Ninefox Gambit

THE TWO TEN-WEEKS passed more quickly than Cheris had reckoned on. Her first experience at high table was awkward. People tended to talk to her shadow rather than her face. Kel Nerevor didn’t do this, but instead made cheerful remarks that played up her experience and Cheris’s lack thereof.

Cheris had thought that she had recovered the ability to use chopsticks without fumbling them, but nerves made her drop them on the floor. A deltaform servitor brought her a new pair, and she thanked it, grateful that her voice didn’t shake. The deltaform chirped and bobbed before it returned to its duties.

“I’ve noticed your affinity for the servitors, General,” Nerevor said toward the end of the meal.

Cheris considered her response. “I like to think of them as allies,” she said. She hadn’t had much time to talk to the ones on the Unspoken Law, mostly because there was far more paperwork involved in being a general than she had realized.

“Never too many of those,” Nerevor said, but she clearly thought Cheris was eccentric.

Afterward, she reviewed available information on the Fortress of Scattered Needles, singling out the six wards and their associated factions for attention. The Andan, Shuos, and Rahal were represented by the Drummers’ Ward, Dragonfly Ward, and Anemone Ward; the Vidona, Kel, and Nirai were represented by the Ribbon Ward, Radiant Ward, and Umbrella Ward. She still didn’t like the fact that all the wards’ communication posts had been taken over simultaneously. Then she tried to make a dent in her paperwork.

“You should take a break,” Jedao said while she was in the middle of parsing a particularly disorganized report on Medical’s preparedness. “Isn’t there something you do to relax?”

“I should—”

“Trust me, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to work yourself to death later. Do something fun while you can.”

Cheris was dubious, but she invited some servitors to join her for a drama. A deltaform and a mothform came by, and they exchanged friendly greetings while the drama began playing. The mothform lit up in ebullient golds, magentas, and oranges every time the heroine’s sidekick, who was supposedly a Nirai, wrote so-called equations.

For her part, Cheris quizzed the deltaform about its opinion of the cindermoth’s Kel, especially Commander Nerevor. Maybe it was underhanded to turn to a servitor for intelligence, especially since most people didn’t take notice of them even when they were right under their noses, but she needed all the help she could get. As a captain she’d been able to associate with her lieutenants and the other infantry captains and listen in on a little gossip. Here, the greater difference in rank, to say nothing of Jedao, made it impossible to talk to people in the same way.

In any case, in between sarcastic comments on the heroine’s taste in power tools (many servitors had definite opinions about power tools), the deltaform told Cheris that Nerevor was popular among the crew for her flamboyant style and the fact that she was unstinting with her appreciation when her subordinates did something well, even when it involved outsmarting her. Competitive but fair. For that matter, the servitors had no quarrel with her, and it said philosophically that the Kel were as well-mannered as Kel ever were. Cheris smiled wryly.

Jedao didn’t seem to be paying attention to their discussion at all. “I had no idea your taste in entertainment ran to romantic comedy,” he said quizzically during one of the pauses. “Romantic comedy with a rogue engineer, at that.”

“Oh, they all duel each other, too,” Cheris said. “Every episode the heroine makes a whole new calendrical sword out of paper clips and metaltape.” The dueling was the reason she liked this show. “The dueling is ludicrous, but the special attacks are really funny. Like that one just now with the galloping horses.”

The deltaform said that if someone summoned horses to attack it, it would just surrender.

“Given that they outmass you by lots, that would be sensible,” Cheris said. “Jedao, weren’t you a duelist? If you hate this, we can watch something else.”

Jedao laughed. “And here I was thinking that you have much better taste in dramas than my mother.”

She was disconcerted by the thought that Jedao had had a mother. She didn’t know anything about his family.

“I’m told someone murdered her while I was being interrogated,” Jedao said, as though he were reporting the number of cucumbers a battalion ate in a month. “My father was already dead. We were never close to begin with. My brother—” Suddenly the unsentimental voice became raw. “My brother shot his partner and their three daughters in their sleep exactly a year after Hellspin Fortress, then killed himself. And my sister vanished. Probably ran right out of the heptarchate. She was always the practical one.”

“I’m sorry,” Cheris said, because she couldn’t think of what else to say. The servitors blinked lights at her inquiringly, then subsided. They continued to watch the drama in silence.

As the episode wound down, Jedao said, “You’re not doing badly with Nerevor. She’s expecting your nerve to crack and it hasn’t yet.”

“Jedao,” Cheris said, “I’m stapled to a bigger threat. I’m worried about her, but when you get right down to it, my situation is already worse.”

“Good,” he said.

“Good what?”

“Be more assertive. You tend to defer to Nerevor. The problem with authority is that if you leave it lying around, others will take it away from you. You have to act like a general or people won’t respect you as one.”

Cheris frowned, but he was right. Feeling twitchy, she started doing some exercises. She was still dealing with having a stranger’s patterns of motion stamped into her. The more she thought about ways to compensate, the more she fell over her feet.

On the fourth day at high table, as everyone finished the cinnamon-ginger punch with floating pine nuts that was the day’s indulgence, Kel Nerevor leaned over and said, “I haven’t seen you sparring with anyone since you arrived, General.”

Nerevor had chosen day four – four for death, the unlucky lucky number that suicide hawks favored – for this conversational gambit. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to indulge me with a duel?” she went on. “Some of my officers have been speculating about your style.”

It would have been terrible protocol to refuse, although it wasn’t good protocol for Nerevor to ask, either. “I’ll oblige you,” Cheris said, because she liked dueling, “although I’m sure you’ve had more challenging opponents.” This was bound to be true even without Cheris’s current difficulty getting her body to cooperate. The servitors had told her that Nerevor enjoyed a fair deal of success as a duelist, and that her style was flashy and aggressive. She remembered Jedao’s words on authority and added, “In one hour.”

People were talking and eying her speculatively. Her clumsiness had not gone unremarked. Clumsy Kel were rare.

“This will be interesting,” Jedao said once she was back in her quarters. She was never going to get used to how big they were. She didn’t have to look at the general’s wings on her uniform most of the time, but there was no escaping the rooms. “I had hoped your coordination would recover faster than this.”

“Did your other anchors perform better in this regard?”

“Yes, but please don’t think this reflects badly on you. I have an idea of what’s going on, but it doesn’t help you, and if I’m right you’ll figure it out immediately.”

“I hate it when you’re cryptic.”

“Well, you might as well warm up.”

Cheris did so. Twelve minutes before the appointed time, she took up her calendrical sword.

When Cheris reached the dueling hall, Nerevor was already there. Nerevor’s calendrical sword had a burnished bronze hilt with scrollwork in green: elaborate, but a cindermoth commander was entitled to it. A fair number of Nerevor’s officers were there, including the Rahal captain-magistrate, Gara. Most of the Kel were intent. Shuos Liis had a seat near the front and was smiling openly. Cheris avoided looking at her.

“You’re exactly on time, sir,” Nerevor said. It was impertinent of her to make the observation, but she spoke with real delight.

Cheris raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t help appreciating the other woman’s forthrightness. “I trust best of five will do, Commander?”

“Of course, sir.”

Four servitors marked the corners of the dueling rectangle, birdforms rather than deltaforms. Cheris bowed slightly to each of them as she took her place across from Nerevor. Nerevor raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. The servitors might not divulge their names to humans, but service was still service.

Numbers flashed backwards, then forwards, as Nerevor readied her stance and activated her calendrical sword. Hers was fierce yellow-white. It was too bad they couldn’t be allies. Under other circumstances Cheris would have enjoyed serving under someone with such obvious enthusiasm for the Kel cause.

Cheris’s sword was blue and red. The academy instructors had assured them that the colors had no meaning, but people liked to speculate anyway.

“Count of four,” Nerevor said.

The servitors made four clicks, perfectly synchronized.

Nerevor was fast. The blade leapt in her hand and took Cheris in a great slash across the chest while Cheris was still trying to work out what her feet were doing. The slash stung momentarily, but the blade wasn’t in lethal mode.

At least Nerevor didn’t humiliate Cheris with commentary, although her mouth pulled down in disappointment. She was unnecessarily cautious in the second round. Cheris suspected she was trying to squeeze out a more exciting victory. Although Cheris knew better than to slow down and think through her responses, she did it anyway. Her parries were soft and uncertain, and Nerevor tired of the exchanges and ran her through.

Well, this will be over with quickly, Cheris thought. She hated to make such a poor showing, even though Nerevor was legitimately better than she was. On the other hand, this was hardly the worst of her problems, so there was no use fretting over it. In a way, it was a relief to know herself so thoroughly outclassed.

As Cheris took up her position the third time, she smiled at Nerevor, feeling genuinely calm. Nerevor’s eyes slitted, and a line formed between her brows.

Nerevor came at her fast again. Cheris stopped thinking through moves and counters and footwork, and simply reacted. There it was, that funny thing with her balance, but she let herself keep moving, aware simply of the necessity never to stay still. Nerevor wanted a flashy exhibition of sword-skill, but Cheris had no intention of letting her have it. She pivoted neatly, slipped under Nerevor’s guard, and took her between the ribs at a precise angle.

“Point to the general, I believe,” Nerevor rasped. “Really, sir, was it necessary to feign such incompetence?”

Cheris blinked at her, trying to connect what had just happened to what Nerevor was saying. She couldn’t pretend she had been feigning – that would just be insulting – but she didn’t think it would be any better to explain that she had surrendered to a dead man’s expertise. “Fight harder,” she said instead.

“I will indeed,” Nerevor said, smiling.

Cheris won the last two rounds faster than she meant to. Apparently Jedao had believed in ruthless, decisive action. She was uncomfortably aware of Jedao’s dueling record. He had only lost to one Kel.

Nerevor saluted her without any trace of irony. “I will remember not to underestimate you,” she said. “This has been most informative.”

“I’m honored to have faced you,” Cheris said, because it was true.

People were staring at her shadow with its inscrutable eyes, but there was nothing to be done about that. Liis looked worryingly pleased.

Nerevor nodded, then walked off, looking cheerful.

“That was the thing,” Jedao said the instant they were back in her quarters. “You kept thinking about what you were doing. Calculating. The body isn’t about thought. It’s about reflex. Especially in combat. You would have figured this out sooner if somebody had come at you with a real weapon, but I couldn’t very well advise the commander to set her sword to lethal mode in a friendly duel.”

“You could have told me,” Cheris said, looking at her hands as she turned them over, palms down. They were the same hands she had grown into, but she kept expecting them to be larger, longer. She was momentarily convinced that if she took her gloves off, her hands wouldn’t belong to her anymore. “Does this go away after you’re not anchored to me anymore?”

“I don’t have that information,” Jedao said. Then: “You’re not in a good mood.”

“That obvious?” Cheris said.

“Seriously, what’s bothering you?”

“It wasn’t a fair fight.”

Jedao’s brief silence spoke volumes. “The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don’t fold,” he said. “Besides, you didn’t use any resources Nerevor didn’t know of in advance. She knew I was anchored to you. If she couldn’t compensate for it, that’s not your fault.”

“That’s a good way to save lives,” she said, a chill in her voice.

They weren’t discussing the duel anymore. “The faster it’s over with, the fewer people die,” Jedao said. “I realize you have delicate Kel sensibilities, but please accept my advice. You can’t leave advantages lying around, either, or people will use them against you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cheris said stiffly.

Jedao sighed, but didn’t press the point.