He had wanted her to continue the game for him. Or perhaps she was supposed to decide whether the game was worth playing at all. If only he had been able to trust her with more.
Cheris wasn’t done with splinters. But she hesitated. Now that she knew about Nirai Kujen, she had a better idea how his form of immortality worked.
If she abandoned the splinters, Jedao would be truly dead, and his terrible treasonous war with him. If she devoured the last of them, she could carry on the fight, but the person doing so might not be Kel Cheris.
Had he meant to manipulate her into this choice? She didn’t think so, but this was Jedao.
Still, Cheris knew she had already decided.
The next two splinters took her through the eyes like bullets.
CHERIS WAS SITTING at a table outside, shuffling and reshuffling her favorite jeng-zai deck. Normally she didn’t lack for opponents – this was Shuos Academy, after all, and there was always someone who didn’t believe a first-year could be as good as she claimed to be – but the yearly game design competition was going on, and everyone was distracted.
Someone came up from behind and kissed the top of her head. “Hey, you,” said a familiar tenor: Vestenya Ruo, the first friend she’d made here, and her occasional lover. “Dare I hope that I’ve finally gotten the drop on you?” He came around and took a seat on the bench next to her. Like Cheris, he wore the red cadet uniform. The two of them had a theory that the first Shuos heptarch had picked her faction’s colors to make her own people extra-special easy to assassinate from a distance.
Cheris quirked an eyebrow at Ruo. “Hardly,” she said. “You came around that corner by the gingko tree, didn’t you? I saw your reflection in the perfume bottle that guy was fiddling with earlier. Pure luck.”
Ruo punched her shoulder. “You always say it’s luck. Even at the firing range. You don’t get aim that good with luck.”
“I don’t know why you make such a big deal of it when you’re the better shot.”
“Yes, and I’m going to make sure it stays that way.” Ruo grinned at her. “But it’s annoying that I can’t beat your reflexes.”
“I’m hardly a threat to you,” Cheris said patiently. As a point of fact, when they’d first met at some party, Ruo had picked a fight with her. Lots of bruises, no hard feelings, although she had since learned that picking random fights out of a spirit of adventure was the kind of thing Ruo did. She wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened, but it wasn’t long before she started hanging out with him, partly because he always thought up terrific pranks, like the one with the color-coded squirrels, but partly so she could keep him from getting into too much trouble.
“Bet you say that to all your targets,” Ruo said. Periodically he tried to persuade Cheris to declare for the assassin track with him, but she hadn’t decided yet. “Say, shouldn’t that girlfriend of yours be done with class about now?”
“‘That girlfriend’ has a name,” said Lirov Yeren, who had come up behind Ruo. Sometimes Cheris despaired of Ruo’s situational awareness. Although Yeren could walk silently, she hadn’t been making any particular effort to be quiet. “Hello, Jedao. Hello, Ruo.” Yeren leaned down, careful not to spill her drink, her curls falling artfully around her face. She and Cheris kissed.
“Hello yourself,” Cheris said. She fanned out her hand, face-up, for Yeren’s amusement.
“Oh, you’re not even pretending not to cheat,” Ruo said. Cheris had arranged to draw a straight of Roses.
“Only because I don’t have any real flowers to offer you, Yeren,” Cheris said, “so I had to make do with the sad cardboard substitute.”
Yeren eyed her sidelong. “I’m pretty sure that line wasn’t in Introduction to Seduction when I took it last year.”
“I hate that course,” Cheris said. “Seriously, all the Andan bars we practice at overcharge for drinks because, hello, the Andan are all rich. You’d think they’d figure it into our stipends, but I think it’s supposed to incentivize us to commit fraud to get by.”
“I don’t see what your issue is,” Ruo said dryly. “You’re terribly good at persuading people to buy you drinks, especially with that whole ‘I just got here from the farm and you civilized city people confuse me’ routine.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Cheris said. Besides, it was technically an agricultural research facility, even if her mother jokingly referred to herself as a farmer.
“You poor thing,” Yeren said. “Drown your sorrows?” She offered her drink.
“See what I mean?” Ruo said.
Cheris took a sip. “That’s a lot of honey,” she said. The local spiced tea was something she was still getting used to. It wasn’t very popular where she came from.
“It’s to cover the taste of the poison,” Yeren said, very seriously.
“Excellent thinking.” Cheris drank again, more deeply, then handed the tea back.
“By the way,” Yeren said, “I keep looking through the competition standings and I’m stumped. Where did you hide your game?”
“Don’t get me started,” Ruo said. “I can’t even get him to play any of the more intriguing entries, let alone admit to entering.”
Cheris shuffled the straight back into her deck and did her best “you civilized city people confuse me” impression. “It’s much less stressful to watch everyone else tie themselves into knots. You heard about how Zheng got caught breaking into the registrar’s computer systems?”
“That’s so yesterday,” Yeren said, “and I don’t believe you for one second. Ruo told me how you volunteered to be outnumbered five to one in that training scenario and you care about stress?”
“Did he also mention I lost that one?” Cheris narrowed her eyes at Ruo, who looked innocent.
“Only after you struck the instructor speechless with your novel use of signal flares,” Ruo said helpfully.
“Got lucky,” Cheris said.
Ruo rolled his eyes. “No such thing as luck.”
Cheris drew three cards in rapid succession: Ace of Roses, Ace of Doors, Ace of Gears. “Sure there is,” she said ironically.
Yeren, who had taught Cheris most of the card tricks herself, ignored this. “I suppose you might take some kind of ridiculous pleasure in an anonymous entry,” she said, “but they’ll trace it to you anyway. Why not put your name on it from the beginning?”
“That’s only if I entered,” Cheris said. “Say, Ruo, you entered a shooter, didn’t you? How’s it doing?” She hadn’t looked it up, but Ruo had talked about it a lot while wrestling with the coding, even if he’d turned down her offer to help by playtesting.
“High middle,” Ruo said, “for its category. As good as I could hope for. I haven’t embarrassed myself, that’s all I ask.” There were always a few entries that did so poorly that they damaged the cadets’ future career options.
Yeren wasn’t distracted. “Jedao, first-years don’t get a lot of opportunities to impress the instructors. I didn’t think you’d pass this one up. Especially considering how much you like games.”
“It’s very altruistic of you to point this out to me,” Cheris said, “but it’s done now, either way.” She touched Yeren’s hand. “We could go for a walk by the koi pond. It wouldn’t kill you to get away from all the competition analysis for an hour or two.”
“This is my cue to go elsewhere,” Ruo said cheerfully. “Don’t scare the geese.” Cheris often thought she should never have mentioned that her mother liked to say that, even if they hadn’t had all that many geese.
“Like you don’t have a hot date of your own lined up,” Yeren said. Ruo looked awfully smug, at that.