It couldn’t be that the courier pilot had been looking forward to catching a glimpse of Koscuisko the way a man went to a zoological garden to see a venomous snake — or a botanical gardens, for that matter, to wander in amongst the poisons. There was some personal reason behind Ise-I’let’s interest, Jils was sure of it; and chose her words with care, accordingly.
“If it’s confrontation you had in mind I’ll have to warn you.” Not as though it would surprise Koscuisko himself. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d got bored with it, you inhumane monster, you killed my father — my brother — my wife — my child — my friend.
She could almost hear Koscuisko’s voice, cold and clear and as cutting as ice for all the soft edge of some of his characteristically Dolgorukij diphthongs: Yes, yours and those of better men than you, what do you want from me? An apology? It would be hypocritical of me to tender one, I am in the abstract sense sorry for your loss, but I decline to attempt to pretend to you that I did not enjoy it. At least probably. You can’t expect me to keep your murdered dead apart from all the others, there were simply too many of them. Now do get out of my way, and if you wish to pull a knife, you will have to clear it with my Security.
She shook herself with a little scowl, annoyed — too easy by half. The pilot was waiting for her to finish her thought. “You’d be best advised not to initiate a confrontation on board of Scylla. He used to be their chief medical officer, at one time. They might take it amiss. That, and one is expected to wait one’s turn in line, and it’s a prodigious long one.”
“He is at Emandis Station?”
Had he heard her at all? Was he even listening?
She nodded. “Yes, on Scylla. In protective custody, I gather. My job is to get him off the Scylla without provoking armed confrontation between the Emandis home defense fleet and Fleet, and I think I have just the approach, too.” The EHDF, that reminded her. What had Karol told her? Emandis Station claimed Koscuisko for a native son?
The pieces fell into place. Ise-I’let. She should have remembered. Koscuisko had lost a man at port Rudistal, a bond-involuntary who had been with him since his earliest days at Fleet Orientation Station Medical. Joslire Curran had been an Emandisan knife-fighter; that meant five-knives.
And at the point of his death, under honorable circumstances in the performance of his duty and by his choice to spare the Bench the expense of rehabilitating him, his legal status had reverted to that of a free man with full citizenship — and his name to the one he had carried before his condemnation. Ise-I’let. The courier pilot was related to Koscuisko’s man, and in all likelihood meant to demand the return of the knives.
“Souls under Bond have no families,” the pilot said. “No contacts, no communications. Nothing. But I’ve asked everywhere I’ve had any chance at all, and from what I’ve heard Koscuisko didn’t just restore our honor and our position when he killed Jos. He loved my brother. I loved my brother. We have things in common. I thought I’d missed my chance to talk to him.”
That was all very well and good as far as it went, but Jils wasn’t sure it went far enough. Koscuisko had peculiarities — “Excuse me if I’m speaking of things that I don’t understand,” Jils said, as gently as she could. “Does Koscuisko want to speak to you?”
Koscuisko was on Scylla. How could she promise this earnest young man that he’d have his chance when she had no idea whether Koscuisko would be willing to engage in a conversation?
The pilot nodded. “I heard from my family, Dame. They met him at the launch-field in Jeltaria, and took him to the orchard. Then the Ragnarok left, and they believed he had gone with them. My wife and child have never touched the holy steel.”
He shut up abruptly, as if he had said too much. Five-knives, all right, Jils decided. That was between Koscuisko and his man’s family. It was none of her business.
“Dolgorukij value kinship ties, as a general rule.” Whether Koscuisko did was anybody’s guess, but in many ways he was a traditionally conservative Dolgorukij — his family was among the more conservative of the great families, among other things. “I think you have a good chance of seeing him.” On shipboard only, of course, in case there was an issue about the knives and Koscuisko decided not to give them up.
Where were Koscuisko’s five-knives? On board the Ragnarok, which would mean gone? She had the feeling that given the apparent willingness of the Emandisan to get sticky about Koscuisko, the news that the knives had left the system without their escort would not go over well. Would Koscuisko have taken them with him to visit Joslire’s family? She could hope. Traditional, and ceremonial-minded.
“These days I have been struggling with it,” the pilot admitted. “It will be a great thing in my life. Thank you, Dame Ivers.”
It was little enough to have done. Jils waved him away cheerfully enough, then turned back to her data. Wait a minute. The pilot had said he’d seen Karol at Panthis? She went to the door and put her head out into the corridor.
“Ise-I’let. Sorry. Tell me again. How many are some weeks, and had you ever seen him before that?”
The pilot had turned around when she called to him, and stood now in the corridor, considering her question. “Well, Dame. Let me think. I started Brisinje to Ygau to Terek, lay over in Sashama, then through Burig to Wellocks. That would have been about the time the First Secretary died, I think. We heard the news coming off Wellocks to Terek again. Then we were had a mission to Upos from there, on to Panthis, where Specialist Vogel came on.” And left her a message. “So that was just before we went back to Chilleau on standard courier. Three weeks before I carried you Chilleau to Brisinje, Dame.”
It was hard to follow the pilot’s line of thought, but Jils could see the reasoning — rehearsing his travels, if this is six weeks ago I must be in Panthis. If Karol had heard about the death and started his own investigation he would have had time. If Karol had done the murder, though —
Now the door to Padrake’s bed-cabin opened to reveal Padrake standing in the doorway with his collar and cuffs undone, a stylus in his hand. “What’s going on?” Padrake asked. “Garrile to Nabmedor, Fellau and Warbay and cold Boglynn shore?”
No, Wellocks to Burig to Upos, and — Jils shook her head, annoyed. It didn’t matter. She’d only been interested in the one piece of information. The pilot apparently recognized the reference, because he grinned; and then he sang — very surprisingly, but in a very nice voice really, in a middle register. “‘As a boy, then a man, then a master of men.’ Jetorix, anyway. With respect, Specialist Delleroy.”
“You just go on back to the wheelhouse, my lad,” Padrake said, with his accent as rich and plummy as it got only when he was drunk or being silly. “I’ve business to transact with this fair maid blithe and bonny. Away with you, now.”
A very appealing smile, the pilot had. He bowed and turned and closed the door between the wheelhouse and the corridor; Padrake straightened up — his head dangerously close to the lintel of the door, he was a tall man — and cleared his throat.
“And now, me proud beauty — how are you feeling?” His voice returned to its more normal speaking tone as he crossed the hall to follow her into her cabin.
“Tired and irate,” she said, consideringly. “And sore. So don’t you get any ideas, my man. There is a time and a place for everything. And this is neither.”
“But I’m an intelligence specialist,” he argued, closing the door. It was not a large bed-cabin. It was even smaller with two people in it. Between the bed, the table with the data, and the two of them, it was fairly well filled as spaces went. “It’s my mission to collect and analyze information. Tired? In what way? Irate, about what? Sore, exactly where, exactly precisely where, exactly precisely and uniquely where?”
Tired of watching her back and wondering about everybody who crossed her path. Irate and angry that she’d been attacked, twice, she’d had to kill to save her life and she could never stop herself from wondering if there had been another way around the
problem that she just hadn’t seen in time. Nion hadn’t deserved to die for ambition. Well, maybe she had, and any Bench specialist displaying stupidity deserved the same — Nion had been stupid, incautious, overbold, grand-standing —
“Mostly my ribs.” She was tired. She could use a little recreation. She and Padrake had been lovers before, and if anything his hawk-hooded eyes, his leonine mane had grown more decorative over the past few years. He’d always been a very attractive man, and there was a good deal of him in the appropriate places in appropriate measure, too. “Here.”
He started to move, but then drew back, as though he had suddenly thought of something. “Oh. Wait. Rafenkel gave these to me. I’m supposed to try to get you to take some, how about it?”
Painkillers. She took the mediflask and looked at its contents. “Fast-acting?”
“No, I don’t think so, sorry, standard issue — Oh.”
Yes. Oh. She opened up the mediflask and shook out the standard dose, one each, repeat on the third hour until asleep or stupefied, whichever came first. She usually had a good hour, maybe more, or — with the condition of her body to consider — maybe less.
Taking the mediflask into the tiny lavatory she swallowed the dose with a flask-full of water to help it dissolve; and then she joined Padrake again in the bed-cabin. Handsome Padrake. Attractive Padrake. Padrake whose body already knew things about hers, whose body hers knew and wanted, again. Maybe she’d never entirely stopped wanting him. That had been one of the reasons that she’d put distance between them in the first place, after all.
“Mostly here,” she repeated, pointing. Padrake took his cue; he put his arms around her, one arm laid carefully across her shoulders so that the arm that went around her waist did so on the unhurt side.
“Not here,” he said, and touched his fingers to the hollow of her back where her spine lay in its channels. “Not here.” Where her uniform fell from the waist to the hip, smoothing the fabric with all due deliberation over her backside to make absolutely sure that nothing hurt there. “Not here either, I hope, Jils. Let me know.”
He wouldn’t hurt. She didn’t have to worry about him. She knew the fragrance of his flesh, and the soft touch of his body-hair and the way the muscle of his back and shoulders felt beneath her fingertips. She knew the taste of Padrake’s mouth, and he remembered how to kiss her, too, just the way she liked to be approached with lip and tongue. He knew. She remembered. It was good.
She laid aside her troubles with a contented sigh, and surrendered to the pleasures of a careful hour spent between lovers who had history to cushion their caresses.
###
Later — Jils didn’t know how much later, but it was later, she was blissfully relaxed and boneless in the bed, and her ribs didn’t hurt at all — later he left her, standing up to dress and go back to his own bed-cabin. There was only room in the bed for one and one-half people, and Jils had to sleep either on her back or on one side; it left little room for Padrake. And he hadn’t taken any pain medication.
One eye half-open, too lazy and asleep to turn her head, Jils watched Padrake dress, admiring his back. Those beautiful shoulders. The taurian power of his neck, the way the muscle tapered — not too much, he had a figure, but not too extreme a waist — down to braid into the strong set of his hips. Yes. A fine figure of a man. She closed her eyes, smiling.
When she opened them again it was because she had heard something, and might have been alarmed had she not seen Padrake’s familiar back. Still dressing, apparently, she had dozed off for mere moments. She hadn’t heard the clicktone of a scroller at all, she’d heard him fastening his trousers, or something. The data was on the table, he might have accidentally nudged it, what did it matter? He was dressing, she was asleep. She felt wonderful. Wonderful. Hadn’t felt this good since she could remember when.
She closed her eyes again and didn’t open them till hours had elapsed, Padrake long gone.
###
“Tell me,” Andrej said gently, tossing a token onto the pile in the middle of the table. “I hope to hear that things go well with you, Code?”
Code Pyatte had been one of the bond-involuntaries assigned when Andrej had served on Scylla. He considered the tokens in his array and discarded, rather more sedately than Andrej had. “It’s been quiet, your Excellency. Quiet is good. I mean in specific quarters, sir.”
There were other bond-involuntaries here in the small cabin, none of whom Andrej knew, though they’d claimed to know of him. Technically speaking they were on watch; he’d been under confinement to quarters since he’d struck the chief medical officer. What was his name? Weasel-Boy? No. Lazarbee. It was hard to sit with Code and know that there was nothing Andrej could do for him; he couldn’t even tell Code that Robert had escaped. Code was under Bond, and would suffer for hearing the information.
“I understand.” He knew exactly what Code was saying. Captain Irshah Parmin had kept his chief medical officer clear of special assignments, and Secured Medical as empty as possible. Andrej hadn’t understood how careful Irshah Parmin really was about that, either.
It was another area of the life of a Ship’s Inquisitor in which Captain Lowden, late and emphatically unlamented, had opened Andrej’s eyes and left him wishing he’d remained half-blind forever. “Morrisey, your call, I think. Your Doctor Aldrai has a good name in circles, from what I understand, one of our best burn specialists if I remember?”
The other bond-involuntaries were not as much at ease with him as Code was, and there wasn’t anything that Andrej could do about that. He couldn’t send them away, not when they wanted to be here. Chief Samons had already let him know that their eagerness to pull the duty had not pleased Doctor Lazarbee.
Morrisey — that was Efitt Morrisey, Andrej had heard Code call her by that name but he didn’t care to push her comfort boundaries by presuming intimacy — grabbed a token and let it fly, with a confused murmur, “This troop — ah — begging his Excellency’s pardon — ” that Andrej let pass without remark.
It was hard. He remembered too clearly how a bond-involuntary could suffer out of simple confusion. And there was nothing he could do except to be as calm as possible, and notice nothing.
“Aldrai was all right,” Code said quietly, waiting for his team-mate to make the next move. “She was willing to stay on, too, she liked the company. It seems that Fleet had other ideas. There were officers who were particularly interested in coming to work for Scylla, as the gossip has it.”
Four-handed spanners was not an intellectually challenging game, but it didn’t have to be. Andrej had never been good at cards. Dice, bones, stones, rollers he could manage with adequate skill and sometimes a fair degree of luck; cards he could deal in a very ordinary way, on a good day.
It had made him popular in school. Many people who might otherwise have had reservations about socializing with Dolgorukij aristocrats had discovered themselves perfectly capable of trying to take his money in a cheerful and convivial fashion, once they’d made up their minds that there was no unfair advantage on either side.
Andrej considered Code’s careful phrasing while he studied his array. Why would someone want to come to Scylla? The command was a good one, yes, but Brisinje was a quiet Judiciary, or had been before the troubles had broken out. Safe, quiet, uneventful. “Perhaps someone felt he needed a vacation,” Andrej proposed, picking up a token. If he could get three more in the same family he’d win the hand, for the first time all day.
Code shook his head. “That would be a reasonable supposition,” Code said, with a peculiar weight on the word “reasonable” that made Andrej’s ears prick up. “The officer claims to have been sent on a mission, as it were. Worked closely with the Bench specialist in Brisinje in the past, by his report. You didn’t want to give me that token, sir.”
Code lay his tokens out in array. Five. Seven. Nine. Eleven. Reefers. It was a relatively modest array, to be sure, but it was a complete one; and beat any array-in-progress by defini
tion.
“Name of all Saints,” Andrej swore, without much rancor. “Some octave I may beat you, Code, but it is not going to be at any time in the near future. Look at this, look, I could have had such a nice series, really, it grieves me deeply.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Efitt Morrisey almost smile before she remembered who she was and sobered, quickly, with a side-long glance at Andrej to see if he had noticed. He’d noticed no such thing. Code collected tokens from the table, sorting them out into the starting array.
“Pulled strings, and got into a comfortable billet?” Andrej asked, after a moment’s sad contemplation of the hand he might have had. “I wouldn’t have connected a Bench specialist with any kind of reasonable people, myself.”
He had to be careful with that, because although he and Code had been close to one another once, it had been five years, and a man did not lightly suggest that a bond-involuntary had cast aspersions on the integrity of a Bench specialist.
“Just what is said by some, sir,” Code replied. Code was thinking, too. If it was hearsay he could report it so that the officer would know that it was being said. “Posted here from the Galven at Ygau, possibly eight months ago, sir. Willing and eager to do his Judicial duty, but the captain has had no calls of his own and declined others.”
Andrej thought about this, somberly, looking at the tokens in his newly distributed array. An opportunist. Chief medical officers who were eager to do their Judicial duty were either willing to do whatever it took to further their careers — at the expense of truth and mercy — or else they were sadists, people who gloried in the inflicting of pain for its own sake. People like Andrej Ulexeievitch Koscuisko.
“Our captain has always been an extraordinarily stubborn man,” Andrej said, by way of reassurance. “The more he’s pressed, the more he digs in his heels. Such men are very good to find in command. Scylla is lucky to have him.”
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