Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

“What could be so urgent?” Mikodez said sarcastically.

Zehun leaned over his terminal and ran a query. “This one you need to hear,” they said. A summary came up, explaining that a message had been transmitted in the clear and in all directions, from a thousand thousand sources, a storm of light. Cheris had sent her calendar and equations, plus a manifesto explaining their purpose. The Rahal were going berserk trying to suppress the information and handle calendrical fluctuations, but it was too late.

“Yes,” Mikodez said, admiring the uselessness of the map showing the scintillating profusion of transmission sources: too many for the human eye to pick out a pattern, and grid analysis wasn’t doing much better. “It was an obvious move. Sometimes the obvious one is the right one. I just hadn’t expected it to be so thoroughly implemented.”

“You made your choice, Mikodez,” Zehun said. “The world doesn’t stop moving forward. We have a crisis to deal with. Maybe after things settle down, we can hole up with some board games and get roaringly drunk, but in the meantime, you have a job to do.”

“Yes,” he said, “and you’ve done yours. Now get out, and fetch that Mwennin girl for me while you’re at it. I won’t be able to concentrate with you hovering over me.”

“What’s hilarious is that you think this is hovering,” Zehun said, with the superior knowledge of someone who has raised five children speaking to a non-parent, but they went.

Mikodez resisted the urge to procrastinate by watering his green onion some more. He’d only rot its roots that way. “Call request to Shuos Jedao on the Hierarchy of Feasts ,” he said. Maybe this time he’d get through. He wondered what emblem that swarm was bannering these days. Deuce of Gears still? Swanknot? The boring temporary emblem for brand-new generals? Some crashhawk confection?

He had time for a quince candy while waiting. The stash in his desk was running low. He’d have to wheedle his staff into resupplying him. For some reason they thought he should restrict his sugar intake.

The Deuce of Gears flashed at him, and Mikodez’s mouth curled. So this was how she wanted it. The emblem was replaced by Cheris’s quizzical face when she accepted the call. “Shuos-zho,” she said, “is this the best time? Either you have a raging crisis or I do, I’m not sure which.”

“Hello, Cheris,” Mikodez said, impressed that her expression didn’t flicker. “I assure you that you want to be talking to me right now.”

“In that case, Shuos-zho,” she said, “we’re both dead people miraculously able to communicate with each other. I had it on good authority that you and the other hexarchs were all assassinated at some meeting. Must have been one hell of a party to get you all in the same place. Was there any good whiskey?”

Mikodez was pretty sure Cheris didn’t share Jedao’s fascination with liquor. “I ordered the strike,” he said, very calmly.

“Nirai-zho believed she spoke to you on the way in, before the ‘malfunction.’ How do you sabotage a shadowmoth, anyway?”

What the hell were Cheris’s sources? This was making his entire intelligence division look bad.

“Was it a double?” she said. Her smile turned knowing. “I remember you like using those, especially after you threw that Khiaz double in my direction. Because I needed more reasons to stay away from a Shuos hexarch.”

“Cheris,” he said, “it’s over. You’ve won. And if you must know, the double that carried out the suicide strike was my younger brother.” Fuck, he didn’t know why he was confessing that to this woman of all people, when he hadn’t wanted to discuss it with his own assistant. But he knew after all, the way he always did, even when he didn’t want to. He needed Cheris to start trusting him. That would only become possible if she believed him capable of vulnerability. A terrible way to use Istradez’s sacrifice, not that that was stopping him.

Something shifted in her eyes: an intimation of shadow, a nuance of color. “I didn’t realize,” she said. “I’m very sorry.” She waited for him to make some acknowledgment, and when he didn’t, went on, “Why would you betray the other hexarchs?”

“Two reasons,” Mikodez said. “First, once I found out about your plan, I realized you had the winning hand. Second, I wish to offer you an alliance with the Shuos.” His smile was hard. “Consider the deaths of my colleagues a gift to you, as a gesture of my sincerity.”

“So you were the one yanking Kel Command’s defenses around. To get the timetables to match up.”

“Yes.”

“Then it wasn’t Hafn who took out those construction yards.” Cheris’s voice had a bite to it, and if he wondered if the outrage was hers or Jedao’s. For a traitor, Jedao had always been a judgmental prick.

“That’s correct,” Mikodez said. “My saboteurs did the job. Don’t think I wouldn’t do it again, despite the death toll. People are already dying in this revolution of yours. Most of our systems would be under martial law if we weren’t, you know, always under martial law. They’re under extra-special Vidona watch now. It’s always been a question of acceptable casualties.”

“The price of a Shuos’s assistance is a Shuos’s assistance, isn’t that what they say?” Cheris remarked.

Mikodez inclined his head.

“I expect the only thing I’d regret more than saying yes is saying no.”

“That was the idea,” Mikodez said modestly. “Running around as Jedao was an extremely well-chosen distraction, by the way. I congratulate you. But that trick only works once.”

“It only needed to work once,” she said.

Mikodez acknowledged the hit with a wave of his hand. “One moment. I have another gift to offer you, although it’s not a very good one.” Where was Zehun? He paged them but got no response. “If I can keep you on the line a few more moments, anyway. Who are you planning on blowing up next?”

“If I tried to shoot every monster in the hexarchate,” Cheris said, “I’d be a monster myself.”

Mikodez put his chin in his hands and smiled. “If you understand that,” he said, “then you’re far ahead of Jedao, and this alliance has a fighting chance.—Ah, here we go.”

Zehun had returned with a teenage girl in tow. The girl had ivory-sallow skin and hair done up with enamel clasps. Her clothes, despite the striking color coordination in greens and yellows, were notable for their concession to useless practicality. Mikodez wondered just where the girl thought she needed to run off to in those sensible slacks and even more sensible boots. The Citadel of Eyes was a space station. You couldn’t run far.

“Cheris,” Mikodez said, “this is Moroish Nija. I don’t believe you two are acquainted”—Cheris was already shaking her head—“but she is one of approximately 5,000 Mwennin we were able to evacuate. That’s a pitifully small number, and I am not optimistic that your community will recover from its dispersal, but it was the most I could do without exposing Shuos involvement to the other factions.”

“Wait,” Nija said. She wasn’t looking at Mikodez, but at Cheris’s face. “This is her? Ajewen Cheris?”

“Yes, I’m Cheris,” Cheris said.

Nija began speaking harshly and rapidly in a language that the grid identified as Mwen-dal. Mikodez eyed the machine translation it was providing on a subdisplay, which for all its awkwardness suggested that Nija had an impressive command of Mwen-dal obscenities.

When Nija wound down, Cheris said something haltingly in Mwen-dal, then, in the high language, “I have no excuse to offer.”

“As I told you,” Mikodez said, “it’s a very poor gift.”