Hemiola invited elaboration.
“Civil unrest,” Jedao said, “as the result of some necessary reform.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” 1491625 said.
Hemiola blinked inquisitively.
“Old argument,” Jedao said, his eyes troubled.
Hemiola kept reading until it found another mention of the hungry girl. This one was embedded in notes on neuropsychology. The notes themselves were brief to the point of being telegraphic. Not surprising; it couldn’t imagine that the material had posed a challenge to the hexarch even as a cadet. If it had been skimming any faster, it would have missed the paragraph entirely.
Spotted her again, the hexarch said in what looked like quickly dashed-off handwriting. And, in the margin of the next page: My sister was about her age when she died.
“Jedao?” Hemiola said.
Jedao didn’t look up. “Mmm?”
“Who was the hexarch’s sister?”
“The hexarch’s what?”
Hemiola pointed out the marginal note.
“I never heard of any siblings,” Jedao said, “much less that he cared—” He checked himself from whatever he’d been about to say. “I don’t suppose we have any idea how old Kujen was when he wrote this.”
“If we can figure out which course he was taking notes on,” 1491625 said after it glanced over the page, “we can compare it to the standard Nirai curriculum.”
“He was admitted at the age of fourteen,” Jedao said. “He mentioned that to me once. Thought it was amusing how many people thought he needed ‘protection.’ And he graduated early, too, in four years instead of the usual five. He said it could have been three if he hadn’t studied multiple specialties. I don’t think he was being boastful.”
Hemiola tried to imagine the hexarch as a fourteen-year-old cadet experimenting with flatbread recipes and failed. “I wonder why he didn’t report the girl, whoever she was, to the authorities,” it said. “Surely someone would have taken her in.”
While 1491625 and Jedao puzzled over Nirai Academy’s curricula, Hemiola kept reading. It found the answer to its question not long afterward. This one was tucked away next to a cryptic table of data—this one dated. (The hexarch had also showed his work on a number of computations, in what Hemiola would have called a sarcastic manner. It was certain that the hexarch could have done all of that in his head.)
One of my classmates asked me why I don’t just call the Vidona, the hexarch said. As if I don’t remember what life was like in a Vidona orphanage. I’m not sure the girl would thank me.
And, tucked in next to a scatter plot: I learned her name today, in exchange for more flatbread and candies. It’s Meveri. She’s probably lying about that. I used to do that too. Six years old and she already knows.
Hemiola was about to point this out to Jedao, too, in case he was interested. But 1491625 spoke first. “Advanced course of study,” it said. “The kind of thing senior Nirai come back to the academy to research if they’re good enough to be invited back. He was doing that as a cadet.”
“It wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that he was going to end up a heptarch,” Jedao said. “Still, it would probably have been toward the end of his stay at academy.”
“I found a date on this entry,” Hemiola said. “The year was 359.” It also pointed out the orphanage comment.
Jedao looked grim. “I suppose he had his reasons, but did he honestly think that passing scraps of food to a street child that young, rather than getting her to the authorities, was doing her any favors?”
“We don’t know what the authorities were like back then,” 1491625 said. “Maybe someone else was looking out for this Meveri.”
“If only your people had existed in those days,” Jedao said. “We might have some chance of tracking down additional records of her.”
“We have our own archivists,” 1491625 said, “but the heptarchate was a big place.”
Hemiola tuned them out. It wanted to know what had become of Meveri. While the hexarch and Jedao had never brought children with them to Tefos Base, the heroine of A Rose in Three Revolutions had an eight-year-old niece. It supposed six-year-old children behaved differently from eight-year-olds. And how was a six-year-old surviving on only the occasional gift of flatbreads, anyway?
The next swathe of pages made no mention of Meveri whatsoever. Hemiola suffered through confidence intervals, strange attractors, and cryptic chains of biochemical reactions before finding her again. This time the hexarch devoted an entire page to her, along with several scratched-out sketches. While the hexarch might have been a competent draughtsman, his portraits left something to be desired. He eventually settled for a verbal description.
Her hair was matted. She might have had pretty eyes once. They were swollen shut by the time I got to her. My friend was right.
Several more columns of text written, then blotted out; the hexarch knew how to redact material so it was unreadable. Then he added, If I’d waited any longer, the city watch would have taken her for cremation. One of the local fruit peddlers who’d seen me with her earlier finally told me where the beggars’ association had abandoned her. I sat and held her hand until she stopped breathing. Toward the end, she was babbling at me in one of the local low languages. I just made reassuring noises because that was all there was left to do.
We are a nation of thousands upon thousands of worlds, and we can’t prevent a child from starving to death right next to one of our faction academies.
The page looked as though it had been crumpled. Even though it knew better, Hemiola caught itself trying to smooth the paper out. The image, of course, was amenable to no such thing.
“Jedao,” it said, “you had better see this.”
After reading the page, Jedao sat in silence for a time. Eventually he said, “This sister of his. I wonder what happened to her, and why he never spoke of her. It’s not the question I thought I was going to be asking.”
“There are going to be a lot more of those,” 1491625 said.
“Maybe that was what drove him to become heptarch,” Hemiola said, “in a world long ago.”
“Yes,” Jedao said. “In all the years I’ve known him, I never would have guessed. I’m starting to think I never understood him at all. And now we have to figure out what he’s been thinking all this time, what his plan for the heptarchate was, before it’s too late for the rest of us.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN NIRAI KUJEN returned the next day, Jedao and Dhanneth were taking a break with a game of jeng-zai. Jedao had asked Dhanneth to check his plan for the first battle, and then the two of them had looked over the logistics. Among other things, Jedao couldn’t help wondering if all majors were this well-versed in tactics, or if Kujen had picked him an unusually competent aide. There was no tactful way to ask, so he didn’t. Dhanneth had told him that the staff should double-check the details, but Jedao felt better having Dhanneth’s opinion nonetheless, and Dhanneth had improved the presentation. In the course of the discussion it had emerged that Dhanneth played jeng-zai and had brought a deck with him. Jedao was beating Dhanneth, but he was putting up a good fight.
“Don’t yell at the major,” Jedao said quickly when Kujen peered at his hand. “It was my idea.”