Administrator Geltoi hurried toward the office with all deliberate speed, pausing on the threshold to take stock of the situation.
His office was full of people.
There was someone in his chair, but Geltoi couldn’t see who; the chair was turned to the window, with its back to the room.
Sitting on the couch to the left, a short blond man in a dark dusty uniform, slumped over on the edge of the seat with his shaggy head buried between the palms of his soiled hands.
Andrej Koscuisko?
There was that Security Chief of Koscuisko’s, right enough, and Koscuisko’s green-sleeved bond-involuntary troops as well.
Very good indeed.
Clearly orders had come in overnight, and Belan had wanted Koscuisko to be here waiting for his dismissal. Belan could be faulted on execution, but not on instinct. And it was enough of a relief to realize that Koscuisko’s orders were in hand that Geltoi forgave Belan this misappropriation of his office in advance of Belan’s explanation.
His role was to be that of the surprised senior administrator coming upon an unexpected occupation force: very close to exactly what he was, except that he knew what was going on, and was looking forward to playing it out.
“So. Doctor Koscuisko.”
Koscuisko dropped his hands, raising his face to look at Geltoi as he strode confidently in. Koscuisko looked an absolute wreck. Perhaps the experience would teach him something; sober him, make him a better officer. As long as Koscuisko was a better officer far, far away from the Domitt Prison, Geltoi did not grudge him any good his brief imprisonment might have done him.
Geltoi stopped in front of the couch to put a point to the lesson. There were other Security in here as well as Koscuisko’s; some Fleet security — but Geltoi ignored them.
“How unfortunate that it should have to end like this, Koscuisko. We acted in good faith, I remind you, and took great pains to see you lacked for nothing.”
Koscuisko rose stiffly to his feet. His uniform was filthy: and there was an unsubtle odor about it as well that Geltoi declined to identify. He had clearly been up all night; drinking, most likely. That would explain the blank hostile uncomprehending stare Koscuisko was giving him. It was a little uncanny. Stupid as Koscuisko looked, unkempt as he was, he almost did look Nurail to Geltoi.
The realization distracted Geltoi for a moment: what if Koscuisko had been found in the furnace-room, looking like that? Would it be so great a loss if his honest hardworking furnace crew made a mistake, quite reasonable under the circumstances, and clubbed Koscuisko unconscious to feed the furnaces?
Calling his fantasies firmly to heel, Geltoi spoke on. “While you have done nothing but engage in obstructionary and insubordinate behavior since you got here. The rumors we’d heard were right about you all along. No respect for honest decent working folk. No respect for authority — ”
Failure to know his place and keep to it, stubborn refusal to honor the natural order and respect his superiors. Nurail in more than one way. And Geltoi would have told Koscuisko, too, but for some unaccountable reason he found himself flat on his back on the floor. Koscuisko kneeling on his stomach. Koscuisko’s hands, locked around his throat, and the thumbs pressed deep into the pulse on either side of his windpipe.
What —
Koscuisko’s face was a blue-and-white mask of furious hatred and indescribable loathing, and all for being told a few home truths about himself?
He couldn’t breathe.
“Murderer,” Koscuisko hissed at him through teeth clenched tight and bared in savage contempt. “Impious. Unfilial. Outlaw. Vandal. Murderer — ”
Then Koscuisko was pulled off, finally, though it took all four of his slave Security to do it. Fleet Security helped Geltoi to his feet, and Belan decided to turn around, finally.
It was about time.
Belan hadn’t jumped out of the great desk chair at the sound of Geltoi’s voice, which was annoying. Belan was turning slowly from the window with no evident intention of surrendering his place to its rightful occupant.
“Your Excellency. You must wait upon the judgment of the Bench for that, with respect, sir.”
It wasn’t Belan’s voice.
The man in the chair was Bench Lieutenant Plugrath, swiveling to square himself to the desk-table’s surface and toggle into braid. “Chanson, close the gates. Quarantine in effect for local staff. Good-greeting, Administrator Geltoi.”
Koscuisko spoke, his struggle to master himself evident. “Yes, of course, Lieutenant. You are right.” Security was not letting go of Koscuisko, holding him by his arms, standing close behind him. Oddly enough Security hadn’t let go of Geltoi himself, either. “Geltoi, I never thought to believe it could be true. But I have learned. There is a crime under Jurisdiction that deserves Tenth Level command termination. And you have done it. I will have you, Geltoi.”
Security appeared to relax as Koscuisko spoke. One of his green-sleeves bowed, presenting a white-square that Koscuisko declined; with a quick gesture of his head, by way of thanks.
Geltoi stared in shock at the officer in Geltoi’s chair, seated behind Geltoi’s desk-table, making himself perfectly at home in Geltoi’s office. “Lieutenant. What is the meaning of this? Where is Assistant Administrator Belan?”
Belan had been here late last night working. Why hadn’t Belan warned him that Plugrath had come to visit? What were these Fleet Security doing here, if not to escort Koscuisko out of the Domitt Prison? Plugrath’s escort, perhaps. Maybe the Dramissoi Relocation Fleet Commander had sent Plugrath with this escort in token of Koscuisko’s rank. Yes. That could be. Geltoi felt a little better.
“Administrator Belan has been removed to a secure psychiatric facility in Port Rudistal, Administrator. On orders from the commander pro tem of the Domitt Prison, his Excellency, Andrej Koscuisko.”
Koscuisko?
Commanding?
Impossible.
The carpeted flooring eroded like wet sand in a rising tide underneath Geltoi’s feet. Shaking himself free from Security’s grasp with an impatient twist, Geltoi staggered forward, catching at the fore-edge of the desk-table for balance. “Let me see if I take your meaning, Lieutenant. You have taken my poor Merig to the hospital. What wild claims has he been making?”
And what had Koscuisko said?
Security came up behind him, taking his arms once more. But not holding them this time. Security pulled his arms behind his back, and Geltoi felt the cold kiss of the manacles latching around his wrists without quite understanding what it was.
What was going on?
Were these actually chains? Was this how it felt to be made a prisoner? Interesting. But he was not a prisoner. He was the Administrator of the Domitt Prison. Something was not adding up.
“Quite an astonishing number,” Plugrath admitted, almost cheerfully. “Not very coherent, any of it. His Excellency has sent for a Sarvaw forensics team to excavate. There will be physical evidence soon enough. And in the meantime — ”
Sarvaw forensics? Whatever could that mean?
The construction pit.
The Nurail they had buried there.
Sarvaw forensics teams were top of the line for gathering physical evidence from mass burials. Koscuisko was Dolgorukij. He would know. It was Dolgorukij that had massacred all those Sarvaw for the forensics teams to practice on.
“I want him very carefully maintained,” Koscuisko said to Lieutenant Plugrath. Koscuisko hardly deigned to notice he was there, any more. Koscuisko didn’t have to. “There are reparations to be made, punishment owing too many times over to count. I do not mean to risk escape of any sort. I trust you take my meaning, Bench Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.” Plugrath’s submission to Koscuisko’s authority was too absolute. Geltoi could hardly bear to hear it. “I’ll pledge his safety to you personally, your Excellency. You’ll be wanting to move your people into town, I expect.”
“Out of this place,” Koscuisko agreed.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
The furnaces should have warned him. The furnaces had stopped. Koscuisko had people here to rake the furnaces out, and number up the unregistered dead to claim vengeance against him. Belan had whimpered to them about the dead in the construction pit, and Belan could tell a very great deal more to Geltoi’s disadvantage. Belan was Nurail. He had no backbone, no courage, no strength of will to speak of.
Caught between a treacherous Nurail to one side and the prospect of being made to serve as Chilleau Judiciary’s scapegoat on the other, Administrator Geltoi weighed his options as he weighed the stalloy cuffs that chained his wrists.
And decided.
“You’re making a significant error, Lieutenant.” He tried to sound sorrowful, while investing his words with as much aggrieved dignity as possible. “I don’t know what allegations our poor Merig may have made, nor how much faith a prudent man should have in the ravings of a madman. I fear for your career; and you could profit by this instead, if you so chose.”
He could brazen out the evidence somehow. He could see to it that Belan was silenced before evidence could be placed on Record. But if he once allowed himself to be removed as a prisoner, he was as good as dead. He was not in a very good position here and now: he had been taken by surprise. He could still make it work, if only he could walk out of his office a free man.
“Not my mistake to make, Administrator Geltoi,” Lieutenant Plugrath said, respectfully enough, but with no hint of regret or uncertainty in his voice. “His Excellency has cried failure of Writ against the Domitt Prison. The Bench will decide if there have been errors made. Not I.”
Plugrath gave Koscuisko the nod as he said it. There was no love lost between the two officers, perhaps, but there seemed to be little hope of making a wedge between them, either. Administrator Geltoi sought for the right words, the right thing to say, something that would work to break this intolerable spell. This could not be happening. He’d walked into a nightmare.
Lieutenant Plugrath nodded at someone behind Geltoi. “Ready to transport, squad leader. Secure your prisoner and escort to custody as previously detailed, secured psychiatric.”
No.
“You can’t do this to me!” Geltoi shrieked. “You don’t dare — do you know who I am — ”
They picked him up and carried him away, kicking and screaming, his dignity lost to him now as finally as his position. As his future. As his life.
It didn’t matter how much prisoners screamed.
The Bench would have its evidence.
Koscuisko was petty and vengeful, and Koscuisko was Nurail after all; but Koscuisko was an Inquisitor, with the ultimate penalty within his power to inflict if the Bench ruled —
Administrator Geltoi sank like a dead weight in the grasp of the Security who carried him, and wept like a man bereft.
His prison, his prisoners, his work-crews. His land reclamation project. His money.
All gone.
And nothing left —
Except that he could see to it that Chilleau Judiciary did not turn its back on him, he would give evidence.
Why couldn’t they have listened to him, and called Andrej Koscuisko back to Scylla before any of this could have happened?
Chapter Fourteen
Andrej Koscuisko stood on the planking that protected the lip of the pit being excavated, watching the forensics team at their painstaking work below.
From where he stood he could see the careful grid marked off with chalked lines, and the bracing that supported a partially decayed body with too precise a correspondence to how it had been uncovered for anyone’s peace of mind. Clawing its way frantically toward the surface, the head thrown back, the jaw carefully wired into the open-mouthed — dirt-filled — scream that had formed one last protest against atrocity.
There could be no possible hope of misinterpretation. Whoever it had been, it had been a living soul, buried alive, and fully awake to the horror of its cruel fate as it happened.
“Caustic losteppan, ground fine,” the shift supervisor — Sarvaw, as was most of the team — noted, passing a closed vial of clear glass to Andrej for examination. “Broadcast into the pit before they started filling. Don’t get it on your skin, sir, this stuff will start to dissolve flesh within moments.”
Raising his eyes to the black wall that rose up in front of them on the other side of the pit, Andrej found he could not suppress a shudder. “What a fearful way to die.” No one would challenge that, it was too obvious, but the horror he felt was too much to be held in. The excavation was too good. It was too clear. He could almost hear the screaming. “How many bodies in the pit? At a guess?”
But the shift supervisor shook her head. “No guessing yet, your Excellency. Imaging scans show too much confusion at the next level to be able to sort it out. Going by bone density it could be upwards of three hundred souls.”
Andrej shuddered again, and it wasn’t because of the cold or the smell of earth, heavy with decaying flesh. “Thank you, shift supervisor. You should receive every assistance, speak to the Administration if help should flag.”
The woman bowed respectfully, but Andrej didn’t think she cared what he said one way or the other. Why should she? She was Sarvaw, he was Dolgorukij. Worse than Dolgorukij, Aznir Dolgorukij, the twice-great-grandson of Chuvishka Kospodar. He could protest his outrage all he liked, in public or in private. No Sarvaw would believe him.
Or if they did, it would make no difference. This was still atrocity that the Sarvaw had learned to judge against the Kospodar rule.
Turning away from the grave pit, Andrej began to cross the planking toward the Administration building, and Security — Code and Erish — fell in to place behind him. There were people coming on foot from in front of the Administrative building toward them, a small group — six, and four of them Andrej thought he recognized.
He was not particularly farsighted. But Andrej knew his Bonds: and he had left Security 5.3 on Scylla, so what were they doing here?
Not only that.
It seemed to Andrej that Code knew more than just his fellow Bonds; and came as close as Andrej had ever known him to missing a step, near-stumbling.
Afraid.
As the party drew near, Andrej could get more of its members sorted one from the other. Cel Tonivish. Iyo Lorig. Hart Aicans. Specs Fiskka. Yes, Security 5.3. No Robert St. Clare, Andrej was grateful to see. It was hard enough for him to see all of these beaten punished prisoners who looked like Robert to him without Robert actually being here.
Two officers in Administrative grays, but Andrej wasn’t familiar with the branch of service that the steel-gray piping on the uniform might indicate.
Erish was fearfully tense, all of a sudden.
Then Andrej knew.
These officers were dancing-masters.
And that could only mean —
“Your Excellency.” The senior of the two dancing-masters brought up his detail and saluted, very solemnly. “News from the Bench, sir, perhaps you’ve been expecting us.”
Dancing-masters were the people that the Bench put in charge of the difficult period of conditioning and training that a bond-involuntary underwent between the implantation of the governor and the first duty post. That was why bond-involuntaries were afraid of them. It was nothing personal. And very soon it would be over, at least for three of his Security; and it should have been four, but Joslire had claimed the Day.
Joslire.
“Indeed I hoped for you, in a sense.” What was he to call them? He wasn’t sure he was supposed to know that they were dancing-masters. He wasn’t sure they knew what bond-involuntaries called them, come to that. “Where are the others? Because I think that they should be together.”
He knew why they were here. Security 5.3 had clearly been briefed in advance as well, from the fiercely cloaked joy in their faces; and that had been kindly done. Code and Erish could not know: and still gave him so much honor as to have relaxed once more within their bond
-involuntary’s discipline, secure that they were in no danger of bullying in his presence.
“His Excellency’s Chief of Security has taken the other Security assigned up to the Administrator’s office, sir. We were to tell his Excellency.”
They would be waiting for him, then. And not know what it was that they were waiting for. Andrej wanted to hurry. “With dispatch, then, if you please. Code, lead the way.”
Code would be staying. Andrej was conscious of the dancing-masters taking their subordinate positions behind him, as Security gathered into formation around them to move into the building. It annoyed him to realize that the dancing-masters were evaluating the performance of his gentlemen with every step they took. It annoyed him even more that he was anxious for their approval: as though it meant anything at all to him.
They could not know.
There could be no bond-involuntary Security under Jurisdiction as perfect as his people; and yet Andrej knew too well that to a dancing-master they might seem half-ruined. A bond-involuntary might be said to lose the fine edge of his discipline when he lost his fear of punishment.
But not where Andrej could hear it.
Upstairs in the great gracious office that had belonged to Administrator Geltoi Andrej sat down behind the desk to see what the dancing-masters had brought him. Chief Samons formed 5.3 up in ranks outside of the office, in the hall; and held Code back with them. Security 5.4 stood in the office, with a blank space at the end of the line where Joslire should have been.
The senior officer set the flat tray that he’d been carrying down on the desk, and opened its secures. “His Excellency will wish to see to these himself,” the dancing-master said. Safes. Three Safes, one for each of the surviving members of Security 5.4 that had been on board Scylla for that fateful event.
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