She places the tray in front of Pitry. He bows slightly and selects the open bottle of tea. “My apologies,” he says. “Though I would be most grateful for the wine, General, I’m afraid I am here on business from the prime minister.”
“Yes,” says Mulaghesh, who opts for the wine. “I figured as much. There’s only one thing could possibly put Pitry Suturashni in my backyard, and that’s Shara Komayd’s say-so. So what’s the prime minister want? Does she want to drag me back into the military council? I quit about as loud as anyone could ever quit. I thought it was pretty final.”
“This is true,” Pitry says. “The sound of your resignation still echoes through Ghaladesh.”
“Shit, Pitry. That was downright poetic.”
“Thank you. I stole the line from Shara.”
“Of course you did.”
“I am, actually, not here to convince you to return to the military council. They found a substitute for your position.”
“Mm,” says Mulaghesh. “Gawali?”
Pitry nods.
“I thought as much. By the seas, that woman kisses so much ass it’s a miracle she can find the breath to talk. How the hells she made general in the first place, I’ll never know.”
“A solid point,” says Pitry. “But the real purpose of my visit is to share some information with you about your…pension.”
Mulaghesh chokes on her wine and bends double, coughing. “My what?” she says, standing back up. “My pension?”
Pitry nods, cringing.
“What the hell’s wrong with it?” she asks.
“Well…You have heard, perhaps, of what is called the ‘duration of servitude’?”
“It sounds familiar….”
“The basic gist of it is that, when an officer of the Saypuri Military is promoted to a new rank,” Pitry says as he begins digging in his satchel, “their pay is automatically increased, but they must serve in that rank for a set duration of time before receiving the pension level associated with that rank. This was because twenty or some-odd years ago we had a series of officers get to a rank, and then promptly quit so they could live off the enhanced pension.”
“Wait. Yeah, I know all this. The rank of general requires four years of servitude, right? I was almost positive I was well past that….”
“You have served as a general for more than four years,” says Pitry, “but the duration of servitude begins when your paperwork is processed. And as you were stationed in the polis of Bulikov at the time of your promotion, the paperwork would have been processed there—but a good deal of Bulikov was destroyed as, um, you are well aware. This meant they were quite delayed with, well, anything and everything.”
“Okay. So. How long did it take Bulikov to process my paperwork?”
“There was a delay of a little under two months.”
“Meaning my duration of servitude was…”
Pitry produces a piece of paper and runs a finger down it as he searches for the precise amount. “Three years, ten months, and seventeen days.”
“Shit.”
“Yes.”
“Shit!”
“Yes. As your duration of servitude is not completed, when the fiscal year ends, your pension will revert to that of previous rank—that of colonel.”
“And how much is that?”
Pitry puts the piece of paper on the desk, slides it over to her, and points to one figure.
“Shit!”
“Yes.”
“Damn…I was going to buy a boat.” She shakes her head. “Now I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to afford all this!” She waves her hand at her cottage.
Pitry glances around at the dark, crumbling cottage, which in some places is absolutely swarming with flies. “Ah, yes. Such a pity.”
“So what? Are you just here to tell me I’m getting the rug pulled out from under me, I’m off, see you later? Is there no option to, I don’t know, appeal?”
“Well, this is actually a common occurrence. Some officers are forced to retire early due to their health, family, and so on. In these instances, the military council has the option of voting to ignore the remaining time, and award the pension anyway. Being as you, ah, did not leave on the best of terms, they have not opted to do that.”
“Those fuckers,” snarls Mulaghesh.
“Yes. But, we do have an option of recourse. When the officer in question has shown exemplary service to Saypur, they are often assigned to go on what I believe is magnanimously called the ‘touring shuffle.’?”
“Aw, hells. I remember this. I serve out the remainder of my time wandering around the Continent ‘reviewing fortifications.’ Is that it?”
“That is it exactly,” says Pitry. “Administrative responsibilities only. No active or combat duty whatsoever. The prime minister has arranged it so that this opportunity is now being extended to you.”
Mulaghesh taps her wooden hand against the tabletop. While her attention’s elsewhere Pitry glances at the prosthetic limb: it is strapped to a hinge at her elbow, which then buckles around her still-considerable bicep. She’s wrapped her upper arm with a cotton sleeve, presumably to avoid chafing, and he can see more of what looks like a harness wrapped around her torso. It’s clearly an extensive and complicated mechanism, and probably none too comfortable, which can’t help General Mulaghesh’s famously choleric moods.
“Eyes, Pitry,” says Mulaghesh calmly. “Or have you not been in a woman’s presence for a while?”
Startled, Pitry resumes staring into the piece of paper on the table.
Mulaghesh is still for a long time. “Pitry, can I ask you something?”
“Certainly.”
“You are aware that I just shot a man?”
“I…am aware.”
“And you are aware that I shot him because he was on my property, and he was being an idiot.”
“I believe you have articulated this, yes.”
“So, why should I not do the same to you?”
“I…I beg your pa—”
“Pitry, you are a member of the prime minister’s personal staff,” says Mulaghesh. “You’re not her chief of staff or anything, but you’re not just some damn clerk. And Shara Komayd would not send a member of her personal damn staff all the way out to Javrat to tell me my pension’s getting reevaluated. That’s why they invented the postal service. So why don’t you stop dancing around and tell me what’s really going on?”
Pitry takes a slow breath and nods. “It is quite possible that…that if you were to do this touring shuffle, it would provide an excellent cover story for another operation.”
“Ah. I see.” Mulaghesh screws up her mouth and loudly sucks her teeth. “And who would be performing this operation?”
Pitry stares very hard at the paper on the counter, as if somewhere in its figures he might stumble upon instructions on how to escape this awkward situation.
“Pitry?”
“You, General,” he says. “This operation would be performed by you.”
“Yeah,” says Mulaghesh. “Shit.”
***
“I mean, damn it all, Pitry,” snarls Mulaghesh. Her wooden hand makes a thunk as she brings both hands down on the countertop. “That’s some dirty pool right there, holding an officer’s pension hostage to make them go off and get themselves shot.”
“I am sympathetic to your position, General. But the nature of the oper—”