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<You have gotten us into even more trouble than I did,> said Yskandr. She could feel him shuffle through the past week of her life, like a flipbook of infofiche. <I’m actually impressed.>
Sharing skill with an imago felt like discovering an unexpected and enormous talent; like she had sat down to do the Station’s orbital calculations and suddenly realized she had been studying mathematics for decades, all the correct formulas and the experience to use them arrayed at her fingertips; or being asked to dance in zero-g, and automatically knowing how her body should feel, how to move in space.
She was glad she wasn’t learning it, just feeling it unfold inside her like a blooming flower.
<Thank you,> Yskandr said, a whisper like fire behind her eyes.
Mahit put her hand on Three Seagrass’s arm. “The asekreta is here with me,” she said, “and I claim her for Lsel Station. She is my responsibility.” <That is amazingly illegal,> Yskandr said admiringly.
By the time they reached the station, Mahit’s headache felt large enough to devour small spacecraft that had flown too close to its center of mass.
“I am Six Helicopter,” said the man—Mahit stared at him, and wondered when he’d learned to say his name with not only a straight face but with that degree of smugness—
Three Seagrass had taken her hands away from her face, and the expression which was growing there was one that Mahit had seen before: it was Three Seagrass focusing inward, preparing to bend the universe around her will, because all other options were untenable.
“This is more than you opening doors for me,” Mahit told her. “This is my goals in your words, on the public newsfeeds, in the public memory of Teixcalaan, forever.”
Then she did reach out to touch Mahit, her fingertips like a ghost, brushing over her cheekbone. Mahit shivered helplessly, and went very still: like she was waiting for a blow.
“We’re writing poetry,” Three Seagrass said, and managed, by maintaining an expression of perfect serenity, to make the activity sound profoundly intimate. <And she has been flirting back,> Yskandr went on. <When you’re not in the middle of a coup attempt, you might want to do something about that.>
Poetry is for the desperate, and for people who have grown old enough to have something to say.
Not thinking was the province of other people. Not thinking was impossible, and she rather wanted to claw her own skin off.
Empire was empire—the part that seduced and the part that clamped down, jaws like a vise, and shook a planet until its neck was broken and it died.
“We’re arrested,” Twelve Azalea mentioned, off-hand reminder. “But—fuck it. Let’s unarrest ourselves.”
(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). <No,> Yskandr told her. <I wanted her to agree with me. You want her to look at you like you’ve been righteous.>
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.
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.)
“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.
What, my dear, is worth preserving? Your joy in work? Mine in discovery?
“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.”
How can you love an emperor like you’d love a person, Yskandr?
i thought we all agreed mr kermit that a celebrity is not a person
There was no real arguing with him. Mahit could feel the weight of his authority, even diminished and under threat—the long shadow of his eighty years of peace stretching out to shape even this moment.
born out of a childhood half in love with Teixcalaan the story, Teixcalaan the empire of poets, all-conquering all-devouring all-singing beast in the garden of her imaginings;
Mahit thought about it—thought about it while she took Three Seagrass’s hand in her hand, and laced their fingers together, and said thank you with all the honorific particles she could remember tacked onto the end, so that it became both enormously sincere and utterly hilarious, all at once.
Lastly and most truly: Vivian Shaw, my wife, first reader extraordinaire, who showed me that stories could also be joy—thanks are insufficient, darling, but they’re all yours anyway, like everything else.
thank you lesbian you get it
