Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  So Toska got the ankles, which had been bruised through the foot-wraps by the occasional blow but which were otherwise undamaged. The officer himself handled the raw skin of the prisoner’s shoulders, lifting with Toska to arrange the body on the narrow stalloy rim of the wheel.

  Chest-high.

  Just as his Excellency liked it.

  Toska fastened the prisoner’s newly bared ankles to the anchor in the floor. While the officer chained the prisoner’s wrists at the other end, Toska leaned down to fetch the cross-braces up from the storage well. Cross-bracing fixed behind the prisoner’s knees and elbows along the curve of the wheel was called for in order to provide the required stretching effect.

  “Quite impossible,” Koscuisko insisted. “Toska needs my help. My client needs to be decently settled here before we can go on, isn’t that right?”

  Talking to his prisoner, talking to Lieutenant Plugrath. The prisoner’s head hung down against the wheel’s rim, the sweat of his pain shining in the bright lights overhead. Koscuisko gave the floor-pedal a few experimental taps, and the wheel rose by a few eighths. Toska got the elbows fixed just in time.

  “You were telling me, Lieutenant?”

  Toska stood away and waited. Koscuisko would send him out when Koscuisko noticed him. But Koscuisko would have to notice him first. And it could be that Koscuisko wanted him for something else; there was no telling what the officer would come up with next, during his exercises.

  Toska hoped it wouldn’t be very long before Koscuisko noticed him.

  None of what Koscuisko had in hand to deploy against a prisoner could be said to be pleasant: but the wheel was terrible. Koscuisko had no idea. If Koscuisko had known how frightened Toska was of the wheel, he would have had Kaydence in to help instead. Toska was as certain of that as he was sure that the sun would rise over Port Rudistal in the morning.

  “You asked for a status report.”

  Now Plugrath was furious; he knew that he was being manipulated, now, and as deliberately as the officer tipped hot ash from his lefrol into his prisoner’s eyes to make him cry out.

  “Concerted effort on the part of the Port Authority has failed to disclose significant information to date. Investigation is ongoing. Findings include confirmation that the Domitt Prison — Administrators Geltoi or Belan, preferably both — were the intended targets of plotted ambush activity in Port Rudistal. We’re on to a few strands, but the braid is fraying fast, the trail’s running cold already. Captain Vopalar has authorized resources not needed to secure the relocation camp to assist in the legwork. That is all I have to report at this time. Your Excellency.”

  Koscuisko had leaned his elbows up on his prisoner’s naked chest, and smoked his lefrol thoughtfully with his forearms crossed in front of him. Nudging the wheel’s level fractions higher from time to time, to make the prisoner whimper. Toska knew that Lieutenant Plugrath couldn’t want out of this any more badly than he did: yet was constrained by Koscuisko’s superior rank almost as effectively as a bond-involuntary under orders was constrained by a governor.

  Neither one of them could flee until the officer was graciously pleased to let them go.

  “It is not good enough, Bench Lieutenant,” Koscuisko said. Touching the fat coal end of his lefrol to a bloody welt across the prisoner’s belly. Making him choke back a shout of protest and of pain. “I don’t care who they thought they were attacking. I don’t care why. Someone has bereft me of one of my Security. It is bad practice to permit one’s Security to be shot down around one. I want better news than this the next time I see you, Lieutenant. Would it inspire the search to greater effort if I asked your subordinates to me also, to express my sense of urgency in person?”

  Burnt flesh stank, and the knowledge that it was living flesh seemed to make it even more nauseating. Plugrath was as white in the face as Toska imagined he could ever get. “Sir. With respect. This is beneath you. And to bring hardworking troops in here — I resist that notion, sir, as strenuously as I possibly can, and will do so to my Captain if necessary.”

  “Lieutenant.” Koscuisko only sounded entertained. The Lieutenant didn’t know how Koscuisko was, during times like this. The Lieutenant had only seen the better part of the officer up till now. “Your threats amuse me. It will be even more amusing to receive you at my workplace should you try to avoid the reports you have promised. I want results, and if I need your squad leaders’ attention I will have it, and if I want reports every day I will have them too. Do we understand each other?”

  He stepped on the floor-pedal, and the wheel moved, and the prisoner shrieked out loud. “Oh, please, oh, please, I can’t tell you, I don’t know — ”

  Plugrath ignored the prisoner as best he could, but Toska couldn’t help but understand. There was no defiance there, at least not up front. Koscuisko was tormenting the man for Plugrath’s benefit. Of course it was up to the officer who he tormented, and how; how long, and to what end. But it was a bad sign.

  This was only going to get worse, as time wore on.

  “His Excellency makes himself transparently clear.” Plugrath was at least as much angry as disgusted. Toska granted the Bench Lieutenant good marks for a strong stomach: it wasn’t that he lacked grit. “I will wait upon his Excellency in two days’ time to make report. It will not be necessary to invite the shift supervisors. Sir.”

  Koscuisko eased off the wheel by a few marks, and the prisoner caught his breath in surprised gratitude. Terrified and surprised gratitude. Toska could empathize. He didn’t want to.

  “I will to myself reserve the pleasure of being judge of that, Lieutenant. But am content to wait for the decision. That is all there is for you, Toska, show the Lieutenant out, and don’t come back. Oh, except to bring some rhyti, have Kaydence do it.”

  Toska hoped his own gratitude was not too obvious; it would be a breach of etiquette to imply that he wanted out of there, howsoever indirectly. Their officer valued their professionalism. They valued his selfishness in Inquiry.

  “According to his Excellency’s good pleasure. Your mid-meal, sir?”

  Koscuisko waved him off; Plugrath was already at the door. Koscuisko wouldn’t talk to them with the door open. “I will call for mid-meal when I feel the want of it, Toska, rhyti for now. And leave me.”

  Koscuisko would be anxious to be on with it.

  Toska made his salute and opened the cell door for the Bench Lieutenant, following him out quickly and closing it up once more.

  What Plugrath might have to say to Chief Samons, if anything, was nothing of his business.

  “Officer wants rhyti, Kaydence, says to send you.”

  If he stilled himself at post and blanked his mind, the image of the tortured Nurail would not torment him for long.

  ###

  Ceelie Porlich could no longer see, and breathing was so difficult that he longed to be done with it. It had been so long. It had been so hard. And as much as he tried, he could neither make it stop nor make an end of himself, out of what they did to him —

  “You’re holding out on me. Nurail scum. When will you learn?”

  Sneering words, and brutal blows. Ceelie tried to shield his body; but he was bound. He didn’t understand it. When they had taken him from the work-crew they had told him he was to stand Inquiry, under Charges.

  “Please.”

  He could barely speak, his mouth too badly torn by blows. Someone squeezed a spongeful of cold water out close to his face, quite close, he could feel the moisture on his cheek; but he could not get more than a drop or two of the water. And he was so thirsty. “Told you. Everything.”

  There had been no Charges. There had been no Inquiry. There had only been this fearful room in the detention block, forever. If he was to be tortured, why was there no Record? Why was there no Inquisitor?

  “But not everything you know. You’re holding out. Tell, you filthy piece of — ”

  Frantically, convulsively, Ceelie tried to flee away from the pain that possessed h
im. It was no use. It held him, white-hot and ferocious, for three thousand years. And when it finally stopped, Ceelie could hear the voice speak on as though only a moment had passed.

  “ . . . until you tell me what you’re hiding. Well?”

  Hiding. Oh, for someplace to hide, someplace to get away from here. Why wasn’t he dead by now?

  Or — great God — was he dead already?

  “What about ‘the war-leader’?” the voice demanded, suddenly much closer. And the beating had stopped. War-leader? The war-leader was safe. He had not betrayed the war-leader. No, he had kept silent, all of this time; he had not so much as spoken the Darmon’s name.

  He wanted to die.

  Once he was dead the torture would have to cease.

  There was a new pain, now, and it was as sharp as acid, as heavy in his chest as monuments. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hear. Oh, was this it at last, was he to die?

  It faded.

  It faded, and there was something in his mouth. Real water. Cool and sweet. He drank it gratefully, not minding how hard it was to swallow for the slaking of the worst part of his thirst.

  “War-leader Darmon, on your work-crew.” The voice; but this time it had to be his imagination. Because he hadn’t said it. “Which one of your work-crew is the war-leader?”

  Right beside him, to his left. And he hadn’t even recognized him at first, although he’d been one of the Darmon’s lieutenants for the raid on Moltipat. That had been a wonder, that raid. They had given the Bench something to think about.

  “Pay attention,” the voice said, and there was pressure that Ceelie didn’t like against the pulpy shattered mess that they had made out of his foot. Oh. Centuries ago. “Never mind Moltipat. What was his name?”

  Someone was crying, very close. Some other man put to the torture, that was it, and Ceelie hoped he’d die soon, whoever he was. Ceelie hoped for his death breath by breath, because that was his only way out of this. But the war-leader was safe. Nobody even knew he was the war-leader. Cittrops had no thread in the Darmon’s weave, whoever Marne Cittrops had been. No, the war-leader was safe from these men with their cudgels and whips and irons and — and —

  “Good little bootlicker, yes,” someone said, approvingly. “Extra water, for that. And how would you like a little — extra — current, to go with it?”

  Agony in waves, torment in gusts that felled his spirit lower than it had ever been. Ceelie lay in his suffering and trembled, waiting for his death.

  Unless he was already dead.

  Unless he was dead, and being punished, what could he have done in his life that would have earned him such monstrous torture to balance it out?

  “Pick him up,” the voice said. “Another for the furnaces, but whack him good first, he’s earned out. Going by the name of Marne Cittrops, same work-detail. There should be a bounty, for that one.”

  He could have betrayed the war-leader –

  No.

  He could never have betrayed the Darmon. Never.

  It was the last thing in Ceelie’s mind as someone hit him across the back of his battered head with a stout cudgel, and set him free from torment.

  The things they’d done to him, the torture he’d endured, it had been more than Ceelie’s mind could grasp.

  But he had not betrayed War-leader Darmon.

  ###

  It was cold in the mornings, now, and a man looked forward to being set to work. Not for the work itself, though that work seemed to have a good enough goal. But for the warming of it. The cells were cold, and the blankets thin.

  There was misery in the cells, misery in the work-crew, misery going in, misery going out. The only things that made a bit of relief in the hard cold relentless grind of his life were the few moments they were given in a week to have a hot wash, and the time it took to stand at the high tables in the warm mess building for the evening meal, and the moments on the work-crew when the mindless routine of the body took over from the ever-anxious working of the mind to suspend time and transcend reality with the simple physical act of work.

  Marne hammered at his bit of hardened ground and lifted his shovels full of heavy earth and did what could be done to cover for those around him when they began to fail. The foundation ditch for the dike got deeper, wider, longer day by day. But every morning it was full of water, to be pumped out by Nurail on the most primitive of manned pumps Marne had ever thought to see being used for work — rather than a museum — in his life.

  He wondered, from time to time, what they would do when the weather started to freeze overnight; none of the Nurail on the work-crew had winter clothing, and it didn’t seem to be something to expect the prison administration to make up. He supposed they would find out when it got colder whether they would be given clothing — because they were needed for work — or not, because the Pyana had too many Nurail prisoners at their disposal to be bothered over preserving their health. Their lives.

  There had been no protective clothing up till now. When a Nurail injured a foot with a pickax, the overseers simply rolled him down the slope into the ditch, to either drown or die beneath the next avalanche of gravel. When a Nurail was struck in the head by a beam or a bucket being hoisted it was the same story.

  Marne worked in his place on the line, knowing he could not afford to admit the horror of their situation into his mind if he hoped to survive. Concentrating on making it from one round of water carried down the line to the next round. From water to the end of day. From end of day to the mess building. From the mess building to his cell. From his cell to the morning call.

  He was getting so good at concentrating that he didn’t notice the guards arriving on site, paid no attention to whatever was happening upslope. The guards had come for Shopes Ban days ago, Marne couldn’t remember. They had come for one other in the work-crew since then. It was better not to think too hard about it, since there was nothing he could do.

  They were for him, this time.

  The guards came down the slope with the overseer, but they didn’t pass him to go down the line.

  They stopped.

  Marne kept working. Showing that he could. Demonstrating the only skills the Pyana valued in this place, ability to shovel heavy earth and keep shoveling.

  “This one,” the overseer said, and it could no longer be ignored, they were looking at him. “Marne Cittrops. Who did you say?”

  The guards came up around him. “War-leader Darmon,” the squad leader said. “He doesn’t look like a war-leader to me.”

  Marne kept working. Maybe it was the next man. But they surrounded him, and they were staring.

  “He looks more like a Nurail mule, to me. But the order tag says war-leader. No roughness, now, friends, he’s for the Inquisitor, and the Inquisitor doesn’t hold to ‘abuse of prisoners outside of Protocol.’ ”

  That was good for a laugh. Marne took his chance, swinging with the shovel at the nearest guard, jumping at the man who stood down-slope from him. He could make them angry. Any defiance was brutally dealt with on the work-crew, with shockrods and with clubs. If he could make them angry enough, they would not be able to take him back to the Domitt Prison, they would be forced to let his body roll into the ditch and cry an accident.

  It didn’t work.

  The one guard dodged the shovel, and though he went down in the gravel he didn’t seem to take much hurt.

  The second put his fist to Marne’s stomach, as Marne charged, and Marne went headlong into the dust himself, with two Pyana dragging at his heels before he’d even landed.

  “Careful,” the squad leader reminded them. “Like I said. No unnecessary roughness. We wouldn’t want to interfere with the exercise of the Writ. No punishment he might earn here and now can compare with what the Inquisitor is going to do to him.”

  All too true.

  All right.

  He was for it.

  Marne kicked out at the hands at his ankles and stood up, climbing the steep slope with Pyana all ar
ound him to where the car was waiting. He would have liked to get a drink of water before they left, but there was no hope of that.

  Poor Ceelie.

  What he must have suffered, before he died.

  But at least that meant that Robis Darmon was free to confess whatever he liked of Ceelie’s role in their struggle; Ceelie was dead, and could no longer be made to suffer for what the Bench had decided were his crimes against the Judicial order.

  ###

  “At Kosova. Your Excellency. Yes, I was there, and – oh — I threw a bottle-rocket through the window of the Bench Administrative building there, yes, that was me, I confess it — ”

  Andrej shut off the firepoint with a disgusted snap, turning his back on the prisoner. Young Nurail. Quite young, actually, but a man by his beard still, unless he’d been in prison longer than possible had he truly been part of the street-fighting in Kosova. Which Andrej did not for one moment believe.

  “Be still. I am in no mood to be played with. You were nowhere near the Ailleran system when it happened. You are making it up.”

  Inventing it. Confabulating. Spinning a story. Faking a weave.

  Lying to him.

  Perhaps lying was too strong a word, it had been two days. There had been a confession to a lesser offense early on, and then confession in form to the Recorded offense just after mid meal today; but nothing since then except for garbage. Could he blame this prisoner, this Kerag Darveck, for making things up to try to satisfy the Bench requirement?

  Andrej was expected to develop leads, pursue issues, obtain proof of collateral involvement and cross-accusation where he could. He had no need to reproach himself on that subject: What he had done to Darveck, these long hours past, had been squarely within the Bench requirement, and all well within the Protocols.

  But there was nothing there.

  He’d thought that there might be, at first, and that Darveck was grasping at clearly implausible straws in order to put him off the scent of some true thread. He’d tested for it, and ingenious cruelty had never failed him yet; nor had failed now.