Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

“No one ever says ‘nothing’ and means it.” Mikodez set down the comb before Istradez grabbed it and stuck it in his eye. Istradez had always had a bit of a temper. “Are you ever going to debrief me on that damn meeting?”

Istradez growled low in his throat, then leaned forward and kissed him, nipping his lower lip. “Leaned” wasn’t entirely the word for it. Istradez was pressing his full body into Mikodez’s. We’re not twins, Mikodez thought ironically, clothes aside. Istradez’s cock was hard where his was only half-roused, for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.

“Brother-sweet,” Mikodez said, unemotional, “you know you only have ever to ask.”

“That’s what I tried to tell him,” Spirel remarked with a distinct lack of sympathy, over the splashing of water. She had gone to the bathroom to wash the charcoal dust from her fingers, an endeavor that never went well. She often wore gloves to hide the dust beneath her fingernails.

Istradez raised a hand to slap his brother. Mikodez caught it and brought it to his mouth, kissed the knuckles above the cheap rings. A sob choked its way out of Istradez’s throat. “It’s easy for you,” he said. “Good, bad, right, wrong, you don’t care. It’s only ever about efficiency for you.”

“I do my job,” Mikodez said, “because after all the trouble I went to get it, it would be irresponsible not to.” He continued kissing as he bore Istradez toward the couch and pushed him down. Istradez was resisting very little.

Mikodez knelt before the couch and laid his hand on the inside of Istradez’s thigh. Yes: that got a reaction. “I will always do my job. I am the will of the Shuos. But don’t ever, ever doubt that I love you.”

Spirel came out of the bathroom then, and he nodded at her. She smiled at him, a little sadly, before taking his hand and helping him up so he could drape himself over Istradez. For her part, she sat on the floor, as curled and comfortable as a cat, and kissed her way up the side of Istradez’s neck. With one hand she reached up to massage Mikodez’s back, unnecessary but welcome. He wondered if she had gotten all the charcoal out. Istradez’s eyes were wide and glazed, and he said something in a half-gasp, half-moan.

“Shh,” Mikodez said. “Shh.” And he set himself to the task of pleasing Istradez, making a note in the back of his head to check Istradez’s most recent evaluations.





CHAPTER TWELVE





BREZAN HAD NO reason to expect anything to change when he heard footsteps beyond the door to the cell’s antechamber. Hunger was a familiar sharp ache, and his mouth was always dry. The past weeks, which he had lost count of after his captors disabled his augment, had been predictable. Too bad there was singularly little pleasure, under the circumstances, to be had from telling himself ‘I told you so.’

All he remembered about his transfer from the Shuos to the Kel was a blur of untalkative people in the faction’s garish red-and-gold uniforms. What had become of the two irritating medics he would never find out, which was just as well. As for Sfenni and his tasseled minion, he imagined that they were doing just fine.

The Kel had lost no time in verifying his identity. Then they put him in this cell. After two interminable days, during which he resisted the urge to shout at the walls, a colonel showed up. “Kel Brezan,” she had said, “you are excused from standing, given your condition. Do you understand me?”

He would have risen to salute her anyway. She shook her head. He settled for the least half-assed sitting salute he could manage.

“Kel Brezan,” she said, “until the circumstances that led to the dismissal of yourself and the Swanknot swarm’s seconded personnel are understood, it is necessary for your rank to be suspended.”

Standard procedure. He had divined as much from the mode of address. The Kel interrogators would speak to him next. Formation instinct would get them the best results if his rank didn’t get in the way. “Understood, sir,” he rasped.

“Tell me something, soldier. Why seek rescue from the Shuos?”

He had known this was going to be a sticking point. This wouldn’t win him any friends, but he had accepted that when he decided on his course of action. He summarized his line of reasoning.

“In other words,” the colonel said, “General Jedao offloaded personnel he couldn’t control with formation instinct, and you were one of them.”

“Yes, sir,” Brezan said. The words cut his throat like glass. “I was the only Kel eyewitness to the takeover to get out.” He had heard nothing of the Doctrine officer. It was possible that they had died of medical complications.

The colonel’s eyes were frosty. “You have just become someone else’s problem, soldier. Enjoy the rest you get now. You won’t be getting much more of it.”

“Sir,” Brezan said dully. He knew what the Kel did to crashhawks. At best they would revoke his commission and outprocess him. At worst they would execute him. But he had seen no other way to fulfill his duty.

Brezan spent a long time alone after that, observing remembrances with meditations whenever the dead-sounding voice over the announcement system reminded him to. Presumably they were sending for Rahal or Vidona, since Kel interrogators hated dealing with crashhawks, as if they were contagious. A servitor brought him food at intervals, never more than a little tepid rice and water. He was starting to wish he’d taken more advantage of Shuos Sfenni’s hospitality while he’d had the chance. Brezan made a game of trying to tell the servitors apart. Either it was a different servitor each time, or they modified themselves for the hell of it.

In spite of himself, Brezan wished for a Vidona. He didn’t like the Vidona any more than any sensible person did, but he had endured the straightforward application of pain before. Heretic terrorists had captured a transport when he was a captain. They hadn’t held the captives long before the Kel freed them, but to this day Brezan remembered the hot filaments of pain in his feet and face, the recuperation afterward. They’d had to regrow one of his eyes. The Vidona could only torture you. The Rahal could scry your signifier, including signifier reactions to specific questions. Not as direct as lie detection, or anywhere near mindreading (although there were rumors), but a skilled practitioner could trick the truth out of you.

When the hex of Rahal inquisitors arrived thirteen days after he was taken into custody, he knew they were taking his warning seriously. He’d started to wonder. He was pacing at the time, if you could call it that when he was moving agonizingly slowly both due to his lingering sleeper-recovery and the spider restraints, even on a relaxed setting. It took him a moment to register the hex’s presence. The plain robes, gray with bronze hems, were impossible to mistake, the wolf equivalent of full formal. The Rahal did their uniforms backwards, wearing more ornate clothing on more casual occasions.

The head inquisitor was a woman with curly hair and an imperturbable expression. All six wolves’ eyes sheened bronze, indicating that they had activated scrying. They murmured a greeting in an archaic form of the high language.

Brezan fought down the lump of fear that threatened to choke him and gave them a formal bow as best as the restraints permitted, which wasn’t very. The Rahal had a reputation for being fussy about protocol, but they also prided themselves on rationality. They wouldn’t blame him for something that wasn’t under his control.

The head inquisitor acknowledged the bow with a nod, which meant she had decided not to take offense. “Kel,” she said, “I am Inquisitor Rahal Hwan. We are here to determine the truth of your claims.” She spoke a very pure form of the high language.

“I’ll do my best not to get in your way, Inquisitor,” Brezan said, as if he could withstand a full hex.

“You may as well be seated,” Hwan said. “This will take a while.”

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