Raven Stratagem

CHAPTER TWELVE

BREZAN HAD NO reason to expect anything to change when he heard footsteps beyond the door to the cell’s antechamber. Hunger was a familiar sharp ache, and his mouth was always dry. The past weeks, which he had lost count of after his captors disabled his augment, had been predictable. Too bad there was singularly little pleasure, under the circumstances, to be had from telling himself ‘I told you so.’

All he remembered about his transfer from the Shuos to the Kel was a blur of untalkative people in the faction’s garish red-and-gold uniforms. What had become of the two irritating medics he would never find out, which was just as well. As for Sfenni and his tasseled minion, he imagined that they were doing just fine.

The Kel had lost no time in verifying his identity. Then they put him in this cell. After two interminable days, during which he resisted the urge to shout at the walls, a colonel showed up. “Kel Brezan,” she had said, “you are excused from standing, given your condition. Do you understand me?”

He would have risen to salute her anyway. She shook her head. He settled for the least half-assed sitting salute he could manage.

“Kel Brezan,” she said, “until the circumstances that led to the dismissal of yourself and the Swanknot swarm’s seconded personnel are understood, it is necessary for your rank to be suspended.”

Standard procedure. He had divined as much from the mode of address. The Kel interrogators would speak to him next. Formation instinct would get them the best results if his rank didn’t get in the way. “Understood, sir,” he rasped.

“Tell me something, soldier. Why seek rescue from the Shuos?”

He had known this was going to be a sticking point. This wouldn’t win him any friends, but he had accepted that when he decided on his course of action. He summarized his line of reasoning.

“In other words,” the colonel said, “General Jedao offloaded personnel he couldn’t control with formation instinct, and you were one of them.”

“Yes, sir,” Brezan said. The words cut his throat like glass. “I was the only Kel eyewitness to the takeover to get out.” He had heard nothing of the Doctrine officer. It was possible that they had died of medical complications.

The colonel’s eyes were frosty. “You have just become someone else’s problem, soldier. Enjoy the rest you get now. You won’t be getting much more of it.”

“Sir,” Brezan said dully. He knew what the Kel did to crashhawks. At best they would revoke his commission and outprocess him. At worst they would execute him. But he had seen no other way to fulfill his duty.

Brezan spent a long time alone after that, observing remembrances with meditations whenever the dead-sounding voice over the announcement system reminded him to. Presumably they were sending for Rahal or Vidona, since Kel interrogators hated dealing with crashhawks, as if they were contagious. A servitor brought him food at intervals, never more than a little tepid rice and water. He was starting to wish he’d taken more advantage of Shuos Sfenni’s hospitality while he’d had the chance. Brezan made a game of trying to tell the servitors apart. Either it was a different servitor each time, or they modified themselves for the hell of it.

In spite of himself, Brezan wished for a Vidona. He didn’t like the Vidona any more than any sensible person did, but he had endured the straightforward application of pain before. Heretic terrorists had captured a transport when he was a captain. They hadn’t held the captives long before the Kel freed them, but to this day Brezan remembered the hot filaments of pain in his feet and face, the recuperation afterward. They’d had to regrow one of his eyes. The Vidona could only torture you. The Rahal could scry your signifier, including signifier reactions to specific questions. Not as direct as lie detection, or anywhere near mindreading (although there were rumors), but a skilled practitioner could trick the truth out of you.

When the hex of Rahal inquisitors arrived thirteen days after he was taken into custody, he knew they were taking his warning seriously. He’d started to wonder. He was pacing at the time, if you could call it that when he was moving agonizingly slowly both due to his lingering sleeper-recovery and the spider restraints, even on a relaxed setting. It took him a moment to register the hex’s presence. The plain robes, gray with bronze hems, were impossible to mistake, the wolf equivalent of full formal. The Rahal did their uniforms backwards, wearing more ornate clothing on more casual occasions.

The head inquisitor was a woman with curly hair and an imperturbable expression. All six wolves’ eyes sheened bronze, indicating that they had activated scrying. They murmured a greeting in an archaic form of the high language.

Brezan fought down the lump of fear that threatened to choke him and gave them a formal bow as best as the restraints permitted, which wasn’t very. The Rahal had a reputation for being fussy about protocol, but they also prided themselves on rationality. They wouldn’t blame him for something that wasn’t under his control.

The head inquisitor acknowledged the bow with a nod, which meant she had decided not to take offense. “Kel,” she said, “I am Inquisitor Rahal Hwan. We are here to determine the truth of your claims.” She spoke a very pure form of the high language.

“I’ll do my best not to get in your way, Inquisitor,” Brezan said, as if he could withstand a full hex.

“You may as well be seated,” Hwan said. “This will take a while.”

Brezan dragged himself to the bench and sat. His legs wobbled, but damned if he was going to show it. He looked up, determined to meet Hwan’s eyes even if it wasn’t strictly necessary, and fell sideways through a fissure in his head.

Part of him was sitting on the bench. The rest of him was in his parents’ apartment on Irissa Station, in the dreamspace triggered by Hwan’s first question. He wondered fleetingly what it had been before his attention was caught by the walls. They looked like they’d been redone in gun components caulked in something that gleamed viscously. Why had his three fathers done that?

Brezan checked for his oldest sister Keryezan at her favorite reading spot by the lamp with the painting of the grasshoppers. She wasn’t there, nor were her two children. Keryezan was the only one of his sisters he got along with, and he enjoyed cooking indulgent dishes for the kids.

He turned around and his other sisters, the twins Miuzan and Ganazan, sat playing pattern-stones with their youngest father’s set. Ganazan, who wore her hair pinned back from her face, had somehow talked Miuzan into giving her a three-stone handicap. Miuzan categorically hated giving people handicaps. Brezan had never gotten her to give him one growing up despite the fact that she was six years older than he was.

Both the twins were in uniform. Ganazan served as a clerk on a boxmoth, which she considered superior to running around in a combat moth. Logistics had always appealed to her. Miuzan was a colonel on General Inesser’s staff and couldn’t be made to shut up about it.

Brezan opened his mouth and said something, he wasn’t sure what. It didn’t matter. Both his sisters gave no sign of having heard him. He inspected his hands. No black gloves. No uniform, either, just sober brown civilian’s clothing.

Another fissure opened, and he fell through again. He and Miuzan stood in a dueling hall that stretched out so far to either side that the ends curved away. Miuzan’s calendrical sword was bright in her hand, numbers glowing red with white sparks. She had always been good at dueling. As a child, Brezan had loved to watch her practice her forms, admiring the ferocity of her discipline.

Brezan activated his own sword to salute her. The blade wasn’t its usual sullen blue, but red shading to yellow. Foxes, he thought in aggravation. It was tempting to blame Shuos Zehun. In all fairness, however, Zehun hadn’t hanged him. They had merely tossed him a nice long rope.

“You’re going to lose, little brother,” Miuzan said with her usual superiority. “But you’re getting better, I’ll give you that.”

Brezan frequently had fantasies of shoving Miuzan in a cloisonné box and sending her to the Andan so they could teach her to be less condescending or, at least, less obvious about it. The hell of it was, she seemed to be unaware of how much she made his teeth ache. He had long ago given up on ever having her approve of him; he’d settle for getting her to shut up.

“I’m a better shot than you are,” Brezan said, although it was a mistake to make any rejoinder at all.

She eyed him critically. “Yes, that will come in handy if you want to be stuck in the infantry for the rest of your life.”

There came a count of four, and Miuzan lunged. Brezan parried too late. It would have made no difference anyway. Miuzan’s sword flared up and the flames became dark-bright wings. The blade itself stretched out into an ashhawk’s head and sinuous neck.

Brezan swore and ducked. The ashhawk with its vicious raptor’s beak passed harmlessly through him. The flames roared up around him, heatless despite the stench of roasting flesh.

Miuzan was burning red and gold. Her hair had come loose from its braid and was whipping around her head. Blackened sheets of skin were already peeling loose from her face, making a dry crackling sound. Bone showed white at her skull and knuckles. “Oh Brezan,” she said, her voice entirely normal in spite of all this, “you’ll never be formation fuel at this rate.”

“Who the everliving fuck joins the Kel with the intent of becoming formation fuel?” Brezan shouted at her. Miuzan might be infuriating, but she was still his older sister. She had taught him pattern-stones and swordplay and how to take apart and reassemble every single one of the family’s guns, not to mention how to bake amazing honey-ginger cookies. He didn’t want her to die in a suicide formation or to an enemy bullet or, for that matter, by tripping down the stairs. He just wanted her to stop treating him like he was still the gawky eight-year-old who kept following her and Ganazan around hoping they would play forts with him.

Miuzan might have responded, but Brezan couldn’t hear her over the roaring of the fire. He developed a crazed notion that if he burned himself too, he would be able to follow her so he could shake some answers out of her. Try as he might, however, the flames took no notice of him. He was wearing his black gloves now—funny how that had happened. Unfortunately, it made no difference.

The scrying continued in this vein for quite some time. Back on the bench, Brezan hunched over and shook with hunger. The Rahal might be used to fasting, but he still hadn’t recovered from whatever they had botched putting him in the sleeper. A servitor brought him water. He choked it down. It tasted like it was heavy with soot.

The Rahal took their sweet time working their way to the topic of Jedao. In the interrogation, Jedao didn’t appear as a womanform, like Brezan himself, but as he had in the archival videos, a lean, slightly short man. His uniform was in full formal with the old-fashioned red-and-gold braid of a seconded Shuos officer, making Brezan feel underdressed. Jedao had the same tilted smile, however. He was playing pattern-stones with Brezan. In the back of his mind, Brezan resolved never to play another board game unless someone ordered him to. The stones shifted position each time Brezan blinked. Behind him, although he didn’t dare glance over his shoulder, he heard distant shrieks and sobs.

Jedao had a revolver in his left hand. He wore no gloves, fingerless or otherwise, which Brezan took to mean that he was playing for keeps. Each time Brezan placed a black stone—naturally he was the weaker player—Jedao shot one of his fingers off. The bullets didn’t do any damage to the board or its shifting array of stones, neat trick, although Brezan flinched at the ricochets.

Even though this was a scrying and not the real thing, the pain was riotous. The real thing might have been preferable. Then he’d have had a chance of passing out.

Brezan tried to breathe steadily. Pretend this is a remembrance, he told himself. Did that ever console heretics? He had to defeat the fucking ninefox general, but he only had four fingers left. He placed a stone. Jedao reloaded and fired without looking. His aim was impeccable.

Three fingers left. Then two. Then one, with which Brezan managed by scooping the stone between his remaining finger and left palm. At last Brezan had no fingers at all, just a set of bleeding stumps.

Jedao cocked an eyebrow at him. “What now?” he said.

“I am going to stop you if it kills me,” Brezan said, wishing he had a better gift for futile last words, especially since, with the Rahal, he had an audience.

He bent over to pick up one last stone with his teeth—

Everything after that hurt even worse, which he hadn’t thought possible. Eventually the Rahal hex went away. For a while he didn’t realize it. He forced down more water when they offered it. The gnawing pain at the pit of his stomach wouldn’t go away, but it felt like it was happening to someone else. Being someone else sounded like an excellent career move right now.

“I am Kel,” Brezan whispered to the wall when he was sure no one was around. He couldn’t hear his own voice. The words scraped his throat raw.

Time passed. The taste of ashes receded. He shivered constantly. But he had to endure. The Kel might require more information from him. He needed to be in a fit state to give it to them. With any luck, they wouldn’t ask too late for it to stop Jedao.

Brezan thought of the Kel who had been in the command center when Jedao took over, training their weapons on him. He thought of General Khiruev, and the first time they had met. Brezan had been surprised to be tapped for Khiruev’s staff after his predecessor developed a rare medical condition, and not sure he liked what it implied. The general had a reputation for unconventional thinking, not to mention flouting Kel Command’s wishes, which could be good or bad, depending.

During the first meeting, the general had asked him how he was settling in, to which Brezan made the only possible tactful response. (He did occasionally find his way to tact.) Khiruev had then said, unexpectedly, I hope you help me never to forget that it’s people that we send out to die. She was looking at a casualty list from the recent battle. It wasn’t the sort of confidence you’d expect as a newcomer, but he’d seen the bleakness in the general’s eyes and resolved to do what he could.

A sane person might be forgiven for not feeling a whole lot of affection for Kel Command at this point, but the fate of Khiruev and his swarm might depend on Brezan’s information, and Kel Command wasn’t why Brezan had become a hawk anyway. Indeed, Kel Command was a great argument for avoiding the Kel. Family wasn’t the reason, despite what Brezan had told Shuos Zehun in academy, although family had something to do with it. No: it was that the hexarchate was a terrible place to live, but it would be an even worse one if no one with a conscience consented to serve it.

You couldn’t pull the hexarchate apart and exchange it for something better. The fact that the heretics always lost was proof of that. So you had to do the next best thing, the only thing left: serve, and hope that serving honorably made some small difference.

Now, as the door to the antechamber slid open, Brezan staggered to his feet and prepared to bow. The person standing there was a rattled-looking Kel corporal. “Sir,” Brezan said, saluting instead.

The corporal opened the cell’s door and shut off the restraints. “Come with me, soldier,” he said.

Brezan wished he could ask what was going on, but he might as well enjoy blissful ignorance while it lasted, not to mention the odd sensation of being able to move freely. It was a minor miracle that he could walk fast enough to keep up.

They didn’t have far to go. The corporal brought him to an oversized conference room with a secured terminal, the Kel kind that had a nook of its own in the wall. “I’ll be right outside, soldier,” the corporal said. “Come out when they’re done with you.”

The light on the terminal indicated that someone wanted to talk, and the subdisplay had a summons with his name on it. Well, he couldn’t get more presentable, so he might as well approach the terminal. He saw his signifier like a dark, broken ghost in the golden metal. “Kel Brezan reporting as ordered,” he said, saluting preemptively. It only occurred to him too late to wonder if he should have changed his uniform into full formal.

The terminal brightened. “Kel Brezan,” said a woman’s voice, measured, precise. The broad, unsmiling face on the main display belonged to Hexarch Kel Tsoro.

Brezan had no idea what the hexarch required of him. He doubted she was going to personally order him to get a hot meal and a good night’s rest. “Hexarch,” he said.

“At ease,” Tsoro said. “Your information on Shuos Jedao has been verified. We have a new assignment for you.”

Brezan said nothing. According to his augment, seventy-seven days had elapsed since Jedao booted him from the Swanknot swarm. How much bureaucracy had prevented him from getting his warning through earlier, and how much damage had the Immolation Fox done in that time?

“Assignment” meant he wasn’t being dismissed from Kel service. On the other hand, the list of atrocious assignments filled up whole planets. He tamped down the flare-spark of hope.

“You seem to be confused on a certain point,” Tsoro added, with an instructor’s dryness, “so let us clarify this for you, because it’s important. You’re a crashhawk, Kel Brezan.”

He flinched. “Sir—”

“The test results are clear. Your formation instinct has decayed even from the low levels it displayed when you were in academy. It’s rare but not unheard of. But really, you should have figured it out during your confrontation with Jedao.”

“I wish to serve, sir,” Brezan said hoarsely. “It’s all I know.”

“Happily, there are precedents for crashhawks being permitted to remain among the Kel,” Tsoro said. “But you understand, it will be more difficult for you. Your actions will be scrutinized. You will have to choose, over and over, to be loyal. You won’t have formation instinct to guide you, especially when your orders give you pause and the habits of obedience wear thin. We are offering you this opportunity because you risked a great deal to bring us your warning, and because we approve of your conduct.”

“Then let me be a Kel, sir,” Brezan said, his heart thumping too rapidly.

“The assignment, then. This is to be a joint Kel-Andan operation. You will be assigned to Agent Andan Tseya of the silkmoth Beneath the Orchid.”

An Andan? For that matter, a silkmoth? They were small, swift courier vessels. He’d heard that you could build half a cindermoth for the price of one of the things. “Our objective, sir?” Brezan asked. He hadn’t realized that the Kel were now on friendly terms with the Andan, but he’d been too busy worrying about Jedao and the Hafn to pay attention to faction politics.

“Agent Tseya is to assassinate Jedao on his command moth,” Tsoro said, and smiled. “You will facilitate this as she directs.”

Assassinating Jedao as a single target, as opposed to blowing the whole moth up, would take either an Andan or a Shuos for preference, so that much made sense. Still, Brezan felt a stab of revulsion. The Kel had formation instinct, the Rahal had scrying, and the Andan could enthrall you if you were in range, assuming they knew you well enough. There were undoubtedly lots of records on Jedao’s personality structure to help Tseya out. He didn’t imagine that Jedao was long for this world once Tseya made him her pet.

“Your job, Kel Brezan,” Tsoro was saying, “is to wrest back control of the swarm once the agent is done.”

There was a problem with this scenario. “Sir,” Brezan said, “wouldn’t we be better off returning the swarm to General Khiruev or whichever senior officer is still alive?” He hoped Khiruev had survived, something he hadn’t permitted himself to contemplate earlier. As for himself, as much as he wished otherwise, he was no strategist. The swarm needed a line officer’s leadership in case the Hafn struck at an inconvenient time.

“If Jedao has some trick in store and eludes the agent,” Tsoro said, “we need someone to break his hold over the Kel. Khiruev won’t do. She’s already buckled once to Jedao’s authority. We’ve revoked Jedao’s commission, but by now Jedao has had a lot of time to talk to Khiruev, and the ninefox has a history of being extraordinarily persuasive when cornered. No, a general is no good to us. We need to send a high general.”

It took Brezan a moment to piece together the implications. “I believe you’ve coined a brand-new Kel joke, sir,” he said, too wrung-out and angry to care who he was talking to. “It’s quite unfunny.”

Tsoro smiled thinly. “Don’t be absurd,” she said. “The Kel never joke. You’d be surprised how hard it is to come up with a new one, besides.”

For a few muddled seconds, Brezan tried to work out if there was any non-insubordinate way to say that he would rather kill himself with a wooden spoon than join the Kel hivemind. He had always been secure in the knowledge that he’d never succeed to command. Clearly the universe was punishing him for making sensible assumptions about his career.

Tsoro’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Don’t worry,” she said, “there would hardly be time to integrate you, and you’d need to be on site with the rest of Kel Command for it. In any case, historically speaking, not all high generals have been part of Kel Command, although Kel Command has always been composed of high generals.” The change in practice had taken place after the establishment of the hivemind.

“Brevet rank,” Brezan suggested.

“We prefer to limit the use of brevets because not all Kel respond to them satisfactorily.”

There went that.

“You can still decline the mission.”

He drew a shuddering breath. “I accept, sir.”

“Good,” Tsoro said. “Consider yourself promoted, High General Brezan. We’ll expedite the paperwork. There have been enough delays already. Don’t fail us, and don’t forget to adjust your insignia. Your first stop should be Medical. After that, may we suggest that you use your first order to scare up some real food?”

Brezan opened his mouth to make a retort. Thankfully, the hexarch saved him from making an ass of himself by cutting the connection.

It looked like the universe was giving him another chance at Jedao. All he had to do was not fuck it up.