Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

He would have risen to salute her anyway. She shook her head. He settled for the least half-assed sitting salute he could manage.

“Kel Brezan,” she said, “until the circumstances that led to the dismissal of yourself and the Swanknot swarm’s seconded personnel are understood, it is necessary for your rank to be suspended.”

Standard procedure. He had divined as much from the mode of address. The Kel interrogators would speak to him next. Formation instinct would get them the best results if his rank didn’t get in the way. “Understood, sir,” he rasped.

“Tell me something, soldier. Why seek rescue from the Shuos?”

He had known this was going to be a sticking point. This wouldn’t win him any friends, but he had accepted that when he decided on his course of action. He summarized his line of reasoning.

“In other words,” the colonel said, “General Jedao offloaded personnel he couldn’t control with formation instinct, and you were one of them.”

“Yes, sir,” Brezan said. The words cut his throat like glass. “I was the only Kel eyewitness to the takeover to get out.” He had heard nothing of the Doctrine officer. It was possible that they had died of medical complications.

The colonel’s eyes were frosty. “You have just become someone else’s problem, soldier. Enjoy the rest you get now. You won’t be getting much more of it.”

“Sir,” Brezan said dully. He knew what the Kel did to crashhawks. At best they would revoke his commission and outprocess him. At worst they would execute him. But he had seen no other way to fulfill his duty.

Brezan spent a long time alone after that, observing remembrances with meditations whenever the dead-sounding voice over the announcement system reminded him to. Presumably they were sending for Rahal or Vidona, since Kel interrogators hated dealing with crashhawks, as if they were contagious. A servitor brought him food at intervals, never more than a little tepid rice and water. He was starting to wish he’d taken more advantage of Shuos Sfenni’s hospitality while he’d had the chance. Brezan made a game of trying to tell the servitors apart. Either it was a different servitor each time, or they modified themselves for the hell of it.

In spite of himself, Brezan wished for a Vidona. He didn’t like the Vidona any more than any sensible person did, but he had endured the straightforward application of pain before. Heretic terrorists had captured a transport when he was a captain. They hadn’t held the captives long before the Kel freed them, but to this day Brezan remembered the hot filaments of pain in his feet and face, the recuperation afterward. They’d had to regrow one of his eyes. The Vidona could only torture you. The Rahal could scry your signifier, including signifier reactions to specific questions. Not as direct as lie detection, or anywhere near mindreading (although there were rumors), but a skilled practitioner could trick the truth out of you.

When the hex of Rahal inquisitors arrived thirteen days after he was taken into custody, he knew they were taking his warning seriously. He’d started to wonder. He was pacing at the time, if you could call it that when he was moving agonizingly slowly both due to his lingering sleeper-recovery and the spider restraints, even on a relaxed setting. It took him a moment to register the hex’s presence. The plain robes, gray with bronze hems, were impossible to mistake, the wolf equivalent of full formal. The Rahal did their uniforms backwards, wearing more ornate clothing on more casual occasions.

The head inquisitor was a woman with curly hair and an imperturbable expression. All six wolves’ eyes sheened bronze, indicating that they had activated scrying. They murmured a greeting in an archaic form of the high language.

Brezan fought down the lump of fear that threatened to choke him and gave them a formal bow as best as the restraints permitted, which wasn’t very. The Rahal had a reputation for being fussy about protocol, but they also prided themselves on rationality. They wouldn’t blame him for something that wasn’t under his control.

The head inquisitor acknowledged the bow with a nod, which meant she had decided not to take offense. “Kel,” she said, “I am Inquisitor Rahal Hwan. We are here to determine the truth of your claims.” She spoke a very pure form of the high language.

“I’ll do my best not to get in your way, Inquisitor,” Brezan said, as if he could withstand a full hex.

“You may as well be seated,” Hwan said. “This will take a while.”

Brezan dragged himself to the bench and sat. His legs wobbled, but damned if he was going to show it. He looked up, determined to meet Hwan’s eyes even if it wasn’t strictly necessary, and fell sideways through a fissure in his head.

Part of him was sitting on the bench. The rest of him was in his parents’ apartment on Irissa Station, in the dreamspace triggered by Hwan’s first question. He wondered fleetingly what it had been before his attention was caught by the walls. They looked like they’d been redone in gun components caulked in something that gleamed viscously. Why had his three fathers done that?

Brezan checked for his oldest sister Keryezan at her favorite reading spot by the lamp with the painting of the grasshoppers. She wasn’t there, nor were her two children. Keryezan was the only one of his sisters he got along with, and he enjoyed cooking indulgent dishes for the kids.

He turned around and his other sisters, the twins Miuzan and Ganazan, sat playing pattern-stones with their youngest father’s set. Ganazan, who wore her hair pinned back from her face, had somehow talked Miuzan into giving her a three-stone handicap. Miuzan categorically hated giving people handicaps. Brezan had never gotten her to give him one growing up despite the fact that she was six years older than he was.

Both the twins were in uniform. Ganazan served as a clerk on a boxmoth, which she considered superior to running around in a combat moth. Logistics had always appealed to her. Miuzan was a colonel on General Inesser’s staff and couldn’t be made to shut up about it.

Brezan opened his mouth and said something, he wasn’t sure what. It didn’t matter. Both his sisters gave no sign of having heard him. He inspected his hands. No black gloves. No uniform, either, just sober brown civilian’s clothing.

Another fissure opened, and he fell through again. He and Miuzan stood in a dueling hall that stretched out so far to either side that the ends curved away. Miuzan’s calendrical sword was bright in her hand, numbers glowing red with white sparks. She had always been good at dueling. As a child, Brezan had loved to watch her practice her forms, admiring the ferocity of her discipline.

Brezan activated his own sword to salute her. The blade wasn’t its usual sullen blue, but red shading to yellow. Foxes, he thought in aggravation. It was tempting to blame Shuos Zehun. In all fairness, however, Zehun hadn’t hanged him. They had merely tossed him a nice long rope.

“You’re going to lose, little brother,” Miuzan said with her usual superiority. “But you’re getting better, I’ll give you that.”

Brezan frequently had fantasies of shoving Miuzan in a cloisonné box and sending her to the Andan so they could teach her to be less condescending or, at least, less obvious about it. The hell of it was, she seemed to be unaware of how much she made his teeth ache. He had long ago given up on ever having her approve of him; he’d settle for getting her to shut up.

“I’m a better shot than you are,” Brezan said, although it was a mistake to make any rejoinder at all.

She eyed him critically. “Yes, that will come in handy if you want to be stuck in the infantry for the rest of your life.”