Shandal Yeng’s expression went remote. Then she cut the connection.
“And to think she wanted us to face eternity with her hanging around,” Kujen said.
Mahar yawned, then took the scarf off and looped it around his wrist. “You should have said yes,” he said. “Bought her off for a few centuries.”
“She’d work her way around to hating me for saying yes. With some people you can’t win.” Kujen considered the matter. “Do you want immortality? The real thing, not what we have here?” He made the offer from time to time, in case the answer changed.
Mahar scoffed. “Unlike certain people, I understand the math. Rather not be a test subject for a fucking prototype, no offense. I keep studying your design specifications, Kujen, and they ought to be correct, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re overlooking something. Besides, I know about Esfarel and Jedao, remember? One functional immortal out of three is a dismal success rate.”
“Esfarel was weak,” Kujen said carelessly, “even though he was spectacular in bed. Jedao was a head case when he arrived. That’s not a fair test. And anyway, that was the black cradle, not the new variant.”
“If you say so.” Mahar unwound his scarf and put it away, then had a servitor bring him breakfast. The breakfast, when it arrived, was typical Kel fare: rice, pickles, sesame leaves, and marinated roasted meat chopped fine. He ate a few bites, blinked, then eyed the food. “That wasn’t what I meant to order. You’re still thinking about Jedao, aren’t you?”
Bleed-through. “He was such a good project,” Kujen said. “There was always something to fix. Or break, take your pick.”
“Oh, for love of stars above. Now that he’s running around loose, send him a courier with a shiny gun prototype or a nice bottle of whiskey and your apologies. It’ll make you both feel better. He might even forgive you for sticking him in the black cradle. The two of you can team up and conquer the galaxy.”
Mahar might understand the math, but he hadn’t ever looked closely enough at a certain class of weapons. Like the hexarchs, he was deeply confused as to what ‘Jedao’ was up to. “Someday I’ll take you up on that,” Kujen said. “But not just yet.”
KUJEN REMEMBERED WHEN the Kel had first delivered General Shuos Jedao to the black cradle facility 397 years ago. There had been a lot of grim soldiers in Kel black-and-gold. Jedao himself occupied a plain metal casket with a transparent pane. “Held under sedation lock, Nirai-zho,” the Kel corporal said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Suicide risk.”
“I’ll say.” His anchor at the time, Liyeng, strode over to the casket and inspected the status readings. Kujen had already checked them over. Jedao was alive in there, even if he’d picked one hell of a grandstanding maneuver for his bid for immortality.
“Nirai-zho,” said a different voice. It belonged to High General Kel Anien, a thin, gray-haired woman. She was shuffling a deck of cards over and over, unable to be still. “Command sent me to address any questions you might have.”
“Good,” Kujen said curtly, since he had a role to play. “I didn’t see anything in that mess of reports about what the Rahal inquisitors got out of General Jedao. Who do I have to vivisect to get the right security clearance?”
Anien flipped a card over, made a face at it, stuck it back in the deck. At last she looked at Liyeng. “You should have witnessed the interrogation, Nirai-zho,” she said. “If it hadn’t been such a mess, it would have been hilarious. The wolves that Rahal-zho dispatched couldn’t get anything out of him. They started a side-argument with Shuos-zho about the appropriateness of certain Shuos techniques for fooling scrying and why they should be dropped from Shuos Academy’s curriculum. Watching wolves have fits is an excellent pastime when you’re recovering from an incandescent disaster.”
Kujen had always suspected that Anien got bored too easily for her own good. He could relate. “Nothing?” he said, because he needed to be sure that Jedao hadn’t hinted at their alliance. He’d already watched the excerpts from the regular interrogation that they had deigned to send him. Please shoot me, Jedao had said over and over. “He couldn’t have been completely brain-dead if he could form a sentence in response to stimuli. Even a very dull sentence.”
“Jedao has a singularity response to scrying,” Anien said, sobering. Same image no matter what the query.
“Let me guess,” Kujen said. “Immolation Fox.” An obvious choice, given the circumstances, if you had the ability to mask your signifier to block scrying.
“That’s it exactly.”
Kujen took pity on the Kel soldiers waiting to be told what to do and prompted Liyeng. “Follow Technician 24,” Liyeng said, and pointed obligingly. “She’ll show you where to stash the general.” Anien confirmed this with a nod. The Kel and their casket moved off.
“They left something out of the interrogation files Command sent you,” Anien said once they were alone. “We’ve been trying not to let it get out.”
“Do tell,” Kujen said.
“I don’t have video to show you,” Anien said, “and if you mention this to anyone, I’ll have to deny that I ever said anything, Nirai-zho. But Jedao didn’t start off begging to be shot. He didn’t seem to understand what had happened. He—he kept asking what had happened to his soldiers. Asking if they were all right. It was only after he understood what he’d done that he started to beg.”
All this time she hadn’t stopped playing with the cards.
“You’re worried about him,” Kujen said. Interesting change from the overwhelming contingent of Kel who wanted Jedao’s entrails cut into little writhing pieces and the conspiracy theorists who thought the Lanterners had devised a brainwashing ray. Kujen happened to know that there weren’t useful shortcuts when it came to brainwashing.
“Ignore the blame-mongers, Nirai-zho,” Anien said. “We promoted Jedao too fast and pushed him too hard, and he cracked.” Her mouth twitched. “He was a great suicide hawk. Indistinguishable from the real thing.”
She was getting distracted. He had to convince her to do what he wanted. “About the black cradle,” Kujen said. “Are you certain? I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to repair someone that badly broken.”
Anien gave Liyeng a considering look. “How good are you at tactics, Nirai-zho?”
“The real kind, not game theory with perfectly rational actors? Sort of not,” Kujen said. Jedao had always been annoyingly nice about it no matter how much Kujen needled him about his math difficulties. “I solve equations, not guns.”
“He’s good enough for the experiment to be worth attempting,” she said flatly. “Who knows? He might become a useful weapon again.”
“I only talked to him in passing before Hellspin Fortress, once or twice,” Kujen lied. “What was he like before he lost his mind?”
“Other than his inordinate fox-like love for games and his inordinate hawk-like love for guns? Talkative. Brave. Occasionally funny. His soldiers loved him. Or they did, until, well.”
She cut the deck, then showed him the top card. The Deuce of Gears. “Stupid magic trick,” she said. Kujen refrained from mentioning that he had seen most of Jedao’s repertoire. “He showed me how to do a bunch of them a few years ago. Honestly, Nirai-zho, I don’t know what to tell you to look for. No one saw it coming. I would have suspected myself a traitor before I suspected him.”