“That system,” Brezan said slowly, after it was clear that Khiruev wasn’t going to add anything, “is inhabited. Not by a huge population, as these things go, but still, it’s a significant number of people. How the hell are we going to sell ourselves as an attractive alternative to the Protectorate if we—” He couldn’t say it.
Khiruev’s dark eyes were merciless. “It’s not a good option,” she agreed. “But we’re fighting to survive. Inesser’s general has committed a great number of troops to securing the main mining platforms.”
Brezan stared down at the desk. His hands, black-gloved, had clenched into fists, the material straining at his knuckles. Someone has to make the ugly decisions, he thought. He’d volunteered to be that person.
It had seemed so easy, so simple, when he’d first agreed to Cheris’s revolution. Broadcast the new calendar. Let people choose their new governments. But Cheris had vanished, leaving him to oversee the world they’d made together.
Now I know better, Brezan thought.
“High General?” Khiruev said.
“Do it,” Brezan said. The words scratched his throat on the way out. “You know me, I’m not a weapons expert. But you are. Fuck up the orbital platforms. Deny them to Inesser. In particular, we can’t afford for her to resume cindermoth production before we do.” Understatement. Inesser controlled four of them, while Khiruev had ceded the Hierarchy of Feasts to a field general.
“Understood,” Khiruev said. “It’s the sensible decision.”
“You have reservations.” He could tell from the deepened lines around her mouth.
“Who wouldn’t?” Khiruev said. “The day we stop having second thoughts is the day we’ve lost.”
“Pretty words,” Brezan said, “but they won’t do a damn thing for the people who die.”
“It’s war,” Khiruev said. “People always die.”
Brezan made a moue. “I won’t keep you from your job. Burn brightly, General.”
“Burn brightly,” she echoed, and signed off.
FOUR HOURS LATER, after he’d gotten through the meeting with the doctors (fruitless), Brezan was firmly ensconced in a bar in one of the university districts. Brezan had always found that students knew all about cheap ways to get drunk. As head of state, he felt it was incumbent upon him to economize. Despite this, both Lozhoi and Emio conspired to keep him awash in specialty liqueurs. Brezan was weak enough to use them for cooking once in a while (the guest suite boasted a compact kitchen area), mostly because it scandalized his handlers.
Brezan had lost count of the drinks he’d had. He was discovering that the anti-intoxicants that he ingested every day as a matter of course took real determination to defeat. At this point he was starting to feel a pleasant buzz. He meant to continue until he achieved oblivion.
The bar itself sported cheap decor of the sort you could order off anyone with a matter printer, with rococo curlicue designs that probably had a name that someone with a background in art history would recognize. Brezan’s youngest father, a children’s illustrator, almost certainly would have known. Thinking of him put Brezan in a bad mood. Besides Miuzan, no one in his family had contacted him since his so-called promotion. Given how the conversation with Miuzan had gone, that was just as well.
Most of the bar’s clientele seemed to be students, no surprise there. Maybe the occasional instructor or instructor’s aide. By now he’d gotten a better idea of civilian fashion trends in Tauvit and how different people dressed. He’d taken the entirely ineffectual precaution of wearing one of the gaudy embroidered jackets that the locals favored so much.
Brezan’s next drink arrived. He stared at it blearily, then decided it was time to take a piss. His bladder could only take so much of this abuse.
“Watch my drink,” Brezan said to the bearded young man sitting next to him. The young man didn’t deign to acknowledge this and continued chatting up a bored-looking alt about... breeding miniature trees? Not his hobby of choice, but also not his problem.
The restroom in back smelled of overly strong antiseptic. One servitor was hard at work scrubbing someone’s vomit off the floor. Another was removing graffiti, drawn with eyeliner, from the wall.
“Mind if I take a look at that before you get rid of it entirely?” Brezan said to the second servitor, a mothform.
The mothform blinked blue acquiescence and hovered out of the way.
Brezan had a dim awareness that he shouldn’t be drawing attention to servitors in public, and that he had no way of knowing this particular servitor’s affiliation. In the ordinary course of affairs he avoided talking to them, period. General Khiruev was the one who served as liaison to the Kel servitors. She had, however, emphasized to Brezan that just as humans weren’t united, neither were the servitors. Brezan tried not to think too hard about that. In any case, if anyone looked at him funny, he could pretend to be drunk.
The graffiti was written in one of the local low languages. Brezan recognized the script, which was some fancy syllabary. He snapped a photo of it and sent it to his augment for later investigation. While he did have a theoretically secure connection to the governor’s administrative grid, he didn’t want to deal with it right now. And he didn’t trust the city’s public grid at all.
“You going to piss that away?” a voice said from behind Brezan.
Brezan turned around, quelling his instinct to punch out the speaker. Because that would end so well. “What’s it to you?” he said.
The speaker was either a student or faking it very well. He had a cloud of curly hair and an olive complexion complicated either by decorative indigo-dyed scars or some kind of medical condition, Brezan couldn’t tell which. “Well,” the student said, “I thought for a while there you were about to throw up, but you don’t look that drunk.”
“Good to know,” Brezan said.
“What the hell are you doing messing with us in the university district, anyway? We don’t want you here.”
“Yes,” Brezan said dryly, unsurprised that the student had identified him, “a number of you have made that quite clear. Honestly, it made more sense”—he scrabbled for a number—“five drinks ago.”
“Well,” the student said, “then you can buy me one. I’m broke.”
It would at least be a distraction from the moral bankruptcy of his decision four hours past. “Sure,” Brezan said, “why not. Just one moment.”
After he’d relieved his bladder, they sauntered out of the restroom together. Several people arguing about a drama looked up, gave Brezan distinctly hostile stares, then resumed their discussion. Brezan slid his drink across the bar to the student. “I hope you like that stuff,” he said.
“I like anything that’s free,” the student said, and tossed the liqueur back. “Your government’s terrible, has anyone told you that?”
Brezan snorted. “I don’t think anyone thinks it isn’t terrible.” He resisted the urge to add “young man” to the end of the sentence. At fifty-three years, he wasn’t all that old by hexarchate standards, which was part of the problem. Even Lozhoi had decades on him, which made it a miracle that she took him seriously.
“Oh, I don’t think you understand,” the student said. He finished the liqueur. “Do you have any more of this stuff? It’s better than the swill I usually drink.” His scars-tattoos-whatever had now brightened to a dull magenta.