Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

“I won’t be offended if you keep them on,” Jedao said. “I almost never took mine off, either.”

If only he hadn’t said anything, she might have overcome her reluctance and ungloved and turned out the lights. The image flashed in her head, her altered reflection in the mirror: Jedao wearing a Kel uniform, Jedao with his hands in the half-gloves that now meant betrayal . “Did you wear yours the day of the massacre?” Cheris said acerbically.

“Yes,” he said. “They showed me the videos.”

“You don’t remember?” she said incredulously.

“Not all of it, and not in order.”

“You haven’t shown any sign of guilt,” Cheris said, getting the words out like the beats of a drum. “Those were real people you killed. People who trusted you to lead them. I don’t understand why Kel Command preserved you instead of roasting you dead in the nearest sun. The Kel have never lacked for good generals.”

“Look at my record again,” Jedao said. He sounded grim, not boastful. “I assume you did that before unfreezing me.”

Cheris knew the high points. They had studied some of his battles in academy.

He told her anyway. “From the time I was a major onward, I never lost. I was thirty-two when I was promoted to brigadier general, and forty-five when I died. Frankly, they sent me to die, over and over. Because I was good enough to be useful, but I was Shuos so Kel Command didn’t care if I didn’t make it out of horrible crazed no-win situations if there was a Kel general they could spare instead. And you know what? I took every enemy they pointed me at and obliterated them.

“Kel Command didn’t salvage me because they cared about me, Cheris. The piece you’re missing, because it’s all classified, is that I haven’t lost any of the battles they’ve sent me to fight after they executed me, either. If they ever figure out how to extract what makes me good at my job without the part where I’m crazy, they’ll take it out and put it in someone else. It’s why they keep sending me out, to see if they’ve gotten it right yet. And then, when they have it after all, they’ll execute me for real.”

“How does any of that excuse what you did?” Cheris demanded.

“It doesn’t,” he said. He was polite, but not apologetic. The fact that his voice came so close to unconcern made her back prickle. “I could pretend guilt, but those people are centuries dead. It wouldn’t help them. The only thing left for me to do now is to serve the system they died serving, that I was sworn to serve myself. It’s not amends, but it’s what I have left.”

He was almost convincing. Too bad she didn’t know what his game was. She padded over to the bed and tucked herself in. He didn’t say anything further, but it was impossible not to be aware of his presence, of the candle eyes in the darkness.

Eventually sleep came. She dreamt of a forest full of foxes with brilliant yellow eyes. Every time she took a step, the nearest fox was revealed as a paper cutout and burned up, leaving nothing but a dazzle of smoke and sparks. When she woke, she was half-convinced that her shadow would be consumed by fire. But there it was, nine-eyed and imperturbable.

Cheris was hungry, but the grid reminded her that today was a remembrance: the Day of Serpent Fire. Someone had delivered the meditation focus while she slept, a green candle in the shape of a snake slit open, the elongated right lung pulled out and slit crosswise. In the hexarchate’s settlements, the Vidona ritually tortured criminals or heretics on remembrance days, although voidmoths were exempt from this practice. Cheris didn’t like the remembrances. Most people didn’t. However, consensus mechanics meant the high calendar’s exotic technologies would only work if everyone observed the remembrances and adhered to the social order that the Rahal had designed.

“I don’t recognize this one,” Jedao said in an unreadable voice as she lit the candle. “Who were the heretics this time? Were they burned to death?”

“They called themselves the Serpentines,” she said, “which is what you might expect. They had some sort of religious heresy involving a belief in reincarnation.”

“Interesting,” he said, still unreadable. “Well, I won’t interrupt your observance, then.”

He didn’t say anything about observing the remembrance himself. Cheris wondered if a ghost’s observances even had any effect on consensus mechanics. Still, the fact that he didn’t seem to care for remembrances made her like him better in spite of herself.

After the required thirty-nine minutes of meditation, Cheris did her morning exercises. She began with stretches, then a series of forms progressing in difficulty. Her body didn’t want to obey her. More than once she had to recover from the conviction that her legs should be longer, her balance higher. Regretfully, she decided not to attempt the sword forms.

“They say you were excellent at hand-to-hand and firearms,” Cheris said finally, feeling she ought to speak to Jedao, especially after their prickly exchange last night. After all, it was technically her fault that they were working together.

“You have to be in order to keep up with the Kel,” Jedao said, conciliatory in turn. “There’s a chance you inherited what I knew. Whether you do anything with it is up to you, but I imagine it’s work readjusting everything when it’s configured for the wrong body.”

“Did your previous anchors –?”

“One of them had some luck, but he was about my height and build, so that may have helped.”

Cheris was struck by the horrible thought that everything he had done to massacre his staff at Hellspin Fortress had burrowed into her sinews and would not be dislodged. But if the memory existed, it wasn’t in a form she could access directly.

“Besides,” Jedao said, “you probably know plenty of ways to kill people. I don’t know what they teach at Kel Academy these days, but I don’t imagine the state of the art stays still on that front.”

A memory tickled at her. “Didn’t you start out as a Shuos assassin?” Not to say she hadn’t killed her share of people, but Jedao sounded more cavalier about it. She’d known plenty of Kel like that, too, however.

“Yes, but I’m sure I’m out of date.”

The thought of assassins having expiration dates almost made her smile.

Shortly afterward, servitors brought in three trays, one large and two small. The servitors were of a variety she had never seen before, snakeforms with six vestigial wings. “The Nirai,” Jedao said, as if that explained everything. It probably did.

Cheris acknowledged the servitors with a polite nod. She would have liked to chat with them, but she had work to do, and she was sure they did, too. They chirruped in a friendly fashion before heading out.

The trays contained settings for two people, not one, with common dishes on the large tray. Jedao’s bowl was made of beaten metal with the Deuce of Gears engraved into it. The bowl and accompanying plates were empty. A swirling mist filled his cup, like a captive scrap of cloud.

“At least they’re not wasting perfectly good whiskey on me,” Jedao said, but he sounded like he wished they would. “You’re wondering if I need nourishment. The answer is no, but I suppose they felt protocol demanded it.”

“Did you eat with your soldiers?” Cheris asked. It was a dangerous question, but that was true of everything she could ask.

Jedao laughed dryly. His voice, when it came, was calm. “You’re wondering how it’s possible to murder people you spend time at your high table with. I’ve wondered that myself. But the answer to your question is yes. Kel custom has changed over time, you know. In those days every commander brought their own cup to high table. It wasn’t provided like it was the last time I was awake. Do they still do that now?”