by L D Inman
“But you’re not afraid,” Ansett probed.
That was an impolitic, even unlucky, question to ask one’s commander in an active combat zone, but Ansett asked it firmly. She’s watching, Speir thought, to see if I give her too glib a denial. It would have been easy to give a glib denial up till now: only a night ago her soul had been like a lumber room overstuffed with storage cartons, many of them not even her own. Weeping before Douglas, accusing the Lord High Commander on official record, handing Barklay back to himself, giving over her own secrets and fears and even the responsibility of grief for Inslee and her comrades lying dead over the harbor: she’d done a hard day’s work clearing out her interior, and now had the time to straighten, as it were, and survey the result. Her inward light was not blocked in, and reached to every spacious corner of her being.
“I am very afraid,” she said. And bereaved. And charged with love. “I’ve put it away for safekeeping.”
Ansett straightened subtly, and her eyes glinted. She understood what this meant. Possibly she had even learned to contrive with a friend, as Speir had done, to share such burdens. But, “Safekeeping till when?” she asked. Persistent. Speir liked that.
“Till we’re out of this,” Speir said. “One way or the other.”
~*~
Douglas stepped heavily off the chair he was using to hang his Arisail banner and backed up to judge the effect. A morbid instinct had moved him to pack the banner and bring it from Cardumel, in case he wound up not going back; a prescient instinct, he thought ruefully. Now it was tacked neatly to the wall by the corners of its hoist side, just as it had hung over every bunk he occupied since leaving home.
Stevens, preparing every available space for the army officers now billeted in the senior block, had brought Douglas’s things over for him. Douglas suspected that Stevens had changed the linens on the bunk as well, but wasn’t about to ask.
But even with fresh linens and his home banner on the wall, Douglas wasn’t sure whether his and Stevens’s efforts had made this seem less like Barklay’s quarters, or only made it worse.
A soft knock came at the doorway; then Stevens pushed the door further open and peered in. “Oh, good, you haven’t gone to bed yet.” Douglas gave him a look: Are you kidding me? and Stevens blushed. He looked away and noticed the Arisail colors on the wall. “Nice.”
“Was there something you wanted, Stevens?”
“Yes, sir.” Stevens pulled himself together. Douglas sensed, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, a bifurcation in his own feelings: a heartsore awareness of the arbitrary separation of rank that had sliced between him and his friend, and a desire to use that separation to keep himself apart and level. “Major Grier is settled, and says he’ll have someone on comms throughout the night along with our executive on duty. He expects to move at least one company in the morning.”
That was ominous. The Boundary must be taking a rough beating if the major was rushing to get troops in position. At least Amity had got their feet under them and were keeping the sector clear of scudders, since the first assault. Once Selkirk had had confirmation that Grier had arrived safely, he had scheduled his next contact with Douglas for early next morning, barring further emergency.
“Have we got someone monitoring the front?”
“We’ve got two comms dedicated to nothing but that, sir.”
“Good. I want the warning time of another air raid to be as wide as possible.”
“Aye,” Stevens agreed. “I’d better leave you to catch as much of your sleep shift as you can.”
Douglas gave him another look but said nothing. His executive council had turned to him a face of unanimous objection when he had suggested taking the first night’s executive watch himself. “We’ll need one of us to stay at the command post and one of us to rove,” Douglas had said. “I can easily hold the post and get other work done at the same time.” Marag and Stevens drew breath to speak, but it was Beathas who answered him, in her wry lapidary style.
“I think, Admiral, that we had better establish a sleep shift for this installation’s commander at the outset.” It was possible to take or leave most things Beathas said, with overtones or without, but Stevens and Marag looked so satisfied at her words that Douglas threw up his hands.
“Does everyone expect me to try to get out of taking meals and sleep shifts?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir,” Stevens said, deadpan.
Douglas snorted, to avoid either a smile or a snarl, he wasn’t sure which. “I’ve already got twelve older siblings. I don’t need three more.”
“Four,” Stevens said. “You know what Speir would say.”
Douglas shut his eyes briefly. “Very well. I concede. I will take a sleep shift tonight and debrief you in the hour before Lord Selkirk’s call.”
“Thank you, sir,” Beathas had said. Her closed hand to her heart dunted his own conscience, and his eyes locked with hers. There was a long way to go: it was his professional responsibility to look after himself without cavil, and if he was shirking duties now…. I’m not ready for this. Beathas knew him as well as anyone else here: and her children were his eldest brother’s age, older even than Marag. She had dedicated her retirement to Ryswyck Academy; had it ever occurred to Barklay to ask her why? It certainly had never occurred to Douglas.
But perhaps he didn’t need to ask. Professional responsibility was bone and sinew of their life here. It was courtesy that was blood and breath: chosen family, and more than family, was being offered to him now, as if he had never left. Douglas’s eyes smarted briefly. He closed his hand and mirrored Beathas’s gesture. Then he had left the schedule construction to the council.
Now, looking at Stevens across his new quarters, Douglas knew that he had done right. Stevens had a settled air, patient to his authority in a depth beyond his conscious choice of the first hours. That settled patience had communicated itself to the officers of the arriving troops, damping Grier’s hostility before it could rise. The laminations of give and resistance that Douglas felt within himself and in Ryswyck were uncomfortable, but far better than the disarray the major had clearly expected to find.
But he still didn’t want to go to bed. Not in this bed, and not in this room. Stevens was here to check on him as he reinforced the council’s suggestion, and Douglas could not find spirit to resent it. He would just have to do it. He sighed.
“Thank you, Stevens. Was there anything else?”
“No, sir. Goodnight, sir.”
“Goodnight, Captain.”
Trying not to think about it too much, Douglas undressed and got into the bunk. With the lights out and the door closed, he lay still, acclimating to the sounds of the comm station outside his door and the subdued hum of watchful activity throughout the campus. Nothing but darkness protected them from another raid, darkness and Amity’s air squadrons. Douglas closed his eyes.
The sheets were indeed fresh, but even through the clean linen Douglas caught Barklay’s familiar scent. It was all around him, a presence with its source removed. He was not aroused by it, which would have been a mercy if it had not also evoked the memory of many past arousals. None of them had taken place here; he had never set foot in this room till today. He had not been invited.
Douglas was as sure in this darkness as he had been in the light that he could never sleep here with any ease. But even as he thought it, he dropped off.
~*~
“Yes, Ahrens?” Barklay murmured, keeping his voice to a low lisp.
Ahrens hadn’t actually said anything, but he had drawn up close behind Barklay’s shoulder in the dark. They were all wearing night-vision masks, and Barklay could see in the wide tunnel ahead that the lead navigator, a monochrome shadow, was reconnoitering a junction before waving them forward. The rear navigator, just ahead of Barklay, gave a high sign in return.
Ahrens moved still closer. “Not much cover on our retreat,” he observed, in a near-inaudible tone.
The clean, spacious t
unnels were making him nervous, and with good reason. So far the only precarious moment had been the dive their sub had been forced to take, to avoid the explosions of a curtain of mines set off by a skirmish overhead. The sub had narrowly escaped being detected by enemy craft as it found the lane, but had passed from the outer lane to the inner waters off Berenia’s coast without incident. Their first contact, an Ilonian agent employed as an engineer at a coastal retention plant south of Bernhelm, had set the signal that guided them in. He was nowhere to be seen when the team surfaced at the transmitter, but the signal was all they needed to find the unlocked hatch to the underground network.
The engineer had marked their path to the tram with signal tags; they had slipped aboard the last supply car and taken cover among tarps and cartons, and their agent, seemingly oblivious to their presence, had taken the driver’s seat and driven them through miles of tram-tunnel to the depot nearest to the Bernhelm cistern network. There he had paused the tram just long enough for them to alight in the tunnel and disappear through a service door from the cistern catwalks—also unlocked ahead of them.
Now they were in the cistern tunnels themselves, wide graceful ovals kept precisely clean for each reservoir draw as it passed. Except on rare occasions, workers used the catwalks to service the tunnels, instead of descending inside and risking rampant contamination.
“If du Rau knew we were here,” Barklay answered in the same tone, “I wouldn’t blame him for spending a year’s drinking water to flush us out.” How many layers of security had they bypassed so far? They were about to bypass about five more, if the turncoat heir had kept up his end. If this mission failed, Ilona would lose this access point for good.
“I can cover the rear,” Ahrens offered.
“No. I want you at point.”
Ahrens did not protest, but Barklay knew what he was asking. He wanted to know just how reckless Barklay intended to be with his own safety. “Long way to go yet, Captain,” he said. “No need to alter the plan yet.” I won’t be selling my life cheap.
Ahrens accepted this on both its levels, and subsided into silence.
As they progressed, they had only the maps to tell them that they were now under the palace; no change in the tunnels’ shape or size betrayed it. They walked with soft steps, in a ragged single file alongside the narrow ribbon of water that stained the sheathed floor; the only light was the occasional marker for a service ladder-and-door. It was nearing winter, and the tunnels were cold, but not nearly as cold as they would be if they were not insulated. Barklay wondered where under the palace they were now, his mind’s eye running over his memories of the sprawling complex: the wide, checkered Plaza at the front; the sun-baked yellow stone of the main building; the supporting host of meeting spaces and living quarters and office blocks; and the golden lily of the Lantern Tower with its perpetual flame and its curtains of small bells. After almost twenty-five years of war, the real picture overhead was bleaker than his memory, he knew—the flame quenched and the bells silent, the wintry sun no warmth to the pale stone. Berenia had more resources than Ilona did, but it was only du Rau’s skill that had kept them solvent and stable through these years. And he, Barklay, was about to kick this venerable ant’s nest to pieces.
Presently the lead navigator found the hatch they needed: a much smaller pipe that was supposed to come out within the main palace walls. It was not made for regular human ingress, but was large enough for the team to pass through, once they had removed the two grates that sieved the water as it came into the palace’s treatment cellars. Barklay waited at the open hatch, listening to the soft buzz of tools. This was the point where they would know how well their second agent had succeeded in disabling alarms. The grates were down. No reaction came. That didn’t mean anything, but there was no point hanging around. Barklay herded in the team, followed Ahrens into the pipe, and let the rear navigator dog the hatch loosely behind them.
They emerged into a silent room full of square pools, the water within lit dimly from below with an eerie green light. This room will be more precious to the Berenians than a treasure vault, Barklay had warned the team. We must step more carefully here than at any other point. And indeed, when they had picked their way to the perimeter and reached the doors to the service corridor, they found that the walls and doors were heavy and thoroughly water-fast.
Barklay entered the button-code to the door, hoping it hadn’t been changed in the hours since their last transmission. The door clacked open softly, and they went through.
There were recorders mounted in the grated hallway; the plan had been for their agent to wait till the head of palace security was thoroughly drugged and then set the sensor delay from one minute to three hours. Three hours before the alarm was raised. Barklay hoped.
He let them in another door on the other side of the corridor, this one leading to the service tunnels for the sewer side of the system. These doors, too, were water-fast; and no doubt there were more layers between the sewers and the cisterns than met the eye. Another code-locked door opened to a maintenance alcove for the debouchement that served the palace’s lower-level detention facility and security offices. One more door: an ordinary one, not nearly as well reinforced.
It opened onto a dark, narrow corridor with a gloss-polished concrete floor. This was the point at which the team’s orientation shifted: Ahrens and the rear navigator now became point, Barklay and half the team would collect their captive, and bring up the rear as Ahrens led them to their exit.
Barklay checked his watch. They were still in the window before the guard changed, so the guards’ stairwell should be clear. Taking Boyd and the army specialists, he crossed the corridor and entered the stairwell, mounting with light step flight by flight. When they reached the floor on which the Bernhelms’ private quarters were located, Barklay left Boyd in the stairwell to keep watch and let them back through without a key code. Compared to their path so far, the ornate corridor they entered was blazing with light; Barklay and his men in their dark gear were suddenly incongruous in the landscape.
The door to Bernhelm’s suite was not locked. This would be much harder, Barklay had said in his briefing, if du Rau didn’t prefer to valet himself. But he had kept the habits of his life in the field, and he and his wife together held the household servants at a distance; it would have been near useless to suborn any of them, but it did mean there was no valet or maid sleeping in earshot.
The front parlor was dark, with only a small night-light by the door. Making almost no noise, they passed through the door into a more private sitting room; the door from there to the bedroom was closed. Barklay listened at it for a few seconds: satisfied with the silence, he eased it open and they slipped inside.
It was not dark in the bedroom. A light burned above one side of the bed; Lady Bernhelm had been sitting up, but the book had fallen from her hands and her head lolled sideways. She was wearing what looked like a long nightgown, and her velvet robe still lay puddled at the foot of the bed. Evidently she had been settling in to read before du Rau came to bed, when the drug took its full effect.
Du Rau had not lasted so far as to get under the covers; he was curled up limply on top of his side of the bed, still in his slippers and wearing his housecoat over his pajamas. He was as small and lithe as Barklay remembered; but age had picked out the angles in his joints and brushed threads of silver over his ears. The bedside lamp cast a still, golden light over their joint vulnerability.
A deceptive vulnerability. Unlike many Berenian men who make dynastic marriages, du Rau actually loves his spouse. It’s an open secret in Bernhelm. Barklay had added: It ought to go without saying, but bear in mind—she’s almost as dangerous as he is. Once they took du Rau, Lady Ingrid would be fighting the rest of the palace to prioritize getting him back—and if the struggle caused a misstep in the invasion operation, so much the better. Barklay nodded at the soldier nearest du Rau, who reached carefully to turn his sleeping form, preparing to hoist him into a dead-man’s
carry.
That was when the unbroken current of their luck faltered.
The movement on the bed stirred Lady Ingrid. Her hands twitched and she dragged her head groggily upright. Then her eyes were open and focused on Barklay’s face: she had been nowhere near drugged heavily enough. Barklay lunged for her, but not in time to stop her from letting out a loud cry of fear and rage. Swiftly he snuffed out the cry with a hand over her nose and mouth; but she bucked him as he struggled to get a full hold on her, knocking the book noisily to the floor and upsetting the water glass on her nightstand. His arms full with her, half dragged from the bed, he fumbled for the tranquilizer hypo at his belt. Even sluggish from her drugged sleep, she fought him wildly and almost wrenched herself free before he was able to jab her in the shoulder. Seconds passed; her thrashing slowed, and she grew limp and heavy in his arms. Barklay glanced at du Rau; he was well under and did not stir.
But the damage was done. Barklay hefted Lady Ingrid in his arms and jerked his head, drawing his team to the wall by the half-open door. There were already low-voiced murmurs outside the suite: guards checking out the cry. They waited, unbreathing, until the guards made their way to the bedroom’s light and pushed the door fully open—both of the pair, Barklay thought, and pray wisdom they haven’t alerted another pair. In the split second between their clearing the doorway and registering their reaction, one of his men slugged the first guard, and another caught up the second in a hold that lifted his arms away from the red button on the comm at his waist.
They had bare seconds to salvage this mission if it could be done at all. As his men dragged the guards clear of the door, Barklay said quietly, “I’m sorry,” and in the same breath: “Kill them.”