Ninefox Gambit

CHERIS HADN’T ORIGINALLY thought anything much of the refit: perfectly routine, and the Nirai station the swarm had put in at had better amenities than most, not that she was taking advantage of them at the moment. She was in barracks procrastinating on her paperwork for the chief engineer by shuffling a deck of cards that was going to be worn transparent if she kept this up any longer. This particular deck, whose artwork featured anthropomorphic farm animals in the borders, had been a gift from her sister. Nidana had said she’d picked it out because of the geese.

Without any notification, the door whisked open. In a moment Cheris was on her feet, flattened against the wall away from her desk, pistol drawn.

The man who entered was slightly taller than Cheris was, and he paused in the doorway, making a perfect silhouette of himself, the kind of thing you didn’t want to do in front of a former assassin. He wore Nirai colors, black-and-silver, even if the layered brocades and filigree buttons spoke to expensive tastes, and didn’t look terribly practical, either. There was no indication of rank or position, just the silver voidmoth pin. Cheris didn’t relax. The Nirai frequently had odd senses of humor, but it wasn’t usual for them to play pranks on visiting generals who submitted all the proper forms and didn’t push too hard about speedy repairs.

“I’m sorry,” Cheris said, “but what is your authorization for being here?”

“Oh, put that thing down, General Jedao,” the Nirai said, smiling. The man was striking, with a dark, oval face and tousled hair and graceful hands; it was impossible not to appreciate his beauty. Cheris couldn’t help but notice that his tone wasn’t remotely deferential, however. “I’m Nirai Kujen.” He took a step forward.

In academy, one of Cheris’s instructors had said, rather despairingly, that having ninety-sixth percentile reflexes could be just as much of a liability for an assassin as an asset. Cheris hadn’t served as an assassin for years, but the habits of paranoia would not be denied.

She had allowed the Nirai to get too close, but there wasn’t much space in here and she didn’t have time to work through the options. She fired twice into his forehead, then cursed herself for losing her head and wasting a bullet. You’d think Kujen would have reacted when she brought up the pistol anyway, but no.

Kujen fell with an ungraceful thump. Cheris’s pulse was racing. She looked at the fallen body, the lurid splash of blood against the wall, the closing door. She had just committed high treason, even if she could claim that she had reacted to an intruder in barracks.

The bigger problem was that she couldn’t figure out why Nirai Kujen, who had presumably survived the past 500 years by being paranoid himself, had bothered showing up in person.

Four seconds later, the door swished open again. No warning this time, either.

Cheris retreated. Her world narrowed to the doorway.

A shadow fell across the threshold. “Let’s try this again, shall we?” A different man’s voice, deeper, but with the same accent. “Put that thing down. Suffice it to say that I can restore from backups more times than you have bullets, and someone’s going to notice the fuss. I do realize you can probably kill people with your teeth, but it won’t hurt you to hear me out. Besides, I would really rather not have to hop into your body next. No offense, General, but I have other uses for you.”

Fuck. Cheris had known Kujen was immortal. What she hadn’t known was how. She laid the gun down on the floor where Kujen could see it, then backed up. Her gloves felt as though they had turned to ice.

Kujen entered. Cheris saw how carefully he placed his feet, like a dancer, so he wouldn’t get anything on his shoes. This body was also beautiful, but thinner, with a triangular face. Cheris wondered who it had belonged to before Kujen had happened to him.

The door closed, trapping her with him.

“If this is because I tore up my moth’s engines doing that maneuver that last battle I was in,” Cheris said, because at this point bravado was all she had left, “this is overkill, don’t you think? The chief engineer could have just called.”

“Sit down and let’s cut the bullshit.”

Cheris looked at Kujen, then walked over to the desk and sat.

Kujen came over to the side of the desk. “It’s odd for a brigadier general to spend as much time as you do hacking into classified files,” he said. “Don’t you have other things to do, like shooting heretics?”

Cheris picked up her cards and began shuffling them, bringing her half-gloved hands into view. “Funny thing about this uniform,” she said, “but I’m still a Shuos. I like to keep my hand in.”

“You’re adorable,” Kujen said, “but that’s more bullshit. You can’t deny that you recognized my name. There aren’t many people in the heptarchate who can say that.”

She had blown the chance to play innocent rather spectacularly, at that. “How do I know this isn’t a joke?” she said.

When Cheris had first learned that one of the heptarchs was immortal, she had been skeptical. She could see good reasons for such a man to hide behind a false heptarch. But why weren’t the other heptarchs fighting over the technology, then?

Kujen reached over and plucked one of the cards out of the deck. Turned it around so they could both see it: Deuce of Gears.

Cheris was even more worried. Kujen shouldn’t have been able to spot the card.

“I hear you’re a gambler,” Kujen said. “Are you after immortality, too?”

“Maybe later,” Cheris said. The idea repelled her, especially now that she had some idea how it worked, but she couldn’t afford to reject it entirely. “I just want my heptarch’s position. I’m sorry to be such a boring ordinary Shuos, but that’s all there is to it.”

“Lovely story,” Kujen said, “but I’m not buying. I checked your background, General. If you wanted to backstab Khiaz, you should have stayed attached to her office. I mean, from all reports she was very fond of you.” His smile widened when he said that.

Cheris stiffened in spite of herself, even if her recent encounter with Shuos Khiaz was nobody’s secret. Time to change the topic. “All right, Nirai-zho,” she said without emphasizing the honorific, “since I’m apparently so confused about my own motives, you tell me what the hell it is I’m after.”

Kujen’s long fingers picked more cards out of the deck, slow and precise. He laid them in a circle, face-up. Ace through seven from the suit of Doors. “You want to bring down the whole damn calendar,” he said. “Took me a little while to see it. You’re very conscientious about researching all the heretics near your assignments. It looks a lot like duty, doesn’t it? But I think you’re fishing for allies, even if you haven’t found any that meet your criteria, whatever they are. You want to bring the whole damn heptarchate down.”

Cheris was starting to wish she had appreciated her paperwork more. At this rate, she was never going to get a chance to finish it. “Yes, and I’d better hope for a few million soldiers to show up and join me,” she said sarcastically. “Really, a one-man crusade against the heptarchate entire? That’s not cocky, that’s psychotic.”

“Funny you should say that,” Kujen said, “considering you’ve never lost a battle.”

She hated it when people bludgeoned her over the head with that, but she held her peace.

“Besides,” Kujen said, “you’re in luck anyway. I looked at your academy transcripts. I don’t know how it escaped everyone’s notice for so long that you have dyscalculia. Math was the only subject you struggled with, isn’t that right? You need number theory to get anywhere in high-level calendrical warfare. Nine hundred years ago I invented an allied branch of math to make the mothdrives possible. No one else has successfully pulled off a major calendar shift. I’m surrounded by tinkerers, not real mathematicians.”

Yes, Cheris thought, and you came up with the remembrances, too. Specifically, the fact that they were accompanied by ceremonial torture. She was getting the idea that the torture had been a design parameter, not an unfortunate coincidence. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have a certain amount of evidence that you’re a sociopath. Why the fuck would I get in bed with you?”

The thing was, Kujen was making her one hell of an offer. Cheris’s original plan had called for finding a way to assassinate him, because she despised the regime that Kujen represented, and she had thought the only way to replace it with a better one was to annihilate Kujen first. But if she could make use of him instead –

Kujen grinned at her. “This coming from a former assassin.” He glanced over his shoulder at the corpse. “Instead of killing people one at a time, you get to kill them a bunch at a time now, isn’t that why you traded up? In academy you were good at a lot of things. Languages, for instance. You could have gone into propaganda or interpreting or analysis. Yet you threw everything away to become a walking gun.

“You need me, General. You won’t find a better mathematician anywhere in the heptarchate. Besides, you’ll always know exactly where you stand with me, none of this pathetic hiding behind niceties. Face it, if not me, then who?”

Cheris was silent.

Kujen’s voice softened. “You’ve been fighting alone for a long time, Jedao. You never get close to anyone, no affairs that last longer than a couple of weeks. The Shuos aren’t the only ones who like to pry, you know. I imagine the Kel figure you’re standoffish because you’re being a fox. They have no idea what kinds of secrets you’re trying to keep safe. I’m not your ideal ally, no. But I’m better than nothing at all. We can do this together. You won’t have to be alone anymore.”

“I’m not sure what the point of this discussion is,” Cheris said, because she didn’t want Kujen realizing how well he had her figured out. “You’re a heptarch. You can destroy me at any time. What kind of assurances can I possibly expect from you?”

“That’s what I like about you,” Kujen said. He came around the corner of the desk and leaned against the side of Cheris’s chair. Cheris wished her gun were back in her hand, even if she knew better. “Here you are, exposed, and you’re still maneuvering for an advantage. Just what is it that runs in your veins, Jedao?”

“You’re welcome to cut me open to find out,” Cheris said dryly. “Knife’s on my left hip if you forgot yours.”

Kujen’s smile was slow and sweet and utterly untrustworthy. “Oh, I intend to,” he said. “Tell you what. There are things the other heptarchs won’t forgive. Being caught conspiring against them is one of them. If I stick my neck out under the same axe, will you believe my sincerity?”

Cheris didn’t move when Kujen leaned over her. His hand rested on the back of the chair, fingertips brushing her shoulder. What is this, Cheris thought with a flicker of irritation, secondary school? Even so, it was difficult not to react to the sensuous mouth, the long sweep of those ashy eyelashes.

“I have one question,” Cheris said.

“Ask,” Kujen said. His breath smelled of smoke and spice.

“If immortality is so wonderful” – hard to see the downsides for the practitioner if you didn’t care about little things like murder – “why aren’t all the heptarchs doing it?” Assuming they weren’t better at hiding it than Kujen was.

“So you’re interested after all.”

Cheris shrugged. Let Kujen think what he wanted.

“It can drive people crazy if it’s not calibrated correctly,” Kujen said. “I don’t mean sociopath values of crazy.” The corner of his mouth tipped up for a moment. “I know what I am. I’m talking about useless raving values of crazy.”

“No good to me either, then,” Cheris said. It couldn’t just be that sociopaths were immune. The heptarchate’s leadership didn’t lack for those, historically speaking.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Kujen said. “They can’t get rid of me because I’m the only one who understands the math, including the black cradle’s governing equations. I can handle the calibrations. If you’re useful to me, I can arrange for you not to end up as a raving wreck. That being said, you’re a little young to be getting panicky about your lifespan, choice of career notwithstanding.”

“Oh, that’s not the issue,” Cheris said. She had never been afraid of long odds. “I’m more concerned about the fact that I can’t see what’s in it for you. You already have everything.”

“Is that what you think?” Kujen said. His fingers trailed down Cheris’s back, traced a shoulder blade, came to rest. “You want to strip the system down to its component gears and build something new, if I’m not mistaken.” It was impossible to look away from his eyes, darkly avid. “You’re going to make a new calendar. I want to be there when it happens, and anyway, you can’t do it without me. I can slaughter the math on my own, but I’d never ram this by the fucking sanctimonious Liozh or their pet Rahal. You could handle the calendrical spikes if someone solved the equations for you. You need a mathematician. I need a weapon. We can’t do this without each other, Jedao.”

“I can already tell you’re not a tactician if you’re pinning your hopes of revolution on one game piece,” Cheris said. “Unless you have your hands on a bunch of mutinous Kel that no one’s told me about.”

Kujen laughed. “Mutinous Kel are your department, I’m afraid. But we’re two of a kind; that has to count for something.”

There had been a time when she would have hoped that she and Kujen were nothing of the sort, but by now she knew better. “Fine,” she said, because it was important to preserve the appearance that she was making a choice. “Does it particularly matter to you what I want to install in the place of what we have now?”

“I can control the technology parameters that matter to me,” Kujen said. “You do whatever the hell you want with the social parameters. I could care less.”

Cheris didn’t believe this, but they could fight over that later. She rose. Kujen stepped backward to give her room, still with that dancer’s awareness of space. His eyes were both dark and bright. Cheris knelt before him in the formal obeisance to a heptarch, and said, “I’m your gun.”