Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

“Then it wasn’t Hafn who took out those construction yards.” Cheris’s voice had a bite to it, and if he wondered if the outrage was hers or Jedao’s. For a traitor, Jedao had always been a judgmental prick.

“That’s correct,” Mikodez said. “My saboteurs did the job. Don’t think I wouldn’t do it again, despite the death toll. People are already dying in this revolution of yours. Most of our systems would be under martial law if we weren’t, you know, always under martial law. They’re under extra-special Vidona watch now. It’s always been a question of acceptable casualties.”

“The price of a Shuos’s assistance is a Shuos’s assistance, isn’t that what they say?” Cheris remarked.

Mikodez inclined his head.

“I expect the only thing I’d regret more than saying yes is saying no.”

“That was the idea,” Mikodez said modestly. “Running around as Jedao was an extremely well-chosen distraction, by the way. I congratulate you. But that trick only works once.”

“It only needed to work once,” she said.

Mikodez acknowledged the hit with a wave of his hand. “One moment. I have another gift to offer you, although it’s not a very good one.” Where was Zehun? He paged them but got no response. “If I can keep you on the line a few more moments, anyway. Who are you planning on blowing up next?”

“If I tried to shoot every monster in the hexarchate,” Cheris said, “I’d be a monster myself.”

Mikodez put his chin in his hands and smiled. “If you understand that,” he said, “then you’re far ahead of Jedao, and this alliance has a fighting chance.—Ah, here we go.”

Zehun had returned with a teenage girl in tow. The girl had ivory-sallow skin and hair done up with enamel clasps. Her clothes, despite the striking color coordination in greens and yellows, were notable for their concession to useless practicality. Mikodez wondered just where the girl thought she needed to run off to in those sensible slacks and even more sensible boots. The Citadel of Eyes was a space station. You couldn’t run far.

“Cheris,” Mikodez said, “this is Moroish Nija. I don’t believe you two are acquainted”—Cheris was already shaking her head—“but she is one of approximately 5,000 Mwennin we were able to evacuate. That’s a pitifully small number, and I am not optimistic that your community will recover from its dispersal, but it was the most I could do without exposing Shuos involvement to the other factions.”

“Wait,” Nija said. She wasn’t looking at Mikodez, but at Cheris’s face. “This is her? Ajewen Cheris?”

“Yes, I’m Cheris,” Cheris said.

Nija began speaking harshly and rapidly in a language that the grid identified as Mwen-dal. Mikodez eyed the machine translation it was providing on a subdisplay, which for all its awkwardness suggested that Nija had an impressive command of Mwen-dal obscenities.

When Nija wound down, Cheris said something haltingly in Mwen-dal, then, in the high language, “I have no excuse to offer.”

“As I told you,” Mikodez said, “it’s a very poor gift.”

“Were you planning all this even then?” Cheris said.

“No. I just like keeping my options open. And I happen to think genocide is a rotten policy anyway. Nothing personal.”

“Just what are you doing with one of my people in your keeping, anyway?”

Nija spoke to Cheris before Mikodez could, to his amusement. “He offered me a job,” she said. “Which I accepted because your shitty life choices left me so many options.”

Cheris looked uncomfortable. “You’re recruiting, Shuos-zho?”

“In a few cases, where warranted,” Mikodez said mildly. “I mean, the Mwennin produced you. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

Nija was singularly unimpressed with this line of thinking. “You mean you don’t have enough former shoplifters working for you and you’re desperate.”

Behind the girl’s back, Zehun signed, We’ve located the only child in the hexarchate who isn’t afraid of you.

Mikodez signed back, Let me know if you find any more of her.

Cheris’s mouth tightened, then: “I saw the broadcast of my parents’ executions.”

Amazingly, Nija kept quiet.

“I considered intervening,” Mikodez said. He could offer little comfort, although the evidence suggested that she wouldn’t hold it against him. Right now, he almost wished she would. “Because of who they were, Vidona security was too high. I chose not to risk it.”

“I appreciate your forthrightness,” Cheris said. “But what do I have to offer you? All I have is the tenuous control of one swarm, and you undoubtedly have your own mathematicians.”

None of her caliber, but she didn’t need to know that if she hadn’t guessed it already. “Zehun,” Mikodez said, “please escort Nija to lunch or gardening or handgun lessons, whatever you two find agreeable. Nija, thank you for indulging me. I’ll talk to you later.”

Zehun led the girl out. Nija appeared to think she should be back in school, and did the Citadel of Eyes offer a normal curriculum alongside all the Shuos refresher courses with ‘deception’ and ‘murder’ in their titles? Zehun had that ‘I thought I was done raising teenagers’ expression.

“I want in on your social experiment,” Mikodez said to Cheris. “But there’s one thing I believe only you can offer me. I’m hoping you’ll indulge me, as I’m certain it will benefit you as much as it will benefit me.”

“Now you’re making me worry,” Cheris said.

“You know more about Jedao than anyone alive,” Mikodez said. “What the hell was it that drove him over the edge?”

“Ah,” she said, very softly. “That.”

“His academy evaluations said he was a perfect Shuos. If that’s perfection, I don’t want any more of it. We’ve been trying to keep from producing more Jedaos ever since. I was almost purged myself as a cadet for manifesting Ninefox Crowned with Eyes. But the endeavor is doomed if we don’t know what the fucking trigger was.”

For a moment, Mikodez saw Jedao looking at him out of Cheris’s eyes, locked forever in the darkness. Then Cheris said, with Jedao’s accent, “The hexarchate was the trigger, Shuos-zho. All of it. The whole rotted system. He was never mad, or anyway, not mad the way people thought he was. I’ll put together a more detailed account for you. I don’t think it will do anyone any harm, and perhaps it may even, as you suggest, do some good.”

“Thank you,” Mikodez said. He bowed to her from the waist, in the old style that Jedao would remember as a formal greeting between heptarchs. She winced, which was good. He needed her to understand what she had gotten herself into. “I am in your debt. Now, I believe we have emergencies to attend to.”

“Understatement,” Cheris said. “Goodbye, Shuos-zho.”

It did not escape Mikodez’s notice that she signed off with the Deuce of Gears.





BREZAN HAD BEEN putting off the conversation for too long, but he could no longer tell himself that he had direly important matters to attend to, even if he did. Face it, the chief of staff was better at administrative matters than he was, and Cheris seemed to have some idea of what to do about generalized crises, perhaps because she was a trouble magnet.

In an ideal world, the damned uniform would burst into flames and save him from dealing with this, but he needed to deal with the consequences of his treachery like an adult. He was almost starting to wish he could consult Jedao on how you went on with your life after turning traitor. While he could ask Cheris, it seemed gauche.

After drawing a deep breath, Brezan headed down to the brig. His shoulder blades tickled every time he passed a Kel. He could no longer take formation instinct for granted. Now he knew how other Kel felt around him. Fitting punishment, really.

On the other hand, Cheris’s calendar reset meant, for the moment, that Brezan was safe from enthrallment. Terrible excuse for avoiding Tseya: he could have communicated with her remotely at any time, since the ability relied on proximity.

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