Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

FOXES ARE COMPLETELY TRUSTWORTHY, indeed.

“It’s your turn to listen,” Brezan said coldly, without bothering to sit, no matter how much his legs would have appreciated it. Out of habit, he stuck to the polite forms of verbs, and the more-or-less polite pronouns. “I bet you know to the hundredth how much I have left in my primary account, and my obligatory health and retirement accounts, and my independent investments, and everybloodything else. Just clean it all out and buy yourself a few libraries, or hell, hire yourself a planet of bookbinders. I need to get that warning out. Name your price. The real one this time.”

Sfenni didn’t blink at this outburst. But then, who knew how many just like it he had weathered? Instead, matter-of-fact, he slid his tablet across the desk. “I know you hawks are used to the big, wallopingly fancy terminals that look like ancient shrines from back when people sacrificed chickens to fox spirits,” he said, “but this is a Shuos model, and it is secured.”

The hexarchate’s six-spoked wheel with its faction emblems sheened gold-silver-bronze against the black of the tablet’s display. Sfenni said, “I’ll leave the room so you can make your call. You’ll be monitored in the sense that alarms will go off if you try to set anything on fire—which I don’t recommend, by the way, I’m positive some of that paper is made of weird toxic shit—but otherwise you’ll be left alone. Believe me, don’t believe me, it’s all one to me.”

“Then what do you mean, ‘complication’?” Brezan said, because he couldn’t let well enough alone. What he should have done was snatch up the tablet, although admittedly he expected it to be rigged to zap him. Shuos Sfenni, collector of bribes, gardener of books. What had changed? “I don’t understand.”

“We received word that the Swanknot swarm had been subverted about a month ago,” Sfenni said. “You’ve been out of it for a few weeks.”

Brezan hissed in despair.

“We only found out about your outlandish claim to be a personal agent of Shuos Zehun’s because an analyst was double-checking the usual torrent of nonsense messages to find something especially funny to tell their teammates about. Your story was sufficiently odd that we looked into the matter. We figured we’d better evaluate your motives before dumping you back on the Kel, because it was clear that you’d had some kind of breakdown. Let’s not kid ourselves, Kel Medical’s solution to broken birds is usually to throw them in the stewpot.”

“And—?” Brezan said, flabbergasted.

“Let me guess,” Sfenni said. “You couldn’t get anyone to believe a crashhawk”—Brezan didn’t bother correcting him—”so you played up a glancing connection to Shuos Zehun back in academy in the hopes of getting your warning out. It’s the Immolation Fox, isn’t it?”

The world shuddered dark. “General Jedao,” Brezan said. “Jedao’s made his move and I’m too late.”

“Don’t be like that,” Sfenni said kindly. “Any information you have might yet be useful in putting down the hawkfucker for good. Now, go ahead and make that report. And don’t bother looking for the green pills in the desk unless you’re into foul-tasting rubbish. They’re not real anxiety medications, and something tells me that placebos don’t do you a whit of good.”

THE DAY AFTER the hexarchs’ council, Mikodez skimmed through a pile of reports examining Jedao’s responses to Hafn movements and making educated guesses about what he’d do next. The best one came from an analyst whom Zehun kept trying to fire. Zehun was correct, but the analyst in question came up with the best scenarios. Her latest suggested that Jedao had induced an army of ghosts to possess the swarm and that an assault on the laws of entropy was next. The woman was wasted in intelligence. She should be writing dramas, but Mikodez was too selfish to let her go.

None of the reports had suggested what Mikodez considered to be the obvious next step. Zehun had remarked that he was going to do as he pleased so no one was bothering to dissuade him. In the meantime, Line 3 was blinking bewitchingly at him. He’d instructed Zehun and Istradez not to interrupt him unless the interruption promised first-rate entertainment. Zehun had given him a very tolerant look. Istradez had laughed at him and threatened to pop in partway through to confuse matters.

“All right, I’m ready,” Mikodez told the grid. “Put the call through.”

A woman’s face, framed by a neat bob, appeared on the terminal. Mikodez wasn’t fooled. It looked like Jedao’s body had lost weight since Brevet General Cheris had reported in from her final assignment, not surprising given the circumstances. He considered telling Jedao to feed his stolen body better, although Zehun and Istradez would both have laughed at the thought of him, of all people, lecturing anyone on eating properly. Jedao’s uniform was in full formal, unnecessary but touching.

“Fair day, Jedao,” Mikodez said in a deprecated language. He hoped he was pronouncing it right. It had been a while.

Jedao blinked. “I haven’t heard Shparoi spoken in a very long time, Shuos-zho.” He was speaking the high language with the same Shparoi drawl he’d had when they first met, decades ago, at the black cradle facility.

Mikodez had always suspected that Jedao could shed the accent any time he cared to, based on his language evaluations from academy, but there was no need to press. For that matter, the use of -zho, an archaic honorific reserved for hexarchs (or heptarchs, back when), was pure affectation, a reminder of Jedao’s age. “I thought it would only be polite,” Mikodez said.

“That’s considerate of you, Shuos-zho, but I’m not sure I could speak Shparoi myself anymore. I’ll make the attempt if it pleases you, though.”

“Speak whatever suits you. I’ll figure it out. I make a point of keeping on hand interpreters who speak everything you ever did, even Tlen-Gwa.”

“I have to admit,” Jedao said, “I’m not entirely sure why you requested to speak to me. You’ve got to reckon that I’m not surrendering the swarm to Kel Command. It’s the only leverage I have left.”

Everything up to ‘I’m not surrendering the swarm’ was a nearly verbatim replay of an exchange that Mikodez had had with Jedao thirty-five years ago. If Nirai Kujen had told the truth then, Jedao himself no longer remembered the exchange. Jedao had only used a different word for ‘considerate,’ one less ironic than his original choice: remarkably little drift. For once Mikodez was inclined to believe Kujen, who had had an unhealthy obsession with controlling the contents of a dead man’s memory. There was a chance that Kujen had messed up and Jedao had found time to coach Cheris about the old exchange, or that Jedao himself was messing with him, but Mikodez doubted it.

“No,” Mikodez said, thinking that if he had been shoved into a black box with no one to talk to (but maybe Kujen) for the better part of four centuries, he wouldn’t be eager to go back in, either. “I didn’t expect any such thing.”

“You’re lucky I’m not in the Citadel of Eyes with you,” Jedao said icily. “If you wanted to shoot me, fine. There was no need to massacre my swarm to get at me. Soldiers, technicians, medics—they didn’t deserve to die.”

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” Mikodez said incredulously. “That only works on people with consciences, so both of us are immune.”

Jedao started to speak. Mikodez raised a hand, and Jedao subsided. “I realize you’re insane,” Mikodez said, “but look at the situation rationally. There isn’t a schoolchild anywhere who doesn’t know what you did at Hellspin Fortress. Not to mention your perfect battle record.”