Юн Ли - Revenant Gun

“I didn’t think you were ready to hear it,” Kujen said.

“What am I?” He was horrified by the way his voice shook.

“Hush,” Kujen said softly, and drew him down onto the couch so they were sitting side by side. “Call it a security measure. It wouldn’t do to lose my general to assassination.”

Jedao thought back to their earliest meetings. “You said you have your own defenses. Do you—are you—”

Maybe they were alike after all. Jedao was forcibly reminded that Kujen was one of the few people who had never reacted to him with fear or disgust. I could influence him—change his mind— Then he hated himself for the thought.

Kujen’s hand had moved up to the side of his face. He was looking somberly at Jedao. Slowly, he uncurled his fingers until they brushed against Jedao’s jaw. It seemed impossible that Kujen couldn’t hear the hectic pounding of his heartbeat.

“Fine,” Jedao said roughly. “I don’t shock you? Prove it to me.” He had the dim understanding that he was trying to play a game he wasn’t old enough for.

Kujen’s eyes were even more beautiful up close. In spite of himself, Jedao’s pulse quickened further at the way Kujen was looking at him, as though everything else in the universe had fallen away. I can’t be doing this. Yet here he was.

“Sweetheart,” Kujen said caressingly, “the experience differential is not in your favor.”

“I’m not a boy, Kujen.”

“Well, that’s debatable.” His hands traced Jedao’s sides and came to rest low on his hips.

Holding still was agonizing. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How had he expected to outplay a hexarch? Especially when he barely remembered how to have sex?

(Had he done this before?)

“Delightful as this is,” Kujen said, “I feel obliged to point out that you’re going to despise yourself afterward.”

“Maybe I want that.” He meant it, in that moment.

Kujen’s hands slid lower.

Then, without warning, Kujen snatched his hands away and walked in measured strides to the other side of the room. “No,” he said. The beautiful eyes had gone remote.

Heat rushed to Jedao’s face. Fuck. He’d come in here intending to confront Kujen, browbeat him into making the remembrances stop, and now—

He slid off the couch and sank to his knees by reflex, assuming the full obeisance, and waited. After a long time, he became aware that something was wrong— more wrong, at any rate. “Hexarch?”

“Have a seat, General Jedao.”

He almost tripped on the way to a chair, not trusting the couch.

“I’m not Nirai Kujen,” the hexarch said. “It’s past time I explained a few things to you.”

Saying I don’t understand seemed redundant, so Jedao didn’t.

“The situation’s complicated,” the man went on, “but the part you care about is this. You can’t seduce Kujen, not because he doesn’t want you”—Jedao flushed all over again—“but because he’s dead.”

“Then who are you?” he asked, using the same honorific forms he had earlier, just in case. The man didn’t correct him.

“Hajoret Kujen was born 919 years ago. He was the one responsible for the mathematics that led to the development of the high calendar, and the early form of the mothdrive that permitted the heptarchate’s rapid expansion, and other technologies besides. He was good at a lot of things. But it didn’t matter, because he was going to die.”

“Let me guess,” Jedao said. “Kujen really, really didn’t want to die.”

“Yes.”

“There must have been—” He tried to formulate his question in a way that made sense. “Surely someone would have noticed? Or is this another thing I forgot?” And, because it was at least as important as the other revelations: “Who are you ? What do I call you?”

“I don’t have a name anymore,” the man said, which Jedao doubted. “You may call me Inhyeng, if you like.”

Jedao covered his flinch just in time. Inhyeng meant “doll” or “puppet.” The realization hit him late. “You’re the ‘mysterious assistant.’”

Inhyeng inclined his head. “Kujen discovered a way to cheat death,” Inhyeng said. “But to do so he would have to die himself, and content himself with existing as a parasite, a ghost anchored to a living marionette. He’s here in this room; he’s everywhere I go. He can, when he needs to, manipulate my body directly, although we have been together for many years and I am accustomed to anticipating his desires. Eventually I will cease to be useful to him, and he will move on to his next anchor.”

Jedao bit back the automatic I’m sorry . Inhyeng didn’t sound like he wanted anyone’s pity. What he wanted to know was, did Inhyeng also have uncanny undead healing abilities like Jedao himself, or was that the point of this “next anchor”?

Inhyeng smiled humorlessly. “You’re wondering what I get out of this. You don’t need to know the details of the bargain I made, but I am well provided for. As you might imagine, privacy is something I get little of. Still, Kujen respects my desire not to share my personal history with strangers.”

Yes , Jedao thought, you can have anything you want, except freedom. Who was he to argue that it was such a horrible fate? It wasn’t much different from his own existence. It stung to be called a stranger, but he couldn’t deny it. After all, he hadn’t known about Inhyeng’s existence before today.

“So the hexarch’s listening to this conversation?” Jedao said.

Did ghosts need to sleep? Rest? Could Kujen walk away from his anchor and scout the vicinity? How far did his senses extend? He had a whole, ugly new set of questions to address, and no answers.

“Inhyeng,” Jedao said, faltering; but Inhyeng didn’t reprimand him for omitting the -zho honorific, so perhaps it was all right. “When I touched Nirai-zho, when I—”

Inhyeng didn’t rescue him from finishing the sentence.

Jedao started over. “I wasn’t touching him ,” he said, following the thread to its logical end. “I was touching you —”

“There’s no difference.”

What Jedao heard in Inhyeng’s voice was: There is every difference.

Jedao wanted to shut his eyes. Instead, he looked at Inhyeng full-on, waiting.

“You didn’t know,” Inhyeng said at last. “You couldn’t.”

“I am yours,” Jedao said, meaning, I am yours to punish.

“Don’t,” Inhyeng said. “As I said, you didn’t know. You couldn’t have guessed, considering your particular disability. Even the swarm’s Kel don’t know just how long Kujen has lived.”

This Jedao had not realized. He had assumed the Kel would have to know. But he reconsidered the evidence. “The shadow?”

“It’s a symptom, yes. But most people don’t realize its significance. And it’s not any stranger than any number of fashion accessories people run around the successor states with.”

“Then how did you convince them you were the hexarch in the first place?” Jedao demanded.

“Their original general had a high enough security clearance to recognize Kujen,” Inhyeng said. Weariness shadowed his eyes. “I believe that will be all, General. I’m sure you have much to think about.”

Jedao recognized the dismissal. “The remembrances—”

“Go,” Inhyeng said, his voice cold.

“As you will,” Jedao said, suddenly afraid. On the way out, he felt the shadow fluttering behind him like a funeral wind.