Ninefox Gambit

CHERIS ORDINARILY FORGOT her dreams, but this time she woke with a memory of a festival her parents had taken her to when she was eleven. A lot of adults had insisted on talking to her in Mwen-dal instead of the high language, and she had tried not to be too sullen in her answers. In the dream, however, each time she spoke to someone, they turned into a raven and flew away.

She ran after the ravens and into the woods. The ravens alighted on a carcass. One was pecking at its eye. It might have been a dog or a jackal.

She was certain it was a fox.

Afterward, she walked to the mirror and forced herself to look at Jedao’s reflection. For a panicky moment she couldn’t remember the shape of her eyes. Jedao looked the same as he had when she first saw him, except he was smiling quizzically. He had a very good smile. Perturbed, she brought up her hand and stared at the fingerless glove. The reflection did the same.

“Are you all right?” Jedao said.

“Can you see my dreams?” she demanded.

“No,” Jedao said. “For that matter, I can’t remember what it feels like to dream, or to sleep.”

Cheris had a sleep-muddled desire to ask him about foxes, and scavengers, and dark places in the woods, but just then the terminal informed her that Captain-magistrate Gara wanted to talk to her.

“I’ll take the call,” Cheris said. “Captain.”

“Sir,” Gara said, although she looked at Cheris oddly for a moment, “I’ve had Doctrine running figures on exotic weapons. The data we got from the corrosion gradient helped us pin down some key coefficients.” She sent over some equations. “Look at these three matrices in the chain, sir. Now, this is a preliminary result and we have to run some feasibility tests, but” – a cluster of coefficients turned red – “if we can hammer this diagonalization into place, there’s a chance we can modify our threshold winnowers to work.”

I know what those are, Cheris thought blankly. Everyone did, and everyone knew the old chant: From every mouth a maw; from every door a death.

People remembered the winnowers because of the use Jedao had made of them at Hellspin Fortress. Even today, Kel Command used them sparingly.

“What are the guidance parameters?” Cheris said, because she had to say something.

“Well, that’s the interesting part, sir,” Gara said, as though they were discussing a vacation spot and not a weapon. “Most winnower variants are full-spectrum death. We might, however, be able to get this one to target heretics selectively.”

“Weapons that attempt to target loyalty-states are better known for fratricide,” Cheris said. It was the subject of a whole category of Kel jokes.

Gara looked at her again, but was undeterred. “At least give us permission to pursue this. If it does pan out, it won’t be much work to modify the winnowers that Unspoken Law and Sincere Greeting carry.”

“Very well,” Cheris said. “Keep me apprised of your results, but set nothing in motion without my approval.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Cheris shook her head. “Why did Gara keep looking at me strangely?” she asked.

“Cheris,” Jedao said, “can you hear yourself?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my hearing,” she said in confusion.

“Not your hearing. Your accent.”

“Everyone has an accent,” Cheris said, even more confused. Her mother had told her that after she came home crying because some children had made fun of the way she talked. Of course, her mother hadn’t been able to hide the fact that some accents were better than others. By her second year as a cadet, Cheris had conformed her speech to Academy Prime standard.

“Yes,” Jedao said, “but yours has been slipping and it’s particularly bad today. Listen to my speech patterns and then listen to yourself.”

“Are we talking about bleed-through?” Cheris said. “Because if you have anything else to share on that front, I think I deserve to know.”

He was right. She was speaking with his drawl.

“Speech is a physical act,” Jedao said. “It’s probably related to the muscle memory issue. And no, I don’t think there are any more surprises in store for you.”

Well, it wasn’t as if her soldiers didn’t already regard her with suspicion. “Can’t be helped,” she said, more firmly than she felt. Besides, they had more important matters to deal with. “I don’t know about the threshold winnower,” she said, “but if Doctrine can get it to work at all, it would be a valuable asset.”

“You can’t afford to ignore the possibility,” Jedao said. “Even a flawed winnower is one hell of a weapon.” His voice flexed slightly, then steadied.

“How long did it take you to set yours up?” Cheris asked coolly.

“Quite a while, I imagine.”

“If you were there, how can you not know?”

“My memories of the siege are a mess,” Jedao said. “There was very little screaming where I was. They died too fast. I could hear a little over the communications channels that had been left open before the winnower turned everything to static. I spent a full half-hour wandering around the moth trying to figure out why Gized wasn’t answering my calls. I didn’t recognize her with the hole in the side of her head.

“I remember when the Kel arrested me. They should have blown up my command moth with missiles, but they boarded and used tranquilizer clouds instead. Maybe they wanted an identifiable body.

“And then there were the numbers. They told me about all the people who were dead, ours and theirs. But then, war is about taking the future away from people.”

“And you think we should use this weapon?” Cheris said.

“If it works, yes. Dead is dead, Cheris. Do you think it makes any difference whether you’re killed by a knife in the back or a bullet? The important thing is to get the job done.”

“If we can use winnowers,” Cheris said, “they can too.”

“Possible, but unlikely. If they had it, they would have deployed it by now. My guess is they need something about those coefficients in their particular calendar, or maybe they’re having trouble manipulating the appropriate atmospherics.”

“Jedao,” she said, “how are we supposed to shift the calendricals to get this to work? A focused change would do it, but we only have a toehold down there. We can’t even deploy field grids. My people aren’t known for their persuasion skills, and there aren’t enough Shuos.”

“There’s a way,” he said. “But you won’t like it.”

“It’s not a matter of liking anymore,” Cheris said. “I’m ready to hear it.”