Authors: Susan R. Matthews
The officer’s subspecialty, in pharmacology. Psycho-pharmacology, but the basics were the same. Settling back in the hammock-slung seat, Koscuisko chanced to glance up at him; what, had he been too quiet, too still?
“Robert. You are suffering. What is the matter, please?” He was suffering. Yes. It was true. He could not look at Megh without rage in his heart for the beast that had fouled her. And the beast was an officer, against whom he could rage all he liked in the quiet of his mind but in whose presence he was a slave.
“It’s hard to look at.” Choking the words out, Robert could only hope Koscuisko understood. And then hoped Koscuisko didn’t understand too much. “Sir. With respect. It’s something about just the fact that she’s Nurail.”
And my sister
. He wanted to say it, and he could not. He had no claim to Megh while he was still Bonded. He could not say. He could not claim her. He could only make generalizations —
“And no one to avenge her, because after all it’s the Lieutenant. Sir. But it cries out for revenge. If it please the officer.”
He knew the uneasy prickling at the back of his neck, the tingling tension in his skull as his governor tried to decide if what he was saying violated his orders and whether he should be punished. But he was speaking to Andrej Koscuisko, and in the presence of Andrej Koscuisko he was safe from the governor. Even from that.
Koscuisko was watching him, wary and measuring; but Koscuisko did not send him away. “Talk to me, Robert. Tell me how it is that she should be avenged. And I will tell you how it would be, on Azanry.”
Pretending that it was an abstract sort of issue, a discussion initiated to pass the time. For the officer’s amusement. Making the words that ached in his heart an obedient answer, nothing treasonous there.
The governor quieted.
“Well. When a man’s done a crime, it’s for him to make up the loss, in the hill country.” Emboldened, he came forward to stand next to the officer, closer to the clear-wall. Where he could watch Megh. Where he could see her. “And killing is one thing, but this
. . .
It’s another. A killing can be made right with a child. But how can it be made right if a man has murdered a woman’s children, in such a way?”
He wasn’t sure he made sense. He knew what he was saying. A killing robbed the weave, and a man could make up for it by making the weave whole with a child of his body. What was more precious to a man than his own childer?
“Robert, you seem to say that if I killed her brother I would make amends by — engaging with her?”
That was it precisely, though to hear the sound of the officer’s voice he could not quite believe it. Robert could only nod, eyes fixed in misery on the scene below. His sister. His Megh. Oh, his poor darling, and naked in front of all of these people, with no one to care that she would feel shamed by it
. . .
“Practical, really. Sir. If you think on it. You’ve got to convince her that you’re really sorry, first.” Children were the wealth of the weave, after all. And that was the bottom of what killing meant, a killing robbed the weave. A weave could be made whole. “But a rape means an injury, if the officer please. And I heard you say. To Doctor Howe, there.”
Oh, careful, careful. How could he say it, and not reproach his officer? Koscuisko, who had been a good maister to him, though neither of them had chosen their roles. Koscuisko would understand. Koscuisko would not reproach him. The officer frowned, watching below.
“I admit I am not hopeful.” Because of the rape, because of the manner of it. Robert could not think. He could barely breathe. “And still it may come out right. It seems odd to me, Robert, that any crime would be worse than a killing, is it indeed so?”
Oh, it was so. It was so exactly. A killing took one life. This thing took the lives that Megh might have had in her, and showed disrespect for a mother’s womb. “In the hill country, your Excellency. Yes. There is no way to make such a crime right.”
Except by killing. Except by killing the man who had done it, and killing his children, and killing his women lest they carried life that had sprung from a man who could do such a crime. And even then killing could not make it right. Killing solved nothing. Killing was a waste.
Killing the Lieutenant —
Robert waited long moments for the governor’s rebuke to punish the thought, unbidden though it was.
There was no rebuke. The governor was silent.
Was it because Robert knew he was right?
“Hill-country Nurail,” the officer said, in a musing sort of voice. “Robert. I wonder. Do you believe he is in blood her brother? Oh, well, never mind. He’ll do as well as any, I suppose. When this is over we to the gardener should go and speak. I have an idea. Because he is a gardener.”
Down in the operating theater the orderlies were moving pieces of surgical equipment back toward the wall. One of the physicians was leaving the room, stripping off the sterile layer of her garment as she went. Two of the orderlies came to the side of the operating level, one to each side, and shook a sterile covering over her naked body, covering her at last. Megh, poor Megh. His sister. His own.
The officer spoke on. “And I have also promised that he could see her, once we were finished. Come along then, Robert. Let us go see Hanner home to his garden. And hope for a greenhouse.”
Whatever that meant.
He had seen his sister. He had spoken his mind, and to Koscuisko who received it with care and respect. He could do nothing about the Lieutenant.
He wasn’t sorry he’d thought it, even so.
###
It was very early in the morning, scarcely sunrise. Sylyphe Tavart stood half-asleep, half in shock at her mother’s side in the front business room, staring at the visitors that had come upon them so suddenly. Security, four of them, all of them tall, and green-sleeves — green piping on their sleeves, bond-involuntaries. So straight, so still, so perfect; and with them was their master.
“I must beg to be forgiven for this untimely intrusion.”
Andrej Koscuisko.
The language was so stiff as to almost be insincere. Coming from any other man, it might have been; but Sylyphe could not imagine anything more perfect than the way in which Koscuisko chose his words. And how he spoke them. “I had not marked the time. And it is my fault to have kept your garden-master, may one hope he could be excused his morning’s work? Because I have kept him up all night.”
Andrej Koscuisko. Slim and elegant in his black uniform, with the dew glittering in his blond hair. He was so fair it was almost unnatural, and if he was not beautiful he was important — more important than any man she’d ever seen so close up.
Her mother stirred in her seat. “It shall be so, your Excellency, since you wish it. But I hardly think you came all of this way simply to make excuses for my gardener. You’ll pardon my saying so.”
Skelern looked white in the face as well, but he was in the sun all day and was not so pale as Koscuisko. Skelern looked tired and worn. He’d been to see his friend in hospital, and Sylyphe had wanted to know all about his friend, but hadn’t been able to quite puzzle out how to ask without giving the wrong impression.
“You are quite right.” Koscuisko smiled a little with his ruddy mouth, tilting his head a bit back on his shoulder. A little to one side. He had a perfect smile. Perfect. “It’s because the young man is a gardener, and our patient is Nurail. I hoped to beg some medication from you. And here I have come at too early an hour. I shall go away.”
It
was
early. Her mother was in her fast-meal wrap and Sylyphe had only put a smock on over her night-dress. It was a very decent smock. But she knew that she was in her night-dress. If Skelern should guess she would die of humiliation: and still she could not bear to leave the room.
“No sense in running an errand twice, your Excellency, and an honor to receive you at any time. Can I offer you something to eat? What could there be in my house for medication that isn’t in hospital stores?”
Sylyphe could hardly stand still, she was so embarrassed. Her mother. Short and plain, and no cosmetics to disguise the pallor of her cheeks, the thin line of her mouth, the weathering of her face. Thin brown hair tied up in the single most unbecoming knot in known Space. And Andrej Koscuisko, dark and dangerous, with an aura that scintillated with the glamour of his craft. Those Bonds. Bound body and soul to the Inquisitor, to do his bidding at his word or suffer the consequences
. . .
“If you will permit, Dame Tavart.” The housemaster had come in with the beverage set, but Koscuisko paid no attention. How could her mother be so gauche as to offer an Inquisitor his fast-meal, in the first place? As if he was a salesman or a business partner, and not a senior Judicial officer with custody of a Writ to Inquire?
“There is an ointment in the pharmaceutical inventory that originated amongst the Nurail hill-people as a simple fatty salve infused with jellericia flowers. I have asked Gardener Hanner, and he says there may be jellericia flowers in your hand to grant, but more than that he very properly declines to say.”
Why would that be? This was confusing. If Skelern had flowers
. . .
because they were her mother’s flowers, perhaps. And Skelern didn’t want them simply taken. That was odd of Skelern, why would he be protective of her mother’s property, when he so much resented being made near-property himself? Why would Skelern care?
“I still don’t understand. The flowers are yours, of course, with all of my goodwill.” Sylyphe thought she knew which flowers, now. They were small and very red. The fragrance was subtle if distinct, and the blooms were difficult to force under artificial light. Skelern had worked very hard on the jellericia flowers. Would Koscuisko appreciate the effort? “If it’s in the inventory there must be near-naturals to substitute, surely.”
It was Andrej Koscuisko who asked for them. An Inquisitor could not easily be denied. “It’s only because the patient is Nurail hill-station, Dame Tavart. Her subconscious mind will recognize the fragrance. It’s very difficult to match with near-naturals. That is the particular reason that I ask. She will know the fragrance and be glad of it, and it will speed her healing.”
It was true that there were fragrances that continued to deny the perfumer’s art. It was a comfort item, then. Sylyphe couldn’t help but wonder why a man of Koscuisko’s rank should stir himself to such an extent for any patient, let alone a woman from the service house.
Sylyphe’s mother nodded one final time, in acceptance or agreement — Sylyphe couldn’t tell which. Rising to her feet, Sylyphe’s mother made her decision known.
“What you have requested shall be yours, your Excellency. I can’t promise you the use of my gardener to assist you, though. I’m sorry, but his labor has been committed to other tasks. Is there someone at the hospital who can make up this ointment for you?”
Koscuisko didn’t answer, not right away. Skelern cleared his throat, and when Koscuisko — raising one eyebrow, and looking as though he was amused at something — looked back over his shoulder toward where Skelern stood in the back of the room, Skelern spoke.
“The Tavart’s lady-daughter knows how to handle the blooms, with the Tavart’s permission. She could do it as well as I, your Excellency, or maybe better; she’s mindful in such matters.”
Sylyphe’s mother stared. Sylyphe could see the color rise in Skelern’s face even from where she stood. She would have blushed herself in sheer vexation to have her intimacy with a mere gardener exposed in so compromising a light before the Inquisitor, except that part of her was glowing with pleasure to hear Skelern’ s praise.
“If the daughter of the house would be graciously pleased to oblige, then,” Koscuisko said, to her, to her directly. “I will be very much obliged to you both. For my patient’s sake. And for your courtesy in receiving me at this early hour.”
“Hanner will give you instruction, then, Sylyphe,” her mother agreed. “And see to it that the kitchen gives him a good hot meal, since he’s been up all night. Gardener Hanner, speak to my daughter, and then go rest yourself. You’re needed at Center House tomorrow in the morning.”
Dismissing her. In front of Andrej Koscuisko, dismissing her, and Hanner with her. But she was to have a job to do that would support the prestige and put forward the agenda of Iaccary Cordage and Textile at least as much as anything Hanner did. It was the first useful thing she’d had to do in a long time.
Andrej Koscuisko bowed to her as she went past him to go out of the room, bowed to her almost as if she had been a grown woman and not just her mother’s daughter. The daughter of the house.
It made up for her smock and her mother’s thin brown hair.
Out of the room and down to the kitchens with Hanner in tow, to be sure that he got a good meal; and walking on air, every step of the way.
Chapter Five
The power was off again tonight as it had been last night. Port Burkhayden ran on hydroelectric power drawn from the tides in the Worrical Bay several eights to the south; but since the Bench had decided to sell the world to the Danzilar prince no maintenance on the saltwater cylinders and the water-gates had been done. The city was subject to brownout and blackout every night: That was what Garol had been told.
It suited Garol’s purpose well enough.
The sky was overcast, and the clouds picked up what little light there was and diffused it over the port. It didn’t make it easier to see where one was going, but it made it very obvious where one’s goal was to be found if one was headed for an area with auxiliary power.
The public-funded. Then the service house.
Garol found his way into the public-funded through an open door at the back of its great silent kitchen. There were orderlies on staff, right enough, nursing a brewer and some trays of hot-breads under makeshift warmers rigged on temporary circuits; Garol went like a shadow or a stray thought, letting a breath of wind catch the half-open door and swing it wide, waiting patiently just beside a sheltering stack of produce-boxes as the orderly swore and cursed and pulled the door more firmly to.
The kitchen was an industrial one, built to serve round-the-clock for a hospital population fully one-half the size of all Burkhayden. The Bench had built up Port Burkhayden for a major commercial center, and relocated a significant population of Nurail to fill out its infrastructure.
It hadn’t quite worked.
The Nurail that could find their way out of Port Burkhayden did, fleeing in small craft across the great dead reaches of the Baltrune vector to Gonebeyond space. Some of them made it, and some of them didn’t, but it made little difference in Port Burkhayden. The result was the same. The port had never prospered since the Bench had made Meghilder a Bench concern.
So the hospital was larger than would be needed for twice Burkhayden’s actual population, and less than the eighth part of its capacity had ever actually been used. The Bench had built the public-funded but lost interest in staffing it once it became clear that the Nurail at Burkhayden were not going to bide quietly and turn to trade. Huge, and stripped now of everything but the most basic equipment, so that the night-kitchen had to use laboratory ovens to warm midnight meals.
The service house was a little less ravaged; a service house had to at least seem well-stocked. But the linen was old, and there was only just enough of it, and nobody had rotated staff for more than a year now. That was hell on morale at a service house. People liked variety.
Garol had reviewed the inventory with the housemaster: all of the standard luxury items, but the Bench had gutted the surveillance systems. The house grid was useless, its coordinator ripped out by some overzealous hand salvaging the chemos from the fire suppression systems, leaving the whole house to rely on the most primitive defenses imaginable.
Firewalls.
Some parts of the system had been recharged, true, but with plain water.
And the fire alarms still worked; or at least Garol had seen no reason why they should not. Maybe it hadn’t even been the Bench; maybe it had been some enterprising Nurail, taking advantage of an opportunity. Fire suppression chemos could be sold. They could be used, too, for fuel if need be, to power an escape across the Baltrune vector.
Now Garol strolled quietly through the silent halls of the hospital, using the light from the emergency exits to navigate. Koscuisko’s people had set up camp in a ward three corridors removed from what portion of the clinic area was in use — to Lieutenant Wyrlann’s clear if unspoken disgust, and Garol’s own unspoken amusement. Wyrlann was at Center House under guard, for his own protection. Garol wasn’t the least surprised that no one wanted to keep him company.
And Koscuisko, having claimed hospital duty as his excuse for staying well clear of Center House and Lieutenant Wyrlann, had followed through with a will. Garol needed to have a word with Koscuisko about that. But just at present he was curious about arrangements. He held a Bench warrant. It was second nature to find out about arrangements.
Garol didn’t know exactly where Koscuisko’s sleeping quarters were. He didn’t need to search long, as it happened. Someone was on watch. And whoever was on watch had company. The sound of voices told Garol where to look.
“It’s only natural to wonder. And I drew the frayed end.”
One of the voices was female, coming from within a bay that ran three open doors along the corridor. The voices were at the far end of the bay. Garol had checked into another such bay on his way here; he knew the layout. Cautiously, he angled his body through the door to see what there was to see.
“I’m not the man to cry you shame for it. But look Chief Stildyne doesn’t catch us gossiping; he’s tender about the officer’s dignity.”
The Nurail troop. Robert St. Clare. There was an inner bay to this ward, and a long hall that paralleled the corridor; St. Clare sat at the doorway to the inner bay. Quite correctly, too. Controlling access.
But Garol wanted in.
“And is it really so simple as that? A man of his nature. One would have thought, surely.”
The woman’s voice faded as Garol retreated down the hall. The ventilation system on these wards was not quarantined; these had originally, been intended for day-clinic areas. Climbing the service stairs to the floor above Garol found the flue-vent, but he didn’t break the vapor seal. Retracing his steps he counted paces till he was as close to his goal as he needed to be. Then he looked around.
“ — shoulders.” There was the intake, and once Garol had got well inside the capacious vent he could hear St. Clare’s voice from below. He could even hear that St. Clare was teasing, just a bit. “But it’s his lady to take the lap-seat, maistress. That’s the way of it when they aren’t Dolgorukij women. Elsewise there’s fear of doing an injury, whilst a man isn’t paying the attention that he naturally ought.”
Wedging himself shoulder and hip in the cross-shaft Garol worked his way down to the room behind St. Clare’s back, where Andrej Koscuisko’s bed was made up. The Security post was through the doorway to Koscuisko’s private room, and the door was only half-open. There was no reason for it to be otherwise. It was no failing on Security’s part; no one could stop a Bench intelligence specialist from getting to where he wanted to go.
And at the same time Garol had particular reasons for wanting Koscuisko’s Security to be alert.
He popped the secure on the vent-screen with a click so subtle that it would not carry across the room, let alone through the door and outside into the hall. As far as he could tell St. Clare had as yet heard nothing; listening to the lady, perhaps. Whoever she was.
“It’s ungallant, surely, to make the woman labor at such work. And still if that is all — there’s nothing to be feared from him, then?”
Free to move around inside the room, now, Garol found the thing he wanted and flipped the lid. The dose-packet that St. Clare had gotten from the orderly, shortly before they’d finished loading the courier. Garol needed some way to signal to Security to step up their surveillance; and at the same time he was curious.
What doses?
Why?
Why carried separately? Why separately delivered?
It was a standard dose-pouch, the preloads registering system integrity on display. Garol tipped a handful of the styli out of the pouch and held them up in the palm of his hand to be close to his face so that he would be able to read the encodes in the dim light.
Not narcotics; and yet under normal circumstances only narcotics or other Controlled List drugs warranted such special handling.
A hypnotic, yes.
Specific for Dolgorukij.
Hypnotics and stimulants and two doses of an antipsychotic psychoactor — the hypnotic was specific, it said so, and if the other drugs were not uniquely prescribed for an Aznir autocrat the dosage levels clearly pointed at some class of hominid whose weight or metabolism exceeded the average index —
Drugs for a sick man, for a man half-mad with conflict and self-loathing. Garol remembered the scene in the loading bay. Psychoactive drugs for a man who was perhaps insane, if only periodically sociopathic.
Exercising his Bench warrant would be an act of kindness, then. Euthanasia. Putting Koscuisko out of his evident suffering.
If only he could be sure about the source —
Carefully, Garol returned the doses to their pouch, making sure to transpose two doses as he did so. The dust should catch someone’s attention. It didn’t need to be anything as obvious as leaving the ventilator’s grid unsecured. Security would sense a discrepancy, and then they would notice the dust Garol had carried into the room from the vent-shaft. Then they would search, and when they searched they would find that the seal of the vent-shaft had been broken, and that someone had been looking at the dose-pouch.
This part of Garol’s mission was accomplished. A quick check of the clinic and a stroll through the shabby halls of the less-than-recently-renovated service house, and he would be ready to go to bed.
To the extent that he’d done what he’d come to do — alert Koscuisko’s security to the potential existence of a hitherto unsuspected problem — he was satisfied.
But the more he learned about Andrej Koscuisko the less he was inclined to credit his Bench warrant.
###
Well past sunset, and the clinic was finally clearing out – not so much because everything that could be done had been done as that it was three eights past curfew and people could no longer safely travel to arrive. Andrej Koscuisko leaned back against the cool edge of an examining table and folded his arms across his duty-smock with a deep sigh of satisfaction and weariness.
He wasn’t used to being worked so hard, so long.
He enjoyed it.
And with any luck it would be the same for him tomorrow. It seemed clear that his name and his Judicial function was not, after all, enough to prevent pragmatic Nurail souls from taking advantage of the opportunity that an extra physician on duty represented for obtaining free medical care.
A knock at the door, and through the long high narrow windows of the examining room Andrej could just make out the balding head of Garol Vogel with a Security escort. What was Vogel doing here? The door swung open; well, he’d find out, then. Or he wouldn’t. Vogel was a Bench intelligence specialist. There was no telling about his ilk.
“Good-greeting, your Excellency, and the evening finds you?”
Polite. Neutral; Vogel only cared to the extent that any ordinary person would care about the health and welfare of a casual acquaintance. Fine as far as Andrej was concerned.
“Very well, thank you, Specialist. The same for you, I hope, and where is Specialist Ivers this evening?”
Vogel stepped into the room and closed the door, leaving it ajar. So that if Andrej was needed he could be got at, Andrej supposed. Good protocol for hospital receiving areas: Bench intelligence specialists were expected to know what the appropriate behavior was under almost any circumstances. It wasn’t a matter of memorizing rites and practices. It was a simple question of common sense, and the intelligence to grasp what was needful.
“Center House, sir. The woman will recover? I heard the technical report but I’m not much good at interpreting it. If you’d summarize for me, your Excellency, I’d appreciate it.”
Fair enough. “The short answer is yes. The long answer is that physical therapy will be required, she may or may not become infertile, and I hope before Heaven that the guesses I had to make about the nature and intensity of her sensory response to sexual stimulus are close to correct. I am favorably impressed with Paval I’shenko, in pulling rank the way that he did. Gardener Hanner for one will be sure to defend my cousin henceforward.”
Vogel grinned, a gesture which suddenly squared his otherwise somewhat round face. “What I like is that that was only part of his reasoning. The rest of it was good old-fashioned decent moral outrage. There isn’t enough of that around, these days.”
No indeed. “And speaking of moral outrage. I believe you may wish to re-inventory pharmacy stores before the rest of Fleet arrives, Specialist. Someone has broken into stores and made very free with some quite expensive medication, and I am sure that Paval I’shenko would regret having to make an issue of the discrepancy.”
Vogel’s expression somehow lacked much of an element of surprise. “I’m shocked, your Excellency. Shocked. This person, you wouldn’t happen to have an idea of who he was or where I might find him, would you?”
As a matter of fact Andrej was tolerably certain that both he and Vogel knew exactly what was going on. “Quite a good notion, actually. Enough of one to know that regrettably the villain cannot be prosecuted. There is no reason why he should not be identified, however. I hardly know what worse Fleet could do to me than it already has.”
Because it was he, himself, Andrej Koscuisko, who had forced the secures and issued the stores. Under the Privilege of the Writ he could not be brought to account for misappropriation of Fleet or Bench stores; nor could any of the subordinate physicians to whom Andrej had released the materials be faulted for simply receiving normal stores in personal ignorance of the exact manner in which release had been authorized.
“Ah,” Vogel said, with an odd little gesture of his chin that was supportive and admonitory at once. “Oddly enough that reminds me. News from Fleet, extension approved, no transfer in the foreseeable.”
Well. It was only as much as he had expected. There was no sense in noticing the voice in his mind that still raged in protest. He was tired: and Vogel was still talking.
“Hoping the news isn’t all bad. Good-night, I’ll be on my — oh. Almost forgot.”
What kind of trick or trap was this, then?
Andrej waited, deeply suspicious.
“The Danzilar prince. I was to tell you particularly. He apologizes for, let me see, what was it, for not greeting you prior to departure. And promises that there is to be dancing at Center House.”