Raven Stratagem

CHAPTER FOUR

HEXARCH SHUOS MIKODEZ’S latest hobby was container gardening. At the moment he was admiring the spectacularly ugly flower his green onion, which he had given a prominent place on his desk, had produced. He was also having tea with his younger brother, Vauhan Istradez. Istradez was less than thrilled by this development. It meant one more detail about Mikodez to memorize, to say nothing about all the notes on potting soils and drainage.

Mikodez was blessed with the Vauhan line’s good looks, which had hardly required genetic tinkering. He was tall, and a little too thin from the drugs he took, with flawless dark skin, glossy black hair, and smiling eyes. He had once joked that he had joined the Shuos because the faction’s red-and-gold uniform complemented his coloration. At that point his youngest parent threatened to hold Mikodez down and dye his hair turquoise.

Istradez looked identical to his brother, which was not a coincidence. Today, along with the duplicate of the hexarch’s uniform, he also wore the same topaz earrings. While he’d been born Mikodez’s younger sister, he had undergone modding to serve as Mikodez’s double on the grounds that this was almost as good as Mikodez being able to be in two places at once, and the benefits were almost as good as the downsides.

“Thank you for picking such an ugly plant, by the way,” Istradez was saying. He spoke effortlessly with his brother’s inflections. “Couldn’t you have chosen something nice to look at, like forsythias? Even Zehun agrees with me that that thing is an eyesore.”

“Yes,” Mikodez said, knowing that Istradez was carping not because he cared about the scenery but because he’d been cooped up in the Citadel of Eyes—the star fortress that served as Shuos Headquarters—for a month and twelve days. “But it made a nice garnish for the chicken ginseng soup, don’t you agree?”

Istradez eyed the hapless green onion’s snipped-off leaves. “I don’t see how you can tell, since you hardly touched the soup.” He tapped the cookie tray, which Mikodez had demolished.

“It’s the price I pay for never sleeping,” Mikodez said blandly. His assistant Zehun regularly tried, and failed, to get him to follow a healthier diet. Mikodez’s usual retort was that the sweets hadn’t killed him yet, so why mess with what was working?

“At least you’re in a good mood today,” Istradez said, and smiled Mikodez’s own smile at him.

In his more honest moments, Mikodez admitted that he couldn’t tell the difference, but then, that was the point. You don’t have to do that in here, he sometimes thought of saying, except it wasn’t true. Even in the Citadel of Eyes, even in this fucking room where they sat across each other like twins, he didn’t dare. Sad truth: paranoia was his trade. He wouldn’t have survived forty-two years as hexarch otherwise.

“I thought the chicken soup would be to your taste,” Mikodez said. Kel fare, which Mikodez found dreadfully plain. But after long assignments eating the things that Mikodez himself was known to fancy, Istradez went through periods bingeing on bland fare. It was hardly something Mikodez would deny his favorite sibling.

Istradez fluttered his eyelashes at Mikodez. “It was. I’m just being difficult.”

“Foxes preserve us.”

“As if foxes have ever been known for their constructiveness.”

“You wound me,” Mikodez said. “Foxes are capable of being useful if you train them appropriately.”

“But then they’re not foxes anymore, only hounds.”

It was a distinction peculiar to the Shuos. Most people outside the faction called all Shuos foxes. The Shuos themselves distinguished between foxes and hounds. The former were the flashy ‘secret’ agents you saw on the dramas; the latter were the bureaucrats, technicians, and analysts who got the real work done. (Mikodez, who had trained as an administrator with a side of analysis, had his own biases.)

“You say ‘only’ like it’s a bad thing,” Mikodez said. He reached for one of the candies in the bowl on the table between them, and bit through the hard, sugar-dusted shell into the even more sugary plum-flavored center. “One fox is smarter than one hound; a pack of hounds is another beast entirely. And I have always believed that a properly guided bureaucracy is deadlier than any bomb.”

“I’ll avoid making all the obvious jokes about paperwork.” Istradez was avoiding the more obvious jokes about Shuos Jedao. “I’m so glad I don’t have your job. It’s bad enough being shot at without also being in charge of policy.”

This wasn’t strictly true. By necessity, Istradez sometimes had to make policy calls while in his role. But Mikodez always made sure that he was fully briefed and that he had a team of advisers to rely on, the way Mikodez himself relied on Zehun and his staff.

“Speaking of which, do you have another assignment for me yet?”

“It’s not yet time,” Mikodez said. “Getting bored of your surroundings? I swear, your attention span is almost as bad as mine these days. You should meet with Recreation and give them some suggestions.”

“Sorry, you’re only paying me to be you, not to also do Medical’s job for them.”

“Worth a—”

An alert gleeped at Mikodez. “High priority to the hexarch, Shuos Zehun,” the grid said. “Zehun requests an immediate meeting with you, alone.”

Istradez smiled ruefully at his brother. “I’ll leave you to the latest national emergency,” he said. “You know where I’ll be if you break your mirror.” He leaned in and embraced Mikodez, kissing him on the mouth. They were lovers on and off, something the rest of the family had regarded with bemusement. At least they keep each other occupied, had been their older mother’s opinion. As the two had been crèche-born exactly a year apart, family superstition considered it inevitable that the two would be particularly close. Mikodez didn’t have any particular interest in bedroom gyrations for their own sake, but he liked keeping Istradez happy.

Mikodez waved his brother off. “Yes, yes,” he said, “enjoy your date, and feel free to put the gory details in an appendix so I can skip it at my leisure.”

“I’ll tell you all about it in person,” Istradez said sweetly. “I’ll look in on our nephew for you while we’re at it.”

“Appreciate it.”

Istradez sauntered out with a very un-Mikodez-like gait.

Minutes after Istradez departed, Zehun requested entry into Mikodez’s office. Mikodez let Zehun in. He was always surprised that they were just a bit shorter than he was, as if he was still that cadet who had been called out for a surprise evaluation. (Late growth spurt.) Zehun had wrapped themselves in a shawl of maroon wool. They were getting on in years, and claimed that Mikodez kept his workspaces too cold.

A cat wriggled in Zehun’s arms: the orange tabby Jienji, who, like all of Zehun’s cats, was named after a notorious Shuos assassin. Even someone who liked cats as much as Zehun did was unlikely to run out of names anytime soon. At the first opportunity, Jienji squirmed free and leapt up onto Mikodez’s desk.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Mikodez said, scooping up the cat and depositing her back on the floor. He wasn’t about to lose his green onion to a feline nuisance. “So, Zehun, what’s so urgent that you had to interrupt my family time?” Ordinarily, after chatting with Istradez, the two of them would have gone to see their nephew afterward.

Zehun didn’t smile in response to his cajoling tone. He immediately went alert. “You’re going to love this,” they said. “Hexarch Nirai Kujen is confirmed missing.”

Mikodez didn’t waste time gaping. He turned to his terminal and said, “Details.”

Zehun gave him a file code. He brought it up. The report’s contents were, if anything, worse than he expected.

In theory, six factions shared rule of the hexarchate. Three high factions: Rahal, which governed the high calendar and set the law; Andan, with their financiers, diplomats, and artisans; and Shuos, which specialized either in information operations or backstabbing, depending on whom you asked. Three low factions: Kel, known best for their military; Vidona, which handled education and the ceremonial torture that was fundamental to the calendar’s remembrances; and Nirai, which consisted of the technicians and researchers.

‘High’ and ‘low’ were old designations, more a matter of tradition than actual power, which fluctuated according to resources, infighting, and the interplay between the current hexarchs. The Nirai were irregular in that their true hexarch, Kujen, was immortal. Or, more accurately, undead, a revenant who anchored himself to a living marionette to wield continued influence.

The Nirai’s public face was False Hexarch Faian. Kujen had selected her for a combination of administrative ability and a certain narrow genius in calendrical mechanics. Mikodez had always suspected that Kujen had known from the outset that Faian would develop a mind of her own.

Mikodez had also suspected that Kujen figured it out very quickly when Faian and the Rahal hexarch conspired to develop an alternate immortality device, one less inimical to its users’ sanity. Kujen called his the black cradle, and seemed perfectly happy with it, but Kujen was also psychotic. Most people who knew how the black cradle functioned considered it a glorified torture device.

Kujen had stood at an impasse with the other hexarchs for centuries. He would have disposed of the rest of them long ago if not for the fact that they did the tedious work of government so that he could focus on the research that was his passion. The hexarchs, especially Kel Tsoro, put up with this arrangement because Kujen offered ever-better mothdrives to convey people between the stars and ever deadlier weapons for Kel warmoths.

Now Kujen was gone, with no indication of his destination. This from a man who preferred to hole up with his projects for years at a time, allowing the false hexarch to attend official functions in his stead. Faian was apparently driving herself to distraction trying to determine what had become of Kujen and whether she should seize the opportunity to oust the man who had put her in power. Mikodez wished her luck. If he could find out as much, he would be surprised if Kujen didn’t know and have countermeasures in place. It was unlikely that Kujen had survived nine centuries of parasitism without picking up some basic survival skills.

Jienji had gotten bored of the desk and was busy shedding orange hairs on Mikodez’s carpet. Oh well, the carpet was largely self-cleaning, and the servitors would take care of anything the carpet didn’t eat. In point of fact, one had already swooped in and was methodically following the cat’s trail.

“You were right to bring this to me,” Mikodez said to Zehun, “although I’m not sure what we can do beyond monitoring the situation. The part that bothers me the most is the timing. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“When is anything a coincidence?” Zehun said. “I can only assume that Kujen insisted on the new, especially excessive retrieval protocols for General Jedao and his anchor to make us think that he was especially invested in sticking around to look at the test results.”

“He must have taken exception to the fact that Iruja and Faian are almost ready to seize immortality for themselves,” Mikodez said. For all the hexarchs. He planned on opting out—as much as he enjoyed chatting with Kujen about everything from Kel-shopping to budget management, he wasn’t convinced that immortality improved anyone’s psyche—but they didn’t need to know that.

“Even if he hasn’t hacked your contingency files,” Zehun said, “he has to have guessed that you’re the one responsible for offing him on the others’ behalf.”

“Well, yes,” Mikodez said. “It makes our conversations all the more entertaining. Still, he hates leaving his home station, and I don’t like the thought that he’s out of sight. Iruja will expect me to drag him back, if only to make sure that he won’t drop some crazy new superweapon before she can have her shot at immortality.” Never mind that Faian claimed that she could prevent aging, but a well-placed bullet would still kill you dead. Mikodez had long ago stopped expecting Iruja to be rational on the topic.

He frowned at the report. “Schedule a meeting with the relevant analysts in half an hour. That damn thing with the financial irregularities will have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

“I was hoping you’d seen this coming.”

“Since when do I anticipate things that you don’t?”

Zehun gave him that don’t play innocent cadet look he remembered so vividly from academy.

Mikodez grimaced. “I will be disappointed if you haven’t adequately pillaged my worst-case scenario files on the matter. The question is, will Faian break the news to the other hexarchs first, or should I preempt her? I almost wish it were a bomb. Kujen might be a splendid weapons designer, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have the requisite experience launching surprise attacks without getting caught.”

“No, you have him confused with the other, much less dangerous sociopath in the hexarchate’s arsenal,” Zehun said, with the merest trace of sarcasm.

“Please,” Mikodez said. “Which do you think is more dangerous, the mathematician our entire way of life is chained to, or a mere general with a gift for self-destruction?”

“As if ‘dangerous’ is something you can measure on a single axis,” Zehun returned, then leaned down. The cat, with perfect foresight, sprang for a table, missed, and landed ungracefully on the nearby chair. Zehun was forced to hunt Jienji around the office until they cornered her by a shelf. (It was the same shelf every time. Jienji was stupid even for a cat. Mikodez had asked Zehun if this was a comment on the intelligence of Shuos assassins—a matter of particular interest, considering how they had met—and Zehun had smiled unhelpfully.)

“At least Jedao’s out of the way,” Mikodez said. “If Kujen has left the picture too, maybe I have a chance of convincing Kel Command to stop fielding Jedao. And then you’ll be free to name that adorable black kitten after him.”

“Not on your life,” Zehun said. “Superstition is irrational, but a little irrationality is perfectly justified where that man is concerned.”

Mikodez would have plenty of opportunity to reflect on those words in the days to come.