Raven Stratagem

by Yoon Ha Lee

  “Because we had to win back the Fortress of Scattered Needles, and—don’t tell Kel Tsoro about this bit, she dislikes me enough already.” True as far as it went. “Only one of the available Kel generals was deemed good enough to crack invariant ice and handle the situation, Kel Inesser. But Kel Command didn’t want to hand her that victory because she’s too popular with her own troops, and they think she’s a potential threat to them.”

  Jedao’s mouth twisted. “Not that we’re on the same side, Shuos-zho, but has Kel Command ever in the past four centuries considered that it might be better not to field generals it doesn’t trust?”

  “I’m not a soldier, so I don’t feel qualified to comment,” Mikodez lied. “It wasn’t a good solution, but it was a damn sight better than ceding the Fortress of Scattered Needles to Hafn control. It was also better than letting you charm your way out of captivity afterward. I admit we didn’t see your solution coming, even if everyone realizes that the Kel are expendable.”

  Jedao didn’t fall for the bait. But then, his control had been moderately good during the previous conversation, and Mikodez was working his way up to the harder questions. “What do you seek to gain from this chat, Shuos-zho?” Jedao asked.

  “I’m not going to tell you that I have your best interests at heart, because I don’t, and no one should believe a Shuos making facile remarks anyway.” He could tell that Jedao was refraining from making a sarcastic rejoinder. “But the fact remains that you’re a Shuos, even if Kel Command thinks you’re pretty in that uniform. That means you’re one of mine. Every time you hare off course, I’m responsible.”

  “Shuos-zho, you don’t need to break it down into words of one syllable for me. They were teaching this stuff four centuries ago, you know.”

  Mikodez quirked an eyebrow. “We’ll just agree that we both speak fluent Shuos and go from there.”

  Jedao leaned back. “Are you looking for assurances? You’ll notice that I’ve aimed my guns consistently at the Hafn and not your moths or cities. That Shuos commandant of yours should have told you that I offloaded all my threshold winnowers. I know people are, shall we say, sensitive about them. Although maybe it’s a bit much to expect forthrightness from someone who spent her career under deep cover.” He smiled briefly, ironically.

  “No, she was frank about that,” Mikodez said. He had instructed Zehun to find Mazeret the posting of her choice in return for her extraordinary service. “But Jedao, it can’t have escaped your notice that the only people who will ever ‘trust’ you are people who have no choice in the matter. You can’t expect to convince me of your sincerity. I’m not a Kel, and we were both trained to be paranoid.”

  “I know,” Jedao said, very quietly. “But it doesn’t matter. I refuse to return to the cradle. There’s no light in there. If I have to run out of the hexarchate and turn mercenary, then fine. That’s what I’ll do.”

  “You’ll kill a lot more people that way. You have a talent for it.”

  “I know.”

  “You didn’t ask for this assessment,” Mikodez said, “but I’ll give it to you anyway. Did it never occur to you that if you’d been a standard-issue happy-go-lucky sociopath like the rest of us foxes, instead of a Crowned with Eyes visionary, a lot more people would be alive and a lot less evil would have been done?”

  Ninefox Crowned with Eyes was Jedao’s signifier. During his lifetime it had been interpreted as an indication of his brilliance. But visionaries and the mad sometimes turned up with it, and they all knew how that story ended.

  “If you were a ‘standard-issue happy-go-lucky sociopath’ yourself,” Jedao retorted, “you wouldn’t give a fuck about lives saved or lost.” His gaze shifted sideways. “Fox and hound, Shuos-zho, are you growing a vegetable on your desk? Is there a food shortage in the Citadel? I would have recommended something that offered a little more sustenance, personally.”

  Transparent change of topic, which Mikodez had expected. Besides, it was nice to see Jedao taking an interest in something that wasn’t ordnance. Maybe he should send the swarm some cuttings? “That’s what my assistant said. Every so often I snip some leaves to put in my soup. Speaking of which, how are you enjoying Kel food? Is it very different from what you used to eat?”

  “Don’t recognize what they’ve done to the pickles,” Jedao said drily, “and I’m afraid to ask about some of the fish. If they’re fish at all. So how many hexarchs has your assistant served?”

  At least Jedao still recognized Shuos power structures. The Shuos who made a play for the hexarch’s seat were almost always foxes. Even then, only the vainglorious, the rabidly ambitious, or the terminally bored bothered with the exercise. (Mikodez thought of himself as a category three.) No: if you wanted to wield lasting influence, you skipped the dramatics, became a bureaucrat, and made yourself too indispensable to purge.

  “I’m Zehun’s third hexarch,” Mikodez said matter-of-factly. “Of course, my predecessor only lasted three years before I happened to him.”

  “Bullet? Poison? Point-blank knitting needle?”

  Jedao had never had much imagination, even for Shuos infantry. “He was having a nervous breakdown,” Mikodez said. “He wanted to retire somewhere quiet and change his face and sex and, I’m not making this up, breed cockatiels. I visited her once afterward, to make sure she was doing all right. Lovely birds, cockatiels. I often think she got the better end of the deal, especially when I have to deal with budget allocations and my agents whine about not getting all the latest toys. Anyway, my assistant had to talk me out of bringing one of the birds home as a pet. Zehun’s such a killjoy sometimes.”

  Jedao looked bewildered. “I realize it’s impertinent of me to ask, Shuos-zho, but why did you decide to become hexarch? Instead of taking up landscape architecture or tiger-taming or anesthesiology?”

  Mikodez grinned at him. “Because I’m good at it and it’s fun. Not necessarily in that order. Honestly, even some of the Kel figure out that duty can be fun. You have some peculiar knot in your psyche that says everything has to be about suffering. But then, considering that you’re practically half-Kel, it’s not surprising you react like a hawk.”

  Pointedly, Jedao held up his left hand and inspected his half-glove. “It’s just a uniform, Shuos-zho. You do have my transcripts from Shuos Academy, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and I also happen to know how hard you had to work not to fail out of those math classes. But I’m not joking. At one point you had formation instinct.” Mikodez studied Jedao’s face intently. Thirty-five years later and they were winding back to the part of the conversation that Nirai Kujen had so disapproved of. They’d quarreled afterward, and then Zehun had yelled at Mikodez for getting into a fight with the Nirai hexarch on his home station. Worth it, though.

  Jedao scoffed. “That’s preposterous. I’d know if they’d made me into a counterfeit Kel. Even outprocessing can’t suppress a memory that—” He fell silent, eyes going opaque as the uncertainty hit.

  He didn’t remember this time, either. “Not a counterfeit,” Mikodez said. “You were the prototype. Where do you think they got the idea?”

  Jedao met Mikodez’s eyes. His face had cleared of all expression, an obvious tell. He was silent for a long time. “You’re not lying to me.”

  “My dear,” Mikodez said, “I shouldn’t have to remind you that sometimes the truth serves better than a lie.”

  A longer silence. “Why would they get rid of formation instinct if they’d managed to inject me with it? I would have assumed that they’d want to leash me as tightly as possible.” Brief pause. “At least now I understand why they didn’t—didn’t just kill me. If they thought they could do this. If they did.” Jedao drew a shuddering breath, regrouped.

  “I don’t know why they uninjected you,” Mikodez said. Also true, although Jedao was unlikely to believe him. “But it should be obvious to you who would have that information, if you can track him down.”

  There was a chance that Kel Command’s
hive memory, never entirely reliable, had degraded over time. Mikodez and Jedao both knew that Nirai Kujen had perfect recall, however. Getting Jedao to retrieve Kujen was a long shot, but Mikodez had nothing to lose.

  “At a guess,” Mikodez said, “they gave up on it because the results were unreliable. You’d be a lousy Kel candidate to begin with, so even with modern techniques a standard injection wouldn’t take. Who knows how long they spent getting a psych surgeon”—meaning Kujen—“to do a custom job.”

  “It’s redundant for you to give me more reasons to avoid Kel Command,” Jedao said.

  “That wasn’t why I told you.” Mostly true.

  “Then—?”

  “Because you deserve to know.”

  Jedao’s eyes widened. Then he laughed.

  “You’re one of mine,” Mikodez said. “I despise seeing my people mishandled, but until very recently you’ve been under Kel jurisdiction, so there was only so much I could do.”

  “Yes,” Jedao said, growing distant. “I remember when they told me that Khiaz-zho had signed me over to the Kel Arsenal. I don’t know why it came as such a shock. But I deserved no less.” More silence.

  “Whatever’s on your mind, you might as well ask.”

  “Is it true that you assassinate Shuos cadets?”

  Interesting. Jedao was trying to gauge his moral fiber. Kel Command would have been singularly unamused. Or possibly gone out to get collectively drunk. (Did they ever do that? Intelligence was unclear on that point.) “My dear,” Mikodez said, “I’m happy to tell you the dirt, but you’re not good enough to determine whether I’m lying or not.”

  “Try me anyway,” Jedao said.

  “The answer is yes. I specifically targeted two cadets, whom my agents successfully terminated. There were no secondary casualties. The cadets were part of a heretic plot to blow up Shuos Academy Tertiary. The details are messy. I didn’t have a lot of time. Since I didn’t fancy a panic, I had my agents shoot them while they were playing some drinking game. The plot came much closer to succeeding than I generally like to admit.”

  “Why not release the truth after the matter had been handled? Your academy commandant should have been able to keep the lid on a little panic.”

  “You didn’t ask when the incident happened.” Mikodez grimaced. “I was twenty-seven. It was my second year as hexarch, and I didn’t have a lot of credibility. I felt it was more useful for people to be afraid of what I might do to top that.”

  Jedao laughed wryly. “I can’t say I envy you your job, Shuos-zho. I was never tempted to try for it.”

  Mikodez believed him, which was just as well. The prospect of someone with Jedao’s psychological problems in charge of the Shuos appalled him. Jedao’s solution to people who disagreed with him was to shoot them. While even Jedao couldn’t shoot everyone in the hexarchate, the evidence to date suggested that he’d do a fantastic amount of damage on the way out.

  Jedao did have a swarm—-Shandal Yeng’s anxiety wasn’t entirely unfounded—but Mikodez hoped that the Hafn would keep him occupied with something familiar and soothing until he could be stabilized. In any case, it was Mikodez’s turn. “Tell me something so I can settle a few bets around the Citadel,” he said idly. “How is Khiruev in bed?”

  Jedao went ice-white.

  Damn. That meant he’d been thinking about it. The taboo had not been as strong during Jedao’s lifetime. However, after the institution of formation instinct, due to the potential for abuse, Kel who had sex with other Kel were executed. Even Kel Command recognized the morale problems that would result. And Jedao, who had spent almost his entire adult career, and several lifetimes besides, in Kel service, thought of himself as a hawk.

  “You wouldn’t entirely be to blame for gravitating toward hawks after the way Khiaz worked you over,” Mikodez said. As a matter of fact, her notes on all her victims were in his archives. (Heptarch Khiaz had been a very well-organized predator.) In Jedao’s case, she’d taken the extra step of allowing him to transfer out of her office when he was a young man, so that he thought he’d escaped being harassed by her. She’d waited until his promotion to brigadier general to strike.

  “Shuos-zho,” Jedao said, in a voice so pleasant it was poisonous, “it’s no secret that I’m one of the hexarchate’s greatest monsters, but I draw the line at rape.”

  “That’s fucking hilarious considering whose body you’re walking around in,” Mikodez observed.

  Jedao’s face was recovering some of its color. “Kel Cheris had already died,” he said. “I didn’t see any harm in wringing some final use out of her carcass. The dead aren’t around to care.”

  “You’re one of us, all right.”

  “I’m so glad I have your approval, Shuos-zho, but feel free to get to the point.”

  Jedao’s sexual hang-ups hadn’t been a concern while he was a revenant, but the fact that he had a body now complicated matters. “Never mind Khiruev, then,” Mikodez said. “At some point when you’re done walloping the Hafn, you ought to take some time off and try sex with someone who isn’t a Kel. I hear some people find it fulfilling.” Istradez always laughed whenever he heard of Mikodez giving this particular advice. But Jedao’s discomfited expression made the whole conversation worth it. “Unless you have some archaic problem with being a womanform?”

  “Shuos-zho,” Jedao said patiently, “I haven’t had a dick in four hundred years. I got over it fast, promise.”

  “It’s still frustrating that I can’t send over a licensed courtesan, although I’m not sure I can afford one good enough to work through your particular problems.”

  “You say this like I’m going to have time for extracurricular activities. This fucking swarm doesn’t run itself, you know.”

  “Tell me,” Mikodez said in exasperation, “what the hell would you do if there weren’t a war on?”

  Jedao faltered. For a moment his eyes were wrenchingly young. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

  Which meant, although there was no way that Jedao was ready to admit it to himself, that he’d start a war just to have something to do.

  “I’ve kept you long enough,” Mikodez said, “but one last thing.” The most important thing. “Does the term Mwen-denerra mean anything to you?”

  Home of the Mwennin. The scatter-home, the braid of all the small communities bound by blood and custom.

  Jedao cocked his head. “I can’t even tell you what language that’s from, Shuos-zho. Foreign? Hexarchate?”

  “The hexarchs want to destroy it,” Mikodez said.

  He had thought there might be a reaction this time, but still nothing. “Is it a weapon?” Jedao said. “A sculpture? A really terrible snack food?”

  “Never mind, then,” Mikodez said. “I just thought you might be able to tell me about it.”

  “I failed the test, didn’t I,” Jedao said ruefully. “In my defense, it’s hard to read up on things when there’s no light.”

  “It genuinely isn’t important,” Mikodez said. It looked like Cheris was dead, or unavailable, or whatever happened to possessed people. Besides, it wasn’t as if Jedao, or Cheris for that matter, could do anything useful about the planned genocide. Mikodez himself certainly didn’t need Jedao’s permission to do as he pleased about the situation. “Try not to kill more people than necessary.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Jedao said. “Goodbye, Shuos-zho.” His image flicked out and left the Deuce of Gears in its place, gold on a field of livid red. Then that, too, vanished.

  “That could have gone better,” Mikodez said to his green onion. But he hadn’t hoped to fix four centuries of mismanagement in one conversation. It would have to do for a start.

  CHAPTER TEN

  KHIRUEV HAD GOTTEN accustomed to the fact that Jedao was, as commanding officers went, conscientious about details. She couldn’t imagine that someone with Jedao’s battle record had achieved what he had by dashing around without paying attention to lo
gistics. And logistics were going to be an issue since they were renegades. So far their supplies had held up, but who knew how long a campaign Jedao had planned?

  Jedao was also conscientious about getting to know his staff as individuals, and holding regular conferences with the leaders of the tactical groups and the scoutmoths, and even walking through the Hierarchy of Feasts’ levels and chatting with the crew. No one would ever forget who Jedao was or what he had done, and no one would ever feel at ease around him, despite his pleasantness. But then, this was a very old game to Jedao.

  Sixteen days after the engagement at Spinshot Coins, as the swarm continued its pursuit of the Hafn, Jedao and Khiruev had returned from one such walk and ended at Khiruev’s quarters, which was odd. The walk itself had been nothing remarkable. Indeed, it wasn’t unusual for a swarm’s general to inspect their command moth with the high officers aboard. Khiruev remembered such walks as a brigadier general under Lieutenant General Myoga, who, while excellent at training large swarms, had possessed an unfortunate soft, droning voice that resisted everyone’s augments’ attempts to decipher it when she inevitably trailed off at the end of a sentence. This didn’t matter when you were composited and the pickups transmitted everything from subvocals, but it became embarrassing when you were fumbling for a response to whatever she had just said while poking around the engine room. At least Jedao spoke loudly enough to be heard, and his drawl, while unusual, was paradoxically comprehensible.

  Jedao’s divide-and-conquer tactics, which involved talking to individuals rather than groups whenever this made sense, were transparent. Yet no one could do anything about it. Khiruev made a point of reminding herself every time she woke up that the swarm had been stolen from her, not as a matter of personal pride (although, if she was honest with herself, there was an element of that too). It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Jedao might be a manipulative bastard, but he was the manipulative bastard that Khiruev was bound to serve.

  So it came as no especial surprise when, having gotten Khiruev alone, Jedao asked her a personal question. It didn’t matter that Khiruev’s own quarters should have been friendly terrain. Ever since that scathing critique of her assassination attempt, Khiruev would always be slicingly aware of Jedao’s dominance whenever they met here.