There were veserts upon veserts of fields in grain, still green and silvery in the sun; it was yet midway into the growing season, and Jan Seed–of–Life had only begun to show the long black beard that marked him for a man and ripe for slaughter. Well, for harvest, but harvest was slaughter, and tradition required it be approached with reverence and care.
“Thank you, Jelchick. Final approach. Beacon scan initiated.”
In all of the years that he had known Lek Kerenko, Andrej didn’t think he had even once noticed that he had an accent. The blood of his ancestors in the fields below reached out to him, cried out to him — corrupted him. Lek sounded Sarvaw to him, and Andrej shuddered to hear it. If he could think such a thing — he, who owed so much to Lek for openhearted charity — if he could think the word with scorn, how could he hope to keep Lek from shame at the Matredonat?
The courier slowed perceptibly moment by moment, falling fast. Jelchick Field took a sudden approach, but it had been the most suitable airfield — the one closest to home. Andrej was not going to Rogubarachno, the ancient house in the plains of Refour where he had been born; only later would he travel to Chelatring Side in the mountains, to attend to political business with his family.
They were for the Matredonat, an estate that belonged to him personally in his capacity as the son of the Koscuisko prince, the place where he kept Marana and his child. They were going there first. It had been negotiated. It had been agreed. So why were there riders in array at the very edge of the airfield, a hunting party, and one rider on horseback sitting apart from the rest?
“Send a security query, Chief,” Andrej suggested. He would not send the question himself. Let Stildyne do it. “Find us out who those people are. The airfield is secured. I want to know.” He needed all the advance warning he could get, if they were who he suspected they might be.
Stildyne stepped away from beside Andrej without comment as Lek drew the courier into its final descent. Andrej could see the emergency equipment drawn up alongside the end of the travel–path, could hear Lek talking to the traffic control center; but had eyes only for those people well out of range of the courier’s engines, waiting.
If he did not take care, Andrej told himself, he would convince himself that he recognized that one tall rider. And that was clearly impossible. He had not so much as seen his father in almost nine years.
Stildyne had returned. “Says it’s the landlord, your Excellency,” Stildyne said. “At least that’s what I think they said.”
“ ‘Master of field and grain, river and mountain’? Is that what they said?”
Stildyne didn’t so much nod, but merely lowered his head in confirmation. “So what does it mean, sir?”
Closing his eyes for one brief moment of frustrated fury Andrej swore. “All Saints in debauch. My father, Chief. Probably my mother. Doubtless at least the youngest of my brothers, but it was not what we had planned. I’m not prepared for this.”
It was far too late to tell Lek to abort the landing, and break space again. Nor would it have been fair if he’d let himself be forced so far as that. He wanted to meet his son.
“His Excellency presents his compliments,” Stildyne said, as if it was a question. “And regrets that an unfortunate desire to see you all in Hell prevents his meeting with you at this particular time or any in the foreseeable near future?”
As angry as Andrej was, he had to laugh. “Someone has corrupted you, Chief. You sound like a house–master in a bad mood. No. There is to be no help for it, and everybody knows that the prince my father left me with no choice when he elected to attend this event. I will have to go and kneel and beg for blessing.”
The courier had come to a complete halt, the ventilators equalizing atmosphere. Andrej took a deep breath to calm himself. He almost believed that he could smell the hot dust of the grain–lands in the summer. “When we approach them, hold the team at the same remove as my father’s house–master will be standing, with my father’s mount.”
“We brought smoke, your Excellency.” Lek surprised Andrej by speaking up, and Murat beside him took up the skein, in braid.
“We wouldn’t even use irritant fog. Just smoke.”
“Lay down a good field,” Smath added. “Run for it. Evasive action. Just to keep in practice, sir. Just say the word.”
They were so good to him. Or perhaps they simply preferred not to start a vacation with their officer of assignment in a filthy temper: so one way or another he owed it to them to face up to the coming ordeal like a man, and get it over with.
“Thank you, gentles, but the word must be ‘no.’ I will go and speak to my father. You may watch if you like. You will not see many Dolgorukij so tall as he is.”
Meeka had inherited all of their father’s height, and their father’s beautiful great black beard as well. Neither Lo nor Iosev nor Andrej himself stood any more near such height than the shoulder to the head. There was no telling about Nikosha, who had been a child; but even so, Nikosha seemed to take after their mother for his frame and his physique.
The ground crew had arrived. Andrej could hear Taller making the required polite conversation. A moment or two, and the passenger ramp descended, opening the side of the courier to the sight of late morning and the faint but unmistakable fragrance of sirav in bloom.
The perfume of the weeds of the country seized Andrej’s brain like a drug. He could not bear to stay inside the courier breathing Standard air for one moment longer. He had to get out. Even though it meant he would have to go and confront his father, he had to get out and breathe the air, feel the pull of his own earth, the caress of the warmth of his own sun.
Nine years.
He had spent years at school on Mayon before he had gone to Fleet; he had had difficulty with Mayon’s gravity as well. Off. Ever so slightly off. It had taken weeks for the uneasiness in his stomach to settle, but he had been away from home too long, and now he felt the land–sickness in his stomach all over again.
It was probably just nerves.
Out there in the near distance the hunting party was moving in bits and pieces, reacting to the appearance of the courier’s passengers and crew. It would be over all the sooner, and the more quickly, he engaged; therefore Andrej waited until Murat had finished his post–flight checks and spoke.
“If you please, Mister Stildyne.”
He was an officer under escort, his uniform a stark contrast to the hunting costume that his father wore. Men in their family did not wear black boots in the summertime, nor boots of hard leather of any color unless they were at court or at war. The blouse of the trousers was not creased unless one’s housekeeper were clumsy, stupid, incompetent, or insolent; no man of rank would fail to wear a broad belt over his jacket, from which to hang a pouch of this or a string of that. All in all, he was quite possibly as alien to them as Andrej’s father and his people were to Security 5.l.
Climbing into the waiting ground–car Andrej nodded to Taller, who had taken the driver’s seat. Taller knew quite well that they were taking a detour on their way to traffic control. Once Smath had hopped on board with the last of the luggage Taller headed out for the far side of the airfield, where the hunting party was gathered just to the near side of the security fence.
When the distance had shrunk to eighty paces or so Andrej stopped Taller with a gesture, and Taller secured the vehicle’s drive before joining the rest of the team on the ground.
His people formed up in the standard square around him with the efficiency of long practice and the ease of clear, if unspoken, communication. Andrej started through the long grass toward the hunting party, and three riders came down from the little rise that the hunting party had invested to meet him partway.
When they had closed one quarter of the distance Andrej’s father dismounted. So of course the escort dismounted as well, one of them taking the reins of Andrej’s father’s horse.
One half of the distance, and the two men who had accompanied Andrej’s father stopped. And
rej didn’t hear any word from Stildyne, but his people stopped too, Taller and Lek each taking a step to either side to give Andrej clear passage between them.
When Andrej was close enough to see his father’s face, close enough to meet an outstretched hand, he stopped and stood and waited for his father’s word. Looking up into his father’s worried blue eyes Andrej wondered what there was that he could say, what there was that he could do. He knew the obvious answer: he was to kneel and beg his father’s blessing. But it was not as simple as that.
This man was his father, and loved him, drinking in his face with an expression of fond thirst.
And yet Andrej’s knees could not be convinced that they should bend. His father, yes, but also the man who had sent him into Hell nine years ago and demanded that he abide there, the man who — once all had been said and done at the Domitt Prison — had rebuked him for unfilial behavior in having challenged Chilleau Judiciary in so public a forum. The man whose acceptance of Chilleau’s persuasions had left Andrej with no other escape from a servitude more horrible than even that which he had endured under Captain Lowden’s command than to submit himself to Fleet for four years more.
At the same time, this man had not truly done much of what Andrej found to blame. His father had been an officer in mere Security, and at a time when Inquiry had been informal and field expedient, bearing no discernible relation to the Protocols in their current form. His father could have no conception of what Andrej’s life had been like with Captain Lowden as his commanding officer.
This was a Dolgorukij father in the presence of a wayward son, and as much as Andrej regretted the shape into which his father had forced his life, there was no sense in reproaching a man for what he had no idea that he had done.
In the end, it wasn’t his father’s fault at all.
He could at any point have turned his back and stepped away from duty and obedience that required he execute sin and practice atrocity. No one had forced him to his duty but his own will to be dutiful. He had not in all of this time turned his back and said no, because he had not had the courage to shame his father and distress his mother.
Was that truly adequate an excuse to cover the torture and murder of feeling creatures?
Having submitted to such crimes to keep the pride of his family from stain and reproach, was he now going to shame his father in front of so many of the household by refusing the basic duty of a child in the presence of its father?
It was the act of a coward to blame another for something that was not truly their fault but one’s own.
Finally Andrej’s knees began to bend. He lowered his head to show his father the white of the back of the neck above the collar. Maybe it had taken all these years for Andrej to grasp the idea that he did not have to be a filial son, but so long as he was here and had committed such horrors in the name of filial piety and the Judicial order, it would be mean–spirited of him to deny his father the respect that should naturally be between father and son.
It was not his father’s fault.
His father reached out to him as Andrej started to kneel and prevented him from kneeling, drawing Andrej to him instead, to be embraced both gently and fiercely.
His father seemed to be weeping, and the notion sent Andrej into a panic that he didn’t really understand. So many people he had hurt so far beyond the power of tears to express, or cries, or screaming. Why should one man’s purely emotional grief distress him so?
“Please, sir.”
His father relaxed his grip on Andrej the moment Andrej spoke, but he didn’t let go of him. Andrej stood in his father’s embrace in an agony of confusion and embarrassment; too much happening too quickly between heart and mind for Andrej to be able to make sense of it.
“Please, sir, don’t distress yourself. I have been wayward and unfilial, but I am your child still.” And yet he was going to go from here to the Matredonat, where he would once again defy his father and insult his mother by acting as though he were an autonomous person rather than some body’s child.
His father tightened his arms around Andrej one last time, then let him go. “And yet Cousin Stanoczk has hinted, son Andrej. You know that you cannot have my blessing for your intended actions.”
What was worse, his father apparently knew what he meant to do. How had Cousin Stanoczk come by the knowledge?
Was there ever any knowing, with Malcontents?
He’d spoken to a priest on their way out of Port Burkhayden, in order to be sure of the correct and complete ritual. That was perfectly true. He just hadn’t expected it to get back to his father, and for the Malcontent to have transmitted the information made Andrej wonder what the Malcontent had in mind.
“I am bound for four years more at least, sir, and my ship of assignment has only recently lost two of its officers, even though we are not actively engaged.” One of whom he had himself murdered, but he wasn’t going to trouble his father with that surely trivial piece of information. And he had no idea whether the death of Cowil Brem was public knowledge as yet. “I must think of my son.”
“As I of mine.” Well, the Koscuisko prince had more than one son, and they both knew that. But Andrej was the oldest of Alexie Slijanevitch’s male children; that meant he counted for more than the rest of his brothers taken together. “And I have for too many years played Sanfijer to your Scathijin, son Andrej. I don’t pretend that Scathijin did not bring the most part of his grief upon himself. But Sanfijer had no one but himself to reproach for the fact that he had not been more natural a parent.”
Never, never, never had Andrej ever imagined that it could be possible for his father to say such a thing to him. The surprise betrayed him to himself, and the frustrated affection and aggrieved resentment of the years brought tears to his eyes.
“I do not ask for your forgiveness, sir, as I do not deserve it.” He was become unfilial. He would remain so. His father forgave it, even before the fact. “But to have your forgiveness for my fault. It would be almost as good.”
It was a fault only in the context of their culture. Andrej had just realized he was no longer fully part of it; but his family was. His son would be raised here on Azanry, and have to find a way to fit himself into the society to which Andrej had been bred and born. It seemed the traditions of his ancestors had power over him that he had not begun to suspect.
“I bless thee as my unfilial son Andrej,” Alexie Slijanevitch said, very solemnly, but there was the unmistakable softness of a loving parental heart within and around the words. “That is to say, my child, who has been a man in the eyes of the greater government of this Jurisdiction for these years past. Your father’s blessing on your misguided, ill–advised, self–willed, and all too clearly Koscuisko head, son Andrej, with a full heart I grant it.”
Something inside Andrej’s chest seemed to crack open, flooding his body with grateful warmth. He bowed over his father’s hand to kiss the family seal that Alexie Slijanevitch wore on his right hand; and his father embraced him once again, and held him close for a long moment as Andrej struggled for control of his emotions.
“Now. I have already violated the terms of our agreement, son Andrej. We know you are on your way to the Matredonat.” His father put Andrej away from him at arm’s length and looked him in the eye, lovingly. “You will perhaps forgive us in turn for having wanted too badly just to see you. Go and kiss the hem of your mother’s apron, and come to us at Chelatring Side when the Autocrat’s Proxy arrives.”
It was almost unfair.
He was to have his father’s forgiveness and his mother’s understanding after all, and it was all only now. Only now that he was under some mysterious and undefined sentence of death, only now that he had already made contract with Fleet for another four years.
If he had known that his father would have softened so much toward him as to be able to cite the story of the filial son wrongly accused — the tragedy of Scathijin the Self–Minded — he might not have done it. He might have come home an
d trusted his parents’ change of heart to keep him safe from the threat of Chilleau Judiciary.
With a full heart Andrej hurried through the tall grass of the un–mown verge between the pavement of the airfield and the perimeter to see his mother, his head too full of wonder and amazement to have a thought to spare for anything but the moment.
###
They were too far away to hear what was being said, but what Stildyne could see was startling enough.
Koscuisko’s father.
Stildyne had only negative associations with the concept. His own father was a man he’d hardly thought twice about since the day he’d sworn to Fleet to get off–planet and away before the local authorities started to make inquiries. The chances of anybody really caring who had killed Stildyne’s father were vanishingly small, and the pitiful remains of Stildyne’s young sister were no more grievous a motive in the world that he had left than other wrongs his father had done.
He’d never embraced his father that he could ever remember, and had successfully avoided other sorts of physical contact from the day when he’d been old enough to hit back. His younger sister hadn’t had a chance. She’d never gotten quick and clever enough to escape. She hadn’t lived long enough.
And here Koscuisko bowed to his father.
Was about to kneel, if Stildyne read Koscuisko’s body language correctly, and he had studied Koscuisko’s body language with care and keen attention for years now. Koscuisko was embraced by his father, and bore it; then bowed over his father’s hand.
There was something wrong. There was something altered in the slope of Koscuisko’s shoulders, something alien and unknown creeping into Koscuisko’s body to make him a different man, one whom Stildyne did not recognize. What was it?
The Devil and Deep Space Page 10