Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

“—but he’s seceded from the hexarchate,” Zehun said. Fenez mewed and hopped up into Zehun’s lap, then began purring loudly. Mikodez had always known that cats were more treacherous than his own people. For their part, Zehun buried their hands in that mess of calico coat, expression content. “The other hexarchs are pushing for you to resolve this rapidly. The Kel have offered their compliance, mainly as a way of rubbing it in, but you will lose considerable prestige by taking them up on it. What went wrong, and how did the Shuos get to this point?”

Fenez yawned hugely. Light from the two jeng-zai images sheened yellow-green in her eyes. “Just one question about the scenario,” Mikodez said. “Has Jedao set himself up as some kind of dictator?” The thought was almost funny enough that he wanted to see it happen, except for the implications.

Zehun laughed at him. “In the interests of watching you struggle, I’m going to say no. He’s put someone else in charge and is running around as their pet general and all-around enforcer.”

“Well,” Mikodez said, “I suppose that even my favorite suicidal revenant might have enough of a sense of self-preservation to know that it’s better not to be the primary target. Plus, this way he can deny that he wants power for its own sake.”

“Quit stalling and get started, Mikodez.”

Mikodez considered what he’d been given. “I posit this: we’re too lackadaisical about responding to Jedao’s propaganda campaign. Ordinarily it’s a mistake to draw attention to whatever chatter is being distributed, but that’s when you have a better chance of monitoring the sources. We apparently never manage to track down the distribution channels. Even now there’s circumstantial evidence that he’s doing something unusual there. Istradez tells me it’s driving Intelligence wild, as if I couldn’t tell.” He eyed Fenez, who was clearly unimpressed. “Scenario aside, it’s infuriating that traffic analysis hasn’t yielded anything illuminating. If our agent on the Hierarchy of Feasts had run across anything, she’d have passed on word, but that’s assuming she hasn’t been killed or subverted or turned into a paperweight.”

“That’s just distribution, though,” Zehun said. “You haven’t accounted for the effectiveness of the propaganda. Yes, we’ve seen a few system-level successes on Jedao’s part, but they can be attributed to locals reacting to the Hafn breathing down their necks. So go back to the scenario. Jedao can’t have kept on broadcasting bulletins that suggest that he’s as nicely leashed as someone’s dog. What changes?”

“Jedao buys a brainwashing ray off the black market?” Mikodez said, remembering some of Kujen’s caustic remarks. You couldn’t find more of an expert on brainwashing than Kujen. Too bad they still had no idea where he’d gotten off to.

Zehun gave him the flat stare that had earned them a reputation for eating slow-witted cadets back when they’d been an instructor.

“All right,” Mikodez said, sobering, “I’ll stop being a pest.”

Zehun muttered something that might have been “No danger of that.”

“Jedao isn’t a propagandist,” Mikodez said, “although he picked up the basics and absorbed some stylistic quirks from Khiaz. He’s very good at talking people into things, but with his anchors he had the advantage that no one else could monitor what he was saying once they left Kujen’s presence, and with the Kel he could use formation instinct as a crutch. Anchoring no longer applies, and the Shuos are not conformist enough to be manipulated in the same ways that modern Kel can be.

“Given all that, I’m proposing a few things. First, he recruits a propagandist or six. I doubt anyone with the necessary imagination was lurking in General Khiruev’s swarm. It simply wasn’t what they were assembled for. Still, Jedao can always recruit someone on some station. Face it, the man has raging ego problems the way most Shuos do, myself not excepted, but he didn’t become a general without learning to delegate.”

“What about Jedao’s motivations?” Zehun said.

“The other hexarchs default to thinking that he’s out for old-fashioned vengeance and let it go at that,” Mikodez said. “I don’t buy it. He’s at war because it’s the world he knows, but he tells himself he’s putting something right in the process because he needs a reason for the butchery.

“If he successfully creates a splinter state, it’s either because that was his goal all along, it’s a stepping stone to some other goal, or it’s a feint and he’s after something else entirely. I assume we fuck up our assessment for him to get as far as he does. He doesn’t issue some kind of manifesto, does he?”

“Nice try,” Zehun said, “but no.”

“What, you don’t think it’d be fun to draw up a mock document in Jedao’s style?” Mikodez started making a fort of the cookies. Zehun, used to such behavior, sighed. “The other logical possibility is that Jedao wants something else but was stuck with secession as a consolation prize. Since the point of the exercise is a disaster scenario, I have to assume that’s not the case and he’s out to stick it to us.”

“It would be one hell of a consolation prize, yes.” Zehun lowered their cat to the floor. Instead of darting off, Fenez rolled over on her back and began writhing comically.

“As of right now in the real world,” Mikodez said, “Jedao has intimated that he’d like to ingratiate himself back into the hexarchs’ favor. Granted, everyone remembers that he looked sane from his childhood until Hellspin Fortress, so a couple months of ostentatious good behavior isn’t much of an indication, but he always did like playing long odds. In the scenario, we misread the threat that he represents. Say he takes a left turn and obtains more threshold winnowers, which puts everyone on high alert. We’re occupied making sure he doesn’t sprint somewhere to blow up another million people because with a mass murderer you can’t afford to ignore the threat. In the meantime, he’s busy negotiating with a number of senior Shuos.” He fell silent.

Zehun said, “Ah,” very softly, and waited, hands resting on their knees.

All but two of the cookies had joined the fort. “You know,” Mikodez said, “Jedao’s record as an assassin has always puzzled me, as though I should be able to diagnose whatever the hell went wrong twenty years down the line. He wasn’t enthusiastic about torture or seduction, but he’d follow his handlers’ orders. And then his service with the Kel. Superficially gregarious, but no close friends or lovers. For the longest time, people just figured he lived for his job, like any number of soldiers, and then. It’s vexing that I can’t solve the puzzle when there’s so much on file.”

Zehun shook their head. “I know you like to think that there was some cunning pattern back then we ought to have picked up on, but face it, we make a point of recruiting people who are comfortable getting friendly with others only to stab them in the kidneys. Some of them are even decent, helpful human beings who just want to rescue kittens in distress and the occasional hostage. With Jedao we got unlucky. It’s not like he’s the only Shuos to prove unstable, given the personality traits we select for, even if he happens to be one of the more destructive of the bunch.”

“Short of dragging Jedao in here and scaring up some ace interrogators,” Mikodez said, “we can’t resolve that question. But the point is that we assess Jedao as a military threat rather than a political one. It’s the curse of being a Shuos, or a Kel, for that matter. All we see is a general in a box, when the general might have other ideas now that he’s free.” He picked up a candied violet and crushed it over the cookie fort. “What I hate about my own logic is that this is exactly what we’re doing right now, whether or not it’s wrong.”

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