Revenant Gun

by Yoon Ha Lee

  The hexarch meant psych surgery. It was almost always a bad idea, according to everything Hemiola had ever heard, to undertake psych surgery on yourself. Hemiola wished it could travel back in time and talk the hexarch out of this. It was too late by centuries.

  Hemiola vibrated nervously, wondering what to do. It was still stuck on the needlemoth. But who did it owe its loyalty to? Even if the hexarch had ripped out his own conscience and warped the nation around his own thirst for life eternal, that didn’t automatically make Cheris trustworthy.

  CHERIS HAD WEDGED herself into the last remaining free space in the hold and was regarding Hemiola gravely. “You look like you want to talk about something,” she said.

  “Want” was a strong word. “I have information you need,” it said.

  “Need?” Cheris said.

  “You said you want to kill the hexarch.”

  “So you know how.”

  “Now I do.”

  “Why tell me?” Cheris said reasonably. “Have you changed your mind about the kind of man he was?”

  “You’ve been a general across many realms, many stars,” it said.

  “Something like.” She was wary. It didn’t blame her.

  “The world that the hexarch built—is it a world where people starve?” It had pored over summaries from Ayong Primary, but they had been frustratingly incomplete. Plus, it suspected that administrators everywhere had the incentive to report things in a positive light whether or not things were going well.

  Cheris made a frustrated gesture. “You’re asking for a lot of data about a complicated question, and I can’t imagine I can chew through it faster than a servitor. Each world, each station, each city, each neighborhood. The short, the uncomplicated answer is no. Foreigners like to talk about the hexarchs’ tyranny. It is, however, a tyranny that feeds people and gives them work and allows them pleasure. Unless you’re a heretic, that is. But someone always has to pay the price.” Her mouth crimped. “This is the world I destroyed. Kujen thought I was going to help him, and I betrayed him.”

  Her straightforwardness disarmed Hemiola. “Can you swear to me that the hexarch’s motives were a tyrant’s?” it said.

  “Not anymore I can’t. He’s a complicated man. But the numbers of people who have been tortured for him—that’s not complicated at all.”

  It came to its decision then. “There are weapons that can kill him. I assume you haven’t gotten your hands on them or you’d be done already.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “For this assassination,” Hemiola said slowly, “you’re going to need Kel. Formation effects.”

  “That can be arranged,” Cheris said. She bowed from the waist. “Welcome to the mission, Hemiola.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BREZAN HAD SPENT all morning at a desk wishing someone would rescue him from the earnest, polite, and painstakingly detailed conversation about calendrical shift logistics he was having with High Magistrate Rahal Zaniin. It wasn’t that he disliked Zaniin. Despite her temper, which rivaled his own, Zaniin was a reasonable human being. (She was also surprisingly funny over drinks, the one time he’d got her drunk. In particular, she knew a lot of jokes that were not Kel jokes, which he appreciated.)

  Several objects currently decorated his desk. A slate and two styluses, both of which had an irritating tendency to skip. A tiny cylindrical aquarium from Tseya, in which a placid blue-and-silver betta swirled amid pondweed and what looked distressingly like genuine faceted gemstones. Intelligent woman that she was, Tseya had left care instructions not with him but with his aide. He still wasn’t sure what to make of the gift, especially since Tseya knew perfectly well that he thought fish were creepy when they weren’t deliciously pan-fried.

  Miuzan hadn’t brought him any parting gifts, or spoken more than a handful of words to him since their evacuation from Isteia. Nevertheless, in a spirit of self-flagellation, Brezan had placed a portrait of his family on his desk, angled so Zaniin couldn’t see it. His youngest father had commissioned one of his friends to paint it. Brezan remembered being impressed that any artist, even one on good terms with his prickly youngest father, would risk the inevitable blistering critique.

  “High General,” Zaniin said, “are you paying attention?”

  “Yes,” Brezan lied.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Well, at least fake it better.” Then she returned to explaining the adjustments that would have to be made to the grade school curriculum. He already wasn’t looking forward to the obligatory protests from the teachers, most of whom retained Vidona sympathies even if they had officially renounced their old allegiance.

  Save me from this, Brezan thought despite a wave of guilt. Inesser had sustained tremendous losses fighting against Jedao. (New Jedao? Jedao Two? Nomenclature was getting to be a problem around here. It hadn’t helped that Mikodez had casually mentioned that his assistant Zehun had named their latest calico kitten Jedao, apparently continuing a long tradition of naming their cats after notorious Shuos assassins.) Anyway, the least he could do was shoulder some of the administrative burden.

  As it turned out, “rescue” came from an unexpected quarter. Zaniin was in the middle of running a bulletin by him, as if she needed his input on proper phrasing, when the call arrived. “Sorry,” Brezan said with simulated regret. “I have to take this one.”

  She pulled a face at him. “Of course you do,” she said. But a lifetime of attention to propriety won over curiosity. “Call me back when you’re done.”

  “Naturally,” Brezan said, fighting to keep his tone casual. His hands had gone clammy. “Please open Line 6-0. Record the whole thing.” He might have to report the whole conversation to Inesser.

  There was an unusually long pause. The grid indicated that it was securing the connection. Then it imaged a familiar oval face. Brezan’s stomach knotted up as he viewed it: a woman, her hair cropped short with military practicality, rather than the bob he remembered. Despite her drawn face, her eyes were alert. It took all his self-control to keep from shouting, Where have you been all these years? Even if Khiruev had told him, it was another thing to see her.

  “Hello, High General,” said Ajewen Cheris.

  “Hello,” Brezan said. His attempt to keep hostility from seeping into his tone was insufficiently successful. Cheris made a moue in response. “It’s been a few years.”

  “You don’t need to understate things around me,” Cheris said. “We both know how long I’ve been gone.”

  “If you’re bothering to check in now,” Brezan said, “I assume it’s related to the messy business at Isteia Mothyard.”

  “I’d heard about that, yes.”

  Brezan scowled at her. “We could have used a warning.” He hated her composure. She was always so calm. But then, having a mass murderer living in your skull must help induce sangfroid. Too bad he couldn’t have some of that for himself.

  Am I really wishing for a Jedao in my head? Brezan asked himself.

  “I’ve been occupied.”

  “So Khiruev told me. Rather late.”

  She smiled Jedao’s smile at him. Even though he knew she couldn’t help it, his stomach clenched with dread. That smile would make him recoil for the rest of his life. “Contrary to some of the dramas, High General,” she said, “I don’t read minds. Tell me what’s bothering you so we can move on to the important part of the conversation.”

  Brezan reined in his temper with an effort. Squared his shoulders. Pretend Mikodez is watching. That was always good for dampening outbursts. He trusted Mikodez even less than Cheris. His life was full of untrustworthy people.

  “I could have used your help nine years ago,” Brezan said. He was proud of the evenness of his tone. “A lot of people could have.”

  “Really,” Cheris said.

  He couldn’t help it. He stiffened in response to the utter lack of emotion in her voice. “Dammit, Cheris, you ran off.”

  “You had plenty of help,” she said. “Khirue
v is a perfectly good general—you of all people know that. Ragath should have made general years ago. I’d heard you promoted him.”

  “Of course I did,” Brezan said. “I didn’t have so many high officers that I could afford to ignore talent.” Which was hilarious coming from him because he’d never been a line officer himself. Not only had Ragath’s record spoken for itself, he’d come highly recommended by people he trusted. To his relief, Khiruev and Ragath got along well. The same couldn’t be said of all his generals.

  “Well, then.”

  “I would have appreciated having someone to advise me other than Mikodez.”

  Cheris’s breath huffed out in an almost-laugh. “I would have liked to tell you what I was doing,” she said, “but I needed to preserve operational security. It’s moot now. That drama about Kujen your people are distributing isn’t as foxingly awful as I’d expected it to be, given how much of a rush job it has to be. Although did your Andan playwrights have to give Kujen all the best lines? To say nothing of that gorgeous actor? He’s starting to have fans.”

  A sudden wild hope lit his heart. “I don’t suppose you’re calling now because you’ve gotten rid of this ghost or revenant or whatever the fuck Kujen is and we can all stand down from high alert?”

  Too much to ask for. “Sorry,” Cheris said. “I’m calling to ask for your help with him. You’re the one with all the Kel.”

  “Inesser is, these days,” he said. He assumed she’d approached him rather than Inesser based on their prior acquaintance—he couldn’t exactly call it friendship—especially since Inesser was unlikely to hold a high opinion of Cheris. “Keep talking.”

  “First: what I told you about the black cradle years ago is still true.”

  He winced. “Cheris, if you’re hoping that cozying up to Inesser has gotten me one of the two weapons that can kill a revenant, that’s not the case. I’m pretty sure Inesser doesn’t have them either.”

  “No, Kujen wouldn’t have gotten that careless,” Cheris said. “I haven’t even been able to find schematics for the snakescratch dart and genial gun. And running around interrogating random Nirai with connections to Kujen would take longer than anyone has.”

  “Well, if you wanted to depress me, you’ve succeeded.”

  “That’s not the bad news.” Cheris gestured at her face. “You know how Kel Command stuck Jedao’s mind in my body? Jedao couldn’t control where he ended up. Kujen always inserted him wherever they wanted him.”

  “I love how you talk about that so casually.”

  She ignored that. “Kujen doesn’t suffer that limitation. Kujen can jump anywhere he wants, so long as it’s in high calendar space.”

  “You can’t mean—”

  “I do.”

  Brezan put the pieces together. “Then—”

  “Yes. Kujen is very old and very patient. He might have been willing to wait for the Compact, or your alliance with the Protectorate, to die out and wind up as some obscure classified footnote to history. He’s weathered secessions and civil wars before.”

  “Secessions?” He hadn’t heard of any.

  “Ask Ragath about that sometime. Most of them were—”

  “—classified. Right.”

  Cheris continued speaking. “Inesser agreeing to adopt your calendar makes her a threat. Because Kujen can’t continue to hop bodies once it takes hold. But it’s also an opportunity to craft a trap for Kujen, by leaving a target too good to miss. Switch up the calendar everywhere except the target. Leave that one under the high calendar.”

  He liked the sound of this less and less. “What target would that be?”

  “Terebeg 4.”

  “No,” Brezan said immediately. “You’re not going to dangle the Protectorate’s capital in front of Kujen and his unbeatable swarm.”

  She was relentless. “The anniversary of Hellspin Fortress is coming up. It’s perfect. Kujen won’t be able to resist the opportunity, especially knowing that his cover’s been blown and he has to move soon. He has a Jedao. He has a swarm. He has a brand-new weapon.”

  “That’s great,” Brezan said, “except for the part where we don’t have a countermeasure for the gravity cannon.”

  “The other Jedao only has one swarm,” Cheris said, “and he hasn’t shown any evidence of particular tactical cleverness, although it’s not impossible that he’s good at doing more than firing a big gun. Inesser’s good at her job. She wasn’t the hexarchate’s best living general for no reason.”

  “You’re forgetting the other thing,” Brezan said acidly, “which is the whole reason we got rid of the high calendar in the first place. Because you can’t bluff. It will have to be the real thing, with real remembrances, and real victims. If Kujen decides to give the whole thing a miss, that’ll be hundreds of people dead—not just dead, but tortured to death—and for no purpose.”

  “He destroyed Isteia, Brezan. He won’t stop there, not until the high calendar is reinstalled everywhere.”

  Brezan thought furiously. “Assuming Kujen accepts the lure, he’ll have Kel and Inesser will have Kel. I’m hoping he doesn’t have more of those damn gravity cannons, or more swarms. How do you propose to assassinate him?”

  “There are formations that can sever him from his anchor and kill him forever,” Cheris said.

  The grid indicated that she had just sent him a databurst. Brezan opened up the files and glanced them over. He could read basic formation notation, but this wasn’t his department. Inesser and her staff would be able to figure it out.

  “You want me to persuade Inesser to go along with this plan of yours.”

  “Yes.”

  “You realize Inesser’s calling the shots and not the other way around? Fuck, Cheris, the woman’s older than my grandparents. Scarier than any of them, too.”

  “A lot’s at stake, Brezan. Are you going to stand by?”

  He scowled at her. “Of course not. But understand, I only have so much pull.”

  “Then make the most of what you have.”

  “You know, Kujen missed his window of opportunity, if what you say is true,” Brezan said. “He could have lobbed himself into, I don’t know, Inesser’s body and taken over all the Kel.” Just as Cheris herself had hijacked Khiruev’s swarm nine years ago.

  “You think he hasn’t thought of that? There’s a reason he doesn’t wander around doing that. He drives most of his anchors mad in short order. I’m not saying he couldn’t do a massive amount of damage, but he’s cautious by nature and has generally preferred to survive by keeping his existence secret from all but the highest circles of government. Until you and Inesser blew that to the stars, too.”

  “Why doesn’t his current anchor oust him?”

  Cheris’s eyes grew distant. “His current anchor has served him for decades. Kujen can be extraordinarily persuasive. He hasn’t been a psych surgeon for centuries for nothing.”

  “So we have two months and twelve days left,” Brezan said, having checked his augment.

  Cheris reflexively checked her wrist. It took Brezan a moment to recognize what she was wearing: the rose gold watch that General Khiruev had given her. No one went around with them anymore except actors or the occasional collector, but Khiruev liked to buy decrepit ones from antique shops and fix them up. Khiruev had even presented one to Brezan a few years back, an ornate affair with a lacquered magpie on the face, although he kept it in a drawer back in his office in Tauvit. He wondered if he’d ever see it again.

  “Mobilizing the populace on that scale isn’t the hardest part,” Brezan said. “Because the populace is still used to jumping every time they hear a Vidona’s footstep. Of course, that means if Kujen conquers Terebeg, they’ll be just as happy to fall in line for him. Oh, not everyone... but enough. It’ll be messy.” He gave Cheris a hard look. “I think you’d better deliver some of this news to Inesser yourself.”

  “No,” Cheris said flatly. “The less people know about my movements, the better. Be persuasive. I’m sure y
ou’ve had plenty of practice at it.”

  “Why,” Brezan said, “what are you going to be up to? I need to know so I don’t get in your way.”

  “I’m the backup plan,” Cheris said. “In case the Kel formations don’t get him. It’s a long shot, but what’s a life but a coin to be spent, anyway?”

  “Please don’t tell Kel jokes.”

  “Sorry, habit.” Jedao’s smile again.

  “Do servitors even appreciate Kel jokes?” Since he couldn’t imagine anything else would fit in that needlemoth with her.

  “Depends on the servitor. If you want to know, you can ask the ones around you.”

  A shiver went down his spine. He would never be at ease with the servitors, even though they were perfectly polite to him. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  “If I can trap Kujen in non-high calendar space,” Cheris continued, “he can be killed.”

  “He’s not going to be stupid enough to enter hostile calendrical terrain for your convenience,” Brezan said.

  “I know. That’s why I’m going to assassinate the other Jedao on his own command moth.”

  Brezan’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth for a moment at how casually she said it. “Localized calendrical spike.”

  “Yes. You won’t notice it, I don’t think, but it should give me a window of opportunity to do away with Kujen.”

  “Cheris,” he said, “you’ll be careful?” Now, as much as he disliked her, he was wishing her good luck. Funny how that went. “I can’t imagine he’s less of a killer than you are.”

  “If Kujen designed him, probably not.” Her eyes had gone intent. Brezan didn’t envy the other Jedao, who would never know what hit him. “I’m Kel, Brezan, you think I’m not used to living with risks?”

  “I don’t think ‘I’m Kel’ has anything to do with your extraordinary penchant for destructive gestures,” Brezan said.

  Her smile flickered at him like a candle flame. “If you feel that way, imagine what it’s like having him in your head all the time. Besides, I’m not done. I’m going to need one more thing from you, or none of this will work.”