Vacation
ONLY ONE YEAR since the marriage, and Brezan was desperate to go somewhere, anywhere, that didn’t involve smiling at politicians. Brezan had wanted to slip their handlers and visit some restaurants. Not the fancy ones that he and Tseya inevitably were treated to in the course of their duties, but the sort of grimy dive that served fried pork fritters and questionable beer.
Tseya, on the other hand, had wanted to visit an aquarium, despite the fact that she knew Brezan’s feelings about fish. In Brezan’s opinion, fish belonged properly seasoned and filleted in a skillet with lemon butter and capers, and not looming over you in a giant tank that would drown everyone if a bullet punctured it and released all that water pressure.
So they had compromised by going to the zoo.
They were admiring a Kel-oriented display of raptors—although unusually for a Kel, Brezan thought birds were best when stuffed with chestnuts and jujubes, and not staring at you. Tseya outshone the birds in an embroidered sundress and a hat trailing an elaborate confection of silk flowers adorned with crystal beads. Since Brezan had opted to wear an innocuous beige shirt and slacks, he felt distinctly underdressed.
“I don’t understand why you like fish, of all things,” Brezan said, unable to let the topic go. Tseya rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “They should give any reasonable person the creeps. Imagine falling into an ocean”—the ocean was almost as bad as fish—“and having them gnawing on you.”
Tseya gave Brezan a funny look. “Didn’t you have to pass a swim test to get into Kel Academy?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Brezan said without elaborating.
Tseya’s eyes narrowed. “How good is your swimming anyway?”
“I passed.”
“Can you swim now?”
“Oh look,” Brezan said loudly, “I’m getting hungry. The sign over there says there’s a café in another twelve minutes’ walk, over by the display of snakes.”
“You’re transparent,” Tseya said, but she obligingly moved on, casting one last speculative glance at a storm falcon whose plumage might, just hypothetically, look especially fetching as hat decorations. “You’re the only person I know who comes to a zoo for the food.”
“Eating is an important part of the life cycle,” Brezan said. “People don’t appreciate good food enough.”
“I don’t think ‘good’ is what you’re going to be finding here,” Tseya murmured. “Honestly, considering how well you cook, I’ve never figured out why you feel the need to eat mediocre food.”
Brezan simply grinned at her.
They paused so that Tseya could appreciate an enclosure whose KEEP OUT and DO NOT TEMPT WITH APPENDAGES signs had been defaced with squiggly tentacle graffiti. The enclosure’s inhabitant, an amphibious dragon-cat from some bored Nirai’s bioengineering experiment, declined to show itself. Brezan did think he glimpsed two burning yellow eyes, but that could have been his imagination.
Tseya reluctantly consented to eat two riceballs wrapped in dried seaweed and stuffed with salted plums. Brezan, to his delight, discovered that the café served crawfish pies. Tseya shook her head. “You’re scared of fish, but you eat bugs?”
Brezan finished chewing what was in his mouth, swallowed, and said, distinctly, “Crawfish are delicious bugs, is what.”
“You are hopeless,” Tseya said, but she was smiling.
Author’s Note
Like Brezan, I can’t swim worth mentioning. Cornell University has (or used to have) a swim test for all entering freshmen. I passed by the skin of my teeth, by which I mean that I was flailing so badly in the pool that they almost sent in a lifeguard after me. At the time I was determined to avoid taking a semester of swim class. In retrospect, I should have conceded defeat, taken the class, and learned a valuable life skill.
Unlike Brezan, I have no problems with fish or aquariums. We probably agree on the general deliciousness of fish. I grew up eating all manner of seafood, both in Houston and in South Korea. I am told that my parents liked to show off the fact that I ate raw oysters as a toddler.
As for the crawfish pies, Baton Rouge Zoo serves them. One of the great benefits of living in Louisiana is the ready availability of food with crawfish in it. Sometimes hexarchate food is Asian-inspired, as in the Kel pickled cabbages (gimchi), and sometimes it’s inspired by the Middle East (the Mwennin). And then sometimes it’s just Southern!
Gamer’s End
THE INSTRUCTOR IS intimidating enough—you know about his kill count, unmatched in Shuos history—but what strikes you as you enter the room is all the games.
Games are one of the Shuos faction’s major instructional tools. The Shuos specialize in information operations, although your particular training is as “Shuos infantry,” as the euphemism goes: assassination. You recognize most of the games that rest on the tables. A pattern-stone set with a knife-scratch across its cloudwood surface, its two bowls of black and white stones glittering beneath the soft lights. Pegboards, counters, dice, darts.
There are less old-fashioned games, mediated by the computer grid. The harrowing strategic simulations from your last year of studies would have been prohibitively time-consuming otherwise. Here, the only evidence of computer aid is a map imaged above a corner of the instructor’s desk. It’s centered on the Citadel of Eyes, the star fortress that is Shuos headquarters, and the world it orbits, which you just came from. Shuos Academy’s campus is located planetside.
On the instructor’s desk rests a jeng-zai deck. A hand of middling value lies face-up next to several hexagonal tokens. You can’t help but look for the infamous Deuce of Gears, gold against a field of livid red, formerly the instructor’s emblem. But it’s said his years on the battlefield are behind him.
“Instructor,” you say without saluting—you’re not Kel military—although you feel the vast differences in your statures.
“Sit down,” the instructor says in a drawl. You almost expected at ease, given he once served as an officer in the Kel army. Was, in many ways, their best general during the time he was loaned out to their service. The Kel, another of the realm’s factions, are sometimes allies and more usually rivals of the Shuos. The Shuos share the Kel interest in military matters, but the two factions often differ on how to intervene in the usual crises.
The instructor is not a tall man, although his build suggests a duelist’s lean strength. The Shuos uniform in ninefox red-and-gold looks incongruously bright on him after Kel black-and-gold, as does the topaz dangling from one ear. He asks, “You know how many of your class came here for advanced training?”