Chapter 3.2: Old and new friends, old and new enemies

[zuhrovet]

Sasha has distributed flutes of sparkling water and small glasses filled with a clear liquor. She finds a clear place to stand near the edge of the party--Jedao and Alaric are to her left, the cluster of people around the mothlings falls at about 3π/8--and signals the grid to adjust the light so that she is highlighted and the other partygoers are very slightly in shadow. She asks the grid for a ringing sound and waits for people to quiet. Her voice slightly amplified by the grid, she says, "Welcome, everyone. We have a unique combination of expertise, on the Cantata. I'm glad that you are here." (It's a formal situation, so she uses the plural 'you'.) "While we are gathered, let us toast to the success of the rebellion."

Sasha waits for an answering murmur, then raises her own glass and knocks it back. The liquor tastes like snow and homesickness; but these are her people now. A slight gesture of her left hand makes illumination linger on Jedao for a moment, before the room lights return to normal.

Sasha sees Remi trying to explain that shot glasses are not for mothlings, and grins in genuine amusement.

[We have some really fascinating conversations running in the previous move. I don't want to cut them off, but please put new threads here!

Also, an out-of-character public service announcement: Remi is a youthful, apparently non-sociopathic version of Kujen, plucked from an earlier timeline. He has not yet interacted with Jedao.]

Comments

a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

Sasha leads Jedao toward the door she has created. It opens on a small room, with low benches and tables hastily extruded. Sasha has placed a second door at the far right; she suspects Jedao shares her feelings about rooms with one exit. She sits, breaks her sanbosak apart experimentally--predictably, it is made of carbs filled with carbs--and looks at Jedao. "Tell me what's happening. Unless you would prefer to wait for Reshad?"

[n.b.: at this point I am just making fun of everyone who has ever spurned my cooking in favor of their workout plan.]

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

Jedao has left the earlier plate of cake from his encounter with Alaric behind. His gaze flickers to the second door, then back to Sasha. "I think it couldn't hurt to have another perspective," he says, "in case I am badly mistaken, but it is you I'm sworn to."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

Sasha is so focused on Jedao, she is no longer seeing the rest of the room. "Tell me, then. What is going on?"

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

Jedao squares his shoulders. "Your Nirai Remi," he says, "bears an uncanny resemblance to a video clip I saw of the Nirai I used to...work with, before you spirited me away, in his original incarnation. I heard Remi speak. It's the same inflections, the same intonations. They move the same way. Perhaps it's a coincidence. I am not sanguine about the situation, but I thought I should bring it to your attention."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad has just extricated herself, and comes more quickly that she'd like to the room. Signaling urgency won't help anything - but neither will missing crucial information.

She admits herself to the little room, water flute still in hand.

"Your co-conspirator," she says. The one he's terrified of. One he overthrew as soon as he thought he could. Thinking fast, she closes her eyes.

"Is there some way your Nirai would betray himself? Some reaction he should have, to something said or done by someone other than you?"

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

"Let's start with, what was this Nirai's name, and when was he from?"

He isn't, actually, Jedao's. Or vice versa.

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

Jedao has gone very still and blank. "Hexarch Nirai Kujen. I don't know if that was always his name. When I met him, in my time, he was already a few centuries old. From the mid-300s, if I'm not mistaken."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

So the timeline is consistent.

Sasha keys a quick instruction on her tablet, then asks, "What do you know of this hexarch's early life?"

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad closes her eyes and thinks, face gone still. A Hexarch - well, they would anger all of them, eventually.

Now, if she could recall anything about this particular one. But... "That's not a name I know," she murmurs. "And if he'd been alive that long... There should have been something." Particularly in association with the Immolation Fox.

Jedao was taken before his most famous atrocity. She can only hope that this Kujen was as well - but that renders neither man harmless. So she listens, absorbing information as best she can.

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

"Kujen's early life?" Jedao says. "He was reticent about his childhood. He was a refugee on some world assimilated by the heptarchate in his childhood. I don't know specifics, not even the name of the world. He worked with Heptarch Nirai Esfarel at one point. Beyond that...he liked to tell stories about worlds he'd seen, and wars, but I don't know how much of it was invention." A pause, then, in a very neutral tone: "He was an excellent dancer. Both solo dances and partnered dances, lead or follow. He preferred to lead."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

The stars of hell burn whiter than white.

"We retrieved Remi from the year 361. He was a refugee as a child--he told me about foraging for food. He is a dancer. He is also, in my experience, an intensely moral person."

Sasha speaks slowly, watching for Jedao or Reshad to shift out of stillness. "I expect you are correct, and this is some form of the same person. Not just from these coincidences of biography, but because Quill sent us to retrieve him. She gave us a young and feckless version of the future Hexarch Mikodez, as well. And she involved the rebellion in your own timeline. What happens, then, if we are both right? If Remi is a person who could become our enemy, but is now our ally?"

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

Sasha fidgets with her tablet, still watching Jedao closely.

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[hoardingpearls]

Stones on a board, the pattern not yet complete. The territory not yet enclosed; time, then, for the pieces within to intercept. To break the line, before the terrain shifts and it becomes impossible. But thoughts of what Quill might be doing can be saved for another time.

"What happens, then, if we are both right? If Remi is a person who could become our enemy, but is now our ally?"

The same situation as Jedao: holding on to someone whose capacity for threat is well beyond estimate. "Then, we may need to know what sort of a person he could become." The words are dry; her tone is concerned, and she's looking with worry at Jedao. "It may not have to be tonight - unless you assess the danger to be urgent."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

"If I thought it were so urgent as to endanger you [1] immediately"--Jedao's eyes are inscrutable--"I would have dealt with the matter myself, despite the cost. You're asking whether to extend to him the courtesy you did to me, given what I did in my future. Short-term strategy I'd say get rid of him. Longer-term he might well be an asset, and given Kujen's skill at mathematics and technology, he's a more important one than I'll ever be. Tacticians are as common as flowers in the field, after all. Even the version of him that I knew, I judged a useful ally, although a perilous one." Brief pause, then: "If this is before he gains the ability to jump into new bodies when he's killed, then it wouldn't be that difficult to kill him if he does prove treacherous. The Kujen I knew was, not to put too fine a point on it, terrible at combat."

[1: NOTE: When Jedao says "you," the fact that the high language doesn't inflect for number makes it ambiguous as to whether he means "all of y'all" or "you, Sasha specifically."]

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[hoardingpearls]

And now she's watching Sasha.

Clearly, Jedao and this Nirai are capable of working together; just as clearly, it might be a bargain with an event horizon.

"Is there a way to tell? Aside from the obvious." Killing people, even experimentally, is an extreme resort.

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

Jedao eyes Reshad, and for a moment his eyes are flat, dark, a killer's eyes. "Not that I'm aware. I found out the obvious way. I didn't see any point in repeating the experiment, because he threatened to jump into me next. I didn't want to find out if it was a bluff."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

Sasha has no gift appropriate for the saint of vines. Not that it's useful to give presents to abstract principles, just, where the fuck does one go for guidance on an undying ghost, if not to the three-faced saint?

"Remi is not sworn to me, but I am responsible for him." Silver and copper, twisted up together. And Jedao will fucking owe her, if he hurts him. "This Kujen, he is immortal because he takes many bodies, each in turn? What happens to the other minds? And is there a limit, in how far he can jump?"

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[hoardingpearls]

Jedao's face changes in a chilling pattern, and Reshad nods slowly, once. Yes; she knows what he did. And that he's willing to sacrifice his own, does he think it necessary. To kill this questionable ally for the purpose of an experiment - well, it saves her asking where some of the knowledge came from.

She is not one to point fingers, or recoil in horror. Not when her own hands were sullied well before Sasha and Quill and a rebellion with ideas about moths, if not to the catastrophic extent that his have been.

Not when all her guesses about Jedao's relationship with authority point to horrors.

"No, that's a risk best avoided." Possession by erstwhile ally - how strange, to think of that as something outside the realm of fiction. (He could be lying; he has no reason to lie to them.)

Sasha's question strikes her as remarkably cold-blooded; not what she'd expect, if what she's considering is a remote, unwarned death. That seems unusual, and so Reshad refrains from comment or even reaction to the thought. The quieter you are, the more you are able to hear.

"Is there a ...backup?" The question feels foolish, when asking about a living being. Or an unliving one, like something from a horror-tale, but it's exactly those tales that inspire the question: somewhere, for all she knows, is a goose egg hidden in a turtle, hidden in a pond.

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

Jedao's attention goes back to Sasha when she mentions that Remi is hers: "Understood. Kujen told me once that most people whom he possessed went mad in short order, and he kept a 'supply' of compatible 'bodies.' He was powerful enough to arrange that, I suppose. I don't know the specifics. Sometimes he shared a body with someone long-term. As for the range, short of an empirical test I don't know."

A pause after Reshad's question, then: "I'm not sure what kind of backup you mean. I will say that it's not impossible Kujen wasn't the only one with the ability, but he guarded his secrets jealously. It was actually one of the reasons I negotiated with him, after he showed up and accused me of high treason in person."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

Oh, that is a binding full of thorns, to give your body over and to know that it is taken. But there is no reason not to strike against this enemy. Between Alaric and Remi's own knowledge, they can find a way to hurt him.

There is a clarity, in knowing one's opponents.

"We will speak to Remi, and assess his truthfulness. Is there assurance that you require, beyond my word?"

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

"Your word is assurance enough," Jedao says without hesitation.

[Jedao is used to having to make snap decisions about people and maaaaaaybe also has a reckless side.]

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

"Good." It does feel good, aligning thought and action, in this very narrow moment.

"Jedao, I want a written report from you on Kujen's powers, known and estimated, by end of day tomorrow. The science team will have insight that you or I do not. Reshad, I'll want Sulen and Ione with Remi, and--I think Xiulan?" That leaves Seyli to watch Jedao. Sasha can message them if she needs to, which is easier than looking at them. Eight hells. "If you don't mind? I'm going to make this room a little larger."

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[hoardingpearls]

Not understanding the question doesn't mean a negative answer, but Sasha's request for a full report on Kujen's abilities should cover it. Reshad drops the subject for now. "I'd like to see that report," she adds.

And the collection of other people seems a task for her. When there are two sources who can't work together, the effective agent does not force the issue. "Ready to go back out there?" she asks Jedao.

"I'll try and keep some distance between you and him." And if she can, prevent a clean line of sight.

[Another post coming shortly; wanted to keep this one from extreme length.]

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[yhlee]

Jedao nods at Sasha. "Understood. I'll have that report for you and Reshad by tomorrow morning."

[Could I ask for a clarification of what Reshad means by her question? Jedao might be able to figure it out, but I am not that smart.]

"I should probably get some food into myself," Jedao says amiably to Reshad, as though nothing out of the ordinary was discussed.

Re: a quiet room - paging Jedao and Reshad

[hoardingpearls]

[Of course! Alternately, make her be clearer in character, it's good for her.

She leaped from "can't be killed if he can take a new body" to "can maybe be killed if there isn't a new body" to "what if he's got a secret hidey hole somewhere and can reach out at will?" In short, Reshad is spooked and thinking up worst cases.

Hence, lich tales where the bad guy might have hidden his heart in a goose egg.

Edit: in the interest of readability, making a new thread.]