“Well, then.”
“I would have appreciated having someone to advise me other than Mikodez.”
Cheris’s breath huffed out in an almost-laugh. “I would have liked to tell you what I was doing,” she said, “but I needed to preserve operational security. It’s moot now. That drama about Kujen your people are distributing isn’t as foxingly awful as I’d expected it to be, given how much of a rush job it has to be. Although did your Andan playwrights have to give Kujen all the best lines? To say nothing of that gorgeous actor? He’s starting to have fans.”
A sudden wild hope lit his heart. “I don’t suppose you’re calling now because you’ve gotten rid of this ghost or revenant or whatever the fuck Kujen is and we can all stand down from high alert?”
Too much to ask for. “Sorry,” Cheris said. “I’m calling to ask for your help with him. You’re the one with all the Kel.”
“Inesser is, these days,” he said. He assumed she’d approached him rather than Inesser based on their prior acquaintance—he couldn’t exactly call it friendship—especially since Inesser was unlikely to hold a high opinion of Cheris. “Keep talking.”
“First: what I told you about the black cradle years ago is still true.”
He winced. “Cheris, if you’re hoping that cozying up to Inesser has gotten me one of the two weapons that can kill a revenant, that’s not the case. I’m pretty sure Inesser doesn’t have them either.”
“No, Kujen wouldn’t have gotten that careless,” Cheris said. “I haven’t even been able to find schematics for the snakescratch dart and genial gun. And running around interrogating random Nirai with connections to Kujen would take longer than anyone has.”
“Well, if you wanted to depress me, you’ve succeeded.”
“That’s not the bad news.” Cheris gestured at her face. “You know how Kel Command stuck Jedao’s mind in my body? Jedao couldn’t control where he ended up. Kujen always inserted him wherever they wanted him.”
“I love how you talk about that so casually.”
She ignored that. “Kujen doesn’t suffer that limitation. Kujen can jump anywhere he wants, so long as it’s in high calendar space.”
“You can’t mean—”
“I do.”
Brezan put the pieces together. “Then—”
“Yes. Kujen is very old and very patient. He might have been willing to wait for the Compact, or your alliance with the Protectorate, to die out and wind up as some obscure classified footnote to history. He’s weathered secessions and civil wars before.”
“Secessions?” He hadn’t heard of any.
“Ask Ragath about that sometime. Most of them were—”
“—classified. Right.”
Cheris continued speaking. “Inesser agreeing to adopt your calendar makes her a threat. Because Kujen can’t continue to hop bodies once it takes hold. But it’s also an opportunity to craft a trap for Kujen, by leaving a target too good to miss. Switch up the calendar everywhere except the target. Leave that one under the high calendar.”
He liked the sound of this less and less. “What target would that be?”
“Terebeg 4.”
“No,” Brezan said immediately. “You’re not going to dangle the Protectorate’s capital in front of Kujen and his unbeatable swarm.”
She was relentless. “The anniversary of Hellspin Fortress is coming up. It’s perfect. Kujen won’t be able to resist the opportunity, especially knowing that his cover’s been blown and he has to move soon. He has a Jedao. He has a swarm. He has a brand-new weapon.”
“That’s great,” Brezan said, “except for the part where we don’t have a countermeasure for the gravity cannon.”
“The other Jedao only has one swarm,” Cheris said, “and he hasn’t shown any evidence of particular tactical cleverness, although it’s not impossible that he’s good at doing more than firing a big gun. Inesser’s good at her job. She wasn’t the hexarchate’s best living general for no reason.”
“You’re forgetting the other thing,” Brezan said acidly, “which is the whole reason we got rid of the high calendar in the first place. Because you can’t bluff. It will have to be the real thing, with real remembrances, and real victims. If Kujen decides to give the whole thing a miss, that’ll be hundreds of people dead—not just dead, but tortured to death—and for no purpose.”
“He destroyed Isteia, Brezan. He won’t stop there, not until the high calendar is reinstalled everywhere.”
Brezan thought furiously. “Assuming Kujen accepts the lure, he’ll have Kel and Inesser will have Kel. I’m hoping he doesn’t have more of those damn gravity cannons, or more swarms. How do you propose to assassinate him?”
“There are formations that can sever him from his anchor and kill him forever,” Cheris said.
The grid indicated that she had just sent him a databurst. Brezan opened up the files and glanced them over. He could read basic formation notation, but this wasn’t his department. Inesser and her staff would be able to figure it out.
“You want me to persuade Inesser to go along with this plan of yours.”
“Yes.”
“You realize Inesser’s calling the shots and not the other way around? Fuck, Cheris, the woman’s older than my grandparents. Scarier than any of them, too.”
“A lot’s at stake, Brezan. Are you going to stand by?”
He scowled at her. “Of course not. But understand, I only have so much pull.”
“Then make the most of what you have.”
“You know, Kujen missed his window of opportunity, if what you say is true,” Brezan said. “He could have lobbed himself into, I don’t know, Inesser’s body and taken over all the Kel.” Just as Cheris herself had hijacked Khiruev’s swarm nine years ago.
“You think he hasn’t thought of that? There’s a reason he doesn’t wander around doing that. He drives most of his anchors mad in short order. I’m not saying he couldn’t do a massive amount of damage, but he’s cautious by nature and has generally preferred to survive by keeping his existence secret from all but the highest circles of government. Until you and Inesser blew that to the stars, too.”
“Why doesn’t his current anchor oust him?”
Cheris’s eyes grew distant. “His current anchor has served him for decades. Kujen can be extraordinarily persuasive. He hasn’t been a psych surgeon for centuries for nothing.”
“So we have two months and twelve days left,” Brezan said, having checked his augment.
Cheris reflexively checked her wrist. It took Brezan a moment to recognize what she was wearing: the rose gold watch that General Khiruev had given her. No one went around with them anymore except actors or the occasional collector, but Khiruev liked to buy decrepit ones from antique shops and fix them up. Khiruev had even presented one to Brezan a few years back, an ornate affair with a lacquered magpie on the face, although he kept it in a drawer back in his office in Tauvit. He wondered if he’d ever see it again.
“Mobilizing the populace on that scale isn’t the hardest part,” Brezan said. “Because the populace is still used to jumping every time they hear a Vidona’s footstep. Of course, that means if Kujen conquers Terebeg, they’ll be just as happy to fall in line for him. Oh, not everyone... but enough. It’ll be messy.” He gave Cheris a hard look. “I think you’d better deliver some of this news to Inesser yourself.”
“No,” Cheris said flatly. “The less people know about my movements, the better. Be persuasive. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of practice at it.”
“Why,” Brezan said, “what are you going to be up to? I need to know so I don’t get in your way.”