Kel Gized

**Kel Gized** was a Kel soldier who served as chief of staff to General Shuos Jedao. She is seen in Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem, as well as the flashfic An Evening's Offering.

## Appearance

Gized had dark brown skin, short-cropped gray hair, a round, bland face, and an untidy, shockingly pale scar along the side of her head. Her interest in literary technique was an oddity among the Kel.

## History

Attending an Andan flower-viewing party, Gized criticized an Andan functionary's poetry to his face, impressing Jedao, who asked her for a duel when she was done. She was bored rather than upset by losing the duel, having come to the party to enjoy herself. Jedao later chose her as his chief of staff on the strength of her excellent administrative skills. He challenged her to numerous games over the years, usually winning, and she played along while behaving as though she thought them a waste of time.

After Jedao was raped by Heptarch Shuos Khiaz at another gathering, Gized followed him to the bathroom where he had gone to contemplate suicide, threatened to shoot the lock if he didn't let her in, and practically charged in when he opened the door. Seeing his condition, she risked a treason charge by insisting that what the heptarch had done to him was wrong, and, unusually addressing him by his first name only, demanded his gun and knife, saying that he could court-martial her when she returned them in the morning. When he finally complied, she told him they were going back to barracks, where he was going to spend the night beating her at jeng-zai, and, with an aside about how little she cared whether anyone was watching them leave early, offered to tell him the worst Kel jokes she knew, starting with "How many Kel does it take to dig a latrine?"

She continued this pattern of behavior later in his career, showing up unexpectedly at his vacation suite in a floral shirt with whisky and an offer to see how drunk he'd have to be to beat her at jeng-zai. During her visit, she reminded him of an incident when he'd been trying to teach Kel Gwe Pia how to jury-rig a grenade and ended up needing a partial facial reconstruction.

She served with Jedao on the fangmoth One Card Too Lucky during the action against the Lanterners, an engagement she had thought would be straightforward but was not. When he remarked that High General Kel Anien owed him a jeng-zai debt, she interrupted the logistical tables she was running to ask if he played games just to blackmail people. Later, when Jedao, on orders from Kel Garit, ordered the swarm to open fire on the Lanterners' children, she obeyed without blinking, as had he.

Gized served with Jedao at Hellspin Fortress. Though she was never a fast thinker, she was analytical and would not have considered him above suspicion if given ten more minutes. Jedao shot her in the side of the head with his Patterner 52 before shooting the other Kel, Gwe Pia and Jiang, who were in the command center with them. Afterwards, seeing her dead, he could not remember her name. For the next half-hour, he wandered the ship wondering why she didn't answer his signal, unable to understand what he'd done or recognize her with the hole in her head.

## Trivia

* Although Jedao told Cheris he shot Gized in the side of the head and the memory he passed on to Cheris corroborated his account, video footage of the massacre showed Gized with a bloody hole in the center of her forehead, suggesting that Jedao fired at an angle and the central hole was an exit wound.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
4. ↑ An Evening's Offering
5. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
6. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
7. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
8. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
9. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12, 15
10. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
11. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 11