Raven Stratagem

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EVERY MORNING, MIKODEZ had a Kel infantry ration bar for breakfast. According to the Kel, consuming them voluntarily suggested interesting things about your mental health. Mikodez ate them in the hopes that they would immunize him to any poisons, and because they seemed to make his medications more effective. He knew poisons didn’t work that way, and that the latter effect was illusory, but it was a nice thought. Besides, he had to do something to atone for all the candy he put in his system.

He’d opted to get to the conference room forty-eight minutes early and eat there, on the grounds that he was getting bored of the decor in his offices. All his offices. There was more than one of them, for reasons that were not entirely clear. The architects who had designed the Citadel had included Shuos, with Shuos habits of thought. His favorite hadn’t originally been an office, but had been converted to one as a test of variable layout, which Mikodez considered very brave of that long-vanished heptarch. (Said heptarch had died shortly after, not because of variable layout, or the Citadel’s security. She’d attended a meeting on some distant planet and caught what might or might not have been a bioengineered disease.)

“You have the stupidest eating habits of anyone in the entire Citadel,” Istradez said. “If anyone else did that, they’d get dinged on all the medical evaluations.” He had already finished his own breakfast, consisting of seaweed soup, rice, a modest scallion pancake, and Kel pickles.

“So how’s your latest girlfriend?” Mikodez was frowning at his tablet, which he had set at a comfortable angle in its holder so he wouldn’t get a crick in his neck staring down at it. “I hope you’re not bored with her already. I can only hand out security clearances so fast.”

“Just how much detail did you want me to go into?”

“Kind of not.”

Istradez smirked at him. “You want me to clear out so you can have your meeting?”

Mikodez’s senior staff knew about his doubles, including Istradez, and even the general populace had some idea that he used them from time to time. Not all of Mikodez’s advisers approved of him using a non-Shuos for the role, but he’d pointed out that no one else knew him as well as the younger sibling he’d grown up with. Istradez was only one year younger than he was. Their parents joked that they’d been meant to be twins, except they had realized that two of them at once would have been overkill.

“No, come take my seat,” Mikodez said. They’d done this before and he was certain that Intelligence and Accounting’s division heads could tell them apart, but it was good to keep them guessing. “Run the meeting. I’ll take notes. Also, I have some other things to keep my eyes on, so I won’t be able to give my full concentration to the meeting.”

“Why show up at all?” Istradez wondered.

“Because if we’re both here they’ll figure there’s a higher chance one of us is real.” Mikodez had two other doubles, one of whom was still in physical therapy after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt during his last assignment. The man had so far refused to retire, but Mikodez thought it was only a matter of time. The other one was attending a conference.

“You could hole up in your bedroom and sip plum wine before taking a—” Istradez’s eyes narrowed. “When’s the last time you slept, Mikodez? I bet you missed chatting with our nephew, too. If I’d known, I’d have gone to see Niath myself so he doesn’t get lonely.”

Mikodez had to ask the augment how long it had been. “Two days and three hours and change.”

Istradez moaned and put his head in his hands. “I am the worst little sibling ever. Go to bed.”

“I can sleep after the meeting.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Miki? You know that Shenner”—that was the head of Intelligence—“always makes the meetings run over by an hour. If not more.”

The problem with Shuos heads of Intelligence was that they, with some cause, conceived of themselves as occupying the high rung on the ladder. Certain Shuos heads of Intelligence took this as license to go into threat analyses in exhaustive detail even when theoretically confined to twenty minutes.

“Yes,” Mikodez said, looking wistfully at the cookies that he shouldn’t eat because he should leave them for Istradez so he could get into the role. “My hints to Shenner get less and less subtle, but for someone who’s ordinarily so astute at picking up on cues, she’s proved remarkably oblivious.”

“Oblivious my ass. Shenner likes the sound of her own voice. It’s going to take a direct reprimand to get her to shape up. You should let me give it if you’re squeamish. And it’s not like you to be squeamish.”

“Well, then her voice will make an excellent lullaby. No one will be surprised to see you sleeping in the corner after last night’s excesses.”

“They weren’t that excessive.”

“Besides,” Mikodez said, “Shenner has a very touchy ego. Which makes it difficult to suggest that she get some more therapy for it. The problem is, she’s obsessive, paranoid, and loyal, all of which make her excellent at her job—and all of which mean that I have to handle her very delicately. Best to leave things as they are.”

“If you say so,” Istradez said, sounding unconvinced. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the corner seat. Mikodez took it, and Istradez lowered himself into the customary hexarch’s seat. “Dare I ask what you’re working on, anyway?”

“Best if you don’t know.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Then why did you ask?”

Istradez looked pensive. “Because someone has to.” Then, with an effort, he straightened and eyed the cookies. “Couldn’t you do something to reduce the size of these damn platters? It’s getting harder and harder to choke all this stuff down without getting fat.”

“Your metabolism’s even faster than mine is,” Mikodez said unsympathetically, “it’s just that you put less junk in your system.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Oh, look, it’s almost time for the meeting,” Mikodez said, just to annoy Istradez, although they had a good fourteen minutes left and no one ever arrived more than six minutes early.

“If you don’t spend part of Shenner’s inevitable rant about the inadequacy of our data-processing throughput catching up on sleep,” Istradez said, “I shall ruin your reputation by flirting with Accounting.” Accounting was run by a married individual who got a body mod every three months like clockwork, according to whatever was in fashion with the Andan. Some of the fashions were extremely distracting, like the thankfully brief period when the high diplomats had gone around sporting neck-frills. Otherwise, Accounting was staid and conservative, and entirely modest about what went on in the bedroom. “I bet I could get them to stray.”

Mikodez yawned pointedly and curled up in his chair, slate tucked under his arm.

Eight minutes later, the door opened, but it was only a servitor come to clear Mikodez’s tray. Mikodez had only eaten half the ration bar, but he only ever ate half, so it knew to take the dish away. As for other food, the conference table was already home to two lavish plates of cookies and pastries (mostly for Mikodez, who had never met a sweet he didn’t like), seasoned rare meats cut up into slivers and stuck with absurdly decorative gold-toned toothpicks, spring rolls, slices of crisp fruit. Mikodez believed that no one thought well on an empty stomach, so while people were certainly welcome to eat before they came to meetings, he made sure they could fill up during them if they chose to.

A minute after that, the division heads filed in one by one. Mikodez’s eyes were closed, but he listened to the exchange of greetings. Istradez would be smiling at each person individually because that was what Mikodez himself did.

For a while Mikodez followed the threads of his people’s interactions. Shenner’s voice was more shrill than usual. She despised the Hafn not because she’d lost family to them but because she had once met a Hafn aristocrat and he had commented disparagingly about her accent speaking in his language. Shenner was vain about her language skills. Fortunately, Accounting interrupted what could have been a lengthy diatribe. In the early days, Mikodez would debrief with Istradez after meetings, pointing out things he would have done differently. These days that was rarely necessary.

While he didn’t feel drowsy in the slightest, Mikodez’s mind felt fuzzy. The medications hadn’t kicked in yet. Medical didn’t like the number of drugs he was abusing. He could tell because instead of lecturing him about it (ineffectual), every single one of the courtesans he saw was painstakingly and consistently polite about how he needed artificial assistance to do his job (also ineffectual, but at least it saved everyone the arguments). While sex didn’t interest Mikodez, he believed firmly that all of his people should talk to trained conversationalists/therapists on a regular basis. He did not exclude himself from this requirement.

Idly, Mikodez brought up a puzzle on his slate and began playing it. It wasn’t a cover for anything. A cadet had designed it during the academy’s games competition several years ago, and it had been one of the top entries in its category. Mikodez liked the game not for its originality but for its ability to numb his brain. It involved pattern-matching, music (piped in through his augment, although this made it difficult to follow the meeting at the same time), and just enough randomness to make it a challenge. Right now Mikodez couldn’t score points to save his life, which confirmed his decision to hand off the meeting to Istradez. He hadn’t asked Medical whether the game was a reasonable test of his cognitive function, but he didn’t need to.

Partway through an impassioned speech by Propaganda on how the Andan were botching the media fallout by allowing the broadcast of dramas about Jedao portraying him in a favorable light, the drug hit Mikodez. It was as though all the lights in the room had sparked brighter. Istradez glanced at him very briefly. He knew. Instead of drawing attention to Mikodez, Istradez instead pointed out that they were going to have to offer the Andan incentives to step on the dramas. Unfortunately, the Andan liked profit as much as anyone else. The dramas had to be making them a lot of money just now.

Mikodez dismissed the game, wondering in passing how that cadet was doing, then opened one of the files on Jedao’s history. Opened another one on Kujen. Four centuries in one case, nine in another. Both of them contained frustrating lacunae. Or rather, Jedao’s profile existed in as much detail as you’d expect, minus the usual slow rot of history. No one had anticipated that he’d prove to be a time bomb. Kujen, on the other hand, had actively obfuscated his profile for so long that Mikodez didn’t trust everything in the files. But he had to start somewhere.

Jedao had responded to Mikodez’s second attempt to contact him not with a direct communication but a simple message: Make you a deal, Shuos-zho. You stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours. We can hash out the rest after the Hafn are gone.

Not a bad offer, as such things went. Even if Mikodez and his staff had good reason to believe that ensuring the Hafn’s trickling survival was Jedao’s primary plan. After all, Jedao couldn’t claim to be defending the hexarchate without the invader. Admittedly, getting rid of the Hafn wouldn’t help much, as the hexarchate had plenty of other enemies, but it might trip Jedao up. Mikodez had not said anything in response to the message. Jedao wouldn’t expect assurances in any case.

His attention turned to Kujen, whose disappearance had left such an odd hole in Mikodez’s life. They were not friends. Kujen might understand friendship as an abstraction, but he was no more friends with another human being than a shark was with a fish.

They were, however, colleagues, and they had consulted with each other on many occasions since Mikodez took the seat. Mikodez had grown dangerously fond of him, even if he hadn’t become aware of it until now. But he liked challenges, and there was no denying that dealings with Kujen, however cordial, were never safe.

Mikodez had visited Kujen’s home station twice. Kujen preferred to let his false hexarchs administer the faction, or so he said, although Mikodez had good evidence that he kept a close eye on what was being done on his behalf. Faian had ascended to false hexarch twelve years after Mikodez himself took the seat, under circumstances that strongly suggested that Kujen objected personally to Faian’s predecessor skimming off parts of the budget. The man in question had later turned up as a technician on Kujen’s personal staff—“No sense wasting talent,” Kujen had said blithely. He was much prettier, and much more docile, after Kujen got through with him.

Kujen’s taste for the beautiful was not limited to men (and the rare woman or alt). He surrounded himself with luxuries from the hexarchate’s bounty of worlds. Even if Mikodez hadn’t known from the threadbare records that Hajoret Kujen had spent his childhood as a refugee on a world whose name had changed twice in the past nine centuries, he would have guessed it from Kujen’s particular obsession with everything from hand-woven carpets to blown-glass figurines of flowers to cabinets inlaid with abalone and slivers of moonstone. He collected these objects but took no notice of them once he owned them. Mikodez had given up trying to bribe him with such mundanities long ago. When he really needed a favor, he instead offered ancient sextants and finely made orreries, artifacts that appealed to the scientist in Kujen.

Faian had stopped waffling and her people had taken control of Kujen’s old base. Mikodez expected that she’d be turning it upside-down for clues for the next decade without much luck. He’d offer help, except she was unlikely to take kindly to the suggestion that she needed it. That, and she didn’t trust him. Which, fair enough. Since he spent all that time cultivating his reputation, he couldn’t blame people for taking it to heart.

“...Miki.”

The use of his childhood nickname made Mikodez look up. Istradez wouldn’t have used it if any of the division heads remained anywhere near the room. “Yes?” he said, and rubbed his eyes. His stomach rumbled. When was the last time he had eaten?

“Fine, cookies,” Istradez said. He was standing over Mikodez with his hands on his hips. “If I can’t get you to eat anything better. And then you are going to bed.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Mikodez said. “You haven’t debriefed me on what the hell went on in the meeting.”

Istradez eyed him incredulously. “Are you kidding? You’ve been asleep all this time? Or sleeping with your eyes open, whatever. You’re ordinarily better about managing than this.”

“I can’t have been asleep that—” Mikodez checked the augment. Yes, he had, apparently.

Istradez’s voice softened. “Well, it’s not all bad. You missed the spectacular pissing match between Intelligence and Propaganda. I’ll fill you in later, promise. Just, you can sleep in my room, and I’ll cover for you until you’re fit for duty again.”

“Fine,” Mikodez said, since he was clearly losing this round. “Fine.”

“I’ll escort you,” Istradez said.

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

Istradez visibly wavered, then nodded. He stalked back to the table, snatched up a cold spring roll, then pressed it into Mikodez’s hand. “I don’t care if you’re going to look like a kid purloining this from the appetizer tray. Eat it.” And he stood over Mikodez until he did, in fact, eat it. Then he had to drink half a glass of water to wash it down because it’d gone dry. He made a note to himself to have a word with the kitchens about that.

Mikodez took the long way to Istradez’s apartment, on the grounds that he had no reason to hurry. He amused himself by affecting Istradez’s so-what-if-I-have-my-brother’s-face slouch and cynical smile. Istradez was the better actor, since his livelihood depended on it, but Mikodez liked keeping his hand in.

He trailed his hand along the green walls, livened up from time to time by paintings of cavorting foxes or, for variety, the occasional coy moon-rabbit. Sometimes he thought about taking a vacation. The sad fact was that he rarely left the Citadel, when the highest ceremonies dictated his presence. Otherwise, he did the most good here, in the never-sleeping Shuos headquarters.

When he entered Istradez’s apartment, he almost called for security. There was someone in the room already. But then she rose up from the couch in a whisper of languid silks, bronze pearls rattling around her neck and wrists and ankles, and he relaxed.

“Spirel,” Mikodez said as the door shut behind them both.

She floated up to him in a haze of perfumes and embraced him, not entirely with platonic intent. Spirel and Mikodez and Istradez had slept together once, because Spirel had expressed an interest, Istradez was drunk out of his mind and thought the idea was really funny, and Mikodez hadn’t cared one way or the other so why not. Curiosity allegedly satisfied, she hadn’t asked again, but Mikodez occasionally wondered.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” she said with that particular wry tone.

“I hate how you can always tell,” Mikodez said into her ear.

Spirel disengaged as neatly as a voidmoth pilot and smiled at him. “That’s why I get paid so much, yes?” In academy she had been tracked not as a courtesan but as Shuos infantry. He knew from experience not to get into an arm-wrestling match with her. Technically he was stronger, but she never played by the rules. (He had no idea why, that first time, he had expected a fellow Shuos to play by the rules, even a fellow Shuos who was his sibling’s long-time lover.)

She then gave him a critical look that was so similar to the one that Istradez had given him back in the conference room that Mikodez sighed and traipsed obediently to the couch. He began to arrange himself. Spirel cleared her throat. Meekly, he took off his shoes. Spirel had very strong opinions about shoes on her couch. It might be Istradez’s apartment, but Mikodez was sure that even in Security’s room roster the couch was listed as Spirel’s particular possession.

“I’m tired,” Mikodez said without meaning to, and was additionally horrified by how blurry his voice sounded. He’d better visit Medical again. They were always fiddling with the cocktail he had to take, but the meds hadn’t failed him this badly in a while.

“Sleep, then,” Spirel said with the brisk practicality he liked about her. “Scoot over.”

He did, even though it was taking an increasing amount of effort to get his muscles to respond. Spirel climbed in next to him and pulled the blankets over them both. Her heat radiated from her like a living thing in its own right, and she smelled of mint and citrus and an odd twist of lavender. She burrowed against him until he let her pillow her head on his shoulder. Great, was the last thought he had before falling asleep, I’m going to wake up with no circulation in that arm.

When he woke, though, his arm wasn’t numb at all. Spirel had already gotten up and was sketching at the window that opened up onto a view of one of the Citadel’s gardens. She liked drawing dragonflies. This particular garden had an abundance of them.

“Good afternoon,” Mikodez said. “Where’s Istra?”

“Right here,” Istradez said, emerging from the bathroom. He was still toweling himself off. He grimaced at the hexarch’s uniform that Spirel had laid out for him, then shook his head and stomped off to the closet. “No, no, no, no—hmm. I haven’t worn that one in a while.”

“You mean you haven’t worn that one ever,” said Spirel, who had nearly infallible skills of observation when it came to clothing and jewelry.

“How would you know?” Istradez demanded.

“Because I bought it for you two weeks ago, remember?”

Mikodez translated that into fourteen days. Spirel insisted on using the seven-day week even though it was, if not technically illegal, considered unlucky through most of the hexarchate. It came from her people’s traditions. She had remarked once that she had no idea what the rest of their old calendar had looked like before her people looked around and decided to join the hexarchate before getting wiped out as heretics. Mikodez had asked her why she had chosen this particular bit of calendrical minutiae to preserve, and she had shrugged.

Istradez changed his mind yet again and put on a set of robes in pink and yellow, a deliberately attenuated variation on Shuos colors. He was swearing as he tried to put on jewelry that went with it, rose quartz and heliotrope and the startling, contrasting pale flashes of aquamarine in glittering facets. Spirel pulled a face at Mikodez behind Istradez’s back and matter-of-factly went to help Istradez with the clasps.

“Thank you,” Istradez said.

“I could have sworn I paid you enough to afford real gems and not synthetics,” Mikodez said. He knew everything Istradez kept in his collection, all the careless strands of rose gold, the music boxes, the emergency hairpins. Mikodez and Istradez both wore their hair short in back, despite the long forelock, but Spirel was forever losing her hairpins.

Istradez shrugged with one shoulder. “Not like I wear these anywhere that anyone is going to find out and care.”

Mikodez hoisted himself off the couch and strode across the room to grab Istradez by the shoulders and force him to face him. “You are the vainest person I know,” he said, snatching up a comb and some mousse from the nearby dresser and beginning to fix Istradez’s hair. “Honestly, one of these days the details will get you.”

“Excuse me,” Spirel said. “Are you saying that he’s vainer than I am on account of a few bits of glitter? I’m clearly not trying hard enough.” She had laid her charcoal down. Her hands and sleeves were smudged black all over.

Istradez’s pupils had grown large, swallowing the amber-brown irises. “I like shiny things, all right? It’s not a crime to like shiny things. At least I don’t assassinate children with them.”

Spirel made a frantic shushing motion.

“All right,” Mikodez said, remembering what he’d jotted down in the notes to his own procedures for dealing with aggravated employees—except Istradez was also family. Deescalate. “What did I do this time?”

“Nothing,” Istradez said.

“No one ever says ‘nothing’ and means it.” Mikodez set down the comb before Istradez grabbed it and stuck it in his eye. Istradez had always had a bit of a temper. “Are you ever going to debrief me on that damn meeting?”

Istradez growled low in his throat, then leaned forward and kissed him, nipping his lower lip. “Leaned” wasn’t entirely the word for it. Istradez was pressing his full body into Mikodez’s. We’re not twins, Mikodez thought ironically, clothes aside. Istradez’s cock was hard where his was only half-roused, for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.

“Brother-sweet,” Mikodez said, unemotional, “you know you only have ever to ask.”

“That’s what I tried to tell him,” Spirel remarked with a distinct lack of sympathy, over the splashing of water. She had gone to the bathroom to wash the charcoal dust from her fingers, an endeavor that never went well. She often wore gloves to hide the dust beneath her fingernails.

Istradez raised a hand to slap his brother. Mikodez caught it and brought it to his mouth, kissed the knuckles above the cheap rings. A sob choked its way out of Istradez’s throat. “It’s easy for you,” he said. “Good, bad, right, wrong, you don’t care. It’s only ever about efficiency for you.”

“I do my job,” Mikodez said, “because after all the trouble I went to get it, it would be irresponsible not to.” He continued kissing as he bore Istradez toward the couch and pushed him down. Istradez was resisting very little.

Mikodez knelt before the couch and laid his hand on the inside of Istradez’s thigh. Yes: that got a reaction. “I will always do my job. I am the will of the Shuos. But don’t ever, ever doubt that I love you.”

Spirel came out of the bathroom then, and he nodded at her. She smiled at him, a little sadly, before taking his hand and helping him up so he could drape himself over Istradez. For her part, she sat on the floor, as curled and comfortable as a cat, and kissed her way up the side of Istradez’s neck. With one hand she reached up to massage Mikodez’s back, unnecessary but welcome. He wondered if she had gotten all the charcoal out. Istradez’s eyes were wide and glazed, and he said something in a half-gasp, half-moan.

“Shh,” Mikodez said. “Shh.” And he set himself to the task of pleasing Istradez, making a note in the back of his head to check Istradez’s most recent evaluations.