Conservation of Shadows (35 page)

Many of the reports compared the pilots’ strategy in the game to actual engagements. Ling Yun had skimmed these earlier, because of all the unfamiliar names and places—the Serpent’s Corridor, the Siege of Uln Okh, the Greater Vortex—but now she added up the ashworlders’ estimated casualties and felt ill. They had lost their own Shang Yuans. She doubted that the general would stop until they lost many more.

Ling Yun had been right. The ashworlders were desperate, to send children.

Something else that interested her was the rate of replenishment. In the game, you could build new units to replace the ones you had lost. The five pilots kept losing dragons. Over the course of the game, the rate at which the game permitted them to build new dragons dropped slowly but significantly. Based on the general’s remarks, Ling Yun was willing to bet that this was based on actual intelligence about the Dragon Corps’ attrition rate.

It was too bad she couldn’t ask her uncle, who had probably helped plan the general’s grand attack. Her uncle had once told her that, so far, the ashworlds had held their own because they had a relatively large number of dragon pilots. Metal was not nearly as unstable an element as fire; people who worked almost exclusively with metal did not self-destruct quite as regularly.

It was no coincidence that each colony sent an assassin, and also no coincidence that the Phoenix General had kept all of them captive. Five was an important number, one that Ling Yun had taken for granted until Periet told her that the key was
six.

The empire, with its emphasis on tradition, had accepted the sages’ cycle of five elements since antiquity, even after it founded Colony One and Colony Two in the vast reaches of space. But what of space itself?

Numbers were Ling Yun’s domain as much as they were any musician’s. Now she knew what to do.

Ling Yun’s head hurt, and even the tea wasn’t going to keep her awake much longer. Still, she felt a quiet glow of triumph. She had finished the suite, including the sixth piece. The sixth piece wasn’t for the
wuxian qin
at all. It was meant to be hummed, or whistled, like a folk melody or a child’s song, like the music she had wanted to write all her life.

There was no place in the empire for such music, but she didn’t have to accept that anymore.

If the toy glider had a song, it would be this one, even if the glider was broken. It was whole in her mind. That was what mattered.

Five strings braided together were coiled in her jacket sleeve, an uncomfortable reminder of what she was about to do.

Ling Yun wrote a letter on the tablet and marked it urgent, for the general’s eyes only:
I must speak to you concerning the
five assassins.
Her hand shook and her calligraphy looked unsteady. Let the general interpret that however he pleased.

A handful of moments passed. The character for
message
drew itself in the upper right corner. Ling Yun touched the tip of her brush to it.

The general’s response was, simply:
Come.

Shaking slightly, Ling Yun waited until her escort arrived. Under her breath, she hummed one of the variations from Mesketalioth’s piece. In composing the suite, she had attuned herself to the pilots and their cause, but she did this by choice.

Be awake,
she urged him, urged all the young pilots.
Be prepared.
Would the music pluck at the inner movements of their souls, the way it happened in the stories of old?

The escort arrived. “You are dedicated to work so long into the night,” the taller of the two soldiers said, with every appearance of sincerity.

“We do what we can,” Ling Yun said, thinking,
You have no idea.
People thought musicians were crazy, too. Perhaps everybody looked crazy to someone.

After tonight, she was going to look crazy to everyone, assuming Phoenix Command allowed the story to escape.

The Phoenix General met her in a different room this time. It had silk scrolls on the walls. “They’re pretty, aren’t they?” he said. Ling Yun was eerily reminded of Periet looking at her glider. “Some of them are generations old.”

One of the scrolls had crisp, dark lines. Ling Yun’s eyes were drawn to it: a phoenix hatching from a
wei qi
stone. “You painted that,” she said.

“I was younger,” the general said, “and never subtle. Please, there’s tea. Your profile said you preferred citron, so I had them brew some for us.”

The citron smelled sweet and sharp. Ling Yun knew that if she tasted it, she would lose her nerve. But courtesy was courtesy. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

She held the first five movements of the dragon suite in her head, to give her Wu Wen Zhi’s fixity of purpose and Ko’s relaxed mien, Mesketalioth’s reflexes and Periet’s hidden ferocity, and Li Cheng Guo’s quick wits.

The braided silk strings slipped down into Ling Yun’s palm. She whipped them around the Phoenix General’s neck. He was a large man, but she was fighting with the strength of six, not one. And she was fighting for five ashworlds rather than one empire.

As the Phoenix General struggled, Ling Yun tightened the strings. She fixed her gaze upon the painting of the hatching stone.

Ling Yun had been the Phoenix General’s creature. The phoenix destroyed itself; it was only fitting that she destroy him.

It would only occur to her later that it had begun with the general assassinating the ashworlders’ leader, that justice was circular.

Now I know what it is like to kill.

There was—not happiness, precisely, but a peculiar singing relief that the other was dead, and not she. She let go of the strings and listened to the thump as the general’s body hit the floor.

The door crashed open. Wen Zhi and Periet held pistols. Wen Zhi’s was pointed straight at Ling Yun.

Ling Yun looked up, heart thudding in her chest. She pulled her shoulders back and straightened. It turned out that she cared to die with some dignity, after all. “Make it quick,” she said. “You have to get out of here.”

Ko showed up behind the other two; he had apparently found a cord to tie his braid. “Come
on,
madam,” he said. “We haven’t any time to waste.”

“So you were right,” Wen Zhi said to him, sounding irritable. “The musician took care of the general, but that doesn’t guarantee that she’s an ally.”

“Is this really the best time to be arguing?” Periet asked, with an air of,
Have you ever known me to be wrong?

The other girl lowered her pistol. “All right, Perias. Are you coming with us, Musician?”

It was unlikely that Ling Yun’s family would ever forgive her, even if she evaded capture by the imperial magistrates. She hurried after the pilots, who seemed to know exactly where they were going. “Perias?” she asked Periet, hoping that she might get an answer where Phoenix Command had not.

“Was the sixth one,” Mesketalioth said without slowing down.

“What exactly is your plan for getting out of here?” Ling Yun said diffidently, between breaths. “We’ll be hunted—”

“You of all people have no excuse to be so slow-witted,” Cheng Guo called back. He was at the head of the group. “How do you think we got here?”

“All we need is a piece of sky,” Periet said yearningly. She struck the wall with the heel of her hand.

I was right,
Ling Yun thought. The edges of her vision went black; the reverberations sounded like a great gong.

Mesketalioth caught her. His arm was steady and warm. “Next time, a warning would be appreciated,” he said, deadpan as ever.

The wall split outwards.
Metal cuts wood.

“Let’s fly,” Periet said. A great wind was blowing through the hallway. They stepped through the hole in the wall, avoiding the jagged, broken planks. Above them, stars glittered in the dark sky.

“The void is the sixth element,” Ling Yun said, looking up.

Five dragons manifested in a half circle, summoned through the void, white black blue yellow red. In the center, tethered to the red dragon by shimmering cables, was an unpainted glider. The sleek curves of its fuselage reminded Ling Yun of her zither.

“See?” Ko said. “I told you we’d fix it.”

“Thank you,” Ling Yun said, overwhelmed. They had written her into the game after all.

“It only works if there’s six of us,” Cheng Guo said. “You’re the sixth pilot.”

Mesketalioth helped Ling Yun into the glider’s cockpit. “When we release the cables,” he said, “follow Cheng Guo. He understands glider theory best, and he’ll safely keep you on the void’s thermal paths.” Despite the scars, his expression was almost kind.

“It’s time!” Wen Zhi shouted from her white dragon. There were now ten red marks on it. “We have to warn the seedworlds.”

Soldiers shouted from the courtyard. A bolt glanced from one dragon in a shower of sparks. Mesketalioth’s dragon reared up and laid down covering fire while Wen Zhi’s dragon raked the ground with its claws. The soldiers, overmatched, scattered.

Then they were aloft, all six of them, dragons returning to the sky where they had been born.

Ling Yun spared not a glance backwards, but sang a quiet little melody to herself as they headed for the stars.

War Season

In space there are no seasons, and this is true too of the silver wheels that are humanity’s homes beyond Earth and the silver ships that carried us there. In autumn there are no fallen leaves, and in spring, no living flowers; no summer winds, no winter snow. There are no days except our own calendars and the stars’ slow candles in the dark.

The Network has known only one war, and that war ended before it began.

This is why, of course, the Network’s ships trapped in q-space—that otherwhere of superpositions and spindrift possibilities—wield waveform interrupters, and why, though I was Rachel’s friend, I killed her across several timelines. But the tale begins with our final exam, not my murders.

The Test

You are not required to answer this question.

However, the response (should you attempt one) will be evaluated. If you decide otherwise, key in “I DECLINE.” The amount of time you spend will be evaluated. You cannot proceed to the next item without deciding, and there will be no later opportunity.

Your time remaining is: —:—:—

In her essay “The Tyranny of Choice and Observation,” Shinaai Rei posits a “black abacus” that determines history’s course by “a calculus of personalities and circumstances, cause and effect and chance.” (You are not expected to be familiar with this work; the full text is restricted.)

In light of this, under what circumstances is war justified? What about assassination? Consider, for example, Skorzeny’s tactics during World War II, police actions against the Candida Rebellion, and more recently, terrorists’ sabotage of relay stations. You may cite current regulations and past precedents to support your answer.

As you do, remember the following points:

1. During the 76.9 years (adjusted time) that the Pancommunications Network has been in place, no planet- or station-born conflict has found expression in realspace.

2. Because your future duty as a Network officer requires absolute reliability, treason is subject to the death penalty.

3. “
Reductio ad absurdum
is one of a mathematician’s finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but the mathematician offers the game.”—G.H. Hardy (1877-1947)

The Results

57% of that year’s class declined the question, or so they thought. The computers recorded every keystroke and false start for further analysis. Of those who did respond, the ratio of essay length to time taken (after adjustments for typing speed) matched the predicted curve.

Rachel was the exception. Her answer took 5.47 minutes to compose (including one self-corrected typo) and three sentences to express.

The records knew her as Rachel Kilterhawk. Her comrades in command training knew her as the Hawk. In later times and other lives, they would call her Rachel the Ruthless. Neither of us guessed this when we first met.

White: Queen’s Gambit

Rachel was one of the first to leave the exam. Her cadet’s uniform was creased where she had bent over the keyboard, and even now her hands shook.
I did what I could,
she thought, and set her mind on other things: the spindles of growing plants, the taste of thrice-recycled water, the cold texture of metal . . . the sea, from her one visit to Earth, with its rush of foam and salt-sprinkled breezes.

She went to hydroponics, where water warbled through the pipes and the station’s crops grew in identical green rows, a spring without end. In a corner of the garden she picked out a bench and sat with her legs drawn up, her hands on her knees. Nearby was a viewport—a viewscreen, actually, filtering the stars’ radiation into intensities kinder to human eyes.

After a while her hands stopped trembling, and only then did she notice the other cadet. He had dark hair and darker eyes, and where her uniform was rumpled, his was damp with sweat. “Do you believe in angels?” he asked her.

Rachel blinked. “Not yet. Why?”

He gestured at the viewscreen, tracing unnamed constellations and the pale flash of an incoming ship’s q-wave. “It must be a cold thing to die in space. I like to think there are angels who watch over the ships.” The boy looked away and flushed.

She gazed at the fingerprints he had left on the screen. “Angels’ wings.”

It was his turn to blink. “Pardon?”

“The q-waves,” she said. “Like wings.”

He might have laughed; others often did, when Rachel with her quicksilver thoughts and quiet speech couldn’t find the right words. She was startled when he rubbed his chin, then nodded. “Never thought of it that way.” He smiled at her. “I’m Edgar Kerzen. And you?”

She returned his smile with one of her own. “Rachel.”

Dawning realization: “You’re the Hawk. No one else would’ve torn through the exam like that.”