Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

Brezan squared his shoulders, wondered if he should adjust his uniform, then decided that medium formal was good enough. He stepped in.

The first thing Brezan noticed about the office was the shelves. It wasn’t so much that they were finely made, although he couldn’t help wondering if that was genuine cloudwood, all shimmering gray with subtle pearly swirls, or one of the better facsimiles. The shelves were crammed with books. Not just books, either. They looked hand-bound, and the smells of aged paper and glue almost overwhelmed him.

Shuos Sfenni sat at a much less expensive-looking desk overshadowed by all those shelves. He had an incongruously round, soft face atop a boxer’s blockish frame. For all Brezan knew, he whiled away his time between alphabetizing tomes and dealing with inconvenient Kel by pummeling unlucky bears. At least, unlike the tasseled woman, Sfenni wore a proper Shuos uniform.

“Have a seat,” Sfenni said, indicating the chair on the other side of the desk. “So. Colonel Brezan, is it?”

“Yes,” Brezan said, and waited.

“I’m substituting for Shuos Oyan, who would ordinarily be processing you,” Sfenni said, “so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little slow. We intercepted your, ah, request to talk to the hexarch’s personal assistant.”

“Yes,” Brezan said, more cautiously this time. Granted, he hadn’t expected it to be easy to get to a secured terminal, but he didn’t like where this was going.

Sfenni not-smiled at him. “Let me summarize what we fished out of that pile of reports.”

The high language didn’t inflect for number, but ‘pile’ was pretty unambiguous. Just how many hand-offs was Brezan dealing with? His stomach clenched.

Sfenni’s summation was, thankfully, accurate as far as it went. After he had finished, he scrutinized Brezan and sighed. “Enough games, Colonel. Tell me why you’re really here.”

What does he mean, ‘really’—”I don’t know how to verify my identity or rank if you haven’t been able to get the necessary information from the Kel,” Brezan said, “but I assure you that my need to contact my superiors is urgent and then I’ll be out of your hair. I apologize for involving the Shuos. Circumstances made that seem like the best way forward.” More like he had been muzzy from sleeper-sickness, but no need to spell that out. He didn’t know how much more was safe to say, no way of telling what Sfenni’s security clearance was. For that matter, even if Sfenni let him access a terminal, there was no guarantee it would be secured. Still, one problem at a time.

Sfenni reached into a drawer. Brezan tensed, but all Sfenni did was retrieve a pill dispenser and dry-swallow one of the bright green capsules. “All right, look,” Sfenni said after a painful-sounding coughing fit. “Can we level with each other, Colonel? You’re in holding on Minner Station”—Where? Brezan wondered—“and this is the most boring place in the march, for all that it’s become very exciting lately. The thing is, some of us appreciate boredom.”

Brezan knew where this was heading.

“So here’s the thing, Colonel. I understand that you hit the ceiling of your career”—Brezan bristled, but Sfenni didn’t pause—“and you’d like to be seconded to the Shuos or retire to some nice planetary city and dabble in energy market intelligence or whatever the fuck. But Shuos Zehun is known for being unforgiving when people waste their time. Things around here could get very uncomfortable, and some of us like our comforts.”

If Sfenni said ‘some of us’ with that particular greasy inflection again, Brezan was going to throttle him. “I don’t care about your philosophy of life,” he said, and Sfenni’s eyes became moistly reproachful. “Would you get to the fucking point already?”

“Well,” Sfenni said, “inconveniences are inconveniences, you know.”

Then, to Brezan’s massive irritation (that note in his profile about anger management was never going away at this rate, but this one time surely he was justified?), Sfenni got up and trundled over to a decorous cloudwood-or-next-best-thing cabinet. “What’s your poison?” he said.

Oh, for—Brezan bit down on what he’d been about to say. Sure, he shouldn’t be randomly getting drunk, but if it got this loser to get him to that fucking terminal, why not. It couldn’t make the inside of his mouth taste any worse than it did anyway. “Peach brandy,” he said. He despised peach brandy, but it was the most expensive drink he could see from where he was sitting.

Sfenni pulled out a decanter, then two snifters. “Sorry, my collection of brandies is atrocious,” he said, as if Brezan cared, “but my supply has dried up of late.” With fussy courtesy, he poured for them both.

Brezan took the tiniest sip that could still be construed as polite and forced himself to smile. Overpriced brandy or not, he couldn’t tell, and anyway it didn’t matter. He needed this despicable man. Sfenni would come to the point in his own time.

“I’m not an unpatriotic citizen,” Sfenni said. It had been so long since Brezan had heard ‘unpatriotic’ without an expletive attached to it (or ‘patriotic,’ for that matter) that he almost burst into laughter, and he only just caught himself in time. “But the administration of Minner facilities requires more funding than we’re usually able to wheedle out of regional headquarters.” He let the statement hang there.

‘Administration of Minner facilities,’ his ass. More like every ill-gotten mark that Sfenni received in bribes went into cultivating that garden of books. Brezan didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or lunge across the desk. Kel Command wouldn’t care that much about a transgression like bribery, under the circumstances, especially if he reported it before they uncovered it independently. And especially if he had a good excuse, which he did. Brezan cared fuck-all about Shuos opinions on the matter. But Brezan did very much care about having to compromise his principles like this, even when the need was so great.

Get over yourself, Brezan told himself. No one cares about your petty irrelevant scruples.

But sometimes—sometimes he wished someone did.

In the meantime, his higher duty had not changed.

“Since we’re being so delightfully candid,” Brezan said, “I have funds, yes.” Unlike General Khiruev, he didn’t go on leave and shop for staggeringly overpriced antique trinkets. Brezan’s vices were simpler and less expensive: alcohol (just not peach brandy), the obligatory spot of dueling, and the occasional cooking class, because sometimes the best way to understand people was through their food. All this meant that he was reasonably well-off.

“Then an accommodation is possible—?” Sfenni said.

“I know how to make a transfer,” Brezan said. “I don’t know how to keep the transaction from being traced.” Not completely true. He’d learned odd tricks from the people he talked to. He just thought those tricks wouldn’t fool a full-on audit.

“I can instruct you,” Sfenni said. “But an honest man like myself—”

At the end of this whole unreal interlude, Brezan was either going to emerge as the hexarchate’s best actor, or he was going to spontaneously self-combust.

“—needs to take precautions.” Sfenni’s eyes crinkled suddenly. “And in case you’re thinking that an honest Kel would rather take precautions of his own, I assure you that this will go more smoothly if we come to our agreement peaceably.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined otherwise,” Brezan said.

Sfenni passed a tablet to him. He named a sum.

Brezan didn’t bother to hide his contempt. “Fine.”

As promised, Sfenni’s instructions were easy to follow. Brezan made note of the fancy accounting tricks. They weren’t far off what he’d already known.

“Excellent,” Sfenni said. “We’ll get you settled while that goes through. For our mutual protection, you understand. Do you want me to have more brandy sent up to you while you wait?”

Yoon Ha Lee's books