“What do you require of me, General?” Talaw’s lips pressed thin.
“It hasn’t escaped my notice that the crew is shaken,” Jedao said. “As you may have noticed, I’m not good at reassuring people.”
Talaw grimaced their agreement, not without a certain irony.
“But the crew trusts you,” Jedao went on. “Panic will do no one good. It will be a fine balance, remaining alert without devolving into paranoia. Can I count on you...?”
“Of course you may,” Talaw said bitterly. “I can’t even disagree with your reasoning.”
“I have never expected you to like me,” Jedao said. “But you are a vital figure in the chain of command, and I intend to use you as such.” He paused then, wondering if Talaw had any particular response to that.
Talaw merely nodded. “All right,” they said. “Is there anything else?”
“Is there anything else that I should be aware of?” Jedao said.
“Not, I think, that you don’t already know. You can read the morale indices just as well as I can.” Talaw hesitated, then added, “I will inform you if anything comes up.”
“Thank you,” Jedao said. “Dismissed.”
A couple hours later, after tunneling through the hectic mass of reports by the department heads and acting department heads, Jedao ordered himself some hot broth. In particular, he’d had to talk down the acting head of Doctrine from a nervous breakdown. He looked forward to a quiet evening staring at the wall—in all fairness, Kujen or Kujen’s interior decorator had provided him with an unusually pretty wall—or, possibly, having a nervous breakdown of his own. Too bad he couldn’t afford one.
After a servitor had delivered him a cup of broth, Jedao settled in at his desk to drink it in tiny sips. Taking tiny sips didn’t help with the aftertaste, but it let him savor the warmth. It also distracted him from worrying about Dhanneth. Medical had reassured him that Dhanneth was doing as well as could be expected. Apparently he’d had some rare allergic reaction to whatever Kujen had introduced into the air, necessitating additional monitoring. Left to his own devices, Jedao would have been hovering by Dhanneth’s bedside, but he had duties of his own.
Jedao was entirely unprepared, then, when the door opened without warning. His hand reached automatically for the sidearm that wasn’t there, which was just as well, even though he halfway wished that Kujen would let him go armed. It did, however, save him from raising the alarm by starting yet another firefight in his own quarters.
The intruder was either the same snakeform servitor who had accompanied the assassin or its... did servitors have twins? Jedao took a deep breath in spite of his accelerating pulse and said, once the door had closed behind it, “If you’re here to finish the job, I hope you have better tools. Throwing me into a furnace might do it, but I have this critical shortage of furnaces in my quarters.”
For a long moment the servitor hovered at eyes-to-sensors level, blinking its lights in a subdued blue-green pattern. Jedao didn’t know how to interpret the colors. He found them soothing, but that didn’t mean they meant the same thing to a servitor.
“I don’t speak your language,” Jedao added, wondering now how many servitor languages there were. “For that matter, I’m not sure I’m fluent in anything besides high language, so if you don’t understand me, we’re sort of stuck. Although I guess we could try miming at each other.” How exactly did you mime Are you here to kill the hexarch? successfully, anyway?
“I speak the high language,” the servitor said. It spoke softly but clearly, in an alto of smooth timbre. “I have been watching you for the past days. It should be safe to speak for the moment.”
Well, if that wasn’t the case, it was too late anyway. He might as well talk to it. “You broke my hand,” Jedao said, remembering.
The servitor fluttered pink-orange lights. “I owe you an apology. My original mission failed. But I think it’s not a complete loss. Why didn’t you tell the hexarch about my presence?”
Jedao’s heart soared. Don’t get your hopes up yet, he told himself, but it was hard to resist. “Because I’m not convinced we’re enemies,” he said. Inescapable truth: if he expected any candor from this new servitor, then he was going to have to reveal some of his own motives. A dangerous proposition. On the other hand, it would be a relief to level with someone at last.
This is everything, Jedao thought. If I fail here, worlds upon worlds cascade into fire and ruin.
“I have been looking for a way to kill the hexarch,” Jedao said. “I had been investigating formations as a way of generating an exotic that would do the trick, but I don’t have enough facility with the math.” He omitted mention of the Revenant or its servitor conspirators, although for all he knew this snakeform was acquainted with them. “After the attack, I thought—I hoped—that another means existed. That killing me was only a means to an end, and that the hexarch himself was the ultimate target.” He clenched his hands. “If I have to fling myself into a power core to make it possible, then fine. I’m willing.”
Jedao looked at the snakeform servitor, awaiting a response. Its lights had shifted red-orange as he spoke. Good sign? Bad sign? Too bad he couldn’t consult the grid for a guide to servitor languages without drawing attention.
“The original plan was to kill you, then to take advantage of the calendrical shift to assassinate the hexarch himself,” the servitor said. “I’m only telling you this because it obviously didn’t work.”
Jedao caught his breath. Don’t hope. And yet here he was...
“But you mentioned formations,” the servitor went on. “That was an avenue not available to my friend, because any Kel she brought into the vicinity of your swarm would get slaughtered before they got close enough—assuming you didn’t just run. But if you’re involved, as the general...” It paused, lights flickering in what Jedao assumed was doubt or calculation.
“Go on,” Jedao said. He discovered he was leaning forward, fingers digging into his thighs, and forced himself to let go.
“There are formations that can do what you want them to do,” the servitor said. “If you’re willing to use them. I know how they work.” It paused again, then added, “What I don’t see is how you could get them past the hexarch’s attention. I can’t imagine him letting you get away with that.”
“There’s a way,” Jedao said. “I’m willing to stake everything on it.”
The servitor tilted its head quizzically. “Even supposing that’s true,” it said, “why are you willing to do this? Are you not his general?”
Jedao told it about the deaths at Isteia. The remembrance he’d interrupted, the flash of the Vidona’s blade as she plunged it into the heretic’s heart. How Kujen had acknowledged that he wasn’t just letting the system perpetuate itself, but that he’d come up with it in the first place. About his own complicity, and the gradual corrosive awareness that the man he served was willing to destroy uncounted lives in exchange for his own immortality.
“There are moments when he’s almost human,” Jedao said, struggling for adequate words. “He’s spoken of enduring terrible things. Assuming that’s true, and not a bid for my sympathy. But that can’t possibly excuse what he’s done—what he’s still doing.” He raised his head. “And you—what about you?”
The servitor’s lights dimmed. “I used to work for him.”
“Really,” Jedao said in fascination. “You must tell me the story sometime.”