Momento Youri - Revelation

[deuceoftears]

Kujen arrived on schedule. The grid didn’t announce him; the door simply opened. You had expected this. What you hadn’t expected was Kujen’s companion, a massive man even taller than Kujen was. His coal-dark skin made Kujen look even more pallid. He wore the Kel uniform with a certain matter-of-fact dignity. The four-claw insignia of a major gleamed from his left breast.

The major looked straight at you. His eyes widened. Then he saluted, very correctly, although his gaze flickered to your half-gloves. Shouldn’t the Shuos eye in his insignia explain everything?

Unless I’m a clone and the original is supposed to be dead? you wondered. Had the major known the original Jedao?

The barest flicker in the major’s eyes suggested, if not distaste, a healthy ambivalence. You groaned inwardly. You couldn’t blame the major, who no doubt hated being saddled with a stranger, but that didn’t mean you were looking forward to working with people who disliked you.

Kujen, decadent in a black satin jacket framing a gray brocade shirt, smiled down at You. Silver rings glinted in both ears, and strands of pearls and onyx beads circled his throat. “I’ve brought you your aide,” he said. “Major Kel Dhanneth. I thought this would be a good time to make you a gift of him.”

The major’s expression didn’t waver, but you said, “Kujen, I’m not sure people are gifts?”

“As idealistic as ever,” Kujen said fondly. “Suit yourself. Will you at least let the major join us for breakfast? Or are you going to consign him to Kel food? Since you care about details like that.”

You finally remembered to return the Kel’s salute, feeling like an impostor. “Major Dhanneth. Er, at ease.”

“Yes, sir,” Dhanneth said in a rumble. Dhanneth’s eyes were no longer so wide, but they tracked you with eerie intensity. You wondered if you'd imagined that hint of distaste.

“Do you have an opinion on breakfast?”

The question threw Dhanneth. After a moment, he said, “I will eat whatever you wish me to, sir.”

“I can’t argue with your priorities,” you said, deciding that smiling at Dhanneth would only spook him. “Kujen, I assume you’re the one with preferences, so pick something.”

“You’re going to insist on eating at high table once we get underway,” Kujen said, “so we might as well indulge while we can.” He took the same seat he had yesterday and summoned up a menu.

You pulled up a chair for Dhanneth, meaning only to be polite. Dhanneth raised an eyebrow, and you were reminded that you theoretically outranked Dhanneth. “Go ahead,” you said, since done was done. “Sit.”

“As you like, sir.” Dhanneth did so, and continued to regard you intently.

No help for it. You waited for Kujen to pause over some decision—the beverages?—then said, “What about staff?”

From Dhanneth’s sudden tension, you'd asked the wrong question, or a right one.

“This swarm was originally commanded by a lieutenant general and two brigadier generals,” Kujen said. “I had to remove the lieutenant general, so the swarm is yours now.”

“Remove” didn’t sound good. Unfortunately, you’d already screwed up by mentioning the matter in front of Dhanneth, who needed to perceive your leadership as being united.

Huh. How did I know that? More evidence of the years of experience you couldn’t remember?

“That being said,” Kujen murmured, eyelashes lowering as he looked sideways at Dhanneth, “you will have access to staffers, yes. It would be difficult to manage a swarm of this size otherwise. And you should rely on the major for assistance. He is well-versed in these matters.” He returned to the beverage list and made a pleased noise when he spotted something promising. He put in the order. The grid acknowledged in its usual calm voice.

You wanted to talk to Kujen in private before you stepped into any more minefields, but it would be unkind to send Dhanneth away unfed. “Do you know why you’re here?” you asked Dhanneth, meaning besides the obvious.

Dhanneth’s brows lowered. “I’m awaiting your orders, sir, like everyone else.”

“Two things,” You said. Might as well get this over with. “They’re related. I’m going to need advice on how the Kel do things. This is because my memory is damaged.”

Kujen’s head came up, but he didn’t intervene.

“As you say, sir,” Dhanneth said. His shoulders had tensed, but the motion was subtle. If you hadn’t been watching for a reaction, you might have missed it.

You had expected more of a reaction than that. You couldn’t imagine that the Kel usually went around with brain-damaged generals. “And another thing,” you said. Maybe this question would tell you something more useful. “These gloves seem to hold some significance to you. Tell me about them.”

He hadn’t expected such a strong response to a question about a regulation item of clothing. You’d think you'd asked Dhanneth to kill himself with a wooden spoon. Dhanneth looked at you, then at Kujen, then at you again.

“For love of stars above,” Kujen said to you, “I didn’t expect you to be so direct about it.”

“What the hell is it about these gloves anyway?” you demanded.

“You might as well tell him,” Kujen said to Dhanneth. His cynical tone suggested he’d known this would happen. What was he trying to prove?

Dhanneth squared his shoulders. “Sir,” he said quietly, “stop me when I’m saying things you already know. You’re the last person to wear that style of glove in the Kel military. Before—before you died.”

“I feel alive, thanks,” you said to coveryour discomfort. “Unless I’m a clone?”

“No,” Kujen said. “Plenty of parents choose clones or clone-mods to produce children. But genetics isn’t prophecy, and you wouldn’t have the original’s personality and skills. After you died, I was able to revive you and reinject you with the memories that Cheris hadn’t purloined. That’s all.”

So much for that theory. You said, “I thought all seconded personnel—” Something from the Kel military code flickered at the edge ofyour consciousness, then evaporated before you could bring it into focus.

Dhanneth hesitated, then said, “Seconded personnel adopted gray gloves after what you did, sir. Because of the connotations.”

Suddenly you suspected that you were going to enjoy this discussion even less than Dhanneth was. “Say it straight out. What did I do?”

“Hellspin Fortress,” Dhanneth said, as if that explained everything.

“Why, what happened with the Lanterners?” Oh no. “They went heretic at a bad time?” But what did that have to do with you? Maybe you'd been sent to fight them? “I lost humiliatingly against them?” Except hadn’t Kujen said—

Dhanneth closed his eyes. “You don’t know?”

“Let me,” Kujen said impatiently. “The Lanterners demanded autonomy. Kel Command assigned you to put them in their place. That eight-to-one battle? That was the Battle of Candle Arc, against the Lanterners. After that you harried them to their last stronghold, Hellspin Fortress. But Kel Command had pushed you too hard, and you snapped. You took out the Lanterners, all right, but you also blew up your own swarm.”

You stared at him. “I what?” Don’t get distracted. Get the facts. The way Dhanneth’s jaw was set, he believed the story, incredible as it sounded. That worried you. “How many died?”

“A million people altogether,” Kujen said. “Granted, we don’t care about the Lanterners”— you were disturbed by the cavalier way Kujen said this, heretics or not—“but it makes the number easier to remember.”

The next question was going to be even uglier. “When was this?” You should have asked this earlier, when you learned the high calendar had destabilized.

“Four hundred and eight years ago.”

The edges of your vision grayed. “Listen,” you said, “you can vivisect me for speaking out of turn, but you’re fucked in the head if you think the correct response to a psychotic mass-murdering traitor is to bring him back from the dead and hand him another army.”

“My options were limited,” Kujen said calmly. “I don’t just need someone good, I need someone spectacular. And you were available.”

Kujen didn’t get it. Granted, no one expected a hexarch to care about petty moral qualms. You tried again. “I cannot imagine that Kel Command was stupid enough to knowingly field a general whom they suspected of being one million deaths’ worth of unstable. Were there any warning signs?”

His voice was shaking. You didn’t want to believe any of this. For that matter, you weren’t sure what you wanted Kujen to say in response. Was it better to have a definite sign that you were about to lose your mind and slaughter people, or was it better to be taken by surprise? Of course, you imagined the people about to be targeted would appreciate a warning.

“Hexarch,” Dhanneth said after casting you a worried look, “perhaps we could discuss this after breakfast.”

You were impressed. In Dhanneth’s position, you wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to yourself.

“No, we’d better get it out of the way,” Kujen said. “There were no signs. You were an exemplary officer. We think it was the stress, but no one knows for sure. And with the holes in your memory, you can’t tell us yourself.”

Abruptly, you hauled yourself to your feet and walked to the other side of the room. You were tempted to punch the wall, but Kujen wouldn’t appreciate that, and it would upset Dhanneth, who had done nothing wrong. The fact that you were Dhanneth’s superior was ludicrous, but that wasn’t Dhanneth’s fault either.

On the other hand, you now had some idea why Dhanneth was both hostile and trying to suppress signs of it. Because he’d been assigned as the aide to a mass murderer. Dhanneth couldn’t possibly have wanted the job.

Kujen approached you slowly, as if he expected you to bolt. “Jedao.”

You didn’t know what to say, so you said nothing.

“Jedao,” Kujen said, “you’re not to blame. You don’t remember it anyway.”

“If I did it,” you said, “then I’m responsible whether or not I remember it. I assume that—” Actually. “Did I die in battle, or was I executed, or did I choke on a fishbone?”

“Executed.”

You’d think you would remember some of this, any of this. You closedyour eyes. Fragments came back to you: wrestling with Ruo, and the sharp, sour smell of the other cadet’s sweat; disassembling a sniper rifle while the instructor shouted in your ear; a silent room steeped in darkness. But the execution? you had no idea.

“Talk to me, Jedao.”

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll strangle you?” you hadn’t meant for that to slip out.

Kujen took hold of your shoulder and turned you around. His eyes were earnest. “I am one of very few people who will never judge you for anything you’ve done, or will do, whether you remember it or not,” he said. “Because it is impossible for you to shock me. As for my safety, I have my defenses. You needn’t worry on my behalf.”

You weren’t sure you liked that. “But you’re a hexarch.” New thought: “Where’s your security?”

Kujen shook his head. “So young. Come on, let’s eat. The servitors have been setting out the food.”

The argument worked. You had no appetite, but that was no reason to starve Dhanneth. (He wasn’t worried about Kujen’s ability to fend for himself.) Numbly, you returned to your seat.



Later, at high table, surrounded by your officers, an already razor-taut conversation went suddenly, deeply, incomprehensibly awry. You don't know what you said wrong.

Kujen intervened. “I won’t make a habit of this,” he said to you, “because high table is high table, but I need to speak to you and it can’t wait.”

You didn’t believe that in the slightest. you would have liked to stay and fumble your way through the rest of dinner despite the prickly atmosphere, because you couldn’t spend the rest of the voyage avoiding your own officers. On the other hand, you couldn’t refuse the hexarch, either. you excused yourself. The hush that followed them was frosty.

Kujen’s own silence made you edgy all the way back to Kujen’s conference room. Kujen paused in the doorway after it opened. You looked around the room, which was appointed with fantastic models of buildings, all bird-curves and starry angles and tiny glittering windows. Then Kujen stalked into the room and pivoted on his heel. You entered and sank to your knees in the full obeisance to a hexarch.

Kujen sat on his haunches and laid a hand on your shoulder, feather-light. He peered into your face. “I had assumed that your lack of research on the topic meant that you remembered after all,” he said.

“Remembered what?” you said. And what did this have to do with dinner?

“I was listening in on your idea of light conversation,” Kujen said. “People are afraid that if they upset you, you’ll slaughter them. Get up and let’s sit in actual chairs. My knees are not fond of deep bends anymore.”

Kujen leaned back in a chair upholstered in violet-black velvet. You took the one across from him. It looked like someone had painted its platinum-colored snowflake-and-bird designs with a one-haired brush. How much luxurious furniture did Kujen own anyway? You hoped you never took it for granted.

“Fine,” you said, accepting the reprimand for what it was. “I’ll call up some documentaries. Or a book.” Being a general required a lot of paperwork, but you could schedule it in.

Kujen massaged his temples.

“All right,” you said, “something I said bothered you. Explain it to me in words of one syllable.”

“So you don’t remember Hellspin.”

“Obviously not.”

“I am not used to this,” Kujen said, “and normally I am better at accounting for variables than this. But there’s a first time for everything.” He sounded displeased with himself. “Jedao, you’re not a blank sheet of paper, even if you can’t remember large chunks of your history. You have skills, you have preferences, you have flaws, a personality. The difference is that people who know their own past have a chance of figuring out their own failure modes and how to avert them, and most of them don’t manage that even so. As far as I can tell, you’re operating on instinct. You have no way to prepare for your own reactions.”

“You can’t hide the records from me forever,” you said.

“Let’s start slow,” Kujen said. “You already know about the gloves, which are unavoidable, and the Deuce of Gears. There are also the threshold winnowers.”

“Threshold winnowers?”

“They’re bombs,” Kujen said, “that kill living things within the gate radius without damaging nonliving structures. The part that scares all the civilians is all the eyes and mouths that chew up the victims. That’s just cosmetic. Dead is dead.”

You hid your revulsion. Kujen hadn’t mentioned whether this chewing up happened before or after the victims perished. You had a bad feeling you knew the answer to that one. “Your design?”

“Yes.” Shit.

“Are you going to let me have any?” you asked, to gauge Kujen’s reaction.

Kujen didn’t answer that, which could mean either yes or no. “Next,” he said. “During Hellspin, once the massacre was underway, you went on a rampage on your command moth. You shot a bunch of staff and soldiers and so on with a Patterner 52. That’s—”

“I know what that is,” you said. “What the hell was someone in the Kel military doing with a Shuos handgun?” Sure, you could print up ammunition for it special, but didn’t that sort of thing annoy Logistics?

“Special dispensation,” Kujen said, “as a courtesy to the Shuos.” His mouth curled in a sudden smile. “You were a known favorite of the Shuos heptarch.”

You weren’t sure you believed that. How could you have achieved that, anyway?

Kujen hadn’t finished speaking. “Anyway, it figures you’d recognize your signature gun. I’m sorry I couldn’t retrieve it for you, but the Shuos stole your gun collection a few decades ago just to piss off the Kel. I keep wondering if they mean to fence the lot, because the Shuos are notoriously always in danger of going broke. As far as I can tell, the collection is sitting in the Citadel of Eyes gathering dust, and I didn’t want to test Mikodez’s security.”

“I forgive you,” you said, to cover your additional unhappiness at the idea that you'd have some reflexive attachment to a weapon you'd used to commit a massacre. “Is there anything else about Hellspin Fortress that I have a crushing need to know?”

“You weren’t sane when Kel Command retrieved you,” Kujen said. “Your memories from that period seemed to be hazy even before Cheris’s interference.”

You turned your hands over and stared at the back of your gloves. You were used to them already. “Why did they retrieve me instead of executing me on the spot?”

“They wanted to figure out what had happened,” Kujen said. “You’d been loyal up to that point. It came as a complete surprise. After that, they decided they still had uses for you, so you never received a proper court-martial. It’s hard for people who aren’t familiar with the records to appreciate this. Remember, originally it wasn’t clear that you had been responsible for the slaughter. They thought it had been Lanterner agents, or another traitor.”

“I appreciate the lesson,” you said. “So when you pulled me out of high table, it was because of the remark I made.” I hear our aim isn’t as good as yours.

“Yes,” Kujen said. “I advise you to do some more homework before the next high table.”

“Noted,” you said.



You took Kujen’s instructions to do homework seriously. This was harder than you had thought, considering that you were also trying to work your way through a recommended command primer and remedial math coursework. you couldn’t put it off forever, however.

“Do you have records of Hellspin Fortress?” you asked the grid.

Your eye was caught by one of the top results, a video of the massacre’s first moments in the command center of the fangmoth One Card Too Lucky. “Play that one,” you said recklessly, and sat down to watch.

The moth’s combat record started innocuously enough. You didn’t recognize any of the Kel visible in the command center, but you studied yourself in dread and fascination. I look older, you thought inanely. The rational part of your brain pointed out that it was the same face, age and all, that looked back at you from the mirror. Yet the Jedao in the video did look older. It was in his sharp eyes; it was in the way he leaned back in his chair, that air of utter assurance. You were sure you didn’t appear that way to your Kel. Or if you did, you didn’t feel like it inside.

Two of the Kel were talking to each other about a logistical matter. Without any warning, without so much as a flicker in his expression, Jedao-then whipped out his gun and fired twice. Two bullets, two kills. Blood and a leakage of brains.

“Stop,” you hissed. When had you gotten up? Your hand was opening and closing uselessly. You’d reached for the sidearm you didn’t have.

You were the only officer in Kujen’s swarm who didn’t have a gun, and you'd never noticed before.

You had started toward the video as if you could stop yourself, or wind back time to take the bullets for the hapless Kel soldiers. The video had paused obligingly on a frame of one in the midst of falling.

You walked into the next room. Asked the grid to image you something pretty for meditation. It provided you with a tidy garden with petals falling artistically off the flower-laden trees only to vanish before they hit the floor. You watched the evanescent petals for twelve minutes.

Then you walked back to the video. The Kel hadn’t come back to life. You thought to ask who it was. Not like you had any idea. The grid informed you that this first victim was Colonel Kel Gized, General Shuos Jedao’s chief of staff.

“Kel Gized,” you said out loud. The name meant nothing. You didn’t know who she was. You stared at the round face with the bloody dark hole dead center in her forehead, the gray hair, mussed in the fall. How could you remember nothing about someone you'd murdered in cold blood?

What kind of man am I?

It had been one thing for Kujen and Dhanneth to tell you that you were a mass murderer. It was quite another to see yourself committing one of the murders.

“Keep going,” you said at last, because you owed it to the fallen woman. What you wanted to do was run to the toilet and throw up, except even your nausea was abstract, as though it belonged to someone far in the distance. How many dead bodies have I seen?

Even through your revulsion, you were impressed by your older self. You hadn’t known real people could be that good with firearms. No fancy choreographed scenes, just messy, businesslike killing. You tried to keep count of the victims, measuring your monstrosity, but the numbers flew out of your head like burning birds.

At last you reached the part where Jedao-then shot several Nirai technicians in the back when they tried to run. You couldn’t take it any more. “Stop,” you said hoarsely. “Make it stop.”

The grid blanked the slate. It couldn’t do anything for the images in your head.