Юн Ли - Revenant Gun

The escort had backed away from Jedao. “S-sir,” the corporal said in a hushed voice, “perhaps you’d rather—”

“Perhaps I’d rather what?” Jedao asked in what he thought was a commendably calm voice.

The corporal shut up.

“One question,” Jedao said, also quietly, although the people in the back were starting to stir and frown in his direction.

The corporal bobbed a nod. The other soldiers had sufficient discipline not to back away from him, too. That, or it was formation instinct.

“How many prisoners of war did we capture?”

“The total, sir, or just on the command moth?”

That told him what he needed to know: too many . Besides, a quick consultation of the grid gave him the numbers. Eleven on the Revenant . All told, 503 captives in various states of health, distributed more or less evenly among the swarm’s warmoths. The efficiency with which this had been accomplished was also a bad sign, as was the fact that the grid reassured him that the Vidona were carrying out the selfsame ceremony on the other moths in his command.

Jedao shoved his way through the crowd and to the ramp leading up to the dais. Shocked murmurs followed him. He didn’t care. A saner voice in the back of his head said, You can’t save all of them this way.

Maybe not , he thought back at it, but I might make a difference for this one soldier.

The corporal yelled after him to come back, then swore and started after him. Jedao lengthened his stride.

The Vidona had raised a sharp, saw-bladed instrument high above the burning soldier. She didn’t flinch at his approach.

He grabbed her wrist and hissed, “This stops now.”

She met his eyes coldly. “With respect, sir,” she said in a voice that implied anything but, “you have no authority over me here.”

Up close, he could hear the ragged breathing of the burning soldier. Their face was a mass of blisters and char marks tracking the locations of the major veins and arteries. He doubted they had a voice anymore or they’d be screaming.

“We are both,” the Vidona said, “sworn to the hexarch’s service. Stand down.”

Jedao came very close to breaking her wrist and slamming her into the flames; but that wouldn’t solve the problem.

Nevertheless, she reacted to the intimation of violence. She plunged the blade into the victim’s heart before he could stop her. Flames bloomed up around her hand. Her gray glove and her sleeve caught on fire. Her face was calm, even a little bored, as if she did this often. Which she probably did.

“I will have to make a calendrical adjustment,” the Vidona said. She withdrew the blade with fussy neatness, damped the fire with a smothering cloth.

Jedao stared at her, aghast. “They could have been saved.”

“A waste of resources,” she said. “She was almost dead anyway.”

Not trusting himself to speak, Jedao spun on his heel and stalked out of the hall. He knew where he was going next.

JEDAO SLOWED JUST enough for his escort to catch up with him. They didn’t look grateful. He was beyond caring what they thought of their charge.

Kujen’s quarters were defended by an immense foyer. A dazzle of candlevines grew up the walls, illuminating tangled wires and chitin-iridescent panels. A low thrumming reverberated throughout, like a gong that had just been damped.

The Nirai voidmoth emblem gleamed along the far wall, engraved in such piercing silver it was almost blue. The escort knelt in the full obeisance. Jedao didn’t bother. He called out, “I’ve come for an audience with the hexarch.”

When the doors parted, spilling light onto the floor and highlighting the iridescent panels, Jedao blinked but did not move otherwise.

“Jedao,” Kujen said in that velvet voice of his. “The timing could have been better, but... well.”

He wasn’t interested in Kujen’s assurances. “ How long have the remembrances been going on? ”

“Corporal,” Kujen said without looking in the man’s direction, “you and your soldiers may leave us.”

The Kel escort fled.

Kujen was already leading the way forward. “Come with me,” he said. “You’ll find nothing interesting out here unless you like prototype circuits.”

They passed through several rooms, each more opulent than the last, which did nothing to improve Jedao’s mood. One room featured the pelts of gray tigers, while another housed chairs and tables of handsome blue-black lacquer. Yet a third was full of shadows except a pedestal where a single immense vase of finest celadon rested. The glaze depicted an arched branch with a raindrop in the act of falling free; that was all. Jedao didn’t ask why Kujen collected such treasures when he scarcely paid heed to them. He wondered if he would be the same way when he had more experience of the world. He hoped not.

“Now,” Kujen said, “you may yell.”

Jedao reined back his temper. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“The remembrances?” Kujen sank down into a couch. Jedao took the chair across from him, drawing his feet in. “You mean in their current form.”

Jedao just looked at him.

“For the past eight centuries and change,” Kujen said.

“And you let this go on?”

Kujen raised his eyebrows. “Jedao,” he said, “I’m the one who came up with the system.”

Jedao’s brain stuttered to a halt.

“The formations, and formation instinct, and the mothdrive harnesses,” Kujen said, “all of them depend on people adhering to the system. The stability of the hexarchate, and its ability to provide for its citizens, depend on people adhering to the system.”

“Kujen,” Jedao said, recovering his voice, “we just fucking tortured prisoners of war to death. Now they’ll never negotiate, or cooperate with prisoner exchanges, or believe any of our assurances, or—”

“I never intended to negotiate with Inesser or her people.” Kujen rose and made his way to a cabinet. From it he drew a dark, unlabeled bottle. He tilted it inquiringly and cocked an eyebrow at Jedao. Jedao shook his head. “She and her followers are too dangerous. Better to add them to the list of heretics and move on.”

“You can’t arbitrarily decide that it’s all right to torture whole categories of people to death!”

Kujen tapped the mouth of the bottle. The stopper, whatever it had been made of, vanished into a curl of blue-pale vapor. The smell of roses and spice perfumed the air.

“It’s one of the better vintages of wine-of-roses,” Kujen said. “I’d hate to drink this alone.”

“If you think I have any interest in getting drunk right now,” Jedao said icily, “you are quite mistaken.”

“Your loss,” Kujen said with a shrug. He poured a glass for himself and sipped delicately.

“When you told me that we were restoring order to the hexarchate,” Jedao said, “I had no idea you had this in mind.”

Kujen sipped again, then set the glass down on a table. He approached Jedao. Jedao stood his ground, increasingly uneasy.

“I’d forgotten how young you are,” Kujen murmured.

“Don’t fucking patronize me.” Jedao glared at him, which was awkward because Kujen topped him by almost a head.

Kujen stepped in close, quite close, and rested his hands on Jedao’s shoulders. “That’s not all you’re upset about, is it? This has to do with that regrettably violent confrontation with that Kel squad.”

Jedao was trembling with the suppressed desire to lash out. He knew, however, that it wouldn’t do any good. “That’s not—”

“I told you once,” Kujen said, “that it’s impossible for you to shock me. Do you remember?”

Unwillingly, Jedao looked up into Kujen’s perfect face, the smoky, gold-flecked eyes with their long lashes. “I remember.” Then: “You knew. Even then, you knew.”