Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

It was like trying to look through a lens made of mist. “I am Kel,” Khiruev said. “You are here now, sir. My service is owed to you. I understand that I was in error. I accept whatever consequence you impose.”

Brezan jerked his gaze away. “I could order you to do practically anything,” he said savagely, “and you wouldn’t even see anything wrong with the arrangement.”

“Then I await your orders,” Khiruev said, because it was the most correct response she could think of.

Brezan scrubbed angrily at his eyes, but didn’t say anything to that. “Cheris,” he said, “just how do you propose setting off a calendrical spike? I assume it’s a calendrical spike you have in mind. It’d have to be something big.”

“The Rahal, like everyone else, rely on servitors for maintenance tasks,” Cheris said, “including those for the master clocks.” She let the statement hang there.

“You can’t possibly be talking about having sway over a legion of treacherous disaffected Rahal—” Brezan paled again. His glance swept around the room, at servitor-height. “Servitors? But they’re not—” He swallowed. “Can they be trusted?”

Cheris crossed her arms. “Brezan,” she said, “has a servitor ever offered you harm? Or anyone you know, for that matter?”

After a drawn-out pause, he said, “All right. I’ll concede that. But why? What do they want?”

“They’re individuals,” Cheris said tartly. “I don’t presume to speak for each and every one of them.”

Khiruev thought back to the servitors who had hung around Cheris’s quarters back when she was being Jedao. Khiruev had never thought twice about their presence. Most people gave servitors less thought than the wallpaper. If they had wanted to slaughter humans in their sleep, they could have managed it forever ago. It spoke better of them than the humans.

Brezan hadn’t finished questioning Cheris, however. “That takes care of calendar values,” he said, “but you’re going to have to do something pretty fucking dramatic to mark a full-on calendar reset. What are you going to do, aim some torture beams at all the hexarchs?”

Cheris gave him a look. “No torture,” she said. “But Kel Command has to go.”

Khiruev drew her gun.

“Stand down,” Brezan hissed.

Khiruev holstered her gun, although she didn’t want to. “It’s high treason.”

“This whole thing is high treason,” Brezan said, which didn’t help. “I’m not done talking to her.”

“So you want to see if I can pull it off,” Cheris said to Brezan.

“I am sick of serving something I don’t even believe in,” Brezan said. “What the hell. Fifteen days, you say? I want to know down to the fucking hour, and I want to see the math so someone who is not me can check it over. If nothing happens, if nothing changes, I’ll scorch you dead and drag you back to Kel Command. And then, if they don’t hang up my corpse next to yours, I will spend the rest of this rotted career helping them smash whatever uprising they point me at.”

“And the Andan agent?” Cheris said. “What’s her place?”

“I left her in confinement,” Brezan said. His voice had gone distant. “She claimed to be disgraced, but it’s always possible she was lying to get my guard down.” Brezan colored. Khiruev knew then what their relationship had been. “It may not be safe for anyone, er, human to enter the room with her. We’ll have to find somewhere to let her off at some point.”

“Were you expected to report in?”

“They’d expect to hear from her, not me,” he said. “I’m positive there’s no way to secure her cooperation. As far as I know, she’s loyal. And I—I don’t have any leverage.” His eyes darkened. “Her silkmoth is mated to the Hierarchy of Feasts. I’d better do something about that before we set off for wherever the hell we’re going.”

“I’m certain we’ve driven off the Hafn,” Cheris said. “It’s not impossible they have yet another reserve swarm, but I was looking in on the analysis that Doctrine was doing. The Hafn had a staggering number of those caskets, but they run through them fast. I looked at what we could deduce of their calendar and figured it out. Those people sewn up with birds and flowers—they’re a power source. That’s why the Hafn were able to use their native exotics in high calendar terrain. Fortunately for us, they were running low, and they weren’t able to link up with their logistics swarm.” The one with the mysterious auxiliaries.

“They use people as a power source?” Brezan said in revulsion. He had been shown videos of the caskets during the meeting he had called.

“So do we,” Cheris said, “only we call them suicide formations.”

“It’s not the same.”

Cheris held her silence just long enough for Brezan to get the point.

“Anyway,” Brezan said, unable to meet her eyes, “since this border is otherwise wide-open, it won’t kill us to be on patrol. At least until non-crashhawk Kel show up spoiling for a fight.”

Khiruev listened while the two crashhawks discussed logistics, and wondered if it was possible for her world to tumble any more upside-down. In fifteen days she would find out.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE





ONE OF THE important features of the Citadel of Eyes was also one of its great disadvantages: the pervasive attention to security. It was 03.67 and Shuos Mikodez was seriously considering whether he had any chance of sneaking past his own guards and into one of the restricted sections of Archives. There had always been the rumor that one of the old heptarchs had squirreled away a collection of heretical calendrical erotica. Just how you made abstract algebra erotic was going to have to remain a mystery for the next Shuos hexarch to puzzle over, because Mikodez couldn’t figure out a way past that one checkpoint without pissing off an agent whose ability to brew perfect Six Leaves tea was unrivaled. Oh well, the expedition probably only seemed like a good idea because of the hour and, all right, the fact that he’d only had five hours of sleep in the last seventy-five.

Three red lights came on in a triangle. The grid said, “High priority high priority message.” Stupid phrasing, but no one could seem to fix the alert, and that was on top of the fact that most of the time it was a false alarm. He wished they were doing this on purpose to keep staff on their toes; no such luck.

Another set of lights came on. “Mikodez, wake up already,” said Shuos Zehun’s aggravated voice. “Someone sent in a code red nine, burst transmission, in response to a bug we planted on the Deuce of Gears swarm. Mikodez—”

“Open connection,” he said. “I’m awake. In fact, you have no idea how awake I am.”

“Fuck it, Mikodez, are you up scheming again instead of getting sleep like a sane person? You’re not eighteen anymore.”

What could be that bad for them to start swearing at him right out of the gate? “Just pipe me the damn message.”

“Honestly, Mikodez, I’m going to make Istradez slip you sleeping pills.”

Before Mikodez could say anything snide, the message came through. One of the bugs that they had gotten aboard the Hierarchy of Feasts during its layover at Tankut Primary had finally borne fruit. The report said that one High General Kel Brezan—that crashhawk who had contacted Zehun not long ago, funny how he got around—had taken over the swarm. This news wouldn’t have been worth much in itself. They already knew about the Kel-Andan mission, and it wasn’t surprising that the Andan half was lying low.

No: the important part was that the high general had given a briefing warning of a planned calendrical spike with an intended effect of making formation instinct voluntary. The report included some of the relevant mathematics. What was more, the spike was going to be activated by a strike at Kel Command. Mikodez reflected that Brezan was ruining things for honest crashhawks everywhere.

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