Jedao toweled himself off and got dressed. In a way, finding out this latest unwelcome truth came as a relief. Kujen had created him as a pawn. No one had any reason to mourn him when he died. He was looking forward to it. All he needed to do was endure until he found a way to destroy Kujen.
At some point servitors brought him food. He had a vague memory of acknowledging their presence. The thought of eating exhausted him. He didn’t see the point. Instead, he spent nearly an hour pushing food around the plates before concluding that he wasn’t going to choke any of it down.
It was Kujen, of all people, who rescued him from diving into paperwork for lack of anything better to do. The grid alerted Jedao of a message. Come to my quarters, it said. We should talk.
Jedao messaged that he was coming. Finding his way to Kujen’s quarters wasn’t difficult. The rooms had changed, or perhaps rearranged themselves.
This time he passed one full of seven eyeless statues, flawlessly rendered in costume that looked flowingly impractical. If he knew Kujen, the statues had been chiseled by master sculptors, the rock quarried from mountains where the very birds sang their stories into the stone. Jedao didn’t know who any of the statues represented, if anyone at all. Presumably all of them had been human.
In the next room, ropes of beads hung from the ceiling, alternating with curtains of diaphanous fabric, as if someone had dismembered dragonflies and stitched up their wings. The effect, for all its loveliness, made him feel trapped.
When he found Kujen at last, it was in a garden. Jedao stopped at the archway leading into it, inhaling the smells of plants and earth and decaying leaves. A breeze swirled out and scattered red and yellow leaves. He stooped to pick one up: dry, paper-fine, crisp and curling at the edges.
“Come in,” Kujen said. He was leaning against a tree with narrow, silvery green leaves and smooth bark. The first thing Jedao noticed was not his clothes—robes of fine dark silk brightened with silver embroidery—but the fact that he was standing with bare feet in the dirt. His slippers had been discarded next to an exposed tree root.
Jedao blinked at Kujen, discomfited. Then he stepped into the garden and joined Kujen under the tree. For all his dislike of Kujen, something about the bare feet made Kujen seem human. Illusory as that might be.
“There’s something you should know about your aide,” Kujen said. “I’m glad his programming has held so far.”
“Oh?” Jedao said neutrally.
Kujen pulled a slate out from his robes and called up a still. It showed Kujen in restrained attire, and Dhanneth in full formal. At Dhanneth’s breast was a golden feather pierced with three rings: a lieutenant general’s insignia. The two of them stood before an angled casket in a brightly lit lab. Jedao could guess the casket’s contents, despite the murkiness of the fluid that swirled within. Several guards in Nirai black-and-silver stood to the side, expressionless.
The still had captured Dhanneth with his brows drawn down, mouth slightly open. He was about to argue. In fact, Jedao couldn’t remember ever having seen Dhanneth so combative. But of course, he knew the reason for that.
“Go ahead,” Jedao said, “play it. That’s what you called me here for.”
“Just remember I’m doing this for your safety,” Kujen said, and triggered playback.
Jedao had thought he was prepared for the casket’s contents. The thing within, naked, bore a superficial resemblance to a man if he ignored the way it was composed of tendrils coiled together. Worst of all was the tendrils’ slow knotting and unknotting, as though they sought to crawl free of their shape.
“Hexarch,” Dhanneth-in-the-video said with murderous intensity. “I am not interested in your hobbies.”
Kujen-in-the-video pressed controls on the casket. Tubes drained the fluid, and the lid receded. For all the pallid inhumanity of the tendrils, the thing had a wholly human visage, blankly dreaming, the brown eyes innocent of expression. Jedao stared at his face in the video with its unkempt bangs, and thought inanely, You couldn’t give it a haircut?
Dhanneth’s laugh came short and harsh. “I recognize Shuos Jedao, all right. If you think I’m going to serve some experimental puppet with his face, you’re out of your mind.”
“It’s not just a puppet,” Kujen said, maddeningly calm. “It has Jedao’s capabilities. But he’ll still need an army. At the moment, unless I misread the personnel roster, you’re the swarm’s general.”
“What are you going to do,” Dhanneth said, “slaughter your way down the chain of command if I say no? I’m not going to accommodate you.”
“Kel courage is so inconvenient sometimes,” Kujen said with the nonchalance that Jedao had learned to dread. “You may care little for your own fate, General, but what of your subordinates’?”
“I care about their fates, all right,” Dhanneth said. “They deserve better leadership. Something you’ll never understand.”
In a motion so swift Jedao almost missed it, Dhanneth drew his knife and began stabbing the wretched writhing thing. Dhanneth knew about the business of killing. He did not stop with a single thrust, however wholehearted, or pause after driving the knife home. Instead, he slashed and stabbed over and over, in as many vulnerable places as he could reach. The thing was soon reduced to a mess of cringing severed tendrils and puddled silver-black fluid. But the eyes in the face woke long enough to stare up at Dhanneth in what Jedao recognized, heartsick, as terror.
Kujen paused the recording. “Jedao,” he said, “that was the point at which I decided he needed psych surgery. Because once he fell in line, the rest would follow.”
“No,” Jedao said. “Play the rest.”
“It will hurt you.”
“Do you care?”
“I need you intact, my dear.” Kujen smiled reflectively at him. “In my nine centuries, I have met no one with quite your combination of aptitudes. When I was a boy, I thought my master the warlord was the most ferocious warrior I would ever know. The Kel did away with him handily enough. But you may be the greatest general the Kel have ever known.
“You’re troubled by what you’ve learned? What does it matter what color your blood is, or what you look like beneath your skin? You’re still a person. Don’t get distracted by superficialities.”
“Just play it,” Jedao said, dropping all honorifics.
Kujen’s eyes lit as if he’d won. “If you insist.”
The hexarch’s security, who’d been standing to the side, finally intervened and pulled Dhanneth off the thing in the casket. Kujen watched with an impressive show of unconcern. Two of the guards went down. Jedao wondered if they had survived. They had to call in reinforcements. Three of those went down as well.
Pinned, guns pointed at him, Dhanneth only grinned at Kujen. “Even if it lives, I doubt that creature is any more enthusiastic about serving you than I am.” Jedao shuddered at the note of desperation in Dhanneth’s voice. “Or being surrounded by people who look at it and see nothing but a monster.”
Jedao covered a wince.
“It’ll look more human after I’ve had more time to complete the treatments,” Kujen said. “I would have liked to continue the experiment at a more leisurely pace. Unfortunately, events have forced my hand.”
Kujen stopped the video again. “Is that enough? Shall I keep going? Because psych surgery is boring to watch. It’s all chemicals and signifiers and furniture-arranging.”
Jedao shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
“Come here,” Kujen said, opening the circle of his arms. “You’re shaking.” He smelled of distant apples and smoke and spices.