by Dan Abnett
‘I don’t want to talk in front of the child,’ said Elodie.
‘Then we’ll talk afterwards,’ said Tona. ‘It’s good for her to have proper female company. She’s got a thousand uncles.’
They ate and cleared the dishes, and then the two women sat down to talk. Gol’s amasec was all gone, but Tona had some sacra, which she poured for them.
‘She’s a funny little thing, isn’t she, your daughter? Lots of energy, and a great appetite. How old is she now, nine, ten?’
‘She’s thirteen,’ said Tona. ‘I’m expecting a growth spurt any minute.’
‘Girls do that, don’t they? Grow up suddenly,’ said Elodie.
‘You’re evading the issue, Elodie,’ said Tona. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you found out?’
‘I went to talk to one of the women, as you suggested,’ said Elodie. ‘She was very defensive, but she confirmed my suspicions. The women aren’t hurting themselves, they’re being hurt.’
‘Someone’s hurting them?’ asked Tona. ‘Who?’
‘That’s the problem,’ said Elodie. ‘I don’t know who, and I don’t know why.’
‘What did she say, exactly?’ asked Tona.
‘She didn’t say anything, but she implied quite a lot. She’s seeing a lot of women with injuries, and she’s helping them. The injuries don’t match the claims the women are making about how they were caused. When I asked who was hurting the women, she said, “They are women.”’
‘That’s all she said?’ asked Tona. ‘Just, “They are women”?’
‘That’s all,’ said Elodie, ‘but the implication seemed clear to me.’
‘She was implying that it’s a man?’ asked Tona.
‘A man or men,’ said Elodie.
‘If it’s domestic and the women won’t speak out, we can’t take this to Gaunt,’ said Tona.
‘I didn’t think so,’ said Elodie. ‘I don’t want to lose my trust with the women, either. And I don’t want to jeopardise this woman’s standing in her community. She does a lot of good.’
‘We’ll go to Ana Curth,’ said Tona.
‘Is that a good idea?’ asked Elodie.
‘She’s the head of medicae,’ said Tona. ‘If any of the injuries are bad enough for the victims to end up in the medicae bay, Ana already knows about this… Even if she doesn’t actually know about it.’
‘What can she do?’ asked Elodie.
‘The next time a woman comes in with an injury, she might be able to persuade her to talk,’ said Tona. ‘She’s a pretty impressive woman when she’s got the bit between her teeth. If she tells you to do something, you do it.’
‘Would you talk to her for me?’ asked Elodie. ‘I’m not sure…’
‘Better coming from me,’ said Tona. ‘I’ll see her tomorrow. I wanted to drop in to see Lesp about some ink, I’ll do it then.’
VIII
Salandra needed the pension. She needed it for her children. Her children whom everyone believed to be another woman’s orphans. Guard orphans. It didn’t matter how or when or why it had all happened, they were her children and this was the only life her family had known for a dozen years. A percentage of the pension went straight back into Harjeon’s pocket, but that didn’t matter, either. She was frugal. She had learned to manage.
What made him think she would tell anyone? Why had he beaten her? She despised him, but there was nothing to be done.
She grabbed the bucket and drew it towards her again. How many times had she thrown up? Why was her neck so stiff? She must go see… She must go see… The old woman, what was her name?
IX
‘Do you need something, Tona?’ asked Ana Curth as the Guard strode through the medicae.
‘Five minutes of your time when you go off duty, if you can manage it,’ said Tona.
‘Wait in my office,’ said Ana. ‘A few stern words with Captain Daur and I’m done for this shift.’
‘Consider them spoken and understood,’ said Ban Daur, waving a greeting at Tona. ‘Lesp already covered this ground.’
‘Lesp isn’t your attending doctor,’ said Ana Curth. ‘Five minutes, Tona.’
Tona pulled a face at Ban, and strode to Ana’s office to wait for her.
Three minutes later, Ana Curth walked in, unbuttoned her smock and sat heavily in her chair, clearly exhausted.
‘Right, let’s have it,’ she said.
‘First things first,’ said Tona. ‘Are you coping all right?’
‘I appreciate the concern, Tona, but I’m busy, I’m understaffed, and I answer to Gaunt.’
‘Well, that put me in my place,’ said Tona.
Ana sighed.
‘It’s easier than answering the question, that’s all,’ she said. ‘For the purposes of moving on, of course I’m coping. That’s not the question.’
‘You’re miserable,’ said Tona.
‘Of course I’m miserable,’ said Ana.
‘I know it won’t help, but it gets less awful,’ said Tona.
‘That’s how I’m coping,’ said Ana. ‘The knowledge that it gets less awful… Until the next time.’
‘Yes,’ said Tona. ‘Until the next time.’
‘So,’ said Ana, ‘give me something else to think about. Tell me what I can do for you.’
‘Can you keep an eye on non-coms accident figures? See if they’re going up? Look for injuries, particularly among the women,’ said Tona.
‘They’re high,’ said Ana.
Tona was surprised.
‘It can happen,’ said Ana. ‘Sometimes, after an engagement… Sometimes the combatants don’t know how to deal with the things they’ve gone through – the mental and emotional traumas.’
‘They take it out on the women?’ asked Tona.
‘Sometimes,’ said Ana. ‘It’s one of the tragedies of war. Everyone pays a price. The victims are strong and the culprits are remorseful. Often they love each other.’
‘They tell you all this?’ asked Tona.
‘The women make excuses for the men, or they say it like it is. They’re very accepting,’ said Ana.
‘Then it’s not that,’ said Tona. ‘Have any women come in here with injuries that you’ve been suspicious about or that they’ve refused to explain?’
Ana got up from her chair and crossed to a cabinet of medicae records. She took out a thick file and leafed through it, pulling out several sheets.
‘I’ve treated five women for unexplained injuries in the past week,’ she said, ‘including fractures to a nose, an elbow and a wrist, a dislocated shoulder, and two concussions. What’s going on, Tona?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Tona. ‘The problem is, nobody’s talking.’
‘Well if I get another woman coming into my medicae in a state like this, she’s damned well going to talk to me,’ said Ana, slapping down the medical records of the five victims.
‘That’s what I hoped you’d say,’ said Tona. She got up to leave. ‘The other stuff, when it happens, you do something about it, right?’
‘Always,’ said Ana.
‘Good,’ said Tona.
X
Stremmy was worried about her mother. She was sick. She tried to stand up, but she kept falling over, and she was saying funny things that didn’t make any sense. It had all started the last time Private Harjeon had come to see them. Stremmy and her twin brother Flory had been sent away, and when they’d come back their mother had been lying down with a headache. They hadn’t eaten that night.
It was two days later, and her mother was worse. Stremmy tried to ask her mother what she should do. When her mother didn’t answer, she wasn’t worried any more, she was frightened. Stremmy decided she’d have to do something by herself.
XI
‘What’s the matter, child?’ asked Honne when Stremmy found her
at the barter market, trying to trade some beautifully darned but very old petticoats for a nearly new wrap.
‘Mum’s sick, can you come?’ asked Stremmy.
‘Salandra’s sick?’ asked Honne, scooping up the petticoats that she’d arranged on the corner of a trestle table. ‘How long has she been sick?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the child. ‘Ever since Private Harjeon came.’
The old woman and the child wove their way through the cramped passages of the hab decks to Salandra’s tiny cabin. The stench of stale vomit hit her before she’d drawn back the oily old curtain that separated the space from the narrow companionway and the hundreds of other tiny, family rooms that led off it.
Flory was sitting on the floor next to his mother. She was still and silent.
Honne crossed the room in two or three strides, gestured the boy out of the way and bent to examine the woman.
Salandra opened her eyes when Honne spoke to her.
‘They’re mine. Don’t let them take my children,’ she said.
‘No one’s going to take the children away,’ said Honne.
‘They need the pension when I’m dead,’ said Salandra. ‘Make sure Harjeon keeps his word. I’m not a traitor. It’s not treason to give the children a pension.’
‘Be still,’ said Honne. ‘You’re delirious. I need to look at you.’
There was a smudge of black blood around Salandra’s right nostril, and her pupils were unequal. Honne gently felt the woman’s head. The right, rear quadrant was warm to the touch.
‘Flory, find two fit strong people,’ said Honne. ‘We’re going to carry your mother to the medicae bay. She needs a doctor.’
‘Will Mum be all right?’ asked Stremmy.
‘I hope so,’ said Honne. ‘You’re a good girl for coming to find me. Now stay here and look after each other until I come back.’
‘Don’t tell,’ said Salandra as she was lifted from her bed. ‘Don’t say a word. I promised Harjeon I wouldn’t ever speak of it. Shhh.’
XII
Salandra never regained consciousness after she was taken to the medicae. Despite Ana Curth’s best efforts, she died within the hour.
‘What happened here?’ asked Curth.
It was less than forty-eight hours after her conversation with Tona Criid, and this woman had clearly been beaten to death. The skull fracture had been fatal, but when she examined her, Ana found other injuries.
‘I don’t know,’ said Honne. ‘She said nothing.’
‘Then I’m having her husband arrested,’ said Ana.
‘She has no husband,’ said Honne.
‘Don’t split hairs with me, woman,’ said Ana. ‘I’m in no mood for wrangling words. Her man, whoever he is, will be arrested for this.’
‘She has no man,’ said Honne. ‘There’s never been a man. She cares for orphaned children who lost their mother at Hagia.’
‘Someone did this,’ said Ana Curth.
Honne shrugged. Salandra had been delirious. She had intended to take her secrets with her to the grave. Souls were not Honne’s responsibility, not dead souls. The souls of the living, that was different. Stremmy and Flory were living souls. They’d lost two mothers.
XIII
At first bell, Ana Curth walked the companionway to Tona Criid’s compartment. She’d stayed in the medicae long into the night, long after her shift was over, trying to piece it all together. There was no definitive answer. It didn’t make sense.
The hatch opened to the smell of eggs. Ana knew they were powdered and stored and might be decades old, and she wondered how Tona managed to get them to smell as if they’d been newly laid.
‘Ana,’ said Tona, surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time the doctor had visited her in her quarters.
‘Tona, can I come in?’
‘Eat with us,’ said Tona. ‘There’s plenty.’
‘Your eggs smell wonderful,’ said Ana.
She stopped in her tracks as she saw Elodie sitting at the small table with Yoncy.
‘On second thoughts, I’ll come back,’ she said.
‘If it’s about the women,’ said Tona, ‘it was Elodie who brought it to me in the first place.’
‘Oh,’ said Ana. ‘What about the child?’
‘Yoncy, would you like to eat breakfast tucked up in your bunk?’ asked Tona.
‘Yes please, mummy,’ said Yoncy, getting down from the table.
Tona scooped some scrambled egg into a bowl, added a hunk of bread and handed it to her daughter. Yoncy ducked behind the partition, closing the hatch behind her, and climbed into her bunk where it was warm and dark.
‘You’d think she’d find it claustrophobic in there,’ said Ana. ‘It’s so cramped and airless.’
‘It beats me, but it’s her favourite place, lately,’ said Tona.
‘A woman died, yesterday,’ said Ana Curth, when they were alone. ‘She was brought into the medicae with a fractured skull. She’d been beaten, badly.’
‘Did you find out who was responsible?’ asked Tona.
‘That’s just it,’ said Ana. ‘The woman who brought her in said she didn’t have a husband or lover. So, I checked her records, and there’s nothing about her being connected to a man. She came into the regiment with a woman Guard at Vervunhive. The mother of her children. She was a casualty at Hagia.’
‘So, it wasn’t a domestic incident,’ said Elodie.
‘That got me thinking about the other women,’ said Ana. ‘I’ve spent most of the night sifting through records for the other five women who had unexplained injuries or who wouldn’t talk about the causes of their injuries.’
‘What did you find?’ asked Tona.
‘None of the women have current registered partners,’ said Anna. ‘Two had registered partners, not married, killed in action, and the other three had registered partners, married, killed in action. Salandra, the woman who died yesterday, was raising Guard dependents.’
‘They were all single women,’ said Elodie, surprised.
‘I also checked the records of the other women who had come in with injuries caused in domestic incidents or altercations,’ said Ana. ‘There were seven of them. Four were married. One had a registered partner, not married. Two were single with no registered partner.’
‘So you think that the silence must be about something else?’ asked Elodie.
‘Yes,’ said Ana. ‘The pattern of injuries was different, too. I looked again at the injuries to the six women who were silent. Whoever hurt these women employs the same moves, over and over. The breaks and bruises are consistent with armlocks and with banging heads. He always attacks in the same ways. He’s a sadist. One woman had clearly had her face smashed against a bulkhead, possibly repeatedly. Her nose was a mess. She’d also suffered a dislocated shoulder. The bruising to the wrist suggested he’d brutally forced an armlock. I think whoever it is enjoys inflicting pain on these women.’
‘So we can take it to the Commissariat,’ said Tona.
‘How?’ asked Elodie. ‘We don’t have a suspect, and I don’t know why, but the women won’t talk.’
XIV
There were eleven women.
Harjeon was already incapable when the first one had sat down at the small table. There must have been something in the caffeine the old woman had given to him. He didn’t know her.
He’d come down to the deck habs for one of his visits. To talk to one of the women. She hadn’t been there. Honne had been there in her place.
‘She had to step out. She asked me to wait for you,’ she’d said. ‘I’ve got caffeine. You’re very good to her. She’s very grateful.’
One at a time, their faces had swum before his eyes. They’d said things as if from a great distance. They’d called him things. His body had taken the blows until he’d felt the warm froth i
n his mouth. He’d been relaxed, soft, numb. They’d punched like little girls.
He hadn’t known they’d held blades in their fists.
XV
They carried the body into the medicae.
‘What in the name of the God Emperor happened here?’ asked Ana Curth.
‘You won’t save him,’ said Honne.
‘I’m going to try,’ said Ana. Lesp was at her side, cutting Harjeon’s blood-soaked fatigues off his body as she took his vitals.
‘Who did this?’ she asked as the stab wounds were exposed.
‘No one,’ said Honne.
Ana scowled at the old woman.
‘Was it you?’ she asked.
Honne allowed herself a low chuckle.
‘They won’t kill him,’ she said. ‘That will.’ She gestured to the medicae tray at the head of the gurney, and turned to walk away.
She stopped several paces further down the medicae bay, and turned to face Ana Curth. She looked right at the doctor, and without blinking, said, ‘He hurt the women. He’ll get what he deserves.’ Then she turned once more and walked away.
Ana watched her for a moment. Harjeon was naked on the gurney, and Lesp was checking and cleaning the wounds to his chest and abdomen. Some of them were quite superficial, others more serious.
Ana noticed that Harjeon’s skin was blooming in odd discoloured patterns, as if he had a rash forming. She looked at the medicae tray. She hesitated for a moment. She picked up a syringe. Filled it, and found the vein in the back of Harjeon’s left hand. She trembled slightly, stopped, and then in one swift move, she gave him the injection.
Thirty seconds later, Harjeon started convulsing. His neck went into rictus. His eyes bulged. Lesp called the code.
Ana Curth and Lesp worked on the private for a further twelve minutes, but he was dead.
XVI
‘Reporting on the death of Private Harjeon, E Company,’ said Ana Curth.
‘Take a seat, doctor. Tell me what happened,’ said Gaunt.
‘I’d rather stand, thank you, colonel-commissar. This won’t take long.’