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The evening before she began advanced schooling, Mahit Dzmare's best friend gave her a treasure. It was a Teixcalaanli flower-novel, copiously illustrated, but untranslated. Even better, it was an old one: The Intermediate Report on the Location of the Dolphin Ring. Mahit had read about this novel, certainly. Even better, she had learned to recognize allusions to it: a carved sea-creature at a slant perspective, references to rivers standing for fidelity, a dissipating cloud that revealed a sundial's shadow, cutting to the truth. (So strange, this notion that something as fundamental as time could be obscured by something so chancy, literally chaotic, as weather. Mahit wondered what it was like, to have water vapor block you from a star.)
Like many Teixcalaanli tales, The Intermediate Report began at the end: not with the Eagle-Down legion's standard, that fluffy cloud-tracing of silver and softness whence shone the City's light, nor with the legion's downfall, shield to shield and defending that standard to the last, nor even with the cuaalhuat adventuring through a wild planet to retrieve it, alone save for his onetime attendant turned sixfold-vowed friend, but in a courtyard in the springtime, after everything was settled. The flower-novel's designer had set a tree at the edge of the courtyard, its branches spreading out in all directions. Mahit traced the illustration with her stylus and marveled at the untidiness, to let a plant sprawl so, without a pruning plan saved through generations of imagos, or guiding wires.
A woman and a man were shown standing in the courtyard. The woman had a thick mass of hair, with a long light scarf drawn over it, in the ancient Teixcalaanli fashion. Her name was Nine Sundial, as indicated by the glyphs above her head. The man was compactly built, with classically beautiful Teixcalaanli proportions, but his nose was tilted in a manner by no means classically approved, and his bare chest was covered in tattoos. His name, the glyphs explained, was Eleven River.
There should have been a third figure, Three Goldenrod, the wounded cuaalhuat who set out to find the standard lost with his father and his father's legion. But this was a typical Teixcalaanli literary trick: one emphasized the third point of a triangle, when beginning a tale, through its very absence.
Mahit breathed deep, and began to translate.
Nine Sundial looked sternly at Eleven River, with a touch of sadness. "We have not seen you in some days."
"The seals are barely hardened on the contract of your marriage," Eleven River answered. "This is a new configuration, and new duties. I thought to give you space, to make some sense of it."
Nine Sundial hissed through her teeth and pulled off her scarf, wrapping the light cotton fabric round itself so she could throw it from her. "Am I become a different person? Is Three Goldenrod? What good is any contract, if the people who have signed it do not exist?"
Eleven River gazed at her. The clear spring light caught in her hair, the way sparks catch in dry tinder. "What person are you, whose existence requires my presence?"
Nine Sundial was a small person, but she moved rapidly. She closed the gap between herself and Eleven River in three steps, and took his face between her hands. She touched her forehead to his forehead, then bit his lip, quick and sharp, as an ocelot cub bites its favorite toy. "I am a woman who loves her husband. Three Goldenrod is mine, and I am his, and our contract is a mirror of our enduring choice. But also he is yours, and you are vowed his friend. What person am I, in relation to you?"
Eleven River was as still as ice upon a mountain, as a map carved in a block of stone, as a cuaalhuat's fixed shield—not from his own choice, but from necessity. "You are a person I must treasure, for you hold my friend's heart in your hands."
"I am holding you in my hands!" Nine Sundial exclaimed. "Quite literally! Who do you think sent me out to find you?"
Eleven River smiled, but still he did not move.
Nine Sundial kissed him lightly now, upon the face and neck. "Will you come inside where it is warm?"
A flower-novel, as the name implied, unfurled like petals. The next section was a flashback, Eleven River's memories of his training as a warrior, among a people not quite cognizant of the light that is the City. Mahit would read this carefully at some point, but she chafed at the implication that foreigners like her were not cognizant of light, and skipped ahead to the next section with Nine Sundial. The illustration showed Three Goldenrod, that key point of the triangle, reclining upon a reed mat strewn with brightly colored cushions. Nine Sundial knelt at his left; Eleven River was at his right.
"I told you," Three Goldenrod insisted, "that I would not change."
"You were very certain I would follow in your footsteps." Eleven River kept his tone light, his statements even, refusing to unleash the full current of his thoughts.
Three Goldenrod said, "You should have known who I am!" in the same instant that Nine Sundial said, "You might have consulted me!"
Eleven River laughed—not a joyful laugh, yet, but an honest one.
Three Goldenrod turned toward his friend, sharp and attentive in his profile, like the eagles that give the cuaalhuatlim their name. "Need there be separate oaths for each of our separate friendships? Or may you and I and Nine Sundial claim each other, all as one?"
Eleven River pondered. Nine Sundial made a swift motion, as if to go to him, but Three Goldenrod stayed her with a hand upon her shoulder. Finally, Eleven River said, "This is a new thing that we are making among us, different from the promises before. I cannot swear yet to its strength. But I am willing to test it."
Three Goldenrod caught them both in an embrace, strong and determined. It lasted until Nine Sundial began to wriggle, running her fingers along Eleven River's spine, nibbling at Three Goldenrod's ear. The resulting scuffle and tangle ended with Eleven River lying on his back, kissing Three Goldenrod while Nine Sundial traced the lines of his tattoos. Kissing Three Goldenrod had a familiar warmth, like sunshine on a sandy bank, or coals heaped in a hearth. But a hearth has three corners. Nine Sundial's touch left pinpricks of brightness.
Mahit had taught herself not to flinch at the thought of flames. The Teixcalaanli could spend oxygen freely, like credits at a festival. But accepting the hearth metaphor left her in a strange, open, wondering space. She had made a plan for her life, had excelled at the aptitudes and mapped out a course of study, with the same relentlessness, perhaps, that Three Goldenrod and Eleven River had trained to be warriors. She knew all the fellow students in her cohort, their strengths and weaknesses and how they breathed their Ls. If she stayed on Lsel, writing analytic reports of great expertise, her colleagues would be entirely familiar.
But if, somehow, she left? If she went out adventuring, what strange new person—aristocratic or delicate or stubbornly solid—might she meet? Could she weave a life together with Teixcalaanli people, as Eleven River had?
What sort of person might she become, if fire could be safe?