Bombs in a restaurant. Demonstrations. And now riots. If the Sunlit really were under One Lightning’s control, their presence here was a sign of how much the yaotlek was trying to present himself as the only possible force for order in a rapidly intensifying climate of social distress and anxiety. Mahit thought it was smart positioning. She’d think it was even smarter if One Lightning didn’t need to head up a war of conquest to prove his imperial bona fides. Still, the repeated attempts of the Sunlit to get her to surrender, not to the Emperor or to the City, but to One Lightning, reflected a deeper wound in Six Direction’s ability to control Teixcalaan than she’d expected. How much had he already lost?
She’d never quite thought about how barbaric—still a terrible little thrill, to apply that word in Teixcalaan to the language’s own speakers—Teixcalaanli modes of succession really were. When it wasn’t confined properly to epics and songs, empire claimed by acclamation was a brutal process that cared not at all for the places and peoples who had to succumb to make that acclamation plausible.
The holoscreen was still on the newsfeeds. Bright red glyphs cycled over the bottom half of the screen, arranged in a charming doggerel verse: Urgently direct your attention! / novelty and importance characterize what comes next / in two minutes on Channel Eight!
Mahit nudged Twelve Azalea on the shoulder, and he startled into consciousness. “—what?” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Oh, you’re up.”
“How do you change the channels on your holoscreen?” Mahit asked.
“Uh. What do you want to watch?”
“The novelty and importance on Channel Eight.”
“Channel Eight is politics and economics … hang on—” His eyes tracked under his cloudhook, tiny micro-adjustments, and the holoscreen flickered, shifted.
Channel Eight! hovered in the right top corner, superimposed on the image of the bridge of some vast ship: a gleaming place, cold metal and pale lights, titanium and steel and the golden Teixcalaanli battle flag splayed on the back wall, blatant in its cluster of sunbeam-spears. In front of it was a dark man, blunt-faced, with narrow lips and high cheekbones. A face like the facets of a stone, made for bludgeoning. His uniform was silver-shot with regalia, medals and honors and rank stripes.
“One Lightning,” Twelve Azalea said. “Hey, Reed, wake up for this.”
Three Seagrass shoved herself upright. There were pressure marks from the couch cushions across one of her cheeks, but her eyes were intent. “—can’t sleep through the propaganda, no, it’s out of character for me,” she said.
“Not at all like Eleven Lathe,” Twelve Azalea said, fond, and Mahit ached, suddenly; to have friends who could tease her like this. To have friends, like she’d had on Lsel.
“Hush, the yaotlek is talking, turn it up,” said Three Seagrass.
He was. He had a stentorian delivery—not a rhetorician, One Lightning, but a man who could shout effectively over long distances. Mahit could imagine being one of his soldiers—and as he continued, firm and deliberate and with an air of vast and urgent concern, she could imagine why his soldiers would follow him even against the Emperor they were all sworn to serve.
“Even here in orbit, just returned from our successes in the Odile System to the heart of the world, my ship Twenty Sunsets Illuminated is aware of the chaos and uncertainty which has boiled up in the streets of the Jewel of the World,” the yaotlek said, and whoever was in charge of broadcasting on Channel Eight! obligingly began to splice in footage of the protests. Mahit recognized the view outside Twelve Azalea’s window, some hours earlier, and wondered where the cameras were, and how many other people were watching through them. Thought again of the City as an algorithm: considered, for the first time clearly, that no algorithm was innocent of its designers. It couldn’t be. There was an originating purpose for an algorithm, however distant in its past—a reason some human person made it, even if it had evolved and folded in on itself and transformed. A City run by Ten Pearl’s algorithm had Ten Pearl’s initial interests embedded in it. A City run by an algorithm designed to respond to Teixcalaanli desires was not innocent of those same Teixcalaanli desires, magnified, twisted by machine learning. (A City run by an algorithm designed by Ten Pearl could suddenly rise up against anyone Ten Pearl designated—and if he was working with the Ministry of War, if the Ministry of War had … what, gone over to One Lightning already, and made some sort of arrangement with Science?)
This street wasn’t the only one showing up on the newsfeed, full of angry Teixcalaanlitzlim. Apparently there had been a sort of mass outbreak of peace protests all across the sector. The camera unerringly picked out the purple lapel flowers on the shoulders of many of the protestors, in every location.
Channel Eight!, economics and politics, was certainly not on the payroll of Thirty Larkspur, Mahit guessed. Not with that focus, while simultaneously playing One Lightning’s anti-protest speech, his voice rolling onward, saying, “I, and all of the brave servants of Teixcalaan I have the honor to serve with, have sympathy for the wishes of the people of the Jewel of the World as they dream of peace and prosperity—but from our vantage point above you, the clarity of our eyes sees what you cannot. Your full-hearted desires have been coopted by the self-serving design of the imperial associate Thirty Larkspur.”
Three Seagrass hissed through her teeth, a sharp little intake of breath that fit perfectly into how One Lightning paused for all the watchers to have their own moment of shock.
“The imperial associate cares neither for war nor peace!” One Lightning thundered. “The imperial associate cares for profits! He would not have lent his approval or funding to these protests if our war had been directed toward any other sector of space—but this sector threatens his interests!”
“Yeah, come on, tell us how, where’s the punchline,” Three Seagrass said. Mahit stole a glance at her; she looked transfixed, alight, her eyes blazing.
“—in this quadrant lies Lsel Station, an insignificant independent territory which has, unbeknownst to the population of Teixcalaan, been providing Thirty Larkspur with illegal and immoral technology for neurological enhancements. I can only imagine that the annexation of this station would cut off his secret supply, and thus he feels compelled to coopt the noble impulses of the people we both serve and stir up unrest!”
“Now that’s interesting,” Three Seagrass breathed, at the same time as Twelve Azalea turned the holoscreen off.
“That’s a problem,” he said. “Is it true, Mahit?”
“Not to my knowledge,” said Mahit, who could not imagine how One Lightning had decided that it was Thirty Larkspur who wanted imago-machines, and not Six Direction, not to mention how One Lightning had discovered them in the first place—unless it was blatant propaganda … She sighed. “And that is in fact the fucking problem, to my knowledge isn’t sufficient.”
Twelve Azalea sat down across from her, heavily. “To your knowledge, Ambassador Aghavn did not provide Thirty Larkspur with … illegal technology? With neurological enhancements? With immoral technology? What’s the part you don’t know about, Ambassador?”