at the infograph screens, and then at her ears.
“Well, he’ll like it. Whatever it is. But I can’t tell you if he’ll do it if I don’t know what it is.”
Mahit said, “This message-task list that I’m using—that’s on your cloudhook, isn’t it. And a person’s cloudhook is private to them.”
“Or to whoever is wearing it,” Three Seagrass said, pleased. “I think I get the idea. Pass it back over when you’re ready.”
Composing a message to the Ambassador of Lsel and sending it to herself was fairly trivial. Mahit wrote, drawing glyphs in the air with her finger on the cloudhook’s projected screen that only she could see: Twelve Azalea should return to the morgue and retrieve the machine we discussed. Then she lifted Three Seagrass’s cloudhook off her head, blinking at the restoration of the other side of her vision, and gave it back.
After she had read the message, Three Seagrass asked, “Do you want that for yourself?”
“No,” said Mahit. “I have one, and besides, that one isn’t useful anymore—it’s recording decay and nothing else.”
“Could it record something else?”
Mahit thought about it. “If it was correctly installed, maybe? I’m not sure. I really am not an ixplanatl, Three Seagrass.”
“Mm. Well, Twelve Azalea will do it, I’m sure, and he’ll even keep quiet about it, but—” She shrugged.
“But what?”
“You’ll owe him a favor. And he’ll probably take it apart and make schematic drawings. He’ll tell you it’s out of his own curiosity, and he won’t even lie. Him being curious is how we used to get into half of the trouble we got into.”
“How,” Mahit asked, amused despite herself, “did you get into the other half?”
“I make friends with terribly interesting people with terribly complicated problems.”
“So nothing has changed,” Mahit said, feeling on the verge of laughter; feeling again the absolute danger of thinking Three Seagrass was her friend like a Stationer could be her friend.
“I did say you were my first barbarian. So, a little change.”
Like that. That unbridgeable gap. Maybe if Mahit hadn’t been the ambassador, if she’d met her at an oration contest, in some other life where Mahit had never taken up Yskandr’s imago-line but had won a travel visa and a scholarship—maybe in that life she could have argued. Told Three Seagrass more of the truth of what she felt.
“I think I can risk Twelve Azalea’s curiosity,” Mahit said. “Considering I’ve already risked your friendship.”
Twelve Azalea with possession of schematic drawings was still better than anyone with possession of the actual imago-machine. Mahit could get him to give up the drawings—later. Later, when she wasn’t trapped inside Nineteen Adze’s apartments. When she wasn’t going to have to—somehow (and how had Yskandr done it?—and had it killed him?)—stop the absorption of her Station into Teixcalaan. Later, when she wasn’t thinking of how pleased Three Seagrass had looked.
Coming back to the spare office that she’d been sleeping in, late in the evening, Mahit saw that the incoming mail had arrived.
Resting in the shallow bowl outside the door were three infofiche sticks—an anonymous grey one that surely would be from Twelve Azalea with his answer to her request, and another in a shade she hadn’t seen before: coppery metal sealed with white wax, the colors of Three Seagrass’s suits. The Information Ministry must have finally decided to tell her who had made sure that a new Lsel ambassador arrived as soon as possible after the old one was—Mahit shook her head wryly—no longer functional. The last was another grey stick, marked with the sticky black-and-red tab for off-world communication. Mahit wondered, her heart rate speeding, if Dekakel Onchu had sent another message to dead Yskandr, a second delivery triggered by some event she wasn’t quite aware of, something more complicated than her own attempt to log into the Lsel Ambassador’s electronic database. She reached into the bowl to pick it up, and found that underneath it someone had left a small branch of a plant she’d never seen before. The stem had been delicately curled around the infofiche stick, but now it lay in a loop of shiny grey-green leaves and a single deep cup of a white flower in the bottom of the bowl.