Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

Sfenni pulled out a decanter, then two snifters. “Sorry, my collection of brandies is atrocious,” he said, as if Brezan cared, “but my supply has dried up of late.” With fussy courtesy, he poured for them both.

Brezan took the tiniest sip that could still be construed as polite and forced himself to smile. Overpriced brandy or not, he couldn’t tell, and anyway it didn’t matter. He needed this despicable man. Sfenni would come to the point in his own time.

“I’m not an unpatriotic citizen,” Sfenni said. It had been so long since Brezan had heard ‘unpatriotic’ without an expletive attached to it (or ‘patriotic,’ for that matter) that he almost burst into laughter, and he only just caught himself in time. “But the administration of Minner facilities requires more funding than we’re usually able to wheedle out of regional headquarters.” He let the statement hang there.

‘Administration of Minner facilities,’ his ass. More like every ill-gotten mark that Sfenni received in bribes went into cultivating that garden of books. Brezan didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or lunge across the desk. Kel Command wouldn’t care that much about a transgression like bribery, under the circumstances, especially if he reported it before they uncovered it independently. And especially if he had a good excuse, which he did. Brezan cared fuck-all about Shuos opinions on the matter. But Brezan did very much care about having to compromise his principles like this, even when the need was so great.

Get over yourself, Brezan told himself. No one cares about your petty irrelevant scruples.

But sometimes—sometimes he wished someone did.

In the meantime, his higher duty had not changed.

“Since we’re being so delightfully candid,” Brezan said, “I have funds, yes.” Unlike General Khiruev, he didn’t go on leave and shop for staggeringly overpriced antique trinkets. Brezan’s vices were simpler and less expensive: alcohol (just not peach brandy), the obligatory spot of dueling, and the occasional cooking class, because sometimes the best way to understand people was through their food. All this meant that he was reasonably well-off.

“Then an accommodation is possible—?” Sfenni said.

“I know how to make a transfer,” Brezan said. “I don’t know how to keep the transaction from being traced.” Not completely true. He’d learned odd tricks from the people he talked to. He just thought those tricks wouldn’t fool a full-on audit.

“I can instruct you,” Sfenni said. “But an honest man like myself—”

At the end of this whole unreal interlude, Brezan was either going to emerge as the hexarchate’s best actor, or he was going to spontaneously self-combust.

“—needs to take precautions.” Sfenni’s eyes crinkled suddenly. “And in case you’re thinking that an honest Kel would rather take precautions of his own, I assure you that this will go more smoothly if we come to our agreement peaceably.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined otherwise,” Brezan said.

Sfenni passed a tablet to him. He named a sum.

Brezan didn’t bother to hide his contempt. “Fine.”

As promised, Sfenni’s instructions were easy to follow. Brezan made note of the fancy accounting tricks. They weren’t far off what he’d already known.

“Excellent,” Sfenni said. “We’ll get you settled while that goes through. For our mutual protection, you understand. Do you want me to have more brandy sent up to you while you wait?”

Tempting to make Sfenni waste the stuff, but... “That won’t be necessary,” Brezan said as diplomatically as he could manage. His parents would have been proud of him.

Sfenni tapped out a summons on his terminal. After an agonizing wait, the tasseled woman appeared again. “Hi there,” she said with no sign of diminished cheer. “What do you have for me now, Sfenni?”

“Take our guest somewhere comfortable to wait,” Sfenni said. “Make sure he’s fed, hydrated, the usual. I absolutely must deal with that damnable Vidona envoy now.”

“Sure thing,” the woman said, and dimpled at Brezan.

Fuck, he hoped she wasn’t flirting with him. Not because she didn’t attract him, but because she did, and right now he desperately needed fewer distractions in his life. Thankfully, the woman left it at that.

They took the lift again, to an entirely different level. To distract himself from his misgivings, he cataloged the decor. Whoever had decorated this level liked monochromatic paintings of ice planets bordered by dizzying fractal swirls. Nice work: Brezan wasn’t artistic himself, but his youngest father was a children’s illustrator with a chronic inability to look at artwork without vivisecting it.

By the time they arrived at the waiting room, it had already been set up with a tray of little dishes, everything from a bowl of noodles topped with half a boiled egg to platters of sliced fruit. Even a shelf of books that Brezan had no intention of touching. The room was overwhelmingly blue-and-cream, so soothing that Brezan’s shoulder blades itched.

“And that’s that,” the woman said. “Anything I can provide to make this less aggravating?” She dimpled again, hopefully.

Tempting, but—“No, I’m fine,” Brezan said. His dilemma wasn’t her fault.

“All right, then. I’ll fetch you later.”

Brezan had just enough time to sag into a damnably comfortable chair and wonder what it would be like to go through life so blithely. Then, appallingly, he fell asleep. He woke up an indeterminate amount of time later with a horrible crick in his neck. The remnants of the peach brandy tasted foul, although he had scarcely touched it. And the tasseled woman was nowhere in sight.

Deliberately, Brezan hauled himself up, stalked over to the wall, and began writing on it with his finger:

FOXES ARE COMPLETELY TRUSTWORTHY

over and over again, like a children’s writing lesson. Could handwriting be sarcastic?

The waiting room opened into a compact but complete bathroom. He knew what this implied about how long they planned to stash him here. He demanded to talk to someone in charge. This didn’t work, but he hadn’t expected it to.

Resigned, he ate the food. Pure military practicality. Besides, that milk-and-carrot pudding was tasty. He’d have to try to duplicate it if he ever got out of here, which was looking increasingly unlikely.

More waiting. More food trays, always deposited through a slit that looked like it would guillotine his hands if he put one in. More sleeping in chairs, in spite of his resolution to do better. His sergeant back in academy would have been ashamed of him. The next time he saw General Khiruev, he swore he would apologize for ever thinking of watch repair as a frivolous hobby and ask for engineering lessons.

Finally, scant moments before he tried ramming the door with his shoulder, the kind of stupid stunt even a Kel would only do in a Kel joke when trapped in a Shuos building, the tasseled woman showed up.

“There you are,” she said, as if she hadn’t been the one to deposit him here. “Let’s go!”

She might have made small talk on the way to Sfenni’s office. Brezan responded with distracted grunts. Still, he envied her the ability to be unoffended by his terrible manners.

“Sfenni,” the woman said once they’d made it to the office with its menagerie of books. “Here he is. Enjoy!”

Her teasing voice would have made Brezan smile grudgingly at her on another day, but not today.

“There’s been a complication,” Sfenni said as soon as the door shut behind Brezan.

Brezan’s heart sank. Sfenni wanted another bribe, the wormfucker. Which could be managed. That wasn’t an issue in itself, since at this rate he was going to die of exasperation before retirement became pressing. But what guarantee did he have that Sfenni wouldn’t string this out until Brezan was broke, and all without ever delivering the promised terminal access?