Prisoner of Conscience (31 page)

Setting the documents out on the countertop in the lab, Koscuisko bent over them. “There’s for you as well, Administrator. Here. And here. Also on this back page, see the place, here.”

Yes, attesting to the fact that he’d watched the audit. Affirming, alongside Koscuisko’s statement, that a physical inventory had been made, and in proper form. The assay slips were all stacked to one side. Once Belan had signed, Koscuisko took the assay slips and sealed them in the documents-case with the rest of it.

Good
, Belan thought to himself, wearily.
We can go home now
. Of course for Koscuisko “home” just meant upstairs, back to the penthouse, and no problem for him if it was after the third-meal, there was a cook to feed him whenever —

“All quite correct.” Koscuisko passed the entire package over to him; Belan took it in two hands. Koscuisko’s Security had gathered around him, waiting for their officer. But it was a little odd; and suddenly Belan felt insecure. “Now, one thing else, and we won’t trouble you further. I need to make an unannounced inspection.”

“Of course.” Belan’s response was immediate and automatic. Unannounced inspection? Of what? Where? “His Excellency has only to direct. The Domitt Prison is open to you, sir.”

There was some sort of an unspoken message passed between Koscuisko and his people, from him to his Chief of Security and to his Bonds. “You are very obliging,”
Koscuisko assured him, courteously indeed. “Take us then to the furnace-room. And I must insist that no one anticipate our arrival, Administrator.”

The where?

The furnace-room?

The sound of the screaming grew louder and louder in Belan’s memory till he believed that he actually heard it. Koscuisko must hear it, too. Why else would Koscuisko want to go to the furnace-room, if it was not that the dead Nurail cried out to him for vengeance?

“Quite impossible. Sir.” He had to protest: He couldn’t allow it. To take Koscuisko unannounced to the furnace-room would amount to betrayal of Geltoi’s trust. He couldn’t do it.

“But I insist.” Cordially, politely, Koscuisko took his arm, and turned Belan toward the door. “Just the seven of us. Show us the way. There’s nothing to hide, surely, Belan?”

Of course there was nothing to hide. There couldn’t be. Administrator Geltoi ran an efficient prison. There was no answer for Koscuisko’s question, none that would not compromise them one way or the other.

Koscuisko took Belan’s silence for an answer in itself, or pretended to.

“Well, then. You see. Take us to the furnaces, Administrator Belan. Take us now.”

There was nothing that he could think to do but comply.

Chapter Twelve

Andrej Koscuisko had been dreading this since the moment he had begun to understand that it had to be done. There was no way around it. He had to see the furnaces, himself; and he had to see them as they were, at the end of the day’s work, when the garbage was to be dumped into the incinerators. Before anybody had a chance to hide something that might be compromising. He hated doing it to his Security: but it had to be done.

He didn’t want to see the furnaces.

Joslire was dead, and every time he thought about the furnaces he thought about Joslire. Things were getting confused in Andrej’s mind: between Joslire who had been sent on high in fire at the hospital, and prisoners whose bodies were destroyed by fire here; so that he found himself confounding Joslire with Nurail prisoners, imagining the horrors he had heard in evidence these past few days as happening to Joslire.

And it was bad enough that anyone should suffer through such fearful horrors, without the accusing ghost of a dead man coming into the picture.

Strolling with casual purposefulness with Belan through the halls of the Domitt Prison, Andrej concentrated his mind on where he was and what he was about. Why would Joslire’s spirit be accusing? Never in his life had Joslire found fault with him: and yet it was the feeling that Andrej had.

There was no one in the corridors to see them, to report to Administrator Geltoi; Andrej had had Kaydence select the time very carefully, taking shift-change and assignment into account. No one to talk to. Andrej wanted to talk, because he was afraid. But if he let Belan know how reluctant he actually was to seek the furnaces, Belan might feel emboldened to resist, or try to run away.

He had to keep his fear within himself. He was in control here, after all. He was the Writ on site at the Domitt Prison.

And if atrocities were taking place under his Writ, and he did not end them, his ignorance of their existence might protect him from legal difficulties, but he would be damned just as deeply as if he had himself planned all of the crimes that he feared he suspected —

Down stairs into the basement levels, avoiding the lifts to minimize the chances of being noticed. Two levels down from the ground floor. It was murky and hot in these maintenance corridors, poorly lit, poorly ventilated, and a rumbling groan within the very walls of the maintenance fans venting the smoke and the stench of the fire into the damper-vent system and out through the roof. There at the corner of the basement, where the walls above turned, there was a wide chute from stories up; a wide chute, and a conveyer, silent and still for now.

Miss Samons was keeping an eye on Belan for him. Andrej stepped forward, past Kaydence and Toska, to peer up through the darkness above to try to see where the chute opened from and how far up it went. No luck; it was black, above, but there was a draft that made Andrej think the chute vented into the Domitt’s courtyard. Outside, where it would be getting dark, where the temperature was falling even as the sun set. A rubbish—chute.

He leaned too far over the lip of the chute, looking up. Andrej lost his balance. Falling forward over the base of the chute, he put his hands out to steady himself; but slid down against the slippery surface of the chute to fall heavily against the conveyer, before Toska had pulled him safely to his feet again.

The conveyer started moving.

Weight-activated.

Once it had started, it didn’t seem to notice that Andrej wasn’t on it any longer. Standing there, watching it, Andrej stared stupidly at the conveyer for a long moment before he realized what it was saying to him.

Follow me
.

Nodding his thanks to Toska for the welcome reassurance of Toska’s protective strength, Andrej Koscuisko walked alongside the conveyer-track to see where it might lead.

It wasn’t far.

The sound of cursing could be clearly heard as he went down the length of the conveyer to where it passed through the fabric-fringed maw of a thermal barrier, into the furnace room beyond

“ . . . filthy piece of Nurail trash. Move it. Get that stack shifted, you, there’s more trash coming, who’s out there culling the cattle at this time of night?”

Cattle. Nurail prisoners, he meant, whoever it was who was swearing. There was a hand-secure on the entrance gate beside the conveyer belt; Andrej gestured with his head for Erish and Code to bring Belan forward.

“If you would be so kind.” Andrej pointed. “Open, here.“

At this point he could set himself to ride the conveyer belt through the thermal barrier, but there was no telling what was on the other side. It would be better not to risk it.

Belan palmed the secure.

Nothing happened.

With a look of sickened desperation, Belan pulled a white-square from a pocket in his sleeve and wiped his hand. Belan would rather almost anything than be here: so much was evident from his face. So Belan knew what was in the furnace-room. And Belan was dirty.

Dirty, but cooperating, because he put his hand to the secure once more, and this time the lock recognized his now-dry palm and bowed to his authority. Disengaged. Opened the door.

Quickly, without waiting for Security, Andrej stepped across the threshold and went in.

The furnace-room was brightly lit, two stories high, and three times as long as it was deep. Andrej could see a work-crew toiling at a pile of debris under the whip of a Pyana overseer, another overseer belaboring a man who knelt — trying to cover his head, to shield it from blows — near to one furnace-gate; another sitting at a table near the door, at the back wall, with the remains of a meal spread out before him and a jug of what was probably a beer of some sort that he was using even now to refresh his glass.

None of these things could distract him or diminish the visual impact of the furnaces themselves. Five furnace-gates, stretched along the back of the wall. Five great grim doors, and darkness behind two of them, but the other three gate-windows aglow either red or yellow or white.

They’d been noticed.

The overseer who’d been eating put down his jug, hastily, rising to his feet. “Assistant Administrator Belan!” He called the name out loudly enough to be heard from one end of the room to the other, even over the noise from the furnaces.

The overseer who’d been tormenting the lone Nurail coiled his whip into his hand hastily, hurrying forward. The other formed his work-party up between the furnaces and the door, where he could keep an eye on them while speaking to their superior.

“This is an unexpected pleasure, sir.” The Pyana overseer had left his table to greet them more formally. All the same, the emphasis seemed to Andrej to be on the word
unexpected
, and the Pyana looked keenly into Belan’s face with an unfriendly eye for all of Belan’s superior rank. Belan was Nurail. Andrej hastened to claim the blame for himself.

“The visit is specifically to be unannounced,”
Andrej answered, in Belan’s defense. The overseer should know who he was, even if the overseer had never met him. “For this reason I made quite sure that Administrator Belan could not be accused of having tipped you off in advance. In this manner there can be no question raised about whether the Administration has passed the audit honestly.”

It was duplicitous of him to imply that the furnaces would pass audit. But Andrej wanted the truth of what went on down here; that meant getting the Pyana overseer’s cooperation. “Now perhaps you would to me the operation show, furnace-master?”

It seemed to work.

“Well. If you say so, sir. Excellency, your Excellency?” the overseer corrected himself, hastily, glancing to Belan for verification. Pyana were precise where titles were concerned: Every bit as concerned about correct categorization as Nurail, from whom they were — in the larger sense — culturally and linguistically indistinguishable. “No offense, your Excellency. Where to start. Well. Let’s start here, then.”

The conveyer. Where the debris to be burned was carried into the furnace-room. It had to be discrete chunks of debris, actually, rather than heaps of scraps and bits of things; because the conveyer’s terminus was well short of the furnace-gates themselves.

“Waste comes in through here, bundled. The work-crew stacks it next to the furnace, depending on which furnace fires next.”

Walking Andrej from the conveyer to the pile of debris that was being built next to the black mouth of one of the furnace-gates. The furnace-gates themselves were huge and heavy, by the looks of them, and got hot even past all of their thermal shielding; that was the reason for the club-like tool that leaned up against the hinges, Andrej supposed. To knock the bolt free when the furnace-gate was to be opened during use to accept a new pallet of fuel.

“Two kinds of debris to be disposed of, your Excellency. The office waste and such-like, that’s no problem. It’s these that take a bit more managing, if the officer please.”

And “these” were the bodies of the dead.

Andrej had feared as much; it was not unexpected. And still the sight of the dead piled like kindling frightened him in some way that he could not quite explain to himself. It was not that it was indecent to burn the dead. He had burned Joslire, and it had been a comfort to protect the abandoned body by alchemical reduction to the ash; so it was not horror that bodies should be burned that frightened him.

There were too many bodies on that pile.

He’d done his research carefully, planning this inspection. He knew how many were on mortality report, day by day, over the past weeks. There should be no more than so many dead, waiting to be freed from the memory of their bodies in the fire. And there were more than there should be.

“In order to write the inspection report.” His throat was dry. He wanted a swallow or two from the overseer’s flask: but that was probably out of the question. “It will be necessary for me to examine these dead, and take a rough count. If you would provide for me the assistance of your work crew, it would spare my gentlemen the unpleasantness.”

Surely this was not unreasonable. The work-crews had to do this work day by day, surely they were in some part inured to it — unlike his gentlemen. Unlike himself: but he could not hope to be spared unpleasantness, it was for him to take responsibility for it.

The overseer shrugged and bowed and gestured, and his fellow hurried the work-crew over to where Andrej stood waiting for him. That one lone Nurail prisoner who had been beaten as Andrej came in was lying on the floor, apart, ignored. Andrej wanted to go see how bad it was. But he had to keep himself in character, aloof and professional, else he would not be able to observe everything that he needed to take in evidence.

The work-crew unpiled their careful heap of bodies, laying the dead out on the floor in rows. “It will be necessary for my report to identify this work-crew by their names,”
Andrej lied to the overseer, taking his little notebook out of the chest-plaquet of his over-blouse. “It’s customary to provide this information for the prison’s protection, so that anything I may say in my report may be challenged by witnesses. Your name?”

Not so much a lie, perhaps. But more important than the audit was his need to try to protect the work-crew from execution once he’d left. The prison might destroy the witnesses on instinct. If he knew them by name, perhaps the prison would have to think twice.

“Shan Morlaps. Good, yes, and your mother’s people hold? The Ringing Rock.” Oh, in that case, one of Shan Morlaps’s family was dead, Andrej had murdered him not three weeks gone by. He had the weave. At least he had the words, and as much of the music as he’d been able to transcribe to his satisfaction.

As difficult as it could be to speak under torture, to sing melodiously was all but impossible; but the tune could be corrected from the threads in the woven-weave, if necessary, so that was not so much at issue as the words. “And your father’s weave. Yes, I insist. You may whisper it to me in confidence, I know how prudish you Nurail are.”

Better than that, if the overseers didn’t know what name was given and written down it would decrease their confidence in being able to substitute. Andrej wanted these people alive.

The Nurail leaned closer, grabbing for Kaydence at Andrej’s side to steady himself and keep his balance without giving offense by touching the officer’s clean uniform with soiled hands. Whispering, he spoke, half-choked with grief or shame; or perhaps both?

“My father carried the Rose of Third-month, in his life. Write it all down and witness to it, officer. These men are murdered outside of the Law.”

The Nurail had no reason to expect Andrej to keep his confidence, no reason to look to Andrej for hope or help at all. But had apparently made up his mind to take the chance that Andrej would listen and hear. Andrej kept his face clear of distress. “Thank you, very good. And next?”

Yes.

He knew that murder was being done.

Once he had evidence, he would see the murderers punished under Law, as they had punished and killed outside of it.

Justice would be done, or his name was not Koscuisko, and Joslire — and Robert, and Kaydence, and Toska, and the rest — had never trusted him.

And yet the strictest justice under Jurisdiction could never make this right, what had happened at the Domitt Prison . . .

Kneeling down next to the bodies, Andrej worked quickly. He didn’t want to give the guards any cause to think twice: so it was important that he appear to be casual, even cursory, in his investigation. He was being watched, of course. But at least so far, the Pyana overseer didn’t seem to have begun to worry.

And why should they?

Because they were the final damning link in the chain that was to bind Belan and the rest of the Administration over to the Bench for abuse of authority, and failure of Writ. That was why they should be worried.

Most of these dead seemed to have died of natural causes, not of trauma. Overwork and underfeeding, that was natural enough, wasn’t it? Overwork, because hands were hardened and blistered beneath the calluses, torn even through skin toughened by hard physical labor. Underfed, because the muscle had wasted; and cardiac muscle would fail, under too great a strain, and leave the dead with just those expressions of surprise or startlement.