Юн Ли - Revenant Gun

“Let me guess,” Brezan said. “The cindermoth is the Three Kestrels Three Suns .”

“Just so.”

In all the hexarchate’s history, Kel Command had only honored a single general by naming a warmoth—a cindermoth, even—after her personal emblem. That general was Inesser. As if he didn’t have enough of an inadequacy complex already. Mikodez had offered to name one of his shadowmoths anything Brezan pleased as a sort of consolation prize, which Brezan had turned down. He didn’t even have an emblem, although both Mikodez and Fiamonor had pushed him to select one. He’d been obdurate on that point, though. Instead of a personal emblem, he used the Compact’s Bell and Scroll. Premier Dzuro had approved, and while she wasn’t right about everything, she was right about this.

“I hope no one’s planning on assassinating Inesser,” Brezan muttered. He grabbed a slate from the mostly decorative desk—even its drawers were fake, for love of fire and ash, who did that?—and looked up the number of Lexicon Primary formations a swarm of 220 warmoths could instantiate. Not that the list meant anything to him beyond bad news.

He did know that Inesser’s choice of River Snake was a taunt. The formation provided no defensive benefits. I trust you won’t do anything stupid was what it meant. As for the size of the swarm—well. He was Kel enough to know about taking succor in numbers. The Kel never traveled alone if they could help it.

Fiamonor’s expression was grave. “It would be indecorous to assassinate the general after having invited her all this way,” she said.

Sometimes Brezan couldn’t tell when Fiamonor was pulling his leg. Not worth picking a fight over, though. Sometimes he managed to hold onto his temper.

“ Three Kestrels Three Suns requesting permission to dock,” Hanzo said a little while later.

“I hate you,” Brezan said.

“... sir?”

“Not you,” Brezan said. “ Her .” But he would smile, and talk to her like a responsible adult, because being a responsible adult was his new job. Funny how he still thought of it as “new” even after nine years.

The hexarchate—the old hexarchate, before Brezan had helped break it into fragments for foreign powers to chew on—had possessed six cindermoths, its largest and most powerful warmoths. One, the Unspoken Law , had perished retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles during the Hafn invasion. Another, the Hierarchy of Feasts , General Khiruev’s former command moth, had fallen in a hotly contested defensive action several years back. They’d lost good people in that battle.

To Brezan’s aggravation, and Khiruev and Ragath’s everlasting worry, the Protectorate controlled the four surviving cindermoths. He couldn’t even blame Inesser for bringing one of them—and the one named after her emblem, at that—to the parley. It made a spectacular statement.

“Sir, they’re repeating the request.”

Brezan bared his teeth. “Let them dock,” he said.

While they waited for security to clear their guests, Fiamonor adjusted Brezan’s collar. Brezan endured her brisk touch. The room had plenty of mirrors. He couldn’t see anything wrong with his collar, but maybe Fiamonor got nervous too.

Security called to inform him that General Inesser and her entourage had passed inspection. Of course they had. Brezan had given explicit instructions that she and her own guard be allowed to keep any sidearms. Fire forbid that Kel be separated from their damn guns. For his part, Brezan lived with the prickling knowledge that you could have all the firepower you wanted and it didn’t matter if you were the worse shot. He hardly went to the firing range anymore on the grounds that Security could hit targets better than he could and he might as well attend to whatever paperwork the premier flung his way.

By the time the doors whisked open, Brezan had resorted to meditation to calm himself. He hated meditation, but the breathing exercises helped. The ordeal wouldn’t be over quickly. They’d meet and exchange pleasantries for the first hour—if he was lucky. (He’d learned.) They’d dance around the topic while Inesser tested him for weaknesses. Only after she’d satisfied herself as to fruitful avenues of approach would she open negotiations. Luckily, he’d also spent the last several years sparring with Mikodez. He had a chance.

All his preparations winged out of his mind the moment he saw the two women Inesser had brought with her.

His gaze went first to the taller of the two, who was swathed in layers of blue gradients. Silk blouse over an asymmetrical silk wraparound skirt. A paler blue lace shawl and a scarf to match, both glittering with star sapphires and blue diamonds whose hearts shone like cracked ice. A blue-and-silver comb adorned with yet more gems held her upswept hair in place. Even her hair was a black so dark that its highlights sheened blue. Only her eyes weren’t blue.

The last time he’d seen her, they had said a stiff, formal farewell before she retreated to an Andan-dominated colony. She’d claimed to have forgiven him for betraying her, but he wondered. Andan Tseya, as beautiful as ever: a daughter of the assassinated Andan hexarch, and once his lover.

Tseya regarded him with her lips quirked upward, seemingly calm. A hundred hundred questions choked and died in Brezan’s throat, because the other woman was his sister, Colonel Kel Miuzan.

Brezan hadn’t talked to anyone in his family since that last disastrous chat with Miuzan. But sometimes, in a rare free moment, he took out a video that his middle father had taken of Miuzan giving him a “dueling lesson.” The part that hurt his heart wasn’t the dueling—he was used to Miuzan walloping him—but his other two sisters in the background, quarreling amiably over who had eaten more riceballs.

Miuzan had changed little in the intervening years. Her uniform was in full formal. Even her hairstyle was the same, a regulation crown of braids pinned back severely from her face.

He almost blurted her name out. But her chin was up, and the absolute hostile opacity of her dark eyes told him that she hadn’t come along because she wanted to wish him well. When all was said and done, they were still on opposite sides.

Then there was Inesser herself. Inesser’s ivory-fine skin belied her age except the telltale small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but then, most people chose to look younger than they were. Her uniform was also in full formal, and no more elaborate than Miuzan’s, except the general’s wings at her breast where Miuzan had a colonel’s star. Inesser’s one concession to personal vanity was her hair, dyed Andan blue at the tips in homage to a beloved Andan great-grandmother. Brezan didn’t care about the hair so much as the fact that she was smiling at him with the kind of delight usually reserved for slow-moving prey.

“Welcome to Isteia Prime, General,” Brezan said, focusing on Inesser’s face. He had a duty as host. Besides, it saved him from the awkwardness of acknowledging that he had his ex-lover and his angry sister in the same room with him. “Might I offer you refreshments?”

Fiamonor hoveringly indicated the range of snacks available, from standard high table fare to the delicacies they’d been able to scrape up. Brezan had mortified the kitchens by offering to help cook. He still regretted that he’d been too busy reviewing security precautions with Emio to kibitz, especially since he wanted to know how they had contrived that fancy coulis for the taro cake. Some of Brezan’s staff had a bet going as to whether Inesser would touch the spiced pickles. Brezan’s personal rule was to avoid betting, especially with staff, but honestly, why would anyone eat what they ate every day during a parley?