Raven Stratagem

CHAPTER TWENTY

NIRAI KUJEN’S ANCHOR, Nirai Mahar, was asleep when the call came. Kujen himself never slept, one of the deliberate effects of being a revenant. Jedao had hated it, although Kujen didn’t much care. When he had been alive, Kujen had wondered about the long-term effects. It turned out that being a disembodied voice, and one with only a single anchor as a conversational partner, did wonders for your patience.

Ordinarily Kujen would have ignored the call until Mahar woke on his own and had a chance to eat something, but only a few of Kujen’s designated agents were supposed to be able to reach him at this clandestine base. Certainly not any of the hexarchs. But the call’s headers indicated that it was coming from Andan Shandal Yeng. He couldn’t imagine what she had to say to him. She had never liked him, especially after Mahar had seduced that one son-now-daughter of hers, and he found her tiresome.

Kujen looked at the current object of his attention, Esfarel 12. The man was monitoring the environmental controls. Esfarel 12 had no idea who the original Nirai Esfarel had been, nor any memory of the modifications that Kujen had ordered made to his appearance. 12 had the original’s slightly unruly hair and smiling mouth and long hands, but not the original’s body language. Kujen hadn’t bothered with that after Esfarel 5. Too much work. Besides, the variety of responses entertained him on the occasions that he was in a mood for sex.

The call indicator wasn’t going away. Kujen sighed. Time to wake Mahar up. Kujen inspected the anchor’s current dream. For someone who had always eaten well, Mahar was surprisingly obsessed with food. This time it was tender bamboo shoots and strips of meat in sweet sauce, bowls of fruit slices garnished with edible petals, fragrant rice, jasmine tea, everything. For his part, Kujen remembered the taste of food vividly. One of the great benefits of being a revenant was never having to starve again, although Mahar needed to remember to eat so Kujen would have a functional marionette.

Kujen inserted an image of an hourglass onto the dinner table. This time the running sand was green-blue. It changed each time. He could control Mahar’s dreams in exacting detail when he cared to, but here there was no need. It hadn’t been difficult to convince Kel Command that giving Jedao the same modification would be a terrible idea. Jedao had already been hard enough to control.

Kujen waited until Mahar stirred. It wasn’t as though he was the one in a tearing hurry. Besides, needling Shandal Yeng was always fun.

Mahar sat up and stretched. The bedsheets were tangled in his legs. He began extricating himself from them. “Emergency?” he said drowsily.

“Just make yourself presentable,” Kujen said. “It’s either the Andan hexarch or her latest consort.”

“Shandal Yeng doesn’t have consorts so much as social rivals she’s decided to take down personally,” Mahar said.

“You’re only sixty-four,” Kujen said as Mahar dressed in silk and velvet, all black and gray and glints of silver, and agate earrings in each ear. “Isn’t that a little young to be so cynical?”

“Your bad habits are contagious.”

Kujen laughed obligingly.

His anchor’s idea of ‘presentable’ was terribly involved. Kujen didn’t disapprove. He insisted on beautiful, mathematically trained men for anchors where possible. If he was going to be alive forever, he might as well enjoy the view and avail himself of decent conversation. His anchors varied in their attention to fashion. This one liked ruffles and scarves, even if the taste for odd knots was a new development. Kujen had grown up paying great attention to fashion, due to his first profession. He had seen a great many trends come and go. At the moment, he supported anything that confused Shandal Yeng, and he was also for letting Mahar enjoy himself once in a while. It made for a smoother working relationship.

Kujen didn’t impute impatience to the call indicator’s steady blinking, once per second in accordance with the local calendar he had devised. But there was no ambiguity about Shandal Yeng’s expression when Mahar activated the line. She wasn’t smiling, for one. She was much less exasperating when she wasn’t smiling.

“I didn’t realize those high collars were in fashion again,” Mahar said, “or I’d have scared up a tailor.”

Most people slipped and thought of Mahar as Kujen himself, an illusion both of them worked hard to maintain. Kujen could step in and use Mahar as a puppet, but it took a great deal of concentration. In most cases Mahar did just fine on his own. (This was another black cradle modification Jedao had not been permitted during his missions for Kel Command. Naturally, Kujen had bent the rules on certain private occasions. He wasn’t worried about his ability to outmaneuver a mere Shuos.) Suitable long-term anchor candidates were rare, and required extensive psych surgery and training. Kujen made sure to keep a supply on hand at all times.

The Andan hexarch was looking at Mahar with shadowed eyes. “You’ve done a good job hiding,” she said, “and I’m glad your self-imposed exile hasn’t killed your interest in making sartorial statements. But I have no heart for discussing your fashion choices right now.” That had to be a first. The Andan prided themselves on using appearances against people. “I hear you have your own immortality device. Not the black cradle, a completely new one.”

To Mahar, Kujen said irritably, “We need to check for leaks again, don’t we.” To Shandal Yeng, through Mahar: “Before you go any further with that thought, what happened to Faian? I left a perfectly good researcher in charge. I’m positive she’s smart enough to follow the instructions on the technology I left for the rest of you.”

Curious: she was shaking her head. “Everyone I paid to make an assessment says she’s doing fine. You chose well. But I felt it was better to approach the one who trained her.”

“Wonderful, a business proposal,” Mahar said subvocally, so only Kujen could hear him.

“I don’t know,” Kujen said. “Desperation is a refreshing look on her.”

Shandal Yeng straightened. “I believe you’ve met my child Andan Nezhe.”

Kujen finally knew where this was going. “The one I slept with?” Nezhe’s relationship with their mother had always been tempestuous. Shandal Yeng had not approved of her second-born fucking a rival hexarch, which was why Nezhe had done it. Nor had she approved of Nezhe’s insistence on training in special operations instead of settling in for a lifetime of sycophancy.

“I want to share immortality with her. It may be my last chance to win her back.”

Ah. Nezhe must be a woman these days. Mahar gave Shandal Yeng a long look. “Let me guess,” he said. “Faian turned you flat down.”

Unsurprising. Faian had always had a subterranean legalistic streak. “Listen,” Kujen said, “last time I checked you had six living”—acknowledged—“children.”

“I should think you would appreciate my restraint,” Shandal Yeng said archly. “Whatever it costs—”

“I don’t care about the six million ways that people wreck their lives,” Kujen said, “but I happen to appreciate that eternity is a very long time. I’m going to do you the favor of giving you sound counsel, and you’re going to listen. First of all, you can’t bribe love out of people.” He was pretty sure that what Nezhe wanted, if anything, was her mother’s affection, not the latest luxury. Even a luxury as good as immortality. “Second, take immortality for yourself and forget about your children, as per the original plan—yes, I listen in when I get bored—or else offer immortality to all of them. If you’re determined to be surrounded by your spawn, Mikodez will say yes because he’s got a soft spot for kids, even grown-up kids, plus he’ll get front seats to the ensuing chaos, and Tsoro’s always been old-fashioned about family. As for the rest, you’re an Andan. You can be persuasive.

“If you do it the way you propose—just the one child—she’ll grow to hate you. If her siblings were expendable, she’ll always wonder if you’ll discard her next. Eventually she’ll try to assassinate you, or if you’re lucky, she’ll simply leave.”

Shandal Yeng narrowed her eyes. “What a droll analysis from someone who’s never had to sit through a dinner with all his children squabbling over pittances of power.”

Kujen had sired a couple children centuries ago, during his first life, but had no idea whether any of them had survived, let alone their descendants. He didn’t particularly miss the experience. “You know,” he said, “the Andan aren’t the only ones who study human nature.”

“That may be so,” she said, “but Nezhe is the one I want. I need her, Kujen. For all the trouble she’s caused me, she’s the most brilliant of my children. I shouldn’t have to explain to you what it’s like to face a future with no family.”

The number of people who had tried arguments like this on him over the years was astonishing, even if no one at this end of time knew that he was responsible for the deaths of his mother and sister. “Don’t appeal to my better nature,” he said. “I’ve spent the last several centuries brainwashing people to pass the time. I have nothing to offer on that front.”

“How interesting,” Shandal Yeng said, “when you just offered me family advice. For a mathematician, your grasp of logic is terrible.”

“Never ascribe to irrational benevolence what selfishness will explain,” Kujen said cheerfully. “Remember that you’re asking me to contemplate eternity with you and your guest list. It’s in my interest to have you in a good mood so I don’t have to listen to the backbiting. Trust me on this. Whatever the hell your children hate about you or each other, find a way to make things right. If you want to bring them all with you into a drearily long future, you can surely win the other hexarchs’ support.” Good luck with Faian, stubborn Faian—but that wasn’t his problem.

“And if I insist that I only want Nezhe?”

“Then I don’t see that I owe you any help.”

“All right, Kujen,” she said. “I realize you’re beyond the need for petty things like companionship—”

“I don’t know, it’s always nice to have an audience,” Kujen said to Mahar.

“Hush,” Mahar said subvocally. “I want to see if she offers us anything good.”

“—but I meant what I said about payment. Don’t you tire of being dependent on the goodwill of the Kel? It looks like certain of your assets are still tied up with theirs.”

It looked like Shandal Yeng’s analysts weren’t as good at following money trails as they needed to be. Happy news.

“If I cared to find out, I’m sure I could look up how much you’re worth,” Mahar said. “Maybe you could offer me some museums full of paintings while you’re at it?” Mahar cared a lot more about fine art than Kujen did, which was why he got to deal with interior decoration.

“If you’ve developed new tastes in that area,” Shandal Yeng said, “I should only be happy to guide you toward pieces worthy of your interest.”

“Too bad,” Kujen said, playing toward her misimpression that he was still allied with the Kel, who would have given a lot to know where he was. “I’m more interested in big guns. I don’t know if it’s escaped your attention, but when it comes to putting holes in things, you can’t go wrong with the Kel.”

“Money is a much better defense than violence.”

“When money’s gone,” Kujen said softly, “only violence will do.” He had never been good at it himself, which was where people like Jedao came in handy.

“You don’t want me for an enemy, Kujen,” she said.

Kujen had known it would come to threats. “If you can take me down without stabbing yourself in the back,” he said, “please, go ahead. Don’t bother Faian again. She’s strong-willed, one of the things I like about her. I’ll send you some textbooks if you want to work out the equations for yourself. And don’t call again. You won’t find me here or anywhere. In the meantime, I have some appallingly unethical pastimes to attend to.”

Shandal Yeng’s expression went remote. Then she cut the connection.

“And to think she wanted us to face eternity with her hanging around,” Kujen said.

Mahar yawned, then took the scarf off and looped it around his wrist. “You should have said yes,” he said. “Bought her off for a few centuries.”

“She’d work her way around to hating me for saying yes. With some people you can’t win.” Kujen considered the matter. “Do you want immortality? The real thing, not what we have here?” He made the offer from time to time, in case the answer changed.

Mahar scoffed. “Unlike certain people, I understand the math. Rather not be a test subject for a fucking prototype, no offense. I keep studying your design specifications, Kujen, and they ought to be correct, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re overlooking something. Besides, I know about Esfarel and Jedao, remember? One functional immortal out of three is a dismal success rate.”

“Esfarel was weak,” Kujen said carelessly, “even though he was spectacular in bed. Jedao was a head case when he arrived. That’s not a fair test. And anyway, that was the black cradle, not the new variant.”

“If you say so.” Mahar unwound his scarf and put it away, then had a servitor bring him breakfast. The breakfast, when it arrived, was typical Kel fare: rice, pickles, sesame leaves, and marinated roasted meat chopped fine. He ate a few bites, blinked, then eyed the food. “That wasn’t what I meant to order. You’re still thinking about Jedao, aren’t you?”

Bleed-through. “He was such a good project,” Kujen said. “There was always something to fix. Or break, take your pick.”

“Oh, for love of stars above. Now that he’s running around loose, send him a courier with a shiny gun prototype or a nice bottle of whiskey and your apologies. It’ll make you both feel better. He might even forgive you for sticking him in the black cradle. The two of you can team up and conquer the galaxy.”

Mahar might understand the math, but he hadn’t ever looked closely enough at a certain class of weapons. Like the hexarchs, he was deeply confused as to what ‘Jedao’ was up to. “Someday I’ll take you up on that,” Kujen said. “But not just yet.”

KUJEN REMEMBERED WHEN the Kel had first delivered General Shuos Jedao to the black cradle facility 397 years ago. There had been a lot of grim soldiers in Kel black-and-gold. Jedao himself occupied a plain metal casket with a transparent pane. “Held under sedation lock, Nirai-zho,” the Kel corporal said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Suicide risk.”

“I’ll say.” His anchor at the time, Liyeng, strode over to the casket and inspected the status readings. Kujen had already checked them over. Jedao was alive in there, even if he’d picked one hell of a grandstanding maneuver for his bid for immortality.

“Nirai-zho,” said a different voice. It belonged to High General Kel Anien, a thin, gray-haired woman. She was shuffling a deck of cards over and over, unable to be still. “Command sent me to address any questions you might have.”

“Good,” Kujen said curtly, since he had a role to play. “I didn’t see anything in that mess of reports about what the Rahal inquisitors got out of General Jedao. Who do I have to vivisect to get the right security clearance?”

Anien flipped a card over, made a face at it, stuck it back in the deck. At last she looked at Liyeng. “You should have witnessed the interrogation, Nirai-zho,” she said. “If it hadn’t been such a mess, it would have been hilarious. The wolves that Rahal-zho dispatched couldn’t get anything out of him. They started a side-argument with Shuos-zho about the appropriateness of certain Shuos techniques for fooling scrying and why they should be dropped from Shuos Academy’s curriculum. Watching wolves have fits is an excellent pastime when you’re recovering from an incandescent disaster.”

Kujen had always suspected that Anien got bored too easily for her own good. He could relate. “Nothing?” he said, because he needed to be sure that Jedao hadn’t hinted at their alliance. He’d already watched the excerpts from the regular interrogation that they had deigned to send him. Please shoot me, Jedao had said over and over. “He couldn’t have been completely brain-dead if he could form a sentence in response to stimuli. Even a very dull sentence.”

“Jedao has a singularity response to scrying,” Anien said, sobering. Same image no matter what the query.

“Let me guess,” Kujen said. “Immolation Fox.” An obvious choice, given the circumstances, if you had the ability to mask your signifier to block scrying.

“That’s it exactly.”

Kujen took pity on the Kel soldiers waiting to be told what to do and prompted Liyeng. “Follow Technician 24,” Liyeng said, and pointed obligingly. “She’ll show you where to stash the general.” Anien confirmed this with a nod. The Kel and their casket moved off.

“They left something out of the interrogation files Command sent you,” Anien said once they were alone. “We’ve been trying not to let it get out.”

“Do tell,” Kujen said.

“I don’t have video to show you,” Anien said, “and if you mention this to anyone, I’ll have to deny that I ever said anything, Nirai-zho. But Jedao didn’t start off begging to be shot. He didn’t seem to understand what had happened. He—he kept asking what had happened to his soldiers. Asking if they were all right. It was only after he understood what he’d done that he started to beg.”

All this time she hadn’t stopped playing with the cards.

“You’re worried about him,” Kujen said. Interesting change from the overwhelming contingent of Kel who wanted Jedao’s entrails cut into little writhing pieces and the conspiracy theorists who thought the Lanterners had devised a brainwashing ray. Kujen happened to know that there weren’t useful shortcuts when it came to brainwashing.

“Ignore the blame-mongers, Nirai-zho,” Anien said. “We promoted Jedao too fast and pushed him too hard, and he cracked.” Her mouth twitched. “He was a great suicide hawk. Indistinguishable from the real thing.”

She was getting distracted. He had to convince her to do what he wanted. “About the black cradle,” Kujen said. “Are you certain? I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to repair someone that badly broken.”

Anien gave Liyeng a considering look. “How good are you at tactics, Nirai-zho?”

“The real kind, not game theory with perfectly rational actors? Sort of not,” Kujen said. Jedao had always been annoyingly nice about it no matter how much Kujen needled him about his math difficulties. “I solve equations, not guns.”

“He’s good enough for the experiment to be worth attempting,” she said flatly. “Who knows? He might become a useful weapon again.”

“I only talked to him in passing before Hellspin Fortress, once or twice,” Kujen lied. “What was he like before he lost his mind?”

“Other than his inordinate fox-like love for games and his inordinate hawk-like love for guns? Talkative. Brave. Occasionally funny. His soldiers loved him. Or they did, until, well.”

She cut the deck, then showed him the top card. The Deuce of Gears. “Stupid magic trick,” she said. Kujen refrained from mentioning that he had seen most of Jedao’s repertoire. “He showed me how to do a bunch of them a few years ago. Honestly, Nirai-zho, I don’t know what to tell you to look for. No one saw it coming. I would have suspected myself a traitor before I suspected him.”

Kujen heard what she wasn’t saying. “I’ll do my best for him, Anien.”

He could have gotten rid of her if it looked like she was going to be an obstacle, but this way was easier, and he was looking forward to taking Jedao apart.

KUJEN SHOULD HAVE known that his life would be filled with inconveniences after High General Kel Shiang was appointed his new liaison. High General Anien had died of a rare cancer, leaving him her collection of playing cards. A strange thing to offer someone who technically didn’t have hands.

Shiang was a tall, tawny woman with a broad frame. The forcefulness of her movements made him wonder if the facility was going to thunder itself into rubble around her. Kujen’s current anchor, a shorter manform named Uwo, found this intimidating. Kujen couldn’t blame them, but it was a bit of a distraction.

Uwo had brought Shiang to the lab where Jedao was pinned. The room was drab except for a single wall devoted to a one-per-minute cycle of riotously colorful photographs of flowers. Forsythias, cosmos, moss roses, azaleas, everything. Flowers were an innocuous way of giving Jedao access to color when they switched on the portal that could, for short periods, give him a limited window into the world.

“He’s in here, Nirai-zho?” Shiang asked, looking around at the terminals with their graphs and readouts. One of them was still set to a card game.

“Not precisely,” Kujen said, “but this is the single point of access we’ve allowed him. I didn’t deem it wise to give him an anchor of his own without Kel Command’s approval.”

“I’m authorized to make that determination.”

“Of course,” Kujen murmured. “Do you wish to talk to him?”

Shiang eyed him. “I did read your reports, but is he stable?”

What was Jedao going to do without a body, put nails through her eyes? “As stable as anyone is,” Kujen said. “You came all this way, you might as well see for yourself. I should warn you that the time windows are dependent on calendrical mechanics—the equations were in Appendix 5—so you’ll have twenty-three minutes this session if we start now.”

“Let’s do this, then.”

Uwo flipped the switch. A chime sounded. A shadow rippled through the room. Nine candle-yellow eyes stared at them through a crack of black-silver. Then the shadow faded, and the eyes with them.

“Jedao?” Shiang said, unmoved by the phenomenon.

“I apologize for being unable to salute, sir,” Jedao said, that same easy baritone with its drawl. It sounded as though he stood in the room facing them, except he’d also have to be invisible. “What do you require of me?”

“I’m here to evaluate your recovery,” she said. “Nirai-zho tells me you’ve given no explanation for your behavior at Hellspin Fortress.”

“I have none, sir.”

“Do you remember what happened?” She was frowning at Uwo, as though Kujen’s anchor should have an answer for her.

Jedao hesitated. “I remember it in pieces, sir. The pieces aren’t in order. They showed me some of the videos, including—” His voice wavered. “Including when I shot Colonel Gized. I don’t—I don’t understand why I would want to do that. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Can the Rahal get anything out of him now?” Shiang asked Kujen.

“Unfortunately, that’s impossible,” Kujen said. It had, in fact, been one of the design parameters for the black cradle. Not that Shiang was ever going to learn that from him. “Neither of us sleeps. A wolf scrying has no access.”

Shiang swore under her breath, then said, “What do you think I hope to accomplish here, Jedao?”

“I imagine you’re here to render judgment, sir. I’m not sure why I’m being retained as a revenant, however. There must have been a court-martial, but I can’t remember any of it. I realize I killed a great many, including my own people. I am prepared for your sentence.”

“We kept you alive”—Shiang’s nostrils flared—“because Kel Command needs tacticians of your caliber, because you may yet ‘serve’ in an experimental capacity, and because the heptarchate continues to face many threats.”

Uwo coughed. “About that.” This would have gone better if Shiang had read the report as she had claimed.

Shiang glared at Uwo. “You have something to say, Nirai-zho?”

Kujen decided that he needed to go back to picking more physically intimidating anchors. This one was excellent in all other regards. They had marvelous conversations about homological conjectures over breakfast, but even bleed-through hadn’t overcome Uwo’s naturally retiring demeanor.

“Sir,” Jedao said, “I—I would recommend against using me for that purpose. I have difficulty with tactical simulations now. I don’t have any reason to believe that things would be any better in the field.”

“That must be humbling for you to admit, given your former stature,” Shiang said.

Jedao sounded puzzled. “I wish to serve, sir, but it’s important that you have an accurate assessment of my capabilities.”

“And if I decided that the Kel would best be served by your permanent death?”

“Then I will die, sir.”

“Do you want to die, Jedao?”

“I wish to serve, sir,” he said again. “It’s not for me to question your orders.”

“Are you happy here?”

“I am waiting to serve, sir. That’s all that matters.”

Shiang flipped the switch herself, banishing Jedao. Kujen hated it when strangers touched his equipment. Uwo would have said something, but Kujen held them back. He didn’t want to pick a fight over this when there were more important matters at hand.

Shiang scowled. “He’s respectful, obedient, self-effacing, and sounds nothing like the cocksure bastard who bet a fortune that he could get his army through the Battle of Spiral Deluge with under ten percent casualties, and who came in under seven,” she said. “Congratulations, Nirai-zho, you’ve turned him into a sheep. There’s nothing of the general left.”

Kujen would have smiled. He had botched the job on purpose. “You wanted a perfect wind-up soldier,” he said. “I gave you one. I can’t make him any better than this. He’s stable and he’ll serve you no matter how poorly you treat him.”

“And your report admitted that his tactical ability tests under the thirty-seventh percentile on all four of the simulators we provided. A squirrel with a bowl of marbles could do better. When they say he’s never been defeated, do you appreciate what that means? We didn’t send him off to a bunch of easy battles on a lark. Most of his assignments should have killed him. A Shuos officer was always going to be more expendable than one of our own. It just so happened that his choice was to be brilliant or not to die. He figured out how not to die. Kel Command expected him to be annihilated at Candle Arc, outnumbered eight to one, and he didn’t just win, he smashed the enemy. This experiment is no good if he isn’t usable.”

“It was a necessary compromise,” Kujen said. This was the part he had to sell. “People aren’t lumps of clay. You have to work with what’s already there. With Jedao, you can either have perfect obedience or you can have the little box in his head that magically tells him what his opponent is going to do so he can tie them in knots, but you can’t have both at the same time. Please don’t ask me how to put the little box back in while he’s like this. I can’t. You’d need a psych surgeon who was also a tactician.” That part was even true. “If you know where to find someone like that, send them my way. I’d love to talk shop. What exactly is it that you expect of me, High General?”

Kujen had misgivings about Shiang’s smile. He used to have one like it, back when he was alive.

“He seemed at peace,” Shiang said. “I had a niece who served under him at Hellspin, did you know that? I’ll make this easy for you. If you can’t make him better, make him worse. Break him. Cripple him. He’s a fucking traitor, Nirai-zho. He doesn’t deserve to have his life handed back to him, even like this. He needs to suffer.”

Kujen laughed incredulously. “My peach”—the Kel hated condescending endearments as much as anyone else—”you realize your operational parameters contradict themselves? Do you want a torture chew-toy, or a useful commander?”

“You’re such a genius, Nirai-zho,” Shiang retorted. “All the Nirai tell us so—but I guess you program them that way. Why don’t you prove it to the rest of us? Find a way. Make Jedao a tactician again. Make him suffer as he serves the Kel.”

“Feel lucky that I despise you, High General,” Kujen said, “and that I can’t wait to get you off my facility. Anything I can do to Jedao, I can do to you. Face it, Jedao’s a lot more complex than you are.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Shiang said. “Try anything and some fangmoths will blow your precious equipment into radioactive little pieces. You know us Kel, we’re great at breaking shit. Anyway, I believe I’ve made Kel Command’s requirements clear, Nirai-zho, or do I need to repeat myself?”

“No, you’re perfectly clear,” Kujen said. He had gotten what he wanted.

“NIRAI-ZHO,” JEDAO said after the eighth round of jeng-zai, “what’s troubling you?”

It took a ridiculous set of accommodations to enable Jedao to play the game without an anchor, but Kujen remembered how much Jedao liked it. Unsurprisingly, Jedao’s little box affected his skill at gambling. Right now he was terrible at it. Kujen was good at jeng-zai himself, but he shouldn’t have been winning so easily. Between moves, his anchor was doing a logic puzzle, since revenants could talk to each other directly.

“How do you feel, Jedao?” Kujen asked.

A bemused pause. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, Nirai-zho, but aren’t you sitting on top of a bunch of instruments that tell you more about what I feel than I know myself? I’d remind you what they’re called, but I can’t pronounce the names.”

“Don’t give me that,” Kujen said. “I know how good your memory is, too.” Except the pieces he had locked down as a security measure. It wouldn’t do for Jedao to let something slip to the Kel while he was still vulnerable. “You know what every last one is called.”

“Still flunk the math,” Jedao said cheerfully.

That was true. While Jedao had excellent geometric and spatial intuition, he had never developed better than scrape-by competency at the algebraic underpinnings of calendrical mechanics. Kujen had considered fixing the dyscalculia, but it was more convenient not to.

Kujen inspected the primary display. He had certain instruments that the Rahal didn’t know about. In his readings, the central signifier, Ninefox Crowned with Eyes, never changed. It suggested that Jedao was not just more intact than he was letting on, but that he was manipulating the entire situation. Kujen hadn’t yet caught him at it, though.

The weighted network of secondary signifiers had taken more work. Kujen had done a lot of jiggering to replace the problematic Immolation Fox in the motivational vertices with the more tractable Rose Chalice, that-which-receives. “Jedao,” Kujen said, “I have to dismantle you. It will hurt.”

Kujen knew how to give High General Shiang half of what she wanted. To make Jedao sane and functional, to give him back the ability he had had in life. Kujen would have to build around the latter because he didn’t understand it well enough to mess with it, but it could be done. He could transmute that all-consuming guilt into a desire to make amends. The hard part would be giving Jedao some sense of proportion. The man had a judgmental streak a planet wide.

Of course, that was only half of what Shiang had demanded. If Kujen wanted the Kel to think he was in bed with them, he was also going to have to pretend to be hostage to their desires.

“Nirai-zho,” Jedao said, “I was made to serve. If this is the service I am to give, then it doesn’t matter how much it hurts.”

The sad side-effect of making Jedao like this was that he was no longer an entertaining conversationalist. Thank goodness it was temporary. “I wish you’d shut up about service,” Kujen said.

Slight pause. “What would you rather talk about?”

“Aren’t you even going to ask me why I have to take you apart?”

“It doesn’t matter, Nirai-zho, unless you’d like to tell me. I expect you have a good reason for it.”

If Kujen wasn’t mistaken, Jedao was trying to comfort him.

“There’s one thing I can do for you,” Kujen said, because it was easier to work with a calm subject and after a certain point Jedao wouldn’t realize he’d been deceived. “I’m not saying you’re much more than a doll as it stands, even if you have no idea what I’m talking about, but you’re not out of your mind with the desire to commit suicide, either. I can take away your memory of this time. You’ll be broken but you won’t remember once having been patched up. It might hurt less that way.”

“If it makes you happy, Nirai-zho—”

Jedao used to understand that this was a very risky line of thought. “I’m asking what you would prefer.”

“I want to remember,” Jedao said, his voice suddenly steady.

So Jedao hadn’t entirely lost his understanding of pain or pride or ugly bargains after all. Good to know. “Fine,” Kujen said. “We’ll begin now.”

He flipped the switch, leaving Jedao trapped in the black cradle’s sensory deprivation.

Over the next week, Kujen modified the setup so he could hear Jedao without Jedao hearing him. Jedao turned out to be good about not talking to himself, unlike Esfarel. If it hadn’t been for the readings, Kujen would have wondered if Jedao had died in there.

He started dismantling the work he’d done to stabilize Jedao so he could reinstall the death wish.

After seven months and three days in utter isolation, Jedao broke his silence. “Nirai-zho? Are you there? Please—” His voice was brittle.

Kujen didn’t answer. Instead, he started the finicky work of suppressing more of Jedao’s memories now that Jedao had cracked. If Kujen was going to spend eternity with someone, he might as well guarantee that that someone would be pleasant company. Esfarel had gone mad in the black cradle, but Kujen had figured out better techniques since then. Jedao was more resilient to begin with if he’d lasted this long.

Sixteen days after Jedao spoke, Kujen noticed the thrashing. The instruments didn’t pick up on it, but as a revenant himself he could feel it. Esfarel had done that when he was newly undead and trying to figure out how to kill himself.

Eighty-three days after that, just as Kujen thought he’d be able to move on to the next phase, Jedao spoke again, very quietly. “Kujen, please. I miss you. It’s so dark. Are you—are you there?”

That wasn’t fear.

It was loneliness.

Kujen happened to know that even monsters seek companionship. Or an audience, anyway. “Shut up,” he said, suddenly irritated. The only reason they were in this situation to begin with was Jedao’s ridiculous grand strategy. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

Jedao still couldn’t hear him. Hear anything, really.

Kujen returned to work.

KUJEN CONTEMPLATED MAHAR. He’d taken a brilliant young student and ruined him utterly, done him a favor no one else could have done, promised him luxury and power and his brother’s life in exchange for the use of his body. The anchor lived a restrained lifestyle, given that, but that was his affair.

Kujen had laid out the terms clearly. It worked best when he was up-front; he had figured that out early on. In a just universe, he should be a lonely pile of cinders beneath some rock, rather than hanging around to parasitize his own people, but he had never cared for justice anyhow.

A long time ago, one of his mentors had told him of the good he could do with his astonishing versatility in the technical fields. Restorative psych surgery on refugees and veterans. Better mothdrives. The occasional paper on algebraic topology. He could have done any of it, had eventually done all of it, except none of it changed the fact that he would die someday.

As it turned out, you could fix the calendar to cheat death. Even the Rahal couldn’t fix calendars the way Kujen could. Granted, this didn’t come without its cost. The calendar had made remembrances even more pervasive than they had been during Kujen’s childhood.

Immortality didn’t turn you into a monster. It merely showed you what kind of monster you already were. He could have warned his fellow hexarchs, but it was going to be more fun to watch them discover it for themselves.