The Devil and Deep Space (20 page)

There were two kinds of joke there, whether or not Stanoczk meant both rather than just the one. The first was that Andrej would embrace a Malcontent who was his blood relation, but he had not yet “embraced the Malcontent,” which was quite a different proposition.

The second was that he himself, Andrej Koscuisko, might pretend to disdain the Malcontent, whose moral turpitude was strictly relative to Combine mores — when his own sin was atrocity under the laws of almost any well–developed moral community.

Andrej held out his arms for his cousin, and embraced Stanoczk with a full heart. He and Stoshik had been playmates when they had been children, never minding the gulf of rank that stood between them. Before Stoshik had elected the Malcontent. It was a very comforting embrace; but that was Stanoczk’s business, after all — comfort, and reconciliation.

Finally Stanoczk pulled away, and laughed, holding his hand to his eyes for a moment. Stanoczk had brown eyes, brown hair, a deep voice; but otherwise he and Andrej alike were the very types of the blood of the family of their mutual maternal grandmother. The Kospodar line. Chuvishka Kospodar, in fact, from whom the Sarvaw nations had yet to recover.

“It’s good to see you, Derush.” Stanoczk used the childish diminutive rather than the more formal adult pet name. It had been a long time. “I need to speak to you on the Malcontent’s business. Later. Is the Bench specialist to stay? Because I could to Beraltz go and speak.”

House–master Beraltz, Stoshik meant. Andrej turned to Ivers, who had watched him greet Stanoczk with reserved good will. “If you have no other business, Specialist, you are welcome to a place at my hearth.”

Perhaps “welcome” wasn’t quite the word for it, and it was only his hearth in principle. It was much more Marana’s hearth, Beraltz’s hearth, the hearth of the people who had lived here and seen to the estate these nine years past; but still, in point of protocol, it was “his” hearth.

“Cousin Stanoczk says we’re expected at Chelatring Side in eight days’ time,” Ivers said. “An expedition in force, I’ve been told. Thank you, your Excellency, you’re very kind.”

That was right. He had to go into the mountains. The Autocrat’s Proxy would come to take the pulse of the Koscuisko familial corporation, and though Zsuzsa would doubtless know their father’s prejudice already, it was all part of the play of the Selection for the grand rounds to be made.

The Autocrat called her people to herself when she wanted to issue a decision, to let them know her will. The Autocrat came to her people one by one when she sought their advice and their opinion: and so it had been since the days of the Malcontent’s life beneath the canopy of Heaven.

“Go and tell my Chief of Security,” Andrej suggested to his cousin. Stoshik took himself away on Andrej’s not very subtle suggestion, and Andrej turned to Ivers. “Stildyne says he has worked with you before, Specialist. But since you go to Chelatring Side to hear my father’s will, what use do you have for one mere Andrej? Walk, and talk to me.”

It was a beautiful day. It would be midsummer soon. The breeze from the river smelled of growing things, the bosom of the Holy Mother, the skin of the great green–gold fish of the Matredonat. Someone would bring refreshment. A man could not walk five paces in his own garden without someone turning up with a laden table.

“First I have to tell you that the First Secretary at Chilleau Judiciary sent me in full knowledge of the fact that you might feel that he’s attempting to bribe you.”

She didn’t look at him, but at the great hedge at the far end of the garden, well beyond the maze. She took a very formal tone with him, one that made the word
bribe
all the more unusual in context. “Chilleau Judiciary can’t do anything just now without a political interpretation being cast on it, after all, your Excellency. So it’s important that you understand that what I’ve been sent to tell you is independent of your family’s advice to the Autocrat. And of the final decision at Selection.”

The gravel on the path was crushed pink rock quarried in the hills around the Serah. It had been so long since he had felt it crunch beneath his feet. “Yes?” He didn’t know what she was talking about.

She seemed to realize this with a sigh. “When I saw you last, your Excellency, it was to bring you an offer from First Secretary Sindha Verlaine. You took an unexpected action to assert your independence, your Excellency. The First Secretary regrets his ill–considered action. I have with me fully executed Bench documents for relief of Writ, sir.”

Relief of Writ?

Andrej stopped in the middle of the garden path with the late morning sun warm on his shoulders, squinting toward the river. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me, Specialist.” He was afraid to believe what he thought she was saying.

“Your re–engagement with Fleet was essentially coerced. It can be put aside. I have the legal instrument. Stay home, your Excellency. The Bench regrets its lapse in judgment. Sir.”

The words made no sense. She spoke Standard, not Aznir, but he had been tutored in Standard from a young age, he knew the language. It wasn’t that.

Andrej shook his head with violence. It was as though he had gotten water in his ear sinking too deeply into the bath, and couldn’t find his balance. “Your humor is ill chosen, Specialist Ivers.” He wanted to believe that it was possible, and it couldn’t be, because he wanted it far too much. “Why have you come?”

“I’ve brought the documentation with me, your Excellency,” she insisted firmly, but as if she was fully sensitive to the confusion it created in his mind. “Since you have been so generous as to offer me your hospitality, sir, perhaps I could meet with you later today or tomorrow, and display my proofs. I know it must be difficult to credit. But I’m telling you the truth. The First Secretary is not playing games.”

She almost said “
Any more games
.” He knew she had. Could it be true?

“Why?” Andrej asked, wonderingly. “Why, after all these years, would Verlaine have come to such a conclusion? Does my old schoolmate Noycannir no longer have his ear?”

Ivers looked confused. But Ivers knew Noycannir; Ivers had brought her to Port Rudistal, years and years and years ago. Noycannir had thought that she was to assume control, but the Domitt Prison had already been taken off–line, and under Andrej’s personal command.

“There are political implications.” Ivers’s tone was grave and reserved. Of course there were. They could not escape them, not under the current unsettled circumstances. “But I’ve spoken to the First Secretary, your Excellency. I believe his motivation to be genuine. If opportune.”

The house–master’s catering party had come into the garden from the gate nearest the kitchens, and he could not discuss this matter in front of the house staff. They were discreet; they would keep it in the family — but the family in which they would keep this news comprised every soul at the Matredonat.

“Freedom?” he asked, watching the house–master’s party nearing with tables, hampers, linen.

“It is the judgment of the Court that your extension was only solicited as a result of improper pressure. ‘Unreasonable duress,’ I think it says. There is more.”

Could it be true? Did she in reality offer him the escape he had believed denied him? Was he to stay here on Azanry, in his home, with his child, and never be the instrument of atrocity again?

“Too much, Specialist Ivers,” Andrej said finally, putting one hand to her shoulder to communicate the depths of his emotional confusion. “I cannot grapple with this suggestion here and now. We will take rhyti. There is to be no help for it. Tomorrow in the morning, after breakfast, come to me in the library, and show me the documents you have.”

She wasn’t playing games with him. Bench intelligence specialists didn’t play games. She knew what she was saying, as she had not more than one year ago when Captain Lowden had sent her to speak to him on board of the
Ragnarok
.

A full banqueting–hall of local gentry was coming to the Matredonat for dinner; there was to be dancing in the gardens after dark. Her offer needed more concentration than he would have to spare until tomorrow. He needed time to think about what she had said, and make up his mind about whether he had interpreted her correctly or not.

“At your Excellency’s disposal, sir, entirely.” She knew that what she brought was world–shaking for him. If she believed that he was to be free, how could he doubt?

He would be free. He could stay home. He would learn to be a husband to Marana, if she would permit it. He could become a father to his son, in place of some unknown Malcontent. And he could engage with the Malcontent to see if there was anything a man could do to atone for such sins as he had committed. He could be reconciled to his family, his father and his mother.

All he would have to do then was discover who it was that had wanted him dead; and if Chilleau Judiciary offered him freedom, did that mean that the threat had not come from Chilleau Judiciary, or was being withdrawn?

He would never see his Bonds again, not until the Day dawned for them and they came to him. If the Day ever dawned. If they ever came to him after that. Yet when last year he had believed that he was going home at the expiration of his tour of duty, he’d known that he could not take his Bonds with him.

The fate that had faced them then had been far worse than it was now. Captain Lowden had been in command of the
Ragnarok
. Andrej had shuddered to think of people for whom he was responsible, of whom he was fond, suffering Lowden’s whims and jests without him to protect them. But now Lowden was dead.

Andrej didn’t know much about Jennet ap Rhiannon, but she was nothing like Griers Verigson Lowden. The bond–involuntaries assigned to the
Ragnarok
were as close to safe as they could be. First Officer would look out for them. Stildyne would be there.

And they would want him to be free, even at cost to themselves — as he would wish for them. He couldn’t let that become an issue in his mind: or not an insurmountable barrier. Once he had seen Ivers’s documentation with his own eyes, he would know whether he was to send Stildyne back to the
Ragnarok
an orphan.

###

Dierryk Rukota was lying on his back on the bench in the squad–bay that First Officer had assigned to the preliminary assessment team, chewing on his thoughts and trying to digest his mid–meal, when the admit at the door sounded with unexpected urgency, and the
Ragnarok
’s Intelligence Officer came storming through in a great rustling of wings, with four or five Ship’s Security behind her.

“I have no intention of tolerating, no, it is not prudent!” she shrieked at him, her momentum carrying her clear to the far wall of the squad–bay where she scrambled up onto the surface of the desk–ledge and glared at him horribly. “At the very least a formal protest, and you will be very lucky if the Engineer does not have you simply locked off. I would not regret seeing it.”

He couldn’t speak for the shock of the surprise, the clear sense of assault and the fear he had of predators with such sharp glittering teeth. Half–stupefied, he could only freeze — still lying on his back — and wonder, for the crucial moment that it took her to find a foothold at the top of the empty equipment locker. Clambering up, she inverted herself, wrapping her wings around her in a thunderous gesture of high dudgeon and rocking sullenly back and forth in expectant silence.

For a moment he considered whether the particularly nasty bowl of soup he’d gotten for his mid–meal had poisoned his brain somehow. It could be a bad dream, couldn’t it? Delusions. Why would the Ship’s Intelligence Officer, one of the Ship’s Primes, have come down to the dismal space that Mendez had assigned to them, in person? And — in the unlikely event that she had decided to indulge a taste for fresh raw Rukota — what conceivable reason could she have for bringing witnesses?

He sat up carefully, taking stock of the situation. He was trapped in here, alone, with her. Security was at the door, but by the looks of them they were not inclined to intervene should Two take it into her head to tear his throat open for a snack.

“Your Excellency. A very great pleasure, ma’am. To what do I owe the honor?”

Her great black leathery wings filled the room like an explosion as she gestured. “I am not mollified; you are not in order. I am keeping all of them. Confined to courier. You will have to sleep in some room else.”

All right, it was Pesadie’s team. They’d done something; or something that they’d done had been traced back — the information ap Rhiannon had announced to Admiral Brecinn, perhaps? “If her Excellency would be graciously pleased to explain, ma’am.”

Two was still muttering, and how she managed that with a translator Rukota could not fathom for the life of him. Not that he wanted to dwell on that particular phrase —
the life of him
— with an obviously angry Desmodontae in the same small room as he was.

“As if you think that I am stupid. Lax. Remiss in procedure,” she accused, shifting her wings with an angry sort of irritated restlessness. “As if you think we are to be simply walked in on and queried by any uncleared parties. As if you have no knowledge of plain Standard or good discipline. It is intolerable, I remind you!” she shouted yet again, her wings an agitated scrim against the back wall.

“Yes; ma’am, but if you’d just give me the worst of it. I am responsible for the conduct of the team, after all.” Technically, at least. In fact, they’d made it all too clear that he was only there for show: but at least the Captain and crew of the
Ragnarok
seemed to understand that as well.

Two dropped from her perch; Rukota shut up. Scuttling forward on her strong little feet, using the primary joint of her wingtips to hurry her along, she paused before Rukota on her way out of the room, lifting her sharp black face toward Rukota’s with an expression of immense dignity, only somewhat weakened by the fact that she surely could not see him.

“Members of your party have been found using guest–code to access ship’s computers.”

Rukota closed his eyes with involuntary pain. Violating Security protocols was a willful endangerment of Fleet resources, not to speak of lives.