Hour of Judgement (7 page)

“Everyone knows about Black Andrej. And the Domitt Prison.” Keeping her voice low on instinct, Megh kept testing for the right approach to appease him, to get him to stop for long enough for her to get away. Once she could get away she would be safe, the house staff would surely intervene to protect her. She couldn’t be beaten for not singing her weave, even had her governor permitted it. It was a killing offense to sing any weave, let alone a war-weave like the Narrow Pass.

“Oh, well, perhaps you’re disappointed, then. You’d sing the weave for him, soon enough, but not for me, is that it?”

He shook her and let her go, but she couldn’t get to the door, because her legs came out from underneath her as soon as he released her upper arm. And he was still talking. It was important to pay attention to what he was saying; she had to find a way to placate him.

“I’ll tell you something, though. I’ve seen him work. There’s really nothing very complicated to it. Anything he can do, I can do, and better.”

It was his boot this time, and not a fist at all. A boot sudden and brutal put to her stomach, making her cry out loud of it. And yet another boot, to take the wind out of her belly, so that she rolled her arms around her middle and curled onto her side, trying to find her breath.

“There’s his tapes, you know? I watch them sometimes, with the Captain. And if Koscuisko was here I know just what he’d do. Here, we’ll pretend I’m your precious ‘Black Andrej,’ shall we? And when we’re done you can sing me your weave like an obedient little slut. Whether you want to or not.”

Stooping down to her on the floor he grabbed her wrist, and pulled her flat at length on the carpet. She tried to smooth her breathing out, to be ready for the next blow. It helped sometimes to try to guess the course of a beating, to concentrate on whatever one could use to create an illusion of control.

“And if Koscuisko were here he’d probably start with
. . .
well. He’d use the butt end of his driver to fuck you wide open, he does amazing things with that whip. Haven’t got a whip. This’ll do, though, just as well. I’m sure.”

He seemed minded to rape her with his boots, never minding the other ugly things he said. There didn’t seem to be anywhere that she could get to, to hide from him. He drove her across the carpet to the far wall with his blows; and when she could flee no further he stuffed her shawl deep down into her throat and raped her horribly with the wine-flask. She thought it was the wine-flask, he’d had a wine flask, but whatever it was forced her belly up into her throat with agony.

“Damn thing’s broken, well, if you think I’m going into your stinking cunt after that, you can just think again. Not to disappoint you, I know how much you crave it.”

Where were the musicians? Hadn’t it been an hour, two hours, half a day since she had come up here to set the table, and she still left here all alone at the mercy of this monster’s brutal whims?

“Of course in the end the simple things are best. Traditional. You Nurail like tradition? You’ll like this.”

She was choking on her own screams, trying to breathe.

And she could not stop screaming even so.

###

The Port Authority had come and gone, the emergency aid team had left with the injured woman, and the word went out into the silent whispering streets of Port Burkhayden.

The
Ragnarok’s
First Lieutenant, in the service house
.

There were menials on night shifts, ready to provide hot food to comfort the patrols coming in off the streets for their warming-periods, and the message followed each mobile vendor from station to station as the night deepened.

One of the women, making his meal ready. He tried to make her sing her father's weave.

The city’s communications nets were old and poorly maintained, and now that the Jurisdiction had pulled its resources out there were chronic problems with lapses in the net. Strictly licensed Nurail maintenance crews were on call to respond at any hour of the day or night. There was a steady stream of emergency restore orders, and the news was left at nexus after nexus as the hours wore on.

Support staff, not a bed-partner, only setting the table out. Beat her with his fists, put his boots to her. Cut her with broken glass, you can guess where, because nobody wants to have to say.

During the coldest hour, the oldest hour, the least respected of the city’s servants rose up out of their meager beds to see that all was waiting, nothing wanting, when the city’s maisters rose. Fuel for furnaces, water-heaters brought up in time for them as had the luxury of showers, baths. Fresh sweet milk from outside the port’s boundaries, the morning’s fresh-picked flowers for the fast-meal table. A bite to eat for the Nurail that lived in lodgings, that had to be up and doing before the kitchen would be open to provide for them: and the sorry tale came whispering to Skelern Hanner as he stood in the darkness of his gardener’s shed and washed his hands and face in icy water, getting dressed.

The woman Megh, the Nurail, at the service house. Raped by the First Lieutenant, and with a flask, a piece of broken furniture, nobody knows what else. Taken off to charity ward, but there's no healer there for such wounds as she's taken. She may be dead already.

Skelern stood in the dark silence of his shed, half-dressed, his face still dripping with the cold water of his early morning wash, frantic phrases rushing through his mind. Megh, poor Megh, he had to go and see her.

He couldn’t hope to go see her, not on his own, they wouldn’t let him in.

He could wake Sylyphe, that he could, she was pitiful if misguided, she could take him to the hospital.

He could not possibly involve Sylyphe.

She was young and privileged. She did not understand the cruel truths in life, and the cruel truth was that a Command Branch officer in any civil port could do such crimes without reproach. Without reprisals.

If he even told Sylyphe she might make a scene in public, and her mother could be compromised by implication. He owed the Tavart for too many favors to want to see her compromised, nor her daughter permitted to make a fool of herself in public. He couldn’t see Sylyphe.

He could ask permission to ask the Tavart, but the Tavart was out of town on business, and by the time he could make his request — the day after tomorrow, sometime, and he’d need a chit from her, too, to give him authorization from his employer to go where he’d no business being otherwise — poor Megh could be dead by then, if she wasn’t already.

But he was Nurail as well as Megh was, and she would not thank him for courting a beating by risking it on his own just to see her corpse. Nurail, and a slave, and if the Port Authority did not have the legal right to use his body at its pleasure as the
Ragnarok
’s First Lieutenant had done Megh’s there was no lack of reasonable pretexts to torture a Nurail gardener for stepping outside of his place, for involving himself uninvited in the affairs of his betters. And no one watching to see that the punishment was restricted to the Jurisdiction Standard, either.

He washed his face again, to rinse the tears away. He would have to wait. The Tavart would grant him leave to go, he was sure of that.

And maybe Megh would not be dead before he could come to grieve for her in hospital.

Chapter Three

Lights were dimmed and room was quiet, but Garol woke with immediate certainty that he’d heard something. He kept his breathing slow and regular, his eyes still shut, listening hard. There was only Jils in the room with him, Jils in the bed beside him as companionable as a sister. It wasn’t Jils who’d awakened him, then; not unless it had been her signal.

Garol opened his eyes and sat up in the dim hush, cautiously, and the tone came at the outer door, the door at the end of the room outside the bedroom. Someone in the corridor.

Jils was awake now too, and he could trust Jils’s judgment better than his own. She hadn’t signaled danger: not yet. Very well. They’d see.

Pushing his feet into the slew-socks that Dohan Dolgorukij wore for bed-slippers, Garol belted his heavy blue brocade bed-robe — a present from the Danzilar prince — around his waist as he made for the door. The signal was tuned to its lowest intensity, but it was persistent.

He keyed the admit and opened the door, and found himself face to face with the Danzilar prince Paval I’shenko himself, standing in the corridor with a household technical officer and some Security behind him. Bowing, Garol wondered; the Danzilar prince had never come to him in quarters, and had never interrupted his sleep-shift, either.

Danzilar himself seemed to have just gotten up, if the butter-yellow jacket he had on over his thin white silk bed-suit and the tousled condition of his nondescript brown hair was any indication.

“Do not waken the lady, I beg it of you,” Danzilar said, softly. “No woman should have to hear of such a thing. There is a problem, Garol Aphon, and I believe that I must insist on an immediate response.”

Jils was listening in the other room, Garol knew. She would pretend she was still asleep, then.

“At your disposal, your Excellency, of course. At any time.” The “Excellency” had been a little distracting to Vogel, because the same title that translated for the respectful language due a Dolgorukij aristocrat applied to Fleet superior officers in Standard as well. Andrej Koscuisko was an Excellency twice over, even as the Danzilar prince was. And neither the Danzilar prince nor Jils Ivers knew what Garol held in his keeping for Andrej Koscuisko. “Is there a place where we can go to talk?”

Danzilar nodded grimly. “Come, and we will discuss. We can use a side room, here — ”

Not far from his quarters, and servants already standing by with service tables. As far as Garol had been able to tell, fresh beverage and hot bread was next to godliness for Danzilar’s Dolgorukij. Jils would probably remind him that people whose body temperature ran high usually did need to eat a little more frequently to keep themselves going.

“Here is the master of communications, who has brought me this. You will oblige me by reading it for yourself, Garol Aphon. We have had it done into Standard, and I am unwilling to go into the details.”

The Danzilar prince habitually called him by two of his names in the formal Dolgorukij manner. Garol had a hard time really resenting it, even though he had never liked his second name. The Danzilar prince looked so young. But looks were deceiving; the Danzilar prince was forty-seven years old, Standard. Older than Garol himself was.

Garol took the report slate that the watch-master offered him and sat down.

From Burkhayden, not too surprisingly. A protest against damage to property specifically included in the terms of the Contract, more or less predictable. Except that the property was a woman, not a public building or a farm utility vehicle. The whole issue of bond-involuntaries had always given Garol a raging case of the toe-cramps. And the report was brutally precise on the important issue of exactly what was meant in this case by the “damage.”

There didn’t seem to be anything for him to say. Garol passed the report slate back to the officer.

“Yes, your Excellency?”

“There is nothing to be done about the vandal, I know that.” Danzilar had seated himself in a well-padded chair as Garol read; now he smoothed the broad band at his wrap-jacket’s hem carefully over his crossed knees, frowning. He meant Wyrlann, Garol guessed.

Danzilar was right.

There wasn’t anything that anyone could do about Wyrlann, except what Garol had been sent to do about Koscuisko. And he had yet to exercise his authority to revise a Bench warrant, regardless of the provocation. He wasn’t about to start with a warrant he could not even decide was legitimate.

Danzilar was still talking. “But the staff of a service house is not of small importance, because comfort must be had. And the contract has been signed.”

What was Danzilar getting at? “His Excellency will of course be compensated, once the review board has validated loss of function.” It didn’t make sense for Danzilar to be as upset about this as he seemed to be. The price of any sixteen bond-involuntaries could be easily lost in even the smallest detail of the contract’s fiscal stipulations. Yet Danzilar was not only visibly upset, he seemed not far from actually furious, rising to his feet with a ferocious if controlled gesture of rejection.

“I do not want her price, Garol Aphon. I want her worth, as I have been promised in the contract. Her symbolic function at this point is of paramount importance. She belongs to me, Garol Aphon, and I demand her rights.”

Of which she had none, whoever she was. Apart from the obvious, of course. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, your Excellency.”

“Aah, it is the middle of the night. I am only — very angry.”

Why?

It was perhaps not inappropriate to indulge oneself in a certain degree of moral outrage, under the circumstances. But Danzilar was not a child, no matter how much like a twenty-five-year-old he looked to Garol. The Dolgorukij had defined atrocity, at least as far as the Sarvaw were concerned; and Danzilar’s second cousin thrice removed — or fourth cousin five times distant, or whatever the hell the relation was — was the self-same Andrej Koscuisko who held a Writ which authorized him to practice very much the same sorts of things that Wyrlann appeared to have done to the poor whore at his will and good pleasure, in support of the Judicial order.

So it couldn’t be that Danzilar had simply never run into this sort of thing before.

What was going on in Danzilar’s mind?

Garol kept silent, and after a moment Danzilar continued. “To do this thing so casually, it shows a lack of respect. For me as well as for the holy Mother. I cannot afford to discard this woman as a piece of spoiled goods. What kind of treatment would any other expect from me, if I did that? These people are to be my people, Garol Aphon. I am responsible for their well-being.”

Well, it was true that Dolgorukij were peculiar in that respect. As with Danzilar’s cousin Koscuisko, again; and nobody touched Koscuisko’s Security, not after what Koscuisko had done to the people he had decided to consider responsible for the death of that bond-involuntary Emandisan of his at Port Rudistal.

“No disrespect is intended, your Excellency. I’m simply not sure what you want me to do about it.”

Danzilar glanced at the report slate in the watch-captain’s hands with what seemed to be a shudder of horror, or of barely suppressed disgust. “Four pieces of glass, it says, Garol Aphon. And the wounds as long as my hand is broad. There is no surgeon in Burkhayden to address such injuries effectively. My medical administrator says that we will not have a trauma surgeon on site before it cannot but be too late for this poor woman.”

Garol started to shrug in involuntary perplexity; but smoothed his shrug out, thinking quickly. He was beginning to think that he knew what the Danzilar had in mind.

“You want Fleet to send a trauma team to Burkhayden. Possibly when Jils and I leave.” They were scheduled to depart inside of ten eights, and a ship of the
Ragnarok
’s size carried modular units for just such requirements — although they were usually used to bring newly repossessed or liberated facilities on line.

If there was a hospital building still standing in Burkhayden the
Ragnarok
could furnish a surgery and a surgeon, up and running in — how long? Garol did some calculations, concentrating hard. The report was already ten eights old. They had a day and a half or more in transit time, ahead of them; maybe if they left a few hours early —

“I want Fleet to send the best surgeon at its disposal here and now. The Chief Medical Officer’s personal involvement would send the strongest possible signal to my people in Burkhayden. That is what I wish you to have done.”

“Koscuisko?”

The name escaped Garol in an involuntary yelp of disbelief.

Send Koscuisko to minister to a woman raped? Send the single most notorious pain-master in the entire inventory to tend to a woman brutalized by his own ship’s First Lieutenant?

Koscuisko.

It made a certain amount of sense, once he thought about it.

“There are two things that the most uneducated of rabble knows about my cousin Drusha,” Danzilar replied, with utter seriousness. It took Garol a moment to make sense of the name: Drusha, from the intimate form of Andrej. “No, perhaps three things. First, there is of course the obvious. Second, that he is the Chief Medical Officer on board the
Ragnarok
. And finally, that there are none better at what he does, irrespective of the capacity in which one invokes his expertise. Is it not so?”

Well, maybe not really. Once the first point had been raised and controverted the rest faded a bit in significance. Still, Koscuisko was recognized as a senior officer by token of the Inquisitorial function that he performed, if nothing else. Koscuisko’s symbolic subordination to a Service bond-involuntary was probably a pretty damn solid way for Danzilar to make his point, if that was what Danzilar was after.

“I’ll send an emergency override, your Excellency.” It was within his authority to demand that Lowden comply with any measures he deemed necessary to complete the transfer of function. Garol decided that he might very well enjoy making a point of that. “The ship’s Chief Medical Officer to travel to Burkhayden with me, and to treat the traumatic injuries this woman has sustained to the maximum extent of his professional ability. Shall I report to his Excellency when the requirement has been communicated to Captain Lowden?”

“Four pieces of glass, Garol Aphon.” Danzilar stared at the closed door, clearly distracted. “Please, yes, let me know. This must be addressed, and it cannot be done too soon, you understand.”

Maybe there was some cultural peculiarity that made Wyrlann’s particular crime especially horrible to Danzilar.

Or maybe Danzilar was simply a decent sort at heart, with decent instincts.

“I understand. If you’ll excuse me, your Excellency, I’ll go to communications right away.”

Nodding, Danzilar put his hand out to Garol’s shoulder, walking with him toward the door and talking with evident intent to lighten the atmosphere somewhat. “Yes, thank you, Garol Aphon. Excuse me to my cousin that I do not greet him before you leave, beg for me his forgiveness. And remind him. There is to be a party. There will be dancing.”

The more Garol thought about it the better he liked the idea of Captain Lowden forced to make good the senseless damage his First Lieutenant had done.

###

Captain Lowden usually enjoyed disciplinary events on a number of levels, but today was different.

Today his secret knowledge of the joke he planned to play on Koscuisko distracted him to such an extent that he almost wished Koscuisko would just get it over with, and Koscuisko wasn’t off his game, no, nor was the guilty technician unresponsive to the impact of Koscuisko’s whip. Koscuisko’s performance was, as always, a thing of abstract beauty; as great passion and great control were always beautiful, perfect in form and in execution.

Discipline administered as adjudicated, Technician Hixson, if Lowden remembered correctly. Three-and-thirty. Hixson, bound by the wrists to the wall, two Security troops standing facing the room on either side at several pace’s remove so as to be out of danger of any stray blow.

Ship’s Engineer, the aggrieved party, present as much to keep an eye on Koscuisko as to provide witness that the penalty had been administered and the grievance satisfied. Jennet ap Rhiannon, counting the strokes, because Lowden felt it was important to involve junior lieutenants in the full range of their duties as Command Branch officers.

The room was crowded. All the better. Koscuisko would swallow down questions he might otherwise ask, to spare listening ears the unpleasantness; and that would help the joke forward.

“Twenty-six, twenty-six, twenty-seven,” the Lieutenant counted, her voice flat and free from any inflection that might betray any emotion she felt. Did crèche-bred have emotions? Lowden wondered. Neither Fleet nor the Bench had much use for emotions, so why would crèche-bred have been issued any? Apart from the Standard, of course.

Whether it was her dispassionate demeanor or something else that Lowden hadn’t noticed, Koscuisko apparently objected to the Lieutenant. Or to something she had done. “Twenty-eight, Lieutenant, the count is twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.”

Yes, right, now that Lowden thought about it she’d counted twenty-six two times over, just now. Lowden had thought the stroke a hair on the light side himself, but there were good reasons not to challenge Koscuisko on it.

For one thing Lowden was serenely convinced that Koscuisko wouldn’t dare actually muddle his count with his Captain in the room. It was the officer’s mess, not Secured Medical, so there were no record tapes to review to determine a true count. But Koscuisko was too well trained.

“With respect, sir, the Standard calls for — ”

The Standard called for blood to be let on every stroke or the stroke repeated. Koscuisko knew that. Koscuisko was the Judicial officer on board. It wasn’t very appropriate for the Lieutenant to challenge him on his count.

“Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three,” Koscuisko called firmly, ignoring the Lieutenant. “Three-and-thirty. Gentlemen. Release the technician. Wheatfields, your man.”

Ap Rhiannon stifled well; yes, Koscuisko had interrupted, but Koscuisko was the senior officer. Lowden rose from his observation post and stepped down from the Captain’s Bar to examine the evidence and decide the issue for himself.