by Yoon Ha Lee
The escort had backed away from Jedao. “S-sir,” the corporal said in a hushed voice, “perhaps you’d rather—”
“Perhaps I’d rather what?” Jedao asked in what he thought was a commendably calm voice.
The corporal shut up.
“One question,” Jedao said, also quietly, although the people in the back were starting to stir and frown in his direction.
The corporal bobbed a nod. The other soldiers had sufficient discipline not to back away from him, too. That, or it was formation instinct.
“How many prisoners of war did we capture?”
“The total, sir, or just on the command moth?”
That told him what he needed to know: too many. Besides, a quick consultation of the grid gave him the numbers. Eleven on the Revenant. All told, 503 captives in various states of health, distributed more or less evenly among the swarm’s warmoths. The efficiency with which this had been accomplished was also a bad sign, as was the fact that the grid reassured him that the Vidona were carrying out the selfsame ceremony on the other moths in his command.
Jedao shoved his way through the crowd and to the ramp leading up to the dais. Shocked murmurs followed him. He didn’t care. A saner voice in the back of his head said, You can’t save all of them this way.
Maybe not, he thought back at it, but I might make a difference for this one soldier.
The corporal yelled after him to come back, then swore and started after him. Jedao lengthened his stride.
The Vidona had raised a sharp, saw-bladed instrument high above the burning soldier. She didn’t flinch at his approach.
He grabbed her wrist and hissed, “This stops now.”
She met his eyes coldly. “With respect, sir,” she said in a voice that implied anything but, “you have no authority over me here.”
Up close, he could hear the ragged breathing of the burning soldier. Their face was a mass of blisters and char marks tracking the locations of the major veins and arteries. He doubted they had a voice anymore or they’d be screaming.
“We are both,” the Vidona said, “sworn to the hexarch’s service. Stand down.”
Jedao came very close to breaking her wrist and slamming her into the flames; but that wouldn’t solve the problem.
Nevertheless, she reacted to the intimation of violence. She plunged the blade into the victim’s heart before he could stop her. Flames bloomed up around her hand. Her gray glove and her sleeve caught on fire. Her face was calm, even a little bored, as if she did this often. Which she probably did.
“I will have to make a calendrical adjustment,” the Vidona said. She withdrew the blade with fussy neatness, damped the fire with a smothering cloth.
Jedao stared at her, aghast. “They could have been saved.”
“A waste of resources,” she said. “She was almost dead anyway.”
Not trusting himself to speak, Jedao spun on his heel and stalked out of the hall. He knew where he was going next.
JEDAO SLOWED JUST enough for his escort to catch up with him. They didn’t look grateful. He was beyond caring what they thought of their charge.
Kujen’s quarters were defended by an immense foyer. A dazzle of candlevines grew up the walls, illuminating tangled wires and chitin-iridescent panels. A low thrumming reverberated throughout, like a gong that had just been damped.
The Nirai voidmoth emblem gleamed along the far wall, engraved in such piercing silver it was almost blue. The escort knelt in the full obeisance. Jedao didn’t bother. He called out, “I’ve come for an audience with the hexarch.”
When the doors parted, spilling light onto the floor and highlighting the iridescent panels, Jedao blinked but did not move otherwise.
“Jedao,” Kujen said in that velvet voice of his. “The timing could have been better, but... well.”
He wasn’t interested in Kujen’s assurances. “How long have the remembrances been going on?”
“Corporal,” Kujen said without looking in the man’s direction, “you and your soldiers may leave us.”
The Kel escort fled.
Kujen was already leading the way forward. “Come with me,” he said. “You’ll find nothing interesting out here unless you like prototype circuits.”
They passed through several rooms, each more opulent than the last, which did nothing to improve Jedao’s mood. One room featured the pelts of gray tigers, while another housed chairs and tables of handsome blue-black lacquer. Yet a third was full of shadows except a pedestal where a single immense vase of finest celadon rested. The glaze depicted an arched branch with a raindrop in the act of falling free; that was all. Jedao didn’t ask why Kujen collected such treasures when he scarcely paid heed to them. He wondered if he would be the same way when he had more experience of the world. He hoped not.
“Now,” Kujen said, “you may yell.”
Jedao reined back his temper. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“The remembrances?” Kujen sank down into a couch. Jedao took the chair across from him, drawing his feet in. “You mean in their current form.”
Jedao just looked at him.
“For the past eight centuries and change,” Kujen said.
“And you let this go on?”
Kujen raised his eyebrows. “Jedao,” he said, “I’m the one who came up with the system.”
Jedao’s brain stuttered to a halt.
“The formations, and formation instinct, and the mothdrive harnesses,” Kujen said, “all of them depend on people adhering to the system. The stability of the hexarchate, and its ability to provide for its citizens, depend on people adhering to the system.”
“Kujen,” Jedao said, recovering his voice, “we just fucking tortured prisoners of war to death. Now they’ll never negotiate, or cooperate with prisoner exchanges, or believe any of our assurances, or—”
“I never intended to negotiate with Inesser or her people.” Kujen rose and made his way to a cabinet. From it he drew a dark, unlabeled bottle. He tilted it inquiringly and cocked an eyebrow at Jedao. Jedao shook his head. “She and her followers are too dangerous. Better to add them to the list of heretics and move on.”
“You can’t arbitrarily decide that it’s all right to torture whole categories of people to death!”
Kujen tapped the mouth of the bottle. The stopper, whatever it had been made of, vanished into a curl of blue-pale vapor. The smell of roses and spice perfumed the air.
“It’s one of the better vintages of wine-of-roses,” Kujen said. “I’d hate to drink this alone.”
“If you think I have any interest in getting drunk right now,” Jedao said icily, “you are quite mistaken.”
“Your loss,” Kujen said with a shrug. He poured a glass for himself and sipped delicately.
“When you told me that we were restoring order to the hexarchate,” Jedao said, “I had no idea you had this in mind.”
Kujen sipped again, then set the glass down on a table. He approached Jedao. Jedao stood his ground, increasingly uneasy.
“I’d forgotten how young you are,” Kujen murmured.
“Don’t fucking patronize me.” Jedao glared at him, which was awkward because Kujen topped him by almost a head.
Kujen stepped in close, quite close, and rested his hands on Jedao’s shoulders. “That’s not all you’re upset about, is it? This has to do with that regrettably violent confrontation with that Kel squad.”
Jedao was trembling with the suppressed desire to lash out. He knew, however, that it wouldn’t do any good. “That’s not—”
“I told you once,” Kujen said, “that it’s impossible for you to shock me. Do you remember?”
Unwillingly, Jedao looked up into Kujen’s perfect face, the smoky, gold-flecked eyes with their long lashes. “I remember.” Then: “You knew. Even then, you knew.”
“I didn’t think you were ready to hear it,” Kujen said.
“What am I?” He was horrified by the way his voice shook.
�
�Hush,” Kujen said softly, and drew him down onto the couch so they were sitting side by side. “Call it a security measure. It wouldn’t do to lose my general to assassination.”
Jedao thought back to their earliest meetings. “You said you have your own defenses. Do you—are you—”
Maybe they were alike after all. Jedao was forcibly reminded that Kujen was one of the few people who had never reacted to him with fear or disgust. I could influence him—change his mind—Then he hated himself for the thought.
Kujen’s hand had moved up to the side of his face. He was looking somberly at Jedao. Slowly, he uncurled his fingers until they brushed against Jedao’s jaw. It seemed impossible that Kujen couldn’t hear the hectic pounding of his heartbeat.
“Fine,” Jedao said roughly. “I don’t shock you? Prove it to me.” He had the dim understanding that he was trying to play a game he wasn’t old enough for.
Kujen’s eyes were even more beautiful up close. In spite of himself, Jedao’s pulse quickened further at the way Kujen was looking at him, as though everything else in the universe had fallen away. I can’t be doing this. Yet here he was.
“Sweetheart,” Kujen said caressingly, “the experience differential is not in your favor.”
“I’m not a boy, Kujen.”
“Well, that’s debatable.” His hands traced Jedao’s sides and came to rest low on his hips.
Holding still was agonizing. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How had he expected to outplay a hexarch? Especially when he barely remembered how to have sex?
(Had he done this before?)
“Delightful as this is,” Kujen said, “I feel obliged to point out that you’re going to despise yourself afterward.”
“Maybe I want that.” He meant it, in that moment.
Kujen’s hands slid lower.
Then, without warning, Kujen snatched his hands away and walked in measured strides to the other side of the room. “No,” he said. The beautiful eyes had gone remote.
Heat rushed to Jedao’s face. Fuck. He’d come in here intending to confront Kujen, browbeat him into making the remembrances stop, and now—
He slid off the couch and sank to his knees by reflex, assuming the full obeisance, and waited. After a long time, he became aware that something was wrong—more wrong, at any rate. “Hexarch?”
“Have a seat, General Jedao.”
He almost tripped on the way to a chair, not trusting the couch.
“I’m not Nirai Kujen,” the hexarch said. “It’s past time I explained a few things to you.”
Saying I don’t understand seemed redundant, so Jedao didn’t.
“The situation’s complicated,” the man went on, “but the part you care about is this. You can’t seduce Kujen, not because he doesn’t want you”—Jedao flushed all over again—“but because he’s dead.”
“Then who are you?” he asked, using the same honorific forms he had earlier, just in case. The man didn’t correct him.
“Hajoret Kujen was born 919 years ago. He was the one responsible for the mathematics that led to the development of the high calendar, and the early form of the mothdrive that permitted the heptarchate’s rapid expansion, and other technologies besides. He was good at a lot of things. But it didn’t matter, because he was going to die.”
“Let me guess,” Jedao said. “Kujen really, really didn’t want to die.”
“Yes.”
“There must have been—” He tried to formulate his question in a way that made sense. “Surely someone would have noticed? Or is this another thing I forgot?” And, because it was at least as important as the other revelations: “Who are you? What do I call you?”
“I don’t have a name anymore,” the man said, which Jedao doubted. “You may call me Inhyeng, if you like.”
Jedao covered his flinch just in time. Inhyeng meant “doll” or “puppet.” The realization hit him late. “You’re the ‘mysterious assistant.’”
Inhyeng inclined his head. “Kujen discovered a way to cheat death,” Inhyeng said. “But to do so he would have to die himself, and content himself with existing as a parasite, a ghost anchored to a living marionette. He’s here in this room; he’s everywhere I go. He can, when he needs to, manipulate my body directly, although we have been together for many years and I am accustomed to anticipating his desires. Eventually I will cease to be useful to him, and he will move on to his next anchor.”
Jedao bit back the automatic I’m sorry. Inhyeng didn’t sound like he wanted anyone’s pity. What he wanted to know was, did Inhyeng also have uncanny undead healing abilities like Jedao himself, or was that the point of this “next anchor”?
Inhyeng smiled humorlessly. “You’re wondering what I get out of this. You don’t need to know the details of the bargain I made, but I am well provided for. As you might imagine, privacy is something I get little of. Still, Kujen respects my desire not to share my personal history with strangers.”
Yes, Jedao thought, you can have anything you want, except freedom. Who was he to argue that it was such a horrible fate? It wasn’t much different from his own existence. It stung to be called a stranger, but he couldn’t deny it. After all, he hadn’t known about Inhyeng’s existence before today.
“So the hexarch’s listening to this conversation?” Jedao said.
Did ghosts need to sleep? Rest? Could Kujen walk away from his anchor and scout the vicinity? How far did his senses extend? He had a whole, ugly new set of questions to address, and no answers.
“Inhyeng,” Jedao said, faltering; but Inhyeng didn’t reprimand him for omitting the -zho honorific, so perhaps it was all right. “When I touched Nirai-zho, when I—”
Inhyeng didn’t rescue him from finishing the sentence.
Jedao started over. “I wasn’t touching him,” he said, following the thread to its logical end. “I was touching you—”
“There’s no difference.”
What Jedao heard in Inhyeng’s voice was: There is every difference.
Jedao wanted to shut his eyes. Instead, he looked at Inhyeng full-on, waiting.
“You didn’t know,” Inhyeng said at last. “You couldn’t.”
“I am yours,” Jedao said, meaning, I am yours to punish.
“Don’t,” Inhyeng said. “As I said, you didn’t know. You couldn’t have guessed, considering your particular disability. Even the swarm’s Kel don’t know just how long Kujen has lived.”
This Jedao had not realized. He had assumed the Kel would have to know. But he reconsidered the evidence. “The shadow?”
“It’s a symptom, yes. But most people don’t realize its significance. And it’s not any stranger than any number of fashion accessories people run around the successor states with.”
“Then how did you convince them you were the hexarch in the first place?” Jedao demanded.
“Their original general had a high enough security clearance to recognize Kujen,” Inhyeng said. Weariness shadowed his eyes. “I believe that will be all, General. I’m sure you have much to think about.”
Jedao recognized the dismissal. “The remembrances—”
“Go,” Inhyeng said, his voice cold.
“As you will,” Jedao said, suddenly afraid. On the way out, he felt the shadow fluttering behind him like a funeral wind.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Interlude: Tefos Station, 280 years ago
JEDAO HAD A list of things he hated about being a revenant. The inability to sleep, however, came near the top of the list. He lingered in the dimly lit room not out of choice but because his anchor, the blond Hafn boy, had fallen asleep on the couch after the latest round of sex.
Kujen had gotten up already and was sitting on the edge of the couch, splendidly nude, as he scribbled notes on a slate. “You’re about to say something,” he said without looking up, “so you might as well get it over with.”
“I wouldn’t dream of disappointing you, Nirai-zho,” Jedao said with a hint of sarcasm. “I was only thinking of how s
atisfying it would be to report you to Kel Command.”
“Wouldn’t do you any favors,” Kujen replied, unperturbed. “Half the hivemind is still convinced that it ought to throw away the key and leave you in the darkness forever. Which could still be arranged, if you’re feeling masochistic.”
Jedao said nothing. Kujen liked needling him about his fear of the darkness. He was well aware that his vacation from the black cradle came thanks to Kujen; that his unusual degree of freedom during this jaunt was another such gift. When Kel Command ordered him chained to an anchor, Jedao ordinarily had no influence over the anchor except to speak to them, a voice that no one else (but Kujen) could hear. This time, however, Kujen had adjusted the bond so that Jedao could exert a certain degree of control over the body.
Kujen set the slate down on a table next to the couch and leaned back, bonelessly folding into the crook of Jedao’s arm. Jedao was ambivalent about considering the Hafn boy’s body “his,” since strictly speaking, the boy hadn’t had any choice in the matter. But the strengthened anchor bond meant that he could feel what the body felt, as though—almost—he inhabited it himself. Kujen had been at pains to demonstrate the benefits of this.
“Considering how hard Kel Command worked you in life,” Kujen said, his voice throaty, “I should think that you’d welcome a little vacation.” He twisted and resettled himself, kissing Jedao’s jaw and earlobe in a lazy meandering line.
The body woke; Jedao used its voice to speak. He still hadn’t gotten entirely used to the clear, pure tenor, or the telltale foreign accent. But of course, Kujen had selected it for its beauty, including the beauty of its voice. “If Kel Command thinks to inventory the black cradle while we’re out here, we’re fucked.”
Kujen shrugged. The motion translated itself to Jedao’s arm. Kujen’s proximity, the lithe brushstroke perfection of his limbs, had its usual calculated effect, and Jedao’s cock began to harden. “My double can handle that,” Kujen said. “They won’t catch on. Besides,” and he reached over to nestle a hand in the curling blond hairs at Jedao’s chest, “you really must learn to enjoy a chance to relax when you have the opportunity for one.”
