Ninefox Gambit

CHERIS STRAIGHTENED. IT no longer surprised her that their overseers had decided to kill Jedao. But they could have used a simple carrion gun to do so. They could even have handed her the gun and ordered her to do it herself, as a loyalty test.

She took a ragged breath, then another. Candied corpses in every direction. The command center’s walls were warped, and the cracks in the floor were webbed together by fused strands of glass.

Maybe she was wrong about the extent of the damage. Maybe there were other survivors. She’d have to check manually. A cindermoth was a large place, but she had nothing better to do.

“Jedao?” she asked, because she couldn’t help hoping.

No answer came.

Jedao had provoked the attack by convincing her to reveal the extent of her mathematical abilities, which alerted Kel Command that they had given him access to someone who could handle a high-level calendrical rebellion for him. But he hadn’t expected Kel Command to risk two cindermoths plus a swarm to execute him. And now the heptarchs – hexarchs, she corrected herself – had finally caught on, and Kujen had abandoned her.

Cheris smiled grimly. She was already starting to think of herself as Jedao.

Jedao had tried to give her what he could. Don’t make my mistakes, he had said. A few words and a lifetime of memories.

He had wanted her to continue the game for him. Or perhaps she was supposed to decide whether the game was worth playing at all. If only he had been able to trust her with more.

Cheris wasn’t done with splinters. But she hesitated. Now that she knew about Nirai Kujen, she had a better idea how his form of immortality worked.

If she abandoned the splinters, Jedao would be truly dead, and his terrible treasonous war with him. If she devoured the last of them, she could carry on the fight, but the person doing so might not be Kel Cheris.

Had he meant to manipulate her into this choice? She didn’t think so, but this was Jedao.

Still, Cheris knew she had already decided.

The next two splinters took her through the eyes like bullets.