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It was, in the grand scheme of things, a tiny, minor detail to Teixcalaan. A footnote on the page describing the not-quite-aliens-but-barely-even-people-even-if-they-were-humans of Parzrawantlek— no. No, she means Bardzravand Sector. She was not Teixcalaanlitizm, she could pronounce her own sector correctly.
She was upset with herself for being so disgusted with it, and she was upset at the entirety of the City (in her head she kept thinking in Teixcalaanli, not Stationer, she didn't know if she meant City or World or the Universe—) she had idolised her entire life for doing something so indecent.
She couldn't do the proper rites of burial with Yskandr's body. They'd pumped his body full of chemicals to preserve it, preserve it as a useless hunk of meat instead of letting it return to the cycle, because he had died surrounded by people and a lot didn't get that mercy, pilots who were lost in space or engineers lost in accidents and their generations of imago-lines didn't get the mercy of being known, of being seen and loved and mourned in their final moments except by each other, and Yskandr only had himself and the faint remains of their first, and it was so—
And Yskandr had, but they were Teixcalaanlitizm and they— they— despite their poetry and literature that both she and Yskandr had loved so dearly they didn't understand.
So Mahit cried, for she couldn't even let Yskandr die as one of their people, for all his life and his death had been perverted by the City they held so dear.
<I recognise that seal. It's from Fifteen Engine,> Yskandr murmured, slightly apologetic as Mahit dropped the infofiche stick, the nerves in her hands suddenly flaring up in pain. <Sorry.>
She couldn't tell which of them apologised — maybe both, to be honest — but she gave herself a moment for the pain to dull before cracking open the stick. It wasn't their fault, regardless. They missed him, something fierce, and stars, that grief was seeping into her now, overpowering the dislike she had for her brief time meeting him. With everything that had happened, they hadn't had time to fully merge the despondent chord of losing Fifteen Engine alongside everyone else — their grief for themselves and Six Direction, and her own grief for Twelve Azalea. Grief was just one emotion they had shared, but the whirlwind of sorrow was enough for one life, Mahit thought.
A small part of her noted the date it had been sent. It had been sent the morning she met him.
She expected to see the poem, the poem that Three Seagrass had gotten a copy of for her so she could work on decrypting her own damn mail, but it was one wholly unfamiliar to her.
But not to them.
<Oh. I wrote this poem with him, just before he left,> the younger said, and Mahit let herself go so he could put their hand out to the holographic message, fingers hovering over the circular script that made up the Imperial language. In a darker tone, the older one added, <I knew he wouldn't let just anyone decrypt it.>
‘He needed to make sure that whoever the next Ambassador was had the imago,’ Mahit realised.
<Exactly,> hissed Yskandr, in the wicked, smart way he was.
It was a short poem, not written in the political verse that such ciphers were usually written in, and there was nothing trendy about this one, nothing in common with any encomiastic poem she'd ever read. Her eyes flickered over it, trying to read it before Yskandr came in with the answer, but she was struggling to even understand the poem, let alone the cipher underneath it.
‘It's nonsense. None of these words rhyme together.’
Amusement filtered into her endocrine system alongside a spark of annoyance, and a bubble of laughter followed with his answer.
<That's because you're pronouncing it like how a Teixcalaanlitizm would pronounce it. We're not Teixcalaanlitizm.>
Her mind shifted, the words realigning themselves in her brain as they reconstructed themselves before her. The words picked were basic, far simpler than she knew Yskandr could speak, far below her own reading level. They reminded her of when she was a child, when she and Shrja Torel would put their heads together and giggle over 2e Asteroid and daydream and write stories about what living in the City (the World; the Universe and all within) would be like.
If she pronounced this poem like a Teixcalaanlitizm would, it was incomprehensible.
If she pronounced it like a Stationer would, a child, before the long consonants and trilling vocals of Teixcalaanli had sunk its claws deep, deep into her, then she could read it.
It was incredibly smart, and she told Yskandr that exact thing.
<I know,> he preened, <I am.>
She could read it now, so she could decrypt it. Yskandr helped when she needed it, but it took her less time than she thought.
Yskandr Aghavn, it said.
You died three months ago. At least, part of you did — I did listen, after all, when you told me of Lsel's secrets. That would be why he had to code it in this poem; it couldn't be read by non-Stationers. I'm meeting your replacement in an hour, so maybe this is a stupid message. When I see you again, I hope they don't suffer from the same allergies as you did.
<Incredible, the idea that I lived here for two decades and never once had an allergy test,> scoffed Yskandr.
I wasn't going to write you anything at all. But with your replacement coming, I felt it best. Just in case it didn't work. Just in case I didn't trust them. But if you are reading this, I know you are there, so I shall say my part:
You were always upset about how Teixcalaan handled their dead. I was always upset at the idea of ritualistic cannibalism, but you always were a persuasive bastard, so it's not a surprise I stopped caring as much — especially as I never saw it in action. Blood and starlight, thankfully I never saw it in action.
But it does make me feel for you, and your replacement. They brought me in to see your body, to verify it was you — No, I don't know why — and you would be disgusted at the state of it. You had told me, once, that if you were to die you wanted me to burn you before the ixplanatl got their hands on you. I am sorry, old friend, that I couldn't.
If they have any wits about them, your replacement would not have tried to eat your ashes, because I am old and cannot be bothered with a third Lsel Ambassador in my lifetime, and whatever they pumped you full of will almost certainly kill that child.
You did tell me what they do with bodies that cannot be recovered, however.
Fifteen Engine.
<I said that in regards to pilots, we're not pilots—>
‘Shut up, Yskandr,’ Mahit interrupted. He head hurt, her heart hurt, and she turned away from the infofiche and her desk to force her way back to her bedroom, refusing to do any more work at the moment.
Her mind kept thinking, however. It was rare, but when a pilot died and they couldn't find their body — or their body was exposed to space and was too radioactive for their families to safely eat — they honoured them with a dedication, maybe naming a new fighter after them, and the families would usually burn and eat parts of them that remained — a lot of Stationers kept hair cuttings for this very reason, but anything that could be burnt and eaten safely was consumed. Favourite foods, clothes, personal items, as long as they were organic, they could be processed and eaten.
She curled up under the blanket, the blue walls too sunny and happy for her, and tried to think of anything else.
<My favourite Teixcalaanli food is an ahachotiya-based plum and fowl stew,> Yskandr (she couldn't tell which, maybe both?) said, softer than she'd ever heard him before, blurring the lines in her head as she felt how he felt, felt him trying to calm her down with hormones and sending wave after wave to soothe her, and damn her, it was working, <My actual favourite food are those spicy fish flatbreads that I spent years figuring out how to recreate here, I have a recipe written down somewhere,> he added, and she knew based on how easily the words flowed through him that he'd had to give an Teixcalaanli answer far more than his actual answer.
‘Thanks,’ she whispered, ‘but those flatbreads are too good to be wasted on you.’
<Bastard.>