“Well,” Miuzan said, with less condescension than usual, “I suppose you were only trying to do as you saw best in a chaotic situation.” She had never thought well of his ability, a fact she didn’t make any effort to hide. “But that’s not why I called.”
“Really,” Brezan said. “Why, then?” His stomach knotted up. Stop that, he told himself. Given the impressive number of fires he was trying to put out all across the hexarchate, he didn’t need to borrow trouble.
Miuzan leaned forward, eyes brightening, and he knew he was in for it. “General Inesser asked that I contact you.”
That didn’t help the state of his stomach. General Inesser, the Kel’s senior field general. The only general who had been honored by having a cindermoth, one of the hexarchate’s six greatest warmoths, named after her personal emblem. Inesser, known for her courage and cleverness, to say nothing of a lineage that went back into some of the great Andan families. Normally that last fact wouldn’t have been an advantage. Unlike the Andan (because of them, even), the Kel had strong feelings about nepotism, largely negative, although that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. But by the time she reached her current rank, Inesser had developed a reputation for unswerving honor.
Miuzan had landed a position on Inesser’s staff several years ago, quite a feat. It had also made her more insufferable than ever. He didn’t want her to take him seriously because he’d gone revolutionary, but since that was the world they lived in...
“The general has my attention any time she wants it,” Brezan said, quite truthfully. Among other things, he doubted Inesser was contacting him because she wanted to throw her support to the regime he proposed. While he’d never met her, she also had a reputation for old-fashioned Kel conservatism of the kind he’d once aspired to even as it made his teeth ache. If Inesser was speaking to him through his sister, it meant that she was feeling him out for a proposal of her own.
“That’s good to hear,” Miuzan said, although she eyed him as if she suspected sarcasm. For which he couldn’t blame her; their relationship had not been sarcasm-free, these past years. “She may have an offer for you.”
“Do tell.”
“The hexarchate needs a strong hand to hold it together after the broadcast of that heretical calendar,” Miuzan said. Brezan wondered if she realized that she was speaking just a little more loudly, a little more quickly, than usual. He wasn’t used to thinking of his sister as someone who could be swept up by fervor, even fervor in her general’s service. “General Inesser intends to be that person.”
He’d thought as much. Inesser was going to be a formidable rival.
“Don’t answer yet,” Miuzan said rapidly, responding to whatever she saw in his face. “The foreigners, not least the Hafn, don’t care about our internal divisions except as weaknesses they can exploit. The hexarchate needs a united Kel to hold them off and to enforce the calendar so that the stardrives can keep working. General Inesser is the best candidate for the job.”
“You said calendar,” Brezan said, going directly for the part he cared most about. “By which you mean the high calendar, I presume.” The one that he and Cheris had blown up Kel Command to overthrow.
“Of course,” Miuzan said, puzzled. “How could the Kel function otherwise?”
How indeed. Brezan searched for a response. The Kel military depended on formation instinct to yank around its soldiers. As a crashhawk, Brezan’s own formation instinct was defective, something he’d been in denial of for the longest time. After all, you didn’t need formation instinct to obey orders. It just made doing so easier, if by “easier” you meant “unavoidable.”
Cheris’s new calendar, which she’d broadcast throughout the hexarchate for the use of anyone who could make it stick, changed exotic effects so that they only affected those who wanted to be affected. It wasn’t hard to see how this would jeopardize Kel hierarchy. The Kel hadn’t always used formation instinct, but once instituted, they’d grown dependent on it.
“There’s something else you should be aware of,” Miuzan said.
Brezan’s stomach knotted up even more. Next time I get a personal call, Brezan thought, I’m going to take some anti-anxiety medications first.
“I assume you’ve heard,” Miuzan said carefully, “but in case you haven’t, there are reports of difficulties with mothdrives. So far they correlate rather disturbingly with regions of calendrical rot. I can send you the databurst if you want it. Call it the general’s gift to you, for your contemplation. But this is all to say that we need to stabilize the hexarchate sooner rather than later, before all our defenses and intersystem trade shut down.”
How had he missed this? Unless it had been buried in the piles of reports and dispatches that he struggled to make it through every day. Considering he hadn’t been doing the job for long, he was already impressively behind.
“Let me guess,” Brezan said. While he was no engineer, he knew about the fundamentals of mothdrive technology. “The harnesses aren’t working properly anymore.”
Obvious once she brought it up, really. Voidmoths were biological in origin, hatched at mothyards and then fitted with technological implants to make them suitable conveyances or weapons of war. Calendrical rot had always threatened the efficacy of the harnesses that controlled the mothdrives. Voidmoths were additionally fitted with invariant maneuver drives for a reason.
Miuzan’s mouth twisted. “Surprised you didn’t see this coming, little brother.”
“It’s been a busy few weeks,” Brezan said. He swallowed his pride and added, “You’re right, though. It’s inexcusable to lose sight of a detail this important.”
“Well,” Miuzan said, “that’s settled.”
Wait, how had she—“Excuse me,” Brezan said, tamping down on a flare of anger. “I haven’t agreed to anything. Tell General Inesser I appreciate her warning.” He did, sincerely. “But I can’t support her.”
For once Miuzan was at a loss for words. Her nostrils flared, and she slitted her eyes at him for several long moments.
“It’s simple,” Brezan said despite the stabbing in his heart. “If the general is bothering with me at all, it’s because she thinks I’m a threat. Maybe not much of a threat, but that means I have a chance. And I have to do this—not for myself, but for all the people who can be saved from the Vidona.”
“You—” Miuzan breathed in, expelled it in an angry huff. “You’re putting your ego and a bunch of heretics before the safety of a lot of innocent people.”
“Once upon a time, some of those heretics were ‘innocent people’ themselves,” Brezan shot back. “How many times have we seen it, Miuzan? Some group of people who’d been going about their lives for decades, longer even, and then overnight they’re the new heretics because the Vidona have come up with some new fiddly regulation just for the purpose of scaring up new victims? I don’t want to be a part of that anymore.”
“All right.” Miuzan’s voice had gone dead soft, never a good sign. “I wasn’t going to say this to you, but you’re not leaving me much choice.”
There’s always a choice, Brezan thought. Still, he might as well let her have her say. She wouldn’t leave him alone until she got everything out.