Their attempts at stealth hadn’t been good enough, unfortunately. “I’m right in here,” a horribly familiar voice called out. A door opened at the other end of the receiving room. Jedao was partly visible through the doorway, including half his smile.
Brezan couldn’t help himself. He aimed and fired three times. The bullets whined as they ricocheted; something in the other room shattered. Jedao had already dodged back into the room, mirror-quick.
“If you were serious about killing me,” Jedao said, “you’d have blown the whole place up, just like Kel fucking Command did with the other cindermoth. Quit wasting your bullets and my time, and let’s have a civilized conversation.”
This couldn’t possibly work to their advantage if Jedao himself was suggesting it. It had to be a ruse. But if it gave Tseya a chance at Jedao—
“I want your word,” Jedao said. Now he was dictating terms. “I’ll leave my sidearm in here. You can keep whatever the hell weapons you like, Brezan.”
In agony, Brezan hesitated. The only thing keeping him from going in there anyway was the memory of his stinging hand, the scalding fact that Jedao was the better killer. Tseya didn’t say anything and was probably remaining in the hallway until she judged that she could enter safely, so he assumed he was to stick to the original plan. “Fine,” he said roughly. He holstered the gun out of a suicidal sense of honor. “Come out.”
He had agreed not to shoot. He hadn’t said anything about other weapons. Jedao wasn’t stupid enough not to have noticed the loophole, and anyway, a Shuos would expect everyone to lie as much as he did. They both intended to betray the other. The question was who was faster.
He might not survive this. But his orders were to give Tseya her opportunity. He was going to follow the damn orders for once.
Jedao sauntered out of the room. That damnable tilted smile. Brezan clenched his left hand, wishing he could smash the fox’s face in. Jedao caught sight of Brezan’s insignia. His eyes widened. Then he laughed softly. “And people complained I got promoted too fast,” he said. “Well, congratulations. How are you liking the privileges of rank, General?”
Then Jedao’s eyes narrowed, and he was looking over Brezan’s shoulder. Brezan didn’t dare turn at first, but he heard Tseya’s tread. She could walk silently when she cared to. That she didn’t now indicated her confidence.
Brezan felt the heat of her presence and, to his mortification, flushed up the sides of his neck knowing she was so close, even if her attention was focused on another man. In spite of his original intention, he turned, slowly, to watch her. He wished he could run his hands through her hair, whose locks were curling free of the silver pins; marveled at how her eyes had gone rose-blue, sea-deep; wished that petal regard was focused on him instead, even knowing what it would do to him.
Then he looked back at Jedao, which was what he should have been doing all along. Jedao was watching Tseya through lowered eyelashes. Brezan wondered, very cynically, when Jedao had last known any form of human contact that didn’t involve killing people. The intensity of Jedao’s regard worried Brezan, except Tseya didn’t give any indication that she was concerned.
Slowly, Jedao walked toward Tseya, graceful, taking no notice of Brezan. He said something caressingly in a language that Brezan didn’t recognize. Tseya answered in the same language. Brezan eased into position, careful not to move too suddenly, despite knowing that enthrallment didn’t break so easily.
Brezan lunged, except Jedao wasn’t there anymore. He had whipped around Brezan and struck Tseya at the back of her head. The struggle was over so quickly that Tseya had slumped in Jedao’s arms before Brezan could react.
Brezan discovered the gun in his hand, not that it did him any good. You’d think he’d learn.
“Don’t,” Jedao said, not sounding enthralled in the least. “She’s alive, even if she’ll need medical care. I’d rather not kill her if I don’t have to. Especially not in a stupid accident.”
Brezan stared at Jedao, then at Tseya, then at Jedao again. The enthrallment should have worked, unless—
Unless Jedao wasn’t Jedao.
He’d been played. From the beginning, even.
Which meant he had just delivered them into the hands of someone even more dangerous than Jedao.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHERIS DUMPED TSEYA unceremoniously to the floor. She was already in motion. Vexingly, she still moved with the mirror-swiftness that Brezan had observed in the recordings of Jedao’s duels once upon a life. Brezan fought her, but she had already gotten a crushing grip on his throat. Wonderful, he thought as the world sank into blackness, I had to run afoul of infantry Kel.
When Brezan came to, he had been expertly trussed up in spider restraints. Cheris had given him a chair that would, under other circumstances, have been downright luxurious. At least it wasn’t one of General Khiruev’s chairs, antiques that looked suspiciously like the general had a nervous habit of gouging the arms with her screwdrivers. Brezan didn’t think he could have endured that.
Cheris, for her part, had draped herself over a chair with its back facing Brezan. “I was worried you were going to stay under all night,” she said. “Don’t bother yelling for help. No one will hear it. Formation instinct being what it is, I can’t risk it yet.”
She was still speaking with Jedao’s accent. “We both know who you are,” Brezan said in his best temperate voice, which emerged as a croak. “You can stop pretending.”
“That’s complicated,” Cheris said, “and anyway you’re confused as to who’s interrogating whom. Why did you try to kill me?”
He should have kept his mouth shut. It was becoming a theme. On the other hand, the question wasn’t a hard one. “I should think that would be obvious,” he said. “You took over my general’s swarm as Shuos Jedao. Who, in case you were asleep for that particular lesson, has a history of blowing people up. I’d have to be insane to want to leave you in charge.”
Cheris smiled Jedao’s smile at him. “I see that tact isn’t your specialty, but you’re not stupid. As you said, we both know I’m not Jedao, or your Andan comrade’s attempt would have succeeded.”
“What have you done with her?” Brezan said before he could stop himself.
Cheris raised an eyebrow at him. “Jedao would have killed her, but she’s not dead. That’s all you’re getting.”
Brezan believed her, but who knew what condition Tseya was in. “You put a hell of a lot of effort into being a convincing Jedao,” Brezan said, remembering how this had all began. Maybe it was better to keep her talking. She might let something drop.
“Believe it or not, it’s a side-effect of something Kel Command did to me. Anyway, let’s try again. Why did you try to kill me?”
Oddly, she didn’t seem to be taking the assassination attempt personally. She was digging for his motivations. Why? Why did it matter? She could have killed him without any trouble. Come to that, she could have done that the first time around, too. He liked the implications less and less.
Cheris was watching him patiently.
“You hijacked my general’s swarm,” Brezan said, “whoever you were claiming to be. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Let you swan off with all those moths?”
Cheris tapped the top of the chair. “And what was the swarm going to be used for?”
“You know the answer to that question. Why are we even having this conversation?”
“Are all generals this bad at giving straight answers?” Cheris said tartly. “It’s not even a hard question.”
“We had orders to fight the Hafn,” Brezan said, quelling the urge to lunge at Cheris even though he had a good idea how that would end. “Which we would have managed just fine without your intervention.”