She needed to concentrate on the situation. Instead all she could think of was how difficult it would be to source another skein of Maple Red #5. Genuine hand-dyed variegated silk, certified Andan product from a planet in the Compact. Specifically, hand-dyed variegated silk that was tuned to change color with the seasons on her own homeworld. Working with seasonal silks was a pain in the ass, especially getting the colors to coordinate year-round without having them change inconveniently on any proscribed remembrances. But the results were worth it.
“Protector-General.” Miuzan cleared her throat as she came in. She held a slate tucked under her left arm; her right was in a sling. “Are you ready for the meeting, or should I put it off?”
Inesser forced herself to pay attention. “Where?”
“They’re coming to you.” Miuzan smiled grimly. “My little brother may be strutting around in a jumped-up fancy uniform, but he’s not completely unreasonable.”
Inesser refrained from mentioning that if Brezan’s position was anything like hers, he wore the “jumped-up fancy uniform” because some protocol expert had thought it would serve for impressing the masses. While he hadn’t looked uncomfortable in it, precisely, he also hadn’t looked as though it brought him any particular pleasure. “Bring them in,” she said. “And Miuzan—”
Miuzan tensed at the sound of her name.
“Whatever he’s done,” Inesser said, “he’s still family. You have a chance to talk to him.”
“I tried that once,” Miuzan said flatly. “It didn’t change anything.”
“I know a little of what it’s like to be at odds with kinfolk. You can still mend things.”
“Is that an order?” Miuzan said. “Sir.”
“No,” Inesser said, weary. “No. Let’s get this meeting started, shall we?”
So young, she couldn’t help thinking. She thought that a lot these days. Curious how she’d been young once, and then suddenly, not anymore.
High General Brezan entered, accompanied by a pair of hovering servitors bearing what looked like the kind of food you fed invalids, except it smelled much better. Porridge, and mouthwateringly fragrant jellied fruit, and even a thin slice of cake. Brezan grinned when he saw Inesser’s expression. “I thought you might appreciate being fed real food. I was in a mood to cook anyway.”
The servitors set the tray down on the table next to Inesser, then retreated to fuss with one of the paintings on the wall. Inesser, her eye exquisitely sensitive to matters of alignment thanks to uncounted hours of cross-stitch, yearned to yank the painting away and do their job for them.
“We have an emergency,” Miuzan said, radiating disapproval, “and you’re cooking?”
Brezan didn’t respond to the provocation. “Losses were heavy,” he said, directing the comment at Inesser.
“You don’t need to be diplomatic around me,” Inesser rasped. “I’m not in the habit of shooting the messenger. Give me the numbers.”
Brezan’s eyes were dark. “We took 62% casualties to the swarm,” he said. “The mothyard itself was pulverized, so forget about that. We had to abandon the system.” He produced his own slate and showed her the map. “We’re here now. So far no signs of pursuit, probably because they’re busy consolidating their hold on Isteia.”
Inesser’s breath shuddered in and out. She knew what consolidating their hold meant. Remembrances. “They took captives.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Brezan said.
“Where’s Tseya?”
Tseya came in as though summoned. “Here I am,” she said. She had a glass of jellied lychees in her hand.
“I know you have weapons-grade reservations about the man,” Brezan said to Inesser, “but I would like to include Shuos Mikodez in this conference. If anyone knows what’s going on, he does.” His mouth twisted. “I agreed that you’re calling the shots, though. So it’s up to you.”
“Weapons-grade reservations” was putting it mildly. People stopped trusting Mikodez after he assassinated two of his own cadets the second year after he took the hexarch’s seat. Inesser still remembered waking up to the news. It had arrived during one of her leaves. She was ensconced in a decadent bathhouse with one of her wives when the senior Shuos on her staff called her. “Remember how we thought the boy hexarch was a joke?” they said. “Well, either he’s a genius or he’s a sociopath, but he’s not a joke anymore.”
And that had been only—“only”—two cadets. Inesser had wondered afterward if Mikodez would follow that up with anything more spectacular. Instead, he settled in for decades of distressingly competent leadership. Like any right-thinking person, Inesser couldn’t decide whether she feared the Shuos more when they were organized and all pointed in the same direction, or thrashing about in their periodic orgies of backstabbing. But she knew no one could rely on a Shuos with that kind of reputation. Mikodez had proven that spectacularly true after assassinating the other hexarchs.
Brezan was looking at her.
“Yes,” Inesser said, gritting her teeth. She disliked being beholden to Mikodez for anything. But she was already in bed with one of her adversaries; why not another? Besides, Brezan would consult with Mikodez whether she liked it or not. She might as well gather what information she could.
“Line 6-1 to Hexarch Shuos Mikodez,” Brezan said. “Line 6-2 to High Magistrate Rahal Zaniin, Line 6-3 to General Kel Khiruev, and Line 6-4 to General Kel Ragath, please.”
“There are unauthorized parties in the room,” the grid said primly. “Under security code 43.531.1, it is required that an authorized party—”
Brezan put his face in his hands and growled while the grid’s impersonal voice continued to elaborate on security precautions. “For fire’s sake,” he said to no one in particular, “we go through this every fucking time and I am theoretically the former head of state. Override, dammit.”
“Under security code 43.531.1, it is required that an authorized party—”
Brezan pulled out his slate and jabbed at it with his thumb.
“Haptic code?” Inesser said.
“I’m sure you could crack it no problem,” Brezan said sourly. “Which is hilarious because half the time I can’t get the system to recognize it coming from me.”
Sure enough, a loud chime sounded. “Notice to High General Kel Brezan,” the grid said. “Unauthorized user has been logged attempting to—”
Two guards in Shuos red-and-gold poked their heads into the room. “Real emergency or fake emergency, sir?” the broader one, a man with a bearlike build, said.
Brezan waved them off. “Fake emergency. You can go back to cheating little children at jeng-zai or checking the art on the walls for steganography or whatever the hell it is you foxes do when life gets boring.”
“We only cheat little children when they deserve it,” the man said. The door swished shut behind the guards as they resumed their positions.
“Nice to know Mikodez is still training sarcasm into his operatives,” Inesser said. “I assume that’s where you got them.”
“The price of a Shuos’s help is a Shuos’s help,” Brezan said, quoting an old maxim. He jabbed at the slate some more. This time the authorization went through.
The grid spoke again. “Line 6-3 open. Line 6-2 open. Line 6-4 open.” Then, after a pause: “Line 6-1 open.”
Inesser wasn’t surprised that Mikodez responded last. He’d always possessed a healthy sense of his own importance, even before he’d established his reputation as the hexarchate’s second most dangerous Shuos. Inesser told herself to stop thinking of him as “that boy.” She remembered how astonishingly young he’d been when he talked himself into the hexarch’s seat, against all odds, and clung to it thereafter.