A Memory Called Empire
Page 39
Nothing happened. Somehow Mahit had expected something would; that blood sacrifice would be magic, or sanctified, or—
There was a little breath of silence. Then Nineteen Adze stood up, holding her bleeding finger safely away from the fabric of her suit, and said, “We’ll get some bandages, and then, Ambassador, asekreta, I believe we will go see the Emperor.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
I carry exile in my heart. It animates my poetry and my politics; I will never be free of it, having lived outside of Teixcalaan for so long. I will always be measuring the distance between myself and a person who remained in the heart of the world; between the person I would have been had I stayed and the person I have become under the pressure of the frontier. When the Seventeenth Legion came through the jumpgate in bright star-snatching ships and filled up the Ebrekti sky with the shapes of my home, I was at first afraid. A profound discontinuity. To know fear in the shape of one’s own face.
—from Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier, Eleven Lathe
* * *
What, my dear, is worth preserving? Your joy in work? Mine in discovery?
—private letter from Ambassador Yskandr Aghavn to the ezuazuacat Nineteen Adze, undated
THEY were keeping the Emperor in a bunker under Palace-North. It took forty-five minutes to walk there, Mahit and Three Seagrass and Nineteen Adze and one of the aides—the young man, Forty-Five Sunset. They went through tunnels, avoiding the curfew, the roving bands of Sunlit. The entire palace complex was riddled with them, deep under the ground. At her left, Three Seagrass murmured, “The rumors are that the palace sinks as many roots into the ground as it does blooms into the sky; we daylight servants of the Empire see only the flowers—justice, science, information, war—and the roots which feed us are invisible but strong.” Mahit liked hearing her talk. It was how they’d started this, barbarian and liaison, Three Seagrass decoding Teixcalaan for her. She liked it, and at the same time she knew that Three Seagrass was doing it to keep herself calm.
Nineteen Adze moved them through checkpoints, guarded first by the shimmering AI-walls of the City—opened by Nineteen Adze’s cloudhook—and then by ever-increasing numbers of Teixcalaanlitzlim, dressed very simply in grey tunics and trousers with armbands bearing the imperial crest on their left arms. Mahit was reminded of the Judiciary forces who had been chasing Twelve Azalea, and thought of Eight Loop, who was Six Direction’s crèchesib, who might have given him a secret personal guard of Judiciary-trained people. They all had shocksticks. Some of them—more, as they went deeper—had projectile weapons, and one woman carried what Mahit would swear was a laser which should have been mounted on the prow of a small warship. None of them wore the full-face cloudhooks of the Sunlit.
The innermost guards wore no cloudhooks at all, and they took the cloudhook Nineteen Adze was wearing from her. She gave it over easily.
One Lightning’s infiltration of the City’s AI-algorithm—One Lightning, working through War—must have gone very deep, to have the Emperor guarded only by people who would be guaranteed free of any influence of it: left as naked and abandoned by the vast flow of Teixcalaanli literature and history and culture and moment-to-moment news as Mahit had been naked and abandoned when she had lost contact with her imago.
Nineteen Adze spoke to some of them; others simply nodded to her. Mahit wondered how many times she’d come this way before—whether she was new to this level of disaster and threat, or if there had been other times in the long history of her service to Six Direction that he had been forced to hide down here in the strange heart of the Empire.
said Yskandr.
He might have slept with you, but you weren’t his, Mahit told him.
How can you love an emperor like you’d love a person, Yskandr? Unspoken: How could I? Would I?
She never had. That was all Yskandr. She’d met the Emperor twice, once in public and once in private—and been impressed, had felt the echoes of Yskandr’s familiarity all through her nerves and limbic system, but that wasn’t her.
Maybe it was them, though, the combination of her and both Yskandrs, integrating together—and that might be a problem. She wanted to stay as objective as she could.
Beyond the last door and the last guards was a small room, by imperial standards, flooded with sunlamp light—the whole ceiling was made of full-spectrum lamps. It was warm, like basking in solar radiation on a viewport couch was warm, and bright enough that Mahit thought no one in here would ever sleep again. More grey-uniformed guards stood in the corners, and one of them stepped forward to take Three Seagrass’s elbow and gently separate her from Mahit and Nineteen Adze. She left willingly.
Six Direction himself sat in the center of the room on a divan, dressed in resplendent red-purple and gold, and while at home in Palace-Earth he had borne a halo of sunlamps, here in the deep places under the City he was surrounded by a scintillating fortification of information holographs, a migraine aura composed entirely of reports. He looked terrible. His skin had gone to a grey-brown crepe, translucent purple under the eyes, and while the smile he turned on Nineteen Adze—and then on Mahit herself—was brilliant and sharp enough to make her heart flip over in her chest, she was scared for him. Viscerally.
I don’t think the past three months have done anyone any favors, including His Brilliance. Dying men die faster when they aren’t allowed to rest.
“Your Brilliance,” said Nineteen Adze, “I’ve brought you trouble again.”
“So you have,” said the Emperor. “Come sit beside me once more, Mahit, and let us see if we get any farther than we did in our last conversation.”
Mahit went, drawn forward by invisible strings: desire, hers and not-hers. Obedience to imperial authority. All the effort and sacrifice she had put into making this meeting possible. She sat, becoming part of the fortification-aura of information. Just one more piece of data surrounding Six Direction. There were visible bruises, this close up, on the Emperor’s wrists, over the veins; inelastic skin and thin-walled vasculature insulted by what must have been countless injections. She wondered what was keeping him alive.
“I also have come to bring you trouble,” she said.
“I hardly expected any less, from Lsel Station.” Six Direction smiled at her, Lsel-smile, with mouth and teeth, and she didn’t know what to do with how much she felt, all at once. It would be so useful if she felt nothing. If she could be purely a political tool, purely an instrument of preventing Teixcalaan from annexing Lsel. It would be so easy, to be cold and clear and—
For a moment Mahit considered slipping, letting Yskandr have her, letting Yskandr talk to his Emperor one more time—and then she felt sickly horrified. Get the fuck out of my neurology and out of my limbic system, Yskandr. I am not you reborn. That is not how we are.
A hiss, like static on a wire. Then:
“Your Brilliance,” Mahit began, “I have received actionable intelligence from my government on Lsel which describes a grave threat to Teixcalaan; graver, I am afraid to say, than the current unpleasant chaos outside this room.”
“Do go on,” said Six Direction. “I could use a distracting problem, one slightly less intractable than my current situation. However grave.”
Mahit went on. She explained the entire message—explained it as she had to Nineteen Adze, including its blatant political maneuver. And then she waited, to see what the Emperor would say.
He was quiet for the space of a few breaths. She could hear the faint bubbling in his lungs. Then he looked to Nineteen Adze. “And do you think our latest Lsel Ambassador is as credible as the last one?” he asked her.
Ninet
een Adze, standing next to Three Seagrass nearer the door, nodded. “I wouldn’t have brought her here if I didn’t believe her. I think she’s reporting exactly what she was told by her government, and I think she’s reporting her biases honestly. If this was at any other moment, my lord, I’d suggest she was coming to us for help; a fair diplomatic trade, vital information for her Station’s continued lack of being formally Teixcalaanli.”
“It is not any other moment,” said Six Direction. He turned back to Mahit. “I will ask you what I asked you before, Mahit Dzmare, and with appreciation and thankfulness at being informed of this danger—will you agree to what your predecessor agreed to? Give me what Yskandr would have given me if not for my lovely friend Nineteen Adze and the arrayed forces of Science and Judiciary; trade me my life reborn, and you will not even need this danger to protect your interests in Lsel.”
“Can’t we be done with this, Six Direction,” Nineteen Adze said, and there was an aching, exhausted anguish in her voice. “I want you to live and to hold the throne forever; I will miss you all the days of my life when you are gone, but the sun-spear throne is not a barbarian medical experiment and should not be—look at Mahit, your Brilliance. She has Yskandr in her and she is not Yskandr.”
The Emperor affixed his eyes on Mahit’s. She felt like she was drowning. All the supernatural power she’d imagined a blood ritual to evoke for her was right here, and all it was was reflected limbic system response, a trick of neurology. And yet there was a soapbubble–thin hook behind her sternum, an ache. Six Direction lifted one of his hands—they did not shake, and she had time to wonder at his strength—and cupped her cheek in his hand.
She let Yskandr—the sequence of responses, continuity of memory and its reflection on emotion, on pattern, that used to be Yskandr—lean into that palm. Let him shut her eyes in a deep, slow flutter.
And then took it all back, sat up straight with her eyes wide open, and said, “Your Brilliance, he loved you. I have met you thrice.”
In the shocked little silence that followed, she went on: “Besides. I do not have an imago-machine for you. And I cannot—even in a better situation than this—get you one in time to preserve your memory before your life is over. I am sorry, Six Direction. But my answer is no.”
The Emperor smudged his thumb along the curve of her cheekbone. “There’s one in you,” he said, “isn’t there.”
“If you wanted,” Mahit told him, swallowing hard against bright fear, he was the Emperor, if he wanted to carve her open he could wave a hand and one of the grey-clad guards would do it right here on the floor, with Five Portico’s surgical scar to guide them, “you could put me and Yskandr—two versions of Yskandr, even, it’s complicated, it’s all so very fucking complicated—into your mind. Or into the mind of anyone you like. But there is no imago-machine, Your Brilliance, which will bring you and only you into another person’s mind. None for two months’ worth of travel.”
Six Direction sighed, and let her go. She felt the afterimage of his hand like a brand, glowing-hot, hypersensitive. “It does not change very much, I suppose,” he said. “I have not been counting on the hope of resurrection since your predecessor’s death. I was not expecting you to bring me hope. I had only … wished for it.” He waved a finger, and Nineteen Adze came to him, sank to the floor at his side on her knees. He put a hand to the back of her neck, and she leaned up into it.
Mahit had thought of her as an enormous tiger, clawed and dangerous, and yet—she knelt. She leaned into that hand.
Or perhaps that was her own voice, casting itself in a tone she’d be most likely to believe.
“How goes this very stupid rebellion, Nineteen Adze?” asked the Emperor.
“Stupidly,” Nineteen Adze said, “but badly for everyone. One Lightning is killing civilians; Thirty Larkspur is trying to unseat you via flat-out internal coup, I believe because he thinks if you die Eight Loop and Eight Antidote will cut him out of the government—so he’s using One Lightning as an excuse to take preemptive power while you’re still alive, and doing it by sending instigators into the streets with his ridiculous little badges of floral honor—we’ve lost Two Rosewood in Information, she’s dead, or as good as, and I don’t have much hope about Nine Propulsion in War; if she hasn’t gone over to One Lightning already she might, at any time, if she thinks it will get her an ezuazuacat’s position in his government…”
“Would you like to be Information Minister, Nineteen Adze, since you know everything already?”
“… I like my current title. As I’ve said, multiple times,” said Nineteen Adze. And sighed a little. “If you need me to be, though, I will.”
“That’s not what I need from you,” Six Direction said. Mahit found absolutely no comfort in his phrasing. Neither, from her expression, did Nineteen Adze.
“Where is Eight Antidote?” Nineteen Adze asked. “If you can tell me. I am—concerned, my lord, for his welfare.”
It would matter very much where the ninety-percent clone was; even at ten years old—Was he conceived when you and Six Direction finally agreed on your trade, Yskandr, or was he already an insurance policy?—he was likely to be the first of the three co-emperors, by virtue of his genetic heritage, when Six Direction died. If Six Direction died before the child reached his majority.
“He’s down here with us,” said Six Direction. “You will protect him, Nineteen Adze. Won’t you?”
“Of course I will. When have I not acted in your best interests, Your Brilliance?”
“Oh, once or twice,” Six Direction said, and instead of flinching or being cowed, Nineteen Adze laughed. Mahit could abruptly imagine how they must have been when they’d first met: Nineteen Adze a young military commander, Six Direction come into the high blossoming of his power. The easy friendship that they’d struck up. The successes of their partnership.
Then the Emperor turned back to Mahit, and she felt quite small, and terribly young, and not nearly as simpatico with these two Teixcalaanlitzlim as Yskandr had been. She wouldn’t have become part of that strange triangle.
No. She wasn’t sure. She merely wasn’t ready.
“So, Mahit Dzmare—if you cannot solve the most fundamental problem of good government for me, if you cannot give me eternity and stable rule—what can your news from Darj Tarats give me? What shall I do with an alien invasion on the borders of my empire, from down here while I hide from death and deposition in the heart of my palace?”
And just like that, she was being given a test. The same way she’d felt on her first day here, suddenly knowing she needed to speak Teixcalaanli, all the time, not just in her mind or between friends. She would speak Teixcalaanli now. She knew the phrasings, the shadings. She had all of Yskandr’s long history with Six Direction—all the conversations they had had, over tables and at legislative meetings and in bed—to guide her. Everything that ached—her hand, her hip, the endless, endless headache—fell away, and she thought: All right. Now.
“You can discredit One Lightning,” she said. “And you can elevate Eight Loop above Thirty Larkspur.”
“Go on.”
She was flying. “One Lightning is waging an usurpation—an attempt to be acclaimed Emperor—and has he won victories? No. Is he even trying? No, he is leaving the edges of Teixcalaan open to alien threat. A barbarian had to bring this message to you, which is a shameful failure on the part of your yaotlek, who should have known of this danger first but has put himself and his vainglorious ambition above the safety of the Empire.” She had to pause for breath. Behind her, she could feel Three Seagrass’s eyes on her, and wished that her liaison was with her, close enough to hold her hand. “And … Eight Loop warned the entire City that the annexation war—which Thirty Lark
spur supports, has supported in public at your last oration contest—was of dubious legality, due to the possibility of these threats. She fulfills her role as Judiciary Minister; Thirty Larkspur is exposed as using his position of influence upon you to put you in political danger.”
She winced a bit. “It does ask you to admit that you may have been led astray by your ezuazuacat, I have to confess.”
“A small price,” Six Direction said. “I am an old man, and easily persuaded by interests foreign to me, am I not?”
Six Direction looked down at Nineteen Adze. Some communication passed silently between them. She nodded. His hand came off the back of her neck and she got up to her feet, fluid and graceful for a woman in middle age who probably hadn’t slept for a day and a half at least.
“We’ll have to broadcast it,” she said. “On every feed. Imperial override; emergency message. And it will have to be you saying it, Your Brilliance—no one will believe a proxy right now. You saying it, and the Ambassador prerecorded and spliced in as appropriate.”
“As ever, Nineteen Adze, I do trust your judgment.”
Nineteen Adze’s smile was more like a flinch. Mahit suspected she was thinking of how she had allowed Yskandr to die, and doomed Six Direction at the same time. It would be like a thorn in her, a goad. Six Direction must like that, to have something to twist—
“Ambassador Dzmare,” said Nineteen Adze. “Mahit—will you record your statement from your government for us?”
If this was the plan, this was the plan. “Yes,” Mahit said, “I will. Where should I go?”
“Oh, we have everything we need right here,” said Six Direction. “Emperors have lived down here, for months. A holograph recorder is nothing.” He waved a hand toward some of his grey-uniformed attendants, and they swung into motion: some left the room, others approached Mahit and the Emperor on the couch, with some wariness.