Then Jedao sighed and stepped backwards, and sank back down into the chair. “There are things I will do and things I will not do,” he said simply. “But I don’t blame you for believing the worst.” He didn’t look all that convinced himself.
Khiruev knew better than to pretend that she had been thinking about something else. “It doesn’t matter one way or another.”
“But it does,” Jedao said, hot and cold and sharp at once. “This is exactly what matters. The difference between what should and should not be done. This is what the fight’s about.”
“Someday I will understand you, sir,” Khiruev said, meaning it.
“I hope so,” Jedao said. This time the smile lasted longer.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EVERY MORNING, MIKODEZ had a Kel infantry ration bar for breakfast. According to the Kel, consuming them voluntarily suggested interesting things about your mental health. Mikodez ate them in the hopes that they would immunize him to any poisons, and because they seemed to make his medications more effective. He knew poisons didn’t work that way, and that the latter effect was illusory, but it was a nice thought. Besides, he had to do something to atone for all the candy he put in his system.
He’d opted to get to the conference room forty-eight minutes early and eat there, on the grounds that he was getting bored of the decor in his offices. All his offices. There was more than one of them, for reasons that were not entirely clear. The architects who had designed the Citadel had included Shuos, with Shuos habits of thought. His favorite hadn’t originally been an office, but had been converted to one as a test of variable layout, which Mikodez considered very brave of that long-vanished heptarch. (Said heptarch had died shortly after, not because of variable layout, or the Citadel’s security. She’d attended a meeting on some distant planet and caught what might or might not have been a bioengineered disease.)
“You have the stupidest eating habits of anyone in the entire Citadel,” Istradez said. “If anyone else did that, they’d get dinged on all the medical evaluations.” He had already finished his own breakfast, consisting of seaweed soup, rice, a modest scallion pancake, and Kel pickles.
“So how’s your latest girlfriend?” Mikodez was frowning at his tablet, which he had set at a comfortable angle in its holder so he wouldn’t get a crick in his neck staring down at it. “I hope you’re not bored with her already. I can only hand out security clearances so fast.”
“Just how much detail did you want me to go into?”
“Kind of not.”
Istradez smirked at him. “You want me to clear out so you can have your meeting?”
Mikodez’s senior staff knew about his doubles, including Istradez, and even the general populace had some idea that he used them from time to time. Not all of Mikodez’s advisers approved of him using a non-Shuos for the role, but he’d pointed out that no one else knew him as well as the younger sibling he’d grown up with. Istradez was only one year younger than he was. Their parents joked that they’d been meant to be twins, except they had realized that two of them at once would have been overkill.
“No, come take my seat,” Mikodez said. They’d done this before and he was certain that Intelligence and Accounting’s division heads could tell them apart, but it was good to keep them guessing. “Run the meeting. I’ll take notes. Also, I have some other things to keep my eyes on, so I won’t be able to give my full concentration to the meeting.”
“Why show up at all?” Istradez wondered.
“Because if we’re both here they’ll figure there’s a higher chance one of us is real.” Mikodez had two other doubles, one of whom was still in physical therapy after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt during his last assignment. The man had so far refused to retire, but Mikodez thought it was only a matter of time. The other one was attending a conference.
“You could hole up in your bedroom and sip plum wine before taking a—” Istradez’s eyes narrowed. “When’s the last time you slept, Mikodez? I bet you missed chatting with our nephew, too. If I’d known, I’d have gone to see Niath myself so he doesn’t get lonely.”
Mikodez had to ask the augment how long it had been. “Two days and three hours and change.”
Istradez moaned and put his head in his hands. “I am the worst little sibling ever. Go to bed.”
“I can sleep after the meeting.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind, Miki? You know that Shenner”—that was the head of Intelligence—“always makes the meetings run over by an hour. If not more.”
The problem with Shuos heads of Intelligence was that they, with some cause, conceived of themselves as occupying the high rung on the ladder. Certain Shuos heads of Intelligence took this as license to go into threat analyses in exhaustive detail even when theoretically confined to twenty minutes.
“Yes,” Mikodez said, looking wistfully at the cookies that he shouldn’t eat because he should leave them for Istradez so he could get into the role. “My hints to Shenner get less and less subtle, but for someone who’s ordinarily so astute at picking up on cues, she’s proved remarkably oblivious.”
“Oblivious my ass. Shenner likes the sound of her own voice. It’s going to take a direct reprimand to get her to shape up. You should let me give it if you’re squeamish. And it’s not like you to be squeamish.”
“Well, then her voice will make an excellent lullaby. No one will be surprised to see you sleeping in the corner after last night’s excesses.”
“They weren’t that excessive.”
“Besides,” Mikodez said, “Shenner has a very touchy ego. Which makes it difficult to suggest that she get some more therapy for it. The problem is, she’s obsessive, paranoid, and loyal, all of which make her excellent at her job—and all of which mean that I have to handle her very delicately. Best to leave things as they are.”
“If you say so,” Istradez said, sounding unconvinced. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the corner seat. Mikodez took it, and Istradez lowered himself into the customary hexarch’s seat. “Dare I ask what you’re working on, anyway?”
“Best if you don’t know.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
Istradez looked pensive. “Because someone has to.” Then, with an effort, he straightened and eyed the cookies. “Couldn’t you do something to reduce the size of these damn platters? It’s getting harder and harder to choke all this stuff down without getting fat.”
“Your metabolism’s even faster than mine is,” Mikodez said unsympathetically, “it’s just that you put less junk in your system.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Oh, look, it’s almost time for the meeting,” Mikodez said, just to annoy Istradez, although they had a good fourteen minutes left and no one ever arrived more than six minutes early.
“If you don’t spend part of Shenner’s inevitable rant about the inadequacy of our data-processing throughput catching up on sleep,” Istradez said, “I shall ruin your reputation by flirting with Accounting.” Accounting was run by a married individual who got a body mod every three months like clockwork, according to whatever was in fashion with the Andan. Some of the fashions were extremely distracting, like the thankfully brief period when the high diplomats had gone around sporting neck-frills. Otherwise, Accounting was staid and conservative, and entirely modest about what went on in the bedroom. “I bet I could get them to stray.”