Ninefox Gambit

CHERIS FELL INTO a memory of blurred voices and laughter and the mingled smells of wine, perfume, flowers, a door half-open: a party. A woman dark-haired and fragrant and sweet of face, a long red coat draped over her shoulders, was pressing herself against Cheris. The woman’s mouth was beautiful, but never kind. She was wearing gloves so dark a red they were almost black, in terrible taste, but no one could tell her no. It was Heptarch Shuos Khiaz, and she had backed Cheris into a shadowed room.

Khiaz’s hands were in her hair, drawing her head down for a kiss. One hand drifted across Cheris’s chest, unerringly finding all the scars beneath the black-and-gold uniform, then lingering over the brigadier general insignia. She was telling Cheris to take off her gloves. The gloves were black and fingerless. Cheris knew she couldn’t afford to sleep with a heptarch, but she couldn’t afford to say no, either.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” Khiaz said. “I always knew you’d go far.”

“Shuos-zho,” Cheris said, very formally. She was remembering her origins as Shuos infantry, a decade ago, and why she had transferred out of Khiaz’s office and into the Kel army at the earliest opportunity. “Pardon me, can I get you anything to—”

Khiaz shrugged off her coat in a single languorous motion. Underneath it she was wearing a Kel uniform. It was perfectly tailored to her.

For that matter, the gloves weren’t dark, dark red. They were black. Kel gloves, taboo for a Shuos to wear.

Cheris was aware of the suddenness of her erection, and of the fact that in one moment she had been comprehensively outflanked.

She almost said no, even if the heptarch could pull her from Kel service for defying an order. Destroy the career she had worked so hard for, the plan she had nurtured for so long. But as a Shuos, she was the heptarch’s property. There was no one she could appeal to.

The Shuos didn’t believe in sex without games and obligations. Khiaz’s hands moved down. For one red-black moment Cheris considered killing her just to get away. Khiaz had very clever hands. Cheris’s heartbeat sped up despite her best efforts not to react. Khiaz liked to ask embarrassing questions to punctuate her caresses.

Then Khiaz reached up to unbutton her uniform’s jacket. Before she could stop herself, Cheris caught her wrist. Begged her to leave it on.

And I call myself a tactician, Cheris thought savagely. Of all the subterranean desires to be caught out in. Her breath hitched. She could wring an advantage out of this if she retained some shred of control. She started answering Khiaz’s questions, maneuvering the conversation in a better direction. As long as Khiaz thought Cheris was overcome by desire rather than nurturing a plot against the heptarchate, she was safe.

Khiaz murmured something about fear and courage and the zigzag paths people take between the two. “What are you so afraid of?” she asked, mocking. “Do you think I’ll hurt you?” She knelt, still in the uniform, and took Cheris in her mouth, velvet-warm.

Voice breaking like a boy’s, Cheris gasped out a terror of death. Banal, but believable. Khiaz’s eyes were momentarily bright with triumph beneath the long lashes.

Years later, Khiaz would remember, as Cheris had intended her to; and in the aftermath of Hellspin Fortress, she would consign Cheris to the black cradle’s terrible undeath.

Khiaz wasn’t done. Cheris hadn’t expected her to be satisfied that easily, so this came as no surprise. Over and over as it happened, Cheris thought, I’m not here. I’m not here. But of course she was. After a certain point she gave up trying to mislead Khiaz with clever ripostes. She had no words anymore, only the miserable awareness that she couldn’t make her heart beat more slowly.

Afterward, Cheris closed the door, which Khiaz had left partway open. Dressed and put her gloves back on. Opened the door and walked to the nearest bathroom, looking neither left nor right, past the people who knew what she had just done. She locked herself in and turned on the water. Listened to the water running.

She peeled back one glove and stared at the veins, and the scar across the base of her palm.

For a long moment she hesitated. Then she took out her Patterner 52 and laid it next to the sink. Rested her hand on it. She was under no illusions that it would be painless. She had experienced too much of battle for that, and anyway, a little pain was a small enough price to pay. At least it would be quick.

Someone started knocking loudly. “Open up or I’ll shoot the door off its hinges,” a voice said over the sound of the water. It was Colonel Kel Gized.

Cheris had a sudden violent desire to take her gloves off and cut them to shreds. People knew now that she wanted to sleep with another soldier, forbidden though it was. The last person she wanted to talk to was a Kel, least of all her chief of staff. Even Khiaz would have been preferable.

“If you make me shoot, it’ll raise a horrible fuss and it’ll upset the host and you know how the Andan hate it when someone spoils a party. You’ll never hear the end of it for years.”

Cheris hesitated, then unlocked the door and stepped back.

Gized practically charged in. She took one long look at Cheris. Her mouth became a flat line.

Cheris glanced involuntarily at the mirror. Her face looked like a stranger’s, angles ground too sharp, eyes abraded of expression. Her hair was a mess, too; she hadn’t thought to run her fingers through it.

Gized closed the door. “It isn’t right, what she did to you,” she said.

“Colonel, I won’t hear you speak against the heptarch,” Cheris said coldly. Technically, Gized could be charged with treason. Most people wouldn’t waste their time with such charges, considering them to be frivolous, but Cheris knew personally that Khiaz was mercurial and might insist. “I could have said no.”

“Bullshit,” Gized said. But she didn’t raise her voice.

“I am a Shuos. She is my heptarch. I belong to her. If that’s how she wants to use me, then that’s how I’ll be used.” She was aware of how Kel she sounded. Nevertheless, it was true. Khiaz had just asserted her ownership.

All those years ago, when she had gotten herself seconded to the Kel, Cheris had thought she had escaped the heptarch’s eye. She should have known that a fellow Shuos would have a long-term plan.

Gized glanced at the Patterner 52. “Jedao,” Gized said, even though she never addressed Cheris without her rank. “Give me your gun and your knife.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean. Give me your weapons. You’ll get them back tomorrow.”

Cheris glared at her. “You’re out of line, Colonel.”

“You can court-martial me tomorrow. After you give me your weapons.” She glared back.

Cheris entertained fantasies of court-martialing Gized, but where was she going to find another administrator as good? After a long moment, she broke eye contact. “I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

Gized’s mouth twisted. “You’re usually a better liar than this, Jedao. Frankly, that worries me more than anything else.”

“I don’t know what you want of me.”

“I’m being remarkably clear, Jedao. The weapons.”

“No.”

“Jedao.”

She hesitated, then handed them over, hating herself for her weakness.

“I’m taking you to barracks, and we’re going to stay up all night playing jeng-zai, which is an incredible concession on my part. You can beat me horribly the way you always do. And when you’re fit to have weapons again, I’ll give them back to you.”

“People will notice us leaving early,” Cheris said.

“I have really obscene things to say about how little I care about people noticing things, including the fact that we’re holed up in the bathroom together. Come on, Jedao. I’ll tell you the worst Kel jokes I know. How many Kel does it take to dig a latrine?”