Prisoner of Conscience (37 page)

Sarvaw forensics? Whatever could that mean?

The construction pit.

The Nurail they had buried there.

Sarvaw forensics teams were top of the line for gathering physical evidence from mass burials. Koscuisko was Dolgorukij. He would know. It was Dolgorukij that had massacred all those Sarvaw for the forensics teams to practice on.

“I want him very carefully maintained,”
Koscuisko said to Lieutenant Plugrath. Koscuisko hardly deigned to notice he was there, any more. Koscuisko didn’t have to. “There are reparations to be made, punishment owing too many times over to count. I do not mean to risk escape of any sort. I trust you take my meaning, Bench Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.” Plugrath’s submission to Koscuisko’s authority was too absolute. Geltoi could hardly bear to hear it. “I’ll pledge his safety to you personally, your Excellency. You’ll be wanting to move your people into town, I expect.”

“Out of this place,”
Koscuisko agreed. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

The furnaces should have warned him. The furnaces had stopped. Koscuisko had people here to rake the furnaces out, and number up the unregistered dead to claim vengeance against him. Belan had whimpered to them about the dead in the construction pit, and Belan could tell a very great deal more to Geltoi’s disadvantage. Belan was Nurail. He had no backbone, no courage, no strength of will to speak of.

Caught between a treacherous Nurail to one side and the prospect of being made to serve as Chilleau Judiciary’s scapegoat on the other, Administrator Geltoi weighed his options as he weighed the stalloy cuffs that chained his wrists.

And decided.

“You’re making a significant error, Lieutenant.” He tried to sound sorrowful, while investing his words with as much aggrieved dignity as possible. “I don’t know what allegations our poor Merig may have made, nor how much faith a prudent man should have in the ravings of a madman. I fear for your career; and you could profit by this instead, if you so chose.”

He could brazen out the evidence somehow. He could see to it that Belan was silenced before evidence could be placed on Record. But if he once allowed himself to be removed as a prisoner, he was as good as dead. He was not in a very good position here and now: he had been taken by surprise. He could still make it work, if only he could walk out of his office a free man.

“Not my mistake to make, Administrator Geltoi,”
Lieutenant Plugrath said, respectfully enough, but with no hint of regret or uncertainty in his voice. “His Excellency has cried failure of Writ against the Domitt Prison. The Bench will decide if there have been errors made. Not I.”

Plugrath gave Koscuisko the nod as he said it. There was no love lost between the two officers, perhaps, but there seemed to be little hope of making a wedge between them, either. Administrator Geltoi sought for the right words, the right thing to say, something that would work to break this intolerable spell. This could not be happening. He’d walked into a nightmare.

Lieutenant Plugrath nodded at someone behind Geltoi. “Ready to transport, squad leader. Secure your prisoner and escort to custody as previously detailed, secured psychiatric.”

No.

“You can’t do this to me!” Geltoi shrieked. “You don’t dare — do you know who I am — ”

They picked him up and carried him away, kicking and screaming, his dignity lost to him now as finally as his position. As his future. As his life.

It didn’t matter how much prisoners screamed.

The Bench would have its evidence.

Koscuisko was petty and vengeful, and Koscuisko was Nurail after all; but Koscuisko was an Inquisitor, with the ultimate penalty within his power to inflict if the Bench ruled —

Administrator Geltoi sank like a dead weight in the grasp of the Security who carried him, and wept like a man bereft.

His prison, his prisoners, his work-crews. His land reclamation project. His money.

All gone.

And nothing left —

Except that he could see to it that Chilleau Judiciary did not turn its back on him, he would give evidence.

Why couldn’t they have listened to him, and called Andrej Koscuisko back to
Scylla
before any of this could have happened?

Chapter Fourteen

Andrej Koscuisko stood on the planking that protected the lip of the pit being excavated, watching the forensics team at their painstaking work below.

From where he stood he could see the careful grid marked off with chalked lines, and the bracing that supported a partially decayed body with too precise a correspondence to how it had been uncovered for anyone’s peace of mind. Clawing its way frantically toward the surface, the head thrown back, the jaw carefully wired into the open-mouthed — dirt-filled — scream that had formed one last protest against atrocity.

There could be no possible hope of misinterpretation. Whoever it had been, it had been a living soul, buried alive, and fully awake to the horror of its cruel fate as it happened.

“Caustic losteppan, ground fine,”
the shift supervisor — Sarvaw, as was most of the team — noted, passing a closed vial of clear glass to Andrej for examination. “Broadcast into the pit before they started filling. Don’t get it on your skin, sir, this stuff will start to dissolve flesh within moments.”

Raising his eyes to the black wall that rose up in front of them on the other side of the pit, Andrej found he could not suppress a shudder. “What a fearful way to die.” No one would challenge that, it was too obvious, but the horror he felt was too much to be held in. The excavation was too good. It was too clear. He could almost hear the screaming. “How many bodies in the pit? At a guess?”

But the shift supervisor shook her head. “No guessing yet, your Excellency. Imaging scans show too much confusion at the next level to be able to sort it out. Going by bone density it could be upwards of three hundred souls.”

Andrej shuddered again, and it wasn’t because of the cold or the smell of earth, heavy with decaying flesh. “Thank you, shift supervisor. You should receive every assistance, speak to the Administration if help should flag.”

The woman bowed respectfully, but Andrej didn’t think she cared what he said one way or the other. Why should she? She was Sarvaw, he was Dolgorukij. Worse than Dolgorukij, Aznir Dolgorukij, the twice-great-grandson of Chuvishka Kospodar. He could protest his outrage all he liked, in public or in private. No Sarvaw would believe him.

Or if they did, it would make no difference. This was still atrocity that the Sarvaw had learned to judge against the Kospodar rule.

Turning away from the grave pit, Andrej began to cross the planking toward the Administration building, and Security — Code and Erish — fell in to place behind him. There were people coming on foot from in front of the Administrative building toward them, a small group — six, and four of them Andrej thought he recognized.

He was not particularly farsighted. But Andrej knew his Bonds: and he had left Security 5.3 on
Scylla
, so what were they doing here?

Not only that.

It seemed to Andrej that Code knew more than just his fellow Bonds; and came as close as Andrej had ever known him to missing a step, near-stumbling.

Afraid.

As the party drew near, Andrej could get more of its members sorted one from the other. Cel Tonivish. Iyo Lorig. Hart Aicans. Specs Fiskka. Yes, Security 5.3. No Robert St. Clare, Andrej was grateful to see. It was hard enough for him to see all of these beaten punished prisoners who looked like Robert to him without Robert actually being here.

Two officers in Administrative grays, but Andrej wasn’t familiar with the branch of service that the steel-gray piping on the uniform might indicate.

Erish was fearfully tense, all of a sudden.

Then Andrej knew.

These officers were dancing-masters.

And that could only mean —

“Your Excellency.” The senior of the two dancing-masters brought up his detail and saluted, very solemnly. “News from the Bench, sir, perhaps you’ve been expecting us.”

Dancing-masters were the people that the Bench put in charge of the difficult period of conditioning and training that a bond-involuntary underwent between the implantation of the governor and the first duty post. That was why bond-involuntaries were afraid of them. It was nothing personal. And very soon it would be over, at least for three of his Security; and it should have been four, but Joslire had claimed the Day.

Joslire.

“Indeed I hoped for you, in a sense.” What was he to call them? He wasn’t sure he was supposed to know that they were dancing-masters. He wasn’t sure they knew what bond-involuntaries called them, come to that. “Where are the others? Because I think that they should be together.”

He knew why they were here. Security 5.3 had clearly been briefed in advance as well, from the fiercely cloaked joy in their faces; and that had been kindly done. Code and Erish could not know: and still gave him so much honor as to have relaxed once more within their bond-involuntary’s discipline, secure that they were in no danger of bullying in his presence.

“His Excellency’s Chief of Security has taken the other Security assigned up to the Administrator’s office, sir. We were to tell his Excellency.”

They would be waiting for him, then. And not know what it was that they were waiting for. Andrej wanted to hurry. “With dispatch, then, if you please. Code, lead the way.”

Code would be staying. Andrej was conscious of the dancing-masters taking their subordinate positions behind him, as Security gathered into formation around them to move into the building. It annoyed him to realize that the dancing-masters were evaluating the performance of his gentlemen with every step they took. It annoyed him even more that he was anxious for their approval: as though it meant anything at all to him.

They could not know.

There could be no bond-involuntary Security under Jurisdiction as perfect as his people; and yet Andrej knew too well that to a dancing-master they might seem half-ruined. A bond-involuntary might be said to lose the fine edge of his discipline when he lost his fear of punishment.

But not where Andrej could hear it.

Upstairs in the great gracious office that had belonged to Administrator Geltoi Andrej sat down behind the desk to see what the dancing-masters had brought him. Chief Samons formed 5.3 up in ranks outside of the office, in the hall; and held Code back with them. Security 5.4 stood in the office, with a blank space at the end of the line where Joslire should have been.

The senior officer set the flat tray that he’d been carrying down on the desk, and opened its secures. “His Excellency will wish to see to these himself,”
the dancing-master said. Safes. Three Safes, one for each of the surviving members of Security 5.4 that had been on board
Scylla
for that fateful event.

And each Safe on a necklace of fine chain to hang around a man’s neck, and sit close to the governor, and transmit its carefully restricted signal to the governor to keep it lulled to sleep until such time as the governor could be surgically removed by someone with experience.

“Thank you.” He still didn’t know what to call them. “It is a very great privilege. And orders?”

He would have liked to do the surgery himself. But he wasn’t sure he trusted the level of the technical sophistication at the local hospital to support so delicate a thing. The dancing-master smiled; a very warm and confiding smile, really. Andrej had not cared for the dancing-masters from the moment he realized that they frightened his people. The goodwill in the dancing-master’s smile reconciled Andrej considerably.

“To be read aloud, your Excellency, before, during, or after. At his Excellency’s discretion.”

And it should be soon. At once. Immediately.

“Miss Samons, if you would close the door.”

He would speak to Code and 5.3; but this was first. Rising to his feet, Andrej gathered the Safes up into his hand and approached the senior man on 5.4. Toska was as white in the face as Andrej had ever seen in his own mirror, mornings that followed an excess of drink. He could have smiled. But this was solemn business: more so than anything in these peoples’ lives.

“Attention to orders,”
the senior dancing-master began. Andrej raised an eyebrow at Toska, who realized finally that he was to bow so that Andrej could slip the Safe over his head. “In the matter of the petition of Fleet Captain Irshah Parmin on behalf of Jurisdiction Fleet Ship
Scylla
. For meritorious service above and beyond the requirements of duty, Revocation of Bond is granted to the following Bench resources.”

Toska, then Kaydence. The dancing-master read their names; they were different than the ones Andrej knew. Real names. Who had Joslire been?

Toska Simmanye. Kaydence Varrish. Finally Erish Tallis. They were all on Safe; free men, and soon to be free forever, once the governor in their brains that enforced their Bonds was removed. Free: but still and stiffly at attention. Andrej stepped back to stand with the dancing-master, who was finishing his speech.

“The before-named therefore to travel at Bench expense to the nearest Fleet rated facility for restoration of organic integrity.” Surgery, he meant. “Cadre officers Attis and Fisemost to accompany and arrange for adequate debriefing prior to return to civilian life. Accrued pay and benefits to be awarded in addition to Fleet meritorious service pension for life. By the Bench instruction, na Roqua den Tensa, First Judge, Fontailloe Judiciary, Presiding.”

Free.

Andrej stepped forward on impulse, not trusting himself to speak; and put his arms around Erish, who was nearest. Kissing him formally, with heartfelt emotion, first on one cheek and then on the other. Feeling his way, through the tears that blurred his vision, to the next man, to embrace him in like kind and be embraced. They were free. And to him it had been granted, through no merit of his own, to see at least these many of his gentlemen safe and away.

But there was one missing.

Andrej stared at the empty place for a long moment.

Joslire was free, too; and had known the time and the place of his emancipation. And had rejoiced in it.

“I must to the others go out and speak.” They all knew but Code; maybe Chief Samons was telling poor Code even now. “If you would stand by, gentles, it will be one moment.”

Why should they?

He wasn’t their officer any longer.

There was no reason they should listen to him.

But they would always have been his Security; and that reminded him, something of which he had only fantasized in years gone by. He could take care of them, as they had taken care of him.

“I will for you provide letters of introduction, you shall go to the familial corporation if you like.” It could be that they would find themselves at loose ends, no matter how good the debriefing support to be provided. “That you are no longer bound to Fleet, I cannot but rejoice for you. And there is no claim I have to lay upon you for your service, but strong claim in your hands to make against my family, as it may please you.”

He probably wasn’t making sense. And they probably wouldn’t get anywhere near anything that reminded them of him, not by choice, ever. Why should they? That they had shared an unequal partnership with him had been his privilege. But it had been their punishment. “For what has in the past been between us it is your right to claim honor and comfort, sustenance and maintenance and all due respect. For as long as you live, if you elect it.”

And Joslire, Joslire was to be remembered in his turn . . .

“You’re wrong, you know. Sir.” Toska was clearly struggling with something, swallowing hard on his emotion. “To say you have no claim. After these three years, sir. You can’t expect us to forget everything you’ve done for us. Just because we get — to go free.”

Oh, he was going to miss them. But he’d know they were free: not under some other officer’s direction, to be subject to potential reprimand. “You are right, Toska, and I am a sinner.” Toska had taken better care of him than that. No governor under Jurisdiction could make a bond-involuntary extend his unspoken support by choice. “There is no use pretending that you have not been good to me over and above your Bond, all of this time. The bond that is between us cannot so easily be revoked, no matter the distance that should separate.”

They would no longer be bond-involuntary troops, Security slaves. But they would always be bonded to him, and he to them.

There was no loss in them going after all.

###

Ailynn had seen the three reborn men on their way in the company of the dancing-masters. Code had introduced her to his fellows, the new team that had been sent to wait upon the officer, and gave her credence amongst them. Now it had been eight weeks since she had gone with Kaydence, who was no longer to be called Psimas, down the wall; and pleasant as her life had been, it could not last. She knew it.

Eight weeks.

First they had moved from the prison to a house in Port Rudistal, but the officer had not been satisfied with those lodgings; and had moved himself within days to a house he liked better. How he had come by it Ailynn didn’t know, nor did she ask — she knew her place.

It was not so big a house, perhaps, but there was room enough for the officer and his Security and the house-staff besides. The officer had brought the cook from the penthouse at the prison to prepare their meals, but he would not have Pyana housekeepers, and had hired Nurail from the camps instead.

Left her to manage them.

Eight weeks, and she had ruled the officer’s household as the keeper of his keys, and stirred neither foot nor finger to her own work except to see that the toweling was warmed for his bath and to warm the bed beside him while he slept. He’d mostly only slept in bed, these eight weeks past; busy at the prison and in the camps with the taking in of evidence and dispositions with speak-sera, and no torture.

It wore on him, regardless. He was deeper into drink than he had been before: and why should she take a second thought for it? Except that he had treated her decently.

Still, something that Ailynn didn’t understand was happening.

The officer had received his orders; he was called back to his ship-duty and due to leave Port Rudistal within three weeks. The business of the Domitt was not concluded: it was hardly well begun, but Fleet would have its Inquisitor back, a good indication that the officer was half-vindicated already. The Bench had sent audit teams, and the officer had given his evidence, his personal evidence, even as she had. Now the Bench audit teams would take the matter in hand.