Hour of Judgement (17 page)

He trembled with the fearful frustration of it all, and stood at attention-rest in his place.

###

It wasn’t far enough to the local Bench offices by half, and transport got there entirely too soon. Captain Lowden’s Security handled the gardener with the exaggerated roughness typical of people who were not accustomed to the task, and overdoing things accordingly; but what difference could it make?

Andrej said nothing, absorbed in his own gloomy meditations. He knew Skelern Hanner, at least in a manner of speaking. He almost thought that if he knew Hanner any better he’d like the man. But Lowden had said the word. There was to be no help for it.

There was a night watchman. Andrej sent two Security with him to bring the auxiliary power on line. It was true that he didn’t need the Record to obtain a lawful confession; he held the Writ, which was necessary and sufficient of itself for that function.

But he had to be able to see to do it.

He went through to the courtroom while he waited. It was empty, of course, but Miss Janisib — the senior Security on this team — had already found a chair for him from somewhere; and as Andrej was trying to decide whether she’d had rhyti leaf on her — or had simply borrowed some in a hurry from Center House — she came back into the room with one of her fellows, carrying a table sturdy enough to be used for his purpose if he elected it.

Janisib knew.

She wasn’t bond-involuntary, but there weren’t enough bond-involuntaries to go around, and she’d been on one of his Security teams when he’d got to
Ragnarok
. She’d transferred soon after, but the fact remained that she knew enough of what went on around an Inquiry to direct the other members of her team.

By the time the power came on to reveal the depressing extent to which the courtroom was stripped, Miss Janisib had things arranged quite creditably, all things considered.

A heavy armchair for him to sit down in when he got tired of standing or wanted to catch his breath.

A table, long enough to stretch a prisoner at length upon, sturdy enough to take the various stresses of weight and blows and the tensions to which it might be subjected. Rhyti in an open pan with a cracked flask to sup it from, but it was good rhyti. It was not to be imagined that Jan simply carried rhyti about on her person, for such an eventuality. “Thank you, Miss Janisib. If I could see my prisoner, now.”

Hanner himself they had left under guard in a closet outside while Security did what could be done to make a workspace out of an abandoned courtroom. Andrej stared at his interrogations kit while he waited, brooding about things.

Confession for breakfast, the Captain had said. Lowden was sure to seek recreation at the service house; it was an unfailing habit. Andrej could only hope that his Captain wouldn’t be so insensitive as to beat up another Service bond-involuntary.

Now Security was marching Hanner in through the double doors at the foot of the room; and it occurred to Andrej that there wasn’t any place in particular he wanted them to put Hanner. Looking around for a secure chain from the ceiling or a post or hook in the wall Andrej thought hard and fast, aware all the while of how ridiculous this was.

If he took up his trefold shackles and used the interconnecting chain he could pass it beneath the surface of the table they’d brought him, and shackle Hanner’s wrists one to a side. Hanner couldn’t possibly work the chain down to one end of the table and under the table-legs to free himself; or if he could he wasn’t going to be able to manage the trick without Andrej noticing. So that would do.

But there was something that Andrej needed before Hanner was chained. He could have Hanner stripped just as easily after as before; but the gardener was probably not well paid. His clothing was probably all he possessed that was worth handing on to someone who might want it to remember him by: his sister, perhaps, and how could Andrej hope to check on her recovery after this, knowing what he was about to do to her brother?

“You’ll want to undress, Hanner,” Andrej suggested, holding his hand up in a sudden sharp gesture of warning to Security to let Hanner alone. “Or your clothing will be damaged, as well as soiled. We’ll see to it that Megh gets your things, at least.”

It was hard for the gardener to strip himself naked with so many unfriendly eyes watching him. Yet Andrej knew better than to even think of dismissing Security to leave him alone with an unbound prisoner: inquisitors died that way. It was a form of suicide, one that masqueraded as a lapse in judgment. Andrej Koscuisko had not come this far to die of an accident, however deliberately courted. Security would stay.

Had he survived so long for this to come to him, then?

Was it not better to die if to live meant to ruin a decent young man who had avenged his sister, and draw Hanner’s death out for seven to ten days in vengeance for a man who tortured helpless women?

But
he
was a man who tortured helpless women.

And something inside of him was focused on a quite different issue.
Eight to eleven
, the voice of his appetite whispered to him, encouragingly.
Eight to eleven. You can do better than you did at the Domitt. This man is fit and strong, and inured to hard labor and to privation. He'll last much better. You could get twelve.

Andrej shut the seductive meditation off with an effort. It was not time. All too soon he would yield to his own thirst for Hanner’s pain because he would not be able to do his work without consenting to take pleasure in it. But he didn’t have to start that this early. Captain Lowden wanted a clean confession. He could do it without succumbing to his own beast; there would be need enough — pain enough — grim red atrocity sufficient to slake Andrej’s fiendish appetite, later. Tenth Level. Command Termination.

Eight to eleven, you could go twelve . . .

No, Andrej told himself firmly. He’d have none of it. Hanner unclothed himself to the skin and folded his garments into a stack; Miss Janisib carried the clothing away to wrap up in a bundle and stood by the door as the rest of Captain Lowden’s Security followed instruction and chained Hanner over the table.

“Thank you, gentles. Now you are excused.” Andrej lifted his field interrogations kit onto the table and opened it in front of Hanner, so that Hanner could see what he was doing. “I will call, if I want you. Yes? Go away.”

They seemed a little startled at his blunt language, but Andrej didn’t care. He was accustomed to being blunt in torture room.

The door at the far end of the room closed behind them; Andrej and Hanner remained alone in the center of the room. One of them clothed. One of them chained. Andrej found what he wanted, and loaded the osmo-stylus with the dose.

“This is the way of it, Skelern.” No need at this point for the formal introduction,
My name is Andrej Koscuisko, and I hold the Writ to which you must answer
. So much was understood. “You are taken under accusation for the murder of Fleet First Lieutenant G’herm Wyrlann, Jurisdiction Fleet Ship
Ragnarok
. It is the Captain who cries you guilty, and has also laid it on me that you confess before sunrise tomorrow.”

Hanner’s face was dirty, stained with mud and dried blood. Dried filth: the blood of the man who had savaged his sister. And very pale, underneath it all, but resolute of spirit for all that. “Or else what, your Excellency?”

Which was a good sign; or a bad sign. And Andrej wasn’t going to indulge himself even so far as to try to guess which. “Or else I will be hard pressed to protect my Security, but that’s not your problem. Now. This is commonly called extract of allock, class five speak-serum, from the Controlled List.”

Setting the loaded stylus down on the table where Hanner could watch it for him, Andrej started to unpack his kit. Showing the instruments of torture was one of the oldest traditions of the craft. It was also one of the most useful and least hurtful of the persuasions Andrej had at his hand; if Hanner could be persuaded to speak freely, they would both be the better for it. For the time being.

“There is circumstantial evidence that places you at the murder site when it happened. The Captain’s cry against you is very serious, because of his rank, but it is still hearsay of a sort and not direct evidence. Your confession is absolutely required to find you subject to the penalty for this shocking crime.”

Why was he telling Hanner this? Why should he waste his time being honest or candid? Wouldn’t it be the same in the end if he forced a confession and lied about how he’d obtained it? The Bench didn’t care, not when it came down to it. As long as what could be made to pass for justice was done the Bench overlooked any number of merely procedural irregularities,

“You have two choices before you now. You can confess to me the murder, I will confirm it with an appropriate speak-serum, and we will be done until the time arrives for the penalty to be assessed.”
Eight to eleven days
, the voice whispered, eagerly.
You could go twelve
. Andrej frowned, concentrating.

“Or I will administer this dose, which encourages but will not compel truthful utterance. It is still only circumstantial evidence. My authority is to test you with this drug and a degree of coercive persuasion until you say truth.”

Hanner looked relieved. He had no cause to be, but Andrej knew what was on his mind even before Hanner spoke. “Then there’s no need, your Excellency, and I’ll get dressed, it’s cold in here. Give me the speak-serum, your Excellency, I’ll tell you the truth here and now, drug or no drug. It was only watching you dance with the little maistress. I had neither word nor deed in the murder of the Fleet Lieutenant, though I can’t deny that I’m not sorry for it.”

Watching him dance? Oh, watching Sylyphe Tavart, rather. If only it was so easy as that. “I appreciate your willingness to cooperate. But I cannot take your word at face value, not with the charges that my Captain has cried. If you confessed to the murder — but since you do not you must be ready to ask yourself, very urgently indeed, whether you had better not do so.”

Andrej picked up the dose and pressed it through the browned skin at Hanner’s shoulder as he spoke. Hanner was right. It was cold in here. Hanner had goose-bumps; but the dose went through all the same.

“I can’t say I’ve killed the Fleet Lieutenant.” Hanner was frightened, and rightly so. But Hanner was firm. “Because I’d no hand in it. And you’ll know it, soon enough I hope. I’m innocent. Even if you’re to beat me for being so rude as to contradict such a man as the Fleet Captain, Lowden.”

Andrej had no respect for Fleet Captain Lowden for his own part, but that didn’t mean Andrej lacked respect and sound understanding of what Captain Lowden could do, with his rank. What things Captain Lowden was lawfully entitled to say, or plead, or demand by virtue of his rank.

“Thank you, but it is not good enough.” Andrej didn’t have the drugs that it would take to elicit a confession at the Fifth Level with speak-sera alone. Results were required. More direct forms of physical coercion were authorized for use in tandem with a speak-serum, Andrej picked up his favorite whip. “We have some hours ahead of us to test, then. Why should you deny the deed? You had the motive. You were there. What could be more natural than to have revenged your sister?”

Once he had laid the soles of Hanner’s bare feet open with his whip he would not need to take quite so many precautions against Hanner running away. There were important psychological issues there as well. It would be very awkward for Hanner, chained to the table as he was, if he could not put his weight on his own two feet. It might help him toward an appropriately submissive state of mind.

“I had no weapon, sir, and had I done I’d still have no knowledge of how to use it — your Excellency — ”

Hanner spoke on as Andrej moved around the table and behind him. But Hanner’s nerves betrayed him to himself. He could not help looking back over his shoulder, his words trailing off as Andrej ran the length of the lash through his lightly clenched fist to straighten it of any stray kinks.

“Face front, if you please.”

Oh, Andrej knew the hunger for it, now. Even though he thought that he liked Hanner. Even though Andrej felt sorry for him. Hanner was meat to the knife, nothing more. Andrej Koscuisko was come into his dominion, and rejoiced to recognize it for his own.

“Yes, sir, but I’m innocent, I didn’t — ”

Swinging the whip around in a long, almost lazy arc, Andrej made his first mark on living canvas. Skelern Hanner shouted with surprise and pain, and stumbled to regain his footing where he stood chained to the table. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. Andrej moved more quickly, this time, and brought the snapper-end of the stout whip down brutally hard against the bottom of Hanner’s foot. The left foot. Just below the ball of the foot, nestled in to the tender place above one arch of muscle and beside another.

Hanner was not so much surprised, this time. It was a good beginning.

Andrej knew he could have confession before morning.

One way or another: and he no longer cared which.

###

Mendez liked the fancy pattern-dancing, the men and women of all ages in different traditional modes of dress representing different Dolgorukij ethnicities, each of them cheerful and energetic and all apparently having a good time. He tried to picture the Chief Medical Officer on the dance floor, unable to make sense of the projected image. Still, it looked like fun. Under other circumstances he might have been tempted to join in the demonstration, and see if he couldn’t interest one or two of the ladies in a Santone sawelling.

“I had thought to tempt your Chief Medical Officer with the fanshaw.” The Danzilar prince, beside him, sounded nothing short of gloomy; and Mendez didn’t blame him. “I wonder if you know, First Officer. My cousin is a very pretty dancer, especially in fanshaw; because after all his family is Koscuisko.”

Quite right, too. He wouldn’t have guessed Koscuisko even could dance, which made him regret not having seen it all the more. Stildyne gave the Chief Medical Officer good marks for a sufficient degree of athleticism, true enough, but Stildyne was notoriously prejudiced, and combat drill was not an infallible index of how well a man could dance.