Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

Tseya had noticed, not that he had made any effort to hide his reaction. “You think this is extravagant, don’t you? Personally, I find the meditations for the remembrances much more pleasant when I can do them in beautiful surroundings.” Moth personnel were exempt from observing the remembrances while in transit, but some people insisted anyway.

Brezan considered this. “I suppose I could get the grid to image me something pretty,” he said, “but I can’t see why I would want to. It would be too distracting.”

“And blank walls aren’t distracting?”

Had they just passed a waterbird with wise eyes? “I’m used to them,” Brezan said. He’d been raised on a station that didn’t believe in pretending to be a miniature planet. It had had parks, but none as lavish as this garden.

“Suit yourself.”

Thankfully, they soon arrived at his assigned quarters. Small potted trees stood to either side of the door. Brezan had expected to be deposited in some small, soothing, out-of-the-way room. He hadn’t reckoned on Andan notions of ‘small’ or ‘out-of-the-way.’

The room was a suite like the one General Khiruev had had on the Hierarchy of Feasts , and which that prick Jedao would have kicked her out of. Brezan hoped this suite wasn’t bigger, but it sure as hell looked like it. For guests of state, he assumed. Thoughtfully, Tseya had decorated the receiving room with an ink painting of an ashhawk clutching arrows in its talons. General Andan Zhe Navo, who had served with such distinction among the Kel, was supposed to have been an archer as well as everything else. Not a subtle reminder, but it didn’t bother him.

The servitor discreetly set his duffel bag down, then withdrew. Tseya paid it no heed. “I’ll give you an hour to settle in,” Tseya said, as if the walk had been strenuous. “Join me for lunch when you’re ready. One of the servitors will be on call in case. Failing that, you can’t go wrong by following the yellow flowers.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. He’d noticed the flowers and their different colors, but he hadn’t realized that they were functional as well as decorative. A neat alternative to hanging signs, unless you had one of those rare incurable allergies.

“Oh, and we have every sort of tea you might want to relax with. I mean it. The grid will tell you. Get me to talk you through the alcohol if that’s what you’re after, though. One of my cousins stocked the Orchid and their taste in wines is a little abstruse.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, too,” Brezan said, although his taste in alcohol ran to the stuff you drank primarily to get drunk, and which could hardly be described as ‘abstruse.’

Tseya regarded him questioningly, then murmured an excuse and left. When the door closed, Brezan slumped in relief for all of six seconds. Then he looked around at the wasteful expanse of the receiving room, at the beautifully executed painting. The brushstrokes were neither too loose nor too controlled, which he had found out during calligraphy lessons was harder than it looked. He had a quiet few moments of panic. Any second now a real general was going to show up and kick him out.

Shut up, Brezan told his brain. Kel Command was unpredictable, but they didn’t pull this kind of stunt for laughs. Besides, he couldn’t afford to lose his head. He had to help rescue General Khiruev and the swarm from Jedao.

He spent about twelve minutes unpacking and arranging his belongings. What was he supposed to fill all this space with? Some officers hauled lots of personal items around with them. General Khiruev’s collection of gewgaws. Commander Janaia’s octopus figurines. (She refused to explain why octopuses.) Major-analyst Shuos Igradna’s flutes, most of which weren’t in tune with each other, or possibly anything. For his part, Brezan had left most of his belongings with his parents. He wasn’t sure why he had wanted to split his life in two. The partition had seemed very important when he was young, and then he had never grown out of the habit.

Ruefully, Brezan looked at the one item he had put on the largest table in a vain attempt to make it look less empty. His twin sisters Miuzan and Ganazan had given it to him when he graduated Kel Academy: a miniature orrery. A beautiful piece of work, he had to admit—silver-gold circles and gleaming gears and spinning jeweled planets. When he watched it too long, he could almost hear it singing. All the moons exhibited a shadowfall of feathers, an endless ashen drift. The orrery didn’t correspond to any system any mothgrid he had accessed would admit to. The twins professed ignorance of the matter; he tended to believe them. In his gloomier moments, Brezan thought that the orrery represented some quiet procession of worlds and moons untouched by the hexarchate’s rot—except there was that endless shadowfall, the touch of ashhawk conquest.

He reached for the orrery, then decided to leave it alone. In the meantime, if he was going to rattle around here, he might as well distract himself by considering clothing options. He had taken a protocol class in academy like everyone else, but he’d forgotten most of it. The refresher had been more confusing than anything else.

Brezan sorted through his civilian clothes several times, then shook his head. Fuck it, he’d stick to the uniform. It was, if not necessarily the best option, at least not incorrect. So what if she thought it was boring? If she disdained his attire, he could console himself that he hadn’t designed the damn thing. On impulse, however, he put on two of his rings so that he didn’t feel so damn stiff.

He sat and kicked at the floor, wishing he didn’t feel so intimidated. Dealing with another Kel officer would have been one thing. There he knew what to do. But here? Tseya was running the operation, and she wouldn’t consider him reliable if he was scared off by a show of (say) fancy cutlery.

Be fair, he told himself. So far Tseya had been perfectly civil. As long as they had to work together, he owed her the same.

Brezan asked the grid how long it would take him to reach wherever it was that Tseya wanted to meet for lunch. He added eighteen minutes to the answer just in case. Then he fidgeted until it was time to set out. He wondered how hard it would be to get lost. Too bad he hadn’t brought anything to draw a map on, not that maps helped with variable layout on a potential hostile— Stop that.

As it turned out, the yellow flowers helpfully leaned over on their thornless stems to point the way whenever he approached. Brezan supposed some Nirai lab had received a great deal of money to get them to do that. He passed some more long-necked birds, usually but not always white, some with fanciful colored crests. They seemed unconcerned about his presence. He could only assume that no one had told them how many Kel enjoyed hunting. Brezan had never tried it, mainly due to squeamishness. Maybe the birds sensed they had nothing to fear from him.

I am such a stationer, Brezan thought, and hurried on, ignoring the sudden unsettling trill of frogs. He even managed to hurry past the carp. He was almost but not entirely certain it was the same pond that Tseya had led him past earlier.

The bewildering garden path and its accommodating yellow flowers led to a more normal corridor and an open archway hung about with curtains. “Come in,” Tseya called out.

Eleven minutes early, not too bad. Brezan had to keep himself from glancing back at the last yellow flower to see if it now pointed in a different direction. Bracing himself, he stepped into the room. To his surprise, the decor was restrained. Of note was a single vase in the corner half as tall as he was, some kind of celadon. Food awaited them on a low table. Tseya was already seated on the floor. Across from her was a blue cushion for him. And, interesting touch, at the center of the table was a container full of toothpicks. Andan humor?