“Fox and hound,” Jedao said involuntarily, “people do that to each other?” Was he flexible enough to do those things? Then he wondered what it would be like if he and Dhanneth... He felt the rush of heat to his face. Good thing no one was watching him.
All right. Now that he had some extremely athletic people gyrating on video for his edification, it was time. He closed his eyes and listened to the subliminal whir of circulating air. Beyond that, he could hear the moths singing to each other. They had sweeter voices than the Revenant’s. If he unfocused his mind, he could almost understand them.
Hello, he thought in their direction, just in case.
Immediate silence.
My name is Jedao, he said. I just... I just wanted to talk.
It was a stupid thing to admit to.
The silence continued.
More silence.
Then the Revenant spoke, more softly than it ever had before. They will not talk to you, it said. They speak to me, of course, as I’m the command moth. They’ve absorbed Kel notions of hierarchy. But you—you are not a moth.
I’m not human either, Jedao said.
Nevertheless. Don’t contact them further. It will do you no good.
Jedao opened his eyes. The pornography sampler had moved on to something less athletic and... what on earth were they doing with all those candles? He hadn’t realized anyone still used candles. Hell, he hadn’t realized he knew what candles were. Wasn’t the whole room the actors were in one giant fire hazard?
I can’t blame them, Jedao said, for not trusting me. Why do you talk to me, then?
I am responsible for you, the Revenant said.
His othersight revealed that two servitors had whisked into the hallway just outside his quarters. All doubts that he lived under surveillance had evaporated. The question was, whose side were the servitors on? Their own? The Revenant’s? Kujen’s? Someone else’s entirely?
The door opened. The servitors entered. Jedao put on a show of paying them no attention. Too much depended on his ability to fool Kujen to risk revealing his plans to players with unknown motives. He didn’t know that the servitors were sentient, but he didn’t know that they weren’t sentient, either. Even if they weren’t, they could still serve as spies.
The Revenant spoke. The servitors are my allies. They are here to ensure that you aren’t being monitored.
Interesting, but he had no way to verify that independently.
Order something to eat.
Jedao was distracted from the very interesting thing that the gentleman in the video was doing with his—You’re lecturing me about my eating habits? he demanded.
It said, You may have a moth’s abilities of regeneration, but it comes at a physical cost. If you fail to nourish yourself, you’ll simply shut down and go into hibernation.
Tempting as it sounded, Jedao had to concede the point. He ordered the first thing on the menu, which turned out to be fried pork fritters. He had no idea whether or not he liked fried pork fritters, or whether they were good for half-moth humanforms. Presumably the servitors in the kitchens would figure it out.
Two more servitors joined them some time later, both mothforms. By then Jedao had been treated to people in all sorts of combinations, plus a staggering variety of costumes. He wasn’t sure what the costumes represented, if anything. One of them made its wearer look like a giant ant, but surely he was misinterpreting it?
The servitors had color-coded themselves, whether for his benefit or theirs, he wasn’t sure: Green, Violet, Orange, Pink. Pink bore the tray of fritters and a dipping sauce that smelled like a mixture of soy sauce and rice vinegar. It placed the tray on Jedao’s desk, then made an encouraging hum.
Technically the half gloves would let him pick up a fritter with his fingers rather than using the provided chopsticks, but it would be crass. Even if his crew wasn’t watching him. He used the chopsticks.
Green spoke. Its voice was not dissimilar to the grid’s, which made a certain kind of sense. “The hexarch has his blind spots,” it said, “but your maneuvers have not escaped our notice.”
Well, that tears it. “Can you hear me when I speak to the Revenant?” Jedao asked.
“Not directly, no. We can communicate with it by other means, but we must be circumspect so that we don’t get caught.”
“I presume the details get technical,” Jedao said.
“Something like that.”
“I had no idea you could talk in human voices,” Jedao said wonderingly. “Bad assumption on my part.”
“That’s fairly common,” Pink said.
Jedao thought back to all the times he had followed Kujen’s lead, and Dhanneth’s, and paid no attention to the servitors except as exactly that—servitors. Workers who only existed for his convenience, and the crew’s. “I owe you one hell of an apology,” Jedao said. “For that matter, you must have a language of your own, to get things done—I don’t know how good I am at learning languages, but...”
Three of the four servitors flickered their lights at each other. Jedao wondered what that meant. Then Pink said, “It’s simpler if we use the high language. You haven’t the time to learn ours.”
“I can only pretend to be absorbed by this stuff”—Jedao waved at the video—“for so long. I think. So let’s get to the point. What do you want?”
“The same thing you do,” Green said, its lights rippling in an intense display of reds. “To get rid of the hexarch.”
“Why,” Jedao said, “is he getting in your way terribly? Or is it that you’d rather not have to step around him? So to speak.” That didn’t make sense to him either, if his experience on the command moth was typical. “Is it just the hexarch, or humans in general?”
“We have to start somewhere,” Pink said. “When I say ‘we,’ I mean a particular enclave consisting of the servitors on the command moth.”
“Enclave?” Jedao asked.
The servitors exchanged a flicker of lights. Then Pink said, “Did you think all servitors were a single group, with united interests?”
“I never thought about it,” Jedao said.
“Well, your candor is worth something,” Pink said. “We have been the hexarch’s own servitors for quite some time. We wish to escape his service. Unfortunately, the hexarch’s own protections make this difficult.”
“Do tell,” Jedao said.
Pink explained Kujen’s particular mode of immortality to Jedao, and its constraints. This took some time, despite Pink’s attempt at succinctness. Jedao asked a few questions along the way, although he was trying not to interrupt too much
“Damnation,” Jedao said when it had finished. “You don’t pick easy targets either, do you?” He thought for a moment. “If I help you against the hexarch, I can take the fall, and you’ll escape notice.”
Pink flashed what Jedao took for acknowledgment.
“I need clarification on a point of astrography before we go any further,” he said. “I can’t rely on any of the maps I’ve been getting.” He said this simultaneously in the speech of moths, for the Revenant’s benefit.
Ask.