Raven Stratagem

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BREZAN WAS FEEDING the birds with Tseya, at her insistence, while Beneath the Orchid approached the Kel swarm. Tseya kept referring to it as the Deuce of Gears swarm. This was correct, but Brezan felt that sometimes reality needed a kick in the teeth, even if it was only in your head, and called it the Swanknot swarm to himself. They were no longer receiving active updates from Andan sources, as that might reveal their presence. Their own scan, however, told them that Jedao and the Hafn were dancing around each other. Brezan and Tseya wanted to stay close, but not too close, in case something combusted.

One of the three birds made an alarming rattling sound and tilted its head almost all the way sideways to peer at Brezan when he failed to dispense another treat. Brezan was of the opinion that necks, no matter how long and slender and graceful, shouldn’t be allowed to corkscrew like that. “Seriously, we should be monitoring the situation ourselves,” he said to Tseya. He tried not to think about how much the bird’s beak resembled a spear.

Tseya was dangling her bare feet in a tiny creek, apparently unconcerned that her toes might get nibbled off. Today she wore her hair in braids, which tumbled down over her crocheted silk shawl. “They made me read up on a few Kel battles when I was in academy,” Tseya said placidly. “Some of them go on longer than our most interminable dinner parties. The two swarms haven’t even bannered at each other yet. I’d say there’s no sense getting wound up, except as far as I can tell, you’re always wound up.”

Brezan glowered at her. The bird was looking sadly at him instead of picking on the more accommodating target, having clearly been trained to harass innocent Kel. He fished another treat out from the container and held it out gingerly. With great delicacy, the bird plucked the morsel from his grasp and swallowed it.

“I think you’re more scared of a tame crane than you are of Jedao,” Tseya added. “Isn’t that backwards?”

Brezan glanced at her sidelong but saw only honest inquiry in her expression. “Better the enemy you know?” he said. “Although I hadn’t realized just how much Kel Academy had left out about him.”

During their journey, Tseya had assiduously studied their target. They had viewed a number of the records together. At Kel Academy, Brezan had become familiar with the notorious bits, such as Hellspin Fortress and Heptarch Shuos Khiaz signing Jedao over to Kel Command, repudiating him utterly. One video had even shown him being awarded some medal, very discomfiting. That had happened nearly a decade before the massacre.

As Brezan had learned, these records accounted for a fraction of the available material. For instance, Tseya had dug up a clip of some state dinner where they seated Jedao next to a Liozh poet who took a dim view of his sister’s verses. Brezan had had no idea that Jedao ever had a sister, let alone one who was a poet. Irrelevantly, he wondered if she had ever annoyed Jedao as much as Miuzan annoyed him. Tseya had also found a note Jedao had written to one of his lovers, a magistrate. The letter was brief and formal, and concerned a keycard. Brezan would have considered the phrasing terribly cold, except Tseya had explained to him that this was what protocol expected back then. Even so, Brezan hated thinking of Jedao as a living man rather than an overpowered game piece. It was too disturbing thinking that someone would knowingly do the things Jedao had done.

Tseya was looking contemplative. “There’s a lot on the Immolation Fox,” she said, “and only so much of it was reasonably expected to be relevant to a Kel officer, I imagine. It’s only a pity that the most useful piece is missing.”

The question of what had caused Jedao’s madness. “I doubt he was ever crazy,” Brezan said, remembering Jedao standing there in the body he had stolen, perfectly relaxed.

“Well,” Tseya said, “I wish I could tell you that I hope to figure it out, but if they couldn’t get anything out of him back then, my chances aren’t better. Damnable Shuos.”

Brezan fed the second bird a treat. It bobbed its head almost as though in thanks. “Don’t these pets of yours ever fatten up?” he demanded. They showed no signs of diminished appetite.

Tseya laughed helplessly. “You’re hopeless. Since my plan to relax you is a dismal failure, why don’t we try something else? We can sit in the command center and depress ourselves with what we’re up against by reviewing some of Jedao’s old duels.”

“Sure, rub it in,” Brezan said. He’d told her at some point that Miuzan always thrashed him at the sport. On the bright side, being in the command center beat being pestered by unnaturally ribbony birds. “Well, since you offered, sure.”

Tseya flung a last treat toward two artistically entwined potted trees. The birds strode after it. “Come on,” she said.

Brezan found it alarming that Tseya went around everywhere in her bare feet. It was as though, having made the obligatory show of being an Andan, she no longer felt she had to keep up appearances. When he mentioned this, she only smiled and said, “The point of protocol is to make an impression, one way or another. Maybe I’m lulling you into a false sense of security?”

Her words reminded Brezan that when most people worried about being stabbed in the back, tangled up in an intrigue, or otherwise outmaneuvered, they didn’t just worry about the Shuos. If they had any sense, they also kept an eye on the Andan. “I’m the least useful Kel general in history if you’re looking for a pawn on the cheap,” Brezan said. “And if you’re bored, well, you’re already bedding me.”

Tseya snorted, but didn’t respond to the jab.

They entered the command center with its aquarium. The terminals were bright with status reports. As she sat, Tseya said carelessly, “I’m sure you could kill me pretty easily if you had to.”

Brezan stiffened. “Don’t,” he said. “That’s not funny.”

Tseya opened her mouth, saw his face, closed her mouth. “What’s your family like, Brezan?” she said out of nowhere.

“My what?” He glanced over a status report because it was something he understood and right now he needed that. Unluckily for him, the reports revealed nothing more untoward than swarms maneuvering. The Swanknot swarm seemed disinclined to chase the Hafn, but who knew what baroque plan Jedao was executing. If it meant less chasing, he was all for it.

“Your family.” Tseya had her hands on her knees and was leaning slightly forward.

He wondered why it mattered to her. I am not devious enough for this assignment, Brezan thought. “I’m sure we’d bore you,” he said, especially since she had to have access to all the juicy bits already. “My oldest father was retired from active service by the time I was old enough to be sentient, although my younger two fathers still did most of the parental work. One of them restores antique guns, which explains his partnering with a Kel. The other does paper-cut illustrations for children’s books. I once got yelled at for ruining his best pair of scissors.”

He had told her about his siblings before, but she was still looking at him expectantly. “My oldest sister is Keryezan. I hardly see her anymore, and I didn’t see a whole lot of her growing up, either, which automatically made her more appealing than the twins. She’s rather older and she has two kids. I think she was planning on a third. As for the twins, Miuzan is the one who never lets anything rest. I could have got on with Ganazan by herself, she’s pretty easygoing, but she was always on Miuzan’s side by default.”

Tseya continued to say nothing. Feeling hounded, Brezan said, “We fought over stupid things like who had to clean the guns and who chose what dramas to watch together. My oldest father believed that we should all watch them together, no idea why. Honestly, we’re very ordinary. It’s just me who’s the disgrace. If crashhawks were so easy to predict, I—I’d never have made it into Kel Academy at all.”

Come to that, he had no idea what, if anything, Kel Command had told his parents. He hadn’t dared to ask. If he was lucky, Kel Command had said nothing. His family had probably assumed he was dead or under Jedao’s control. The truth wasn’t much better.

“Your family sounds very different from mine,” Tseya said. “Please don’t think all Andan families are about poison and platitudes. Some are and some aren’t.”

Brezan wondered if she meant to elaborate, and wasn’t sure whether he was more worried or relieved when she didn’t. Maybe she wanted a distraction. “You wanted to watch some duels?” he said, eyeing the status indicators. Still nothing useful.

“Yes, let’s pick one at random,” Tseya said, reviving a little.

The grid was happy to select one for them: Jedao, back when he was the commander of a tactical group, against some whippy-looking long-haired Shuos who had taken offense over a point of etiquette that Tseya undoubtedly understood but Brezan sure as hell didn’t. It was strange to examine Jedao in his own body, a lean man whose face was unremarkable until he smiled; but Brezan recognized the way that Jedao-as-Cheris had moved during the takeover of the Swanknot swarm, smile included. It was also bizarre seeing Jedao with the star-and-flame tactical group commander’s insignia rather than a general’s wings. Brezan reminded himself that Kel Command had finally discharged Jedao, anyway.

Jedao and his opponent, Shuos Magrach, were sizing each other up in a way that made them look like siblings. “Magrach was an assassin, so they would have had similar training,” Tseya said when Brezan remarked on it. “There was speculation that she was trying to injure or kill Jedao for reasons of her own.”

Brezan had thought he’d had a handle on the timeline. “I thought this was when people still liked Jedao.”

Tseya shrugged. “That’s complicated. A lot of the Kel who served with him liked him, but others thought he was just lucky and resented how rapidly he got promoted. The Shuos considered him an eccentric. Look at it from their point of view. He was fast-tracked to his heptarch’s own office straight out of academy, brilliant early career as an assassin, does some work with small units and is even more brilliant there. Then, as far as anyone can tell, he lets the military stuff get to his head and he abandons everything to chase after the Kel. Inexplicably, Heptarch Khiaz let him go. Maybe she concluded he was no good to her after all. Imagine how much trouble she could have saved everyone if she’d just sat on him until he settled down.”

The match was underway, best of seven. Brezan could only follow what had happened in the slowed-down replays. He had already known about Jedao’s extraordinary reflexes, but Magrach was just as fast. “I feel inadequate like you wouldn’t believe,” Brezan said.

Tseya kicked his shin. “I don’t think you’d enjoy being an assassin.”

“If I’d had an assassin’s skills, I might have been able to shoot Jedao before he got this far.”

“There’s more to life than being able to shoot your problems,” Tseya said. “We’ll just have to get it right this time around. For a man so good at hitting things, Jedao has a lot of weaknesses. No; I’m more worried about getting within enthrallment range than about Jedao fighting back.”

“I’m not sure this is an attitude conducive to our long-term survival,” Brezan said.

She smiled at him with the side of her mouth. “One of us has to be the optimist.”

The mothgrid interrupted them with a notification: Jedao’s swarm had bannered the Deuce of Gears.

“We’d better get ready,” Tseya said.

Brezan turned off the duel recording, noting in passing that the score was 2-2 and wondering if he was paranoid for thinking Jedao might have engineered it that way. He averted his face. More than anything he yearned to be part of the battle, yearned to fight.

“Brezan,” Tseya said, “Brezan. We’re fighting in our own way.”

Hopeless to explain to her that being a Kel wasn’t about fighting in your own way, as he had done during Exercise Purple 53. It was about fighting the same way as all the other Kel. Of course, as a crashhawk, he was in no position to lecture Tseya about Kel doctrine. Instead, he said, “I will do my duty,” because that was always unobjectionable.

Tseya had an imitation Kel uniform for the operation. He didn’t watch her put it on, couldn’t bear to, but he had to concede that she would stick out on a Kel moth if she wore anything else, especially since Jedao had booted all the seconded personnel. The two of them suited up quietly. Brezan knew that the Andan cared about the aesthetics of even utilitarian objects like suits, but it was different when you had to wear one yourself. Oh well, given how his year was going, tasteful scrollwork was the least of his problems.

Of the two of them, Tseya was the better pilot. Brezan had observed her long enough to know that this wasn’t just a matter of specific familiarity with the silkmoth’s handling characteristics. Fortunately, she was on his side, or anyway more on his side for the moment than against it.

He was tempted to whisper as they made the approach, as if the Kel in the swarm could overhear them across vacuum. Tseya, intent on her task, seemed to feel no such impulse. Her toe was tapping loudly against the side of the terminal.

The agony of waiting didn’t get any better aboard a silkmoth. Brezan was watching the Kel and Hafn swarms on scan and fretting when another Hafn swarm blinked into existence. He had no other word for it, and he didn’t think that many formants, even glitchy foreign formants, could be a malfunction in their scan. “Tseya—”

“I see them,” Tseya said. She wasn’t changing their approach, mainly because the main body of Jedao’s swarm was obdurate in threatening the newcomers. How Jedao had known they would show up there, Brezan had no idea. No one had ever said that Jedao had the ability to get extra information out of scan, but it wasn’t impossible that he knew some tricks.

Brezan had difficulty not staring at the highlighted triangle in the display that represented the Hierarchy of Feasts. We’re going to free you from the Immolation Fox, he thought savagely, trying not to wonder whether General Khiruev had survived. And then I will personally kill Jedao into so many pieces you can’t even burn what’s left.

One of Brezan’s former lovers, a perfumer, had asked what he found so attractive about the violence of his profession. Never mind that as a staffer he didn’t personally see to the violence. Brezan didn’t like admitting it, but there was a certain satisfaction to kicking down obstacles.

Focus, he reminded himself. They weren’t in position yet, and Jedao was still a threat. He glanced at Tseya. Still engrossed in her task. Good.

The battle was unfolding very oddly. He worked out that the Hafn had somehow taken control of fourteen Kel bannermoths. Jedao had caught on before Brezan did and had condensed the grand formation dangerously to release a tactical group to deal with the crashhawk units. Brezan took long, even breaths to deal with the nausea at the thought of the Kel forced to turn traitor again, something they had to be sick of—

No. That wasn’t it. He remembered the shattering devotion in General Khiruev’s eyes, in Commander Janaia’s. Brezan himself only felt horrified because he had no formation instinct to assure him that the world was ticking along as it was supposed to. The Kel hexarch had warned him, but he hadn’t been ready to heed her.

“That detached group, it’s burning up?”

Brezan realized Tseya had addressed him and looked at the tactical display. “Yes,” he said flatly. Which unlucky commander had Jedao sacrificed? Rationally, any commander had to send people to die. But he couldn’t help the way he felt. “That group looks like it’s putting pressure on the units the Hafn are trying to shield.”

“I see,” Tseya said. She was guiding them past the fireworks now.

They had discussed how they wanted to handle this, given that battle would complicate matters. In this case, it would harm the swarm’s chances of survival to remove Jedao during the engagement. If Jedao continued to aim himself at the Hafn, they might as well allow him to complete the battle. Brezan had served under General Khiruev long enough to have faith in the woman’s ability, but they had no guarantee that Khiruev still lived. For his part, Brezan didn’t have the training for the task.

Instead, they were going to board the command moth and ambush Jedao when he headed back to his quarters to rest. Presumably having a body, even the wrong body, meant the bastard had to sleep once in a while. And there was a chance, however small, that Jedao would let down his guard enough to give the two of them a shot.

One thing Brezan had always hated about space combat, despite having been a moth Kel for half his career, was the illusory sense of insulation. You could almost imagine that the vast-eyed darkness was a protective shroud; you could mistake the intermittent silences for an indication that the enemy would pass you by. As it happened, the universe was very good at suckering Kel who got too cocky. During his first bannermoth posting, in an engagement against Taurag raiders, railgun shot had punched through the fading formation shields and through the moth, and sheared the woman next to him in two.

“There we go,” Tseya crooned. Brezan startled, but she was talking to the moth. They were in the midst of the battle now. Tseya clearly knew more about formation mechanics than she usually let on. She had to in order to anticipate what Jedao was doing so she didn’t get them shot down on the way in. Already she’d pushed them through the shields by exploiting the modulation gaps and the silkmoth’s capacity for bursts of rapid acceleration.

Brezan enlarged the subdisplay devoted to optics. At this distance, only the gold paint, glimmering irregularly in the light of shield effects and incoming fire, distinguished the cindermoth from the rest of the void.

“I’ll be able to mate the moths soon,” Tseya said. “Ready? You’ll hate it. I always do.”

Both of them double-checked their webbing, and Brezan nodded. He was glad something was finally happening, even though he knew he would feel quite the opposite in a matter of minutes.

Tseya was right. For all her deftness as a pilot, the mating maneuver made Brezan’s bones feel like they were going to vibrate out of his flesh. The silkmoth cobwebbed itself to the insertion point and juddered slowly closer and closer to the Hierarchy of Feasts. Then it released eggs that hatched to create a bridge of metalweave, and a burrower to gnaw its way through the cindermoth’s hull.

The burrower laboriously extruded a blister over itself and the breach point, then got to work. They waited in silence. Brezan had the irrational urge to hit the progress indicators. Tseya showed no sign of impatience. “Everything’s as good as it’s going to get,” she said at last, and he concurred. “Let’s move.”

After the silkmoth’s profusion of birds and disquieting fish and graceful trees, it was almost disappointing that the airlock was strictly utilitarian. Tseya’s mouth quirked when she caught Brezan’s expression, but she didn’t say anything. The distance between Beneath the Orchid and Hierarchy of Feasts was not large, but it was also perilous. Tethers aside, if you were careless, you might tumble through some of the openings in the imperfectly-braided metalweave. Still, it was a danger Brezan had faced before, and he completed the crossing quickly, making it onto the metalfoam blister.

Tseya hesitated for a long moment, and Brezan wondered if she had spotted something wrong. Then she, too, made the crossing. The blister opened for them, and they entered it together, forced close to each other by its small size. It closed behind them, and then the breach in the hall gaped open to admit them.

They emerged in a corridor. Brezan looked sharply around but saw no one coming. He had expected to feel something more than this knifing sense of alienation. “I’m locked out of the grid,” he said in a low voice. He hadn’t expected any differently. But if Jedao had gotten careless, they could at least have found out what the moth’s current layout was.

Tseya’s only response was a curt nod. She was breathing shallowly, and her face was too pale.

“Tseya?” he asked.

“I’m all right,” she said in a faint voice.

He should have asked her about any inconvenient phobias, the kind of thing he used to vet for the general, except he hadn’t been the one who selected Tseya for this mission. Plus, he’d never been allowed to see her profile, although he bet she had seen his. After all, he answered to her, not the other way around.

“We should keep moving,” Tseya said, more strongly. Good: so what if she had problems with wide-open spaces or vacuum. She had made it across and they had an arch-traitor to shoot.

They shed their suits, then tucked them into the breach. If someone found the breach before they located Jedao, they were done for anyway. It was still grating seeing Tseya in the Kel uniform. As for himself, it felt as though the fucking high general’s insignia was transmitting their position to the entire cindermoth.

His best guess as to Jedao’s quarters took them through nerve-wrackingly identical passageways. It was hard not to read a certain smugness into the expressions of the ubiquitous painted ashhawks. If someone ever lets me decorate a moth, Brezan thought, I’ll have it done in a boring solid color. More seriously, he was used to taking variable layout for granted. Being locked out of the master map’s shortcuts disturbed him in ways he didn’t want to name.

A clitter-clatter made them both tense, but it was only a servitor bearing a toolbox, carrying out routine maintenance of the sort that didn’t require the approval of a human technician. The servitor, a deltaform, took no more notice of them than Brezan would have taken of a floor-tile. Tseya’s eyes were considering, but he gestured for her to keep up, and she did. Other than the crossing, she was doing fine. He only hoped he was handling himself as well.

They ran into their first Kel outside of what had to be the dueling hall; Jedao hadn’t bothered to change the painted ashhawks clutching swords. The two Kel, a soldier and a corporal, had the bleary expressions of people who just wanted to sleep. They almost walked right by Brezan and Tseya.

“I can see discipline has gone to hell around here,” Brezan said caustically. He recognized them: Kel Osara and Corporal Merez. Neither was likely to give them trouble unless they were stupid enough to challenge Merez to a drinking contest. He had heard a sergeant swear that it wasn’t possible to get the man drunk without resorting to additives.

The two jumped. Osara, quicker-witted, thumped a salute, her face going blank. Very Kel, and frankly the best thing she could do for herself. She could work out that something had gone seriously wrong for Brezan to be here, let alone with the rank he was claiming, but he hadn’t required her to think so she wasn’t going to.

Merez, on the other hand, was trying to make sense of the situation. He stared at the wings-and-flame insignia, then saluted much more slowly.

Before Merez could formulate a question, Brezan said sharply, “Is General Khiruev still alive?”

“Yes, sir,” both Kel said.

He wanted to be happy about the answer, but he didn’t have any guarantees as to the general’s condition. “Is she well?”

Hesitation. “She’s alive, sir,” the corporal said.

Wonderful. He wanted to pursue this, but they had a fox to kill. “Jedao?”

No hesitation this time: “Alive, sir.”

Damn. “I need directions to wherever Jedao is holed up,” Brezan said, “then to the general.”

Merez gave the directions. As it so happened, Jedao had given Khiruev quarters just next to his. Brezan hated what that implied.

“All right,” Brezan said to the two. “Head directly to barracks and stay there. Do not speak to anyone until I countermand this order. Go.”

The two Kel marched off. For a moment Osara’s eyes lit with bemusement. Tseya murmured, after the Kel had rounded the corner, “We’d better hope they don’t run into anyone on the way.”

“Not much we can do about it,” Brezan said.

They reached Jedao’s quarters without further incident, even if it didn’t feel that way. Brezan glanced down the hall at the doors that led to Khiruev’s quarters, as though the general would come out to greet them. Hardly likely. He nodded at Tseya.

A lot could go wrong when you messed with a full-fledged mothgrid, especially if a Shuos was monitoring it, which was why neither of them had tried it earlier. But they had to make the attempt now. Tseya had grid-diving experience. She pulled out a hacking device in the shape of a ring with an egregiously large opal cabochon surrounded by diamonds, which she had previously described as ‘my mother’s idea of fashionable,’ and cocked her head, listening to something only she could hear.

Brezan was worrying that someone would show up at either end of the corridor when the door whispered open. Tseya straightened and nodded at him. Brezan had already drawn his gun. He checked the interior from where he was, then sprinted through and broke left, sweeping the room once again. There was nothing of interest except a jeng-zai deck and some tokens on a table. “Clear,” he said in a low voice.

Their attempts at stealth hadn’t been good enough, unfortunately. “I’m right in here,” a horribly familiar voice called out. A door opened at the other end of the receiving room. Jedao was partly visible through the doorway, including half his smile.

Brezan couldn’t help himself. He aimed and fired three times. The bullets whined as they ricocheted; something in the other room shattered. Jedao had already dodged back into the room, mirror-quick.

“If you were serious about killing me,” Jedao said, “you’d have blown the whole place up, just like Kel fucking Command did with the other cindermoth. Quit wasting your bullets and my time, and let’s have a civilized conversation.”

This couldn’t possibly work to their advantage if Jedao himself was suggesting it. It had to be a ruse. But if it gave Tseya a chance at Jedao—

“I want your word,” Jedao said. Now he was dictating terms. “I’ll leave my sidearm in here. You can keep whatever the hell weapons you like, Brezan.”

In agony, Brezan hesitated. The only thing keeping him from going in there anyway was the memory of his stinging hand, the scalding fact that Jedao was the better killer. Tseya didn’t say anything and was probably remaining in the hallway until she judged that she could enter safely, so he assumed he was to stick to the original plan. “Fine,” he said roughly. He holstered the gun out of a suicidal sense of honor. “Come out.”

He had agreed not to shoot. He hadn’t said anything about other weapons. Jedao wasn’t stupid enough not to have noticed the loophole, and anyway, a Shuos would expect everyone to lie as much as he did. They both intended to betray the other. The question was who was faster.

He might not survive this. But his orders were to give Tseya her opportunity. He was going to follow the damn orders for once.

Jedao sauntered out of the room. That damnable tilted smile. Brezan clenched his left hand, wishing he could smash the fox’s face in. Jedao caught sight of Brezan’s insignia. His eyes widened. Then he laughed softly. “And people complained I got promoted too fast,” he said. “Well, congratulations. How are you liking the privileges of rank, General?”

Then Jedao’s eyes narrowed, and he was looking over Brezan’s shoulder. Brezan didn’t dare turn at first, but he heard Tseya’s tread. She could walk silently when she cared to. That she didn’t now indicated her confidence.

Brezan felt the heat of her presence and, to his mortification, flushed up the sides of his neck knowing she was so close, even if her attention was focused on another man. In spite of his original intention, he turned, slowly, to watch her. He wished he could run his hands through her hair, whose locks were curling free of the silver pins; marveled at how her eyes had gone rose-blue, sea-deep; wished that petal regard was focused on him instead, even knowing what it would do to him.

Then he looked back at Jedao, which was what he should have been doing all along. Jedao was watching Tseya through lowered eyelashes. Brezan wondered, very cynically, when Jedao had last known any form of human contact that didn’t involve killing people. The intensity of Jedao’s regard worried Brezan, except Tseya didn’t give any indication that she was concerned.

Slowly, Jedao walked toward Tseya, graceful, taking no notice of Brezan. He said something caressingly in a language that Brezan didn’t recognize. Tseya answered in the same language. Brezan eased into position, careful not to move too suddenly, despite knowing that enthrallment didn’t break so easily.

Brezan lunged, except Jedao wasn’t there anymore. He had whipped around Brezan and struck Tseya at the back of her head. The struggle was over so quickly that Tseya had slumped in Jedao’s arms before Brezan could react.

Brezan discovered the gun in his hand, not that it did him any good. You’d think he’d learn.

“Don’t,” Jedao said, not sounding enthralled in the least. “She’s alive, even if she’ll need medical care. I’d rather not kill her if I don’t have to. Especially not in a stupid accident.”

Brezan stared at Jedao, then at Tseya, then at Jedao again. The enthrallment should have worked, unless—

Unless Jedao wasn’t Jedao.

He’d been played. From the beginning, even.

Which meant he had just delivered them into the hands of someone even more dangerous than Jedao.