by Yoon Ha Lee
Mikodez translated that into fourteen days. Spirel insisted on using the seven-day week even though it was, if not technically illegal, considered unlucky through most of the hexarchate. It came from her people’s traditions. She had remarked once that she had no idea what the rest of their old calendar had looked like before her people looked around and decided to join the hexarchate before getting wiped out as heretics. Mikodez had asked her why she had chosen this particular bit of calendrical minutiae to preserve, and she had shrugged.
Istradez changed his mind yet again and put on a set of robes in pink and yellow, a deliberately attenuated variation on Shuos colors. He was swearing as he tried to put on jewelry that went with it, rose quartz and heliotrope and the startling, contrasting pale flashes of aquamarine in glittering facets. Spirel pulled a face at Mikodez behind Istradez’s back and matter-of-factly went to help Istradez with the clasps.
“Thank you,” Istradez said.
“I could have sworn I paid you enough to afford real gems and not synthetics,” Mikodez said. He knew everything Istradez kept in his collection, all the careless strands of rose gold, the music boxes, the emergency hairpins. Mikodez and Istradez both wore their hair short in back, despite the long forelock, but Spirel was forever losing her hairpins.
Istradez shrugged with one shoulder. “Not like I wear these anywhere that anyone is going to find out and care.”
Mikodez hoisted himself off the couch and strode across the room to grab Istradez by the shoulders and force him to face him. “You are the vainest person I know,” he said, snatching up a comb and some mousse from the nearby dresser and beginning to fix Istradez’s hair. “Honestly, one of these days the details will get you.”
“Excuse me,” Spirel said. “Are you saying that he’s vainer than I am on account of a few bits of glitter? I’m clearly not trying hard enough.” She had laid her charcoal down. Her hands and sleeves were smudged black all over.
Istradez’s pupils had grown large, swallowing the amber-brown irises. “I like shiny things, all right? It’s not a crime to like shiny things. At least I don’t assassinate children with them.”
Spirel made a frantic shushing motion.
“All right,” Mikodez said, remembering what he’d jotted down in the notes to his own procedures for dealing with aggravated employees—except Istradez was also family. Deescalate. “What did I do this time?”
“Nothing,” Istradez said.
“No one ever says ‘nothing’ and means it.” Mikodez set down the comb before Istradez grabbed it and stuck it in his eye. Istradez had always had a bit of a temper. “Are you ever going to debrief me on that damn meeting?”
Istradez growled low in his throat, then leaned forward and kissed him, nipping his lower lip. “Leaned” wasn’t entirely the word for it. Istradez was pressing his full body into Mikodez’s. We’re not twins, Mikodez thought ironically, clothes aside. Istradez’s cock was hard where his was only half-roused, for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.
“Brother-sweet,” Mikodez said, unemotional, “you know you only have ever to ask.”
“That’s what I tried to tell him,” Spirel remarked with a distinct lack of sympathy, over the splashing of water. She had gone to the bathroom to wash the charcoal dust from her fingers, an endeavor that never went well. She often wore gloves to hide the dust beneath her fingernails.
Istradez raised a hand to slap his brother. Mikodez caught it and brought it to his mouth, kissed the knuckles above the cheap rings. A sob choked its way out of Istradez’s throat. “It’s easy for you,” he said. “Good, bad, right, wrong, you don’t care. It’s only ever about efficiency for you.”
“I do my job,” Mikodez said, “because after all the trouble I went to get it, it would be irresponsible not to.” He continued kissing as he bore Istradez toward the couch and pushed him down. Istradez was resisting very little.
Mikodez knelt before the couch and laid his hand on the inside of Istradez’s thigh. Yes: that got a reaction. “I will always do my job. I am the will of the Shuos. But don’t ever, ever doubt that I love you.”
Spirel came out of the bathroom then, and he nodded at her. She smiled at him, a little sadly, before taking his hand and helping him up so he could drape himself over Istradez. For her part, she sat on the floor, as curled and comfortable as a cat, and kissed her way up the side of Istradez’s neck. With one hand she reached up to massage Mikodez’s back, unnecessary but welcome. He wondered if she had gotten all the charcoal out. Istradez’s eyes were wide and glazed, and he said something in a half-gasp, half-moan.
“Shh,” Mikodez said. “Shh.” And he set himself to the task of pleasing Istradez, making a note in the back of his head to check Istradez’s most recent evaluations.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BREZAN HAD NO reason to expect anything to change when he heard footsteps beyond the door to the cell’s antechamber. Hunger was a familiar sharp ache, and his mouth was always dry. The past weeks, which he had lost count of after his captors disabled his augment, had been predictable. Too bad there was singularly little pleasure, under the circumstances, to be had from telling himself ‘I told you so.’
All he remembered about his transfer from the Shuos to the Kel was a blur of untalkative people in the faction’s garish red-and-gold uniforms. What had become of the two irritating medics he would never find out, which was just as well. As for Sfenni and his tasseled minion, he imagined that they were doing just fine.
The Kel had lost no time in verifying his identity. Then they put him in this cell. After two interminable days, during which he resisted the urge to shout at the walls, a colonel showed up. “Kel Brezan,” she had said, “you are excused from standing, given your condition. Do you understand me?”
He would have risen to salute her anyway. She shook her head. He settled for the least half-assed sitting salute he could manage.
“Kel Brezan,” she said, “until the circumstances that led to the dismissal of yourself and the Swanknot swarm’s seconded personnel are understood, it is necessary for your rank to be suspended.”
Standard procedure. He had divined as much from the mode of address. The Kel interrogators would speak to him next. Formation instinct would get them the best results if his rank didn’t get in the way. “Understood, sir,” he rasped.
“Tell me something, soldier. Why seek rescue from the Shuos?”
He had known this was going to be a sticking point. This wouldn’t win him any friends, but he had accepted that when he decided on his course of action. He summarized his line of reasoning.
“In other words,” the colonel said, “General Jedao offloaded personnel he couldn’t control with formation instinct, and you were one of them.”
“Yes, sir,” Brezan said. The words cut his throat like glass. “I was the only Kel eyewitness to the takeover to get out.” He had heard nothing of the Doctrine officer. It was possible that they had died of medical complications.
The colonel’s eyes were frosty. “You have just become someone else’s problem, soldier. Enjoy the rest you get now. You won’t be getting much more of it.”
“Sir,” Brezan said dully. He knew what the Kel did to crashhawks. At best they would revoke his commission and outprocess him. At worst they would execute him. But he had seen no other way to fulfill his duty.
Brezan spent a long time alone after that, observing remembrances with meditations whenever the dead-sounding voice over the announcement system reminded him to. Presumably they were sending for Rahal or Vidona, since Kel interrogators hated dealing with crashhawks, as if they were contagious. A servitor brought him food at intervals, never more than a little tepid rice and water. He was starting to wish he’d taken more advantage of Shuos Sfenni’s hospitality while he’d had the chance. Brezan made a game of trying to tell the servitors apart. Either it was a different servitor each time, or they modified themselves for the hell of it.
In spite of himself, Brezan wished for a Vidona. He didn’t like the Vi
dona any more than any sensible person did, but he had endured the straightforward application of pain before. Heretic terrorists had captured a transport when he was a captain. They hadn’t held the captives long before the Kel freed them, but to this day Brezan remembered the hot filaments of pain in his feet and face, the recuperation afterward. They’d had to regrow one of his eyes. The Vidona could only torture you. The Rahal could scry your signifier, including signifier reactions to specific questions. Not as direct as lie detection, or anywhere near mindreading (although there were rumors), but a skilled practitioner could trick the truth out of you.
When the hex of Rahal inquisitors arrived thirteen days after he was taken into custody, he knew they were taking his warning seriously. He’d started to wonder. He was pacing at the time, if you could call it that when he was moving agonizingly slowly both due to his lingering sleeper-recovery and the spider restraints, even on a relaxed setting. It took him a moment to register the hex’s presence. The plain robes, gray with bronze hems, were impossible to mistake, the wolf equivalent of full formal. The Rahal did their uniforms backwards, wearing more ornate clothing on more casual occasions.
The head inquisitor was a woman with curly hair and an imperturbable expression. All six wolves’ eyes sheened bronze, indicating that they had activated scrying. They murmured a greeting in an archaic form of the high language.
Brezan fought down the lump of fear that threatened to choke him and gave them a formal bow as best as the restraints permitted, which wasn’t very. The Rahal had a reputation for being fussy about protocol, but they also prided themselves on rationality. They wouldn’t blame him for something that wasn’t under his control.
The head inquisitor acknowledged the bow with a nod, which meant she had decided not to take offense. “Kel,” she said, “I am Inquisitor Rahal Hwan. We are here to determine the truth of your claims.” She spoke a very pure form of the high language.
“I’ll do my best not to get in your way, Inquisitor,” Brezan said, as if he could withstand a full hex.
“You may as well be seated,” Hwan said. “This will take a while.”
Brezan dragged himself to the bench and sat. His legs wobbled, but damned if he was going to show it. He looked up, determined to meet Hwan’s eyes even if it wasn’t strictly necessary, and fell sideways through a fissure in his head.
Part of him was sitting on the bench. The rest of him was in his parents’ apartment on Irissa Station, in the dreamspace triggered by Hwan’s first question. He wondered fleetingly what it had been before his attention was caught by the walls. They looked like they’d been redone in gun components caulked in something that gleamed viscously. Why had his three fathers done that?
Brezan checked for his oldest sister Keryezan at her favorite reading spot by the lamp with the painting of the grasshoppers. She wasn’t there, nor were her two children. Keryezan was the only one of his sisters he got along with, and he enjoyed cooking indulgent dishes for the kids.
He turned around and his other sisters, the twins Miuzan and Ganazan, sat playing pattern-stones with their youngest father’s set. Ganazan, who wore her hair pinned back from her face, had somehow talked Miuzan into giving her a three-stone handicap. Miuzan categorically hated giving people handicaps. Brezan had never gotten her to give him one growing up despite the fact that she was six years older than he was.
Both the twins were in uniform. Ganazan served as a clerk on a boxmoth, which she considered superior to running around in a combat moth. Logistics had always appealed to her. Miuzan was a colonel on General Inesser’s staff and couldn’t be made to shut up about it.
Brezan opened his mouth and said something, he wasn’t sure what. It didn’t matter. Both his sisters gave no sign of having heard him. He inspected his hands. No black gloves. No uniform, either, just sober brown civilian’s clothing.
Another fissure opened, and he fell through again. He and Miuzan stood in a dueling hall that stretched out so far to either side that the ends curved away. Miuzan’s calendrical sword was bright in her hand, numbers glowing red with white sparks. She had always been good at dueling. As a child, Brezan had loved to watch her practice her forms, admiring the ferocity of her discipline.
Brezan activated his own sword to salute her. The blade wasn’t its usual sullen blue, but red shading to yellow. Foxes, he thought in aggravation. It was tempting to blame Shuos Zehun. In all fairness, however, Zehun hadn’t hanged him. They had merely tossed him a nice long rope.
“You’re going to lose, little brother,” Miuzan said with her usual superiority. “But you’re getting better, I’ll give you that.”
Brezan frequently had fantasies of shoving Miuzan in a cloisonné box and sending her to the Andan so they could teach her to be less condescending or, at least, less obvious about it. The hell of it was, she seemed to be unaware of how much she made his teeth ache. He had long ago given up on ever having her approve of him; he’d settle for getting her to shut up.
“I’m a better shot than you are,” Brezan said, although it was a mistake to make any rejoinder at all.
She eyed him critically. “Yes, that will come in handy if you want to be stuck in the infantry for the rest of your life.”
There came a count of four, and Miuzan lunged. Brezan parried too late. It would have made no difference anyway. Miuzan’s sword flared up and the flames became dark-bright wings. The blade itself stretched out into an ashhawk’s head and sinuous neck.
Brezan swore and ducked. The ashhawk with its vicious raptor’s beak passed harmlessly through him. The flames roared up around him, heatless despite the stench of roasting flesh.
Miuzan was burning red and gold. Her hair had come loose from its braid and was whipping around her head. Blackened sheets of skin were already peeling loose from her face, making a dry crackling sound. Bone showed white at her skull and knuckles. “Oh Brezan,” she said, her voice entirely normal in spite of all this, “you’ll never be formation fuel at this rate.”
“Who the everliving fuck joins the Kel with the intent of becoming formation fuel?” Brezan shouted at her. Miuzan might be infuriating, but she was still his older sister. She had taught him pattern-stones and swordplay and how to take apart and reassemble every single one of the family’s guns, not to mention how to bake amazing honey-ginger cookies. He didn’t want her to die in a suicide formation or to an enemy bullet or, for that matter, by tripping down the stairs. He just wanted her to stop treating him like he was still the gawky eight-year-old who kept following her and Ganazan around hoping they would play forts with him.
Miuzan might have responded, but Brezan couldn’t hear her over the roaring of the fire. He developed a crazed notion that if he burned himself too, he would be able to follow her so he could shake some answers out of her. Try as he might, however, the flames took no notice of him. He was wearing his black gloves now—funny how that had happened. Unfortunately, it made no difference.
The scrying continued in this vein for quite some time. Back on the bench, Brezan hunched over and shook with hunger. The Rahal might be used to fasting, but he still hadn’t recovered from whatever they had botched putting him in the sleeper. A servitor brought him water. He choked it down. It tasted like it was heavy with soot.
The Rahal took their sweet time working their way to the topic of Jedao. In the interrogation, Jedao didn’t appear as a womanform, like Brezan himself, but as he had in the archival videos, a lean, slightly short man. His uniform was in full formal with the old-fashioned red-and-gold braid of a seconded Shuos officer, making Brezan feel underdressed. Jedao had the same tilted smile, however. He was playing pattern-stones with Brezan. In the back of his mind, Brezan resolved never to play another board game unless someone ordered him to. The stones shifted position each time Brezan blinked. Behind him, although he didn’t dare glance over his shoulder, he heard distant shrieks and sobs.
Jedao had a revolver in his left hand. He wore no gloves, fingerless or otherwise, which Brez
an took to mean that he was playing for keeps. Each time Brezan placed a black stone—naturally he was the weaker player—Jedao shot one of his fingers off. The bullets didn’t do any damage to the board or its shifting array of stones, neat trick, although Brezan flinched at the ricochets.
Even though this was a scrying and not the real thing, the pain was riotous. The real thing might have been preferable. Then he’d have had a chance of passing out.
Brezan tried to breathe steadily. Pretend this is a remembrance, he told himself. Did that ever console heretics? He had to defeat the fucking ninefox general, but he only had four fingers left. He placed a stone. Jedao reloaded and fired without looking. His aim was impeccable.
Three fingers left. Then two. Then one, with which Brezan managed by scooping the stone between his remaining finger and left palm. At last Brezan had no fingers at all, just a set of bleeding stumps.
Jedao cocked an eyebrow at him. “What now?” he said.
“I am going to stop you if it kills me,” Brezan said, wishing he had a better gift for futile last words, especially since, with the Rahal, he had an audience.
He bent over to pick up one last stone with his teeth—
Everything after that hurt even worse, which he hadn’t thought possible. Eventually the Rahal hex went away. For a while he didn’t realize it. He forced down more water when they offered it. The gnawing pain at the pit of his stomach wouldn’t go away, but it felt like it was happening to someone else. Being someone else sounded like an excellent career move right now.
“I am Kel,” Brezan whispered to the wall when he was sure no one was around. He couldn’t hear his own voice. The words scraped his throat raw.
Time passed. The taste of ashes receded. He shivered constantly. But he had to endure. The Kel might require more information from him. He needed to be in a fit state to give it to them. With any luck, they wouldn’t ask too late for it to stop Jedao.
Brezan thought of the Kel who had been in the command center when Jedao took over, training their weapons on him. He thought of General Khiruev, and the first time they had met. Brezan had been surprised to be tapped for Khiruev’s staff after his predecessor developed a rare medical condition, and not sure he liked what it implied. The general had a reputation for unconventional thinking, not to mention flouting Kel Command’s wishes, which could be good or bad, depending.