Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee Read Free Book Online

the names and dates of the battlefields that had claimed their lives.
    Every soldier rose at her entrance, spoons and chopsticks clinking as they set them down. Cheris paused long enough to return the honor, and smiled with her eyes. Lieutenant Verab was sober-faced as always, but Ankat returned the expression with a sardonic grin. Ready to tell the officers’ table a brand-new Kel joke, no doubt. He had a better repertoire than anyone she’d ever met. Then she headed to her seat at the center of the officers’ table, and indicated that they should sit again.
    The communal cup was waiting for her. It was lacquered red and graven with maple leaves, and someone had refilled it nearly to the brim. Verab, who sat at her right, passed her the cup. He looked very tired, and she lifted an eyebrow at him. He shrugged slightly: nothing important. She didn’t challenge the lie. Cheris felt tired herself, knowing the news she was going to have to break to him, and to the rest of her company. Schooling her expression to calm, she took one sip. The water was sweet and cool, yet she felt it ought to be bitter.
    She had a bowl of rice, and the communal platters had familiar fare: fish fried in rice flour and egg and leaves of sage, pickled plums, quail eggs with sesame salt. Some fresh fruit had been saved for her. Verab was mindful of her love for tangerines, a sometime luxury; plus he didn’t care for them himself. She looked at the food and thought about all the meals she had shared with these people, the times she had dragged herself out of a battle knowing that soon she would be able to sit down with them and eat the food they ate, and listen to the Kel jokes that she really wasn’t offended by, even though she sometimes pretended to be as a joke in itself, and comfort herself with the voices of those who had made it through. All of that was about to end.
    “I have bad news,” Cheris said. “They’re breaking up the company.”
    They were staring at her, even Verab, who should have guessed. “Doctrine,” he said. His voice cracked. Verab was fifth-generation Kel. His family would take it hard.
    “You may be able to serve again, some of you,” Cheris said, aware of the inadequacy of her words, “but that depends on the magistrates’ assessments. I’m sorry. I don’t have details.”
    “Kel luck is always bad,” Lieutenant Ankat said. He was about to make a joke of his own, she could tell, sheer anxiety. She looked at him, hard, and he swallowed whatever it had been.
    “It’s duty,” Cheris said. Right now duty seemed arid. “I am not to go with you. They have another use for me.”
    A murmur rippled up and down the table, quickly quelled. They knew the euphemisms, too.
    They weren’t looking forward to the future. Most of them would lose Kel tradition and formation instinct. They might remember the mottoes and formations, but the mottoes would give them no more comfort, and the formations would no longer have any potency for them.
    “Good luck where you’re going then, sir,” Ankat said, and Verab murmured his agreement. He didn’t believe this had just happened. She could tell by the stricken look in his eyes.
    “I would hear your names and dates of service,” she said quietly. It would make all of this real, and the ceremony would give them something to hold onto, even if that something wasn’t precisely comfort. “All of you. Acknowledge.”
    “Sir,” they said in one voice. Ankat looked down at his hands, then back at her.
    It was not the formal roll call. They had no drum, no fire, no flute. She would have included those things if she could. But even the servitors had heard her. They stopped what they were doing and arranged themselves in a listening posture. She nodded at them.
    They started with the most junior soldier – Kel Nirrio, now that Dezken was dead – and ascended the ladder of rank. Nobody ate during the recital. Cheris was hungry, but hunger could wait. She didn’t need to commit