Khiruev said, after a pause of several seconds, “A lot of people will die if it works. But I imagine you have it all calculated out.”
She hadn’t meant it as a dig at Jedao’s math difficulties. But Jedao turned his hand palm-up to acknowledge the hit.
Kel Command had reprimanded Khiruev for organizing guerrilla warfare during the Wicker’s End campaign. They didn’t like the possibility of citizens getting it into their heads that techniques that bought time against entrenched heretics could be turned against their legitimate masters. Of course, at some point you had to ask yourself how much legitimacy any government had that feared dissension within more than invasion from without, but if you had any desire for a quiet life, you kept those thoughts inside your skull where the Vidona couldn’t see them.
“As much as I usually lament people’s obsession with numbers,” Jedao said, “in this instance you’re correct. But is it better to let people die at random because we flinch from anticipating the casualties, or to go into battle knowing exactly how many people we’re putting into harm’s way?”
“I don’t contest this,” Khiruev said. “I can’t figure out your angle, though.”
Jedao laughed suddenly. “The fact that a Kel general is hoping that I have a reasonable plan is cause for optimism, in its way.”
“Am I mistaken, sir?”
“The plan isn’t reasonable,” Jedao said, entirely too cavalierly. “But it has good odds. As Devenay would tell you, history forgives the winner a lot of things.”
Khiruev thought hard before she asked the next question. “Do you expect forgiveness?”
Next to the wall, the mothform and one of the lizardforms, speaking to each other in flashes of light, paused. Khiruev paid them no heed.
A shadow passed through Jedao’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I lie to myself about a lot of things, but that’s not one of them. We’re long past that point.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MOROISH NIJA WAS hot beneath her coat and knitted dress. The coat was slightly tight at the shoulders. Ordinarily she preferred more vivid shades of rose, but she hadn’t had time to be picky. Right now she was stuck inside a store full of shawls she couldn’t have afforded if she wanted to, although that pale green one with the tassels would complement the coat nicely.
Nija had spent her entire life on the world of Bonepyre, and even then she had never before left the City of Hollow Processions, where she had been born, except on a couple of school trips. Terrible irony: she was supposed to have caught a shuttle off-planet, an adventure she’d longed for all her life, and instead she’d fled back home. If anyone recognized her, they wouldn’t send her to school, where her classmates were sitting that exam in discrete mathematics she hadn’t pretended to study for, or to her parents, who were probably dead. They’d send her straight to the Vidona, as they’d done with all the other Mwennin.
She had ducked into the store when the remembrance was about to begin, the Meditation of Needle Tongues. She didn’t know how she had forgotten it, when all her life her elders had emphasized the importance of adhering to the high calendar’s external forms. Even better, a Vidona stood in the store, a man with a disconcerting resemblance to her kindly history teacher. He wasn’t wearing full faction uniform, but the green-and-bronze sash said all that needed saying.
Mostly Nija could hear people’s breathing and the rapid thudding of her own heart. It seemed impossible that the Vidona couldn’t hear it, too, despite being on the other side of the room looking bored with the proceedings. It seemed equally impossible to concentrate on the official litany being read in the unquiet silence. Nija settled instead on composing mental critiques of the shawls. The one right in front of her was a dead loss, she’d never cared for that style of lace, but the one beside it had promise. She wouldn’t mind wearing something with that touch of sparkle on a date. Not that she’d ever owned anything nice enough to go with it.
Finally the remembrance ended. Nija lingered in the store a little longer, then headed out into the street with its mingled smell of spice and damp earth and expensive perfumes. Trees were planted at precise intervals. Servitors were busy clearing away leaves and twigs from the walkways. The air was humid, the sky overcast, but she didn’t think it would rain again so soon. Still, maybe she should pick up an umbrella. She clenched her jaw thinking of her grandfather’s absurd oversized umbrella, the blue one with the stripes. The Vidona had probably tossed it in the recycler with everything else.
Nija’s attention was brought unpleasantly back to the present when she realized a brown woman in cream robes and an unflattering profusion of pearls was following her. She was wondering what to do about it when the woman lengthened her stride, then stooped and cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” the woman called out to Nija. The woman straightened, holding out a handkerchief. “Did you drop this?”
Nija’s demurral died in her throat when she looked at the handkerchief, an elegant affair in matching cream silk. For a second, words appeared in red light upon the handkerchief. Words in Mwen-dal, her native tongue: Come with me. Beneath the words was the Shuos eye in yellow.
She almost bolted, but it was too late already. Although the street was by no means crowded, there were enough shoppers and people sipping tea outdoors or taking strolls that someone would notice and alert the authorities, assuming the authorities weren’t already paying attention. Besides, if the woman was a genuine Shuos, she could drop Nija unconscious with a flick of her fingers.
“Thank you,” Nija said, accepting the handkerchief with a forced smile.
“I’m Trenthe Unara,” the woman said. She fell in beside Nija. “Do you know where’s a good place to get flowers around here?”
Why couldn’t she look it up the way normal people did? Still, Nija had passed an extravagant florist earlier today. She tried not to wonder what a Shuos needed with flowers. “I’ll show you the nearest one I know,” she said, feeling hopelessly stilted.
Unara smiled. “I’d like that.”
Nija wanted to demand an explanation. Why the charade? Why not arrest her? A Shuos agent didn’t need a pretext to detain her. Nija had no faction affiliation or friends in high places to protect her.
She lost the ability to notice anyone but Unara, as though they walked about hedged by walls. Even the sight of the extravagant florist only increased her anxiety. Maybe some of the flower arrangements were used for assassinating people, or drugging them.
The curl to Unara’s mouth suggested that she had divined Nija’s worries, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she forced Nija to stand there with a burgeoning headache as she picked out a bouquet of fantastic proportions. If not for the headache, Nija would have enjoyed watching the florist put it together. Some of those flowers, with their wildly disparate shapes and colors, shouldn’t have harmonized, yet the florist made it work. Nija’s favorite touch was the lace-spray of drooping cloud-bells.
A hoverer awaited them when Unara declared herself satisfied with the bouquet. The driver, in front, was hidden behind a shaded partition. Meekly, Nija climbed in the back. She had given up trying to understand the situation. Unara sat across from her. The bouquet, held up by stabilizers, took up an impressive chunk of the back. The mingled fragrances, stronger in the enclosed space, aggravated Nija’s headache.
As the hoverer took off, Unara said, no longer bland, “I’m Agent Shuos Feiyed. You know, if it were up to me, I’d fucking recruit you. I put three of my people on report because you slipped out from under their noses earlier.”
“I’m sorry,” Nija lied, although she did remember to use an appropriate humble verb form now that they weren’t pretending to be chance-met strangers.