An Exchange of Hostages (43 page)

His proctor had sent a priest to see him a few days after that. One of his brother Mikhel’s priests, not Uncle Radu’s, Andrej had been grateful to note. Unfortunately the message could not have been more offensive had it come from Andrej’s supercilious uncle in person; he was not to feel depressed, the priest had counseled him, because it was not his fault that the patient had died. He was not responsible.

And that had made him angry, as well as depressed, because a Koscuisko prince’s life was defined by responsibility. To suggest that he was not responsible — simply because he had not been at fault — was a profound violation of Andrej’s basic sense of self-definition.

After he’d thrown the priest out into the street, however, he’d begun to understand what the man had actually been saying. He couldn’t practice medicine at its highest level without accepting the fact that disease was no respecter of Dolgorukij autocrats. He had to separate his absolute responsibility for his Household from the more limited responsibility of a professional physician. The rules were different. He had thought that he had understood that fact; but after his first patient death, he had found himself evaluating his understanding all over again.

Now he was a murderer three times over, and he had no more tolerance within himself to entertain the polite fiction that he was not responsible. Yes, he was only one of many Students, to be one of many Inquisitors. True, that the prisoners accused at the Advanced Levels were as good as dead from the moment Charges were Recorded against them — because even if they declined to confess, the implementation of the Protocols would kill them. There was no question that had he not killed whomever it was — no, Verteric Spaling, it was a man he had murdered, not an anonymous abstraction — had he not murdered the man Spaling, someone else would have, or someone else would have left him to die of worse wounds than Andrej had given him.

None of the rationalizations proper to the practice of medicine could be applied appropriately to murder.

He was Koscuisko, and he was responsible for the work of his hand, the more so because he had enjoyed it. Or much of it.

Joslire wanted to take his now-cold food away to be replaced with a hot meal, but Andrej waved him off. He wasn’t very hungry, and the food had little savor in his mouth. He made a point of drinking the tepid rhyti in his flask; he had been working hard all day. Or he had been exercising himself all day, if it was not proper to try to call it “work” when one derived such obscene satisfaction from it. He needed fluid, one way or the other, especially if he was to end up drinking yet again. There was his wodac, right enough, still cold in its icer tray, sitting promisingly next to the glass with its saucer and its bit of sharbite-peel as if it really thought it was an aperitif and not an end in and of itself.

He was too tired to drink wodac. How long had he been sitting here, brooding about the sin that stained his honor? How could he grieve for his innocence, when the Fleet and the Church and his father all three refused to acknowledge that it was a sin against the Holy Mother’s Creation to put a soul that could suffer to such torture for any purpose?

Emptying the rhyti flask of its last swallows, Andrej stood up and turned toward his bed.

He was so tired.

If only sleep could bring him rest, this time . . .

He could not close his eyes, because the stubborn habit of his weary mind was to review what he had done, and each time he closed his eyes, he saw his work once more — and shrank from it. He lay on the sleep-rack, trying to let go of his conflict, promising himself accommodation after accommodation to try to soothe his guilt-wracked spirit to sleep.

He would buy prayers for their souls.

None of them were Aznir, and why should their gods listen to his coin, when the Holy Mother herself almost never listened to anyone who was not Dolgorukij?

He would find their families, lie to them about their next of kin and about the manner of their dying.

Their families were probably either dead or compromised, or had sold the victims of his lust to Jurisdiction in order to save themselves.

Whatever it was that he was doing — Andrej told himself finally, with disgust — resting was not it. There was little sense in wasting energy struggling with himself. He needed all the energy he had to keep him through the ordeal of this place.

“Very well.” He said it aloud to himself, pushing himself up off the sleep-rack with an effort. He was not too tired to drink after all, as he had thought. He would go out to his supper and try again.

The wodac would not have gotten very far, surely?

###

“There, if the officer would consent to rest for a moment, it’ll get better now, just rest. Shallow breaths, if the officer please . . . Yes, that’s right . . . ”

Andrej Koscuisko lay sprawled ungracefully across the washroom floor. Joslire supported Koscuisko’s shoulders against his knees as best he could while struggling to keep Koscuisko’s head from falling too heavily against the basin set in the cold gray tiling. The lights in the washroom were harsh and unforgiving, and Joslire couldn’t help but think Koscuisko was as ashen as a corpse — considering what Joslire could see of Koscuisko’s face, clay-colored, beaded with sweat, his forehead an anxious agonized cording of care, his eyes shut tight against the brutal glare. Koscuisko was sick to his stomach with the drink, and Joslire was only surprised it hadn’t happened any sooner in light of all the drinking that Koscuisko had done throughout the Term.

Koscuisko tried to move, evidently wishing to push himself up into a more normal seated position. Koscuisko didn’t have the strength for it, and Joslire caught him around the chest from behind to stop him from falling over backward. “Just breathe, if the officer please, don’t try to get up just yet. Just rest, yes. Like that, that’s good.”

It did seem that the drink was minded to be revenged upon Koscuisko; for now — having gotten sick to his stomach with the drink finally — Koscuisko was not only sick, but unstrung, shaken to the floor with the violence of the action of the poison, wrung too weak to so much as keep himself levered adequately over the basin.
A thorough man, Koscuisko,
Joslire told himself, putting the damp hair out of Koscuisko’s eyes absentmindedly. When he studied his lessons, he studied the references as well as the text. When he was to administer discipline, he spent his spare hours practicing the whip and studying the physiology of Nurail so that he could do the thing to his best satisfaction. And when he poisoned himself with alcohol, he did so with characteristic care and concentration, if the violence with which he vomited the wodac could be taken as any indication.

Dozing again, now, Koscuisko was a dead weight in Joslire’s arms. Joslire didn’t want to wake him, not at any cost — no matter how awkward it was to be half-lying on the washroom floor, embracing his drunken charge. Drunken was not the word any longer, Joslire decided, shifting one arm forward carefully to make a pillow of sorts between Koscuisko’s head and the basin. Koscuisko had been drunk hours ago. What Koscuisko was now was a perfect paradigmatic picture for a cautionary tale about people who put their faith in wodac to redeem them.

Koscuisko woke with a spasm of retching, sudden and fierce. They didn’t need the basin any longer, not really — there wasn’t anything left in Koscuisko’s belly to vomit up. Still, Koscuisko clung to the basin’s rim with a trembling hand as he struggled for breath against the convulsions that wracked him; as if, in the middle of his exhaustion and his pain, the thing that really worried him was the danger that he might disgrace himself by heaving onto the floor.

“You’re fine, you’re fine. Your Excellency. No, just lie still, try to think. Is there something I can get for you?”

It didn’t matter what he actually said to the officer, at this point. He could probably call him Andrej and ask him for a loan of Jurisdiction specie, and Koscuisko would remember none of it in the morning, and the Administration wouldn’t care. Although if Koscuisko were capable of thinking for long enough to tell him, he could go and request whatever antispasmodics or painkillers might ease the suffering of a bad case of ethanol toxicity in Aznir Dolgorukij.

Koscuisko was out again, asleep, limp and defenseless and utterly trusting — or too tired to care. He couldn’t really leave Koscuisko, not just yet. A man as sick as Koscuisko was could lapse into hypothermia lying on a cool tiled floor, without the protection of Joslire’s body heat. And there was no sense in even beginning to gamble that there wasn’t enough fluid, enough matter, enough anything left in Koscuisko’s stomach to choke him if he turned wrong in his sleep — without somebody there to ensure the airway remained clear. A man could choke on his own blood as easily as on wodac, and if Koscuisko wasn’t bleeding yet, he would be soon unless the dry heaves eased up more quickly than Joslire judged they would. He could be wrong, of course, he knew that well enough. Koscuisko could sit up and rub his face and demand his fast-meal, for instance. There was no telling with Dolgorukij.

He just couldn’t afford to take that risk.

He settled himself as best he could to wait the liquor out.

###

Usually — Ligrose knew — only she and the Tutors attended the Administrator’s morning report; there was no need for the Provost’s attendance. What was going on? Clellelan looked grim. And only Chonis was here of all ten Tutors on Station, this time.

“Doctor Chaymalt.” Not only that, but Clellelan was being formal with her. “This concerns your favorite Student, or at least your favorite this Term. Come in, sit down, close the door. There’s a problem.”

Koscuisko, was it? His man St. Clare had spent some more time in Infirmary lately, she’d noticed that. She’d made it her business to find out why; she’d even gone so far as to review the tapes of Koscuisko’ s Eighth Level, and what had happened after. She should have known better than to look at Koscuisko’s tapes. His control and his precision were just as impressive when he was beating his Security as she had found them when he’d been performing surgery; and she’d already decided that she didn’t want to get involved.

“What’s the problem, Rorin?” The Provost Marshall was nearest to the Administrator in rank. She was correspondingly most informal with him in private. “I hadn’t expected an executive consult.”

Oh, was that what they were doing? This wasn’t adding up. Executive consults were called to evaluate dismissing a Student to civilian status because they were incompetent, or because they simply could not implement the Protocols. It happened rarely, not because the quality of the candidates was so high but because Fleet was so desperate for the bodies.

What could any of that have to do with Koscuisko?

“We’ve heard from the Bench offices at Pikanime,” Clellelan replied indirectly. Pikanime was the nearest nexus-point between Fleet Orientation Station Medical and civilized space; less than three days, Standard, there and back. The comment seemed to mean something specific to Chonis, but she was still in the dark. She shrugged, and ventured to ask the obvious.

“Anything in particular, Administrator?”

He nodded grimly in response. “Let me provide a little background, here. Student Koscuisko is supporting our efforts to graduate First Secretary Verlaine’s creature. We — Adifer and I — had made the decision to let her take it on drug-assist; Koscuisko’s been supplying the drugs.”

Well, of course; she knew that. But Journis might not have.

“Now, some days ago, Adifer had an uplink with Verlaine, with Noycannir present. She seems to have interested Verlaine in Koscuisko. And he’s a little too interested, for my peace of mind.”

This she hadn’t known. “Seems logical,” she commented. “If he’s good enough. We don’t have many who are good at all.” Particularly not good at more than one thing at a time, medicine, Inquiry, Fleet discipline. She was in a position to know exactly what the driver usually did in the hands of lesser Students. Koscuisko’s achievement was all the more impressive, accordingly.

“If it’s any good, the Bench will annex it,” the Provost said with a snort of disgust. “You’re not going to void him out of Orientation just to spite Verlaine, though.”

Clellelan shook his head. “No, but it gets more complicated. During the uplink, Verlaine asked for Noycannir’s tapes — so that he could evaluate Koscuisko’s potential, we suspect. It isn’t too difficult to separate Noycannir’s performance from the effectiveness of Koscuisko’s drugs, if you know what you’re looking for. But it could take up to nine days for tapes to reach Chilleau Judiciary from here. Now we’ve received a formal request from Pikanime. If they’re relaying to Verlaine, we don’t have nine days to work around.”

“So Verlaine has some Clerks review the tapes, uplink to him, give him a good report. Verlaine issues a Bench warrant through Pikanime. Koscuisko is frozen on-site.” Journis sounded thoughtful, putting it all together. “Anyone talked to Koscuisko about this? Adifer?”

As if a Student had anything to say about the disposition of his Writ. On the other hand they were talking about Andrej Koscuisko, which meant that Combine politics complicated things even more than his own respectable potential.

Chonis was nodding. “The Administrator and I had decided to accelerate the program, try to get him out and off-Station before Verlaine had a chance to look at those tapes. I talked to Student Koscuisko, and suggested that his Writ might — potentially — be annexed to the Bench.”

She’d wanted to see him taken off the Line for pure medical practice. She didn’t see how releasing him to Verlaine would do any good, either for him or for any of the patients in need of his abilities. “What did he say?”

Shaking his head, now, Chonis sounded a little amused. At the First Secretary’s implied discomfiture, perhaps. “He said that if he had a choice, he preferred Fleet. For some reason he didn’t seem to feel that he would have much opportunity to practice the medical skills he values, if he were to be assigned to the Bench at Chilleau Judiciary.”

Indeed not. Journis put the question that was still only half-formulated in Ligrose’s mind to Clellelan directly.