Mikodez grinned at Brezan. It almost made him look friendly, except Brezan wasn’t fooled. No one in control of that many assassins and spies could ever be friendly. “Sorry you had to meet your new bodyguard so precipitously,” Mikodez said, “but it couldn’t be helped.”
“If the situation is so fucked that I’m in immediate danger of getting offed,” Brezan said, “I’m not sure what difference one bodyguard is going to make. Even a superpowered Shuos bodyguard.” He cocked an eyebrow at Emio, daring her to say something.
“Only in the line of duty,” she said, unruffled.
“You’re in desperate need of a briefing,” Mikodez said, “especially if Cheris isn’t sticking around to take up the reins. I apologize for not getting in touch earlier, except I had to get briefed first, if you see what I mean.”
“Yes,” Brezan said sourly. “As far as I can tell, that means I get to stick around holding together the hexarchate until a decent provisional government can be put in place.” Which was going to be interesting because he was by no means a political theorist, and he automatically distrusted any that Mikodez, of all people, might offer to provide him. It wasn’t entirely clear to him, or to anyone, what laws the hexarchate now followed. Would its currency remain in place, and how was he going to persuade the Andan into helping him stabilize the markets? What would happen to all the Vidona? What would they do for jobs now? And the problems only began there.
“Worse than that,” Mikodez said, sobering. “You’re probably going to have to strong-arm people into following your new calendar and signing on to your government. Where by ‘strong-arm’ I mean sweet-talk. Normally I would offer the services of my Propaganda division, but right now my popularity is at an all-time low. You want to be seen cooperating with me as little as possible.”
Brezan avoided mentioning that he wanted not to have to cooperate with Mikodez, period, not least because he didn’t see that he had much choice. “Well,” he said, “that’s one thing I can do better than Cheris. Not because I’m particularly charismatic or interesting, but because by now everyone thinks she’s Jedao.”
“Charisma is just a matter of practice,” Mikodez said, waving a hand. “Admittedly, you’re not going to have much time. I’ll coach you, but it will only work if you take me seriously.”
It was only now penetrating that Shuos Mikodez seriously meant to back Brezan as the new head of state. “What’s in it for you?” Brezan asked.
“Stability,” Mikodez said with disarming frankness. “The Shuos already have issues on that front, despite my efforts.”
“That makes no sense,” Brezan said, unimpressed. “Why not blow up Cheris instead while you had the chance?”
“Because Cheris wasn’t the only one who objected to the remembrances,” Mikodez said. Suddenly all trace of humor left his voice. “Oh, I suppose the chocolate festivals and the New Year’s gift exchange are harmless enough. But the torture? All those lives cut up? It’s wasteful.”
Brezan bared his teeth at Mikodez. “I notice you didn’t say ‘wrong.’ If it mattered to you so much, why didn’t you do anything decades ago?”
“Because when I took the hexarch’s seat,” Mikodez said, “my duty was to look after the welfare of the Shuos. For decades that meant preserving the status quo. Don’t think I didn’t look into alternatives; I did. But as you’re about to discover, ripping out a government by the roots and replacing it with something new? That’s not trivial work.”
“Spoken like someone who knows.”
“Oh, we stole that from the Andan,” Mikodez said. “First Contact has a large body of research on how to transition governments and sociocultural structures. The problem is, all of it goes in the wrong direction—taking salvageable heretics and integrating them into the hexarchate. We want to go in the opposite direction, and in an opposite direction toward something that’s never existed in our realm before. I imagine a lot of people will revolt or flee or die before it’s all settled.”
Brezan gave him a hard look. “You say that so cavalierly.”
“I’m not the only one who made this world, Brezan.”
Brezan flushed. He couldn’t deny the charge. After all, he’d had his chance to turn Cheris over to Kel Command. Instead he’d joined up with her. Not for the first time, he thought about Tseya, the Andan agent whom he’d accompanied to assassinate Cheris, who’d once been his lover. At the time the two of them had thought Cheris was Jedao. Cheris herself had done everything possible to confuse people on that point.
Cheris had offered Brezan the prospect of a better world, one in which people didn’t have to be ritually tortured to death to preserve the high calendar’s workings. He’d believed her. And he’d betrayed Kel Command, and his family, and his lover Tseya, on the strength of that belief. He was already starting to wonder if he’d messed up.
“Someone’s going to have to take charge of the provisional government,” Brezan said. “I’d hoped it was going to be Cheris. But I see now that that wouldn’t have worked.”
Even so, he was angry, bitterly angry, that Cheris hadn’t stuck around to help unfuck the revolution she’d instigated. He stared down at his hand and saw that it had balled into a fist. With an effort, he unclenched his fingers.
“She wouldn’t have done you much good,” Mikodez said briskly. “What she and Jedao have in common is that their vocabulary for fixing problems is mainly limited to shooting them. That’s all very well when you’re on the battlefield. It’s not very useful in the rest of the real world.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from a Shuos.”
“There are a lot of problems that can be solved more fruitfully by not shooting things.”
“I’ll take that under consideration,” Brezan said. “So. I can’t rely on Cheris, and considering that she’s more of a crashhawk than I am, it might be just as well that she’s gone away. What else do I need to know?”
“Three things for now,” Mikodez said. “First, Kel Inesser”—the hexarchate’s senior field general—“is going to be a problem.” He explained that she’d rallied a not insignificant number of Kel swarms to her banner and had declared herself Protector-General. “I give her points for creativity. Presumably she didn’t claim the hexarch’s seat because of, well, you.”
Brezan barked a laugh. “Like I’m a threat to Inesser.” A general who’d been generaling since before his parents’ births? And Brezan had no field command experience himself. Until recently, his job had involved sitting on his ass in Personnel. “So you want me to convince people that a complete unknown is a better leader?”
“You’re a complete unknown representing a change in regime,” Mikodez said. “Inesser is sticking to the high calendar. For some people, that means a lot, if you can back it up with guns.”
“Yes, about that,” Brezan said. “I’ve only got the one swarm, and General Khiruev is, as I assume you’ve heard, still not in the best of health. Unless you’re offering.”
“I am,” Mikodez said. “Because your second problem is that with Kel Command obliterated, nobody’s providing strategic guidance to anyone’s swarms anymore. It’s not going to take long for all the foreigners to take advantage of the situation.”
Brezan had thought of that for himself. It was impossible not to. Kel swarms customarily received their orders from Kel Command, which had taken care of analyzing the broader strategic picture. Even General Inesser—Protector-General Inesser, whatever—was going to have issues reorganizing her forces to deal with the sudden lack of command and control.