A Memory Called Empire

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FIVE Agate shook Mahit’s hand off her, shook her whole body in a sharp shudder of adjustment. The blood from her shoulder was still spreading, red tendrils down her white sleeve. “There isn’t time,” she said, which didn’t make much sense to Mahit. Nothing was making a great deal of sense.

“—I have to go get him,” Three Seagrass was saying, “he’s dying in there—”

“There isn’t time,” Five Agate repeated, and now Mahit understood: Twelve Azalea in the pool of spreading blood. Twelve Azalea, her friend. Three Seagrass’s friend.

Her chest felt narrow and hot, as if it was her who had been hit by a projectile weapon; like she was a projectile, about to shatter apart.

“I don’t care about time,” Three Seagrass said.

“And I don’t know how many other projectile-spewing illegal weapons are inside the Ministry,” Five Agate spat—Mahit could hardly reconcile this woman with the efficient, quiet aide-de-camp from Nineteen Adze’s office. “Nor how many of Thirty Larkspur’s partisan hacks were also waiting for the moment they could happily shoot someone—fuck my shoulder hurts and I’m sorry about your friend—I’m sorrier about Twenty-Two Graphite, fucking starlight I’m sorry—but you called for help—they’re singing that goddamn verse in the street—so come on and let’s get out of here like you wanted.”

“They’re singing?” Mahit asked helplessly.

“The ones who aren’t shouting UP ONE LIGHTNING at the top of their lungs, yes,” Five Agate said, and stalked down the plaza.

Mahit took Three Seagrass’s hand in hers. The palm was slick and clammy with sweat. They followed. Five Agate moved at a rapid clip, her shoulder stiff and held high, not even trying to disguise the active bleeding. There didn’t seem to be immediate pursuit—perhaps Six Helicopter was dying on the ground next to Twelve Azalea, and oh, that hurt to think, Twelve Azalea deserved better than this—to distract herself, Mahit tried to track where they were headed. She thought she knew the way to Nineteen Adze’s offices but everything looked different in the full light of day, and the last time she’d come, she’d come in a groundcar escorted by the Sunlit.

The sky was that impossible blue again. An endlessness, bound only by the faint strictures of buildings marring the horizon. Mahit could fall right off the face of the planet. She squeezed Three Seagrass’s hand. There wasn’t any response.

As they turned the corner, heading away from the central plaza of Palace-East and toward the series of buildings that Mahit thought probably contained Nineteen Adze’s offices—the flicker of rose-colored marble was surely where they needed to be—they nearly ran into a platoon of Sunlit. They had appeared like an eclipse: there, abruptly, blocking out the light, twenty faceless people in gold helmets.

“Hold there,” said one of them. She wasn’t sure which. They all had the same voice. Five Agate drew to a halt. Her chest was heaving.

“You are injured,” said a different Sunlit; one of the closer ones, from the volume of their voice. “It is dangerous to be outside; the Emperor has called for a curfew of citizens. Are you attempting to reach a hospital?”

“I—” Five Agate began, “I am attempting to return home—I work for the ezuazuacat Nineteen Adze—”

“It is imperative that you not be in the streets,” said a third Sunlit.

“The curfew is enforceable by whatever means we deem appropriate,” a fourth added—and all twenty Sunlit moved forward toward them together, like automata.

Is personal or institutional violence more threatening?

And then: Can I fool the algorithm?

She took a step forward. Voice shaking, she broke in: “We have been shot at.” She tried for hysteria—and relied on Yskandr’s inherent knowledge to pitch her voice to accentless Teixcalaanli. Just for this one moment, let her not be an obvious barbarian. “We were in the Information Ministry—it’s been taken over, by mad people—we—it’s horrible, my friend is probably dead—”

On cue, Three Seagrass burst into tears. They looked genuine to Mahit. They probably were genuine—just held in abeyance until this moment, when they would be useful.

The Sunlit closest to them spoke again, a little softer. “What sort of mad people?” they asked. “Please, citizens, give us information.”

“The man who shot my friend,” Three Seagrass said, through the tears running down her face, “worked for Thirty Larkspur—he said they’d taken the Ministry because the Minister was compromised—” She wiped at her nose, her eyes. “Forgive me, I’m not like this normally. I’m really not.”

“Compromised how?” inquired two Sunlit at once; and then a third, repeating it, like an echo rippling through an AI, the algorithm adjusting itself: “Compromised how?”

“I don’t know,” Mahit said, lying through her teeth. “Just—compromised—maybe the Minister liked the yaotlek’s policies? It’s so confusing—and they shot at us—”

The whole platoon seemed to turn at once toward them, focusing down: a drift of iron filings drawn into formation by a passing magnet. All their hands were still on their shocksticks. Mahit waited for the blow; for the inevitable weight of institutional violence in the form of electricity, the mobile part of the City’s grid attacking her like the still part had attacked Three Seagrass days ago—but if this worked, if they could send this platoon away from them to intercept whatever might come out of the Information Ministry in pursuit—then it would be worth the risk.

“Can we go inside?” Five Agate said. “I don’t want to disobey an imperial curfew. My son is inside—I just want to go home—it’s right over there.” She gestured with her good arm toward the building Mahit assumed was where Nineteen Adze’s offices were, or close enough to it.

That, at last, seemed to be enough. One of the Sunlit on the edge of the platoon detached themselves, took a few steps away from the rest. “Go,” they said. “We will investigate the situation at the Ministry. One of us will escort you.” Once separated from the group, the individual Sunlit almost seemed like a person. Mahit wanted so badly to know how a Teixcalaanlitzlim became one of them.

Yskandr told her,

The rest of the platoon moved fluidly along the path that the three of them had taken out of the plaza. Mahit imagined, vividly, that they were following the scent of Five Agate’s spilled blood, a hunt in reverse.

The remaining Sunlit waved one hand, and the three of them—Mahit still holding Three Seagrass’s hand, Three Seagrass still weeping uncontrollably—followed that gesture onward: and in this fashion Mahit came to the door of Nineteen Adze’s offices under police escort a second time.

Ring composition, she thought. Around we go. And came back once again to that improbable piece of information: they were singing her verses in the streets?

Yskandr murmured—the young Yskandr, hers, that familiar flickering static-bright voice. I learned that.>

Nineteen Adze had turned her front office into a war room. She stood—as she had before—in the center of a vast sea of holograph projections, arcs upon arcs of them; but what had been an orderly information-gathering enterprise was now populated by a group of exhausted-looking young men and women, trading images back and forth with gestures, writing—by hand, on paper—notes, talking in rapid low voices through their cloudhooks to people somewhere else.

In the middle of the chaos, Nineteen Adze was a pillar of white, still immaculate, though the dark skin of her cheeks had gone grey under the eyes, and the eyes themselves were reddened. Mahit’s first thought was that she had been crying, and hadn’t slept at all—wondered how much of the rush of concerned sympathy was hers and how much was Yskandr’s. Decided that didn’t matter, just as Nineteen Adze caught sight of them, dismissed the cloud of projections around her head with one sharp gesture, and went right to Five Agate.

“You’re hurt,” she said, taking both of Five Agate’s hands in hers.

“—a little,” Five Agate said, and Mahit could see in her face: she would have walked right back into Six Helicopter’s line of fire, for just this moment with the ezuazuacat she served. “It doesn’t matter, really. I lost Twenty-Two Graphite—”

“You both volunteered. He knew as well as you what might happen. Go into the back,” Nineteen Adze said, with that same stunning, strange gentleness she had turned on Mahit in the bathroom after the incident with the flower. “You’ve done so well. You did what I asked. Sit down, drink water, we’ll get the ixplanatl in to look at your arm.”

You’ve done so well. Even in the face of losing one of her people, Nineteen Adze could provide comfort to the remaining ones. The ache in Mahit’s throat couldn’t be hers alone. Yskandr would have wanted to hear that, wouldn’t he? Especially from her— (a sharp flicker of what Nineteen Adze had looked like naked, ten years ago, and Mahit didn’t even feel lust so much as desire, wanting to touch, to be with).

Yskandr told her. agree with me. You want her to look at you like you’ve been righteous.>

“… what a prize you are, Mahit Dzmare,” said Nineteen Adze then. “What a price I am apparently willing to pay for you. Did you write that poem all by yourself?”

“Three Seagrass wrote most of it,” Mahit said. She was still holding Three Seagrass’s hand, and now, her liaison squeezed her fingers.

“My dear asekreta. Eloquent as always.”

Three Seagrass made a terrible choked little noise, and said, “Your Excellency, please do not call me eloquent when I am covered in snot.”

Nineteen Adze looked like she was trying to laugh and had forgotten how; mirth had abandoned her entirely. Instead she shrugged, with a peculiar half smile, and said, “Released, I am a spear in the hands of the sun. It’s catchy. Go sit down, will you? I have to decide what to do with you.”

“I need to speak to His Brilliance,” Mahit said. “That’s what you should do with me. After that you can do whatever you want.”

She walked over to the couch—the same one she had sat on the first time she’d been interrogated by Nineteen Adze. Thought again, Ring composition. Her legs felt like water. They spilled her down onto the cushions. Three Seagrass came with her, a satellite in orbit; when she sat next to Mahit, their thighs touched. Mahit wished she had a handkerchief to offer her, to clean up her face, get some of the tears gone. Give her back some modicum of dignity, which was in fairly short supply just now.

Nineteen Adze watched them go; watched them sit. She seemed, for a long and awful moment, rudderless—all of her direction and drive sapped. Then she straightened from the top of her head, her spine a long arc, and strode across the office to stand in front of them both.

“I can’t just walk you in to him,” she said. “He’s under guard. And he’s not well. You know that, Mahit.”

“He hasn’t been well for a long time,” Mahit said. “Which you know. And he knows, and Yskandr knows.”

“Knows?” asked Nineteen Adze, tilting her head fractionally to the side.

“Knew. It’s … complicated. More so now. I—Nineteen Adze, Your Excellency, the last time I was here I told you truly that you could not speak to him, since he was gone, no matter what he or my government had intended; now I can just as truly say differently. I’ve—we’re—it’s a long story and involved surgical intervention and I have the worst headache of my life and hello—I’ve missed you—”

Stepping back; letting that part of her that was Yskandr take, for just a moment, the muscles of her face, shape them to his broader smile, the way his eyes had crinkled up at the corners in smile-lines that her younger skin hadn’t had time to develop.

A mobile flush swept across Nineteen Adze’s face, like forged metal glowing and going out again.

“Why would I believe you now?” she said, but Mahit already knew she did.

“You killed me,” she said, Yskandr said. They said. “Or you let Ten Pearl do it and didn’t stop him, and that’s much the same. But I miss you anyway.”

The breath Nineteen Adze took was huge, dragged through her lungs, a resettling gasp barely controlled. She sat down on the opposite couch, carefully, folding like she thought she might fall if she didn’t. “I assume you want to talk about it—you always did want to talk about decisions—”

“Maybe,” said Yskandr in Mahit’s mouth, and she had not known he could be so gentle, “after this is over. We hardly have time, do we, my dear?”

“We do not,” said Nineteen Adze. She took another one of those enormous breaths. “Be Mahit again; I had not quite imagined how disturbing this would be. Your expressions. You’re like a ghost.”

“Really it’s the wrong analogy,” Mahit said, “ghosts—”

Yskandr told her.

And you were accusing me of flirting—

Oh, is that what we’re doing? I thought we were saving our Station from being annexed—

This kind of back-and-forth talk wasn’t good for them, Mahit knew. She felt nauseated, the headache gathering in her temples, and both Nineteen Adze and Three Seagrass were looking at her like she had quite gently slipped off an edge into a great pool of insanity.

“I have information,” she said, trying to pull herself together, be Mahit-who-was-once-Yskandr and not a terrible hybrid of both of them, “which I have obtained at great personal cost to myself and possibly to my people on Lsel Station, which needs the ear of His Brilliance right now. I have been trying to get back to him. I’ve been detained, my friend has been shot and is probably dead, I have had to negotiate with Sunlit—you seemed like my only possibility of getting close—”

Nineteen Adze cursed softly. “Please accept my deep condolences about your friend. I hope he is in better shape than you fear.”

Mahit remembered the spreading pool of blood around Twelve Azalea, how much of it there had been, how arterial-bright, and thought: Hope is insufficient.

“So do I,” she said. “He is … he has been more generous to me than a barbarian would expect of anyone.”

Three Seagrass made a peculiar noise, something caught between a snicker and a sob. “What he’s done is got himself killed for you, Mahit,” she said. “If he hadn’t been my friend he’d never have gotten himself into this mess at all.”

With the wave of a hand, Nineteen Adze summoned one of her aides; the young man materialized by the couches as if he himself was a hologram. (He was not Seven Scale, who had disposed of the poison flower. Who might have brought the poison flower. Mahit needed to ask about him, about everything that had happened that night, about why Nineteen Adze had tried so hard to save her life.)

“Would you get the asekreta a glass of water and a handkerchief,” Nineteen Adze asked the aide, “and bring all of us some brandy; I think we will need it.”

He vanished as swiftly as he’d appeared. Nineteen Adze nodded, as if confirming something to herself, and said, “If—and I do mean if, Mahit Dzmare—I am to bring you to His Brilliance in this time of absolute unrest and uncertainty, risking my own position and possibly my life to do it, you had better tell me what you are planning to tell him. In the same amount of detail. It has to be worth it, Ambassador. More worth it than an immortality machine which makes ghosts and double-persons out of your oldest friends.”

At that moment, the aide returned with a tray bearing three glasses of dark copper spirits and one of water, and Mahit had never been more glad to see alcohol in her life. She picked up the nearest glass. The spirit clung to the sides when she swirled it, a viscous oilslick shimmer.

“Please, Three Seagrass, tell me this won’t taste like violets.”

Three Seagrass, gulping water like she’d been dehydrated for hours—she had been, Mahit realized, she’d been crying and running at the same time—put her glass back down, took an appraising look at the brandy, and said, bone-dry: “That will taste like fire and blood and the smell of soil turned over in the spring after a rainstorm, if it’s what I think it is—are you trying to get us drunk, Your Excellency? I promise I don’t need much help at this point.”

“I wanted,” said Nineteen Adze, “to be civilized for a moment.” She picked up her glass, raised it in a small and silent toast. “Drink.”

Mahit drank. To living through the next twelve hours, she thought as the liquid slipped down her throat, bright and hot and rich; plasma fire and soil burning. A peculiar type of petrichor. To Lsel Station remaining Lsel Station.

Yskandr whispered, somewhere she could barely feel. An upswelling of emotion more than a voice.

Mahit put the glass down. She felt warm all through. It would work as a substitute for courage.

“All right, Your Excellency. I will tell you. But first I would very much appreciate if you would explain why you kept me alive, and not my predecessor. I need to know if I trust you because I have to—and I do trust you, but I am compelled by lack of other options—or if I might trust you because I want to.”

“Which of you is asking?” Nineteen Adze asked. She’d drunk her brandy like a shot, all of it at once.

“It’s not a good question, Nineteen Adze. I’m asking.” Mahit did not specify further.

She sighed. Folded her hands in her lap, dark against the bone-white suit. “Two reasons,” she began. “First: you—were—not Yskandr Aghavn. And what you wanted was not what he’d wanted; he wanted to give Six Direction what I can only understand, after a great deal of questioning and research and thinking, as an immortality machine—a machine that would put my friend, my lord, my Emperor in the body of a child, make him into something that was—not even human, and might do him irreparable harm. Might do all of us irreparable harm, with that child on the sun-spear throne.”

Mahit nodded. “I did not come here to trade imago-machines for my station’s freedom, no.” They were reversed; she realized quite suddenly that she was leading this interrogation. That it was an interrogation. Or a negotiation.

“What was the second reason?” Mahit went on.

“I couldn’t do it twice,” Nineteen Adze said. “I couldn’t— watch it twice. I’m not a squeamish person, Ambassador, I’ve led my share of planetary conquests. But you were enough my friend, even if you weren’t sufficiently him to want what he wanted. And you hadn’t done anything yet worth that death. It would have been very painful.”

Mahit felt like it was she who was being exposed, carved open, all nerves hypersensitive to the air like they’d been on Five Portico’s surgery table, even though the person who was talking wasn’t her at all.

“Who sent me the flower?” she asked. Distantly, she registered that Three Seagrass had put her hand on the small of her back; a kind pressure.

“It was a gift,” said Nineteen Adze, “from the household of my fellow ezuazuacat Thirty Larkspur to my household. What I did with it was of course up to me.”

Which meant—which meant that Nineteen Adze had first decided that Mahit should die, and watched her nearly breathe in the poison of that flower, and then changed her mind while watching. Which meant that Thirty Larkspur had dared Nineteen Adze to get rid of the new Lsel Ambassador like she’d allowed the old one to be gotten rid of.

Thirty Larkspur didn’t want Yskandr dead; that had been Ten Pearl, and perhaps also Nineteen Adze. Thirty Larkspur hadn’t cared about Yskandr. Thirty Larkspur wanted Mahit dead, and thought that Nineteen Adze, who had helped dispose of one Lsel Ambassador, might do it again.

He’d decided Mahit was too dangerous to have around—he’d probably decided that anyone who could give Six Direction an imago-machine was too dangerous to have around. An imago-machine, especially as imagined by a Teixcalaanlitzlim, an immortality machine, would mean Six Direction on the throne forever. Thirty Larkspur would never be able to use this moment of political unrest to dismantle the tripartite association of imperial successors and claim the throne entirely for himself—that was what he was doing, she couldn’t interpret how he’d taken over Information in any other way—if Six Direction was still Emperor. It wouldn’t matter that some jumped-up yaotlek was trying to acclaim himself the rightful star-blessed ruler. The moment Thirty Larkspur needed would be gone, if Six Direction had access to an imago-machine.

She was abruptly astonished that they’d escaped the Information Ministry at all, and blamed that fragile success entirely on Six Helicopter being a power-drunk politician and not the sort of person who actually asked his boss what to do next.

“One last question,” said Mahit, “and then we can go on. How many people in His Brilliance’s government knew you allowed Yskandr to be killed?”

Nineteen Adze’s smile was Lsel-style, and small; a quirk of the mouth that made Mahit want to mirror it with the patterns of Yskandr’s own smiling. (They’d liked each other so much. The endocrine response activated even after confession to murder.) “Everyone who mattered,” Nineteen Adze said. “Including His Brilliance; I think he is still very angry with me, though he understands why. He always does understand why I do things.”

Mahit remembered the fever-dream of Yskandr and Nineteen Adze in bed: Yskandr saying I love him, I shouldn’t but I do, and Nineteen Adze telling him So do I.

So do I, and then I hope I still will when he’s not himself any longer. No danger of that anymore. His Brilliance would be himself. There were no more imago-machines on Teixcalaan save the one inside Mahit’s skull—and the one she’d given to an anti-imperial activist medic.

She’d think about that later. It was out of her hands.

Three Seagrass was staring at the ezuazuacat as if she’d grown a second head or another pair of arms. “I am terrified of you, Your Excellency,” she said, using the word for “terror” which, in poetry, could also mean “awed.” The sort of adjective that was applied to atrocities or divine miracles. Or emperors, which Mahit assumed were in many ways both at once.

“The perils,” said Nineteen Adze ruefully, “of getting to know someone.” She looked at her brandy glass, as if she wanted to drink the empty air there. Shut her eyes for a moment. The lids were grey with the faint tracery of visible veins. “Now. Enough of this. Tell me what you want to tell my Emperor.”

Mahit framed what she was about to say before she actually said it: tried to say it simply and directly, without pretense or insinuation. The facts. (The politics would come after the facts; would devolve from the nature of the facts, as politics tended to do.) “The Lsel Councilor for the Miners has sent me—under multiple layers of encryption—the locations of increased, threatening, and pernicious alien activity—the sort of activity that presages a conquest—in both our quadrant of local space and two others. The aliens are of a sort unknown to us, and we have not established communication. They are hostile. Both we on Lsel Station and you in all the vast starfield of Teixcalaan are in considerable danger.”

Nineteen Adze clicked her teeth together and made a small, inquisitive noise. “And why did the Lsel Councilor for the Miners want you to know this information?” she asked.

“I believe,” Mahit said carefully, “that Darj Tarats would prefer the beast we know, the empire we have negotiated with for generations, than a force beyond our control in Lsel space.”

“That’s why he wants you to tell us,” Nineteen Adze said. “I’m asking why he wanted you to know.”

What she was asking was closer to By what method did Darj Tarats think you could use this information to influence us? Mahit leaned back against Three Seagrass’s hand. Her eyelids felt heavy; her tongue was still a little brandy-numbed. “I wouldn’t have figured it out,” she said conversationally, “if there hadn’t been all those newspaper articles a few days ago about Eight Loop.”

“Go on,” said Nineteen Adze.

“The ones where she was questioning the legality of the annexation war,” Three Seagrass said, sudden and bright: she’d gotten it. Of course she had.

Mahit nodded. “The ones where she was questioning the legality of the annexation war because the borders of Teixcalaan are not secure,” she said. “She could have meant just that … business you all are having, in Odile. I think that’s what she meant, when she said it. But I know—an actual alien threat is worse than some internal insurrection. If the borders of the Empire are not secure, an annexation war cannot legally be justified, and even a strong emperor at the height of his powers might be overruled by council and ministers and ezuazuacatlim. And now, with this information, I can prove that there is an active threat to the borders of Teixcalaan. We are all in danger from these aliens. And the Councilor for the Miners would like me to use this loophole in Teixcalaanli law to get the Empire to leave my homeland alone. No secure borders, thus no annexation war, and Lsel remains independent. That’s simple language, ezuazuacat. I’m being as clear with you as I can be. As I know how to be.”

It left out entirely whether or not Aknel Amnardbat had tried to sabotage her, and why. That wasn’t for Teixcalaan, Mahit thought. That was for Lsel. For her and Yskandr to think about together, if they lived through this week. She could keep that one thing for herself, in this terrible burst of confession. If she mentioned it now she’d destroy her own credibility. Besides—Amnardbat couldn’t have known Yskandr was dead when she’d sabotaged her. It should have been Yskandr all along, doing what she was doing, carrying this message to Nineteen Adze, a last-ditch effort to save Lsel from annexation.

Yskandr murmured, and the bright flash which was all that was left of the other Yskandr raced down Mahit’s arms like a static charge.

hates the Empire,> Yskandr said, fascinated, intrigued, and then … interrupted.

“That’s extremely clever as well as somewhat disturbing,” said Nineteen Adze, “whether or not it’s true.”

“Let me tell Six Direction,” Mahit asked. She could talk to Yskandr about sabotage later. “Take me to him. Please. For the sake of what we were, and what he and Yskandr were, and for both of our peoples.”

“You do realize that I can’t just walk you in after dark, like last time,” Nineteen Adze said. “He isn’t even in Palace-Earth—it’s too dangerous there for him right now.”

“I do realize. I know I’m asking you for something very large,” Mahit began, and was interrupted by the return of the aide who had brought the brandy. He was empty-handed, this time, and his face was expressionlessly grave even for a Teixcalaanlitzlim.

“Your Excellency,” he said, “forgive me for interrupting.”

“Did I or did I not give standing orders that any further developments were not interrupting, Forty-Five Sunset?”

The briefest flicker of a smile; his eyes gone wide, and then blinking back to standard. “You did. Your Excellency, I regret to tell you that the yaotlek’s forces are in the city center and marching on the palace; there have been reports of multiple civilian deaths. I have feeds if you need them.”

Nineteen Adze nodded; a short, sharp movement. “The clashes, are they partisan?”

“They’re being instigated by flower-bearers, yes.”

“Must we use Thirty Larkspur’s propaganda language, Forty-Five Sunset?”

“My apologies, Your Excellency. Thirty Larkspur’s agitators, with their purple larkspur pins, are primarily responsible for provoking the yaotlek’s soldiers.”

“Thank you,” said Nineteen Adze. “I assume it’s fractionally better if it’s Thirty Larkspur and not the whole mess of people who want to sing your poetry, Three Seagrass. We might still have their loyalties. I’m not sure.”

“Who is we?” asked Three Seagrass, and Mahit felt the echo in her bones: What is the Teixcalaanli definition of we?

“We are people who would like to see Six Direction on the sun-spear throne for as long as he lives,” said Nineteen Adze.

“I’ll swear to it,” said Three Seagrass. “Right here, if you like. With blood.”

It was an old Teixcalaanli custom: one of the oldest, from before the Empire had been multicontinental, let alone multiplanetary. For luck, for proof of an oath. To swear fealty or bind a person to a task. Blood in a bowl, mixed, and that bowl poured out as a sacrifice to the sun.

“How traditional,” said Nineteen Adze. “Mahit—would you so swear?”

Did you ever, Mahit asked Yskandr, quiet in her mind.

Yskandr said, and Mahit remembered the long, curving scar on his hand, below the place where Ten Pearl had stabbed him with his poison needle.

Will I be bound?

“Bring the bowl,” Mahit said, and with a wave of Nineteen Adze’s hand it was done. A little brass bowl, and a short steel knife that Mahit could imagine Nineteen Adze using all too easily. A claw of a thing. Three Seagrass took it by its handle and pressed her forefinger to the edge, cutting deep so that the blood welled quickly, dripping into the bowl. It was harder for Mahit to do; her fingers shook on the knife’s handle, but the edge was microscopic and slit her finger open with next to no pressure and hardly any sting. Nineteen Adze was last. Their blood mingled, all the same shade of red.

In the oldest version of this custom, Mahit knew, they would all drink the contents of the bowl. So much for Teixcalaanli squeamishness about the consumption of the revered dead. They ate people who were still alive.

“May His Brilliance Six Direction reign until he no longer breathes,” said Nineteen Adze, and Mahit and Three Seagrass echoed her.

Nothing happened. Somehow Mahit had expected something would; that blood sacrifice would be magic, or sanctified, or—

Yskandr finished, and she was forced to agree.

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.”