Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  “Forgive me, Kaydence.”

  Kaydence froze, electrified. He had never thought to hear — he had never wanted to hear — but Koscuisko continued speaking in a quiet but utterly determined tone of voice, not waiting for an answer. Not expecting one.

  “I never thought to sink to such a thing, not even with everything else that I have done. And I am so ashamed, but my shame cannot answer to your suffering.”

  He couldn’t let Koscuisko talk like this.

  He couldn’t handle it.

  “The officer is who the officer is.” You are what you are, your Excellency. There is no getting around it for anybody. “It’s just something we all have to deal with. Together. Sir.”

  This was too true to allow for argument or exploration.

  The officer knew better.

  Had the officer forgiven him for being alive, while Joslire was dead?

  He hadn’t realized he’d even been worried about it.

  Now he could put the whole thing out of his mind and concentrate on pulling a report on prison staff for Koscuisko’s use and analysis.

  ###

  Robis Darmon’s world coalesced gradually around him from a dark stifling mist of aching agony into a small cold stinking torture cell in the Domitt Prison, and he groaned aloud to realize that he was not dead yet. Not though he longed to be. Not though he waited for it. Not though his death was the salvation of those whose names he might have been able to remember once upon a time, lost now to pain and dread.

  He was terrified of the sight and sound and smell of the torturer, who brought new pain with every breath.

  His torturer, who tipped the cold sharp rim of a glass of water against his lower lip, lightly enough that Darmon did not recoil from the pressure against the broken skin but drank instead. His torturer was good to him, careful to see that he lacked for nothing that would preserve his life for more pain.

  Still something seemed a little unusual.

  He didn’t seem to hurt.

  His body ached, yes, and his flesh was sore, but where was the huge sharp transcendent all-consuming agony that had been his constant companion now forever?

  He remembered this.

  He could remember a life without pain, without physical pain, a world in which agony of spirit had been his only burden, grief for his dead, fear for the living, rage against the wrong that sought to grind them all into the mud and make good citizens of them. Yes. He could remember.

  There was that glass again, and Darmon drank. The fluid caught a bit going down; his throat was rough. Screaming would do that.

  “Talk to me,” the torturer said, softly. “Your Shopes Ban, the one whose fate so troubles you. Describe to me this man, if you would, please.”

  Drugged.

  That was what it was.

  Drugged to put away his pain, but if the torturer was using drugs against him he was for it.

  The desperation was swathed in cotton-wool, muffled in a resistance field; only dimly reverberating through his mind.

  They had to have been powerful drugs.

  “Thinking.”

  Because the torturer would know that he could hear, and speak. Shopes, poor Ceelie, what had been done to him? Of all the atrocities he’d seen since he had come to the Domitt Prison, it was this unknown horror that preyed most upon his mind. There was a point to be made. Somewhere.

  “Middling tall for a Nurail, about your height, about. Dark in his features. Scar on his arm, from the fire, don’t know how old he was. Couldn’t have been above the age of twenty-five years, Standard.”

  “No, that won’t do.” Darmon felt a moment’s panic; but the tone of the torturer’s voice was light and humorous. And he was drugged. “That won’t do at all. I have Shopes Ban outside this room right now, and he looks nothing like the man you have described. You simply must do better than that, for me.”

  This was a joke. It had to be. Yet if it wasn’t . . . “Ask him about me, then. You will find. The man he knows is different. Let’s bet.”

  “What do you say?” The torturer sounded genuinely startled. Darmon wanted to laugh.

  “There are more than one of us. Shopes Bans. Marne Cittropses. None of us either Ban or Cittrops. Couldn’t be. Not for months now.”

  There was a warmth at the wall beside him, and it made him uneasy. A sound of shifting fabric; the torturer sitting down on the floor beside him. Why?

  “Explain,” the torturer suggested. And tipped the tumbler to let Darmon drink, once more. Darmon hated himself for being so grateful for a swallow of cool water: but hating himself did not change the fact of his gratitude, or its shocking depth. “What is your experience of this place, that you should say such a thing?”

  It had been so long.

  He had suffered, since.

  And still the anguished outrage that he’d felt when he had realized that Nurail were to be burned before they were so much as dead rose up into his throat and nearly choked him.

  If Koscuisko wanted to hear, he could tell things that would make Koscuisko heartily sorry that he had asked.

  “There were people in the cart. Fallen on the way. Young Haps, dragged. By heels. Not dead. They took him to the furnace — ”

  He started at the beginning, and went through the middle to the end, when he had been taken out of work-crew to the torture. It took a long time. Every so often the pain began to build within his shattered body, from his savaged joints, his lacerated skin, his broken hands and feet. Every so often the torturer pressed him in his recitation and fed him a drink of water. And more drugs, he suspected, because the pain would fade away till he could almost forget he even had a body.

  Years.

  Centuries.

  Centuries upon centuries, but Darmon kept at it, trying to remember, trying to make sure each man who had been drowned screaming in the water at the bottom of the ditch would be numbered, every man who had been beaten with shockrods until he bled from the eyes and ears and nose would be remembered, every man who had been worked and worked and worked — and tossed into the grillwork of the gravel-crusher, or taken living or dead to the furnaces, when he could no longer work — was named and tallied up.

  The names of the dead. The names of the overseers. The names of the guards. The names of the dogs that had been set on exhausted prisoners to provide some amusement for their captors once they could no longer shovel earth.

  And ever and always, the soft clear voice of his torturer, asking questions, probing for details, calling out the threads that formed the braid that was the Domitt Prison. Ever and always, the furnaces, smoking in the background of his mind.

  Why did Koscuisko want to know?

  Why should he care?

  Finally he was finished, Koscuisko was done with questions at last, giving him to drink of cool sweet water in grave silence. And there was no pain. Nothing like the pain that there had been. Nothing like the pain that there would be, once the torturer tired of this game, whatever it was, whyever he was playing it.

  Darmon drank the water and thought hard.

  “You understand, such evidence must be tested before it can be freely relied upon,” the torturer said. “I have in mind a speak-serum, because you are very close to dead here and now, did you but know it. I will a dose of wake-keeper administer, excuse me for one moment to fetch it.”

  To confirm evidence was all very well, though Koscuisko had not confirmed any previously offered evidence that way. If Koscuisko had obtained evidence. Perhaps he hadn’t. Darmon really didn’t know, any more, what he might have said; and what managed to conceal.

  One thing he had decided, though, during the long day’s telling of his story. It was not the painease that decided him. It was because Koscuisko had heard the long list of the dead, and taken it into Evidence. Darmon had lived to the end of the Domitt Prison in at least that sense, howsoever small. He had survived for long enough to bear witness.

  Longer than this he had no wish to live. So long as he could only get one fina
l thing out of the way, before he died —

  He remembered the first day, it had been two hundred years ago. Koscuisko had a book. Koscuisko was collecting weaves.

  Darmon heard the torturer put the glass down, shifting to get up. And had sat beside him on the floor all of this time, leaning up against the wall, comforting him with the warmth of the proximity of another human body. Or a torturer’s body. It had still been a comfort, in the cold of the cell.

  “One thing the more, torturer,” Darmon said.

  Koscuisko stilled beside him. “You have something else to say about my parents, and how closely it was that they were related?” Koscuisko replied, gently, so that Darmon knew that he was listening. Darmon thought about smiling. But it would take too much energy to smile.

  “If thy mother had but known. How much she could have saved us all, by hanging herself.” But Koscuisko already knew that. “It’s something I only imagined. I think I may have heard a weaver, once. Take out your book and write it down. If I can remember the weaver said it was the Shallow Draft.”

  The torturer had dealt honestly with him, through all the obscenity of his craft. Had not forced the weave from him in all this time, that Darmon could remember. Had not asked him any questions about —

  “Are you sure of what you do?” Koscuisko asked, quietly.

  “There’s no telling. The weaver may have gotten the threads mismatched. But it was a persuasive weave. I can remember it almost as well as if it were my own.”

  Blame it on a weaver. That would do nicely. Scum of the earth; with power that transcended it. It was a weaver who had first coded the song in the pattern of a piece of cloth, a way of writing before there was writing among the Nurail.

  All a man could properly sing was his mother’s weave, unless he was a weaver. A weaver could sing any weave; and make new weaves when the occasion warranted. Stricken with the calling from on high, destroyed and exalted at once; with the power to communicate any passion they felt to any Nurail within hearing distance, but powerless to control that communication —

  Oh, had there been weavers here, to die in the Domitt Prison?

  Koscuisko’s book was like a weaver, then, if it held a store of weaves. That made the torturer a weave-keeper, and the thought was as good a joke as Darmon could imagine. Weavers were depraved, though it was not their fault; it resulted from the divine disaster that marked them as separate and apart, outside the secure ward of decency.

  And weave-keepers, having weavers in their charge, participated only in the degradation; and had no share of the respect a man could not but grant the force within a weaver. Oh, sympathy, yes, that. Koscuisko a weave-keeper . . .

  “Listen as the weaver sang it. It was about the clinker-built hull and the high curved prow of the ship that carried the daughter of the house over the chain and across the harbor, up the stream in summer muddy, past the shallows bottom-scraping to bring the wrath of the hill-people to take vengeance on Pyana for the burning of the houses down around her family as they slept.”

  The Shallow Draft.

  There was something of the weaver to Koscuisko, in a sense. He too was struck down, destroyed, and even in an obscene way exalted in the conduct of his craft. There was no accounting for all of the ways in which men walked in the world. Nor any understanding of what reason there might be for such a thing.

  Waking and sleeping, dreaming and dozing, Robis Darmon sang his mother’s weave, hearing from time to time the scratch of a stylus in Koscuisko’s hand, the turning of a leaf of paper.

  Now he had discharged his duty to the living, as well as to the dead.

  Now he could die at peace with himself.

  “Let the Record show twelve units of resinglas in solution for the purposes of confirming evidence received.”

  The torturer’s voice was far, far away, and receding further moment by moment. “Three units of vondilong per body weight used for the purposes of wake-keeping for the duration. Adjusted downward in order to take the conservative approach, in allowing for dehydration.”

  It was only a whisper, now, drowned beneath the rising sound of the water cascading over Branner’s Falls. And his wife dimly glimpsed just on the threshold of the family meeting-hall, with the child on her hip, his son, his Chonniskot. His daughters chasing around the comer of the building, the voice of the youngest brisk as a meadow-bird.

  The sound of the falls was soothing in his ears.

  He rested; and the trial of his life ended at last.

  Chapter Eleven

  “How can you tell me that War-leader Robis Darmon is dead?”

  Belan had seen Administrator Geltoi angry, but seldom so angry as this. He cringed in his heart for Koscuisko’s sake: but the officer did not seem to feel the force of Geltoi’s wrath.

  Koscuisko stood politely in a relaxed position of attention-wait in front of the Administrator’s desk. Somewhat closer than he had stood the first time he’d come into this office, Belan noted. As though there was more intimacy between them now . . . or less strict a gradient of rank to separate them.

  “I am heartily sorry to have to report so distressing a reflection on my ability,” Koscuisko replied smoothly. Too smoothly. “At the same time, Administrator. And I must point this out, at risk of seeming to excuse myself. It would not have come so soon had the drug not failed me.”

  Geltoi had hoped for great things from the testimony of War-leader Robis Darmon. Koscuisko had done such wonders with other, less promising prisoners. And for Koscuisko to come to report that the war-leader had revealed so little actionable information before he died was a blow. Belan didn’t see what the failure of a drug could possibly have to do with it.

  Geltoi sat back down, having half-risen from his chair in shock at Koscuisko’s news. “Doctor. You are responsible for knowing your business. If the drug failed isn’t that the same as to say you failed? To exercise professional judgment in the selection of application of specialized tools.”

  All in all, Geltoi was more visibly upset than Belan could remember seeing him. It was a bad sign. Evidence from the war-leader was to have been of special value to Geltoi, since it would emphasize how deeply Chilleau Judiciary was obliged to the Domitt Prison for the resource. But it wasn’t as though Geltoi had needed the additional leverage. Surely.

  “Precisely so, Administrator Geltoi,” Koscuisko agreed easily, with no hint of resentment. “The exercise of my professional judgment. The drug should have served as a wake-keeper, critical to that stage of the interrogation. It did not have the requisite effect, not even at a doubled dose. This is a troubling indication of potential adulteration of pharmacy stores, Administrator.”

  Geltoi had been so angry when Belan told him of Koscuisko’s words over the Lerriback confusion that Belan had half-expected him to call for an immediate reassignment. Belan was a little sorry for Koscuisko. He was probably accustomed to having his own way in everything — like a Pyana. When in the presence of a Pyana, however, Koscuisko was obviously outclassed.

  “How so?”

  Those two words were loaded with all the imperfectly suppressed outrage that Geltoi could bring to bear on a man. And yet Koscuisko did not stagger back from the force of Geltoi’s contempt.

  “These were stores I brought from the Domitt Prison’s Infirmary, Administrator. When I brought my man Kaydence in. Based on the effect it had on my prisoner — lack of effect, perhaps, I should say rather — I can only conclude that the drug had been adulterated, but who would expect to have to do an assay on restricted stores here in the very heart of your Administration?”

  They’d gotten off easy at the time, Belan remembered. Koscuisko hadn’t said anything about stores. Belan had just assumed that the shift supervisor had been on top of things. Now it seemed that Koscuisko had not been as carefully watched in Infirmary as would have been prudent.

  “Really, Doctor. Grasping at straws. As though a man of your caliber relies on drugs to effect his persuasion.”

  Geltoi was
trying to deflect the force of Koscuisko’s point back onto the original problem, that of the war-leader’s death.

  It wasn’t working.

  “A man should be able to rely upon his tools. And it is my responsibility, after all. Given the circumstances I must either report myself as incompetent or conduct an Infirmary audit immediately. And I am not incompetent. I know my job.”

  Well, Belan told himself, Geltoi had walked into that one. He’d as much as told Koscuisko that he was incompetent. That had more or less forced Koscuisko to make the claim of adulterated drugs in order to defend himself against a bad report. Geltoi should rather have left the point alone.

  “I hardly think that now is the appropriate time for such an audit, Koscuisko — ”

  Geltoi had seen the trap he’d laid for himself, but it was too late. Koscuisko merely insisted, with polite deference, on what it was Koscuisko’s lawful right to demand on whim.

  “Forgive me for saying so, Administrator Geltoi, but I cannot agree. I must know whether the stores in Infirmary are reliable. Only in this way can I protect myself from a recurrence of this shocking incident. To have lost so important a prisoner to death by systemic shock, because the wake-keeper was adulterated — it cannot be tolerated.”

  Koscuisko had a right to defend himself against accusations of incompetence, too.

  Why hadn’t Geltoi seen this coming?

  “Very well.” The Administrator had no real choice but to concede. And they all knew it. “You may conduct your audit two days after tomorrow. I’ll send an escort for you.”

  Kitchen audit. And now an Infirmary audit. As far as Belan knew, Geltoi hadn’t heard anything back from Koscuisko on the kitchen audit yet. On the other hand, Koscuisko had been busy.

  “Thank you, sir. And good-greeting, Administrator Geltoi, Assistant Administrator Belan.”

  Day after tomorrow . . . so that Geltoi would have time to ensure that stores were rotated and replaced. A day in which to cover for themselves. If Koscuisko had meant to make trouble, he would surely have insisted on going now, and there would have been a scandal. Why had Koscuisko agreed to the delay?