“I will,” the servitor said, brightening, “but at the moment, I think it’s more urgent that I tell you about the formation mathematics that you will need to implement. However you plan to do that.”
Jedao bowed formally to the servitor. “If we’re working together, you should tell me your name. I’m Shuos Jedao.”
The servitor dipped in the air, its version of a bow. “I’m Hemiola.”
TWENTY-SIX DAYSREMAINED before the swarm arrived at Terebeg System. Jedao did not trust Kujen about many things—a lesson he should have figured out earlier—but for logistical purposes, at this point, Kujen would not lie about that.
The calendar’s countdown beat against his awareness. Most of the crew had recovered. Jedao showed up for staff meetings and asked questions that made people nervous. He made more surprise inspections, not just in the infantry barracks, but in Medical, in Engineering, in the dueling hall. If anyone figured out that he homed in on targets by watching everyone else’s body language, they were kind enough not to say so.
He made the fumble-fingered corporal repeat the exercise with the scorch pistol. This time she performed the job without dropping anything, although she was a little slow. From Muyyed’s expression, he could tell she thought he was going to upbraid the corporal, and that if he did so, she would disapprove. He held his tongue.
The infantry drills, whose elements were informed by Jedao’s covert sessions with Hemiola, confused Muyyed’s Kel. From the reports, they were also confusing the moth Kel in the rest of the swarm. Kujen invited Jedao to tea right when he was due to attend one of the drills, which Jedao wished he could decline, but refusing would have aroused suspicion. He went and endured Kujen fussing over an impractical confection of spun sugar and gold leaf, with bonus lecture.
“I approve your renewed interest in preparation,” Kujen said, “but there’s such a thing as winding up your people too tight. For that matter, you could use a break yourself. You’ve dropped weight again.”
Jedao wished Kujen would stop telling him to eat. And every time a servitor brought him food, he could feel it looking at him. Food continued to taste odd. He assumed it was because he wasn’t human.
“I don’t want to disappoint the colonel,” Jedao said, which was true as far as it went. “I’ve been looking at the morale reports. The infantry are disappointed by the fact that they haven’t seen action, irrational as it is. I’m doing what I can to alleviate that.”
Kujen shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He didn’t bother Jedao again for the next two days.
Dhanneth regained consciousness shortly afterward. Jedao went to Medical as soon as he heard. Dhanneth was sitting up when he arrived, and made as if to salute.
“Don’t,” Jedao said.
He had agonized over what, if anything, he could bring as a gesture. In his investigations of how relationships worked, he had discovered over a century’s worth of archives of an advice column for active duty Kel. It was addictive reading. It also made him despair of ever measuring up. The advice to fete your lover with fancy chocolates, or whatever he liked to eat, for instance. Where on a warmoth was he going to locate fancy chocolates? (A surreptitious check had confirmed that Dhanneth liked chocolate all right, although he had a guilty fondness for candied rose petals. Not that that was any better from Jedao’s standpoint.) And how was he supposed to give Dhanneth fancy chocolates, or candied rose petals, or anything else, without betraying the fact that they were in a completely illegal affair?
In the end he’d come empty-handed and hated himself for it. “How are you?” he asked awkwardly.
Dhanneth’s smile came out as more of a grimace. “I’ve felt better. Your paperwork—”
“Hush,” Jedao said. Dhanneth’s illness had made him all the more aware of how much he had depended on the other man for the necessary small tasks that filled his days. “Just concentrate on getting better.”
“Your attacker—”
How much did Dhanneth remember of the whole incident? Jedao grasped one of Dhanneth’s hands and said in the drum code, Speak to no one else of what happened. “I’m fine,” he said. He suppressed the transient urge to press a kiss to Dhanneth’s brow, satisfying himself instead with a simple squeeze of Dhanneth’s hand before releasing it.
I hadn’t thought the mating urge would take you so strongly, the Revenant remarked.
Jedao kept from recoiling and hoped that the flush at the back of his neck wasn’t visible to any of the medics. I thought he would like to know I was thinking of him. All of a sudden he wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing, but Dhanneth was looking at him with a certain quiet gratitude.
He was a worthy general once, the Revenant added, with deep regret. That’s gone now. I had not expected you to have any interest in people, not in that way. Moths sex according to the circumstances, when the instinct takes us, so that we are guaranteed a chance of egglings when we find each other in the night. The instinct has been suppressed in me, or I would not be a good weapon. I thought the same would be the case for you, but then, the hexarch has always had certain predilections.
Jedao murmured reassurances to Dhanneth. Although he would have liked to linger, he couldn’t stay for long. For an inconvenient moment he flashed on the memory of Dhanneth’s broad, muscled back, the tiger tattoo.
The Revenant’s unkind laughter shook his bones. No matter, it said. Moth or human, you’re sterile either way.
Jedao was taken aback at the pang that went through him, even though children were an abstraction to him. Kujen had never mentioned having any. Jedao couldn’t imagine him being interested in any of the trappings of parenthood. At high table, the Kel rarely discussed their families, for understandable reasons.
Besides, the Revenant added sardonically, you’d make a terrible parent.
That much Jedao had to concede was true. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting him for a father.
Kujen invited Jedao to breakfast the morning after that. Jedao accepted on the grounds that it wouldn’t do to alienate him, especially if he was pretending reconciliation.
“Kujen,” Jedao said in the middle of a conversation meandering around the topic of ecoscrubber failures, “do you have children?”
Kujen’s silence was absolute but thankfully brief. Then he burst out laughing. “Sweetheart,” he said, “sweetheart. Why, is it something you’re interested in trying? The results cry all the time and leak at both ends.”
Jedao wasn’t deterred. “It has taken me so long,” he said, since simple truths would work best, “to realize how little I know about you.”
Kujen put his chin in his hands. It made him look like an unusually thoughtful cat. “Halash didn’t care if his pets screwed the girls. I tried it a few times, but my business was pleasuring the warlord, not founding a dynasty. It’s possible I left a by-blow or two.”
Jedao’s throat almost closed up. “You didn’t keep them, after?”
Kujen’s eyes widened. “When the Kel swept in, they weren’t meticulous about preserving family units. Much luck they would have had, anyway, since everyone was sleeping with everyone else for political reasons, or else some quest for comfort. He was too smart for the former to affect him, anyway.”
Kujen’s voice turned vehement. “He was a good master, as masters went. I always knew where I stood with him. You’ll never endure that, you know. You will always have whatever you want to eat. You won’t have to fight off dogs in the streets to find a safe corner to sleep in. You will have everything you could possibly desire. I have made sure of it.”