Raven Stratagem

by Yoon Ha Lee

  “You know,” Mikodez said, “that’s one option, but it’s not the only option.”

  Zehun went dead quiet. “If that’s supposed to be a Shuos joke I haven’t heard before,” Zehun said at last, “fine, I haven’t heard it before. But it’s a terrible idea, and maybe you should get some sleep.”

  “I’m not joking,” Mikodez said. “It’s true, however, that our window of opportunity is limited. I realize we only have so much information about the planned spike, but I want all our mathematicians on the problem. What will this spike do if it goes off? Formations can’t be the whole story. Even Jedao with his Kel fixation wouldn’t have made this play based on that alone, and even if Cheris is merely very good at emulating a dead man, we have plenty of evidence that her moves take place on multiple gameboards simultaneously. We need a fuller picture so we can make an informed decision.”

  “You frighten me on a regular basis,” Zehun said in a low voice, “but this is something else.”

  Mikodez raised an eyebrow. “You could have had me killed when I was eighteen,” he said, “and you didn’t.”

  At eighteen, Mikodez had been a second-year Shuos cadet. Ever since Hellspin Fortress, Shuos Academy stopped admitting prospects who shared Jedao’s signifier, Ninefox Crowned with Eyes. Never mind that for generations before that, Shuos Crowned with Eyes had managed to lead lives free of high treason and massacre. As for Shuos who developed that signifier later, they were purged.

  Mikodez had entered with a Ninefox Smiling. However, during one of the periodic evaluations, it emerged that he had a variable signifier. Uncommon, but not unheard of either, especially among Shuos and Andan. The ability could even be trained in to a certain extent, which was handy for undercover work. Unfortunately, the evaluation had recorded a brief shift to Crowned with Eyes. Zehun, as a senior instructor, had been dispatched with a team of assassins to assess Mikodez.

  “I think I’m being adequately punished for my lapse in judgment,” Zehun said. They looked at Mikodez unsmilingly. “Forty years of stability in the Shuos. You have no idea what it was like to be Shuos before that; you can’t. You’re proposing turning the whole hexarchate topsy-turvy. That doesn’t bother you even a little?”

  “That’s only if Cheris fails,” Mikodez said. “Have you given the mathematicians their marching orders?”

  “It’s embarrassing that you’re asking,” Zehun said. “Of course I have. I’m also giving them whatever the hell they want for breakfast because I’m sure you don’t want to rely on cranky mathematicians for urgently important policy results.”

  “I’m glad I can count on you to have common sense so I don’t have to.”

  Zehun snorted.

  “Well, keep an eye on the mathematicians. I hear it’s easier to check someone else’s work than hash it out from scratch, but it’s not my field.” He wasn’t under any illusions that the introductory calendrical math he’d studied as a cadet qualified him to inspect whatever Cheris was up to. “In the meantime, I am going to review my colleagues’ plan to see if there are any last-minute changes I should know about.”

  “You really should get sleep instead.”

  Mikodez fixed her with a stare. “Zehun-ye,” he said, using the instructor honorific, “we’re looking at high treason and a calendrical disruption that could be as bad as the one after Hellspin Fortress, and you think I’m going to be able to fall asleep?”

  Zehun sighed. “Fine. Rest when you can, seriously, and I’ll keep you apprised of any developments. I’m having breakfast sent up so you don’t forget to eat yourself.”

  “That was eight years ago,” he protested, “and I get nagged enough by Istradez as it stands. Can’t you let it rest?”

  “Shut up and get to work.”

  Mikodez grinned at Zehun. “If that’s not motivational, I don’t know what is.” He signed off before Zehun could get in a rejoinder. He knew they hated it when he did that, so he saved it for special occasions. You couldn’t get much more special than ‘oh, and by the way, our government and way of life might be ending in fourteen days.’

  Breakfast arrived promptly, borne by an unsmiling guard who refused the persimmon candy on the tray when Mikodez offered it to her. On any other day he would have amused himself by wheedling her to take it, but Zehun would find out and yell at him for harassing the staff. Besides, he liked the candies.

  He only ended up eating a third of what was on the tray, mostly because Zehun seemed to think he needed a lot more fuel than was the case. The last time he’d suggested that he could give them a vacation so they could spoil their grandchildren (four of them, a fifth on the way), they had retaliated by scrambling his noncritical custom grid interfaces. Served him right. In the dramas people shied from Shuos assassins and saboteurs, but the ones you had to watch out for were the bureaucrats.

  While Mikodez ate, he had the grid run some searches. He poured himself more citron tea while going over the results, applying the occasional extra filter, not that those helped much. Nothing new with the Rahal, but he liked to check them first just to get them out of the way, and also just in case they surprised him. Once some Rahal magistrate had tried to bring cooking measures in line with some obscure lemma. That experiment hadn’t lasted long.

  Shuos next, because the received wisdom—that the Shuos were their own worst enemy—had a lot of basis in truth. Mikodez held off on the ordinary business of approving promotions, demotions, and the occasional assassination; that could wait for later. Interestingly, the commandant of Shuos Academy Tertiary was still waffling over whether to make an attempt on the hexarch’s seat. Mikodez wished the man would make up his mind already. It was hard to find good, not to say loyal, commandants. Still, nothing of crushing urgency.

  Andan was more interesting. One of his senior analysts thought Shandal Yeng had discovered some of their taps and was feeding them disinformation. Shandal Yeng was also spending a lot of time in elaborate meals with various offspring and the current consort. Mikodez remembered the time years ago he had attended one such dinner with Nirai Kujen. Conversation had centered around museum pieces, and Mikodez had amused himself thinking up heists. Kujen, who could be surprisingly passionate about beautiful architecture but didn’t care about the buildings’ contents, spent the evening seducing one of Shandal Yeng’s sons, Nezhe. As for Kujen’s anchor’s opinion of the whole affair, who knew. But it hadn’t been hard to figure out that Shandal Yeng was cozying up to Kujen on account of immortality. Too bad Mikodez hadn’t been able to eavesdrop on the conversation the two of them had late that night. Judging by the way they behaved toward each other ever after, the quarrel must have been spectacular.

  As usual with the Andan, there was a lot of activity but none on the level of a code red nine. That brought Mikodez to the next faction, Nirai. The current hexarch didn’t worry him. Faian had a disturbing honest streak that was going to doom her, unending life or no. Unfortunately, Nirai Kujen had contrived to vanish so thoroughly that none of Mikodez’s agents had been able to sniff out his current location even now, and it was too much to hope that someone had accidentally winged Kujen with a genial gun. Mikodez was paranoid as a job requirement, but he feared few people in the hexarchate. Kujen was one of them. Until he had more information, however, he couldn’t do much else. He discarded the idea that Cheris and Kujen had allied with each other, which was one small mercy. Given the personalities involved, he couldn’t imagine such an arrangement lasting for long.

  Kel and Vidona were business as usual. As far as Mikodez could tell, the Kel were occupied with logistics. The Vidona were having internal problems related to the interpretation of a remembrance that might have been fraudulently declared. They wanted to settle the matter before it came to the attention of Rahal Iruja. Riveting bedtime reading if you were into that sort of thing.

  Zehun was right. The rest of the day passed quietly. Mikodez got through the next five days with the aid of drugs. Sleeping pills, to be exact.

  The green onion w
as flourishing, but then, he was very diligent about watering it.

  On the evening of the fifth day, Mikodez got a call on Line 6 while he was in the shower. Especially surprising because he was technically supposed to be meditating for a remembrance so he’d thought he’d at least be safe from that line. “Do you mind?” he said to the grid. “Tell them to hold and I will be there in three minutes.”

  It took five because that one damn button on his uniform hated him. He needed to go back to old-fashioned stupid fabrics instead of the programmable kind the Kel were so infatuated with.

  “All right,” Mikodez said when he was minimally presentable, “connect me.” Within seconds, the five other hexarchs were glowering at him.

  After examining him, Rahal Iruja said, “Mikodez, is your hair dripping?”

  He’d known she’d disapprove. She sounded remarkably like one of his fathers, but he knew better than to say that out loud. “Look, Hexarch,” he said, “it was either my clothes or the hair dryer. Did you really want me to pick the other one?”

  “Is the whole Citadel of Eyes run like this?”

  “Hexarch,” Mikodez said, “be reasonable. I hire staff as little like me as possible or we’d get nothing done.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Iruja said, which made him groan inwardly because she had an excellent memory. “Hexarch Tsoro wanted to announce a change in plans.”

  “I apologize for the late notice,” Kel Tsoro said. Mikodez wasn’t the only person who started; no point hiding his reaction. Tsoro had used an archaic version of the first person pronoun, one that was specifically singular, instead of the equally archaic plural that the hivemind had employed for centuries. (The modern form of the high language rarely inflected for number.) From the sardonic curl to her mouth, Tsoro knew the effect she was having. “The deliberations took time and could not be hurried. On behalf of the Kel, I am declining immortality.”

  Nirai Faian looked like she’d been slapped, but then, she seemed to think immortality could serve some humanitarian purpose, rather than calcifying existing power structures or triggering wars.

  “Explain yourself,” Iruja said coolly.

  “Rahal,” Tsoro said, “I may be the will of the Kel, but I am still Kel. The Kel are made to serve. Part of that service is death. I will not order my soldiers to risk their lives when I can endure forever, nor will I stifle the officers below me by making it impossible for them to hope for advancement.”

  Vidona Psa didn’t seem to be able to decide between admiration and incredulity. “Tsoro,” he said, “that’s all very noble, but few Kel have any chance of becoming generals, let alone hexarch. You may feel this way now, but decades down the line, when death comes knocking—”

  “Death,” Tsoro said, biting down on the word. “What do you know about death, Vidona? The scars are gone, but I once took a bullet that scarcely missed my heart. I was a junior lieutenant in a battle so small that even I wouldn’t remember its name if I hadn’t almost died. It was a long time ago, but I remember. I would die before I forget. If I live forever, I will certainly forget.”

  Iruja looked unmoved by this, and said only, “Do you wish to send someone in your place? A subordinate?”

  “I refuse,” Tsoro said, “on behalf of the Kel.”

  No wonder the argument Tsoro had alluded to had taken so long. She would have had to subdue every dissenter in the hivemind. Formation instinct was one thing, but the prospect of immortality would have been one hell of an incentive even for a component of the composite. Still, since she had won, Kel hierarchy and the hivemind’s extreme conservatism now worked in her favor.

  Of course, if Cheris’s assassination plot was real, she would decapitate the Kel. Mikodez could warn Tsoro right now, but he had a little time yet, and he was determined to hear back from his mathematicians if possible. If he decided to foil Cheris, he could always call another meeting, this time with dry hair.

  Andan Shandal Yeng spoke for the first time. “It’s your pyre, Tsoro,” she said, “but we’ll honor it.”

  The scorn in Tsoro’s eyes was faint, but not faint enough. “There’s no honor,” she said. “Only duty.”

  “Does anyone else have any surprise announcements we need to know about before we send Faian off to recalibrate?” Iruja said. She was eyeing Mikodez. “Why were you shirking a remembrance, anyway?”

  It had been too much to hope she’d forgotten about that. Too bad he didn’t know what excuse Kel Tsoro had given Iruja so he could use it for inspiration. “My older sibling sent me some handmade soap and I had to try it,” Mikodez said. “Should I pass some on to you? Unless you’re allergic to plum blossoms or something.”

  “Next time Wolf Hall has a soap shortage, I’ll keep that in mind,” Iruja said dryly. “Don’t let me catch you at this again. All right. Anything else?” Silence. “Then I trust we can return to what we’re supposed to be doing.”

  Vidona Psa was smirking at Mikodez, but that was all. The conference ended.

  Line 7 was blinking at him, and if he didn’t pick it up, Zehun was going to override. “Put it on,” he said. When Zehun’s face appeared in the subdisplay, he added, “I take it you were listening in on the whole thing.”

  “If you didn’t want to be spied on,” Zehun said unsympathetically, “you should have pursued a nice, quiet life as a hopper mechanic or a pastry chef.”

  “You only say that because you’ve never seen me try to use a screwdriver,” Mikodez said. “Or a spatula, for that matter. More seriously, what’s on your mind? Please tell me someone has extracted something definite from Cheris’s damn equations.”

  Zehun shook their head. “Zhao thinks she’s onto something, but the others are giving her long odds as to whether it’s the right track.” Then they stopped, frowning.

  Mikodez’s hand was out of sight of the camera and he had already begun entering certain codes, just in case. “Go ahead and say it.”

  “Forget the mathematicians,” Zehun said. Their face was composed. “You keep putting off this discussion, but we have to have it now. Forget sending a double. Don’t pull a Tsoro. You should accept immortality.”

  “I don’t understand why you feel so strongly about this,” Mikodez said. He felt calm, made of clear brittle lines inside and out. This was his punishment for taking his assistant for granted for so long. First Cheris and now this. He was getting sloppy.

  Zehun smiled like a knife. There were faint lines around their mouth, at the corners of their eyes. Mikodez was abruptly reminded of their age. “Mikodez,” Zehun said, “remember what I told you earlier. Four decades of stability in the Shuos. Few Shuos hexarchs have accomplished as much.”

  “I’m not saying that the succession isn’t a very large problem,” Mikodez said, “but this is not the way. Remember, Heptarch Khiaz lasted a good six decades, and she was responsible for her share of ruinous decisions.”

  The question was, did Zehun feel strongly enough about this decision that they’d betray him over it? Their support had been critical to his rise to power. Zehun was uniquely positioned to be able to destroy him. After all, they could throw their support to a new candidate; they had to keep a list. It was what he would do.

  “If I believe you were a second Khiaz,” Zehun said, “I would never have backed you. Give me a little credit. Please reconsider, Mikodez. Without a strong Shuos voice, who is going to counterbalance Andan and Rahal?”

  “Zehun-shei,” Mikodez said. This time he used not the instructor honorific, but an honorific used sometimes by lovers, although that was one thing they had never been to each other. “Listen. We know of three people who ended up in the black cradle. I have never been able to extract details, but Nirai Esfarel found existence as a ghost so unbearable that he convinced his anchor to kill them both.

  “Nirai Kujen, on the other hand—” Mikodez weighed his words. “Kujen thinks being a parasite is so entertaining that he’ll hang on until the universe’s last atoms unravel. He gave us remembrances, and with th
em, the mothdrive. He gave us formation instinct. He will show up with more gifts. I am one of the few people in the hexarchate who genuinely likes him, but we cannot afford to accept any more of his gifts.

  “And then there’s Jedao. I don’t know at what point Jedao stopped regarding himself as a person, but once he decided he was a gun, everyone turned into a target.” Mikodez smiled grimly. “That’s three immortals who should never have ended up that way.”

  Zehun put their chin in their hands. “The problem with your argument is the black cradle,” they said. “I don’t care what Kujen likes to say about stabilization effects, prolonged isolation would drive anyone crazy. That won’t be a problem with Faian’s method. The math seems to check out. Youth eternal, life unending, who wouldn’t want it?”

  “Should I send you in my stead?” Mikodez said. “I’m serious. It’s not a state secret that you’re the glue holding this place together. I just give bored assassins a target.”

  “You’re the only one who believes that,” Zehun retorted. “And no thanks, I’d rather leave eternity with people like Vidona Psa to those who are psychologically equipped for the job. I hear he’s always late on his paperwork.”

  Mikodez drummed his fingers on his desk, then tapped out a few commands. The commands were simple. The multiple overrides necessary to make them go through, on the other hand, were a pain in the ass. He’d designed them that way.

  “Mikodez, what are you—” Zehun’s breath caught. “The fuck, Mikodez, I taught you never to—”

  He had given Zehun access to all the emergency protocols that involved assassinating them. “I think that’s all of them,” he said flatly, “but it’s not impossible that I missed something, and it’s guaranteed that some subordinate has something creative in the works just for the hell of it. Please tell me you’d broken into some of them anyway.”

  “Some of them,” Zehun said. “Not all of them. What is wrong with you today? You can’t afford to trust anyone completely, least of all me! If you need to order my ‘suicide’—”