Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)(17)

Khiruev could trust no one, having helped get rid of the lone Kel who had stood up to Jedao. She reflected on this fact daily.

“Here we are,” Jedao said as they approached his quarters, as if nothing was wrong. Two servitors awaited them inside, sleek metal and blinking lights, a birdform and a spiderform. If Khiruev hadn’t known better, she would have said they looked sheepish. “Don’t suppose you mind playing jeng-zai with a couple servitors, General?”

“I don’t see why I should, sir,” Khiruev said. She hadn’t realized servitors had any interest in card games, but who knew what they did in their spare time?

Khiruev’s eyes were caught by a painting imaged over the table. To be fair, it was hard to miss. Jedao took one look at her face and burst out laughing. “All right, General,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

Since she had been asked for candor—“It looks like a rainbow vomited over a fragmentation grenade.”

“I like colors,” Jedao said, and the soft yearning in his voice made Khiruev shudder inside. “There are so many of them. But I won’t torture you with this any longer.” He waved a hand and the visual flicked out. “Anyway, the servitors are very firm that they don’t want me to give them money for proper betting, which is good because I’m flat broke.” He smiled suddenly. “Imagine how Kel Command would react if I asked for my back pay.”

Khiruev took the seat indicated, across from Jedao. The servitors blinked their lights at her, a friendly yellow-orange. She nodded at each in turn, feeling odd—but why not.

The spiderform passed out tokens. “Standard rules, sir?” Khiruev said. She knew better than to ask why they were wasting time on a card game. Jedao was sure to have some twisty Shuos lesson to convey. Khiruev sometimes thought that Kel-Shuos relations would improve if someone sat the Shuos down and taught them to make presentations with easy-to-read captions like normal people.

“Standard suits me fine,” Jedao said. He looked at the servitors. “You two know the rules?”

Both servitors made subdued acquiescent noises.

“If I may ask, sir,” Khiruev said, “why servitors?”

(Much later it occurred to her to wonder what the servitors themselves had made of the entire business.)

Jedao blinked. “Well, why not? We didn’t have machine sentiences when I was alive. I asked them if they had pressing duties elsewhere, and they said no.”

Servitors might not be human, but after centuries among the Kel, they must recognize commanding officer for ‘or else’ as well as anyone else. They turned out to be well-behaved jeng-zai opponents. The spiderform made no attempt to bluff. Khiruev couldn’t tell for certain, but the birdform seemed to be using a pseudorandom generator to guide its raises. Jedao, on the other hand—

Khiruev shook her head as Jedao flipped over the latest card to reveal a Four of Roses. It was just as well that they were playing with tokens. “Sir,” she said, “the odds of you drawing to an inner Splendor of Flowers three times in a row are—”

“—some number so tiny you can’t inscribe it with a needle, yes,” Jedao said, leaning back and smiling crookedly.

The birdform made a small cheeping sound. The spiderform drew its legs in.

“I’m glad somebody finally called me on it,” Jedao said. “I was starting to wonder what the hell I’d have to do to get a Kel to crack. Anyway, bad form to cheat when no real money’s involved. Not that that stopped some of my classmates. You have my apologies.”

“That’s not necessary, sir.”

“Of course it’s necessary.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because,” Jedao said, gathering all the cards up and squaring them in his hands, “we’re not fighting Kel. We’re fighting people whose only interest in Kel rules of engagement is to tie us in knots with them. They’re going to cheat. Which means we have to cheat better.”

Jedao laid the deck down. “I have a certain personal interest that you may not be aware of,” he added. “It was long ago and no one has any reason to remember it, but my world-of-birth was conquered by the Hafn a long time ago, and it passed out of the heptarchate’s control.”

“I don’t think I ever knew that,” Khiruev said.

“As I said, no reason you should.” Jedao’s voice held no sentiment, but Khiruev wondered. “Anyway, if the records aren’t lying about your victory at Wicker’s End, you don’t need me to explain the value of unconventional warfare to you.”

“Surely you didn’t miss the part where they reprimanded me for my actions,” Khiruev said. She had taken a reduction to half-pay for four years, and had barely escaped a demotion.

“You won.”

“My methods didn’t sufficiently conform to Doctrine. Kel Command had every right to—”

Jedao laughed shortly. “Kel Command would rather pin medals on corpses than on people who survived by doing the sensible thing. Still, I’m crazy, so who am I to talk?”

“There’s no point in saving the hexarchate’s citizens if they’re going to fall prey to heresy,” Khiruev said carefully.

“Where in Doctrine does it say that it’s wrong to teach people to organize themselves against an insurrection instead of waiting for the people in pretty uniforms to show up and do the hard work?”