Memento Youri - Remembrances and Rejections

[deuceoftears]

Well. No time to waste. You asked the grid where you were and what was going on. Luckily, someone had troubled to turn your augment back on. The grid replied that they were in parking orbit around Isteia 3 while the hexarch consolidated their gains. It also reminded you, primly, that today was the Feast of Burning Veins.

“That sounds pleasant,” you muttered. The date it gave indicated that four days had elapsed since they’d attacked Isteia. Which meant your attempt to save the mothyard had probably been futile.

He used the water closet, then stripped off your shirt and searched for evidence of the injuries. Nothing, just the scars you'd woken up with that first day. Kujen had implied that scars were trivial to remove or hide, so that wasn’t conclusive. You replaced the shirt and made sure you were presentable.

Then the name of the remembrance penetrated. Feast of Burning Veins. “Just what does this remembrance entail?” you asked the grid.

The grid reassured you that it wasn’t too late to observe the remembrance, which it managed to do while hinting that you ought to strive to do better. Then it launched into a recitation of the chant you were supposed to meditate on and the particular numbers that were significant to this feast.

“No,” you said, starting to be pissed off, “I don’t mean what I’m supposed to do.” Which, fucked if you were going to do it, but no need to tell the grid that.

“What gives the remembrance its name?”

The grid explained to you that an authorized Vidona official rendered a chosen heretic by, essentially, setting their blood on fire. It started going into the technical details. You weren’t a medic, but you didn’t miss the fact that no mention was made of, say, anesthesia. The victim had to be conscious for this.

The grid never used the word “victim” at all. You wondered how many euphemisms deep this went.

He had a moment to make the decision. It was tempting to ask where the hell Kujen was while this went on, but you didn’t want to inadvertently attract Kujen’s attention. So instead you merely asked the grid one more question: “If I want to attend in person”—he was gambling that this wasn’t the oddest request a stray general had ever made—“where would I go?”

Obligingly, the grid provided a map. You had the uncanny feeling that it approved. That, or whoever had programmed it wanted to encourage observance of remembrances.

Four guards stood outside the door. The one in charge was a stolid corporal who had not, strictly speaking, shaved as well as he should have. You opted not to dress him down about the matter, especially since the corporal looked like he’d piss himself if you raised your voice.

“Sir,” the corporal said waveringly, “you can’t be recovered yet.”

That wasn’t an outright You can’t leave, so you were ahead. “I wish to attend the remembrance ceremony.”

The corporal’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened, then closed. If not for your certainty that someone was being burned alive right now, the effect would have been funny. You guessed that you had chanced on the one request that the corporal couldn’t turn down.

“I suppose that’s all right, sir,” the corporal said. “We’ll escort you.”

“Of course,” you said. Don’t smile.

“You’ll want to be in full formal, sir,” the corporal said, even more waveringly.

If you'd still been at Shuos Academy, you would have cracked a joke to lighten the mood. You didn’t think that would help here. You merely nodded and set your uniform to full formal. “Ready,” you said.

The first surprise, once they exited not-Medical, was the view. Someone had set up the hallway so the walls imaged what you guessed was Isteia 3 and its moons. You couldn’t help slowing to gawk at it, your first good view of a planet with its marbled swirls of cloud and ocean and dark land masses. Clusters of lights shone faintly from the moons, which must be cities.

Even more impressive, and not in a good way, were the ruins of a station: Isteia Mothyard. You knew from the intel reports what it had once looked like, an immense cylinder sporting numerous blisters for the young voidmoth hatcheries. Your people had reduced it to a shatter-scatter of metal fragments and scorched shards. You had the awful suspicion that whoever had decided to image thisparticular spectacle had done so the way you might put up a trophy.

Did anyone survive? you asked. The Revenant didn’t answer. Nor did anyone else. You could only assume that any mothlings had perished in the carnage. For the first time, you wondered if any of them would have been old enough to talk to you. Not that you would have blamed them for declining.

It didn’t take them long to reach the remembrance hall. You’d never given it much thought back when Kujen had first presented you with the Revenant’s blueprints. Of all the things to forget.

Even if you'd forgotten, you should have asked earlier.

“I’ve never been here before,” you said to your escort.

The corporal coughed, cleared his throat. “It’s only expanded for use when we’re docked.”

Yes, of course. You remembered the relevant section of the Kel code of conduct now. Personnel on warmoths in transit were exempt, not least because the fussy local calibrations were too much of a pain in the ass. And possibly also because carting around heretics to torture was, as the code said, logistically inconvenient. You wondered now how many euphemisms were hidden in the code.

The remembrance hall had several doors, each marked with the Vidona stingray in bronze against metallic green. Even from the other side of the doors, you could smell the incense. The sandalwood blend should have been soothing. Instead, you thought of what the grid had told you. Setting their blood on fire.

For once, heads didn’t turn as you entered the remembrance hall. The Kel within were in full formal, seconded officers in their factions’ equivalent. Everyone’s attention was intent on the Vidona official and her victim.

The “heretic” was laid out on a dais. It was a Kel soldier. One of Inesser’s soldiers, to be specific. The black-and-gold uniform was almost the same, but had, in addition, an armband with a golden kestrel stooping to catch its prey. By some miracle, the fires did not blot out the kestrel; instead, they made it shine more brightly. It was, by some measure, the brightest thing in the hall.

Inside, the everywhere incense was not quite strong enough to drown out the distinctive reek of roasted flesh and what must be the particular smell of burnt fabric.

The escort had backed away from you. “S-sir,” the corporal said in a hushed voice, “perhaps you’d rather—”

“Perhaps I’d rather what?” you asked in what you thought was a commendably calm voice.

The corporal shut up.

“One question,” you said, also quietly, although the people in the back were starting to stir and frown in your direction.

The corporal bobbed a nod. The other soldiers had sufficient discipline not to back away from you, too. That, or it was formation instinct.

“How many prisoners of war did we capture?”

“The total, sir, or just on the command moth?”

That told you what you needed to know: too many. Besides, a quick consultation of the grid gave you the numbers. Eleven on the Revenant. All told, 503 captives in various states of health, distributed more or less evenly among the swarm’s warmoths. The efficiency with which this had been accomplished was also a bad sign, as was the fact that the grid reassured you that the Vidona were carrying out the selfsame ceremony on the other moths in your command.

You shoved your way through the crowd and to the ramp leading up to the dais. Shocked murmurs followed you. You didn’t care. A saner voice in the back of your head said, You can’t save all of them this way. Maybe not, he thought back at it, but I might make a difference for this one soldier.

The corporal yelled after you to come back, then swore and started after you. You lengthened your stride.

The Vidona had raised a sharp, saw-bladed instrument high above the burning soldier. She didn’t flinch at your approach.

You grabbed her wrist and hissed, “This stops now.”

She met your eyes coldly. “With respect, sir,” she said in a voice that implied anything but, “you have no authority over me here.”

Up close, you could hear the ragged breathing of the burning soldier. Their face was a mass of blisters and char marks tracking the locations of the major veins and arteries. You doubted they had a voice anymore or they’d be screaming.

“We are both,” the Vidona said, “sworn to the hexarch’s service. Stand down.”

You came very close to breaking her wrist and slamming her into the flames; but that wouldn’t solve the problem.

Nevertheless, she reacted to the intimation of violence. She plunged the blade into the victim’s heart before you could stop her. Flames bloomed up around her hand. Her gray glove and her sleeve caught on fire. Her face was calm, even a little bored, as if she did this often. Which she probably did.

“I will have to make a calendrical adjustment,” the Vidona said. She withdrew the blade with fussy neatness, damped the fire with a smothering cloth.

You stared at her, aghast. “They could have been saved.”

“A waste of resources,” she said. “She was almost dead anyway.”

Not trusting yourself to speak, you spun on your heel and stalked out of the hall. You knew where you were going next.


YOU SLOWED JUST enough for your escort to catch up with you. They didn’t look grateful. you were beyond caring what they thought of their charge.

Kujen’s quarters were defended by an immense foyer. A dazzle of candlevines grew up the walls, illuminating tangled wires and chitin-iridescent panels. A low thrumming reverberated throughout, like a gong that had just been damped.

The Nirai voidmoth emblem gleamed along the far wall, engraved in such piercing silver it was almost blue. The escort knelt in the full obeisance. You didn’t bother. You called out, “I’ve come for an audience with the hexarch.”

When the doors parted, spilling light onto the floor and highlighting the iridescent panels, you blinked but did not move otherwise.

“Jedao,” Kujen said in that velvet voice of his. “The timing could have been better, but... well.”

He wasn’t interested in Kujen’s assurances. “How long have the remembrances been going on?”

“Corporal,” Kujen said without looking in the man’s direction, “you and your soldiers may leave us.”

The Kel escort fled.

Kujen was already leading the way forward. “Come with me,” he said. “You’ll find nothing interesting out here unless you like prototype circuits.”

They passed through several rooms, each more opulent than the last, which did nothing to improve your mood. One room featured the pelts of gray tigers, while another housed chairs and tables of handsome blue-black lacquer. Yet a third was full of shadows except a pedestal where a single immense vase of finest celadon rested. The glaze depicted an arched branch with a raindrop in the act of falling free; that was all. You didn’t ask why Kujen collected such treasures when he scarcely paid heed to them. You wondered if you would be the same way when you had more experience of the world. You hoped not.

“Now,” Kujen said, “you may yell.”

You reined back your temper. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“The remembrances?” Kujen sank down into a couch. You took the chair across from him, drawing your feet in. “You mean in their current form.”

You just looked at him.

“For the past eight centuries and change,” Kujen said.

“And you let this go on?”

Kujen raised his eyebrows. “Jedao,” he said, “I’m the one who came up with the system.”

Your brain stuttered to a halt.

“The formations, and formation instinct, and the mothdrive harnesses,” Kujen said, “all of them depend on people adhering to the system. The stability of the hexarchate, and its ability to provide for its citizens, depend on people adhering to the system.”

“Kujen,” you said, recovering your voice, “we just fucking tortured prisoners of war to death. Now they’ll never negotiate, or cooperate with prisoner exchanges, or believe any of our assurances, or—”

“I never intended to negotiate with Inesser or her people.” Kujen rose and made his way to a cabinet. From it he drew a dark, unlabeled bottle. He tilted it inquiringly and cocked an eyebrow at you. You shook your head. “She and her followers are too dangerous. Better to add them to the list of heretics and move on.”

“You can’t arbitrarily decide that it’s all right to torture whole categories of people to death!”

Kujen tapped the mouth of the bottle. The stopper, whatever it had been made of, vanished into a curl of blue-pale vapor. The smell of roses and spice perfumed the air.

“It’s one of the better vintages of wine-of-roses,” Kujen said. “I’d hate to drink this alone.”

“If you think I have any interest in getting drunk right now,” you said icily, “you are quite mistaken.”

“Your loss,” Kujen said with a shrug. He poured a glass for himself and sipped delicately.

“When you told me that we were restoring order to the hexarchate,” you said, “I had no idea you had this in mind.”

Kujen sipped again, then set the glass down on a table. He approached you. You stood your ground, increasingly uneasy. “I’d forgotten how young you are,” Kujen murmured.

“Don’t fucking patronize me.” you glared at him, which was awkward because Kujen topped you by almost a head.

Kujen stepped in close, quite close, and rested his hands on your shoulders. “That’s not all you’re upset about, is it? This has to do with that regrettably violent confrontation with that Kel squad.”

You were trembling with the suppressed desire to lash out. You knew, however, that it wouldn’t do any good. “That’s not—”

“I told you once,” Kujen said, “that it’s impossible for you to shock me. Do you remember?”

Unwillingly, you looked up into Kujen’s perfect face, the smoky, gold-flecked eyes with their long lashes. “I remember.” Then: “You knew. Even then, you knew.”

“I didn’t think you were ready to hear it,” Kujen said.

“What am I?” You were horrified by the way your voice shook.

“Hush,” Kujen said softly, and drew you down onto the couch so they were sitting side by side. “Call it a security measure. It wouldn’t do to lose my general to assassination.”

You thought back to their earliest meetings. “You said you have your own defenses. Do you—are you—”

Maybe they were alike after all. You were forcibly reminded that Kujen was one of the few people who had never reacted to you with fear or disgust. I could influence him—change his mind—Then you hated yourself for the thought.

Kujen’s hand had moved up to the side of your face. He was looking somberly at you. Slowly, he uncurled his fingers until they brushed against your jaw. It seemed impossible that Kujen couldn’t hear the hectic pounding of your heartbeat.

“Fine,” you said roughly. “I don’t shock you? Prove it to me.” You had the dim understanding that you were trying to play a game you weren’t old enough for.

Kujen’s eyes were even more beautiful up close. In spite of yourself, your pulse quickened further at the way Kujen was looking at you, as though everything else in the universe had fallen away. I can’t be doing this. Yet here you were.

“Sweetheart,” Kujen said caressingly, “the experience differential is not in your favor.”

“I’m not a boy, Kujen.”

“Well, that’s debatable.” His hands traced your sides and came to rest low on your hips.

Holding still was agonizing. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How had you expected to outplay a hexarch? Especially when you barely remembered how to have sex?

(Had you done this before?)

“Delightful as this is,” Kujen said, “I feel obliged to point out that you’re going to despise yourself afterward.”

“Maybe I want that.” You meant it, in that moment. Kujen’s hands slid lower.

Then, without warning, Kujen snatched his hands away and walked in measured strides to the other side of the room. “No,” he said. The beautiful eyes had gone remote.

Heat rushed to your face. Fuck. You'd come in here intending to confront Kujen, browbeat him into making the remembrances stop, and now—

You slid off the couch and sank to your knees by reflex, assuming the full obeisance, and waited.