Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

In her head she saw Mother Ekesra laying her hands on Kthero’s shoulders, the crinkling corpse-paper, the folded swans. Swanknot.

“I can what, General?” Jedao said coolly. “Let’s find out where Bonepyre is.” He tapped out the query. A map of the hexarchate swirled into focus. The swarm’s location was highlighted in gold. Bonepyre’s location was highlighted in blue. “I trust you studied logistics at some point? Guess what, Bonepyre’s in the Ausser March, on the other fucking side of the hexarchate. That’s one hell of a detour, and we don’t know, because the Kel rather reasonably aren’t talking to me about their operations, if a decent swarm is available nearby to hold the Severed March in our absence. Are you saying that I should give the invaders a free hand here on the behalf of 60,000 people I have no agents in place to help?”

“I was hoping you might devise some plan,” Khiruev snapped. “One of my mothers was a Vidona. Do you know how they carry out purges? I do. She’d come home and talk about it because it was just a job to her. Every little thing was compartmentalized into subtasks, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Rescind the target population’s jobs. Issue them special identification. Refuel the processing facilities. Make sure there were enough bullets or knives or poison canisters or whatever the flavor of the month was. Send out extra patrols to deal with any that try to go terrorist or rouse the rest of the population. If you focused on the little jigsaw pieces, you never had to notice that the whole puzzle added up to people dying.”

“I’m aware of your family history, General,” Jedao said. “I appreciate that your father’s death must have affected you greatly. But you’ve got to stop reacting and start thinking. I don’t have supernatural powers, and neither do you. Neither of us has any pull with the authorities on Bonepyre, and even if someone in this swarm did, it would already be too late for a useful intervention. And where exactly would we evacuate 60,000 people to? Our swarm doesn’t have the capacity to handle that kind of influx.”

“I’m so glad you’re girding yourself with reasons not to try,” Khiruev said. Distantly, she was impressed with herself for losing her temper this badly. What was wrong with her? And more importantly, why had she expected better from a mass murderer?

“Still with the reacting,” Jedao said. “Does it not occur to you that the Vidona could be lying? While 60,000 people is too many to conveniently haul away to an imaginary refuge, by the hexarchate’s standards it’s a trivial number to wipe out. And I imagine you can tell me all about how the Vidona pride themselves on their thoroughness. For all we know, those people are already dead.”

Khiruev looked at him in frustration. She was serving someone walking around in a Kel’s body. She was complicit in the threat to that Kel’s people.

“It’s not entirely bad that you’re so rattled,” Jedao said quietly. “It gives me hope for the Kel.” Khiruev startled. “But General, you can do better than this. Think it through. Suppose that some miracle is possible after all. We teleport across the hexarchate with a flotilla of just-add-water habitats and get the Mwennin out. What then?”

Khiruev began pacing because she couldn’t think of anything else to do with her nervous energy. Jedao had left the door to the first inner room open, the way he usually did. As Khiruev passed the doorway, she spotted a polished rock with a bird engraving that had been left on a table. How odd, she thought, uncomfortably aware that she was prying. Other than the ubiquitous jeng-zai cards and the metal cup, it was the first indication Khiruev had had of Jedao’s personal effects.

When she reached the wall, Khiruev pivoted on her heel—and stopped dead. She had been about to say something, but it went clean out of her head when she saw that Jedao had unholstered his gun. Jedao was looking abstractedly at the wall as he ran the gun’s muzzle along his jaw. Khiruev’s heart stuttered.

“Sir,” Khiruev said unsteadily, “do you require a refresher course in firearms safety?”

Jedao frowned at him. “What? Oh, sorry. Bad habit.”

Khiruev refrained from mentioning what she’d do to any soldier of hers with such a ‘bad habit.’ To her relief, Jedao set the gun down on a table next to a jeng-zai deck. He shifted his weight, then settled there momentarily, tapping the table with an erratic rhythm.

He’s not as unaffected as he would have me believe, Khiruev realized. She had rarely observed Jedao fidgeting before, even if Jedao’s face revealed only exasperation with the situation. It made Khiruev feel better, paradoxically.

“Anyway,” Jedao said as he began meandering around the room, taking the jeng-zai deck with him and scattering cards on every available surface like a constellation of thwarted gambles, “think it through. Fine. We magically save the Mwennin. Tell me what the hexarchs’ next move is.”

Khiruev paused by one of the cards. The Chained Tower. She couldn’t stop herself from looking for the Deuce of Gears, but had no luck spotting it. Jedao had, however, left the Ace of Gears peeking from beneath a face-down card.

“Two of my parents came from the Khaigar community on Denozin 4,” Khiruev said slowly. “There are more Khaigars scattered throughout the system. Then there’s Commander Janaia. She’s a mix of things, but she’s always identified most strongly with the Moionna because of her favorite grandmother. Muris has Moionna in him, too, far back. Colonel Riozu’s four parents were part of a wave of immigration from Anxiao to Eng-Nang during a civil uprising. I could go on.” Brezan would have known more of this without having to look everyone up, but mentioning him in front of Jedao was a rotten idea. “There are a lot of people in the swarm, and a lot of peoples represented.”

Jedao’s mouth curved into a not-smile. He was waiting for Khiruev to follow through the logic.

“The Vidona will be able to obtain the personnel records through Kel Command,” Khiruev said, “assuming they don’t have them already. They could easily pick out the most expendable peoples and target them as well to put pressure on the swarm’s crew.” She wasn’t proud of how steady her voice was when she said ‘expendable.’ “It would touch off massive uprisings, but they might be desperate enough to try it anyway.”

“Unfortunately,” Jedao said, “even if we show no sign of giving a damn about a people as obscure as the Mwennin, there’s no guarantee they won’t try what you described anyway. I’m hoping the Kel will argue against for the reason you mentioned, but I can’t say I have a lot of faith in Kel Command.”

“Sir,” Khiruev said, “I ask again: what are your intentions toward the swarm? You must have had some form of long-term objective.”

You must have known that something like this would happen eventually.

“I have no reason to be fond of what the hexarchate has become,” Jedao said. “But people won’t fight their own government unless they think they have a way to win. We’re going to provide them with a way to win.”

“My Vidona mother used to come home with bulletins about heretics who thought they could outfight the Kel and Shuos with some new secret weapon,” Khiruev said. “None of them ever succeeded.”

“That’s exactly their problem,” Jedao said. “You think I haven’t put down my share of heretics at Kel Command’s orders? They always think it’s about the fucking tech. It’s not. It’s about people.”

Khiruev studied Jedao’s face. “Exotic technology is already about belief systems, so you must be referring to something else.” They were discussing treason.

She had spent a long career doing Kel Command’s will because she had chosen to be a Kel. Once she became Kel, she had very constricted choices. Nevertheless, she wondered if she should have contemplated treason earlier. She would never have done so if she hadn’t encountered Jedao. She knew herself that well, at least.

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