Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

One of the three birds made an alarming rattling sound and tilted its head almost all the way sideways to peer at Brezan when he failed to dispense another treat. Brezan was of the opinion that necks, no matter how long and slender and graceful, shouldn’t be allowed to corkscrew like that. “Seriously, we should be monitoring the situation ourselves,” he said to Tseya. He tried not to think about how much the bird’s beak resembled a spear.

Tseya was dangling her bare feet in a tiny creek, apparently unconcerned that her toes might get nibbled off. Today she wore her hair in braids, which tumbled down over her crocheted silk shawl. “They made me read up on a few Kel battles when I was in academy,” Tseya said placidly. “Some of them go on longer than our most interminable dinner parties. The two swarms haven’t even bannered at each other yet. I’d say there’s no sense getting wound up, except as far as I can tell, you’re always wound up.”

Brezan glowered at her. The bird was looking sadly at him instead of picking on the more accommodating target, having clearly been trained to harass innocent Kel. He fished another treat out from the container and held it out gingerly. With great delicacy, the bird plucked the morsel from his grasp and swallowed it.

“I think you’re more scared of a tame crane than you are of Jedao,” Tseya added. “Isn’t that backwards?”

Brezan glanced at her sidelong but saw only honest inquiry in her expression. “Better the enemy you know?” he said. “Although I hadn’t realized just how much Kel Academy had left out about him.”

During their journey, Tseya had assiduously studied their target. They had viewed a number of the records together. At Kel Academy, Brezan had become familiar with the notorious bits, such as Hellspin Fortress and Heptarch Shuos Khiaz signing Jedao over to Kel Command, repudiating him utterly. One video had even shown him being awarded some medal, very discomfiting. That had happened nearly a decade before the massacre.

As Brezan had learned, these records accounted for a fraction of the available material. For instance, Tseya had dug up a clip of some state dinner where they seated Jedao next to a Liozh poet who took a dim view of his sister’s verses. Brezan had had no idea that Jedao ever had a sister, let alone one who was a poet. Irrelevantly, he wondered if she had ever annoyed Jedao as much as Miuzan annoyed him. Tseya had also found a note Jedao had written to one of his lovers, a magistrate. The letter was brief and formal, and concerned a keycard. Brezan would have considered the phrasing terribly cold, except Tseya had explained to him that this was what protocol expected back then. Even so, Brezan hated thinking of Jedao as a living man rather than an overpowered game piece. It was too disturbing thinking that someone would knowingly do the things Jedao had done.

Tseya was looking contemplative. “There’s a lot on the Immolation Fox,” she said, “and only so much of it was reasonably expected to be relevant to a Kel officer, I imagine. It’s only a pity that the most useful piece is missing.”

The question of what had caused Jedao’s madness. “I doubt he was ever crazy,” Brezan said, remembering Jedao standing there in the body he had stolen, perfectly relaxed.

“Well,” Tseya said, “I wish I could tell you that I hope to figure it out, but if they couldn’t get anything out of him back then, my chances aren’t better. Damnable Shuos.”

Brezan fed the second bird a treat. It bobbed its head almost as though in thanks. “Don’t these pets of yours ever fatten up?” he demanded. They showed no signs of diminished appetite.

Tseya laughed helplessly. “You’re hopeless. Since my plan to relax you is a dismal failure, why don’t we try something else? We can sit in the command center and depress ourselves with what we’re up against by reviewing some of Jedao’s old duels.”

“Sure, rub it in,” Brezan said. He’d told her at some point that Miuzan always thrashed him at the sport. On the bright side, being in the command center beat being pestered by unnaturally ribbony birds. “Well, since you offered, sure.”

Tseya flung a last treat toward two artistically entwined potted trees. The birds strode after it. “Come on,” she said.

Brezan found it alarming that Tseya went around everywhere in her bare feet. It was as though, having made the obligatory show of being an Andan, she no longer felt she had to keep up appearances. When he mentioned this, she only smiled and said, “The point of protocol is to make an impression, one way or another. Maybe I’m lulling you into a false sense of security?”

Her words reminded Brezan that when most people worried about being stabbed in the back, tangled up in an intrigue, or otherwise outmaneuvered, they didn’t just worry about the Shuos. If they had any sense, they also kept an eye on the Andan. “I’m the least useful Kel general in history if you’re looking for a pawn on the cheap,” Brezan said. “And if you’re bored, well, you’re already bedding me.”

Tseya snorted, but didn’t respond to the jab.

They entered the command center with its aquarium. The terminals were bright with status reports. As she sat, Tseya said carelessly, “I’m sure you could kill me pretty easily if you had to.”

Brezan stiffened. “Don’t,” he said. “That’s not funny.”

Tseya opened her mouth, saw his face, closed her mouth. “What’s your family like, Brezan?” she said out of nowhere.

“My what?” He glanced over a status report because it was something he understood and right now he needed that. Unluckily for him, the reports revealed nothing more untoward than swarms maneuvering. The Swanknot swarm seemed disinclined to chase the Hafn, but who knew what baroque plan Jedao was executing. If it meant less chasing, he was all for it.

“Your family.” Tseya had her hands on her knees and was leaning slightly forward.

He wondered why it mattered to her. I am not devious enough for this assignment, Brezan thought. “I’m sure we’d bore you,” he said, especially since she had to have access to all the juicy bits already. “My oldest father was retired from active service by the time I was old enough to be sentient, although my younger two fathers still did most of the parental work. One of them restores antique guns, which explains his partnering with a Kel. The other does paper-cut illustrations for children’s books. I once got yelled at for ruining his best pair of scissors.”

He had told her about his siblings before, but she was still looking at him expectantly. “My oldest sister is Keryezan. I hardly see her anymore, and I didn’t see a whole lot of her growing up, either, which automatically made her more appealing than the twins. She’s rather older and she has two kids. I think she was planning on a third. As for the twins, Miuzan is the one who never lets anything rest. I could have got on with Ganazan by herself, she’s pretty easygoing, but she was always on Miuzan’s side by default.”

Tseya continued to say nothing. Feeling hounded, Brezan said, “We fought over stupid things like who had to clean the guns and who chose what dramas to watch together. My oldest father believed that we should all watch them together, no idea why. Honestly, we’re very ordinary. It’s just me who’s the disgrace. If crashhawks were so easy to predict, I—I’d never have made it into Kel Academy at all.”

Come to that, he had no idea what, if anything, Kel Command had told his parents. He hadn’t dared to ask. If he was lucky, Kel Command had said nothing. His family had probably assumed he was dead or under Jedao’s control. The truth wasn’t much better.

“Your family sounds very different from mine,” Tseya said. “Please don’t think all Andan families are about poison and platitudes. Some are and some aren’t.”