Kel training reasserted itself. She was ashamed of her panic. It must be a formation, it must be a new formation that her superiors were only now teaching her, and the proper response to a formation was to submit to it. She forced herself to look at the shadow. She saw now that it was a man’s. Had they made her a man? They could do that, it was unremarkable among the Shuos and Andan, and she’d wondered what it was like, but most Kel considered sex changes distasteful so why would her superiors –?
Then she heard the same male voice, but the words were distinctly someone else’s, as though someone were talking to her. She couldn’t see anyone in the room with her, however. The voice said, “They must not have warned you. My apologies, no one has told me your name –?”
For all its concern, the voice spoke with authority, and she knew the correct response to authority. “Captain Kel Cheris, sir,” she said, using the politest form.
Cheris glanced down at her gloves, at every part of her that she could see. No, she had been right the first time. When she spoke, as opposed to merely thinking, her voice was her own, but her body was her own after all, so that made sense.
There was a pause. “I can’t read your thoughts,” the voice went on. “I can hear you if you speak, which includes subvocals. Do you want me to continue, or would you rather orient yourself on your own?”
Cheris was confused that he was giving her a choice. “Sir?” she said.
“You are a Kel, aren’t you? You usually are.” He added, “It’s so easy to forget what colors look like. The style of the uniform hasn’t changed much, though. Don’t – what you’re doing to yourself, this isn’t a formation, that’s not necessary. It will go better if you don’t try to fit yourself into me like I’m a glove. My name is Shuos Jedao, but you needn’t keep calling me ‘sir.’ Under the circumstances I think you’ll agree that it’s a little ridiculous.”
She looked around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. If she wasn’t to respond by resorting to formation instinct, what was she supposed to do?
“You’d better look more closely in the mirror,” Jedao said. She decided that this was an order. She stared into it in fascination, then at her hands, then at it again. Jedao’s reflection looked back at her. She tried to remember what he had looked like in the videos she had seen back in academy, but her memories were hazy. He had straight black hair with bangs almost too long for current Kel regulations, and dark eyes, and a face that might have been handsome if he had only been smiling. Cheris was not tempted to smile. He was leanly muscular, and a wide scar was just visible at his neck above the collar.
Just to make sure, Cheris examined herself again: her old familiar body. It was only the reflection that belonged to Jedao. Relieved, she finished dressing.
She rechecked the reflection because he hadn’t forbidden it. The reflection’s uniform had a general’s wings over the staring Shuos eye, but the wings were connected by a chain picked out in silver thread. She didn’t have to ask about the symbolism.
More distressing were the gloves. Jedao’s reflection wore a black pair in deference to Kel custom, because she had put hers on, but his were fingerless to signify that he wasn’t a Kel. These days, outsiders seconded to the Kel wore gray gloves instead of Kel black. Fingerless gloves had fallen out of fashion because of Jedao’s betrayal, and she had only seen them in old photos and paintings.
He was taller than she was by half a head. Not being able to look his reflection in the eye made her want to twitch.
“Sir,” she said in spite of herself. How was she supposed to address an undead general if not by his rank or title? “You” didn’t seem right.
Jedao sighed quietly. “Questions? I’ve done this before and you haven’t.”
“Are you a ghost?”
“Mostly. I have no substance, although you can target me with exotics through the shadow. I’m anchored to you, which means my welfare is linked to yours. I absorb most exotic damage before it gets through to you, so you might say I’m a glorified shield. It’s only after I die that you’re in trouble on that front. And the only people who can hear me right now are you and other revenants. That’s going to be both a help and a dreadful inconvenience, you’ll find. There’s only one other revenant, who won’t be accompanying us. You’ll be meeting him shortly.”
The mirror opened up, without warning, to a narrow room with a treadmill. A pale, slender man wearing Kel black-and-gold awaited them, although he had neglected to put on gloves. The man had no rank designation, but his silver voidmoth insignia meant he was a Nirai seconded to the Kel. The moth’s wings, too, were connected by a silver chain. If you looked closely at his shadow, it was made of fluttering moths in silhouette. The sight of the moths made Cheris uneasy, as though they were about to rise from the floor and devour her from the bones out.
Cheris was used to being short by Kel standards, but the man was considerably taller than she was. She said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, sir.” Just in case, she spoke to the Nirai as she would to a superior, but she wondered at the absence of rank insignia.
“I was monitoring your awakening,” the Nirai said, unruffled, “and in this matter your health is paramount. Rather less panic than the last one, anyway. I admire good examples of Kel stoicism.” His speech was plain, despite his beautiful voice, his verb forms almost disparaging. It was hard to figure out what that indicated. Many Nirai were informal, after all.
“Should formation instinct have taken her so strongly?” Jedao said. He sounded deferential.
The Nirai raised an eyebrow, good-humored. “Kel Academy keeps fiddling with the parameters,” he said, “hence the variation. I don’t think she’s unusual, but we can’t let her out as your keeper when she’s so suggestible. Much as you wish we would.”
“I’ve behaved for four centuries,” Jedao said. “I’m not likely to change now.”
“That’s what they thought when you were alive, too.”
“You like irrefutable arguments, don’t you?”
“I like winning.” The Nirai turned his attention to Cheris. She was struck by the extraordinary beauty of his eyes, smoky amber with velvety eyelashes, and she wasn’t usually interested in men. “Walk on the treadmill,” he said, “to remind your muscles of their function. Also because you probably got some of his muscle memory and you’ll be useless if you trip over the floor.”
Cheris obliged, not unwillingly. She found a good pace: fast enough to raise her pulse, slow enough that her uncooperative legs didn’t betray her. The fact that her coordination had suffered bothered her. She’d never been the most agile of her comrades, but she hoped the effect was temporary.
“Jedao,” the Nirai said, “I trust she’s satisfactory?”
“I’m your gun,” Jedao said.
Cheris was nonplussed. A Kel might say that ceremonially to a superior, and even then only on the highest of occasions, but the irony in Jedao’s voice suggested that something else was going on.
“Besides,” Jedao added, “if she’s like the others, she never had a substantive choice, and I didn’t have one either.”
The question must have shown on Cheris’s face. The Nirai said, “We prefer volunteers. They survive the process better.”
Ah, yes. Volunteers Kel-style.
“Let me brief you on the basics,” the Nirai went on. “You apparently have some use for Jedao, and Kel Command approved it. What you ought to know is that the black cradle’s ghosts can only be revived by attaching them to someone living, which we call anchoring. This is not general knowledge. Jedao mentioned that most exotic weapons will harm him before they harm you. There are a few exceptions. I advise you to look them up when you get a chance.