Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

“Zehun, are you still there?” Mikodez said.

The link obligingly updated with video. Even at this hour, Zehun looked fresh and alert in full uniform. “You know perfectly well that the only person in the Citadel who keeps worse hours than you do is me,” they said. “And before you ask, so far as I know, that report went directly to me. If someone is capable of intercepting and decrypting it, we’re in so much trouble that we need to have another set of emergency meetings anyway.”

“We’ve been had,” Mikodez said after he had a chance to scan the report summary. “Ajewen Cheris has the mathematical ability to devise a calendrical spike of that order. Jedao would never have been able to put one together himself, and we’d know if Kujen had been in contact to make him a proposal.”

Zehun’s expression was pensive. “The hexarchate gave Cheris plenty of opportunities to reconsider her loyalties. We should have ensured that she died with her swarm at the Fortress of Scattered Needles.”

“Yes,” Mikodez said, “but Kujen insisted on retrieving her, and since he was checking over some critical cryptological results for us at the time, I deemed it unwise to piss him off. There wasn’t any way to guess he’d take a vacation for the first time in centuries. Anyway, might-have-beens don’t concern me. We have to decide what to do about the situation as it exists.”

“We’ve got the shadowmoths on standby and we’ve been alerted of the situation,” Zehun said. “If we’re willing to lose most of that swarm, we can take out the Hierarchy of Feasts. As for Kel Command, I’ve been running a search on the report summaries and I cannot for the life of me figure out how Cheris, if that’s who she is, is going to break through centuries of Kel paranoia—”

Shuos calling Kel paranoid. His day was already complete.

“—but if we inform them, they might be able to see what we’re missing.” Zehun’s tone became deprecating. “The irony is that even if the threat gets through, the Kel hexarch will survive.”

All the other hexarchs would be journeying to Station Mavi 514-11, where Faian had built her immortality device. Mikodez already planned to send a double. He didn’t have any use for immortality, but it would look too suspicious to decline.

“You know,” Mikodez said, “that’s one option, but it’s not the only option.”

Zehun went dead quiet. “If that’s supposed to be a Shuos joke I haven’t heard before,” Zehun said at last, “fine, I haven’t heard it before. But it’s a terrible idea, and maybe you should get some sleep.”

“I’m not joking,” Mikodez said. “It’s true, however, that our window of opportunity is limited. I realize we only have so much information about the planned spike, but I want all our mathematicians on the problem. What will this spike do if it goes off? Formations can’t be the whole story. Even Jedao with his Kel fixation wouldn’t have made this play based on that alone, and even if Cheris is merely very good at emulating a dead man, we have plenty of evidence that her moves take place on multiple gameboards simultaneously. We need a fuller picture so we can make an informed decision.”

“You frighten me on a regular basis,” Zehun said in a low voice, “but this is something else.”

Mikodez raised an eyebrow. “You could have had me killed when I was eighteen,” he said, “and you didn’t.”

At eighteen, Mikodez had been a second-year Shuos cadet. Ever since Hellspin Fortress, Shuos Academy stopped admitting prospects who shared Jedao’s signifier, Ninefox Crowned with Eyes. Never mind that for generations before that, Shuos Crowned with Eyes had managed to lead lives free of high treason and massacre. As for Shuos who developed that signifier later, they were purged.

Mikodez had entered with a Ninefox Smiling. However, during one of the periodic evaluations, it emerged that he had a variable signifier. Uncommon, but not unheard of either, especially among Shuos and Andan. The ability could even be trained in to a certain extent, which was handy for undercover work. Unfortunately, the evaluation had recorded a brief shift to Crowned with Eyes. Zehun, as a senior instructor, had been dispatched with a team of assassins to assess Mikodez.

“I think I’m being adequately punished for my lapse in judgment,” Zehun said. They looked at Mikodez unsmilingly. “Forty years of stability in the Shuos. You have no idea what it was like to be Shuos before that; you can’t. You’re proposing turning the whole hexarchate topsy-turvy. That doesn’t bother you even a little?”

“That’s only if Cheris fails,” Mikodez said. “Have you given the mathematicians their marching orders?”

“It’s embarrassing that you’re asking,” Zehun said. “Of course I have. I’m also giving them whatever the hell they want for breakfast because I’m sure you don’t want to rely on cranky mathematicians for urgently important policy results.”

“I’m glad I can count on you to have common sense so I don’t have to.”

Zehun snorted.

“Well, keep an eye on the mathematicians. I hear it’s easier to check someone else’s work than hash it out from scratch, but it’s not my field.” He wasn’t under any illusions that the introductory calendrical math he’d studied as a cadet qualified him to inspect whatever Cheris was up to. “In the meantime, I am going to review my colleagues’ plan to see if there are any last-minute changes I should know about.”

“You really should get sleep instead.”

Mikodez fixed her with a stare. “Zehun-ye,” he said, using the instructor honorific, “we’re looking at high treason and a calendrical disruption that could be as bad as the one after Hellspin Fortress, and you think I’m going to be able to fall asleep?”

Zehun sighed. “Fine. Rest when you can, seriously, and I’ll keep you apprised of any developments. I’m having breakfast sent up so you don’t forget to eat yourself.”

“That was eight years ago,” he protested, “and I get nagged enough by Istradez as it stands. Can’t you let it rest?”

“Shut up and get to work.”

Mikodez grinned at Zehun. “If that’s not motivational, I don’t know what is.” He signed off before Zehun could get in a rejoinder. He knew they hated it when he did that, so he saved it for special occasions. You couldn’t get much more special than ‘oh, and by the way, our government and way of life might be ending in fourteen days.’

Breakfast arrived promptly, borne by an unsmiling guard who refused the persimmon candy on the tray when Mikodez offered it to her. On any other day he would have amused himself by wheedling her to take it, but Zehun would find out and yell at him for harassing the staff. Besides, he liked the candies.

He only ended up eating a third of what was on the tray, mostly because Zehun seemed to think he needed a lot more fuel than was the case. The last time he’d suggested that he could give them a vacation so they could spoil their grandchildren (four of them, a fifth on the way), they had retaliated by scrambling his noncritical custom grid interfaces. Served him right. In the dramas people shied from Shuos assassins and saboteurs, but the ones you had to watch out for were the bureaucrats.

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