Warring States

by Susan R. Matthews

  Whatever that meant. Leave for Koscuisko to be here with off-worlders, perhaps, in the middle of a private family orchard. There were a lot of the trees here. Joslire’s family had apparently been around for a long time.

  The sound of old and young women walking away down those graveled paths was clearly audible in the orchard’s stillness. When Stildyne could no longer hear their footsteps Koscuisko raised his head, and spoke.

  “Gentles, I have something to say to you,” Koscuisko said, to the tree trunk. “And there cannot be very much time.” Turning away from the tree Koscuisko accepted the nearest helping hand — Robert’s, as it happened — to climb down out of the raised bed, standing with his back to the containment wall.

  “Brachi, I would ask you to forgive me if I believed that you did not know my purpose from the start, even if I did not dare to tell you. Perhaps you have heard from Lek that I was offered my freedom, on Azanry, gentles. The First Secretary at Chilleau Judiciary has granted relief of Writ.”

  Nobody stared. So they all knew, not surprisingly. Koscuisko nodded, as if accepting this as an answer. “Very good. It means I do not mean to stay for longer than I must, on board the Ragnarok. We stand here in the presence of a man I loved, and killed so that he could be free.”

  Clearly wasn’t proposing that he kill them, Stildyne knew — or hoped. There would have been no reason for Koscuisko to take such risks to tinker with their governors if all he wanted to do was kill them.

  “There is a small freighter at the launch-field where we came in, a respectable beast from the Khabardi shipyards. I know that you will be as shocked as I to hear that there are people even in the heart of Jurisdiction who have dealings with the outlaws of Gonebeyond space.”

  “Sending us away, are you?” Robert said suddenly, almost vehemently. “And why d’you assume that we’ll just go? My duty was not of my choice, your Excellency, but it is my duty, and you should not insult us. After all.”

  After all that they had been through together. After all that they had learned from one another. After all that they had meant to one another.

  Koscuisko shook his head. “I will tell you a secret, Robert, and you will understand. I could not live in Fleet without your help. All of your help,” Koscuisko added, looking at Stildyne, right at him. “I will not be able to live in Fleet at all for very much longer.” Koscuisko seemed clearly determined, but to be thinking twice even so. He took a deep breath, and continued.

  “If you do not leave now someone in the future may be able to compel you to admit that I murdered Captain Lowden in Burkhayden, and set fire to the service house to burn the body so that he could not come back to it. I was not thinking very clearly at the time.”

  No, Stildyne thought. You can’t tell them that. You can’t tell them. Nobody is supposed to know. I don’t know. Nobody knows. How could you tell them — and then he understood, even as Koscuisko spoke on.

  “But now I have told you, and betrayed your trust by giving you a terrible secret. You will not dispute with me. You must go away. Please. There is little enough in Gonebeyond, but I am assured that there are neither governors, nor facilities that could impose them without killing if they tried.”

  Well, that was a comfort, wasn’t it? Stildyne asked himself. Maybe it was. He’d worked with Bonds for almost his entire life in Fleet. He’d seen the things a governor could do, and at Burkhayden he was the man who had done them.

  “If you can take the chances you’ve taken,” Pyotr said, “We can have some too. The tax-collector also must pay taxes.”

  Koscuisko nodded. “And I can’t make anybody go. I have no cause to believe I know what is in your hearts, because you have been prisoners in my presence all of these years. But here in the place of the dead I ask it of you. I have owed my life to Joslire. I have owed my life to you. My cousin has a place for you to go, in Gonebeyond. He says it will be deficient in the luxuries of life, but you will be free.”

  His cousin? So that as where Stanoczk had gotten himself off to, in such a hurry. Stildyne hadn’t minded Stanoczk’s precipitate departure, no, of course not.

  “But you’re not coming,” Hirsel pointed out. “Have I got that part right?”

  Stildyne could see sweat running down the side of Koscuisko’s neck. It was uncomfortably warm, and close — but Koscuisko’s face was pale.

  “Good enough for us, but not for you? What kind of an offer is that?”

  “The ship needs me.” It was immediately obvious to Stildyne, and apparently to Koscuisko as well, that the suggestion was not to be accepted. Koscuisko raised both hands, palms outward, making hushing gestures. “It needs you too, but we have other Wolnadi crews, we can cope. We have no other neurosurgeon. You are not needed to work in Secured Medical. And also I mean to keep the truth hidden for as long as possible, there is Security on the vector.”

  “What’s the plan, then?” Lek Kerenko asked, a little skeptically. “Better dead than Bonded, your Excellency, but if I can avoid both at the same time I will.”

  They’d all known Koscuisko was up to something. They’d all known. They must have wondered among themselves what it could be. What Koscuisko was offering could not but be fraught with danger and promised hardship; Koscuisko was clearly grateful to Lek for making the most positive response yet.

  “And I mean both to be avoided, if there is any way that I can make it so. We are going to the service house, gentles, and in the early morning a car will come to take you to the launch field. I have sent you on an errand. The freighter has a cleared departure, and I will simply have to stay in bed until the ship has acquired its vector. Well into the morning. Nearly half-a-day, to be safe.”

  “What if we don’t all go?” Godsalt asked, frowning. “Pyotr is so close to Reborn. Not to get personal, man.”

  “If you don’t all go I will only have sent some of you. First Officer will not press the issue as long as he has the say about it.” Which could not be very long, of course. That was part of what had been on Koscuisko’s mind all along, clearly enough. “But I hope you may all decide. You will need each other. You are the only people who could understand what you have endured.”

  Pyotr was about to say something, but Hirsel put his hand to Pyotr’s shoulder, Robert took a half a step back and caught Garrity’s eye; Godsalt nodded. Lek shook his head as though he were discouraged, but he said nothing.

  Koscuisko turned his back to them all and raised his head to stare up into the dead branches of the tree whose roots were dressed with the mortal remains of a man Koscuisko still loved. “I would wish to have you with me always if I could,” Koscuisko said. “But my motive would be selfish, it would be for my sake and not yours. I don’t know how I am to do without you.”

  It was at that moment that Stildyne understood that he was going to go with them. He didn’t think Koscuisko realized it, yet; Stildyne had only just now seen the logic of it for himself. He couldn’t unsee it. There was no acceptable alternative. Koscuisko loved these people. They’d need someone who understood their situation, someone who could stand between them and the rest of the world and smooth out the rough spots until they had had time to learn again what it was to be free.

  When Koscuisko continued he had apparently found a new strength of determination, his voice strong and steady, if pitched low. “I only tell you this because I could not bear to send you away from me without at least once acknowledging how much I owe. I ask you to do this knowing that it is a risk and that life will not be easy, even if you get cleanly away. I have watched you suffer for these years. Please. Take the only chance that you may get to be away from suffering, at least of that particular sort.”

  In the still air Stildyne was half-convinced that he could actually hear himself sweat.

  “Why aren’t you coming? And tell us the truth of it. It’s owed,” Lek said suddenly.

  Koscuisko looked back over his shoulder, but didn’t turn around. “Six renegade bond-involuntaries lost in Gonebeyond are not worth the
effort it would take to return them,” Koscuisko said. His voice was harsh and hopeless. “I can’t go. Fleet would have no choice but to report a kidnap or an absence without leave, and follow in force. There would be a bounty. There would be no disappearing, no new life.”

  Koscuisko had a point. Stildyne hadn’t thought about it, because the course of action that Koscuisko had suggested was taking its own sweet time to sink in. They’d all known that Koscuisko was up to something, or he understood nothing of these men, and they were by definition intelligent men with the psychological resilience it demanded to be forced to become an instrument of torture, to live in fear of torture, and yet live. They were probably smarter than he was, with the possible exception of St. Clare.

  “Thought of everything, he has,” Robert said to Godsalt, who stood next to him. “It’s like him. Here’s what’s left of Jos, though, you didn’t know him, and I did. I didn’t get to say good-bye to Joslire, either.”

  Koscuisko winced, and closed his eyes. But when he opened them again and turned around to face them, the expression on his face was resolute — almost cold. “Good-bye, Robert,” Koscuisko said. “Thou hast been very good to me, and had little but abuse and care for thanks. I pray to all Saints that you will be free. Lek. Good-bye. I will explain your absence to my son.”

  There was a solid core of merciless determination in Koscuisko’s nature; Stildyne had seen it once or twice before. It made him shudder now, too. There would be no turning Andrej Koscuisko from his purpose, regardless of the cost.

  “Pyotr, good-bye, and thank you for the care that you have had of me. Godsalt. Good-bye, I will miss you, and so will Soft Tissue Displacement, I will have to answer to my staff for it. Hirsel, good-bye, and may you have better luck in the future than you have ever had in the past. Good-bye, Garrity, I can only hope that you can forgive me when I say that I hope I never see you again. Ever. After tonight.”

  Stildyne had never known another man who could make up his mind like Koscuisko. It had been one of the things that had intrigued him from the start, well before he’d realized that Koscuisko’s opinion had begun to matter to him much more than it ought to have done. “Fall back,” Stildyne suggested. “Give the officer some room.”

  Koscuisko turned his back again. One hand on the retaining wall of the raised bed to steady himself Koscuisko reached down, just at hip-height, and took up a handful of the earth that was there. What he did with it Stildyne didn’t know; he was occupied in moving Security off to a respectful distance.

  Koscuisko hadn’t said good-bye to him. He wasn’t going to get to say good-bye. He was going to have to just get up and go, and never see Koscuisko again. It was hard. But that was life. It was even funny that no one else appeared to have realized that Stildyne had no choice but to leave Koscuisko if he loved Koscuisko, and he had long since been forced to accept the awkward fact that he did.

  Then, like fluid coloring when Koscuisko dripped a catalyst into a flask in his pharmacology lab, the air filled in an instant with a fine mist of soaking rain. There was no seeing Koscuisko at the tree; did Koscuisko know where they were, could he find them? It came on so suddenly that the scent of moisture followed after the drenching mist.

  Stildyne wondered if he should send out a scouting party, but no, here was Koscuisko back again, walking slowly and contemplatively with his head bent to the ground and the rain coming in little rivulets across his face and shoulders. What was the hurry, after all? Stildyne asked himself. They had already been wet from the inside out, what sense was there in hurrying to avoid getting wet from the outside in? It wasn’t as if the rain was cold. It was warm rain. It was almost exactly as hot as it had been before the rain had started.

  The thick mist of rainfall obscured walls and boundaries and the skyline of the city in front of them. They were alone, for these few moments, all alone, with each other.

  No one spoke. Moving at a meditative pace they walked in an appropriate formation out of the orchard into the street, and loaded into the ground-transport cars to go to the service house as Koscuisko had arranged.

  ###

  The welcoming party was still waiting. Andrej couldn’t face them, not just now. He was ashamed — there were old women and a young mother, he’d kept them waiting — but he had reached the utmost tolerance of his psychological resilience. He should have done more research. He had no one to blame but himself.

  Even before he had realized the opportunity this would give him to send his gentlemen away, he had long dreamed of kneeling down at Joslire’s grave, in front of Joslire’s marker, and telling the silent earth how much he missed his friend. There had been no grave. There had been no marker. He had trodden in his boots on sacred ground, and not known it. Yes, the tree sang of itself; but right now Andrej could find no comfort in that.

  “Beg for me the pardon of these people,” he said to the translator. “My heart is full. I can’t speak, I’m not fit for company, and there are my gentlemen. Only one night. If it is disrespect of the dead — I don’t know what I will do — ”

  She was every eighth the professional; there was no hint of surprise or disapproval on her face or in her voice. “It is understood,” she assured him gravely. “His Excellency’s accustomed practice. They are only making sure that you don’t need to talk right now, sir.”

  It was all right. Or at least to be overlooked in dignified silence. In front of the family of the murdered man he was to go directly from the burial ground to the service house. He had done that on the night of Joslire’s death, as he remembered, but they had stopped at the port’s hospital first, to dress the wounds that the others had suffered — and to burn the body, sending it up in smoke.

  Joslire had been there when Andrej had discovered that he had an appetite for torture. Joslire had kept him company, and given him comfort. Andrej hadn’t realized how much difference it made. He’d been alone in Port Rudistal, watching the temperature gauge of the hospital’s incinerators. Then there’d been the furnaces at the Domitt Prison —

  Andrej shuddered. He was alone now. He had sent them away and they would go, even Robert whom he loved also. They would go because he bade them, and then he would be alone.

  “I’d like to get the officer changed,” Stildyne said, to the translator. It was a voice that put a hand to Andrej’s shoulder to steady him. To comfort him, in a different way than Joslire’s friendship had strengthened him, but Stildyne was a different man and Andrej owed him much more than he could possibly repay. “If it wouldn’t give offense to the family.”

  The translator bowed politely one more time, but Andrej had remembered who he was; and crossed the wet concrete apron before the orchard gate to bow in turn to Joslire’s family. The least honor he could do to them was to make his own excuses.

  “I’m honored to see the place where his ancestors are.” And that was true. “I need some time to settle my own mind. And I have wished my Security to have the opportunity to take recreation, and will be sending them back to the ship on an errand for me tomorrow. I ask to be forgiven.”

  If he didn’t go with them, they couldn’t go to the service house. Not under ordinary rules. And since he claimed to be sending them off in the morning this was their only chance to have a little fun.

  The youngest woman spoke, her expression anxious, her baby fretful in her arms. “Does his Excellency leave in the morning?” she asked, in rather less fluent Standard than that of the translator. “Shona I wish to have the chance. Joslire was his brother.”

  This Andrej could promise honestly. It would be two or three days before the Ragnarok’s load-out was completed, and whether the Ragnarok would let him back on board at all was to be seen. “I mean to stay in port as long as I may be allowed,” he said. “If all Saints are generous it will give us both the chance, your husband and I. Will it be possible to visit with your family, tomorrow?”

  The translator spoke for him; the oldest woman smiled. There was a ghost there, too. “Required,” the old woman
said; the translator actually blushed as she said the words. “Transport will come for you, grandson. You have not seen your house. We have not seen you in your place.”

  She had just put him in his place, though, and decisively, if kindly enough. Yes, he would be forgiven if he went elsewhere tonight. No, he would not be forgiven if he failed to be a dutiful adopted son tomorrow. Even as heartsore as he was Andrej had to smile.

  “I will prove that I can take instruction, and do my utmost to shadow in his place in such a way as may do honor to his memory,” he promised. “Please excuse me now.”

  Security were loaded in the cars already, all except Stildyne; and there were Emandisan Port Authority security to protect his Security while they protected him. He hadn’t been so flamboyantly secured in his life.

  Sitting in the ground-car on the way to the city’s public house, Andrej leaned back against the padded cradle of the seat and closed his eyes, listening to the pain that was in his heart and mind. Joslire was dead. It had been a mistake to come. It had reminded him, and Joslire was dead all over again, fresh dead, new dead, gone and gone and gone and gone. He’d forgotten how much it hurt. He’d thought he’d put the agony away. There had been the Domitt Prison; he had not had time. Had that been his error? Had he never truly mourned his friend Joslire?

  Not a mistake. It was his second chance, to feel the loss as though it was just done and suffer for it without the need to master his emotions and turn his mind to work. “When we arrive,” he said, knowing that Stildyne would be listening, “If you would make the arrangements, Brachi. I can’t face the negotiations now. Convince them.”

  Arrival at a service house too often caused an uproar, and all manner of misunderstandings founded in his personal notoriety. He was the Ship’s Inquisitor on board the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok; he clearly could not be offered any ordinary accommodation.

  Pain-workers would be called for, and if he could convince the house-master that in fact he did not wish to reproduce in his intimate behavior the regrettable activities of his professional life, they were all too ready to conclude that he desired a beating. Once upon a time he had grown so weary of trying to make himself understood that he had agreed, oh, very well; it had not been a successful experiment.