Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

Jedao smiled at her. “You’re reckoning this backwards.”

She’d been afraid of that. Why alienate the populace by opening fire on them when Jedao could get the invaders to do it for him?

“It would be inconvenient for them to go home after getting their noses bloodied,” Jedao said. “They need an incentive to stay in the game. I’m giving them one. Moreover, if the Hafn are still hanging around making a nuisance of themselves, the hexarchate’s citizens will have a bright blazing excuse to think about just what protection the existing regime is offering them, and what the alternatives might be.”

Khiruev wasn’t fooled by Jedao’s casual tone. He was gambling a lot on this. “It’s my turn to be the pragmatic one,” she said. “You have only the one swarm. There are Vidona in every settlement of any size. Unless you can magically disappear all the Vidona?”

“The Vidona aren’t the biggest problem. When you get right down to it, the Vidona have a lot of toys”—Jedao’s voice dipped sardonically—“but they hardly outnumber the mass of citizens. Sufficiently motivated cadres of insurrectionists could maneuver around them, as I’m sure you realize. The biggest problem is that everyone’s too afraid to try.”

Khiruev’s mouth went dry. She had no rejoinder to the charge of cowardice because it was true.

Jedao’s tilted smile flicked at her: he was waiting for the response.

Khiruev said, after a pause of several seconds, “A lot of people will die if it works. But I imagine you have it all calculated out.”

She hadn’t meant it as a dig at Jedao’s math difficulties. But Jedao turned his hand palm-up to acknowledge the hit.

Kel Command had reprimanded Khiruev for organizing guerrilla warfare during the Wicker’s End campaign. They didn’t like the possibility of citizens getting it into their heads that techniques that bought time against entrenched heretics could be turned against their legitimate masters. Of course, at some point you had to ask yourself how much legitimacy any government had that feared dissension within more than invasion from without, but if you had any desire for a quiet life, you kept those thoughts inside your skull where the Vidona couldn’t see them.

“As much as I usually lament people’s obsession with numbers,” Jedao said, “in this instance you’re correct. But is it better to let people die at random because we flinch from anticipating the casualties, or to go into battle knowing exactly how many people we’re putting into harm’s way?”

“I don’t contest this,” Khiruev said. “I can’t figure out your angle, though.”

Jedao laughed suddenly. “The fact that a Kel general is hoping that I have a reasonable plan is cause for optimism, in its way.”

“Am I mistaken, sir?”

“The plan isn’t reasonable,” Jedao said, entirely too cavalierly. “But it has good odds. As Devenay would tell you, history forgives the winner a lot of things.”

Khiruev thought hard before she asked the next question. “Do you expect forgiveness?”

Next to the wall, the mothform and one of the lizardforms, speaking to each other in flashes of light, paused. Khiruev paid them no heed.

A shadow passed through Jedao’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I lie to myself about a lot of things, but that’s not one of them. We’re long past that point.”

MOROISH NIJA WAS hot beneath her coat and knitted dress. The coat was slightly tight at the shoulders. Ordinarily she preferred more vivid shades of rose, but she hadn’t had time to be picky. Right now she was stuck inside a store full of shawls she couldn’t have afforded if she wanted to, although that pale green one with the tassels would complement the coat nicely.

Nija had spent her entire life on the world of Bonepyre, and even then she had never before left the City of Hollow Processions, where she had been born, except on a couple of school trips. Terrible irony: she was supposed to have caught a shuttle off-planet, an adventure she’d longed for all her life, and instead she’d fled back home. If anyone recognized her, they wouldn’t send her to school, where her classmates were sitting that exam in discrete mathematics she hadn’t pretended to study for, or to her parents, who were probably dead. They’d send her straight to the Vidona, as they’d done with all the other Mwennin.

She had ducked into the store when the remembrance was about to begin, the Meditation of Needle Tongues. She didn’t know how she had forgotten it, when all her life her elders had emphasized the importance of adhering to the high calendar’s external forms. Even better, a Vidona stood in the store, a man with a disconcerting resemblance to her kindly history teacher. He wasn’t wearing full faction uniform, but the green-and-bronze sash said all that needed saying.

Mostly Nija could hear people’s breathing and the rapid thudding of her own heart. It seemed impossible that the Vidona couldn’t hear it, too, despite being on the other side of the room looking bored with the proceedings. It seemed equally impossible to concentrate on the official litany being read in the unquiet silence. Nija settled instead on composing mental critiques of the shawls. The one right in front of her was a dead loss, she’d never cared for that style of lace, but the one beside it had promise. She wouldn’t mind wearing something with that touch of sparkle on a date. Not that she’d ever owned anything nice enough to go with it.

Finally the remembrance ended. Nija lingered in the store a little longer, then headed out into the street with its mingled smell of spice and damp earth and expensive perfumes. Trees were planted at precise intervals. Servitors were busy clearing away leaves and twigs from the walkways. The air was humid, the sky overcast, but she didn’t think it would rain again so soon. Still, maybe she should pick up an umbrella. She clenched her jaw thinking of her grandfather’s absurd oversized umbrella, the blue one with the stripes. The Vidona had probably tossed it in the recycler with everything else.

Nija’s attention was brought unpleasantly back to the present when she realized a brown woman in cream robes and an unflattering profusion of pearls was following her. She was wondering what to do about it when the woman lengthened her stride, then stooped and cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” the woman called out to Nija. The woman straightened, holding out a handkerchief. “Did you drop this?”

Nija’s demurral died in her throat when she looked at the handkerchief, an elegant affair in matching cream silk. For a second, words appeared in red light upon the handkerchief. Words in Mwen-dal, her native tongue: Come with me. Beneath the words was the Shuos eye in yellow.

She almost bolted, but it was too late already. Although the street was by no means crowded, there were enough shoppers and people sipping tea outdoors or taking strolls that someone would notice and alert the authorities, assuming the authorities weren’t already paying attention. Besides, if the woman was a genuine Shuos, she could drop Nija unconscious with a flick of her fingers.

“Thank you,” Nija said, accepting the handkerchief with a forced smile.

“I’m Trenthe Unara,” the woman said. She fell in beside Nija. “Do you know where’s a good place to get flowers around here?”

Why couldn’t she look it up the way normal people did? Still, Nija had passed an extravagant florist earlier today. She tried not to wonder what a Shuos needed with flowers. “I’ll show you the nearest one I know,” she said, feeling hopelessly stilted.