Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  “Your Excellency. Your pardon, sir, no word, what seems – ”

  The officer wouldn’t listen, not for a moment. “Your stores are outdated and your vixit doesn’t work, when was the last time you ran an assay on these drugs? I require narcotics, and I require them now. My man Kaydence. Is in pain. And the dose I got from emergency stores, it may as well have been sterile solution, bring me vixit. Now.”

  The staff surgeon offered the vial he carried, in a hesitant sort of way. “I took the liberty, Cabrello said . . . ”

  Koscuisko snatched the vial out of the staff surgeon’s hand. “And pray to the holy Mother that your stores are merely outdated, and not adulterated, if I should lose my Kaydence after all that we have been through I will not rest till I have taken reparations. In coin of my own choosing.”

  The officer knew what he was doing. The officer had never made a mistake in his medical practice, not in the years he had been on Scylla — not one that had cost life or suffering, that was to say.

  No man was perfect.

  That wasn’t the point.

  The point was that the officer was absolutely confident that what he’d given Kaydence had not been any sort of medication. The last thing Koscuisko was going to do just at this moment was hazard Kaydence’s life against an overdose.

  So Koscuisko was convinced.

  The Domitt Prison had lost control over its pharmacy stores.

  Did Koscuisko think that the staff was in on it?

  Some of the staff almost had to be, by definition, but how far did the corruption extend?

  The officer put the dose through.

  Kaydence’s body lost some of its tension.

  Koscuisko stood with his head bent close over Kaydence’s face, listening to Kaydence breathe as he rested his fingertips lightly against Kaydence’s throat.

  Finally Koscuisko straightened up, and fixed the staff surgeon — who did not look like he knew whether he was more anxious or annoyed — with a sharp querying gaze that Erish would have found very uncomfortable, had it been directed against him.

  “And it was truly vixit, this time, I trust,” Koscuisko stated flatly. “I am concerned about the state of this emergency stores area, Doctor.”

  The staff surgeon blushed. “Ah, only a senior technician, sir. Our senior physician hasn’t quite reported on shift yet. If we’d only known you were coming. Sir.”

  But that was too clearly compromising a statement. If they’d only known Koscuisko was coming, they would have shown him into the treatment room reserved for prison staff, instead of prisoners. Where the real narcotics were. Instead of outdated or adulterated ones. Erish could decode that well enough; and if he could do it, the officer could obviously do it that much more quickly.

  “We’ll take a monitor back up to quarters. You do have monitors?”

  The officer had clearly elected not to follow up — not now. There was Kaydence to consider. Still, the question was a little pointed, and the staff surgeon — or senior technician — scowled briefly before he smoothed his expression out.

  “Yes, sir. Medical monitors available for issue at his Excellency’s pleasure.”

  Because once Kaydence had been drugged deeply enough to deal with his pain, he was drugged deeply enough to need to be on monitor. Just in case. That meant a grouping was right out for now, Erish realized. Someone would need to sit with Kaydence. Two someones, if one of them was the officer, because the officer would be drinking.

  Also Kaydence had to be a part of any grouping. It wouldn’t be a true grouping without him.

  So much for that idea.

  “Thank you, senior technician. And I’ll take the rest of this vixit with me for if I need it.”

  Removing restricted drugs from Infirmary?

  His Excellency was a Chief Medical Officer. He knew better.

  His Excellency held the Writ at the Domitt Prison, and could do anything he liked.

  “According to his Excellency’s good pleasure,” the senior technician agreed, a little sourly.

  Kaydence had the best of this, Erish decided. Kaydence was unconscious.

  It would be up to the rest of them to deal with Koscuisko for the next few hours, and Erish for one was not looking forward to it.

  Chapter Ten

  Andrej Koscuisko lay on the tiled floor of the washroom singing quietly to himself and thinking about alcohol. Wodac. There had been cortac brandy, at one point; but cortac wasn’t strong enough to answer to his need. It didn’t matter. As long as there was enough of it, Andrej didn’t really care what kind of alcohol it was.

  Singing in the washroom had several advantages when a person was drunk. One of them was the classic acoustics of the tiled room, something he’d only discovered as a student at Mayon. At home, washrooms were wood and stone like the rest of the house. Wood rather dampened the reverberation of one’s voice.

  There were stacks of toweling and a carpet in this washroom, which had the same dampening effect, but the carpet had been rolled up and taken away. Andrej suspected that it might have become soiled, in some way, but he could not be sure.

  He took a drink.

  Someone had wrapped him in a blanket, because the tiling was cold and he was only half-dressed. It had been a gesture of concern, Andrej was sure; but one with an unexpected side effect. He’d rolled over onto his side facing the wall. Now he couldn’t seem to get himself unrolled.

  His drinking arm was free, and the bottle was half-full, so that did not present an immediate problem. It could create difficulties further down the line. Andrej could only hope that someone was keeping an eye on his wodac bottle. It would never do to run low on wodac, he could not stay as drunk as he was without a fairly steady infusion of fresh wodac, and the last thing Andrej wanted to be was not-drunk.

  There were reasons.

  He was certain that they were very good reasons.

  He didn’t even want to know what those reasons were. That was the whole point of getting drunk, after all. He couldn’t have called those reasons into his mind if he’d wanted to, except that he had an idea it was something to do with —

  Almost a glimmer of a thought. Andrej swallowed several mouthfuls of wodac hastily. That had been close. He had to pay attention.

  Lying on his side facing the tiled washroom wall, drinking wodac and singing to himself. The odds were good that these washroom tiles had never been exposed to the saga of Dasidar and Dyraine, so it was a public service he was providing, really, cultural enrichment of naive tiles.

  Dyraine was the mistress of meadowlands, she had six spinners for each weaver and four weavers for every loom in her long weaving-house by the flax-fields.

  The tiles echoed pleasantly, so close to his face that he could hear the vibration in sympathy with the catalog of Dyraine’s wealth. It was an interesting effect. There was a word for it, vibrato, Andrej thought, but the whole point of drinking was not to think.

  He sang instead.

  Six flax-fields for every spinner, six fat ewes and six times sixteen pretty lambs, and all for the looms of dark-eyed Dyraine.

  Settling his head in a softer place on the floor — he’d got a corner of the blanket beneath his head at the temple, it wasn’t comfortable, it annoyed him — Andrej closed his eyes and concentrated on the words to the old song. It was good to sing about Dasidar and Dyraine. It was safe. They had had misunderstandings too, but it had all come out right in the end. Well, eventually.

  Each of her looms twelve spans high, and each of her looms three spans wide, no skill of any on the Lake’s broad shore could be compared to the weaving-women of dark-eyed Dyraine.

  H’mm.

  Something was wrong.

  He didn’t hear the buzz of the vibration.

  Maybe he’d forgotten to open his mouth?

  She dyed her fine wool with the sapin-flower on the white shores of the Lake, and took the tiny currit-shell to make her lustrous purple.

  No, he could hear his voice, but no vibration. Wha
t was wrong? Andrej moved his head a little to stretch his throat. Maybe he wasn’t singing loudly enough. He didn’t want to sing loudly, there were people he didn’t want to disturb. But he was focused now on finding out. The song sounded so much more poignant, somehow, with the buzz of the vibration of his voice in the tiling. Like the background drone of the lap-lute that traditionally accompanied the singer.

  Perfumed with rare Myelosin and patterned with swallows in flight, the tapestries of wide renown came from the looms in the weave-house of the dark-eyed Dyraine.

  Well, there was the vibration, right enough. Andrej sang on; but twisted his body a little as he went. He was lying on his side, and one elbow lay beneath him. It was beginning to go to sleep.

  Needlewomen of astounding skill put linen thread to woolen weave and woolen thread to fine spun flax to glorify the house-mistress and praise the pride and management of the dark-eyed Dyraine —

  Halfway through the phrase, though, the vibration stopped. Andrej stopped and opened his eyes, scowling. What was happening, here?

  He’d moved.

  Were there faulty tiles here in the washroom?

  That would be a discrepancy. Everything else in this fine house was perfect. The tiles in the washroom could not be allowed to destroy the overall perfection of the house.

  Which one was it?

  Now, he had to keep his eyes open for this, Andrej admonished himself. It was difficult, because he was having trouble focusing. He took a drink. Well. Better.

  Flax shining like the stars, like the sun on summer waters, flax that shone like milk or cream, such was the flax spun for the linen that was cut and sewn into the apron with long strings that tied around the linden waist of dark-eyed Dyraine, of the weavers . . .

  Four tiles up. Four tiles down. The tiles were as square as his hand was broad. And they all sang back to him as he chanted out the old story, giving him their approval by providing background music. All of them but one.

  Dyraine’s wicked brother-in-law, clearly.

  Or maybe Dasidar’s pledged sacred-wife?

  Snowy flax as pure as light, shining flax like running water, flax as fair as morning bells was cut and hemmed and trimmed in braid to overlay the bird-wing arms, the fir-branch shoulders, the sweet-apple bosom of dark-eyed Dyraine.

  Second tile from the floor. Just by his nose. Defective.

  It would have to be replaced.

  It seemed a little out of true, as well, not quite as much in line with the others. Perhaps it could be set right, and then it would not be the brother-in-law or the pledged sacred-wife at all, but could represent Sarce of the mountains instead.

  That was a much more sympathetic role.

  The tile would thank him for setting it right, for saving it from the eternity of hatred and contempt that was the self-elected destiny of Dyraine’s spiteful brother-in-law and Dasidar’s uncharitable pledged sacred-wife. No tile in its right mind would prefer to be Kotsuda or Hoyfragen when it could be Sarce of the mountains.

  Andrej tapped at the comer of the tile that was out of true with the mouth of the bottle of wodac, pausing thoughtfully to refresh himself as he did so. It was a thick bottle. He tended to break bottles, when he was drunk. His people did their best to give him his drink in a stout flask.

  He wasn’t doing this right.

  The corner wouldn’t be tapped down to true.

  The tapping only jarred the other corners out of true as well, cracking a thin outline in the tiled wall.

  Oh, how aggravating.

  All right, if that was the way of it, the tile would simply have to go, and make way for some more worthy tile. A tile that would appreciate its place and understand its role in the greater scheme of the washroom wall. The wife of the wicked brother-in-law, who refused to sleep in the bed furnished with unseamed linen for as long as Dyraine was in exile . . .

  Scratching at the tile with impatient fingers, Andrej concentrated on prying the wretched villain out of the wall. He had never liked the wicked brother-in-law, not even at the wedding when he’d brought the golden skeps with their heavy hives of pure black honey from the blooms of each of the four mountain berries. Never. The brother-in-law had only gotten what he deserved, and not enough of it.

  The tile came away from the wall and clattered softly to the floor.

  Andrej saw what the problem had been immediately.

  It hadn’t been the tile’s fault at all.

  There was a scrap of cloth there, between the tile-bed and the wall, dampening the vibration, muffling the sound.

  Seized with a sudden spasm of keen remorse, Andrej picked up the poor scorned tile from the floor and kissed it for an apology. Poor Elko. It hadn’t been Elko’s fault.

  He’d had no choice but to take the lambs, since that wretched Simar was his mother’s brother’s daughter. Oh, how remorseful he had been, and how sweetly Dyraine had forgiven him, and how nobly Dasidar had requited the tender impulse that had led him to hide the one rimeno yowe. It was too poignant.

  Andrej wept, and pulled the bit of cloth away so that the tile could be restored to its proper place. Oh, only one, only one little rimeno yowe, but all that Dyraine had been left with to comfort her — no, it was too much.

  Pieces of the wall came with the cloth tag.

  Pulling something behind it.

  Someone had come in to comfort him in his grief; or had they been there all along? Someone was here now, one way or the other. Maybe they didn’t know about Elko. There was more than one of them; they moved him over onto his back, away from the wall, but Andrej kept a firm grip on the bit of cloth.

  Lying on his back was a mistake.

  The pain in his stomach was astonishing.

  Someone offered him the bottle of wodac, but just for once Andrej wasn’t interested.

  Rolling onto his side again away from the wall, Andrej curled his knees to his belly in a ferocious spasm of retching, clutching the cloth tag and the packet that had come out of the wall with it in his hand.

  Oh, he was drunk, and it would be hours before he could see straight, and hours longer still before he would want to.

  But that was what happened when a man got drunk.

  Oddly enough it never seemed to stop him.

  ###

  Now it was morning come.

  Ailynn went as softly as she could with a chilled cloth for the officer’s head, wondering how he managed to sit up at table. She’d tended her share of drunks at the service house; she’d even been drunk herself, once of a time.

  And what she remembered most particularly was that she hadn’t been able to tolerate so much as the smell of food for at least three days after. What the officer had been last night had not been drunk: he had been right stupefied. And still wanted his rhyti, in the morning; or if he didn’t want it, he still asked for it, and drank it when it came.

  Chief Samons had brought medication from the officer’s kit that seemed to help. Koscuisko’s people knew how to manage Koscuisko drunk and then hung over; it was a hint, to her, that it had happened before upon occasion. It was perfectly true that the officer drank every night. But nothing like this. She could not have come to know his body as well as she had, otherwise. Koscuisko drank, but he didn’t come to her drunk; or not in any way that she could recognize as interfering with his concentration or impairing bodily function. She was in a position to know.

  “I woke up with a wad of cloth in my hand,” the officer said to Chief Samons, with a grateful glance at Ailynn in return for the chilled compress. “What on earth was I up to? I am afraid to ask.”

  A good question. Chief Samons smiled not so much in mockery as in chagrined recognition of the situation Koscuisko found himself in. “Singing in the bathroom, sir. One of the tiles seems to have offended you. You pulled this out of the wall with it.”

  The wad of cloth. Or something wrapped in cloth. What had it been doing in the wall? Chief Samons set it down in front of the officer, and Cook came in with a glass and a tray. F
lat unseasoned crackers. What was in the glass was anyone’s guess.

  Koscuisko nodded his thanks politely, sniffing at the contents with an expression of hesitation and doubt. Seeming to take his courage into his hands, Koscuisko drank from the glass; hesitantly at first, then with renewed confidence.

  “What. Is this,” Koscuisko asked the cook, who had hung back waiting for a response. And grinned.

  “As it please the officer. I’m Nurail. If anyone knows about body-wrack, it’s Nurail, sir. Or so they tell me.”

  Hangover remedy. Nurail folklore held that cooks were magicians second only to weavers in their occult powers. Koscuisko was staring at the empty glass in awe.

  “Go to the school at Mayon when you can, and your future is made,” Koscuisko said. “From the pockets of grateful students, if not from medical research. You are a phenomenon. And I am in your debt for this exceedingly.”

  The cook made a small bow of gracious acceptance, still grinning, and went back to the kitchen while the officer tipped the glass back to get at the last drops of the potion.

  “I am a new man,” the officer said. “I am reborn. I am renewed. I am — going to eat a cracker. Ailynn, if you would, open, here. But. Chief. Kaydence, how does he go?”

  It was that short a moment between the opening of a window out of the house of Koscuisko’s pain and the flying wide of the great doors to re-admit the anguish that had set the officer on his drunk in the first place.

  “He’s been up to have a drink of water and wash his hands. He made it back to his bed just in time. Sleeping off the meds, sir, no apparent complications.”

  Not in pain, that was to say. Ailynn pricked open the knot of cloth that secured the outer layer of the wad, concentrating on her task as Koscuisko mused aloud.

  “The hell of it is. I cannot swear. That I didn’t mean. To hurt him.”

  It was difficult for the officer to come out with the damning self-accusation. Ailynn smoothed the cover layer of fabric flat on the table’s surface. It was none of her business.