Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)

by Yoon Ha Lee

Jedao’s voice cracked without warning. “My gun. Where did I put my gun? It’s so dark.” Cheris bit back a curse. This had to be a ploy, even though she couldn’t see what an undead general would be getting out of playing a bad joke. “Jedao,” she said, trying to sound composed and failing, “there’s no need –” Not only was the shadow darker than she remembered it being, Jedao’s eyes had flared hell-bright, and the entire room was heavy with darkness like tongues of night licking inward from some unseen sky. Cheris’s mouth went dry as sand. She’d seen combat before, she’d fought before, and all she could do was freeze and stare like a soldier just out of academy. Where was her chrysalis gun? There it was at her waist, that unmoving weight. She had to reach for it, had to unfreeze – “General.” Now Jedao was coolly imperious. “I don’t recognize you, but your uniform is irregular. Fix it.” She had no idea what had caused him to go mad in the first place, no one did, so she had no idea if he was going mad again. She lost a precious second wondering inanely if snapping a salute would mollify him, then unfroze and fumbled for the chrysalis gun. Just in case. The nine-eyed shadow whipped around behind her in defiance of all the laws of geometry it had obeyed until now, and then she knew she was really in trouble. All that time she had spent reading up on her swarm’s high officers and what intelligence they had on the enemy – some of it should have been spent researching Jedao. “You sh...