{He thinks I’m who?}
Jedao attempted speech. Managed to move the body. “Pardon me,” he said even as memory tickled at the back of his head. “I don’t believe we’ve been—”
Wait a second. He knew this face. Despite the fog dulling his wits, it was coming clear. He’d met this woman before. She was a Kel, despite the anomalies. “Captain—no. General Cheris.”
Her eyes widened. He could feel her surprise pulsing down the invisible link between them. {Did something go wrong?} At the same time, she asked, “Jedao, what’s the last thing you remember?”
The fact that he was restrained didn’t reassure him, but it was so much better than being locked up in the Black Cradle that he almost didn’t mind. The manacles around his wrists and ankles felt good, not in a sexual way, but for the raw fact of sensation. Jedao searched his memory because he didn’t want to give away too much. Fox and hound, he must be really adrift if he’d revealed weakness so readily. But he wasn’t used to—
{Jedao,} and this time Cheris addressed him over the confounding mental link. {I can hear what you’re thinking.}
She could what?
This was worse than when he’d discovered that Kel Command was considering turning itself into a hivemind. At least he’d dodged that particular threat. “What,” he said, “is going on?”
If Cheris had been his anchor, why was he in this body? Some exotic effect? Where was he? They’d last been on a cindermoth, the Unspoken Law. Kel Cheris was the brevet general. They were supposed to take back the Fortress of Scattered Needles from heretics. Hadn’t that been the mission? Except—
They’d won. He remembered that now. (Why were his memories so jumbled?) They’d won, and they’d sent word to Kel Command, and he’d insinuated that Cheris should report her use of mathematics, which in turn would provoke Kujen into a counterstroke—
“Very good,” Cheris said. {If I’d ever been tempted to forget what a foxfucking dick you are, Jedao, there’s no more chance of that.} “That’s all you know?”
Jedao spoke again. The sound of his own voice disoriented him. “There was a bomb. There was a bomb, and then—” His memories ended there. He’d warned Cheris too late. He’d failed.
Except he was here, alive—for some value of “alive,” anyway—and so was she.
Of a sudden he was aware of the dryness of his mouth, the soreness of his throat, as though he’d been screaming. Physical sensations he hadn’t endured in a long time. “Water,” he said.
Cheris’s mouth twisted. He couldn’t tell what she found so funny, except he could. {Given the circumstances—}
“We’re in danger?” he said sharply. Had the heretics outsmarted him after all?
{He really doesn’t know.}
“I think,” Jedao said, “you had better apprise me of the situation, General.”
{As if I needed the reminder.} A glimmer of dark humor. “I’m going to unbind you,” Cheris said, “as long as you assure me that you’re not going to strangle me or some such foxbrained shit.”
She must be provoked if she was swearing at him this much. He remembered that much about her. She only descended into profanities when angry or under extreme stress.
Besides, how he was going to ambush her if she could hear everything he was thinking?
{Very funny,} she retorted.
“You’re my only source of information,” Jedao said, which wasn’t exactly a promise but did express the truth of their current relationship. Given the number of people who would be happy to see him permanently dead, he wasn’t about to alienate his only ally.
{Good to know.} She said the same thing out loud, causing an odd echo effect in his head.
Cheris unbound him. His limbs pricked with returning circulation. Something about the sensation bothered him, as though his muscles and ligaments weren’t attached quite right, but it must be his imagination. After all, he hadn’t lived for four centuries.
Cheris spoke as she worked: “There isn’t time to give you all the details,” she said with an irony that he didn’t understand, which made him immediately wary. “The short version is that the siege is over, you’re embodied, and we’re now under siege in a completely different location, a moonbase, because the Shuos are out to get you.”
That almost made sense. It was only a matter of time before Hexarch Mikodez decided that Jedao was too much of a liability and moved to have him eliminated. Ironically, Kel Command had been his only protection, and even Jedao couldn’t play two parties against each other when he was trapped in the black cradle. Still, he’d hoped for a little more time—
{The long version of this conversation isn’t going to be fun,} Cheris thought dourly. He was sure she hadn’t meant for him to hear that. Foxfucking hounds, was there no way to put up a mental privacy barrier?
“What defenses do we have available?” Jedao was in the middle of asking when the bomb hit.
The walls of the base shook; the candlevines flickered. Some of them came back on; most remained dark. Some of them even shriveled up on the spot, not a good sign.
“Do we have any means of escape?” Jedao added. It would help if they had a map—
He was momentarily distracted by the fact that the othersense provided him one, albeit a kinesthetic sort of impression rather than visuals. Was he hallucinating? It would be a bad time for it, not that there were good times to hallucinate.
Fuck, he needed to focus on the problem so he could help Cheris get out of it. He couldn’t get distracted by the small matter of having a body. There would be time to marvel over that later, if they survived.
“We came on a needlemoth,” Cheris said as she motioned for him to follow her.
Just then a rather snippy voice from hidden speakers interrupted them: “You’re not leaving me alone to deal with the intruders you brought.”
Only long practice dealing with everything from surprise tickle-tackling from his girlfriend Lirov Yeren once upon a time (Shuos Academy, her favorite opening gambit leading into sex) to fending off bona fide assassins kept Jedao from jumping out of his skin. I used to be better than this, he thought, irritated with himself. Just because he hadn’t seen anyone else in here didn’t mean they didn’t exist.
“I did my best to help you,” Cheris said in a calm voice that belied the frustration he sensed in the back of her mind. “But we’re the targets. The best way to stop them from attacking you again is for us to depart and draw them away.”
“Nice try,” the voice said.
While Cheris and the voice bickered, Jedao did a quick inventory of their supplies. Cheris signed her approval. He didn’t have a weapon, which was concerning but not surprising, while Cheris did. He had no idea if Cheris was a good shot when not being terrorized by multi-eyed shadows, but if she was Kel infantry she must have kept up basic firearm qualifications.
She had a suit. He didn’t. This wouldn’t have mattered back when he was a living shadow, but now that he breathed like a normal person...
As he searched the closets for a spare suit, he became aware that he had attracted an audience. Robots—servitors. Six of them surrounded him. Jedao backed away from a closet where he’d located a stash of power cores.
“Hello?” he said, raising his hands and looking at the servitors, all mothforms. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have talked to them, but—ah, memory again—Cheris had done so in the past, so theoretically they were capable of responding.