The other five hexarchs’ faces appeared in the subdisplays with their emblems below them, as if he hadn’t learned those as a toddler. Rahal with its scrywolf above Nirai’s voidmoth, Andan’s kniferose above Vidona’s stingray, Shuos’s ninefox with its staring tails above Kel’s ashhawk.
Rahal Iruja spoke first, her right by tradition. She was a dark woman with coiled gray hair cropped short, and would have been beautiful if not for the severity of her eyes, the absolute lack of humor. He liked that about her. “We all know what this is about,” she said. “General Shuos Jedao survived an assassination attempt that Andan, Vidona, and I were assured he couldn’t escape.”
“I can’t believe you let him run off with a swarm,” Vidona Psa, a large, pale man with incongruous hunched shoulders, said to Kel Tsoro. Psa wasn’t bothering to conceal his scorn. “Jedao walked right in and your general let him pull rank.”
Tsoro’s scarred face was impassive. The scars were an affectation, but no more so than the face: Tsoro spoke for the entire hivemind that formed Kel Command. “We don’t make a practice of stripping the dead of rank, Vidona,” she said. “He served after his own fashion. We had no reason to believe that he could survive the carrion bomb.”
Psa harrumphed. “Well, he clearly did.”
“Jedao has been discharged, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether any of the Kel in that swarm will be allowed to receive the bulletin we’ve been transmitting. We tend to doubt it.”
“What I don’t understand is how he got off the Unspoken Law,” Nirai Faian said. She had been promoted from false hexarch to actual hexarch in an emergency meeting after convincing everyone that Nirai Kujen had, in fact, vanished, but she had trouble getting the others to give her the respect due her rank. She was a quiet woman with wavy shoulder-length hair framing a face like fine ivory, usually mild. There was no mildness in it now. “It’s unfortunate that he convinced Cheris to let him possess her. We should have had the cindermoth destroyed with invariant explosives as well to get rid of her.”
“Yes,” Andan Shandal Yeng said sourly. She was fidgeting with her sapphire rings, all of which were the exact sultry blue of her satin dress with its embroidered seed pearls and smoke-colored diamonds. “Except we only have so many cindermoths, and the Kel keep complaining they can’t afford to build another six.” Not least because of certain Andan monopolies; Tsoro’s face remained impassive. “I’m honestly surprised that Kujen was lying about wanting to retrieve that anchor for dissection or mathematical foreplay or whatever it is that he does.”
Faian wasn’t interested in discussing Kujen’s extracurricular activities. “All the hoppers and transports on the Unspoken Law were accounted for, so how—?”
“I checked the analysis,” Mikodez said. “Wasn’t there that suggestion that one might have gone astray? Looked like it was hard to piece everything together, given all the damage.”
“That’s a dissent among my analysts,” Faian said. “And even so, either Cheris or Jedao would have had to repair the hopper and fly it all the way to the Swanknot swarm, or rendezvous with a conspirator. Neither is known for being an engineer. Too much doesn’t add up.”
“We can figure that out later,” Shandal Yeng said. “We have to deal with the reality that we have a vengeful madman loose with a Kel swarm at his disposal.”
“Jedao won’t have taken the assassination attempt personally,” Mikodez said. “Appeals to his extravagant death wish and all that. He’ll be pissed that we blew up his soldiers. Delicious, really.”
About 8,000 soldiers, in point of fact. Nirai Kujen had wanted to be sure of catching Jedao with one of the few weapons that could kill him, and had insisted on blowing up the swarm, too, for good measure. Mikodez hadn’t pushed back too hard because by then he had acknowledged that Jedao’s victory at the Fortress of Scattered Needles had dangerous repercussions. You had to admire Jedao for coming out ahead. Upgrading to a bigger swarm, even.
Psa scowled. Like many drawn to the Vidona, he was obsessed with rules and as flexible as a pane of glass. Most people in the hexarchate feared the Vidona, who served as a police force against low-level heresy, but Mikodez found it boringly easy to finesse his way around Psa. “I’m sorry, Mikodez,” Psa said, “but you do remember Hellspin Fortress?”
Mikodez suppressed a sigh. At least Kujen, who did remember, wasn’t around to make snide remarks. Actually, Mikodez wouldn’t have minded the snide remarks. It was just bad form to show it.
“Let’s not retread ancient history,” Shandal Yeng said. “We still have to decide what to do about Jedao and his submissive army of Kel.” She must be rattled. No matter how much she disliked Tsoro, she was generally better at tact than this. Unless—hmm. Maybe that wasn’t Shandal Yeng after all. Mikodez paid closer attention to her face.
“We have to concede that he put a good scare into the main Hafn force,” Tsoro said dryly.
“If your agent hadn’t intervened, Mikodez,” Iruja said, “we’d have one less threat operating in hexarchate space.”
“I stand by Mazeret’s decision,” Mikodez said. “She had her choice of targets and she knows as well as everyone how dangerous Jedao is. For love of fox and hound, he had threshold winnowers in orbit around the Fortress with who knows what modifications. We’re lucky we didn’t have a replay of Hellspin.”
“We need to discuss why you felt the need to plant a spy in our fortress,” Tsoro said, her tone wintry. “As the commandant. What were you trying to prove, Shuos?”
Mikodez gave her an equally chilly smile. “Yes, about that,” he said. “Let’s talk extradition.”
“Need I remind you that we’re facing a madman who has the unsavory habit of winning all his battles?” Shandal Yeng said. “This is hardly the time—”
“This is exactly the time,” Mikodez said. “I’m not in the habit of letting loyal agents rot in detention. Talk to me, Tsoro.”
“We can deal with this later,” Tsoro said.
“We’re hashing this out now. You’re going to have a fun time chasing Jedao and the Hafn when your listening posts start going deaf.”
“Shuos—”
“Look, I get that individual Kel are as expendable as tinder and you can use formation instinct to yank them in whatever direction your strategy requires, but I don’t have that option. If I operated that way, no one would want to work for me anymore. Mazeret belongs to me, Tsoro. Your quarrel’s with me, not the agent. Give.”
Iruja looked faintly irritated by the exchange. “Is it worth throwing a tantrum over one agent, Mikodez? Unless you’re planning on mass-assassinating the Hafn all by yourself.”
“Oh, I don’t intend to try anything of the sort,” Mikodez said respectfully. “But I can take down a scary number of Kel listening posts in an amount of time you’re happier not knowing, and the agent is important to me.”
“Tsoro,” Iruja said after a considering moment, “I realize that, like everyone here at some point, you’re fantasizing about running Mikodez through with a bamboo pole for his latest caprice. But let him have the agent as a favor to me. The Rahal will reckon with him later.”
“As you desire, Rahal,” Tsoro said, inclining her head.
Mikodez decided it would be better not to smirk at Tsoro. Why couldn’t one of the Kel with a sense of humor be hexarch? “Tsoro’s earlier remark brings up an interesting possibility,” he said. “If Jedao’s so hell-bent on exchanging bullets with the Hafn, why not let him wear himself out that way?”
“What an intriguing proposal from someone who recently agreed to have the man offed,” Psa said.
“I’m adaptable?” Mikodez suggested.
“We could get lucky,” Shandal Yeng said. “Maybe the Hafn will kill him for us.”
Tsoro coughed. When Shandal Yeng raised her eyebrows, Tsoro said, “We’d be left trying to defeat the general who defeated Jedao. This is unlikely to be a strategic improvement.”