Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

“If there’s no way of retrieving the swarm,” Iruja said, “we may be stuck with that.”

“This is the curious part,” Faian said. “If General Khiruev’s stray staff officer is to be believed, the Kel on the command moth authenticated off the wrong thing, to the extent authentication’s even possible with a revenant. All of Jedao’s anchors inherited his movement patterns and, eventually, his accent, thanks to bleed-through. Of course, the Kel are used to reading each other that way.” As part of formation instinct, a certain baseline body language was imprinted on cadets. “Neither of those proves anything, however. A sufficiently good actor or infiltrator could fake them. It’s the apparent inheritance of Jedao’s skills, too, that’s more worrisome.”

“Nobody’s ever scrounged up any evidence that Captain Cheris had the least scrap of acting ability,” Tsoro said. “We made some inquiries with former instructors and classmates. She couldn’t even shed her low language accent until she was a second-year cadet.”

“I wish I knew why anyone would capitulate to Jedao to the point of giving up her own existence,” Faian said.

Tsoro shrugged. “No one else could hear what he said to her, so we’ll never know for sure. The fact that she responded to being nudged toward Jedao in the first place is suggestive, but for all that, she was determined to be a good Kel. She joined up despite family resistance.”

“No ties there, then,” Psa said, thoughtful.

“Not entirely true,” Tsoro said. “She wrote to her parents regularly, and exchanged the occasional letter with some of her old classmates.”

“Well, then,” Psa said. “We could apply pressure from that direction. We already have Cheris’s parents under surveillance, as a precautionary measure. We could detain them and let Jedao know, see if we get a reaction.”

“That isn’t a good idea,” Faian said, her brow creasing. “If any part of Cheris is alive in there, she’s not remotely psychologically stable.”

“Faian,” Iruja said, “that may give us the opening we need.”

“It may drive her even crazier.”

Tsoro was thinking about something else. “If we’re applying pressure anyway,” she said, “we might as well turn it up all the way. Cheris used to write to her parents in Mwen-dal, which is only spoken by her mother’s people, the Mwennin. There are scattered communities of them on the second-largest continent of Bonepyre, and there are so few of them that they’re extinct by any reasonable standard. We could round them up and threaten to wipe them out if the swarm isn’t restored to Kel control. Vidona, you’ll find a use for them sooner or later, won’t you? It’s too bad they’re so obscure that a massacre of them would be no use as a calendrical attack. In any case, if Cheris is indeed alive in there, it might give her the incentive she needs to resist Jedao’s influence.”

“I don’t see that anything’s lost by trying it,” Shandal Yeng said. “I for one would feel better if we didn’t have a rogue swarm rampaging through the hexarchate.” How many times had she said that already? Or, more accurately, had her protocol program said that to cover for the side conversation she was having, and which Mikodez was recording for review after the meeting now that he’d picked it up? “If this works, then fine.”

Iruja turned a hand palm-up. “I have no objections either.”

“I’ll make it a priority,” Psa said.

Nirai Faian looked intensely frustrated, but said nothing. She knew when she’d lost, and she was the least powerful hexarch.

“No,” Mikodez said. “That’s as in absolutely not, we’re not doing this.”

Shandal Yeng pulled off one of her rings and slammed it down out of sight. “I wasn’t expecting you to be the one with the sudden attack of humanitarianism.”

“This is me, remember?” Mikodez said. “I could care less about that. I don’t object to atrocities because of ethics, which we’ve never taught at Shuos Academy anyway.” She rolled her eyes at the old joke. “I object to atrocities because they’re terrible policy. It may be the case that no one cares about the Mwennin or whatever they call themselves, but if we had so tight a hold over the populace as we like to advertise, we wouldn’t perennially be dealing with heretic brushfires. Make threats against Cheris’s own parents, fine. But it’s unwise to be indiscriminate about these things. We’ll just be creating a new group of heretics, however small.”

Iruja steepled her hands and sighed. For a moment Mikodez was reminded of her age: 126 years, old enough to feel every clock’s ticking heart. “Are you going to throw a fit over this, too?”

As if that would work. Iruja had intervened earlier because she wanted to get the meeting moving and the agent had already been exposed. (Mikodez bet that there would be a lot of extra personnel screening in the next months, though.) On this issue, however, only Faian agreed with Mikodez, and she wasn’t a credible ally. “It’s not worth it to me,” he said.

She laughed without humor. “Good to know. Not that I’m interested in putting this to some kind of vote, but this endeavor will go better if we coordinate.”

“I do appreciate that, Iruja.”

“Well.” Iruja exhaled slowly. “We’re going to send Jedao an ultimatum. The important thing is recovering the swarm. The precedent can’t be allowed to stand. What do you suppose the odds are that General Khiruev is still alive?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tsoro said. “Khiruev’s already been compromised even if she survived. We don’t want her in charge of that swarm after Jedao’s had a chance to mess with her mind.”

“I assume you have an alternate.”

“We’ve recalled General Kel Inesser from the High Glass border. If Jedao can be persuaded to turn himself in, she’s more than capable of handling the Hafn.”

Inesser, the Kel’s senior general, and one of their most respected. Mikodez snorted. “Isn’t that the woman you’ve been holding at arm’s length for the last two decades?” He’d met her a few times at official functions: a woman vainglorious about her hair, with a disarming fondness for talking about her cross-stitch projects. It hadn’t escaped him how adroit she was at manipulating conversations while pretending to be a typical blunt Kel. “I peeked at some of the evaluations. I’m surprised you wouldn’t rather assimilate her already.”

Tsoro gave him a look. “Inesser may be one of the best strategists we’ve seen in two hundred years, and she’s an excellent logistician, but we’d prefer that she not end as another Jedao.” She didn’t elaborate on the evaluation, which she’d discussed with Mikodez, reluctantly, in the past. The textbook Kel opinion of Jedao was that Jedao’s battlefield successes added up to him never thinking far into the future, since he always assumed he could fight his way out of whatever fix he landed in, instead of asking whether the battle was worth fighting in the first place. Mikodez had preferred the much more succinct words of a Kel instructor who had spoken off the record: “Brilliant tactician, shit strategist.” Presumably Kel Command was supposed to think about the big picture for him.

“I realize that you’re saddled with almost four centuries of condensed prejudices,” Mikodez said, “but don’t you think it’s time to stop letting Jedao dictate everything you do? You’ll turn Inesser into an entirely different kind of enemy at this rate.”

“Shuos,” Tsoro said, “when you feel the need to pull stunts like assassinating your own cadets, we don’t send you memos telling you how to run your faction.”

Mikodez fiddled with one of the leaves of his green onion. “Fine,” he said, “but never say I didn’t give you good advice.”

“If you two are quite finished,” Iruja said without raising her voice. “Mikodez, I’ll need you to monitor the situation. Don’t intervene as long as Jedao makes no play against us, and especially leave him alone if he’s fighting the Hafn.”

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