For Honey to Feed Them

[ninefox]

Jedao only somewhat resembles himself. All the footage of him as Heptarch, even the live feeds for the Heptarchs in conference, is edited into a composite of all his doubles, and none of them look quite the same either. Instead of being surgically indistinguishable, they switch variations around from time to time. He rarely attends his official duties in person at all. He gets copied on everything, and his doubles know to cede to his secretaries or to communiqués when necessary.

Instead of forgeries, the Shuos seat under Jedao is a shell game.

When he was twenty-two and terrified out of his mind, it was a way to let people who had a clue what they were doing handle the day-to-day management. Now that he knows exactly what he's doing, it means he can move around with more impunity than most of his predecessors. Jedao could have sent a dozen agents for this. But for a piece this important, he likes to see who he's dealing with in person.

The garish neon-speckled dimness of the bar conveniently obscures everyone's shadows. He isn't even a Shuos here, let alone the Shuos, and Vidona Sinjir doesn't have to be a ray. Something he's needed more and more, lately.

Jedao slides into the seat next to him to puncture that inadequate sanctuary slightly, stealing a sip from Sinjir's drink and making a face.

"Hard day?"

Comments

[drunk_ish]

Once upon a time... Once upon a time, Vidona Sinjir was not a murderer.

No: Velus Sinjir was not a murderer. He was young, and crisp, and loyal, and cold. Like mother, like son, he became Vidona. Crisp and loyal and cold, he rose in the ranks. Crisp and loyal and cold, he mastered the touch, that particular touch, the cleanest sort of murder. Hardly even murder at all: don't we all die, at one time or another, our lives consigned to electronic noise, rippling consequences, maybe a clumsy splash of genetic legacy? At least these people, when they die, are preserved in true, smooth paper. In some distant prehistoric past, paper might have been the only way to preserve someone after they die.

So what if the Vidona hurry them on their way...?

To die by this touch isn't painful, after all. (But Sinjir has inflicted pain, so much pain. He is an artist of pain.)

Crisp and loyal and cold. But he's always seen deep to the cracks in the heart of the Heptarchate, and now those cracks are eating away at him, breaking through to some inconveniently warm core, disloyal, disorganized. To say that he doubts is an understatement. To say that he seethes is more like it. Stingray shifting in sand -- once he thought that meant that he would always dig for the truth. Now he thinks it means he's caught in an ever-changing tide, the ground dissolving even as it buries him.

Once, he wasn't a murderer. Yesterday, he drew his fingers up the cheek of a dissident, and felt the texture of soft skin turn to soft corpsepaper. He folded it into a bird, halfway in flight, wings mid-beat. It isn't quite appropriate for the Remembrance, but it's not far enough off that it will cause anything but a bit of gossip.

He stares moodily at the glass.

Then, suddenly, he's staring moodily at a bit of bar formerly under the glass.

He shifts his moody stare at the culprit.

"No," he says. The day wasn't hard, it was... sharp. Wobbly. Sharp and wobbly, yes. He reclaims the drink. "Go away." He sort of hopes the man disobeys, and sort of hopes he doesn't. Apparently Sinjir is a bit sharp and wobbly as well.