by Yoon Ha Lee
The woman was saying, with charming anxiety, “We’d better do as they say. I wonder what it is.”
Come on, Rhehan thought, what’s the delay? Had they messed up preparing the explosives?
They had turned to smile and pat the woman’s hand reassuringly when the first explosives went off at the end of the hall. Fire flowered, flashed; a boom reverberated through the halls, with an additional hiss of sparks when a security screen went down. Two stands toppled, spilling a ransom’s worth of iridescent black quantum-pearl strands inscribed with algorithmic paeans. The sudden chemical reek of the smoke made Rhehan cough; you’d think they’d be used to it by now. Several startled bystanders shrieked and bolted toward the exit.
The woman leapt back and behind a decorative pillar with commendable reflexes. “Over here,” she called out to Rhehan, as if she could rescue them. Rhehan feigned befuddlement although they could easily lip-read what she was saying—they could barely hear her past the ringing in their ears—and sidestepped out of her reach, just in case.
A second blast went off, farther down the hall. A thud suggested that something out of sight had fallen down. Rhehan thought snidely that some of the statues they had seen earlier would be improved by a few creative cracks anyway. The sprinklers finally kicked in, and a torrent of water rained down from above, drenching them.
Rhehan left the woman to fend for herself. “Where are you going?” she shouted after Rhehan, loudly enough to be heard despite the damage to their hearing, as they sprinted toward the second explosion.
“I have to save the painting!” Rhehan said over their shoulder.
To Rhehan’s dismay, the woman pivoted on her heel and followed. Rhehan turned their head to lip-read their words, almost crashing into a corner in the process. “You shame me,” she said as she ran after them. “Your dedication to the arts is greater than mine.”
Another explosion. Liyeusse, whose hearing was unaffected, was wheezing into Rhehan’s ear. “Dedication... to... the... arts!” she said between breaths. “Dedication. You.”
Rhehan didn’t have time for Liyeusse’s quirky sense of humor. Just because they couldn’t tell a color wheel from a flywheel didn’t mean they didn’t appreciate market value.
They’d just rounded the corner to the relevant gallery and its delicious gear collages when Rhehan was alerted—too late—by the quickened rhythm of the woman’s footsteps. They inhaled too sharply, coughed at the smoke, and staggered when she caught them in a chokehold. “What—” Rhehan said, and then no words were possible anymore.
RHEHAN WOKE IN a chair, bound. They kept their eyes closed and tested the cords, hoping not to draw attention. The air had a familiar undertone of incense, which was very bad news, but perhaps they were only imagining it. Rhehan had last smelled this particular blend, with its odd metallic top notes, in the ancestral shrines of a childhood home they hadn’t returned to in eight years. They stilled their hands from twitching.
Otherwise, the temperature was warmer than they were accustomed to—Liyeusse liked to keep the ship cool—and a faint hissing suggested an air circulation system not kept in as good shape as it could be. Even more faintly, they heard the distinctive, just-out-of-tune humming of a ship’s drive. Too bad they lacked Liyeusse’s ability to identify the model by listening to the harmonics.
More importantly: how many people were there with them? They didn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean—
“You might as well open your eyes, Kel Rhehan,” a cool female voice said in a language they had not heard for a long time, confirming Rhehan’s earlier suspicions. They had not fooled her.
Rhehan wondered whether their link to Liyeusse was still working, and if she was all right. “Liyeusse?” they subvocalized. No response. Their heart stuttered.
They opened their eyes: might as well assess the situation, since their captor knew they were awake.
“I don’t have the right to that name any longer,” Rhehan said. They hadn’t been part of the Kel people for eight years, as the Kel reckoned it. But their hands itched with the memory of the Kel gloves they no longer wore. With their hands exposed like this, they felt shamed and vulnerable in front of one of their people.
The woman before them was solidly built, dark, like the silhouette of a tree, and more somber in mien than the highly ornamented agent who had brought Rhehan in. She wore the black and red of the Kel judiciary. A cursory slip of veil obscured part of her face, its translucence doing little to hide her sharp features. The veil should have scared Rhehan more, as it indicated that the woman was a judge-errant, but her black Kel gloves hurt worse. Rhehan’s had been stripped from them and burned when the Kel cast them out.
“I’ve honored the terms of my exile,” Rhehan said desperately. What had they done to deserve the attention of a judge-errant? Granted that they were a thief, but they’d had little choice but to make a living with the skills they had. “What have you done with my partner?”
The judge-errant ignored the question. Nevertheless, the sudden tension around her eyes suggested she knew something. Rhehan had been watching for it. “I am Judge Kel Shiora, and I have been sent because the Kel have need of you,” she said.
“Of course,” Rhehan said, fighting to hide their bitterness. Eight years of silence and adapting to an un-Kel world, and the moment the Kel had need of them, they were supposed to comply.
Shiora regarded them without malice or opprobrium, or anything much resembling feeling. “There are many uses for a jaihanar.”
Jaihanar—what non-Kel called, in their various languages, a haptic chameleon. Someone who was not only so good at imitating patterns of movement that they could scam inattentive people, but even able to fool the machines whose security systems identified their owners’ characteristic movements. How you interacted with your gunnery system, or wandered about your apartment, or smiled at the lover you’d known for the last decade. It wasn’t magic—a jaihanar needed some minimum of data to work from—but the knack often seemed that way.
The Kel produced few jaihanar, and the special forces snapped up those that emerged from the Kel academies. Rhehan had been the most promising jaihanar in the last few generations, before disgracing themselves. The only reason they hadn’t been executed was that the Kel government had foreseen that they would someday be of use again.
“Tell me what you want, then,” Rhehan said. Anything to keep her talking so that eventually she might be willing to say what she’d done with Liyeusse.
“If I undo your bonds, will you hear me out?”
Getting out of confinement would also be good. Their leg had fallen asleep. “I won’t try anything,” Rhehan said. They knew better.
Ordinarily, Rhehan would have felt sorry for anyone who trusted a thief’s word so readily, except they knew the kind of training a judge-errant underwent. Shiora wasn’t the one in danger. They kept silent as she unlocked the restraints.
“I had to be sure,” Shiora said.
Rhehan shrugged. “Talk to me.”
“General Kavarion has gone rogue. We need someone to infiltrate her ship and retrieve a weapon she has stolen.”
“I’m sorry,” Rhehan said after a blank pause. “You just said that General Kavarion has gone rogue? Kavarion, the hero of Split Suns? Kavarion of the Five Splendors? My hearing must be going.”
Shiora gave them an unamused look. “Kel command sent her on contract to guard a weapons research facility,” she said. “Kavarion recently attacked the facility and made off with the research and a prototype. The prototype may be armed.”
“Surely you have any number of loyal Kel who’d be happy to go on this assignment?” Rhehan said. The Kel took betrayal personally. They knew this well.
“You are the nearest jaihanar in this region of the dustways.” Most people reserved the term dustways for particularly lawless segments of the spaceways, but the Kel used the term for anywhere that didn’t fall under the Kel sphere of influence.
“And,” Shiora add
ed, “few of our jaihanar match your skill. You owe the Kel for your training, if nothing else. Besides, it’s not in your interest to live in a world where former Kel are hunted for theft of immensely powerful weapon prototypes.”
Rhehan had to admit she had a point.
“They named it the Incendiary Heart,” Shiora continued. “It initiates an inflationary expansion like the one at the universe’s birth.”
Rhehan swore. “Remote detonation?”
“There’s a timer. It’s up to you to get out of range before it goes off.”
“The radius of effect?”
“Thirty thousand light-years, give or take, in a directed cone. That’s the only thing that makes it possible to use without blowing up the person setting it off.”
Rhehan closed their eyes. That would fry a nontrivial percentage of the galaxy. “And you don’t know if it’s armed.”
“No. The general is running very fast—to what, we don’t know. But she has been attempting to hire mercenary jaihanar. We suspect she is looking for a way to control the device—which may buy us time.”
“I see.” Rhehan rubbed the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other, smile twisting at the judge-errant’s momentary look of revulsion at the touch of skin on skin. Which was why they’d done it, of course, petty as it was. “Can you offer me any insight into her goals?”
“If we knew that,” the judge-errant said bleakly, “we would know why she turned coat.”
Blowing up a region of space, even a very local region of space in galactic terms, would do no one any good. In particular, it would make a continued career in art theft a little difficult. On the other hand, Rhehan was determined to wring some payment out of this, if only so Liyeusse wouldn’t lecture them about their lack of mercenary instinct. Their ship wasn’t going to fix itself, after all. “I’ll do it,” they said. “But I’m going to need some resources—”
The judge surprised them by laughing. “You have lived too long in the dustways,” she said. “I can offer payment in the only coin that should matter to you—or do you think we haven’t been watching you?”
Rhehan should have objected, but they froze up, knowing what was to come.
“Do this for us, show us the quality of your service,” the judge-errant said, “and Kel Command will reinstate you.” Very precisely, she peeled the edge of one glove back to expose the dark fine skin of her wrist, signaling sincerity.
Rhehan stared. “Liyeusse?” they asked again, subvocally. No response. Which meant that Liyeusse probably hadn’t heard the offer. At least she wasn’t there to see Rhehan’s reaction. As good as they normally were at controlling their body language, they had not been able to hide that moment’s hunger for a home they had thought forever lost to them.
“I will do this,” Rhehan said at last. “Not for some bribe; but because a weapon like the one you describe is too dangerous for anyone, let alone a rogue, to control.” And because they needed to find out what had become of Liyeusse, but Shiora wouldn’t understand that.
THE WOMAN WHO escorted Rhehan to their ship, docked on the Kel carrier—Rhehan elected not to ask how this had happened—had a familiar face. “I don’t know why you’re not doing this job,” Rhehan said to the pale woman now garbed in Kel uniform, complete with gloves, rather than the jewels and outlandish stationer garb she’d affected in the museum.
The woman unsmiled at Rhehan. “I will be accompanying you,” she said in the lingua franca they’d used earlier.
Of course. Shiora had extracted Rhehan’s word, but she would also take precautions. They couldn’t blame her.
Kel design sensibilities had not changed much since Rhehan was a cadet. The walls of dark metal were livened by tapestries of wire and faceted beads, polished from battlefield shrapnel: obsolete armor, lens components in laser cannon, spent shells. Rhehan kept from touching the wall superstitiously as they walked by.
“What do I call you?” Rhehan said finally, since the woman seemed disinclined to speak first.
“I am Sergeant Kel Anaz,” she said. She stopped before a hatch, and tapped a panel in full sight of Rhehan, her mouth curling sardonically.
“I’m not stupid enough to try to escape a ship full of Kel,” Rhehan said. “I bet you have great aim.” Besides, there was Liyeusse’s safety to consider.
“You weren’t bad at it yourself.”
She would have studied their record, yet Rhehan hated how exposed the simple statement made them feel. “I can imitate the stance of a master marksman,” Rhehan said dryly. “That doesn’t give me the eye, or the reflexes. These past years, I’ve found safer ways to survive.”
Anaz’s eyebrows lifted at “safer,” but she kept her contempt to herself.
After chewing over Anaz’s passkey, the hatch opened. A whoosh of cool air floated over Rhehan’s face. They stepped through before Anaz could say anything, their eyes drawn immediately to the lone non-Kel ship in the hangar. To their relief, the Flarecat didn’t look any more disreputable than before.
Rhehan advanced upon the Flarecat and entered it, all the while aware of Anaz at their back. Liyeusse was bound to one of the passengers’ seats, the side of her face swollen and purpling, her cap of curly hair sticking out in all directions. Liyeusse’s eyes widened when she saw the two of them, but she didn’t struggle against her bonds. Rhehan swore and went to her side.
“If she’s damaged—” Rhehan said in a shaking voice, then froze when Anaz shoved the muzzle of a gun against the back of their head.
“She’s ji-Kel,” Anaz said in an even voice: ji-Kel, not-Kel. “She wasn’t even concussed. She’ll heal.”
“She’s my partner,” Rhehan said. “We work together.”
“If you insist,” Anaz said with a distinct air of distaste. The pressure eased, and she cut Liyeusse free herself.
Liyeusse grimaced. “New friend?” she said.
“New job, anyway,” Rhehan said. They should have known that Shiora and her people would treat a ji-Kel with little respect.
“We’re never going to land another decent art theft,” Liyeusse said with strained cheer. “You have no sense of culture.”
“This one’s more important.” Rhehan reinforced their words with a hand signal: Emergency. New priority.
“What have the Kel got on you, anyway?”
Rhehan had done their best to steer Liyeusse away from any dealings with the Kel because of the potential awkwardness. It hadn’t been hard: the Kel had a reputation for providing reliable but humorless mercenaries and a distinct lack of appreciation for what Liyeusse called “the exigencies of survival in the dustways.” More relevantly, while they controlled a fair deal of wealth, they ruthlessly pursued and destroyed those who attempted to relieve them of it. Rhehan had never been tempted to take revenge by stealing from them.
Anaz’s head came up. “You never told your partner?”
“Never told me what?” Liyeusse said, starting to sound irritated.
“We’ll be traveling with Sergeant Kel Anaz,” Rhehan said, hoping to distract Liyeusse.
No luck. Her mouth compressed. Safe to talk? she signed at them.
Not really, but Rhehan didn’t see that they had many options. “I’m former Kel,” Rhehan said. “I was exiled because—because of a training incident.” Even now, it was difficult to speak of it. Two of their classmates had died, and an instructor.
Liyeusse laughed incredulously. “You? We’ve encountered Kel mercenaries before. You don’t talk like one. Move like one. Well, except when—” She faltered as it occurred to her that, of the various guises Rhehan had put on for their heists, that one hadn’t been a guise at all.
Anaz spoke over Liyeusse. “The sooner we set out, the better. We have word on Kavarion’s vector, but we don’t know how long our information will be good. You’ll have to use your ship since the judge-errant’s would draw attention, even if it’s faster.”
Don’t, Rhehan signed to Liyeusse, although she knew better than to spill the F
larecat’s modifications to this stranger. “I’ll fill you in on the way.”
The dustways held many perils for ships: wandering maws, a phenomenon noted for years and unexplained for just as long; particles traveling at unimaginable speeds, capable of destroying any ship lax in maintaining its shielding; vortices that filtered light even in dreams, causing hallucinations. When Rhehan had been newly exiled, they had convinced Liyeusse of their usefulness because they knew dustway paths new to her. Even if they hadn’t been useful for making profit, they had helped in escaping the latest people she’d swindled.
Ships could be tracked by the eddies they left in the dustways. The difficulty was not in finding the traces, but in interpreting them. Great houses had risen to prominence through their monopoly over the computational networks that processed and sold this information. Kel Command had paid dearly for such information in its desperation to track down General Kavarion.
Assuming that information was accurate, Kavarion had ensconced herself at the Fortress of Wheels: neutral territory, where people carried out bargains for sums that could have made Rhehan and Liyeusse comfortable for the rest of their lives.
The journey itself passed in a haze of tension. Liyeusse snapped at Anaz, who bore her jibes with grim patience. Rhehan withdrew, not wanting to make matters worse, which was the wrong thing to do, and they knew it. In particular, Liyeusse had not forgiven them for the secret they had kept from her for so long.
At last, Rhehan slumped into the copilot’s seat and spoke to Liyeusse over the newly repaired link to gain some semblance of privacy. As far as they could tell, Anaz hardly slept.
Rhehan said, “You must have a lot of questions.”
“I knew about the chameleon part,” Liyeusse said. Any number of their heists had depended on it. “I hadn’t realized that the Kel had their own.”
“Usually, they don’t,” Rhehan said. Liyeusse inhaled slightly at they, as if she had expected Rhehan to say we instead. “But the Kel rarely let go of the ones they do produce. It’s the only reason they didn’t execute me.”