Nightwatch on the Hinterlands

by K. Eason

  It was not knowledge Karaesh’t had mentally misplaced, no. She remained stiffly upright, glaring, and jabbed a hand at the closed door. “There is a riev in the corridor wearing templar insignia.”

  “Winter Bite,” said Gaer, with more serenity than he felt. “And his pronoun is, well, he, not it. Honestly, I would have preferred Char, but they had other duties.”

  “A second templar riev.”

  “The first, technically. I think there are five now. You’d have to ask Lieutenant Iari for more exact details. They are all her initiates.”

  “Iari is the other templar out there? The tenju? She’s your keeper?”

  “Not my keeper. My escort.”

  “Sss.” It meant the same as one of Iari’s noncommittal grunts: disagreement not worth the breath or effort to articulate. Karaesh’t swept the room, head tilted to best angle her optic. She was looking for any surveillance devices the Aedis might have planted. Probably frying them blind, if she found any, which Gaer hoped she did not. Tobin alleged to trust him; Keawe made no such declarations. Let Karaesh’t go around dismantling Aedian tech and Keawe’s arguments (to incarcerate him in Windscar, maybe bury him in the Weep fissure) might gain strength.

  He cocked his head, too, to gather Karaesh’t into the scope of his optic as if he were reading her aura. Which he wasn’t, rot her, because she had herself hexed to invisibility. Might as well be a block of stone standing across from him, if stones scowled. Or one of the new riev, none of whom had half of Char’s charm or emotional complexity. (They had auras. Just faint. Dim. Like the aurora borealis on a bad night.) His own aura was less well-concealed. There was that moratorium on practicing arithmancy Sister Iffy insisted upon, yes, and he’d ignore that directive if necessary, but there were the remnants of self-preservation, too. He’d already stepped over the line with Karaesh’t. No need to add to it by challenging her hexwork directly. Stealthy sidelong challenges were still possible. Likely. She’d expect them.

  Karaesh’t hooked one of the chairs, jerked it out, dropped into it like a sack of knives and bone. “How much do they know, Gaer? Your templar keepers. What have you told them?”

  He was glad of the table between them. Less glad that Iari had been exiled to the corridor—a concession Karaesh’t must’ve wrung from Quellis. He wondered if Quellis and Tobin had waited until the aethership’s landing to break the news to the Five Tribes delegation—Karaesh’t and four, count them, four embassy security officers, two of them f-primes, for setat’s sake—that they wouldn’t be transferring him back to Seawall. That he’d been . . . what was the term Iari’d used? Seconded. Saved.

  Truth: he had expected Karaesh’t to insist he return to Seawall for this interview, where the surveillance was all SPERE, if only to mark him as her territory, no matter what the Aedis might claim. That she hadn’t was unexpected, yes, and good, yes, but also worrying. It wasn’t kindness. Karaesh’t wasn’t known for that. There must be some other reason that superseded SPERE surveillance.

  He told her the truth. “I haven’t told them anything compromising or traitorous to SPERE or the Five Tribes.”

  “Sss. And yet you’ve made no reports to us, either.” Karaesh’t had come into the room speaking textbook high Sisstish, for which the Aedis could be expected to keep dictionaries and translators on hand. Now she shifted to SPERE cipher-cant.

  “So make those reports to me now, Gaer. I’m listening.”

  And probably recording. Guarantee that she was.

  Gaer flared the jaw-plate that still worked—the other still swathed in poly-mesh, mending and mostly immobile. Be a trick to even speak that cipher, with his face like this. Karaesh’t would know it. Wouldn’t care if it hurt. Would expect him to do it anyway.

  If he did, he’d reassure her. If he did, he might discomfit the Aedis. Because they were listening. They’d be fools not to, and Tobin and Quellis were anything but. Karaesh’t knew that. How he answered her now—might affect more than any future posting. Might affect his life, when the seconding ended.

  “The details you want,” he said, stubbornly in Sisstish, “I can’t render in cipher. Not and be understood. And besides. It’s not like they don’t know what I’m going to say to you. There’s no need to antagonize them.”

  “Sss. Are you refusing my order to report?” Karaesh’t was relentlessly average, in appearance, vocal range, bodily dimensions, disposition of features. Her best camouflage. All that average made people careless. You overlooked the intellect behind those unremarkable eyes. Underestimated her arithmancy. She must be reading his aura. She’d know he was telling the truth. She could probably (assume she could) rip through any hexes he tried to deploy. She’d certainly notice them.

  “I am, Commander, for reasons of Five Tribes security. The Aedis is our ally in this. They need to trust us. Without them . . .” He gestured, a flare of fingers, a flutter, like something wisping away. “If you believed me a double agent, you wouldn’t waste your time on an interview. You would send assassins.”

  “Mine aren’t the only beliefs under consideration in SPERE command. To your great fortune.”

  Karaesh’t was ordinarily, well, stone-faced (the expression translated surprisingly well). Her chromatophores stayed neutral no matter the storm and ebb of her emotional state. Gaer had never, in all his years of service, seen her face betray her. But here, now: a display of scarlet, vermilion, a sunset of hues.

  So assume that Karaesh’t intended to make that display. Who was the audience for it? Anyone who knew anything about vakari would read those colors as anger. Anyone (vakari) who knew Karaesh’t well would read them as uncharacteristic overacting. A signal. A message. She wanted to offer the appearance of personal distrust, commander to subordinate. To present him as dancing on the edge of disgrace. And she wanted him to know it.

  Maybe a performance for the Aedis? That made no sense. For her superiors, though . . . that might. Or the people who eventually got hands on her recording of this meeting, who would not be SPERE.

  Oh, setat, but he’d worried about this. Warned Iari that all this—the holes in Aedis hexwork, riev perfidy, wichu involvement—would attract attention from people more focused on short-term gain. Some egg-stealing isolationist in the Five Tribes Parliament, or someone on the SPERE oversight committee, sensing an opportunity to put some distance between the Five Tribes and the Aedis. Some xenophobic Reunionist on that committee, worst case, who’d make nice with the slagging Protectorate because vakari were vakari and the rest of the multiverse could rot in a Brood-flooded hell.

  The priorities were clear and simple here on Tanis. There was a fissure. Brood came out of it. That was the problem. Iari understood that. Tobin and Keawe did. And everyone-setatir-else—

  Had to be managed. For the Five Tribes, that was Karaesh’t’s unenviable job. Which he wasn’t making a bit easier for her by failing to file reports. Maybe that was why she hadn’t dragged him (and Iari) back to Seawall. She didn’t want him within reach of someone else.

  (Or, or: she really did think he was a traitor, and was unable to act because of Tobin’s maneuver. It might just be that.)

  Well, he could ameliorate some of that concern. Gaer plucked a rolled tablet from a pocket of his skinsuit and slid it across the table. A secondary report, to augment the first official one he’d sent—through the Aedis dispatcher—earlier, which he had intended she read while she was still in the aethership. This report was . . . oh, let us say more detailed. More forthcoming. And it had not gone through Aedian channels.

  She flicked a glance at it. Touched the display and awakened it. Studied the crabbed, distinctive columns of hand-stylused cipher. She rolled the tablet with deft fingers, stowed it. Then she audibly and obviously rattled her free talons on the table. “Your insubordination is noted. Make your report in Sisstish, then. I suppose you won’t say anything they haven’t heard already.”

  So it w
as a performance on her part, one being recorded—audio only, it seemed, or she would not have taken his tablet without comment. That pigmented display had been for him, a signal he’d read correctly. And he’d had a report to hand off, which he guessed she’d expected. Or hoped for. Maybe he wasn’t on the shortlist for dishonorable discharge and prison, after all.

  Gaer relaxed a notch. That explained the choice of venue. Conduct the interview here, she could be forgiven for failing to bring back video. Setatir Aedis wouldn’t allow it, some manufactured excuse. (How she’d excuse not returning him to Seawall was her problem.)

  He could perform for that listening audience, too.

  “It begins with the murder of a wichu artificer,” he said. And then, as he’d practiced a half dozen times in the hospice (for the med-mecha, the best and most supportive audience), he reported events: Pinjat’s death, the involvement of riev, everything but the chip and its hexwork contagion.

  “A tesser-hex,” Karaesh’t repeated, when he’d finished. “A tesser-hex in atmosphere.”

  “I know how that sounds.”

  “Like you sustained more of a head injury than the medical staff here is qualified to treat. And it just—closed? On its own?”

  Gaer tilted his head. There were versions of SPERE cipher that did not rely on voice or symbol, versions meant to circumvent listening devices—versions that, even if the Aedis had camera-bots in the room, they wouldn’t readily decode. Spacers of all species had some version of hand speech; SPERE cipher took that speech and, well, ciphered it.

  The downside was limited vocabulary.

  “On its own. Yes.”

  He gestured with two fingers. No. Wichu hex. Wichu arithmancy opened tesser-hex.

  “That seems . . . impossible. The tesser-hex itself, first, and that it would simply—close on its own?”

  His face hurt from so much talking. He was glad of the seat. Of the solidity of the table under his forearms. “I believe it closed because it anchored itself to a second set of coordinates in what I think is the Weep itself. I have included a copy of them in my official report.” Not the one in SPERE cipher. The one Karaesh’t had received while in transit, which meant Seawall would have it by now, too.

  “Which the Aedis has no doubt copied.”

  “They did not have to. I shared it with them. We would not have those coordinates at all if not for their aid. Lieutenant Iari is the reason I got out of that cellar alive.”

  Karaesh’t spread her fingers, both hands. More.

  Templar closed tesser-hex, he signed back. New battle-hexes.

  Which was skirting right up on the edge of Iari’s secret, maybe straddling it, certainly not entirely true. He wasn’t sure what to call what’d happened in that cellar. Corso said she’d turned into living plasma. Iari might say, I channeled Ptah. Gaer supposed the science was less romantic than that, less dramatic (possibly not even in conflict): that Aedian nanomecha had evolved new abilities, and he’d bet (without proof; there were limits to the access a foreign asset could get) that evolution had come in response to whatever hack-hex-job Jich’e’enfe had done on the riev, whatever had gotten into Iari from fighting with Sawtooth.

  Karaesh’t was staring at him now, eyes wide, second lids fully retracted. Jaw plates just a little agape, like she’d forgotten to finish a breath.

  Well, yes. That would be big news, wouldn’t it. The Aedis hadn’t produced new battle-hexes since the last surge. Had not, to anyone’s intel, updated their templars. That was exactly the sort of information SPERE was supposed to acquire. That he was supposed to acquire, stationed here in B-town.

  Which he had. And which he’d just reported.

  So, having given, Gaer decided to try and get, too. He folded his hands—no more cipher, that betrayal was done—and composed the ruin of his features into what he hoped was a reasonable expression. “The wichu Jich’e’enfe. Commander Karaesh’t, do you know if she acted alone?”

  “You’re asking me questions. That’s not how interrogation works.”

  “I’m asking because if she didn’t, then more of her sort will wash up someplace. Here. Some other fissure. We need to know that. We, all of us. Not just the Aedis.”

  “Which are you right now, Gaer i’vakat’i Tarsik?” She bared her teeth, down to the last etching’s flourish. “Aedis or SPERE? Confederation or Five Tribes?”

  “Alive,” he snapped. “Not Brood. That’s what I am. And you. All of us here. That”—are you listening, you bureaucrat with political ambitions?—“is the priority.”

  “Thanks to you and your uncovering of this alleged altar, which we don’t actually have.”

  “Thanks to the Aedis, mostly. And you have the images I took of that altar. It’s in my report.”

  “We have no images of this Jich’e’enfe, there’s no body, no proof—”

  “Sss. Please. Please. The wichu want my extradition, you know this. That alone means Jich’e’enfe’s not some private citizen.” Never mind corroborating testimonies. Iari’s. Corso’s. Hvidjatte, who was in Aedis custody right now.

  Karaesh’t waved her fingers—not cipher, this time, just irritation. “Are you saying she’s a wichu agent? That she has, what, official sanction from a member-species of the Confederation? Do you have proof?”

  “No. I don’t know if she is. But I also don’t think our allies, the Aedis, are in any position to make those inquiries. We are.”

  “We. You and me? Not likely.”

  “We, Five Tribes, which we are. SPERE, which we are.”

  “What you are is an Aedis asset by some archaic treaty provision. We could protest that move. This isn’t a setatir surge.”

  But you haven’t protested, Gaer thought. So he told the probable hostile audience—bet it was that new Chair of Oversight, may her teeth rot and fall out of her head. Gaer couldn’t summon a name, just a face, at which to direct his ire. “It’s damn near as bad as a surge. Imagine all the riev left in the galaxy, all infected with Brood, all moving in concert. Imagine that. Jich’e’enfe almost did that to all of us. She cannot have acted alone, Commander. She cannot have. That kind of arithmancy—it’s a revolution. It redefines what we thought we could do. We. All of us.”

  “Arithmancy is mathematics, Gaer.”

  “Sss. You and I both know that mathematics does not mean fixed, static, and predictable. She was using k’bal script. Possibly k’bal theory. We have to investigate that.”

  Karaesh’t flattened her plates. Hissed through pinched nostrils. You forgot, being around all the soft-skins, how much of vakari communication happened through scent, to which the soft-skins seemed mostly blind. Gaer tasted her frustration on the back of his tongue, bitter and slick. Tasted . . . not fear, exactly, but anxiety. Stress.

  “The k’bal are dead.” But her chromatophores flickered. Faintly, what was that? Green?

  She was lying. And she wanted him to know that she was. But about what? Of course the k’bal were dead. The Protectorate had committed genocide during the Expansion, before the Schism, as punishment for k’bal aid to the wichu defection—

  Unless they weren’t all dead.

  The k’bal might not all be dead.

  He repeated that, in hand-cipher.

  Karaesh’t’s fists remained unsurprisingly, resolutely immobile. But she cocked her head at him. Flared one plate just a jot. The equivalent of a raised eyebrow, among the faces surrounding Gaer these days.

  “A better question,” Karaesh’t said, “is why Jich’e’enfe was here.”

  “The fissure.”

  “There are many fissures.”

  “The security around this one—” Gaer cut himself off. Don’t rattle responses like a recruit looking for praise. Think. (It would be easier if his face didn’t feel like it was going to crack off his skull. He should’ve accepted Iffy’s offer of medication. Had wanted his wi
ts sharp, instead. Pain was just as corrosive as alchemy to his wits, he’d discovered, and far less pleasant.)

  So truth, think: this fissure was small, yes, but it had a formidable Aedis presence. All the fissures did. Far away from the major fleet routes if there was some kind of uprising—the riev, maybe, except Oversight should’ve connected them all, across the whole Confederation.

  “I don’t know what her reasons were.”

  Karaesh’t leaned forward onto her forearms, a careful balance between spikes. Then she reached up, slid a talon between the ridges on the left side of her skull. And, as Gaer’s attention followed her motion, paused and pressed.

  “I rebooted the transmitter,” she said, in case he couldn’t figure it. She stabbed a look at the room’s high corners and shifted to Comspek. “I have a few seconds that I can blame on Aedian interference. So listen.” (Still looking at the corners, at the probable ’bots, at the probable templar watchers.) “The k’bal did not wait for the Expansion to kill them. They also did not fight. They ran and they hid on planets with minimal technology, planets unaligned with greater powers. They came here, to Tanis, the far side of this continent where there weren’t many settlements. The alwar colonial government allowed it. Top secret location, need-to-know. The Protectorate found them anyway, eventually, and killed them. That’s the official record.” She flexed her hand on the table. Began to gouge into the polished surface a string of numbers. Of coordinates.

  Location? He signed at her. Base? Settlement?

  Ruins, she signed back. And aloud: “If you’d reported earlier, I would have passed this information along. Then you were seconded, and I was not sure about your loyalty. Now—sss. You’re what we have in the field.” Her voice was crisp and judgmental. “This is very new intelligence. The Protectorate just admitted this to us.”

  “She wasn’t alone, then. And if the Protectorate’s admitting it now, they’ve been having similar incidents on their side of the Weep. Or they’ve found another altar. Or both?”

  “Unconfirmed.” Checking, said her fingers, corroborating. Karaesh’t rolled her neck in the direction of the transmitter. She made a fist—time up, reboot finished—and shifted back into Sisstish mid-syllable, “—may merit exploration.”