Юн Ли - Revenant Gun

Inesser’s smile widened in a way that indicated that she recognized the delaying tactic for what it was. “You don’t have anything alcoholic on hand, do you? I’m tired of tea and water.”

Was he supposed to take that as a challenge?

“As it so happens,” Fiamonor said, and redirected Inesser’s attention to a cabinet stocked with an assortment of rice wines, whiskeys, and brandies. Inesser unerringly homed in on the most expensive liquor available. Brezan consulted his augment about the food budget and winced. Oh well, they only had two bottles of the stuff anyway, which limited the amount of damage she could do. And maybe she was a gullible drunk.

“Would you like seats?” Brezan said to Miuzan and Tseya, directing his words to a point midway between the two. Fine, Inesser had brought along the two people in the whole galaxy best capable of unsettling him. He wasn’t going to let her get to him.

At times like this he missed Cheris more than ever. But he’d finally come to the acceptance that Cheris was gone—permanently gone. With his luck, she’d gotten smashed by a meteorite on some planet no one had ever heard of, and they’d never find out what had become of her.

Fiamonor had earlier set up the circular conference table with painstaking attention to symmetry. Even the flower-shaped candles floating in a bowl of water at the table’s center featured radial symmetry. The candles were wired into place so they wouldn’t drift out of alignment.

“Thank you, High General,” Tseya murmured to Brezan when it became clear that Miuzan had no intention of speaking to him. “Shall we, Colonel?”

As a courtesy, a cloth printed with Inesser’s Three Kestrels Three Suns was draped over the back of her chair. Brezan hoped that she wouldn’t take it amiss that they’d ordered one up from a matter printer instead of already possessing one hand-woven by dedicated artisans. Unblinking, Miuzan took a seat to the right of that one. Tseya took the one to the left, her expression wry.

“You’re going to say no anyway, Colonel,” Inesser said, “but I don’t suppose you’re interested in anything?”

“No, thank you,” Miuzan said. “High General?”

There wasn’t any tactful way of telling her how bizarre the title still sounded in her mouth, so he settled for a headshake. He’d gotten used to it from other people—just not his older sister. Besides, he didn’t want to be at any chemical disadvantage while dealing with Inesser. Fiamonor had fed him detox drugs ahead of time as a precaution, but he was paranoid that they’d pick this particular occasion to fail on him.

Inesser swanned over to her seat with a glass in hand, drank deeply, then handed the cloth to Miuzan before sitting. Wordlessly, Miuzan folded the cloth and set it to the side. “High General,” Inesser said, “let’s get to the point. I don’t imagine your time is any less valuable than my own.”

“By all means, Protector-General,” Brezan said. “You have some proposal regarding Isteia?” He couldn’t think of any other reason they were both here. One of the planets in the system was a major source of raw materials necessary for the manufacture of mothdrive harnesses. The Protectorate and the Compact had been jockeying over control of Isteia, each desperate to be the first to regain the capacity to produce new cindermoths.

Inesser snorted. “Not just Isteia,” she said. “You’re thinking about details , High General. Admittedly, mothyards are very large details. But in our line of work”—nice how she was almost speaking to him as though he were an equal—“we can’t afford to get distracted from the larger picture. No. I have an offer for you.”

“Larger picture” could mean any of sixty million different things depending on context. Brezan smiled coldly at her. “What could be so urgent that it forced you to acknowledge my existence after our last contact went so poorly?”

Nine years of what General Ragath referred to, in a rare instance of euphemism, as “putting out fires.” Not only had the Protectorate and the Compact chewed each other’s borders into ragged edges, the only thing that had caused them to pause hostilities was the knowledge that foreign powers wouldn’t hesitate to swallow them both if they let down their guard. Everyone from the Hafn to the Taurags had gnawed off chunks of border territory. The Hafn had only gotten distracted by an internal crisis, but there were others. And even then the armistice had almost come too late.

“We’re never going to be friends,” Inesser said. “But we could make excellent allies.”

“Bullshit,” Brezan said, unmoved. “Allies how?” He was starting to be entertained that his old career interviewing dubious officer candidates, now honed by extra practice dealing with even more dubious politicians and potentates, came in handy at times like this.

“This is my proposal.” Inesser’s mouth curved upward in sudden dangerous humor. “Unite our realms under a single banner. It’ll keep us safe from the wormfucking foreigners.”

“Like hell,” Brezan said. “Because that ‘single banner’ is going to be yours.”

“I was never under the impression that you sought out this job.” Inesser’s gaze didn’t waver, but Miuzan stiffened. Brezan saw it out of the corner of his eye. Inesser would have grilled his sister for everything she knew about him. Knowing Miuzan, she would have spilled every embarrassing detail of his childhood without hesitation. After all, he remembered how proud she’d been when Inesser picked her for her staff. And beyond that, she was a proper Kel, not a crashhawk.

“Maybe not,” Brezan said, ignoring Fiamonor’s subtle eyebrow-twitch of No, don’t admit that! “But I’m Kel enough to do my duty. I doubt you can offer me anything so good that I’ll roll over and surrender my people to yours.”

“How often do you play jeng-zai?” Inesser said.

Why did everyone who met him for the first time ask him that same fucking question? He smiled at her. If she wasn’t going to play nice, he didn’t see why he should either. “I don’t. I send Hexarch Mikodez to do it for me.”

“Ha.” She grinned back, completely unintimidated. “You’re about to lose this one.”

Her Andan heritage was showing. “Get to the point,” Brezan said.

“Yes,” Inesser said. “I want the Compact to acknowledge the Three Kestrels Three Suns.”

Interesting. She wasn’t making a pretense of continuity with the old regime. This was a naked personal power grab. Brezan slammed his hands down on the table and stood. The candlelight shivered; water slopped over the edge of the bowl. “No,” he said.

She continued speaking over him. “ In exchange ,” Inesser said, “the Protectorate will adopt your calendar.”

Brezan froze. “That’s a very interesting offer.”

“Interesting” was an understatement. More like unprecedented .

Inesser rose so her head was level with his, although the movement was controlled, graceful. “You heard me,” she said. With great care, she pulled off her left glove, then the right one, and held them out to him.

He stared at her gloves as though they’d turned into slugs, then at her naked hands. “You can’t be serious.”

“She’s serious,” Tseya said quietly, ignoring the fact that Brezan had just offered Inesser a mortal insult. No one with any sense questioned the word of an ungloved Kel. (It happened all the time in dramas and theater.)

Inesser, either better at keeping control of her temper or used to being insulted by random crashhawks, grinned again. “You’ll have a place in my government. Your premier, too. There’s plenty of work for everyone, fire knows. If you want it. I think even if you don’t want to be involved, your followers will insist on it.”