Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

There came a count of four, and Miuzan lunged. Brezan parried too late. It would have made no difference anyway. Miuzan’s sword flared up and the flames became dark-bright wings. The blade itself stretched out into an ashhawk’s head and sinuous neck.

Brezan swore and ducked. The ashhawk with its vicious raptor’s beak passed harmlessly through him. The flames roared up around him, heatless despite the stench of roasting flesh.

Miuzan was burning red and gold. Her hair had come loose from its braid and was whipping around her head. Blackened sheets of skin were already peeling loose from her face, making a dry crackling sound. Bone showed white at her skull and knuckles. “Oh Brezan,” she said, her voice entirely normal in spite of all this, “you’ll never be formation fuel at this rate.”

“Who the everliving fuck joins the Kel with the intent of becoming formation fuel?” Brezan shouted at her. Miuzan might be infuriating, but she was still his older sister. She had taught him pattern-stones and swordplay and how to take apart and reassemble every single one of the family’s guns, not to mention how to bake amazing honey-ginger cookies. He didn’t want her to die in a suicide formation or to an enemy bullet or, for that matter, by tripping down the stairs. He just wanted her to stop treating him like he was still the gawky eight-year-old who kept following her and Ganazan around hoping they would play forts with him.

Miuzan might have responded, but Brezan couldn’t hear her over the roaring of the fire. He developed a crazed notion that if he burned himself too, he would be able to follow her so he could shake some answers out of her. Try as he might, however, the flames took no notice of him. He was wearing his black gloves now—funny how that had happened. Unfortunately, it made no difference.

The scrying continued in this vein for quite some time. Back on the bench, Brezan hunched over and shook with hunger. The Rahal might be used to fasting, but he still hadn’t recovered from whatever they had botched putting him in the sleeper. A servitor brought him water. He choked it down. It tasted like it was heavy with soot.

The Rahal took their sweet time working their way to the topic of Jedao. In the interrogation, Jedao didn’t appear as a womanform, like Brezan himself, but as he had in the archival videos, a lean, slightly short man. His uniform was in full formal with the old-fashioned red-and-gold braid of a seconded Shuos officer, making Brezan feel underdressed. Jedao had the same tilted smile, however. He was playing pattern-stones with Brezan. In the back of his mind, Brezan resolved never to play another board game unless someone ordered him to. The stones shifted position each time Brezan blinked. Behind him, although he didn’t dare glance over his shoulder, he heard distant shrieks and sobs.

Jedao had a revolver in his left hand. He wore no gloves, fingerless or otherwise, which Brezan took to mean that he was playing for keeps. Each time Brezan placed a black stone—naturally he was the weaker player—Jedao shot one of his fingers off. The bullets didn’t do any damage to the board or its shifting array of stones, neat trick, although Brezan flinched at the ricochets.

Even though this was a scrying and not the real thing, the pain was riotous. The real thing might have been preferable. Then he’d have had a chance of passing out.

Brezan tried to breathe steadily. Pretend this is a remembrance, he told himself. Did that ever console heretics? He had to defeat the fucking ninefox general, but he only had four fingers left. He placed a stone. Jedao reloaded and fired without looking. His aim was impeccable.

Three fingers left. Then two. Then one, with which Brezan managed by scooping the stone between his remaining finger and left palm. At last Brezan had no fingers at all, just a set of bleeding stumps.

Jedao cocked an eyebrow at him. “What now?” he said.

“I am going to stop you if it kills me,” Brezan said, wishing he had a better gift for futile last words, especially since, with the Rahal, he had an audience.

He bent over to pick up one last stone with his teeth—

Everything after that hurt even worse, which he hadn’t thought possible. Eventually the Rahal hex went away. For a while he didn’t realize it. He forced down more water when they offered it. The gnawing pain at the pit of his stomach wouldn’t go away, but it felt like it was happening to someone else. Being someone else sounded like an excellent career move right now.

“I am Kel,” Brezan whispered to the wall when he was sure no one was around. He couldn’t hear his own voice. The words scraped his throat raw.

Time passed. The taste of ashes receded. He shivered constantly. But he had to endure. The Kel might require more information from him. He needed to be in a fit state to give it to them. With any luck, they wouldn’t ask too late for it to stop Jedao.

Brezan thought of the Kel who had been in the command center when Jedao took over, training their weapons on him. He thought of General Khiruev, and the first time they had met. Brezan had been surprised to be tapped for Khiruev’s staff after his predecessor developed a rare medical condition, and not sure he liked what it implied. The general had a reputation for unconventional thinking, not to mention flouting Kel Command’s wishes, which could be good or bad, depending.

During the first meeting, the general had asked him how he was settling in, to which Brezan made the only possible tactful response. (He did occasionally find his way to tact.) Khiruev had then said, unexpectedly, I hope you help me never to forget that it’s people that we send out to die. She was looking at a casualty list from the recent battle. It wasn’t the sort of confidence you’d expect as a newcomer, but he’d seen the bleakness in the general’s eyes and resolved to do what he could.

A sane person might be forgiven for not feeling a whole lot of affection for Kel Command at this point, but the fate of Khiruev and his swarm might depend on Brezan’s information, and Kel Command wasn’t why Brezan had become a hawk anyway. Indeed, Kel Command was a great argument for avoiding the Kel. Family wasn’t the reason, despite what Brezan had told Shuos Zehun in academy, although family had something to do with it. No: it was that the hexarchate was a terrible place to live, but it would be an even worse one if no one with a conscience consented to serve it.

You couldn’t pull the hexarchate apart and exchange it for something better. The fact that the heretics always lost was proof of that. So you had to do the next best thing, the only thing left: serve, and hope that serving honorably made some small difference.

Now, as the door to the antechamber slid open, Brezan staggered to his feet and prepared to bow. The person standing there was a rattled-looking Kel corporal. “Sir,” Brezan said, saluting instead.

The corporal opened the cell’s door and shut off the restraints. “Come with me, soldier,” he said.

Brezan wished he could ask what was going on, but he might as well enjoy blissful ignorance while it lasted, not to mention the odd sensation of being able to move freely. It was a minor miracle that he could walk fast enough to keep up.

They didn’t have far to go. The corporal brought him to an oversized conference room with a secured terminal, the Kel kind that had a nook of its own in the wall. “I’ll be right outside, soldier,” the corporal said. “Come out when they’re done with you.”

The light on the terminal indicated that someone wanted to talk, and the subdisplay had a summons with his name on it. Well, he couldn’t get more presentable, so he might as well approach the terminal. He saw his signifier like a dark, broken ghost in the golden metal. “Kel Brezan reporting as ordered,” he said, saluting preemptively. It only occurred to him too late to wonder if he should have changed his uniform into full formal.