Hour of Judgement (12 page)

The message was unexpected, and took Andrej by surprise.

Dancing?

Had he even thought about dancing, at any time that he could call to mind, over the past eight years?

And Shiki — his cousin Paval I’shenko — and he had been widely acknowledged as quite good dancers, when they’d been younger. Before Andrej had gone off to school. Paval I’shenko had always been on the lookout for opportunities to test himself against Andrej, and see who would clear the floor in triumph this time.

He was doomed.

“I have not danced so much as a miletta since I came to Fleet.” And Paval I’shenko would know that. Andrej could trust his cousin to be thinking, every moment. “Still less anything more strenuous. I have only two chances.”

One, he had not danced, but he had learned to fight; and perhaps some part of the two skill-sets would prove to be more closely related than he would have thought them.

Or, two, that his cousin the prince Paval I’shenko Danzilar might sprain his ankle, and it would not be an issue.

“Sir?” Vogel was waiting, politely. But Andrej was tired. If Vogel wanted to know he could just bring his own special Bench intelligence specialist skill-set to bear on the issue. Though — it suddenly occurred to Andrej — if he could enlist Vogel’s help, might Vogel not find a way to engineer the spraining of an ankle, to the preservation of the dignity of a Judicial officer?

No.

Perhaps not.

“Earthquake or flood, Specialist Vogel, because nothing less will keep my cousin from his darshan. I am going to bed. You will excuse me. I do not invite you, it is nothing personal.”

He needed to get to bed, because he wanted to be able to open the clinic as soon as curfew lifted in the morning, which was about an eight before sunrise. Vogel bowed.

“Of course. Good rest, your Excellency. I’ll see you at the party, if not before.”

There was no reason to suppose otherwise. Was there? There was something in Vogel’s voice, something in Vogel’s bow that half-convinced Andrej of the existence of some secret.

Well, if it was a secret, then that was what it would have to remain.

“And you, Specialist. If you would call for my gentlemen on your way out, please.”

Alone in the room now Andrej unfastened his smock and bundled it into the laundry-drawer. The laundry-drawer already contained a discarded smock; it made Andrej wonder whether the hospital was in a position to be able to afford to keep a decent linen schedule.

Robert came in with Andrej’s over-blouse and a load of toweling over one arm. If there were towels, didn’t that mean that the laundry was running?

“Thank you, Robert.” Andrej didn’t need help to get dressed. But accepting help was part of accepting the fact that Robert elected to offer it, since Robert knew that body-service was something Andrej considered strictly optional for bond-involuntaries. “I don’t know if I have the energy to wash. Perhaps I will rather bathe in the morning. Is there of rhyti a flask for me in quarters?”

Holding the door open for Andrej as he went out Robert shook his head, with great determination. “Na, the officer is mistaken. You want your wash in now, sir. Truly. And quarters are being shifted.”

Years ago when they had all been much younger, Robert St. Clare had suffered through the ordeal of the prisoner-surrogate exercise at Fleet Orientation Station Medical to win a reduction of his Bond. Robert had not failed; but the trial had failed, and over the space of several days Robert had lived in an agony both physical and spiritual awaiting the formal declaration of the sentence of his punishment — which was clearly understood by all as amounting to a sentence of death by slow torture.

During that time, the ferocious stress levels Robert had endured bad forced the calibration of his governor to one side in some manner. Robert’s governor had never been quite right in all of the time that Andrej had known him since. But as long as it was wrong in the right direction Andrej didn’t care.

Now as always Robert spoke to him more freely than any of the other Bonds, quite clearly and distinctly telling him what to do.

Andrej would comply with Robert’s instructions, of course. Instruction received was instruction implemented, for bond-involuntaries at least, and since it was that way for bond-involuntaries Andrej saw no reason why he should refuse to grant obedience as he was given obedience.

The obedience he was owed by his Bonds could be said to be a simple question of the fact that the governor forced it, on the face of it. Andrej knew better. The obedience he was granted by his bond-involuntaries was given him as freely as even a man enslaved could choose to make a gift instead of paying a debt.

“Shifted, Robert? What was wrong with quarters, that we should shift?”

They were dark and depressing, true. As vacant and empty as any abandoned ward. But wasn’t one abandoned ward much the same as any other?

Robert sounded serious now — for perhaps so long as three eighths. “Security issue, your Excellency. We think we had a visitor while quarters were empty. The ventilation system can be compromised. Pyotr’s shifting for prudence’s sake — ”

Robert had led him down a long hall that led into a communal showers. Only a portion of the showers were apparently in use: the majority of the walls and floors and drains were bone-dry, with the powdery fragrance of concrete on a humid day.

“ — and here’s a sauna for you. I’ve taken the liberty. I’ll take your boots, sir.”

And rest-dress by implication would be waiting in the warmth of the dry sauna, with clean linen. Capitulating, Andrej sat down on the changing-bench and started to strip. A man was slave to his servants from one end of the Bench to the other, Andrej mused to himself. There was no sense in arguing with people who had gone to such lengths for one’s benefit.

How had Robert managed a sauna, with Burkhayden so starved for power?

Perhaps it was just as well if he did not wonder about that.

A sauna was an intrinsic good, after all, and he would enjoy it just as much as if its warmth had not been thieved from sources unknown.

###

Andrej Koscuisko came into the day-clinic with a flask of rhyti in one hand and a wrap of bread and meat-paste in the other. He was late. He’d been up well past midnight last night, because it was not to be imagined that anyone should be turned away from day-clinic, and some of them had been waiting all day. He’d been up late the night before, for the same reason, and slept past the mark this morning, so that it was already past the lifting of curfew.

And the clinic’s waiting-room already full. People were lined up all down the corridor, women with children in arms, children with younger siblings, men with aged parents. Andrej bowed to the waiting room, keenly aware of the lack of respect inadvertently implied by greeting his patients with his fast-meal in both hands.

“Good-greeting, gentles all, I hope that you will forgive my tardiness. But we will turn none of you away, my oath upon it.”

The on-site staff were used to this. There were too few of them, and none with the generalist’s skills Andrej had gained in eight years as a Ship’s Surgeon. None with his peculiar specialty skills, and they had ceded seniority to him almost without his noticing, as glad as these waiting folk to have his help to accomplish their task. He was in charge of day-clinic here and now.

His gentlemen broke away from post behind him as Andrej crossed the room, going to their own stations. They’d been requisitioned early on to help the physician’s aides; they had good triage skills. He was going to owe them a holiday when this was over — but not at the service-house. That was unthinkable.

At an off-license house, perhaps, which would mean scavenging in Port Burkhayden for food and drink to make a party. He would see if he could find a skilled provisioner to the task.

There was a signal for him from the records-desk, the keeper on duty coughing into his hand politely — as a young woman rose to her feet from a chair near the desk. Quite a young woman, and the look on her face was so appealing — open and vulnerable. Something in her hands, what had she brought him, and why did she gaze at him with so much tense reluctant longing?

“His Excellency asked after this preparation,” she said; and Andrej recognized her at last, the little girl from the gardener’s house. The daughter of the house, the young lady Tavart, bearing for him a pot of ointment. Of salve. “I hope that this may serve? It’s the first time I’ve tried it, I’m not sure it’s quite right but I didn’t want to delay any longer.”

She held the ointment-pot out to him, her hands shaking almost imperceptibly. Andrej raised his hands in turn to receive her gift, but his hands were full, and he gestured helplessly, feeling as awkward as if he had been so young as she was all over again. Had he ever been so young? In his life, ever?

“Oh, but my apologies, Miss Tavart.” He thought she was a “miss” yet, an unmarried woman in her mother’s household. “If you would be so good as to come through. I find myself at a disadvantage.”

Through to the treatment room, where he could disembarrass himself of his fast-meal and take the ointment-pot into his hand, tipping the lid off with a careful twist. The creamy fat inside was rosy with the pale ghost of the color of jellericia flowers, and the fragrance — though subtle — was distinct.

It was unusual, so soft, and yet so penetrating — strong enough for all its delicacy to penetrate the insulted brain of a beaten woman and carry its message of comfort, its memory of home, to her dreaming mind. Something to encourage her to return to the world, if only for the fact of such a perfume.

“It is precisely the thing, Miss Tavart. Is it that I shall call you ‘miss’?”

She blushed, and Andrej wondered if he was being irresponsible. He was flirting. No. He was not. A man had no business flirting with such a young woman. Let her cleave to her gardener. They were not suited in station, but neither were she and Andrej suited in station, and at least her gardener was of an age. And seemed to be a decent hardworking young man, while for himself though just at present Andrej was hardworking he could not in honesty believe that “decent” could describe him.

“My name is Sylyphe, sir. I’ve brought these other things, as well — ”

She had a carrying-sack with her, and opened it now, setting it on the level to draw her treasures forth. They were alone together in the treatment room, though the door was open. Andrej stood beside her to see what she had brought, straightening up as he noticed himself leaning rather more closely than he ought.

“Hanner has been called away, and I don’t have his
. . .
his knowledge. He said to wash the spent blooms in alcohol to take the last of the scent.”

A flask of rose-pale water, but when she unstoppered it a delicious fragrance of jellericia filled the room. It addled him, all of a sudden. The fragrance was as clean and as pure as a maiden’s first love; and she was a maiden, clean and pure, who carried within her the awesome divinity of her still-only-potential womanhood. To be the man to dance with her, to lead her across the threshold between childhood and grown age, to be the man to see her first come into the pride and power that was her birthright as a woman —

She passed the vial to him, and their hands touched. Her fingers were cool, as delicate as the spear-shaped leaves that clustered around winter-blooming yellow-trumpets in the snow. She seemed to recoil back from the contact, startled; the same touch grounded Andrej, in some sense, recalled him to the understanding of who and where he was. This was a child that stared at him with such dark lustrous eyes, her blushing mouth half-open. She was perfect, tempting, all points delicious, but she was a child — or at least too young to be a woman to him.

Andrej capped the flask. “Very well done indeed, Miss Sylyphe. And what else is it that you have brought us? I am overwhelmed with this surfeit of bounty.”

Miss Sylyphe, yes, that was the way to do it. She dropped her gaze to her carry-pouch, confused, but composing herself with admirable poise. She was to be a formidable woman, when she came into her majority. Was the gardener man enough to partner her?

Why should he wonder about the gardener, when this child of privilege would surely find her match amongst men as privileged as she?

“There was half-a-flat of jellericia coming into bloom already, your Excellency. The flowers lose their fragrance; it was too late to use them for the ointment, but they do still smell a bit, don’t they? And they look nice. I thought — ”

Call me Andrej
, Andrej thought.
You are not angry with me, surely, why should you be so cold as to say "Excellency?" No, you must call me Andrej, all of my friends do.
As if he had any. As if anyone had called him Andrej in the past eight years.
Call me Andrej, come back later, we can talk more freely when the day is done and we can be alone together
.

She held out a lush bouquet of jellericia, its dark green foliage begemmed with tiny crimson flowers. He could see what she meant, if he looked carefully. The blossoms were a little worn, in fact, and the fragrance scarce discernible.

“I applaud your instinct, Miss Sylyphe.” And he could do so honestly, without ulterior motives. “This will indeed make a pleasing decoration. Of those out there it may be there is more than one, that remembers what these look like.”

When she smiled she was all child, and he was safe from himself. “If the ointment is all right I can have more of it in three days’ time, your Excellency. Hanner showed me what needs to be done to force the next flat.”

Andrej hefted the pot of ointment, now all adult once again. There was enough here for several days’ treatment of the woman from the service house. “If you could let me have as much again in so much time, yes, that would do very well. Thank you, Miss Sylyphe. I am to you indebted, and still now I must ask that you excuse me to the work of the day.”

Now he could take her arm and turn her toward the door, and cosset her like an uncle his favorite niece. Now he could be an uncle to her, and not a man of whom her mother would be right to be suspicious. It was a relief. Because he had been so tempted.