Hour of Judgement (25 page)

Or sooner.

Robert liked his fast-meal.

It would be all right.

He could face Koscuisko with a clear mind, secure that he’d done what he could to protect Robert, knowing that Robert was safe from himself.

And he’d tackle everything else there was to deal with, in the morning.

###

Someone came into the room with fresh rhyti and hot bread, setting the tray down beside the head of the bed before leaning over to kiss the back of Andrej’s hand where it lay on the coverlet. Andrej woke so easily and naturally as to be unable to make the distinction between waking and sleeping; the habit of the first twenty-odd years of his life still ran strong in him. At least when he was asleep.

Opening his eyes he looked up at a ceiling gaily decorated with a motif called beard-of-grain. Very pleasant. Traditional. The man who had waked him was standing quiet and patient at his left, waiting to be noticed. One of Paval I’shenko’s house staff; one of the Danzilar Dolgorukij house staff, that was to say. He’d been on active duty for more than eight years now. He’d never met a Security troop who waked a man in so old-fashioned a manner.

“Holy Mother, bless this child to your work,” Andrej said. Half-unthinking. The houseman smiled and bowed in apparent appreciation.

“And prosper all Saints under Canopy this day. Good-greeting, your Excellency, you are anxiously awaited, if you would care to rise and take bread.”

Anxiously awaited was probably an understatement. He had several missions he needed to accomplish himself, but first things first. Sitting up in the bed Andrej took note of the fact that he was wearing someone else’s nightshirt; not his, anyway. Reedstalk-work. Very respectable. But all of his linen was worked in lapped-duckwings.

“Thank you. I will wish to dress. There are Security waiting for me?”

He was a little surprised none were here, in the room with him. He just hadn’t decided exactly which Security he’d expected to see, or for what precise purpose.

“The prince’s majordomo waits upon your will, sir. I’ll send someone to see to the towels.”

That meant that Security was not waiting outside. He would have to get past the house-master before he got more information, perhaps. Nodding without bothering to probe further Andrej lifted the covers aside and stood up. He was a little shaky. Shouldn’t he be sick? Shouldn’t he be crawling to the basin, after the drinking that he’d done last night?

Maybe whomever had brought him here had drugged him as well. There stood a glass of water at the bedside with a stack of appropriate dose-powders beside it, right enough. And the dregs of a dose in the glass as well. All right. That explained that. He couldn’t remember having been fed medicine, but that didn’t surprise him. He was lucky — he supposed — to remember as much as he did, about what he had accomplished during the past sixteen eights.

By the time he was washed and combed and had changed back into his own linen — freshly laundered, of course, and laid out waiting — there was fast-meal laid out, and the housemaster waiting. That could be a good sign, Andrej told himself; to be waited on by so exalted a personage as the majordomo was a mark of significant respect. So he probably wasn’t under arrest. Yet.

“His Excellency may wish for a brief summary of what has taken place in Port Burkhayden since yestreen,” the house-master suggested, nodding to the houseman to pour Andrej’s rhyti. This was different rhyti than that he had taken with him into the washroom. A guest could not be permitted to drink rhyti from a flask that had stood for so long. Certainly not. Shocking idea. “As his Excellency was, with respect, very drunk last night. When the Bench specialist Vogel brought him to Center House.”

All right, so that was how he’d got here. He wasn’t certain he remembered. Andrej had a quick sip of rhyti, and gestured for the morning-meat tray. He was hungry. Whatever doses whomever had used on him last night had been good meds; but the body still knew that it had been worked beyond the limits of its tolerance, and demanded he make it up in extra sustenance. Morning-meat. And hot bread. And quite possibly several slices of ripe melon.

“Captain Lowden had cried Charges against a gardener. Skelern Hanner. He and I had gone to Bench offices.” Andrej insisted on buttering his own brod-toast; anyone else used either too much or too little. There was a precise ratio to be preserved between melted butter and marmalade. “But the gardener was quite guiltless. I sent him to hospital. And went to the Port Authority to make him clear with the Record.”

Updates went more quickly when they could start from a mutually understood jumping-off place. The majordomo smiled. “Yes, your Excellency.” The majordomo was Nurail, one of the tall broad-shouldered run of Nurail. Fair skin, light-colored eyes, brown hair. Not the sort of Nurail that Andrej Koscuisko would ever be mistaken for.

“As for his Excellency’s personal movements nothing is known, sir, after that. You were reported missing from the Port Authority when First Officer Mendez arrived there. And located some time later near the Port Authority by the Bench specialist, if his Excellency will excuse, seven points before the gale, with all sheets flying. Several additional elements should be placed before you, though. It was a busy night.”

Had he been somewhere near the Port Authority? Had he got that far once he’d left the service house? It was possible. The other alternative would seem to be that Vogel was glossing the actual location a bit. And why would he do that?

“One wonders in particular where one’s Security have got to,” Andrej agreed. Reaching for a dish of egg-pie. He wondered whether the majordomo was Nurail enough to flout tradition and sit down with him; or majordomo enough to stand on his dignity and decline absolutely to sit down with a guest of the house.

On the other hand since the house-master was Nurail, there was no reason to expect him to be willing to sit down with a Judicial officer of whatever sort, guest or no guest. Andrej abandoned the whole idea as a bad lead.

“His Excellency’s Security troop St. Clare experienced a medical emergency last night.”

This startled Andrej; he stopped where he was in mid-bite, and set his fork down. Carefully. The house-master was still talking. Never before had Andrej been quite so sensitive to the number of extra words that politeness was held to demand, when a house-master was speaking to a guest.

“The warrant officer, Chief Stildyne, went to the hospital with the man and the rest of the team. Security five point three? Thank you, sir, Security five point three. An emergency surgery was successfully performed. They’re all still at hospital, sir.”

Emergency surgery. Did he have to ask what kind? He’d forgotten what he’d decided about who had killed Wyrlann. He’d been distracted by problems of his own. Now Andrej was as sure as though he’d been told that he knew that the medical emergency had been a governor on overload, a governor which should have prevented the murder from ever taking place. Which would have prevented it, had it not been defective from the very beginning. He knew that Robert’s governor had gone critical. He believed he knew why.

“I’ll want to go to hospital first thing. Soon, too.”

“Yes, sir. So much was in fact anticipated. The Bench specialist requests a few eighths of his Excellency’s time be made available this afternoon or after third-meal, with specific provision that you were to feel no need to send excuses for seeing to other business first if you slept later in the day.”

He might be Nurail. But he was damnably good at the language of a majordomo. At the same time his conversation was redeemed from the very purest form of mind-numbingly indirect discourse by his persistent tendency to use a second person singular pronoun rather than a noun phrase in the third person. Someone would probably take him gently aside and speak to him about that, before too long.

“For the rest of it the port is under quarantine, and all movement is under escort. There was a fire at the service house last night that may or may not have claimed the life of Fleet Captain Lowden. There are apparently some indications that the fire was set to conceal a crime, but the officer is either dead or missing and presumed dead. The Bench specialists are conducting the investigation, with the Danzilar prince’s permission.”

Well, of course Lowden was dead. Or at least Andrej hoped and expected that Lowden was dead. He had very carefully killed Lowden himself, with his own two hands. Which were fortunately free from embarrassing scratches. But he hadn’t set the fire to cover the crime. He’d set the fire to be sure that Lowden went to Hell and stayed there.

“Other casualties?”

There was a problem with having set a fire at all, now that he was sober enough to consider the potential consequences of such an act. But service houses had fire suppression systems to protect their patrons. Didn’t they?

The sprinklers hadn’t gone off in the suite where he’d burned the body, had they?

“Surprisingly few,” the housemaster assured him. “All in all there seems to have been an orderly evacuation. There are injuries, but none of them very severe. Sprains and bruises mostly, from people being in too much of a hurry. But portions of the service house are apparently still burning.”

Fire suppression systems had been as completely stripped out as the hospital had been, then. He should have stopped to think. Andrej stared at the sweet rolls, stricken with horror. Oh, what he had almost done. What he had done. That it had not become a disaster was clearly better luck than he deserved, and certainly no reflection on any merit of his.

Or was it?

Couldn’t he say that to have killed Captain Lowden and set the whole service house on fire, and nobody else killed, meant a species of approval for the act, from the Canopy of Heaven?

It had been fairly early yet in the night.

People had been drunk, but not too drunk to find their way out of a burning building.

He was a sinner, but perhaps — just perhaps — the holy Mother had put out her hand to shelter and protect him, whether or not he was unreconciled still to her Church.

“House-master. I am astonished. Almost I would say that I was sorry to have missed it. But my First Officer has probably been up all night, and would know this for a lie.”

Wait. Should he say such a flippant thing about the event that was presumed to have taken the life of his commanding officer?

Certainly he should.

Nobody in Port Burkhayden, nobody on the
Ragnarok
, nobody in Fleet, nobody on the Bench would be the least bit astonished at an indication that the death of Fleet Captain Lowden did not afflict him with an excess of grief.

“His Excellency’s First Officer has in fact just gone to bed two eights ago. And leaves expressed concern for your health and well being, sir. I’m directed to advise you that he’s been to hospital and everyone’s asleep. And that he will expect to see you at some time, but that you’re to satisfy the Bench specialists first on any issue.”

Probably not quite as Mendez had said it, but Andrej took the meaning. It had been four years. He could speak Mendez.

“Very well, then. I will go to the hospital, and then to see Vogel. But in the meantime I will have some more rhyti.”

There was no telling what he was to confront, today.

It only made sense to be sure he was well-fortified to face whatever might come.

###

Security Chief Stildyne lay on a thin padded mat on the floor with a rolled-up wad of sterile wrapping under his head and a doubled thickness of toweling over his face to shut out the bright light from the un-shaded window. He’d had a long night. He’d slept through fast-meal, and he had every intention of sleeping through mid-meal as well. Why not? There was nothing to do, and nowhere to go. He’d spoken to First Officer. He didn’t want to see Koscuisko.

He heard voices, coming down the hallway toward the front room of the ward his troops occupied. Robert in the inside room with the diagnostics, sleeping off the exhaustion of having experienced the extreme pain that he’d endured. Despite Stildyne’s expectations to the contrary, Robert had slept through fast-meal and mid-meal as well. If he didn’t wake in time for third meal they would have to call in a resurrectionist, Stildyne supposed.

“Through here.” Stildyne recognized the voice. “Couldn’t leave them cluttering up the emergency treatment areas. Security being on the large side.”

Who would Doctor Howe be speaking to like that? Respectful and restrained, to an extent. Quite unlike the way Howe talked to Stildyne himself. Someone come to see about Robert, obviously, and that meant —

“Indeed I have always noticed that for large people they are capable of dealing with surprisingly confined spaces.” The officer. Andrej Koscuisko. Stildyne rolled off his floor-mat and staggered to his feet in one swift if ungraceful motion. Koscuisko. He wasn’t ready for this.

“One of the tricks of the trade, sir, disappearing in place. So your Chief doesn’t notice you. Good-greeting, Chief, slept at all, did you?”

Yes, coming into the room. Doctor Barit Howe and Andrej Koscuisko. Stildyne bowed, still clutching the towel that he’d been using as an eye-shade in the fist of one hand. “Tolerably, Doctor Howe. Your Excellency.”

Doctor Howe wasn’t more than slowing down on his way through. Stildyne stood aside to follow behind Koscuisko, but Koscuisko paused, putting one hand to Stildyne’s arm and looking up into his face with a very measuring sort of an expression in his eyes — which looked almost white to Stildyne in the bright room, but he was used to that.

“Have you had a bad night of it, Chief?” Oh, Koscuisko didn’t know the half of it. “I should apologize for being drunk, and not here to help out. Tell me what happened.”

Damned if he would. Not here. Not now. There was no telling whether they were on monitor, somewhere. “Robert may have been upset that the murder had happened while he was nearby. I don’t know, your Excellency. All I really know is that he was suffering, and we assumed his governor was cooking off. We nearly lost him.”

Sir, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did it. I didn't realize how much it was going to hurt him. I'm sorry you weren't here.
But Stildyne knew that those were words he’d never say.