by Yoon Ha Lee
“Next you’re going to be telling me that you’re doing this for my benefit.” Jedao held still with an effort, although he couldn’t do anything about the wild pounding of his heart. Kujen couldn’t be unaware of it.
Kujen’s eyes widened. “But I am, my dear. Even you can only withstand so much sensory deprivation.” He hoisted himself up to straddle Jedao, nudging him to the side so that there would be enough space for his knee. (It was a wide couch, but still.) “We’re promised to each other, aren’t we? Which wouldn’t do me any good if you went mad in the black cradle between assignments.”
“You mean between assignations,” Jedao retorted.
“I said what I meant,” Kujen said, mildly enough, but his fingers dug into Jedao’s skin, leaving marks.
Jedao tensed, resisting, despite pleasure and the memory of pleasure. He closed his eyes.
“Stop thinking,” Kujen murmured right into his ear, inescapable. His hand moved; moved again. Jedao’s teeth clenched against a moan. “You can hate me tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that. We’ll have all eternity for that, after all.”
“I’ll never forget what you are,” Jedao said, still with his eyes closed. If he didn’t look, he could pretend that it was just sex, no obligations, no complications, rather than the latest ploy in a game unfolding over centuries.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Kujen said, unperturbed. Little by little he moved down, leaving a trail of touches like moths’ wings, and a while after that he began to use his mouth.
I will not forget, Jedao thought in the last dissolving moments before surrendering himself. As Kujen worked, Jedao entertained himself with thoughts of killing the other man. A blow to the side of the head. Strangulation, although Kujen’s body was, inconveniently, the stronger one, so forget that one. Putting out the eyes with his thumbs. Messy, but what death wasn’t? And Jedao had dealt his share of ugly deaths.
“Oh, is that what you’re thinking of,” Kujen said in barely a whisper, right on cue. “You’re so predictable, my dear.”
Jedao would have cursed himself for being so obvious. But the beautiful thing was that here, now, it didn’t matter. It had no bearing (so he told himself) on the schemes that the two of them came up with, or wielded against each other.
And even better: as despicable as this was (the latest atrocity in a long litany), Kujen really, truly did not care; would never care; would never judge. It was the headiest seduction he could offer. Which was as well, because Jedao wasn’t in any position to say no.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SIX MINUTES AFTER his anchor dismissed Jedao, Kujen took direct control of the man’s body and walked him into one of the inner chambers, then sat him down. Kujen hadn’t had to resort to this in a long time. The movements lacked a certain grace. Half the point of maintaining Nirai Mahar as his anchor was to luxuriate in Mahar’s beauty. But it was good to remind Mahar that every indulgence came at a price.
Kujen waited for Mahar to realize that he had relinquished the puppet strings. The minutes ticked past. At last Kujen said, in a voice that only Mahar could hear, “You might as well tell me what’s upsetting you so.”
“Why would I be upset?” Mahar said in an amiable voice, but after sixty years yoked to each other, Kujen wasn’t fooled. “I’d rather fuck a squid than touch that thing.”
Mahar hoisted himself out of the chair. Kujen let him. Mahar made for one of the walk-in closets with its array of outfits in black, gray, silver, the occasional splash of foam-colored lace.
(“You’re allowed to wear colors as long as it’s not a ceremonial occasion, you know,” Kujen had once said to Mahar. “What are they going to do, demote you?” Mahar had ignored him.)
“I would have thought this kind of prejudice beneath you,” Kujen said mildly.
“I know it’s not his fault,” Mahar said, nostrils flaring. “All the same, I don’t want to bed him. Even if it’s an easy way for you to string him along.”
“Yes,” Kujen said, “he probably had this whole elaborate rationalization worked out for why thinking with his dick was a clever stratagem. Nine hundred years and it’s nice to know human nature never changes.”
Mahar yanked one of his favorite shirts off a hanger, crumpled it in his hands, and dumped it on the floor. Within short order, a pile of mangled shirts occupied the space next to his feet.
Kujen waited. He had long experience waiting, the first thing you learned as a revenant.
“That thing can’t tell whether we’re supposed to be its father or its lover. But then, that’s exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Kujen didn’t intend to let Mahar defy him like this. In particular, Jedao couldn’t be allowed to guess Mahar’s attitude toward him. “You were bound to grow a spine sooner or later,” Kujen said. “Your timing is impeccable.”
Mahar had regained control of himself and merely shrugged. “Everyone is entitled to the occasional exercise in futility,” he said. “You always win. When he speaks, I almost think you pulled it off. And then.”
“Well,” Kujen said, “perhaps you need a reminder. Just a little longer, and you’ll have your freedom.”
“There’s no such thing,” Mahar said bleakly. “You taught me that a long time ago.”
“Perhaps not,” Kujen said, unperturbed. “But you’ll have the next best thing, if you want it. Haven’t I kept the terms of the bargain?”
Mahar lowered his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.
At fifteen, Roskoya Mahar had shown extraordinary promise as a Nirai candidate. Kujen had gotten to him first. Mahar’s younger brother was dying of a rare disorder. Serve me, Kujen said, and your brother will receive the best care to be found anywhere in the hexarchate. You yourself will enjoy every luxury. The price is that you will never meet him again.
One of the things Mahar excelled at, then as now, was mathematics. He did the math. He agreed.
What Kujen hadn’t been able to offer, at the time, was immortality. While he and Esfarel had invented the black cradle, once upon a time, Kel Command watched it too closely for him to shove anyone else into it. And besides, he enjoyed Mahar’s company too much to give it up.
“Come,” Kujen said, and took up the puppet strings again. In Mahar’s body, he walked into the inner sanctum where he kept the most precious of his experiments.
This room, unlike the others, was not made for luxury. Whatever Jedao might think of him, he did know how to get work done. The walls here were a soft warm gray, and the candlevines never dimmed.
Inside the room rested three caskets. The first one contained another Jedao, although its eyes were blank. Kujen would have preferred to have more backups, but there hadn’t been time. This one lacked scars, purely an aesthetic consideration. He hadn’t been able to resist tinkering with the face as well. Subtle changes, the kind of modding people got done for vanity’s sake while still remaining recognizable to those who knew them.
The second one contained a Mahar, or rather, Mahar as he had been as a young man. Mahar kept declining this particular honor, but that didn’t trouble Kujen. Even if Mahar insisted on a natural death instead of transference into an immortal body like the current Jedao’s, Kujen liked the idea of keeping his likeness around. He had grown fond of the man after their decades together.
The last casket contained a man with curly brown hair and milky skin and amber eyes, a dancer’s physique, a smile that had broken hearts. Kujen gazed at his own duplicate, the way he’d looked at nineteen when he’d graduated Nirai Academy. The eyes resembled Mahar’s, although that was pure coincidence. They weren’t related; he’d checked, unlikely as the prospect was. But the single point of similarity pleased him nonetheless.
Kujen relaxed his control so that Mahar could speak.
“I won’t be one of them,” Mahar said in a low voice. “It’s too much, Kujen. I appreciate the offer very much, but I’m not the one with a pressing need to live forever.” Ordinarily he would have needled Kujen about unrel
iable prototypes. Today he refrained.
“I’ll always be here if you change your mind,” Kujen said. “Time runs out for everyone, though. Don’t wait too long.”
Mahar was silent for a long time. Then: “When I come in here for maintenance,” he said, “I see them stirring sometimes. They’re dreaming.”
“Well, yes,” Kujen said, patient. “There has to be some minimum of brain function or they wouldn’t be suitable to be inhabited.”
Mahar sucked in his breath. “Don’t condescend to me,” he snapped.
“My apologies,” Kujen said. The other reason he’d kept Mahar around so long, when he ordinarily changed anchors every decade or so: Mahar was good enough at gate mechanics and moth engineering to make a useful research partner.
“I need time alone, Kujen.”
Kujen heard the strain in Mahar’s voice. “Of course,” he said. He could be silent until Mahar regained his composure.
Mahar turned to the caskets. He avoided looking at his own, but he contemplated the extra Jedao with a mixture of pity and revulsion for a long time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE LAST THING Inesser remembered of Isteia was the evacuation. She hadn’t been conscious for the last of it, not after the hit that had taken out the command center of the Three Kestrels Three Suns. The medic had told her that she’d been lucky. Inesser had experienced enough battles to understand that no body parts missing was, in fact, lucky, despite the fact that she felt like one giant bruise made of multiple component bruises and she’d somehow broken her ankle.
At the moment, she was clutching a cross-stitch frame and what would, in theory, become a fetching stitchery depicting a folding fan. The only reason it had survived, frivolous item that it was, was that she hadn’t brought it with her onto the command moth. She’d brought it with her onto Isteia Station to give her hands something to do in case there was a moment of leisure, and left it behind by accident. When evacuating the station, Brezan’s people had thoughtfully taken it with them. Brezan’s assistant had pressed it into her hand when she first woke.
Inesser was currently ensconced in her own room in Medical on Brezan’s personal transport, the bannermoth Unfettered Harmony. To her side, a glass of water rested on a table. She’d tried some of it. The water had tasted stale. She’d considered asking the grid for rice wine instead, but she knew how that exchange would go.
She needed to concentrate on the situation. Instead all she could think of was how difficult it would be to source another skein of Maple Red #5. Genuine hand-dyed variegated silk, certified Andan product from a planet in the Compact. Specifically, hand-dyed variegated silk that was tuned to change color with the seasons on her own homeworld. Working with seasonal silks was a pain in the ass, especially getting the colors to coordinate year-round without having them change inconveniently on any proscribed remembrances. But the results were worth it.
“Protector-General.” Miuzan cleared her throat as she came in. She held a slate tucked under her left arm; her right was in a sling. “Are you ready for the meeting, or should I put it off?”
Inesser forced herself to pay attention. “Where?”
“They’re coming to you.” Miuzan smiled grimly. “My little brother may be strutting around in a jumped-up fancy uniform, but he’s not completely unreasonable.”
Inesser refrained from mentioning that if Brezan’s position was anything like hers, he wore the “jumped-up fancy uniform” because some protocol expert had thought it would serve for impressing the masses. While he hadn’t looked uncomfortable in it, precisely, he also hadn’t looked as though it brought him any particular pleasure. “Bring them in,” she said. “And Miuzan—”
Miuzan tensed at the sound of her name.
“Whatever he’s done,” Inesser said, “he’s still family. You have a chance to talk to him.”
“I tried that once,” Miuzan said flatly. “It didn’t change anything.”
“I know a little of what it’s like to be at odds with kinfolk. You can still mend things.”
“Is that an order?” Miuzan said. “Sir.”
“No,” Inesser said, weary. “No. Let’s get this meeting started, shall we?”
So young, she couldn’t help thinking. She thought that a lot these days. Curious how she’d been young once, and then suddenly, not anymore.
High General Brezan entered, accompanied by a pair of hovering servitors bearing what looked like the kind of food you fed invalids, except it smelled much better. Porridge, and mouthwateringly fragrant jellied fruit, and even a thin slice of cake. Brezan grinned when he saw Inesser’s expression. “I thought you might appreciate being fed real food. I was in a mood to cook anyway.”
The servitors set the tray down on the table next to Inesser, then retreated to fuss with one of the paintings on the wall. Inesser, her eye exquisitely sensitive to matters of alignment thanks to uncounted hours of cross-stitch, yearned to yank the painting away and do their job for them.
“We have an emergency,” Miuzan said, radiating disapproval, “and you’re cooking?”
Brezan didn’t respond to the provocation. “Losses were heavy,” he said, directing the comment at Inesser.
“You don’t need to be diplomatic around me,” Inesser rasped. “I’m not in the habit of shooting the messenger. Give me the numbers.”
Brezan’s eyes were dark. “We took 62% casualties to the swarm,” he said. “The mothyard itself was pulverized, so forget about that. We had to abandon the system.” He produced his own slate and showed her the map. “We’re here now. So far no signs of pursuit, probably because they’re busy consolidating their hold on Isteia.”
Inesser’s breath shuddered in and out. She knew what consolidating their hold meant. Remembrances. “They took captives.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Brezan said.
“Where’s Tseya?”
Tseya came in as though summoned. “Here I am,” she said. She had a glass of jellied lychees in her hand.
“I know you have weapons-grade reservations about the man,” Brezan said to Inesser, “but I would like to include Shuos Mikodez in this conference. If anyone knows what’s going on, he does.” His mouth twisted. “I agreed that you’re calling the shots, though. So it’s up to you.”
“Weapons-grade reservations” was putting it mildly. People stopped trusting Mikodez after he assassinated two of his own cadets the second year after he took the hexarch’s seat. Inesser still remembered waking up to the news. It had arrived during one of her leaves. She was ensconced in a decadent bathhouse with one of her wives when the senior Shuos on her staff called her. “Remember how we thought the boy hexarch was a joke?” they said. “Well, either he’s a genius or he’s a sociopath, but he’s not a joke anymore.”
And that had been only—“only”—two cadets. Inesser had wondered afterward if Mikodez would follow that up with anything more spectacular. Instead, he settled in for decades of distressingly competent leadership. Like any right-thinking person, Inesser couldn’t decide whether she feared the Shuos more when they were organized and all pointed in the same direction, or thrashing about in their periodic orgies of backstabbing. But she knew no one could rely on a Shuos with that kind of reputation. Mikodez had proven that spectacularly true after assassinating the other hexarchs.
Brezan was looking at her.
“Yes,” Inesser said, gritting her teeth. She disliked being beholden to Mikodez for anything. But she was already in bed with one of her adversaries; why not another? Besides, Brezan would consult with Mikodez whether she liked it or not. She might as well gather what information she could.
“Line 6-1 to Hexarch Shuos Mikodez,” Brezan said. “Line 6-2 to High Magistrate Rahal Zaniin, Line 6-3 to General Kel Khiruev, and Line 6-4 to General Kel Ragath, please.”
“There are unauthorized parties in the room,” the grid said primly. “Under security code 43.531.1, it is required that an authorized party—”
Brezan put h
is face in his hands and growled while the grid’s impersonal voice continued to elaborate on security precautions. “For fire’s sake,” he said to no one in particular, “we go through this every fucking time and I am theoretically the former head of state. Override, dammit.”
“Under security code 43.531.1, it is required that an authorized party—”
Brezan pulled out his slate and jabbed at it with his thumb.
“Haptic code?” Inesser said.
“I’m sure you could crack it no problem,” Brezan said sourly. “Which is hilarious because half the time I can’t get the system to recognize it coming from me.”
Sure enough, a loud chime sounded. “Notice to High General Kel Brezan,” the grid said. “Unauthorized user has been logged attempting to—”
Two guards in Shuos red-and-gold poked their heads into the room. “Real emergency or fake emergency, sir?” the broader one, a man with a bearlike build, said.
Brezan waved them off. “Fake emergency. You can go back to cheating little children at jeng-zai or checking the art on the walls for steganography or whatever the hell it is you foxes do when life gets boring.”
“We only cheat little children when they deserve it,” the man said. The door swished shut behind the guards as they resumed their positions.
“Nice to know Mikodez is still training sarcasm into his operatives,” Inesser said. “I assume that’s where you got them.”
“The price of a Shuos’s help is a Shuos’s help,” Brezan said, quoting an old maxim. He jabbed at the slate some more. This time the authorization went through.
The grid spoke again. “Line 6-3 open. Line 6-2 open. Line 6-4 open.” Then, after a pause: “Line 6-1 open.”
Inesser wasn’t surprised that Mikodez responded last. He’d always possessed a healthy sense of his own importance, even before he’d established his reputation as the hexarchate’s second most dangerous Shuos. Inesser told herself to stop thinking of him as “that boy.” She remembered how astonishingly young he’d been when he talked himself into the hexarch’s seat, against all odds, and clung to it thereafter.