Raven Stratagem

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN NESHTE KHIRUEV was eleven years old (high calendar), one of her mothers killed her father.

Until then, it had been an excellent day. Khiruev had figured out how to catch bees with your fingers. You could crush them, too, but that wasn’t the point. The trick was to ease up behind them and apply polite, firm pressure to trap them between your thumb and forefinger. They rarely took offense as long as you released them gently. She wanted to tell her mothers about the trick. Her father wouldn’t have been interested; he couldn’t stand bugs.

Khiruev came home earlier than usual to show them. When she stepped inside, she heard Mother Ekesra and her father arguing in the common room. Mother Allu, who hated shouting when she wasn’t the one doing it, was hunched in her favorite chair with her face averted.

Her father, Kthero, was a teacher, and Mother Allu worked with the ecoscrubber maintenance team. But Mother Ekesra was Vidona Ekesra, and she reprogrammed heretics. The Vidona faction had to educate heretics to comply with the hexarchate’s calendrical norms so that everyone could rely on the corresponding exotic technologies.

Mother Allu spoke first, without looking at her. “Go to your room, Khiruev.” Her voice was muffled. “You’re an inventive child. I’m sure you can entertain yourself until bedtime. I’ll send a servitor with dinner.”

This alarmed Khiruev. Mother Allu often went on about the importance of eating together instead of, for instance, straggling in late because you’d been taking apart an old game controller. But this looked like a bad time to needle her about it, so she obediently traipsed toward her room.

“No,” Mother Ekesra said when she was almost to the hallway. “She deserves to know that her father’s a heretic.”

Khiruev stopped so suddenly that she almost tripped over the floor. You didn’t joke about heresy. Everyone knew that. Was Mother Ekesra being funny? It wasn’t true what they said that the Vidona had no sense of humor, but an accusation of heresy—

“Leave the child out of this,” Khiruev’s father said. He had a quiet voice, but people tended to listen when he spoke.

Mother Ekesra wasn’t in a listening mood. “If you didn’t want her involved,” she said in that Inescapable Logic tone that Khiruev especially dreaded, “you shouldn’t have taken up with calendrical deviants or ‘reenactors’ or whatever they call themselves. What were you thinking?”

“At least I was thinking,” Khiruev’s father replied, “unlike certain members of the household.”

Khiruev edged toward the hallway in spite of herself. This argument wasn’t going to end well. She should have stayed outside.

“Don’t you start,” Mother Ekesra said. She yanked Khiruev’s arm around until she faced her father. “Look at her, Kthero.” Her voice was flat, deadly. “Our daughter. You’ve exposed her to heresy. It’s a contamination. Don’t you pay attention to the monthly Doctrine briefings at all?”

“Quit dragging this out, Ekesra,” Khiruev’s father said. “If you’re going to hand me over to the authorities, just get it over with.”

“I can do better than that,” Mother Ekesra said.

Khiruev missed what she said next because Khiruev finally noticed that, despite Mother Ekesra’s mechanical voice, tears were trickling down her cheeks. This embarrassed Khiruev, although she couldn’t say why.

“—summary judgment,” Mother Ekesra was saying. Whatever that meant.

Mother Allu raised her head, but didn’t speak. All she did was scrub at her eyes.

“Have mercy on the child,” Khiruev’s father said at last. “She’s only eleven.”

Mother Ekesra’s eyes blazed with such loathing that Khiruev wanted to shrivel up and roll under a chair. “Then she’s old enough to learn that heresy is a real threat with real consequences,” she said. “Don’t make any more mistakes, Kthero. I’ll never forgive you.”

“A bit late for that, I should say.” Kthero’s face was set. “She won’t forget this, you know.”

“That’s the point,” Mother Ekesra said, still in that deadly voice. “It was too late for me to save you when you got it into your head to research deprecated calendricals. But it’s not too late to stop Khiruev from ending up like you.”

I don’t want to be saved, I want everyone to stop fighting, Khiruev thought, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of contradicting her.

Khiruev’s father didn’t flinch when Mother Ekesra laid a hand on each of his shoulders. At first nothing happened. Khiruev dared to hope a reconciliation might be possible after all.

Then they heard the gears.

Maddeningly, the sound came from everywhere and nowhere, clanking and clattering out of step with itself, rhythms abandoned mid-stride, unnerving crystalline chimes that decayed into static. As the clamor grew louder, Khiruev’s father wavered. His outline turned the color of tarnished silver, and his flesh flattened to a translucent sheet through which disordered diagrams and untidy numbers could be seen, bones and blood vessels reduced to dry traceries. Vidona deathtouch.

Mother Ekesra let go. The corpse-paper remnant of her husband drifted to the floor with a horrible crackling noise. But she wasn’t done; she believed in neatness. She knelt to pick up the sheet and began folding it. Paper-folding was an art specific to the Vidona. It was also one of the few arts that the Andan faction, who otherwise prided themselves on their dominance of the hexarchate’s culture, disdained.

When Mother Ekesra was done folding the two entangled swans—remarkable work, worthy of admiration if you didn’t realize who it had once been—she put the horrible thing down, went into Mother Allu’s arms, and began to cry in earnest.

Khiruev stood there for the better part of an hour, trying not to look at the swans out of the corner of her eye and failing. Her hands felt clammy. She would rather have hidden in her room, but that couldn’t be the right thing to do. So she stayed.

During those terrible minutes (seventy-eight of them; she kept track), Khiruev promised she wouldn’t ever make either of her mothers cry like that. All the same, she couldn’t stand the thought of joining the Vidona, even to prove her loyalty to the hexarchate. For years her dreams were filled with folded paper shapes that crumpled into the wet, massy shapes of people’s hearts, or flayed themselves of folds until nothing remained but a string-tangle of forbidden numbers.

Instead, Khiruev ran toward the Kel, where there would always be someone to tell her what to do and what was right. Unfortunately, she had a significant aptitude for the military and the ability to interpret orders creatively when creativity was called for. She hadn’t accounted for what she’d do if promoted too high.

As it turned out, 341 years of seniority rendered the matter moot.

KHIRUEV WAS IN her quarters, leaning against the wall and trying to concentrate on her boxes of gadgets. Her vision swam in and out of focus. All the blacks had shifted gray, and colors were desaturated. With her luck, her hearing would go next. She felt feverish, as though someone was using her bones for fuel. None of this came as a surprise, but it was still a rotten inconvenience.

After quizzing everyone about the cindermoth, the swarm, and the swarm’s original assignment, and making Khiruev relay his latest orders to the swarm, Jedao had retired to quarters. This had occasioned a certain amount of shuffling, since Jedao was now the ranking officer. Khiruev didn’t mind. The servitors had done their usual excellent job on short notice. But Commander Janaia, who liked her luxuries and hated disruptions, had looked quietly annoyed.

Five hours and sixty-one minutes remained until high table. Jedao had scheduled a staff meeting directly after that. Khiruev had that time in which to devise a way to assassinate her general without resorting to the Vrae Tala clause. Vrae Tala was more certain, but she thought she could get the job done without it. She wasn’t eager to commit suicide.

If she hadn’t been a Kel, Khiruev would have taken the direct route and shot Jedao in the back. But then, if she hadn’t been a Kel, Jedao wouldn’t have been able to take over so easily. Presumably Kel Command had no idea that Jedao was walking around in Captain Cheris’s body, or they would have issued a warning in response to Khiruev’s earlier inquiries.

As it was, it would be difficult to get into position to shoot Jedao without formation instinct asserting itself. Contemplating the assassination was already agonizing, and Jedao wasn’t anywhere in sight. And Khiruev was a general, nearest in rank. She was the only one with a chance of resisting formation instinct. The effect would strengthen with more exposure. If she was going to pull this off, she had to make her attempt soon.

Khiruev had always liked tinkering with machines, a pastime her parents had tolerated rather than encouraged. When on leave, she poked around disreputable little shops in search of devices that didn’t work anymore so she could rehabilitate them. Some of her projects came together better than others, and furthermore she was never sure what to do with the ones she did succeed in fixing. Currently her collection contained a frightening number of items in various stages of disassembly. Janaia had remarked that the servitors scared baby servitors by telling them that this was where they’d end up if they misbehaved.

The important point was that she had access to components without having to put in a request to Engineering. She had considered doing so anyway, since dubious military equipment was two steps up from dubious equipment she had bought from shopkeepers who beamed when paid for shiny pieces of junk. Still, she couldn’t risk arousing the suspicions of some soldier in Engineering who would report her to Jedao.

Khiruev nerved herself up, wishing she didn’t feel so dreadful, then gathered the components she needed. Small was good; small was best. It took her an unconscionably long time to lay everything out on the workbench because she kept dropping things. Once a nine-coil rolled away behind the desk and it took her three tries to retrieve it, convinced all the while she was going to break it even though it was made of a perfectly sturdy alloy.

The tools were worse. She could halfway convince her traitorous brain that she was only rearranging her bagatelles. Self-deception about the tools was harder.

She had to finish this before high table, and to make matters worse, she also had to allow for recovery time. She wasn’t confident that Jedao wouldn’t see through her anyway. But the alternative was doing nothing. She owed her swarm better than that. If only Brezan had—but that opportunity had passed.

Khiruev reminded herself that if she had survived that biological attack during the Hjong Mu campaign, the one where she’d hallucinated that worms were chewing their way out of her eyes, a minor physical reaction shouldn’t slow her down. The physical effects weren’t even the issue. It was the recurrent stabbing knowledge that she was betraying a superior.

Her palm hurt. Khiruev discovered that she had been jabbing herself with a screwdriver and stopped. Briefly, she considered removing her weapons so that formation instinct didn’t compel her to commit suicide rather than put her plan in motion, but that wouldn’t work. It would raise suspicions at high table. Her glove had a small tear in it, which knit itself back together as she watched.

The best way to proceed, it turned out, was to break down the task of assembly into the smallest imaginable subtasks so that she didn’t have to think about the end product. (She tried not to think about who she’d learned that from.) She had to scratch out some of the intermediate computations for the correct numerical resonances on a corner of her workbench, an endeavor complicated by the bench’s tendency to heal itself after a few moments. At least it got rid of the immediate evidence. It wasn’t hard to read the marks out of the material’s memory—she could do it herself with the right kind of scanner—but you had to know to do it in the first place.

Khiruev’s chest hurt, and she paused. Her hand ached from how tightly she was gripping the screwdriver. She brought it up so the blade pointed at her lower eyelid. It wouldn’t take much force to drive it into her eye.

She was a traitor no matter what she did. There was no way to be loyal both to Kel Command and to her general. She angled the screwdriver so it—

I have to kill him, Khiruev thought desperately. She couldn’t leave the swarm in the madman’s hands, not when it was needed to defend the hexarchate against the Hafn. Khiruev forced herself to lower the screwdriver. Then she dropped it with a clatter and put her head in her hands, breathing hard. She had to complete the assassination drone no matter what.

The drone, when she finished it, wasn’t one of her better efforts. It looked like nothing so much as a sickly cockroach. She rigged the needler unit using seven- and nineteen-circuits scavenged from a music box, of all things, instead of the preferred semiprime circuit, but it couldn’t be helped.

The next step was programming the drone to recognize its target. Triggering it manually would have been better, but if she’d had the ability to do that, she would have been able to shoot Jedao in the back in the first place. The drone had a basic optic system. She’d cribbed from the mothgrid for the leanest pattern recognition routine she could load into its processor and given it the videos from Captain Cheris’s profile. She had a bad several moments when her own vision shorted out while she was feeding the drone the data. Luckily, the process didn’t require much more intervention on her part. By the time it was done, she was drenched in sweat, but her vision had mostly returned.

No wonder the Shuos had never gone in for formation instinct. Not being able to assassinate their own hexarchs, historically a popular Shuos pastime, would have driven them up the wall.

Khiruev gritted her teeth and shoved the drone into her boot. With any luck it wouldn’t shoot her foot by accident. Only forty-nine minutes until high table. Had it really taken her that long? But she knew the answer to that question. She spent fourteen of those minutes taking a shower, which did not relax her at all, and twenty-nine minutes putting everything away. The shelves looked like a war zone, but that was normal.

Her left boot felt disproportionately heavy all the way to the high hall, even though she knew the drone’s mass to an improbable number of significant figures. She arrived six minutes early, no more and no less. It didn’t reassure her that she arrived within sixteen seconds of General Jedao. Commander Janaia showed up two minutes after that, but she had always been slightly lackadaisical.

“Good to see you, General,” Jedao said, as though a normal working relationship was possible. “Shall we?”

Jedao took his seat at the head table. Khiruev sat at his right hand, Janaia at his left, Stsan at the other end of the table. The senior staff officers arranged themselves after a moment’s hesitation.

Servitors were bringing out the food in trays. Janaia wasn’t paying any attention to them, instead casting surreptitious glances at the cup Jedao had brought to high table, even though one had been provided for him, after modern tradition. The fact that Jedao had remembered the tradition was more important than the cup itself, a plain metal affair. Morbidly, Khiruev wondered if the cup had belonged to Captain Cheris.

Jedao inclined his head to the servitor that delivered his chopsticks and spoon. Curious: Khiruev had never seen an officer do that before. Or anyone, for that matter. The servitor, a birdform with extra limbs, made a cautious quizzical sound. It probably knew as much about Hellspin Fortress as any of the humans, although it had never before occurred to Khiruev to wonder how much machine sentiences cared about history. Jedao cocked an eyebrow at it. The servitor chirred thoughtfully and went on with its work.

“All right,” Jedao said in a voice that was clearly audible without being too loud, “this didn’t matter aboard the needlemoth, but I’d be much obliged if someone would tell me if there are any crashingly important rules for how to eat this stuff. Especially the rolled-up seaweed things. Do I use my fingers or what?”

Janaia was startled into a laugh. “We’re not Andan, sir. Getting it into your mouth without dropping it is the important part.”

“The ‘rolled-up seaweed things’ are mostly vegetables and fish inside,” Khiruev felt obliged to add, “unless the servitors are feeling experimental.”

“Good to know,” Jedao said. “At least you can’t do creative experimental things to chopsticks. I recognize those.” He took the water pitcher, filled his cup, and sipped. All the Kel watched him intently. He had to be aware of it, but his expression was serene.

Khiruev had the urge to fish the drone out of her boot and confess everything. Jedao, however, was passing the cup her way. The cup felt like an ordinary object in her hand, and the water was the same clear, sweet water she was used to drinking. In a just world it would burn out her throat—Stop that, she told herself. She passed the cup to her right, her fingers numb.

Janaia persisted in trying to make small talk. “I don’t suppose military food was any better in your day.”

Jedao’s mouth quirked. “You were made a moth Kel directly, weren’t you, Commander?”

“That’s correct, sir,” Janaia said. “I got lucky. Don’t care for dirtside all that much. Flowers are nice, but you don’t need a whole planet to grow them.”

Khiruev couldn’t fault Janaia. The Kel in the high hall were terrified. Hardly anyone was talking, and everyone was fixated on Jedao’s table. Janaia knew as well as anyone what kind of threat Jedao posed. She was also doing her best, by acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary, to keep people from panicking entirely. Khiruev should have been doing the same, no matter how rattled she was.

“I ate some awful things when I started in the infantry,” Jedao said. “When I was a lieutenant, we were once trapped behind enemy lines. Eventually I had to shoot two people for fighting over who got to eat the maggots.”

“We don’t have maggots that we know of,” Stsan said, “but some of the servitors enjoy hunting. Captain-engineer Miugo tells me that they sometimes leave their kills at her door, like a cat might. Thankfully Miugo has a strong stomach.”

“Point them out to me?” Jedao said.

“Rakish-looking man over there,” Janaia said, waving her spoon, “hair pinned up in braids.”

“Ah, I see him.” Jedao turned to the rest of the table and invited the staff to introduce the rest of themselves more fully. He learned that Lieutenant Colonel Najjad of Logistics had three children, and either found it genuinely interesting that the middle child was a researcher in comparative linguistics, or was faking it very well. The acting head of Intelligence, Major Lyu, was drawn into a friendly debate on some opening gambit in an obscure Shuos board game. Only Operations remained uncommunicative, but Jedao seemed amused rather than offended.

For her part, Khiruev wondered how the history lessons that had gone into such loving detail on the tactics that had won the Battle of Candle Arc could have failed to mention how chatty Jedao was, to say nothing of the astonishingly filthy Andan jokes he knew. Upon reflection, Khiruev realized she had only the haziest notion of how the black cradle provided immortality. It had always been rumored that the device acted more as a prison than anything else. Maybe Jedao was starved for conversation after centuries.

The high hall became, if anything, more tense over the course of the meal. The Kel were waiting to find out just how Jedao meant to massacre them. I’m going to fight the Hafn, Jedao had said. How serious was he? Even if he had good intentions, an unlikely proposition, he had to know that Kel Command was unlikely to allow him to run around unmolested.

Jedao had only eaten half his rice by the end of high table. He set his chopsticks down and said, “We may as well head straight to the meeting. I trust you all know what to do.” He drained his cup, stood, and nodded to the officers at the table before heading out of the high hall with the cup hooked to his belt.

The Kel watched him go in silence. “Commander,” Khiruev said politely to Janaia before filing out of the hall with the staff heads. She had to admit she had no idea what Jedao intended for her specifically. It hadn’t escaped her attention that Jedao had fished for little of her personal history, although there had been no other sign of disfavor, and Khiruev didn’t like talking about her family anyway. Even so, she ached with the desire to make herself useful to her superior.

She couldn’t afford to think about what she was going to do next. Her vision was faltering around the edges again. And her left foot cramped. She clenched her jaw and walked on.

The designated conference room wasn’t far from the high hall. Khiruev caught up to Jedao mainly because Jedao kept pausing to admire the art on the walls: ashhawks rising from devastated cities, ashhawks nesting on improbable spires, ashhawks tearing through storm clouds. Khiruev had come to take Kel decor for granted years ago, but now that she looked at it anew, she admitted it was on the gaudy side, with flourishes in couched gold thread and beads of amber. For that matter, she had no idea how the Kel had decorated their moths during Jedao’s lifetime, but given how many times he had allegedly been revived, surely the hangings couldn’t be that much of a shock?

“I should stop gawking or I’m going to be late to my own damn meeting,” Jedao said to Khiruev as she fell into step half a pace behind him. “Did you know I used to wear a watch? I haven’t seen one of those in a couple centuries. Er, you probably have no idea what I’m—”

This was getting into uncomfortable territory. “I’ve seen a few,” Khiruev said. “Antique stores, with the guts removed so they’ll be in no condition to do anything heretical to the calendar.”

Jedao snorted. “Why am I not surprised.”

The conference room’s door slid open at Jedao’s approach. Irrationally, Khiruev was surprised that the far wall was still imaging the last thing she’d set it to, an ink painting of a gingko tree. The original was attributed to General Andan Zhe Navo, although it was anyone’s guess as to whether she had really painted it.

Jedao took his seat at the table, which was made of black stone with faint gold whorls in it, like spectral fingerprints. He had produced a deck of jeng-zai cards out of nowhere and was shuffling them with the ease of long practice. Then he caught the way Stsan was staring at the cards, grinned unsettlingly at her, and put the cards down.

Khiruev told herself that this was going to be an ordinary meeting, wishing she was better at lying to herself, and sat to Jedao’s right. The other staff heads took their seats in glum silence. Major Lyu looked as though he wished the Shuos analyst who had headed his section hadn’t been booted. Strategy’s Lieutenant Colonel Riozu, on the other hand, kept eyeing Jedao with that I’m going to pick your brains clean expression she got when she met someone new and exciting.

“All right,” Jedao said, “they didn’t exactly provide me with a library while I was busy being undead, but I did attempt to do my homework. If I’m understanding this correctly, the Fortress of Spinshot Coins had its defenses upgraded seventy-six years ago?”

My leg itches, Khiruev thought deliberately. This self-deception business wasn’t getting any easier. How did the Shuos manage it? Ironically, formation instinct prevented her from blurting out her plan. She was seized by the conviction that she mustn’t interrupt the senior general.

Trying not to wince too obviously, Khiruev reached down under the table. Her hand spasmed. She almost hissed, more in surprise than pain. Which was ridiculous, because she had known this would happen. Just an itch. Her fingers found the drone, switched it on after a mercifully brief moment of fumbling, and released it. If she hadn’t heard it scuttling into position, surely no one else had. Of course, there was the possibility the thing had failed to activate, but best not to dwell on that.

“—phantom terrain,” Riozu was saying. She tapped something into her slate. “Here’s a summary of the Fortress’s guns. I imagine you’ll find only a few details have changed. Phantom terrain is the bit you might not be familiar with.”

Jedao glanced over his own slate for the figures. “Yes, I see. How about you explain in your own words what you think I ought to know. The operational details, not the dry lists of numbers they put in the grid database. Pretend I’m a cadet.” He smiled at their palpable dismay. “I mean it. I assume it’s an exotic—weapon? A defense?”

“Exotic defense,” Riozu said. “Effectiveness falls off as inverse radius squared and it blows through the power cores like nobody’s business. But it does exactly what its name suggests. It generates temporary terrain in space.”

Where was the drone? Under other circumstances, Khiruev would have provided a better explanation. Riozu always thought she was more clear than she was. Sweat trickled down Khiruev’s back. She didn’t dare drop her pretense of attentiveness to look, and if she thought about it anymore, the debilitating physical effects would resume.

Jedao had taken up his cards again. He fanned them out and flipped over the first six. Ace of Gears, Ace of Roses, Ace of Eyes, Ace of Doors, the Burning Banner, and the Drowned General. A very unlucky hand, if you were superstitious.

“Terrain can refer to all sorts of things,” Jedao said, very mildly. “Especially when it comes to exotics. Are we talking impedance of motion like swimming through mud, actual physical barriers, force walls—”

Everyone became aware of a curious thready melody, high-pitched, coming from the side of the room. The drone had crept out from under a cabinet. Khiruev knew instantly what part of the wiring she had gotten wrong. She also had a moment to curse herself for using that wretched music box for parts. She clearly hadn’t thought through the resonance activations carefully enough.

The drone’s needler fired four times in lockstep with the horrible skewed melody. Everyone was already moving. Khiruev had reflexively lunged out of her chair to shield Jedao, as had Lyu, Riozu, and Operations’ Kel Meriki. Jedao had his gun out, but hadn’t fired into the tangle because he had no clear shot.

The needler jammed. The music hiccupped, caught on a two-note figure whining out of tune. The drone skittered back and forth for a moment. Meriki fired anyway. The bullet ricocheted. Khiruev’s knees buckled. More gunshots, she could feel them, but she couldn’t hear a thing even though people’s mouths were moving.

The drone came apart as two bullets finally hit it. Khiruev hadn’t built it to last. Fragments scattered across the room in several directions. One hit the table’s leg and bounced off, but Khiruev didn’t see where it went. A moment after that, Khiruev realized she hadn’t noticed all the blood, even though she could smell it, because she’d lost most of that side of the spectrum. Everything in her vision was blue-shifted, wintry. She tried to get to her feet, but her muscles wouldn’t cooperate.

Kel Lyu was sprawled on the floor. Meriki was slumped across the table.

“—Medical,” Jedao was saying from far away, his voice hard and crisp. “Two dead, don’t know about injuries. And I’m going to need a word with Doctrine about stepping up security if Hafn agents planted something on the fucking command moth. I heard about General Cherkad’s assassination.”

A team of servitors arrived first and confirmed that Lyu and Meriki were dead. Lyu had taken three needles. The fourth was buried in the wall next to the gingko image. One of the drone fragments had nailed Meriki in the eye.

“All right,” Jedao said, still in that clipped voice. “Notify Major Arvikoi that they’re the new acting head of Intelligence, the same for Major Berimay and Operations. We’re going to try this meeting again after Doctrine assures me there aren’t any other traps. Out, all of you.” He thought for a moment. “Except you, General Khiruev. Come with me.”

There was no way Jedao didn’t know, despite the flimsy cover story he had fed Medical. “Sir,” Khiruev said, or thought she said. She hauled herself to her feet. The surviving staff heads saluted them as they passed out of the room.

“All right,” Jedao said when no one else was in earshot, “your place or mine?”

His hand wasn’t anywhere near his gun, but then, it hadn’t been when he had fired on Brezan, either.

“I’m certain my quarters will be safe, sir,” Khiruev said, with no particular emphasis on ‘safe.’ When Jedao saw the boxes of dismembered gadgets, he’d have all the evidence he needed. Might as well get it over with.

Khiruev’s quarters were down the hall from Jedao’s. Jedao let her enter first. The door slid shut behind them.

“You weren’t kidding about watches, General,” Jedao said, inspecting the shelves where Khiruev kept her favorite trinkets. “That rose gold one would be nice if you fixed it up, but never mind. You were probably shocky when I called Engineering asking if anyone had recently requisitioned gewgaws. But then, you wouldn’t have needed their help. Engineering subspecialty as a cadet, isn’t that right?”

Khiruev wasn’t sure what she wanted more, a bullet in her head or a cane. Standing up without collapsing was taking all the concentration she could spare. “Come again?” she said.

Jedao eyed her, then brought over a chair. “Sit down, for love of fox and hound. I’d rather not be talking to the floor.”

She sat.

Jedao crossed his arms. “I’m not unaware of the effect that formation instinct is having on you right now, General, but I need you to pay attention to what I’m saying with your actual brain and not the part of your brain that’s going to ‘sir’ me to death. If you’ll pardon the expression.”

Khiruev stared at Jedao’s holstered gun. “I’ve betrayed you, sir,” she rasped. “My death is yours.”

“That’s not the salient point, General.”

Khiruev tried to make sense of the statement. For that matter, Jedao was being awfully conscientious about addressing her by her rank. What was going on?

Jedao’s eyes were very cold. “You fucked up, General. You got two of ours killed. If that’s the standard needler unit, then it holds twelve rounds and we’re lucky it jammed so more people didn’t die.”

Khiruev shook at the contempt in Jedao’s voice.

“I’m not unaware of my reputation. I really did slaughter a Kel army. So I’m not unaware that the Kel have a million reasons to want me dead.

“But I meant it when I said I was going to fight the Hafn.” Jedao’s mouth twisted. “Shooting people is one of the few things I’m good at. It’s the only way I can make amends. And to do that, I need soldiers, not corpses.”

“Sir,” Khiruev whispered, and couldn’t think of what to say after that.

“I used to be a Shuos agent,” Jedao said in a more normal tone of voice, which made Khiruev’s heart freeze. “Didn’t stay at it long before transferring to the Kel, but you’d be surprised how many assassinations you can pull off in eight months if your heptarch insists. There were Kel between me and the drone, including yourself. Given formation instinct, you needed to get me alone. You could have sent the drone after me on the way to the conference room, assuming you had it available then. You were half a step behind me, but you might have been able to submerge formation instinct long enough to keep from tackling me or some damn thing while it went to work. I assume you didn’t build in a weapon with better penetration for lack of appropriate parts. Anyway, it would have had a clear shot at my back. If you’d done this in a semi-competent fashion, you’d have your swarm back and those officers would still be alive.”

Khiruev’s first thought was that of all the things she had expected of this conversation, a critique of her assassination attempt had not been one of them. The second was that she should have known that even a four-hundred-year-old Shuos who had spent his adult life in Kel service would display the Shuos obsession with competence. “That option didn’t occur to me,” Khiruev said simply.

“Obviously.”

“My death is yours, sir.”

Jedao gave her a cockeyed look. “How do you tell the difference between a violin and a Kel?”

She knew the answer to that one. “The Kel burns longer.”

“Listen,” Jedao said, “I’m only good at speaking the language of guns, so maybe I haven’t made myself clear yet. I don’t want your fucking death, General. Killing people is so easy, but it’s usually irreversible. Kel Command clearly thinks you’re good. They’ve been mulling over promoting you someday, if I’m understanding the notations in your profile correctly.”

Khiruev stiffened in spite of herself, but Jedao went on.

“I want your life, General. I want your help fighting the Hafn. But you need to promise me you’re not going to get more people killed through this kind of carelessness. Because if you pull that again, I’m going to show you a damned nasty way of killing someone with a playing card.” Jedao pulled a card out of his sleeve: the Deuce of Gears. His personal emblem.

“You have my service, sir,” Khiruev said, “as long as you require it.”

Jedao smiled brilliantly at her, and Khiruev knew then how completely she’d been defeated.