Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

Just to make sure, Cheris examined herself again: her old familiar body. It was only the reflection that belonged to Jedao. Relieved, she finished dressing.

She rechecked the reflection because he hadn’t forbidden it. The reflection’s uniform had a general’s wings over the staring Shuos eye, but the wings were connected by a chain picked out in silver thread. She didn’t have to ask about the symbolism.

More distressing were the gloves. Jedao’s reflection wore a black pair in deference to Kel custom, because she had put hers on, but his were fingerless to signify that he wasn’t a Kel. These days, outsiders seconded to the Kel wore gray gloves instead of Kel black. Fingerless gloves had fallen out of fashion because of Jedao’s betrayal, and she had only seen them in old photos and paintings.

He was taller than she was by half a head. Not being able to look his reflection in the eye made her want to twitch.

“Sir,” she said in spite of herself. How was she supposed to address an undead general if not by his rank or title? “You” didn’t seem right.

Jedao sighed quietly. “Questions? I’ve done this before and you haven’t.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Mostly. I have no substance, although you can target me with exotics through the shadow. I’m anchored to you, which means my welfare is linked to yours. I absorb most exotic damage before it gets through to you, so you might say I’m a glorified shield. It’s only after I die that you’re in trouble on that front. And the only people who can hear me right now are you and other revenants. That’s going to be both a help and a dreadful inconvenience, you’ll find. There’s only one other revenant, who won’t be accompanying us. You’ll be meeting him shortly.”

The mirror opened up, without warning, to a narrow room with a treadmill. A pale, slender man wearing Kel black-and-gold awaited them, although he had neglected to put on gloves. The man had no rank designation, but his silver voidmoth insignia meant he was a Nirai seconded to the Kel. The moth’s wings, too, were connected by a silver chain. If you looked closely at his shadow, it was made of fluttering moths in silhouette. The sight of the moths made Cheris uneasy, as though they were about to rise from the floor and devour her from the bones out.

Cheris was used to being short by Kel standards, but the man was considerably taller than she was. She said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, sir.” Just in case, she spoke to the Nirai as she would to a superior, but she wondered at the absence of rank insignia.

“I was monitoring your awakening,” the Nirai said, unruffled, “and in this matter your health is paramount. Rather less panic than the last one, anyway. I admire good examples of Kel stoicism.” His speech was plain, despite his beautiful voice, his verb forms almost disparaging. It was hard to figure out what that indicated. Many Nirai were informal, after all.

“Should formation instinct have taken her so strongly?” Jedao said. He sounded deferential.

The Nirai raised an eyebrow, good-humored. “Kel Academy keeps fiddling with the parameters,” he said, “hence the variation. I don’t think she’s unusual, but we can’t let her out as your keeper when she’s so suggestible. Much as you wish we would.”

“I’ve behaved for four centuries,” Jedao said. “I’m not likely to change now.”

“That’s what they thought when you were alive, too.”

“You like irrefutable arguments, don’t you?”

“I like winning.” The Nirai turned his attention to Cheris. She was struck by the extraordinary beauty of his eyes, smoky amber with velvety eyelashes, and she wasn’t usually interested in men. “Walk on the treadmill,” he said, “to remind your muscles of their function. Also because you probably got some of his muscle memory and you’ll be useless if you trip over the floor.”

Cheris obliged, not unwillingly. She found a good pace: fast enough to raise her pulse, slow enough that her uncooperative legs didn’t betray her. The fact that her coordination had suffered bothered her. She’d never been the most agile of her comrades, but she hoped the effect was temporary.

“Jedao,” the Nirai said, “I trust she’s satisfactory?”

“I’m your gun,” Jedao said.

Cheris was nonplussed. A Kel might say that ceremonially to a superior, and even then only on the highest of occasions, but the irony in Jedao’s voice suggested that something else was going on.

“Besides,” Jedao added, “if she’s like the others, she never had a substantive choice, and I didn’t have one either.”

The question must have shown on Cheris’s face. The Nirai said, “We prefer volunteers. They survive the process better.”

Ah, yes. Volunteers Kel-style.

“Let me brief you on the basics,” the Nirai went on. “You apparently have some use for Jedao, and Kel Command approved it. What you ought to know is that the black cradle’s ghosts can only be revived by attaching them to someone living, which we call anchoring. This is not general knowledge. Jedao mentioned that most exotic weapons will harm him before they harm you. There are a few exceptions. I advise you to look them up when you get a chance.

“Jedao can’t read your thoughts, which he told you about, but the part he left out is that he can see and hear, and in particular he sees farther than a human does, in all directions at once. It’s futile to tell a Kel this, but watch your body language around him or you’ll be giving him a window into the contents of your brain. You may occasionally experience moments of bleed-through from his presence, his reactions seeping into yours, but the big one is muscle memory, and that’s not all bad. His reflexes have saved previous anchors.”

The Nirai slouched against a wall, but his gaze was direct. “The other thing, and this is going to hurt you, is that it’s imperative that you kill Jedao if it looks like he’s going mad or he’s about to betray your mission.”

He was right. It hurt her. She stumbled off the treadmill because her legs stopped working, and tumbled to the floor with a thump. She was part of a hierarchy she was sworn to uphold, and people still referred to Jedao by his rank. Shuddering, she levered herself up. Rationally, she knew that she was receiving orders and that the orders made sense, but right now she was keyed to Jedao as her formation leader, even if he was a ghost. And a traitor.

The Nirai had been watching her reaction. He was smiling, making no effort to hide his amusement.

“It will pass,” Jedao said softly. “And he’s right, you know. I remember every ugly thing I have ever done.”

“There will be backup teams,” the Nirai said, “because it would be stupid not to. But it would be best for you to handle it yourself.” He tapped a table, and a dull gray-green gun dislodged from some unseen compartment. Cheris had never seen one of that type before, which took some doing around a Kel, but she presumed a Nirai could manage it. “This is the preferred weapon. It’s a chrysalis gun, and it’ll prepare him to be shoved back into the black cradle for his next deployment.”

Cheris tried to form a question. It came out on the third try. “What defenses does the general have, sir?”

“He can talk to you,” the Nirai said sardonically. “No, don’t laugh. He’s very good at it. When he sounds sane and the rest of the world doesn’t, you know it’s time to pull the trigger. No offense, Jedao.”

“It’s not news that I’m a madman,” Jedao said, still ironic.

The Nirai held the gun out. “It’s on the lowest setting and won’t damage him permanently,” he said, showing her the slider. “Cheris, I want you to shoot Jedao.”