by L D Inman
“Oh, Douglas,” Barklay sighed, after he recovered. “If I had back the years between you and me…I would take care not to squander them.”
Douglas had recovered his blush and looked up at Barklay with a small smile. No, Barklay thought, he hadn’t lost Douglas yet: the same grace that made his anger so powerful also made his humility generous. For a brief moment Barklay wished he could drop all command and tell Douglas everything—about Marag and Selkirk; about John. About Solham Fray.
The urge passed; Barklay couldn’t tell if what he felt was relief or despair. Perhaps it was both; perhaps there was no way forward without committing some discourtesy against the one he loved.
Douglas couldn’t read Barklay’s thoughts, but his own must have been traveling in a similar direction, because he toyed briefly with his teacup and then said: “Can courtesy win a war?”
“Let’s find out,” Barklay said.
~*~
It was another week before Jarrow finally pinned Douglas down. This time, far from attempting to evade him, Douglas simply walked into the contact.
The morning class had finished and he was helping Commodore Beathas to gather up exam papers. Beathas said: “Oh, and Douglas. If you see Lieutenant Speir at lunchtime, ask her if she would mind collecting these maps to return to Commander Jarrow for me. I’d do it myself but I’m in tutorials all afternoon.”
“I could do it, ma’am,” Douglas said. “Unless you need Speir particularly.”
Beathas looked up. She studied Douglas silently for a moment and then said: “So then, you’ve made up your mind, have you?”
Not for nothing was Beathas one of the wisest tactical minds in the service. Douglas did not bother feigning confusion, but merely shook his head. “There was never any choice that needed making.”
“You’ve far harder choices before you than the ones Jarrow presents,” Beathas said, agreeing. “Fortunately for you, perhaps, Jarrow is quite vulnerable.”
“Is he?”
“You’ve noticed how alone he is.”
“I don’t think Ryswyck’s culture has agreed with him,” Douglas said cautiously.
“I don’t mean only at Ryswyck,” Beathas returned.
“I thought he had the ear of the Lord High Commander.”
“So does General Barklay,” Beathas shrugged. Douglas couldn’t help but see her point.
“People who stand alone,” she went on, “are often placed to do a particular job. If they fail, or their usefulness ends, their aloneness becomes their weakness.”
“So, what’s the answer?” Douglas said. “—Don’t be alone?”
“May be,” Beathas said. “But you aren’t. To be blunt, Douglas, don’t corner Jarrow where he can’t back up. He’ll bite. He’ll have to.”
“I’ll be careful.” Douglas gave her a small bow. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Don’t mention it.” Beathas so clearly meant that phrase on all its levels that Douglas was moved to a mordant smile as she placed the file cases in his hands.
As he made his way out of the classroom block and toward Jarrow’s study, Douglas reflected on Beathas’s advice. He wondered what she would make of Barklay’s strategy of undefendedness. Was that a strategy that one shouldn’t pursue alone? In a way, Douglas thought, Barklay was just as alone as Beathas claimed Jarrow to be. Placed to do a particular job, Douglas thought. Surveillance and sabotage. Douglas could feel the shift in his own thinking: he was moving from defense to offense. Beathas had seen it before he had. Surveillance and sabotage. She had pointed out to him where the line of thrust went, and then warned him of its dangers.
Jarrow wasn’t capable of undefendedness. Douglas knew that much. Even Barklay had hedged on his own strategy. That, Douglas realized suddenly, was because undefendedness was an offensive strategy: not a defensive one. Jarrow and Barklay were both on defense. So then, who was on offense?
So musing, he came to Jarrow’s door and knocked.
“Enter,” came Jarrow’s voice.
Douglas went in. “Commander Jarrow, sir,” he greeted him. “Commodore Beathas asked me to return you the maps she borrowed, with her thanks.”
Jarrow looked up, and the surprise and interest was plain on his face. “Lieutenant Douglas. Yes, of course. Come in.” He pushed away from his desk and leaned back to take Douglas in. “Just set them on the desk, will you? Thanks.”
Douglas advanced into the room, aware in detail of the ground, Jarrow’s simple furnishings…something was niggling at him as he set down the map cases on Jarrow’s desk. But it wasn’t until Jarrow said, “I’ll put them away later,” that Douglas realized what it was.
“I haven’t seen Ensign Bright this week, sir,” he ventured.
“No,” Jarrow said, “I sent him back to the capital for the time being. My need has been very light, and he’ll have more to do at HQ than he will at Ryswyck.” Most senior officers, including Barklay, dispensed with auxiliary staff here: Douglas wondered if Jarrow had taken any chaff from his colleagues about bringing Bright along. He was alone, Beathas had said, and it was even more true now.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Douglas said, and made his bow preparatory to leaving. He would leave the opening, but he wouldn’t tarry for it.
Sure enough, as he turned to go, Jarrow said: “Douglas….”
“Yes, sir?”
“I wonder…” —Jarrow spun his words out slowly— “if you had given any more thought to the things we talked about, the last time we spoke.”
“There has been much to think about since then,” Douglas said. “I have heard that you found our single-combat training offensive.”
Jarrow waved a dismissive hand, though his eyes narrowed. “It seems of a piece with General Barklay’s primary aim. A return, may be, to the old traditions of honor. A very heroic enterprise. He seems to have weathered the skepticism over the years.”
“Well,” Douglas said slowly, “there is skepticism, and there is antipathy.” Don’t corner him where he can’t back up, he warned himself.
“I’ve no quarrel with the old traditions,” Jarrow said, blandly.
“But with General Barklay himself…?”
It was Jarrow’s turn to answer questions with silence. Silence, and a thin smile.
“I have also heard, sir,” Douglas pressed, “that you were looking to make an unfavorable report to our superiors and the Council.”
“Rumors can be misleading,” Jarrow said, still smiling thinly. “Yet there is usually some truth to them somewhere. Don’t you think?”
There was no doubt what he meant by that. If Douglas responded with care, both he and Jarrow could walk with dignity away from the engagement.
“I wish you well in your search for truth,” he said. “But I won’t help you prosecute an action against Barklay.”
“Then you are not committed to the truth yourself?”
Jarrow clearly expected Douglas to fall back before that stroke. But Douglas looked him directly in the eye and answered with calm. “I have no greater commitment than to the truth,” he said. “It is that I know of nothing for which General Barklay would deserve to be denounced.”
“Nothing?” The ghost of a sneer crossed Jarrow’s face, and Douglas saw that Jarrow’s respect for him had dropped away like a dead branch. So be it.
“Nothing, sir.”
Jarrow toyed with the stylus on his desk. “Well. You must do as you see fit.” A silence, while Douglas waited for a clear dismissal.
“Douglas,” Jarrow said, after a moment, “you completed your studies in cartography, did you not?”
“I did, sir.”
“There is one quality of a map that is vitally important, and yet it appears nowhere on it. That quality,” Jarrow said, “is time. Time alters many positions. Rethreads watercourses. Makes old perspectives unrecognizable. Be careful of the maps you use, Douglas.”
“That is wise advice, sir,” Douglas said. “Thank you.”
“The pleasure is mine,” Jarrow said.
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~*~
Time passed. The last vestiges of summer were lost in cloud cover, and the autumn term lost its newness. Jarrow taught several highly challenging and interesting lessons that greatly enhanced Ryswyck’s curriculum, but his supercilious manner alienated most of the cadets and even the junior cadre. Speir often found herself fielding questions and smoothing communications as Jarrow’s nearest assistant, which was wearisome; neither Jarrow nor the Ryswyckians were attempting more than surface courtesy, and Speir couldn’t tell which had caused which, so she sighed, and endured.
Cadet Corda made satisfactory progress in sparring court, enough to return to the regular training schedule where he was welcomed with great pleasure by his peers. Though he held off on moving in with Rose, they became a familiar pair in the mess hall and the classroom block, and where you found one, the other was not far away.
Turnbull tried out several more jokes at junior officer meetings. All of them were terrible, but Turnbull’s effort had become somewhat of a punchline in itself. By the time Turnbull finished his course of study and was due to leave, teasing him had become a regular line item in the junior officer meeting agenda. “Well, let’s see you try it!” he cried at the last one. That outburst got the biggest laugh of all.
That was when Ahrens, who was in the seat at Speir’s left, let his square hands fall open on the table in exasperation. “Turnbull,” he said, “has it not occurred to you that you could have sorted the whole thing by lifting a joke from the winter songbook and changing a few details?”
“Wouldn’t that be cheating?” Cameron observed.
“I think that could be excused,” Douglas said, “if he sang it for us at dinner.”
“Aye, but which one?”
“Well, which one has the most hand motions?”
Ahrens started up in a rusty tenor with the song about the man who, improbably, had to cross a bridge and climb a hill to get to his privy, and was there on winter’s deepest night when a gale blew the privy house away. The next verses were about various people attracted to the shining glow on the hill, and they were all singing the refrain when Barklay looked in on the meeting.
“What, is it Lightfall already?” he said.
The raucous tumult died briefly. “We’re just helping Turnbull mend his fault, sir,” Ahrens said.
“Good. It doesn’t do to leave with faults unmended. Carry on,” and Barklay withdrew, smiling.
“‘What Shining Light’ is good,” someone said, “but I think Turnbull should sing ‘O Fire of Love.’”
Turnbull flushed, giving illustration to the bonfire of the song. “I am not singing ‘O Fire of Love’ in the mess hall.”
“I’ll sing it with you,” Ahrens persuaded. “I owe Douglas a fault anyway.”
“In that case, Douglas should join you,” suggested Stevens with a snicker.
“I will if you do,” said Douglas. “There’s four parts, after all.”
“And four sets of fine thighs,” said Fia slyly, and the meeting broke up in ribald sniggering.
~*~
A Rota’s week to handle communications rolled around again, and deep night found Speir working the com tower. It was a shift most people preferred to avoid, but Speir had come to like the darkness and silence of the small hours. She used the first half of her shift to get her coursework done and to update scoresheets for the cadets’ work, and the second she used to look out over the night-lights of Ryswyck and let her thoughts settle. The com tower loft was not much like the chapel to look at: but the solitude, the sense of readiness for a word of action implied in the lighted transmission screens, and the womblike resonance with humming reality, were much the same.
It was her mother who had taught Speir the methods of prayer; and it was the prayer that remained when other memories had sunk beneath the rolling purl of waters. Tonight, however, it was her father who was on her mind, as she looked out past the blinking lights of the console into the rainy dark. This would be a good opportunity to record her father a message and send it to the Med House. It wouldn’t do any good; her father was no more likely to recognize her now than he had during her failed visit; but it would be an easy thing to do, the least she could do. A thing she couldn’t fail in doing.
Her hand lay near the console of the com-deck station; it would be easy to key up the command to record. But she didn’t reach for it.
Presently the transmission light came up. She’d been expecting it: it was the weekly dispatch from the security clearinghouse at Central Command, bearing the latest news and disseminating the new briefing codes. Her job was to take delivery of the transmission, read it through to make sure there were no missing or misordered pages, and log it for access by every student code in the Academy.
She stirred herself and keyed in the decryption codes. The transmission began; it took a long time—a lot of boring news this week, she thought. She watched till the file was complete and decanted it onto her tablet.
As she’d predicted, there were a great many pages to get through. She skimmed carefully from dispatch to dispatch. Reports on the parade review in the capital, briefings from the unit sent out from Amity to assist with the channelbuilders in the southeast quadrant…. It was the middle of her shift, and Speir’s eyes were gritty.
She advanced another page. This one was a report on the investigation of incidents at a place called Solham Fray. It wasn’t a name Speir knew, but she read on, expecting another light-security account of turbine repairs. The page numbers had disappeared, which was irritating; sometimes they forgot to paginate everything after it was collated, and it meant having to read extra carefully.
Then she advanced to the first image.
Her brain locked as she contemplated the haggard face of a man strung up by his wrists, naked and smeared with filth. What was this? Propaganda against Berenian torture of Ilonian soldiers? But she read the image heading, and realized with horror that the man was not Ilonian at all.
She flipped back to the beginning of the report. The report had no security listing, which was normal for a bundled dispatch, but also no date. What in hell was this? She advanced to the next page of text and was seared by a litany of sickening phrases: intelligence mission…bunker in enemy territory…Berenian village leveled…methods of torture—and a list of them, sober and exact descriptions of things that were done to civilians and captured soldiers—by Ilonians, she thought. Our people did this?
This had no business being in a benign weekly dispatch. This was either a repulsive falsehood circulated by an enemy, or a security breach of the most disturbing magnitude. She needed to alert Barklay at once; this was beyond her. She couldn’t imagine who would visit such a thing on the students of a military academy. And why?
She flipped one more page, and the image there told her why.
Another Berenian man bent groveling on a white floor in a windowless room. With him were several men in Ilonian army fatigues of a half-generation ago, smiling at one another over his naked misery. It was what looked like a unit of young men, all wearing special forces insignia, a mix of lieutenants and privates.
And with them was Barklay.
The age of the image was evident; Barklay’s hair was darker, his figure trimmer. The expression on his face was one Speir knew well: it was a look of triumphant and feline enjoyment. She had seen him look like that after a coup of wit, or when one of his students had exhibited a great feat of prowess or courtesy.
Courtesy. Speir’s stomach revolted, and she swallowed down her gorge with an effort.
Taking this to Barklay now seemed precarious in the extreme. Yet what else could she do? If this was a true report, he would know not only the contents of this file but also its context. He might even know where this—attack? was it an attack if it was a revelation of a filthy truth?—had come from.
She sat for a long moment with her eyes on the damning image. Then she reached for the com pad.
“Cadet Lang?” She was pleased to hear her voice come c
alm.
“Yes, Lieutenant Speir,” came Lang’s voice from the cadet runner’s desk.
“I want you to rouse Lieutenant Douglas and have him come to me at the tower summit,” she said. Better not try to frame an explanation; whatever Lang would think, it wouldn’t be anything like this.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lang said.
She waited, the shadows of the com tower creeping around her, for what seemed like an age. When she heard the clank and rattle of the ascending lift, she turned over the tablet, to guard it from Douglas’s view.
A moment later Douglas emerged, neatly if hastily dressed.
“Speir? Did you want me for—what’s wrong?” His expression flattened when he saw her face.
“I need your advice,” Speir said shakily. “Douglas…what would you do, if you found out something terrible about General Barklay?”
6
Barklay was not asleep when the knock came. Two hours before, he had dug into a box of memorabilia in search of letters and images from his last military-attache junket in Berenia before the war, with some hope of formulating a strategy for getting back into the security bracket around the Bernhelm mission.
Now, he was sitting on the floor of his quarters with two open cartons dragged from his closet, a chilled cup of tea half-buried in papers and mementos by his knee, flipping slowly through an image-book.
The main thoroughfare of Reyswick village, seen from his mother’s doorstep. Himself as a lieutenant in dapper army blacks, posing by a wall (another snap by his mother, he thought). A vineyard in northern Berenia, undulating rows of rich green vines, sparkling in the sun. A young Emmerich du Rau, in long-singlet and leggings, arms crossed with a foil dangling in his grip. (He’d forgotten all about that day, though the lesson he’d gotten in foils work on that occasion had shaped him ever after, and Ryswyck’s tradition perforce. How lovely du Rau had been in action; he’d wanted to stop fighting and just sit down and watch him forever.) A grinning trio on the steps of HQ, formally dressed: himself, and Alban Selkirk and his brother. John was just a stripling here, both sharp and awkward in his army officer training gear, pressed shirt and cravat over black slacks. There’d been no Ryswyck Academy to train officers back then, just the schools run by Central Command at the big bases. The brothers both had dark hair; Alban was already showing promise of the breadth and gravitas that now made him familiar in the capital.