TWELVE

 

 

 

JEBI AWOKE IN a prison cell, cleaner if not more luxurious than the group cell they’d been stuffed into after they’d given Zakan the slip. They suffered a moment’s confused terror thinking that someone had flung them toward the moon, there to be burned up by whatever embers lit its surface. Jebi was not clear on the details, in spite of Bongsunga’s efforts. Astronomy had never been their strong suit.

Their eyesight was blurry, and a spike of panic hit them. Would they ever be able to see clearly again? Or would the effect wear off with time?

They blinked, and several figures came into focus through the metal grille that kept them trapped here. Automata—no lower-ranking human guards. Jebi’s mouth went dry. Were they about to die, without anyone to witness it?

{Did you make it out?} Jebi asked Arazi.

{I wasn’t fast enough,} the dragon replied, chagrined. {I’m back where I started. But they have done me no harm, only a few scratches, and I don’t have nerves the way you do. You’re in a bad way, aren’t you?}

{You might say that.} Jebi rose with an effort and peered through the grille until their vision cleared.

Not just automata. Two humans: Girai Hafanden, leaning more heavily than usual upon his cane, and Dzuge Vei. It did not escape Jebi’s notice that Vei’s hand rested upon the hilt of her sword.

Jebi wanted desperately for Hafanden to shout at them, not because they relished the abuse but because the man’s utter icy silence terrified them. They resisted the urge to make an obscene gesture at him; just because he was out there and they were in here didn’t mean he couldn’t send automata in to beat them up.

“Your behavior,” Hafanden said, “is quite incriminating.”

They glared hotly at Vei, trying to gauge her involvement. Had she known that Hafanden would return to check on the dragon? Or had the whole mention of a trip been a ruse to reveal Jebi’s treachery?

What did you expect? they asked themself. They’d known about Vei’s loyalties from the beginning, even if she had Hwagugin blood. Being intimate with Jebi didn’t change her nature.

But they couldn’t help wishing it were otherwise.

“Do you have anything to say about your attempt to free the dragon?” Hafanden said.

Jebi remained silent.

Hafanden sighed, his face creasing in exhausted lines. “I understand that your heritage may make things difficult for you at times,” he said. “And that people of your profession have a reputation for being erratic.”

Erratic? Jebi thought, more outraged by his pretense of sympathy than by his mention of their ‘heritage.’ What they really wanted was for Vei to say something, even if to repudiate them. But Vei stood still, as honed and intent as the weapon she carried.

“You could at least tell me what you hoped to accomplish. Did you really think you’d escape unnoticed?”

Jebi bit their lip. Anything they said would put Arazi in danger, and Bongsunga as well. They didn’t have confidence in their ability to withstand torture, but it would be contemptible to blurt out the truth before things got that bad.

Hafanden had turned to give one of the automata an instruction when Vei finally spoke up. “I advise against torture,” she said.

Hafanden’s lip curled. “If this is because you are personally involved, Duelist—”

Vei didn’t color at the note of distaste in his voice. “Hardly,” she said. “Rather, the crude application of pain never inspires people to say anything but the fastest, most plausible lie that will get the pain to stop.”

To Jebi’s surprise, Hafanden let out a wry chuckle and shook his head. “You’ve been listening to the Deputy Minister of Ornithology, haven’t you?”

Jebi’s blood chilled at the mention of the Razanei spymaster. All this time they’d assumed that their warning had given Bongsunga a chance to vanish into... wherever revolutionaries went when they were evading the authorities. What if spies had followed Jebi to the so-called safehouse, raided it after they thoughtlessly exposed it?

If something’s happened to Bongsunga, and it’s my fault—

“Occasionally I talk to people about things that aren’t sword techniques or art history,” Vei said in a deceptively mild tone. “Besides, you forget. You already have leverage on Tsennan, don’t you?”

“Fuck you,” Jebi spat.

“Don’t be crude,” Hafanden said, “even if that was what you were doing.”

Vei was staring intently at Jebi, as if they had said something more significant than a simple obscenity.

Wait a second. If Bongsunga could be held over their head as a threat, that meant—she was still alive? Or was this some elaborate trick that Hafanden and Vei were playing on them?

Jebi wouldn’t put such deviousness past Hafanden. He had no reason to treat Jebi as anything but a Fourteener spy. But Vei—maybe Vei was giving them a gift. Maybe Vei had some sympathy for them after all.

Or maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see.

“But you’re correct,” Hafanden went on, unaware of Jebi’s turmoil. “The sister is in a very precarious position indeed. Ornithology is very close to bringing her in.” He smiled thinly at Jebi. “Will you speak, or do I need to remind you of what will happen to proven revolutionaries?”

“If you think threatening my sister is the way to get me to talk,” Jebi snapped, “you should reconsider. I hope she’s gotten far from you and your thugs.”

“I’m going to leave you to think about the consequences of your actions,” Hafanden said. He gestured at the automata, two of which repositioned themselves directly in front of Jebi’s cell, staring imperturbably at them. “I will speak with you later.”

With that, he and Vei strode down the hall and away from the cell.

 

 

“CAN EITHER OF you talk?” Jebi asked the automata after Hafanden had gone.

The automata stared at them, their eyes flickering with that familiar faint light. They didn’t answer, or make any sign that they’d heard or understood. On the other hand, they weren’t tormenting Jebi the way some human guards might have been tempted to.

Perhaps, Jebi thought, they are only as monstrous as we make them.

{They won’t respond,} Arazi said. {When you study the glyphs and grammars, I learn them too. Their grammars aren’t complex enough for conversation.}

{Too bad,} Jebi said. {It would be nice if I could bribe them to let me out.}

{I don’t think money means a great deal to my kind,} Arazi said.

They looked around the cell now that they weren’t distracted by the presence of other people—by Hafanden, by Vei, by their uncertainty about Vei’s motives. It was spacious, which they appreciated, with a straw mat and a thin blanket on the floor. There was even an old-fashioned chamberpot in the corner. It occurred to Jebi that keeping prisoners in filth would have offended Hafanden’s sensibilities, and they snickered.

Their moment of levity faded as reality set in. They walked up to the grille and tested the door. It rattled slightly, but didn’t give. Jebi had no illusions that they could break out of the cell. Besides, they’d always been a wimp about bruises, to their sister-in-law’s amusement.

“I’ve fucked up,” Jebi whispered, not caring if the automata overheard them. “What do I do now?”

Would Hafanden leave them here to die of thirst or starvation? Jebi was suddenly, unpleasantly aware of how much they longed for tea, or water, or even the deeply mediocre broth that the kitchen sometimes served in the Summer Palace.

The automata didn’t answer. Jebi hadn’t expected them to.

{I don’t suppose you hid the keys before they locked you back in,} Jebi said to Arazi.

{No,} it said. {Hafanden’s soldiers retrieved those.}

So the escape attempt had been for nothing.

{There must be a way to rescue you,} Arazi said, and Jebi wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Sure, the dragon was a big, frightening war engine, but it was still a prisoner.

{Let me know if you come up with something,} Jebi said without hope, and sat down on the mattress.

 

 

JEBI LOST TRACK of time’s passage. One would think that they’d be used to this timelessness by now; but it never grew familiar. The two automata who guarded it never moved. Another arrived at irregular intervals, bearing trays with weak tea and rice porridge. Jebi fell upon both, angry at themself at their pathetic gratitude. They couldn’t even complain about the awfulness of the porridge, because it wasn’t any more awful than what they’d gotten used to eating.

Through this time, Arazi kept them company. Jebi had to fight off their own irrational anger at the situation when they spoke to it. The endless hours without other humans wore on them, although they would have suffered worse without at least the dragon to talk to.

{If you got free,} Jebi asked it once, {where would you go? What would you do?}

{I would like to go somewhere distant from all this talk of war,} Arazi said after a pause so long that Jebi was afraid that they had offended it. {Somewhere I can live without bothering anyone, among friends. Surely such a place exists, even for an automaton.}

{There are remote mountains, and I’ve heard of deserts in faraway lands,} Jebi said. They weren’t clear on the geography involved, although they remembered the map with its neatly planned conquests and targets on the wall of Hafanden’s office in the Summer Palace. {As for friends...}

{Yes?}

Their heart ached as they thought of Bongsunga’s mission, her determination to use the dragon against the Razanei. {There are people who wouldn’t be afraid of you,} Jebi said slowly. {But some of them would want to use you just as Hafanden did, like my sister. They wouldn’t be interested in what you want for yourself.}

Another, longer pause. {At least you are honest with me,} Arazi said. {Is that what you want to do, if we escape together?}

{No, no,} Jebi said vehemently, although they weren’t sure their own motives were as pure as they insisted. If someone threatened their sister, wouldn’t they want to rescue her by whatever means necessary? Especially since Hafanden had already threatened her?

{You were the only one who thought to give me a voice,} Arazi said. {I owe you for that, if nothing else.}

That only made Jebi feel more wretched. {I did it because I needed information,} they said, compelled into honesty. {I didn’t think of it earlier.}

{Nevertheless.}

Jebi’s stomach seized up when they heard footsteps. What was going to happen now?

They didn’t have to wait long to find out. Hafanden had returned. This time he was accompanied not just by two automata, but two guards—and no Vei.

This can’t mean anything good.

“You have information I need,” Hafanden said without preamble. “I will get it from you one way or another.”

“Go to hell,” Jebi said, unwisely.

“It’s a pity,” he said. “Your Razanei is excellent, your mannerisms almost perfect, exactly the sort of assimilation we wish to encourage in Fourteeners. But the truth is, these are desperate times, and I am running out of options.”

“If you’re going to kill me, do it already.” They didn’t mean it—they weren’t brave like Bongsunga or Jia—but the words flew out of their mouth anyway.

Hafanden’s endless fussy need to explain things was going to be the death of him. Or, more accurately, of Jebi. “Ordinarily I agree with Vei and my counterpart at the Ministry of Ornithology,” he said. “But it’s been a week.”

Jebi’s heart sank. That long? How could they not have noticed, even without sight of daylight?

“Guards,” he said, “begin.” And he nodded to the nearest one.

Jebi had ample opportunity to examine the two guards as they came forward. Both were large, sturdily built, the one on the left running toward fat at a time when few Hwagugin, except prosperous people like Hak, could afford that much food. Jebi had every confidence that Hafanden had selected them for their strength, loyalty, and aptitude for punishment.

“Last chance,” Hafanden said as the guards unlocked the door to the cell. “I would prefer to deliver you back to your lover intact.”

The mention of Vei broke something in Jebi that they hadn’t known existed. When the door opened, Jebi charged at the guards, howling at the top of their lungs. They’d always wondered, in the past, what gave soldiers the courage to rush at the enemy in the face of bullets and blades. Maybe it had nothing to do with courage, and more to do with sheer aggravation.

Their dream of breaking past the guards and pelting down the halls and up the stairs to freedom lasted a second at best. Maybe less. They might as well have run at a brick wall. The guards caught them handily and flung them down so hard that they knocked the breath out of Jebi. For several long panicked moments, Jebi couldn’t see or hear or think about anything but the brutal fact of pain.

The beating could have lasted anywhere from seconds to a century. Jebi screamed and struggled, to no avail. The guards were professionals, which prompted the question of how often they’d done this before.

By slow degrees Jebi became aware that the hitting and kicking had stopped. Their mouth tasted of blood and a ringing noise filled their head. They wished they’d taken the time, long ago, to ask Jia to teach them how to fight, but they’d never been interested in the martial disciplines. They were paying for it now.

Who are you kidding? they thought, wishing that something they’d always taken for granted—breathing—didn’t wake waves of agony. I would have had to spend hours on it, and those were hours I spent on learning how to paint.

Hafanden’s voice came to them as though from a distance of mountains and moons. “I will ask as often as necessary. Where were you planning to go?”

Jebi bit the inside of their mouth. Not like more blood made a difference at this point.

Either Hafanden’s patience was wearing thin, or the guards were bullies. Jebi didn’t see a practical difference. They’d scarcely had a chance to draw a shuddering breath, curled up on the floor, when the guards kicked them again, first in the ribs, then in the stomach.

Jebi retched, bringing up nothing but bile. It had been too long since they’d last ate. Too bad they hadn’t feasted so they could puke all over Hafanden’s fucking shoes.

“All right,” Hafanden said, his voice even more distant, “one last thing. Because I feel you deserve to know.”

They couldn’t help themself. “Know what?” Jebi wheezed. It hurt to speak. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to do anything, or to do nothing at all. Perhaps this was the torturer’s secret: the impossibility of escaping pain.

“Your sister,” Hafanden said, then stopped.

Jebi had no patience left, either. “If you did anything—” They coughed, choked, spat out blood. “If you killed her—”

“On the contrary,” Hafanden said, his tone viciously reasonable. “She’s more useful to us alive.”

Jebi discovered, to their dismay, that hot tears were leaking out of their eyes. They longed to scrub them away, but they wouldn’t give Hafanden the satisfaction of seeing their discomfort. “More useful how?”

Don’t talk to him, a frantic voice in the back of their head insisted. The more you talk, the more you give away. But it was so hard to think past the mosaic of pain that had replaced their body, and they had no resistance left in them.

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Hafanden said, as though Jebi had made some penetrating observation, instead of asking him to explain what the hell he was going on about. “How involved are you with her games, and for how long has this been going on?”

“Look,” Jebi burst out, “just do whatever you’re going to do and get it over with.” They stopped, hacked out a cough that also tasted like blood. At this rate, they were going to be tasting blood for the rest of their life. “I don’t know anything about Bongsunga that you didn’t tell me to begin with. It’s not as if we get along anyway.”

They stopped short, appalled that they’d revealed something so personal to an enemy. For that was what he was, in more ways than one; what he had been ever since he blackmailed Jebi into taking a position with the Ministry, and never mind that he’d gotten them out of the rain.

“All right,” Hafanden said coolly, “let’s see how much you knew about your sister’s revolutionary connections.”

Jebi’s throat constricted in sheer atavistic terror. What if he knows about the safehouse? And what if currently Bongsunga occupied a cell elsewhere in the Summer Palace, or aboveground in the Ministry proper?

But that wasn’t what Hafanden was interested in talking about—not yet, anyway. “Tell me,” he said, “what do you know about her overseas connections?”

Jebi blinked stupidly. Overseas what? Then the memory returned to them, of that visit to the safehouse. Bongsunga had mentioned revolutionaries in exile. There’d been something in there about alliances with foreign powers, hadn’t there? Jebi wished they’d paid closer attention, except it had been a hectic night, and right now they weren’t in the best condition, either.

“Your sister and her friends,” Hafanden said, in a voice so level that it made Jebi curl up in terror, “are so determined to overturn Razanei rule that they’re willing to work with whatever Western powers smile and offer them money. For make no mistake—the Westerners are just as hungry for Territory Fourteen’s resources, and they will be far less merciful than we have been if they ‘liberate’ you.”

“You’re here,” Jebi said pointedly, “and the Westerners aren’t. I’ve never seen a Westerner in my life.” For that matter, they didn’t have a clear idea of what Westerners looked like. They appeared occasionally in Bongsunga’s detective novels, either as exotic courtesans or equally exotic hypercompetent villains, although Jebi had their doubts about the accuracy of the descriptions—did humans really come with orange hair, for instance? And presumably there were real live Westerners who chose career paths other than those.

Hafanden looked grim. By now Jebi had recovered enough that they could peek up at his face. The angle only made him look more imposing, and Jebi couldn’t help but flinch at the sight of his cane. They bet it made a great impromptu weapon.

“I hope you never have cause to meet a Westerner,” Hafanden said. “Because if you do, then I will have failed in my duty.”

Jebi couldn’t conceal their confusion.

“This may be difficult for you to believe,” he went on, “but as a Fourteener you are one of my charges. The duty of the Ministry of Armor is to protect. That includes you, believe it or not.”

“So you weren’t going to kill me after all?” Jebi shot back.

A flicker of irritation crossed his face. “Is that what you think of me?”

“I know you had Issemi killed!” Great, Jebi thought a moment later, he doesn’t even have to have you tortured. Just give away everything you know, why don’t you?

Even so, the fact that they didn’t have to keep their knowledge a secret anymore gave them a moment’s relief, however illusory.

The guards looked at Hafanden. “Again?” one of them asked. “This one’s insolent, for a Fourteener.”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Hafanden said with deadly confidence.

“Bongsunga’s gone where you’ll never find her,” Jebi said, finding their way to defiance too late. They had no idea if any of it was true, or if Hafanden would fall for the bluff. “You can send your automata and your thugs after her. It won’t do a bit of good. If you think threatening her is going to make me cave to your demands, you can think again. You might as well grind me up for your paints for all the good it’ll do you.”

To Jebi’s horror, Hafanden started to laugh. He bent over the cane, wheezing. They were almost worried for him, which was ridiculous considering that he’d had them tortured.

“Is that what you’ve been thinking all this time?” Hafanden demanded.

“That’s what you let me think,” Jebi said, resenting the incredulous note in his voice. After all, wasn’t that what he’d done? Threatened Bongsunga in order to recruit them?

He shook his head in amazement. “I’m more used to dealing with devious minds... You have it exactly backwards. I didn’t threaten your sister in order to recruit you. After all, I could have my pick of artists. Willing ones, even.

“No,” Hafanden said as horror gnawed at Jebi’s stomach, “it’s the other way around. I had you brought in as a favor to Ornithology. You’re our leverage on your sister.”