Jedao let Kujen enfold him. What does it matter? he thought. I can’t figure out how to kill you, and you’re the only one who doesn’t hate me. Except Dhanneth, who didn’t have a choice in the matter.
After a while, Jedao said, “Kujen, the warlord.”
By then Kujen was massaging his shoulders. “What about him?”
“You must have cared about him a great deal.” He remembered the hint of admiration in Kujen’s voice. It was hard to imagine Kujen caring about anyone but himself.
The corners of Kujen’s mouth lifted. “He won my loyalty with a refrigerator, you know.”
Jedao was nonplussed.
“It was a very long time ago,” Kujen said. “Halash had me brought before him after I danced for him for the first time. I’d never seen so much food in one place in all my life. I’m surprised I didn’t attack the table.”
Jedao couldn’t imagine Kujen with his manicured nails and flawless skin and velvets attacking anything; wondered what he had looked like as a dancer.
Kujen gazed into a past that only he could see. “It wasn’t a good refrigerator, a Snowbird 823, but I had no way of telling at the time. When he saw me trying to figure out how much food I could stuff into my clothes, or my stomach for that matter, he took me to my room. A whole room, all to myself. He showed me a table set with food, and the refrigerator in the corner. He explained to me that I didn’t have to eat everything in one sitting. The refrigerator was prone to breaking down, so I set myself to learning how to fix it. Good training for the Nirai, I suppose.”
“You said the Kel got him. What happened to you then?”
“The same thing that happened to all of us. The Kel brought soup, and blankets, and bottled water. All sorts of riceballs and dumplings. And doctors. As if they hadn’t been the ones to bomb us.”
His fingers suddenly dug into Jedao’s back. Jedao stilled. “They looted the warlord’s possessions,” Kujen said. “I didn’t mind that. I used to steal things to survive, when I wasn’t selling myself. Before Halash took me in. But the things they... Halash collected ancient documents. Some of them older than the heptarchate. Some of them much older. Mathematics, astronomy, books of poetry. I used to sit in the solarium and read them. Halash let me because he knew I would be careful.”
“Couldn’t the Kel have sold the books?” Jedao said. “If they were old and valuable?” Now that he had calmed down, he wondered how much he could get Kujen to let slip. Nothing useful... yet. But the more Kujen talked, the more he might reveal.
“The Kel commander didn’t care,” Kujen said “They burned the books because they wanted fuel for their damnable celebration pyre. I went to the biggest Kel I could find. I didn’t know rank insignia then, so I thought the hierarchy might go by size. I begged him to spare the books. I offered to be his whore. He patted me on the head and sent me to the tents with the children. Said I was too young. Young, as if fucking was so damn difficult.”
Jedao was glad he couldn’t see Kujen’s face.
“Useful as they are,” Kujen went on, “I have never forgiven the Kel for that.”
Jedao thought of Dhanneth, of formation instinct. “And afterward?” he said when Kujen fell silent.
He felt Kujen’s shrug. “The Kel were good about getting us into orphanages and arranging for our educations. I tested into Nirai Academy very young.”
“I’m sorry,” Jedao said. It was the only safe thing he could think to say.
“It was a long time ago,” Kujen said, unsentimental. “And you weren’t involved. We’ll fix the world and return it to the way things ought to be, and you’ll never have to endure the things I endured.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
INESSER HAD HEALED enough that the doctors had been allowing her to totter around unsupervised for the last couple of weeks. She’d submitted herself to physical therapy with grim determination. “I don’t get it,” one of the doctors had said to her in honest bafflement. “Generals are terrible about physical therapy.” To which she’d retorted that she had no intention of going around with a limp if she had a choice in the matter. The ankle had taken longer to heal than it would have in the past, even with treatment. One of the consequences of her age.
Brezan had ceded the best quarters on the bannermoth to her. In a surprising move, he had left its decor to her. Inesser hadn’t done much in that regard, not least because she had other matters to deal with. Still, she’d had the grid image one of her favorite paintings against the wall. It depicted an archer drawing her bow: usually attributed to Andan Zhe Navo (what wasn’t?), although she had it on good authority that it was a fake painted by a gifted entrepreneur. It gave her something to look at that didn’t have to do with (modern) warfare while she did damnfool things like writing letters of the alphabet with her foot and meditating on stroke order.
She was in the middle of another round of exercises when the grid indicated that someone wanted to talk to her: Brezan. He had flagged it as a matter of some urgency. “Come in,” she said. It was about time she take a break anyway.
Brezan didn’t salute her after he entered, which was refreshing. “Protector-General,” he said. “I need to ask you for a favor.”
Ah. That explained both the formality and the lack of salute. He wanted her to take him seriously. “Have a seat,” Inesser said, nodding toward one of the extra chairs. “I assume this won’t be fast.”
“Well, that depends,” Brezan said. He sat. “Kel Cheris contacted me just now.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“She didn’t think you’d be a receptive interlocutor.”
Inesser snorted. “Well, at least she’s a realist. Go on.”
A smile flickered at his mouth, was gone. He explained about Kujen’s body-hopping ability, its limitations, and Cheris’s proposed plan.
Inesser couldn’t help reflecting that either he had started out with good communication skills—not necessarily something you could take for granted with staffers—or his role in the Compact’s government these past years had forced him to develop them.
“You’re not surprised, are you,” Brezan said.
“It makes a lot of things make sense,” she said. “If it’s a fabulation, it’s an inspired one. Do you consider Cheris’s information reliable?”
“She claimed her source was one of Kujen’s assistants. How she managed to subvert one of Kujen’s assistants—well.”
“The obvious person to consult would be Hexarch Mikodez,” Inesser said. “I wouldn’t expect him to be able to verify this definitively in time to be useful. But it won’t hurt to check.”
Brezan raised his eyebrows.
“Just because I can’t stand him doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge his occasional usefulness,” Inesser said. “If you ask me, Mikodez decided that Kujen was too much of a rival for power and is taking advantage of the opportunity to have us do away with Kujen for him.”
“Oh, I don’t disagree,” Brezan said.
“Hrm,” Inesser said. She took a seat herself and rubbed her eyes. “I can tell you’re not done because you haven’t asked for the favor yet.”
“Cheris doesn’t just propose that we bait a trap for Kujen,” Brezan said. “She wants to be the backup plan.” He outlined Cheris’s idea of assassinating Jedao in order to create a local spike so she could then assassinate Kujen.