“Then I don’t see that I owe you any help.”
“All right, Kujen,” she said. “I realize you’re beyond the need for petty things like companionship—”
“I don’t know, it’s always nice to have an audience,” Kujen said to Mahar.
“Hush,” Mahar said subvocally. “I want to see if she offers us anything good.”
“—but I meant what I said about payment. Don’t you tire of being dependent on the goodwill of the Kel? It looks like certain of your assets are still tied up with theirs.”
It looked like Shandal Yeng’s analysts weren’t as good at following money trails as they needed to be. Happy news.
“If I cared to find out, I’m sure I could look up how much you’re worth,” Mahar said. “Maybe you could offer me some museums full of paintings while you’re at it?” Mahar cared a lot more about fine art than Kujen did, which was why he got to deal with interior decoration.
“If you’ve developed new tastes in that area,” Shandal Yeng said, “I should only be happy to guide you toward pieces worthy of your interest.”
“Too bad,” Kujen said, playing toward her misimpression that he was still allied with the Kel, who would have given a lot to know where he was. “I’m more interested in big guns. I don’t know if it’s escaped your attention, but when it comes to putting holes in things, you can’t go wrong with the Kel.”
“Money is a much better defense than violence.”
“When money’s gone,” Kujen said softly, “only violence will do.” He had never been good at it himself, which was where people like Jedao came in handy.
“You don’t want me for an enemy, Kujen,” she said.
Kujen had known it would come to threats. “If you can take me down without stabbing yourself in the back,” he said, “please, go ahead. Don’t bother Faian again. She’s strong-willed, one of the things I like about her. I’ll send you some textbooks if you want to work out the equations for yourself. And don’t call again. You won’t find me here or anywhere. In the meantime, I have some appallingly unethical pastimes to attend to.”
Shandal Yeng’s expression went remote. Then she cut the connection.
“And to think she wanted us to face eternity with her hanging around,” Kujen said.
Mahar yawned, then took the scarf off and looped it around his wrist. “You should have said yes,” he said. “Bought her off for a few centuries.”
“She’d work her way around to hating me for saying yes. With some people you can’t win.” Kujen considered the matter. “Do you want immortality? The real thing, not what we have here?” He made the offer from time to time, in case the answer changed.
Mahar scoffed. “Unlike certain people, I understand the math. Rather not be a test subject for a fucking prototype, no offense. I keep studying your design specifications, Kujen, and they ought to be correct, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re overlooking something. Besides, I know about Esfarel and Jedao, remember? One functional immortal out of three is a dismal success rate.”
“Esfarel was weak,” Kujen said carelessly, “even though he was spectacular in bed. Jedao was a head case when he arrived. That’s not a fair test. And anyway, that was the black cradle, not the new variant.”
“If you say so.” Mahar unwound his scarf and put it away, then had a servitor bring him breakfast. The breakfast, when it arrived, was typical Kel fare: rice, pickles, sesame leaves, and marinated roasted meat chopped fine. He ate a few bites, blinked, then eyed the food. “That wasn’t what I meant to order. You’re still thinking about Jedao, aren’t you?”
Bleed-through. “He was such a good project,” Kujen said. “There was always something to fix. Or break, take your pick.”
“Oh, for love of stars above. Now that he’s running around loose, send him a courier with a shiny gun prototype or a nice bottle of whiskey and your apologies. It’ll make you both feel better. He might even forgive you for sticking him in the black cradle. The two of you can team up and conquer the galaxy.”
Mahar might understand the math, but he hadn’t ever looked closely enough at a certain class of weapons. Like the hexarchs, he was deeply confused as to what ‘Jedao’ was up to. “Someday I’ll take you up on that,” Kujen said. “But not just yet.”
KUJEN REMEMBERED WHEN the Kel had first delivered General Shuos Jedao to the black cradle facility 397 years ago. There had been a lot of grim soldiers in Kel black-and-gold. Jedao himself occupied a plain metal casket with a transparent pane. “Held under sedation lock, Nirai-zho,” the Kel corporal said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Suicide risk.”
“I’ll say.” His anchor at the time, Liyeng, strode over to the casket and inspected the status readings. Kujen had already checked them over. Jedao was alive in there, even if he’d picked one hell of a grandstanding maneuver for his bid for immortality.
“Nirai-zho,” said a different voice. It belonged to High General Kel Anien, a thin, gray-haired woman. She was shuffling a deck of cards over and over, unable to be still. “Command sent me to address any questions you might have.”
“Good,” Kujen said curtly, since he had a role to play. “I didn’t see anything in that mess of reports about what the Rahal inquisitors got out of General Jedao. Who do I have to vivisect to get the right security clearance?”
Anien flipped a card over, made a face at it, stuck it back in the deck. At last she looked at Liyeng. “You should have witnessed the interrogation, Nirai-zho,” she said. “If it hadn’t been such a mess, it would have been hilarious. The wolves that Rahal-zho dispatched couldn’t get anything out of him. They started a side-argument with Shuos-zho about the appropriateness of certain Shuos techniques for fooling scrying and why they should be dropped from Shuos Academy’s curriculum. Watching wolves have fits is an excellent pastime when you’re recovering from an incandescent disaster.”
Kujen had always suspected that Anien got bored too easily for her own good. He could relate. “Nothing?” he said, because he needed to be sure that Jedao hadn’t hinted at their alliance. He’d already watched the excerpts from the regular interrogation that they had deigned to send him. Please shoot me, Jedao had said over and over. “He couldn’t have been completely brain-dead if he could form a sentence in response to stimuli. Even a very dull sentence.”
“Jedao has a singularity response to scrying,” Anien said, sobering. Same image no matter what the query.
“Let me guess,” Kujen said. “Immolation Fox.” An obvious choice, given the circumstances, if you had the ability to mask your signifier to block scrying.
“That’s it exactly.”
Kujen took pity on the Kel soldiers waiting to be told what to do and prompted Liyeng. “Follow Technician 24,” Liyeng said, and pointed obligingly. “She’ll show you where to stash the general.” Anien confirmed this with a nod. The Kel and their casket moved off.
“They left something out of the interrogation files Command sent you,” Anien said once they were alone. “We’ve been trying not to let it get out.”
“Do tell,” Kujen said.
“I don’t have video to show you,” Anien said, “and if you mention this to anyone, I’ll have to deny that I ever said anything, Nirai-zho. But Jedao didn’t start off begging to be shot. He didn’t seem to understand what had happened. He—he kept asking what had happened to his soldiers. Asking if they were all right. It was only after he understood what he’d done that he started to beg.”
All this time she hadn’t stopped playing with the cards.