by Yoon Ha Lee
“What did you do?”
Rhehan’s mouth twisted. “The Kel say there are three kinds of people, after a fashion. There are Kel; ji-Kel, or not-Kel, whom they have dealings with sometimes; and those who aren’t people at all. Just—disposable.”
Liyeusse’s momentary silence pricked at Rhehan. “Am I disposable to you?” she asked.
“I should think it’s the other way around,” they said. They wouldn’t have survived their first year in the dustways without her protection. “Anyway, there was a training exercise. People-who-are-not-people were used as—” They fumbled for a word in the language they spoke with Liyeusse, rather than the Kel term. “Mannequins. Props in the exercise, to be gunned down or saved or discarded, whatever the trainees decided. I chose the lives of mannequins over the lives of Kel. For this I was stripped of my position and cast out.”
“I have always known that the universe is unkind,” Liyeusse said, less moved than Rhehan had expected. “I assume that hired killers would have to learn their art somewhere.”
“It would have been one thing if I’d thought of myself as a soldier,” Rhehan said. “But a good chameleon, or perhaps a failed one, observes the people they imitate. And eventually, a chameleon learns that even mannequins think of themselves as people.”
“I’m starting to understand why you’ve never tried to go back,” Liyeusse said.
A sick yearning started up in the pit of Rhehan’s stomach. They still hadn’t told her about Kel Shiora’s offer. Time enough later, if it came to that.
Getting to Kavarion’s fleet wasn’t the difficult part, although Liyeusse’s eyes were bloodshot for the entire approach. The Flarecat’s stealth systems kept them undetected, even if mating it to the command ship, like an unwanted tick, was a hair-raising exercise. By then, Rhehan had dressed themselves in a Kel military uniform, complete with gloves. Undeserved, since strictly speaking they hadn’t recovered their honor in the eyes of their people, but they couldn’t deny the necessity of the disguise.
Anaz would remain with Liyeusse on the Flarecat. She hadn’t had to explain the threat: Do your job, or your partner dies. Rhehan wasn’t concerned for Liyeusse’s safety—so long as the two remained on the ship, Liyeusse had access to a number of nasty tricks and had no compunctions about using them—but the mission mattered to them anyway.
Rhehan had spent the journey memorizing the haptic profiles that Anaz had provided them. Anaz had taken one look at Rhehan’s outdated holographic mask and given them a new one. “If you could have afforded up-to-date equipment, you wouldn’t be doing petty art theft,” she had said caustically.
The Fortress of Wheels currently hosted several fleets. Tensions ran high, although its customary neutrality had so far prevailed. Who knew how long that would last; Liyeusse, interested as always in gossip, had reported that various buyers for the Incendiary Heart had shown up, and certain warlords wouldn’t hesitate to take it by force if necessary.
Security on Kavarion’s command ship was tight, but had not been designed to stop a jaihanar. Not surprising; the Kel relied on their employers for such measures when they deigned to stop at places like the Fortress. At the moment, Rhehan was disguised as a bland-faced lieutenant.
Rhehan had finessed their way past the fifth lock in a row, losing themselves in the old, bitter pleasure of a job well done. They had always enjoyed this part best: fitting their motions to that of someone who didn’t even realize what was going on, so perfectly that machine recognition systems could not tell the difference. But it occurred to them that everything was going too perfectly.
Maybe I’m imagining things, they told themself without conviction, and hurried on. A corporal passed them by without giving more than a cursory salute, but Rhehan went cold and hastened away from him as soon as they could.
They made it to the doors to the general’s quarters. Liyeusse had hacked into the communications systems and was monitoring activity. She’d assured Rhehan that the general was stationside, negotiating with someone. Since neither of them knew how long that would last—
Sweat trickled down Rhehan’s back, causing the uniform to cling unpleasantly to their skin. They had some of the general’s haptic information as well. Anaz hadn’t liked handing it over, but as Rhehan had pointed out, the mission would be impossible without it.
Kavarion of the Five Splendors. One of the most celebrated Kel generals, and a musician besides. Her passcode was based on an extraordinarily difficult passage from a keyboard concerto. Another keyboardist could have played the passage, albeit with difficulty reproducing the nuances of expression. While not precisely a musician, Rhehan had trained in a variety of the arts for occasions such as this. (Liyeusse often remarked it was a shame they had no patience for painting, or they could have had a respectable career forging art.) They got through the passcode. Held their breath. The door began opening—
A fist slammed them in the back of the head.
Rhehan staggered and whirled, barely remaining upright. If I get a concussion I’m going to charge Kel Command for my medical care, they thought as the world slowed.
“Finally, someone took the bait,” breathed Rhehan’s assailant. Kel Kavarion; Rhehan recognized the voice from the news reports they’d watched a lifetime before. “I was starting to think I was going to have to hang out signs or hire a bounty hunter.” She did something fast and complicated with her hands, and Rhehan found themselves shoved down against the floor with the muzzle of a gun digging into the back of their neck.
“Sir, I—”
“Save it,” General Kavarion said, with dangerous good humor. “Come inside and I’ll show you what you’re after. Don’t fight me. I’m better at it than you are.”
Rhehan couldn’t argue with that.
The general let Rhehan up. The door had closed again, but she executed the passphrase in a blur that made Rhehan think she was wasted on the military. Surely there was an orchestra out there that could use a star keyboardist.
Rhehan made sure to make no threatening moves as they entered, scanning the surroundings. Kavarion had a taste for the grandiloquent: triumph-plaques of metal and stone and lacquerware covered the walls, forming a mosaic of battles past and comrades lost. The light reflecting from their angled surfaces gave an effect like being trapped in a kaleidoscope of sterilized glory.
Kavarion smiled cuttingly. Rhehan watched her retreating step by step, gun still trained on them. “You don’t approve,” Kavarion remarked.
Rhehan unmasked since there wasn’t any point still pretending to be one of her soldiers. “I’m a thief,” they said. “It’s all one to me.”
“You’re lying, but never mind. I’d better make this quick.” Kavarion smiled at Rhehan with genuine and worrying delight. “You’re the jaihanar we threw out, aren’t you? It figures that Kel Command would drag you out of the dustways instead of hiring some ji-Kel.”
“I’m ji-Kel now, General.”
“It’s a matter of degrees. It doesn’t take much to figure out what Kel Command could offer an exile.” She then offered the gun to Rhehan. “Hold that,” she said. “I’ll get the Incendiary Heart.”
“How do you know I won’t shoot you?” Rhehan demanded.
“Because right now I’m your best friend,” Kavarion said, “and you’re mine. If you shoot me, you’ll never find out why I’m doing this, and a good chunk of the galaxy is doomed.”
Frustrated by the sincerity they read in the set of her shoulders, Rhehan trained the gun on Kavarion’s back and admired her sangfroid. She showed no sign of fear at all.
Kavarion spoke as she pressed her hand against one of the plaques. “They probably told you I blew the research station up after I stole the Incendiary Heart, which is true.” The plaque lifted to reveal a safe. “Did they also mention that someone armed the damned thing before I was able to retrieve it?”
“They weren’t absolutely clear on that point.”
“Well, I suppose even a judge-errant—I assume they
sent a judge-errant—can’t get information out of the dead. Anyway, it’s a time bomb, presumably to give its user a chance to escape the area of effect.”
Rhehan’s heart sank. There could only be one reason why Kavarion needed a jaihanar of her own. “It’s going to blow?”
“Unless you can disarm it. One of the few researchers with a sense of self-preservation was making an attempt to do so before he got killed by a piece of shrapnel. I have some video, as much of it as I could scrape before the whole place blew, but I don’t know if it’s enough.” Kavarion removed a box that shimmered a disturbing shade of red-gold-bronze.
The original mission was no good; that much was clear. “All right,” Rhehan said.
Kavarion played back a video of the researcher’s final moments. It looked like it had been recorded by someone involved in a firefight, from the shakiness of the image. Parts of the keycode were obscured by smoke, by flashing lights, by flying shrapnel.
Rhehan made several attempts, then shook their head. “There’s just not enough information, even for me, to reconstruct the sequence.”
Kavarion slumped, suddenly looking haggard.
“How do you know he was really trying to disarm it?” Rhehan said.
“Because he was my lover,” Kavarion said, “and he had asked me for sanctuary. He was the reason I knew exactly how destructive the Incendiary Heart was to begin with.”
Scientists shouldn’t be allowed near weapons design, Rhehan thought. “How long do we have?”
She told them. They blanched.
“Why did you make off with it in the first place?” Rhehan said. They couldn’t help but think that if she’d kept her damn contract, this whole mess could have been avoided in the first place.
“Because the contract-holder was trying to sell the Incendiary Heart to the highest bidder. And at the time I made off with it, the highest bidder looked like it was going to be one of the parties in an extremely messy civil war.” Kavarion scowled. “Not only did I suspect that they’d use it at the first opportunity, I had good reason to believe that they had terrible security—and I doubted anyone stealing it would have any scruples either. Unfortunately, when I swiped the wretched thing, some genius decided it would be better to set it off and deny it to everyone, never mind the casualties.”
Kavarion closed her fist over the Incendiary Heart. It looked like her fist was drenched in a gore of light. “Help me get it out of here, away from where it’ll kill billions.”
“What makes you so confident that I’m your ally, when Kel Command sent me after you?”
She sighed. “It’s true that I can’t offer a better reward than if you bring the accursed thing to them. On the other hand, even if you think I’m lying about the countdown, do you really trust Kel Command with a weapon this dangerous? They’d never let me hand it over to them for safekeeping anyway, not when I broke contract by taking it in the first place.”
“No,” Rhehan said after a moment. “You’re right. That’s not a solution either.”
Kavarion opened her hand and nodded companionably at Rhehan, as though they’d been comrades for years. “I need you to run away with this and get farther from centers of civilization. I can’t do this with a whole fucking Kel fleet. My every movement is being watched, and I’m afraid someone will get us into a fight and stall us in a bad place. But you—a ji-Kel thief, used to darting in and out of the dustways—your chances will be better than mine.”
Rhehan’s breath caught. “You’re already outnumbered,” they said. “Sooner or later, they’ll catch up to you—the Kel, if not everyone else who wants the weapon they think you have. You don’t even have a running start, docked here. They’ll incinerate you.”
“Well, yes,” Kavarion said. “We are Kel. We are the people of fire and ash. It comes with the territory. Are you willing to do this?”
Her equanimity disturbed Rhehan. Clearly, Liyeusse’s way of looking at the world had rubbed off on them more than they’d accounted for, these last eight years. “You’re gambling a lot on my reliability.”
“Am I?” The corners of Kavarion’s mouth tilted up in amusement. “You were one of the most promising Kel cadets that year, and you gave it up because you were concerned about the lives of mannequins who didn’t even know your name. I’d say I’m making a good choice.”
Kavarion pulled her gloves off one by one and held them out to Rhehan. “You are my agent,” she said. “Take the gloves, and take the Incendiary Heart with you. A great many lives depend on it.”
They knew what the gesture meant: You hold my honor. Shaken, they stared at her, stripped of chameleon games. Shiora was unlikely to forgive Rhehan for betraying her to ally with Kavarion. But Kavarion’s logic could not be denied.
“Take them,” Kavarion said tiredly. “And for love of fire and ash, don’t tell me where you’re going. I don’t want to know.”
Rhehan took the gloves and replaced the ones they had been wearing with them. I’m committed now, they thought. They brought their fist up to their chest in the Kel salute, and the general returned it.
THINGS WENT WRONG almost from the moment Rhehan returned to their ship. They’d refused an escort from Kavarion on the grounds that it would arouse Anaz’s suspicions. The general had assured them that no one would interfere with them on the way out, but the sudden blaring of alarms and the scrambling of crew to get to their assigned stations meant that Rhehan had to do a certain amount of dodging. At a guess, the Fortress-imposed cease-fire was no longer in effect. What had triggered hostilities, Rhehan didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. All that mattered was escaping with the Incendiary Heart.
The Flarecat remained shielded from discovery by the stealth device that Liyeusse so loved, even if it had a distressing tendency to blow out the engines exactly when they had to escape sharp-eyed creditors. Rhehan hadn’t forgotten its location, however, and—
Anaz ambushed Rhehan before they even reached the Flarecat, in the dim hold where they were suiting up to traverse the perilous webbing connecting the Flarecat to Kavarion’s command ship. Rhehan had seen this coming. Another chameleon might have fought back, and died; Shiora had no doubt selected Anaz for her deadliness. But Rhehan triggered the mask into Kavarion’s own visage and smiled Kavarion’s own smile at Anaz, counting on the reflexive Kel deference to rank. The gesture provoked enough of a hesitation that Rhehan could pull out their own sidearm and put a bullet in the side of her neck. They’d been aiming for her head; no such luck. Still, they’d take what they could.
The bullet didn’t stop Anaz—Rhehan hadn’t expected it to—but the next two did. The only reason they didn’t keep firing was that Rhehan could swear that the Incendiary Heart pulsed hotter with each shot. “Fuck this,” they said with feeling, although they couldn’t hear themselves past the ringing in their ears, and overrode the hatch to escape to the first of the web-strands without looking back to see whether Anaz was getting back up.
No further attack came, but Anaz might live, might even survive what Kavarion had in mind for her.
Liyeusse wasn’t dead. Presumably Anaz had known better than to interfere too permanently with the ship’s master. But Liyeusse wasn’t in good condition, either. Anaz had left her unconscious and expertly tied up, a lump on the side of her head revealing where Anaz had knocked her out. Blood streaked her face. So much for no concussions, Rhehan thought. A careful inspection revealed two broken ribs, although no fingers or arms, small things to be grateful for. Liyeusse had piloted with worse injuries, but it wasn’t something either of them wanted to make a habit of.
Rhehan shook with barely quelled rage as they unbound Liyeusse, using the lock picks that the two of them kept stashed on board. Here, with just the two of them, there was no need to conceal their reaction.
Rhehan took the precaution of injecting her with painkillers first. Then they added a stim, which they would have preferred to avoid, but the two of them would have to work together to escape. It couldn’t be help
ed.
“My head,” Liyeusse said in a half-groan, stirring. Then she smiled crookedly at Rhehan, grotesque through the dried blood. “Did you give that Kel thug what she wanted? Are we free?”
“Not yet,” Rhehan said. “As far as I can tell, Kavarion’s gearing up for a firefight and they’re bent on blowing each other up over this bauble. Even worse, we have a new mission.” They outlined the situation while checking Liyeusse over again to make sure there wasn’t any more internal damage. Luckily, Anaz hadn’t confiscated their medical kits, so Rhehan retrieved one and cleaned up the head wound, then applied a bandage to Liyeusse’s torso.
“Every time I think this can’t get worse,” Liyeusse said while Rhehan worked, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Let’s strap ourselves in and get flying.”
“What, you don’t want to appraise this thing?” They held the Incendiary Heart up. Was it warmer? They couldn’t tell.
“I don’t love shiny baubles that much,” she said dryly. She was already preoccupied with the ship’s preflight checks, although her grimaces revealed that the painkillers were not as efficacious as they could have been. “I’ll be glad when it’s gone. You’d better tell me where we’re going.”
The sensor arrays sputtered with the spark-lights of many ships, distorted by their stealth device. “Ask the general to patch us in to her friend-or-foe identification system,” Rhehan said when they realized that there were more Kel ships than there should have been. Kel Command must have had a fleet waiting to challenge Kavarion in case Shiora failed her mission. “And ask her not to shoot us down on our way out.”
Liyeusse contacted the command ship in the Fortress’s imposed lingua.
The connection hissed open. The voice that came back to them over the line sounded harried and spoke harried lingua. “Who the hell are—?” Rhehan distinctly heard Kavarion snapping something profane in the Kel language. The voice spoke back, referring to Liyeusse with the particular suffix that meant coward, as if that applied to a ji-Kel ship to begin with. Still, Rhehan was glad they didn’t have to translate that detail for Liyeusse, although they summarized the exchange for her.