Raven Stratagem

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHERIS DUMPED TSEYA unceremoniously to the floor. She was already in motion. Vexingly, she still moved with the mirror-swiftness that Brezan had observed in the recordings of Jedao’s duels once upon a life. Brezan fought her, but she had already gotten a crushing grip on his throat. Wonderful, he thought as the world sank into blackness, I had to run afoul of infantry Kel.

When Brezan came to, he had been expertly trussed up in spider restraints. Cheris had given him a chair that would, under other circumstances, have been downright luxurious. At least it wasn’t one of General Khiruev’s chairs, antiques that looked suspiciously like the general had a nervous habit of gouging the arms with her screwdrivers. Brezan didn’t think he could have endured that.

Cheris, for her part, had draped herself over a chair with its back facing Brezan. “I was worried you were going to stay under all night,” she said. “Don’t bother yelling for help. No one will hear it. Formation instinct being what it is, I can’t risk it yet.”

She was still speaking with Jedao’s accent. “We both know who you are,” Brezan said in his best temperate voice, which emerged as a croak. “You can stop pretending.”

“That’s complicated,” Cheris said, “and anyway you’re confused as to who’s interrogating whom. Why did you try to kill me?”

He should have kept his mouth shut. It was becoming a theme. On the other hand, the question wasn’t a hard one. “I should think that would be obvious,” he said. “You took over my general’s swarm as Shuos Jedao. Who, in case you were asleep for that particular lesson, has a history of blowing people up. I’d have to be insane to want to leave you in charge.”

Cheris smiled Jedao’s smile at him. “I see that tact isn’t your specialty, but you’re not stupid. As you said, we both know I’m not Jedao, or your Andan comrade’s attempt would have succeeded.”

“What have you done with her?” Brezan said before he could stop himself.

Cheris raised an eyebrow at him. “Jedao would have killed her, but she’s not dead. That’s all you’re getting.”

Brezan believed her, but who knew what condition Tseya was in. “You put a hell of a lot of effort into being a convincing Jedao,” Brezan said, remembering how this had all began. Maybe it was better to keep her talking. She might let something drop.

“Believe it or not, it’s a side-effect of something Kel Command did to me. Anyway, let’s try again. Why did you try to kill me?”

Oddly, she didn’t seem to be taking the assassination attempt personally. She was digging for his motivations. Why? Why did it matter? She could have killed him without any trouble. Come to that, she could have done that the first time around, too. He liked the implications less and less.

Cheris was watching him patiently.

“You hijacked my general’s swarm,” Brezan said, “whoever you were claiming to be. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Let you swan off with all those moths?”

Cheris tapped the top of the chair. “And what was the swarm going to be used for?”

“You know the answer to that question. Why are we even having this conversation?”

“Are all generals this bad at giving straight answers?” Cheris said tartly. “It’s not even a hard question.”

“We had orders to fight the Hafn,” Brezan said, quelling the urge to lunge at Cheris even though he had a good idea how that would end. “Which we would have managed just fine without your intervention.”

“Mostly true,” Cheris said, “but there’s an exception. That exception would have gotten the lot of you killed. Never mind that. You must have followed the swarm’s movements to be able to board the command moth. I can only imagine you were watching its actions, too. This has undoubtedly told you all about how I’ve been randomly shooting up moths, or crashing them into cities, or filling them with poison gas.”

“The sarcasm is much appreciated,” Brezan retorted. “I’m aware of how much success you’ve enjoyed.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know how much of that success was ascribable to someone who had, until recently, been an infantry captain. “I’m also aware that you’ve been fighting the Hafn just as tamely as though Kel Command had you on a leash. But I refuse to believe you’re doing this for the benefit of the hexarchate.”

“Yes, I imagine the hexarchate’s benefit is very important to you,” Cheris said, quite dryly. Her hands flexed.

Brezan wasn’t thinking about her hands but her tone of voice. What the fuck had she picked up on? He didn’t need her figuring out that he entertained dangerously heretical attitudes toward his government.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she added, although he hadn’t said a word. His heart shuddered. “You care about the swarm; well and good. You will find that I have taken care of the Kel better than Kel Command would have.”

“This is why you sent that tactical group out to fight in a suicide formation,” Brezan said, even though provoking Cheris was a bad idea.

“That was Commander Gherion,” Cheris said.

Brezan bit back an oath. He had liked Gherion, and not just because Gherion appreciated his roast stuffed pheasant, that one time Brezan had invited him over for dinner.

“He served well,” Cheris said with no discernible irony. “Someone had to fight, Brezan. There’s no way around it. Gherion chose how to carry out his mission. Kiora’s Stab was his choice, and it did as he intended. Tell me again, then. Why did you try to kill me?”

Brezan glared at her. Too bad she was good at looking imperturbable. That must come with having the upper hand. “I am Kel,” he said through his teeth. He remembered the smug ashhawks, the smoke-coil wings, the hot regard of those golden eyes. “I have my orders.”

Cheris laughed soundlessly. “We’re crashhawks. If you’re following orders, it’s because you want to. So it comes back to the question I keep asking you, and you keep dodging. Why did you try to kill me?”

He couldn’t even make a fist. He had run out of facile answers. “I don’t know,” he said, hating how ragged his voice sounded. When Cheris didn’t respond, he said, more loudly, “I don’t know, all right? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“I used to follow Kel Command, just as you did,” Cheris said. “But there’s a better way. I couldn’t see it until Jedao showed me.” When Brezan gaped at her, she added, “Jedao was evil, but that doesn’t mean he was automatically wrong.” She rose and began unlocking the restraints. “Here’s what will happen. I’m going to give you run of the swarm, and you can talk to your comrades. I’m certain they’ve worried about your fate. Ask them how the swarm has been run and how you’ve been treated. Formation instinct will ensure that they answer you honestly.” The last of the restraints snicked loose. “Then come back and tell me, to my face, why you want to kill me. Since you’ll be in command of the swarm, I doubt I’ll pose any threat to you.”

Brezan scarcely dared to move, even though tensing his muscles surreptitiously told him he was free in truth. “They have no idea who you are, do they?”

“I thought you’d figure that out, too,” Cheris said matter-of-factly. “Confine me wherever you like. I have some things to work out in my head. After all, if you had intended to kill me, you’d have managed it already.”

Brezan opened his mouth, considered the fact that he’d allowed her to keep talking while he was completely unrestrained, then shut it. “Give me your word that you’ll stay confined to quarters until I come back,” Brezan said.

Kel Command was going to enjoy nailing pieces of him to some undecorated wall once they figured out what he’d been up to. They knew he could interpret his orders liberally, but he had crossed the line of what he could justify to them.

“You have my word,” Cheris said. She rested her hand over the hilt of the calendrical sword she wasn’t wearing, a formality the Kel had not used in over a generation. “You may want to start with your general. She’s probably resting.”

“Give me access to the mothgrid,” Brezan said.

“Of course,” Cheris said. She muttered a passphrase in an unfamiliar language—in his hearing, but he doubted she had any more use for it.

Brezan blinked as the mothgrid started talking to his augment again. It only took a moment to check the master map and to convince the terminal to cough up the current duty roster. “If this is part of some Shuos gambit after all,” Brezan said, “I’ll send you back to Kel Command in pieces.”

She didn’t look impressed by the threat. Considering what she had already pulled off, however doomed, that was fair.

Brezan got up. His muscles protested, but he hadn’t been tied up all that long. He glanced back at Cheris, who had relocated to a couch and had called up—was that some dueling drama? With dancers? Better not to ask.

Although he half-expected to be jumped by heretic Kel when he stepped out, the hallway taunted him with its emptiness. That, and the same smug painted ashhawks.

At this point, Brezan had two choices. He could pay General Khiruev a call, as Cheris had suggested, or he could go after Tseya, assuming the grid wasn’t lying to him about her location. Tseya wouldn’t approve of him talking to Cheris, but she might know what the situation called for. On the other hand, Brezan couldn’t help but feel that he owed it to himself to find out if Cheris’s contentions held any truth.

The hell with it. Best to investigate while he had the opportunity. He walked down the hall, not very far, and paused before the general’s door. “Request to see General Khiruev,” he said.

A long pause followed. Brezan was about to repeat the request when the door slid open. He entered, and only then realized that he’d forgotten to mention his new rank.

“Brezan,” Khiruev said, and then, when her gaze was drawn to the wings-and-flame, “sir.” She had been rearranging the endless collection of gadgets on her shelves. Now she faced Brezan properly and saluted.

Brezan noticed neither the gadgets nor the salute. The white streak in Khiruev’s hair had widened, and she looked thin and wan. Brezan bit down a snarl.

Khiruev’s mouth twisted. “If you’re here,” she said, “then Kel Command sent you somehow, and Jedao is gone.” She tried to reach for her sidearm, but her arm locked up, and her hand began to shake.

She’s trying to kill me for ‘Jedao’? Brezan thought incredulously. “Stand down, s—General,” he said. Khiruev froze. Brezan didn’t order her to hand the gun over, which was almost certainly a mistake, but he didn’t want to strip her dignity away entirely. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Please be more specific, sir,” Khiruev said icily.

Well, if she was going to be that way about it—“You look like you’re being poisoned,” Brezan said. “What’s going on?”

“I invoked the Vrae Tala clause on Jedao’s behalf when Kel Command revoked his commission,” Khiruev said.

“He made you do what?” Brezan demanded. So that was why Khiruev looked ill: because she was. Because she was dying.

“No one made me do anything, sir,” Khiruev said. “I did it voluntarily. Shoot me for it if you like. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

The stabbing despair in Khiruev’s eyes hurt Brezan. “I’m asking the wrong questions,” he said. “Why did you do it voluntarily?”

Silence.

Great. Brezan was going to have to pull rank on the woman who, by all rights, should have been his commanding officer. “Answer the question, General.”

Khiruev inhaled sharply, then nodded. “Because he was worth serving,” she said. “Because the first thing I tried to do was assassinate him with an improvised device—”

Brezan hid his surprise.

“—and I botched the job. I killed Lyu and Meriki.”

“I’m sorry,” Brezan said. It didn’t seem quite real. Lyu with his slight gambling problem, Meriki with her crowd of children.

Khiruev went on as though Brezan hadn’t spoken. “General Jedao took me aside afterward. He knew I was the culprit. Then he chewed me out for killing the wrong targets, warned me not to fuck up again, and asked for my service. I gave it to him.

“I know what the history lessons say. I know what he did. But in his time in charge of the swarm, he acted more honorably toward the Kel than Kel Command usually does.” Khiruev looked away, then back. Her resistance was unraveling. “I assume you’ve dealt with him. You would hardly be here otherwise. Go ahead and end it, sir.” Her voice softened. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re making it out alive.”

It hit Brezan, then, that Khiruev wanted to die. He was tempted to ask if it was a side-effect of Vrae Tala—there had always been the rumors—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, especially when he suspected he wouldn’t like the answer. Instead, Brezan said, “What if I told you that we’d been tricked? That you weren’t following Shuos Jedao after all?”

Khiruev fell silent. Then: “You were the one who pointed out that former Captain Cheris didn’t possess those marksmanship skills. Unless she got lucky on short notice. If that’s where you’re going with this line of argument.”

“I don’t know a hell of a lot about how Jedao was resurrected whenever Kel Command wanted to field him,” Brezan said. “Do you?”

“I never had access to that information, sir.”

He could tell that Khiruev was skeptical. “I didn’t come here alone,” he said, which got no reaction. Khiruev would expect as much. “I was backup for an Andan agent.” Her eyes did flicker then. “The Andan couldn’t so much as slow Cheris down.”

“It couldn’t just be Jedao going crazy, or going crazier possessing Cheris?”

“I wasn’t on the moth for the ride,” Brezan said, thinking of how lucid Cheris had sounded. They did say the Shuos trained the knack of resisting enthrallment into some of their operatives, but Tseya hadn’t thought that would be an obstacle. “You tell me. This person you’ve been serving. Was their behavior crazy?”

“Well,” Khiruev said at her driest, “in our existence, honorable behavior is crazy. But I take your point, sir. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

That took Brezan by surprise. “I don’t follow.”

Khiruev’s mouth crimped. “Are they dead?”

“No,” Brezan said, and was disturbingly gratified to see a little of the light return to Khiruev’s eyes. “She had me. She’s in her quarters on parole. But she persuaded me that I should judge her actions by the state of the swarm.”

“That’s an interesting move,” Khiruev said, “considering that I have no choice but to follow you. Are you sure she can be trusted?”

There it was, formation instinct taking hold, the switch of loyalty. I didn’t want this for either of us, Brezan wanted to say, although he knew better than to say it. “Maybe she was hoping I would judge her the way you did,” he said.

“You were set free and not killed, sir,” Khiruev said, as if Brezan needed the reminder. “I’m seeing a pattern.”

“I’ve barely looked around the Hierarchy of Feasts,” Brezan said. “I’d prefer to do it in your company, to reduce the disruption.”

“You have only to give the order, sir.”

Brezan reminded himself not to pick a fight over behavior Khiruev couldn’t help. “Has Cheris given you any indication as to her final objective?”

“I only know that we were to fight the Hafn, which I imagine you’d figured out, and that perhaps there was a greater game,” Khiruev said. “I never received specifics beyond that.”

“Even if you don’t have specifics,” Brezan said, “anything, anything at all—” He didn’t understand when he had started hoping Cheris-as-fox had a plan. “She couldn’t have possibly intended to go to war with the hexarchs with a single swarm, even one of this size.”

“She did say once that I wasn’t looking at the right battlefield,” Khiruev said, “but that could have been misdirection.”

“Do you think she was bluffing?”

“No,” Khiruev said without any hesitation. “I don’t think she was.”

Brezan thought for a moment. “To start with, I want to see the staff and department heads, and Commander Janaia.”

“Sir, you ought to be aware that the commander has been removed from duty. Muris is the acting commander. Should I reinstate Janaia?”

Just when he thought he was getting a handle on the situation. “What happened?”

“She had a breakdown,” Khiruev said, without elaborating.

“I’ll have to review that later,” Brezan said grimly. The status of the swarm had to come first. “Commander Muris, then.”

“As you wish, sir. I’ll set it up.”

Khiruev could no doubt tell how unprepared Brezan was for this turn of events, but she didn’t comment on it. Which she wouldn’t, because that would be insubordinate behavior. Brezan watched in helpless fury as Khiruev sent out the summons, not even sure who he was furious at. Himself, maybe.

They headed to the conference room early on the grounds that it would be best to be the first ones there. Brezan had to keep from flinching at Khiruev’s tread, not because he heard anything wrong, but because he kept expecting to. Khiruev cleared her throat when Brezan automatically took his old seat at the side of the table. Brezan colored and decided to remain standing, while Khiruev slowly sank into a chair next to the head of the table.

First to arrive was Commander Muris. He didn’t even pause before offering his salute, and proceeded to the seat across from Khiruev’s at Brezan’s nod. Then came most of the staff officers. Last of all was Medical, who looked at Brezan with open skepticism.

When everyone was seated, Brezan said, “I recognize that this is a damnably bizarre situation, but what I need from you is very simple. I want honest assessments of how the swarm has been handled since Jedao’s takeover.” He didn’t explain his presence or why the fuck he wanted the information. At least General Khiruev’s visible compliance lent him legitimacy. “We’ll go clockwise around the table, starting with the commander. I have already heard General Khiruev’s report privately.”

“Sir,” Muris said. He launched into his report. His crisp way of speaking hadn’t changed, and Brezan had to admire his sangfroid. Brezan took notes, even though the meeting was being recorded, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on what Muris was saying.

It was impossible to escape the buzzing sense of unhappiness coming from the officers gathered here. But they would do as he ordered because the moment they walked in and saw him, they lost the ability to resist. Khiruev had tried, but hadn’t been able to stand up to a direct order. In the middle of Muris’s summation of the first engagement with the Hafn, Brezan had the idle thought that it would be horrifyingly easy to get used to people looking at you with that intent devotion, which had to be something specific to high generals, and maybe also to generals who had four hundred unnatural years of seniority. He sure as hell didn’t remember anything quite like it during his regular career.

Kel Cheris had had that power over the swarm, and she had surrendered it as part of a rhetorical gambit. Who was she really, and what was her game?

He was going to have to return to her if he wanted to find out, that much was clear.