An Exchange of Hostages (22 page)

“To be used for an improbable anatomical experiment. Did you wear your five-knives, when you were . . . when you played the game?”

The game . . . when he served as prisoner-surrogate, perhaps. There was only one probable reason for Koscuisko’s order, Joslire knew; not as if it would be the first time, no. Bond-involuntaries were expected to accommodate their officers in any manner their officers might choose to specify. But what difference would his five-knives make to Koscuisko, if that was what the officer intended? Why would it matter?

“It was necessary to perform the exercise without, by the officer’s leave.” A bond-involuntary might be permitted his five-knives. They could be considered to fall under religious exception; and served also as a constant reminder of his shame, to have dishonored his five-knives by wearing them as an enslaved man. But a prisoner would naturally have been stripped of them immediately. For security purposes, quite apart from all the rest.

“Then you will oblige me by taking them off. Now.”

Joslire dropped his head in submission, glad of the opportunity to hide his conflict. “According to the officer’s good pleasure.” Koscuisko’s meal would be getting cold, the rhyti over-steeped. It wouldn’t do to mention that, though he was just as likely to suffer for the fact. No, that wasn’t so — Joslire scowled at himself, stripping off his under-blouse hurriedly. The officer hadn’t seemed the type to make use of a compliant body in quite this way. What had happened to Koscuisko in the Tutor’s office? The Tutor had seemed pleased about something, that was true.

Koscuisko had gone back to the washroom to leave the towel and frown at the mirror. Joslire couldn’t afford to steal more than a glance, he’d been told twice now, he didn’t dare keep the officer waiting. Fumbling with the catches, he loosed the sheathing that bound his five-knives to him, so close — so much a part of him — that the simple requirement to remove them had been almost as much of the torment of the game, as Koscuisko had termed it, as any of the rest. Did Koscuisko know that? Did Koscuisko care? Why should Koscuisko care, except that Joslire had imagined that Koscuisko had been serious about his Bond, except that Koscuisko had seemed genuinely distraught to think that St. Clare would have to stand discipline for a Class Two violation, and likely die of it . . .

Koscuisko stood in the washroom’s doorway, watching him. Joslire laid his five-knives down on his sleep-rack as reverently as he dared, and pulled his boots off clumsily. Moving into the center of the room Koscuisko contemplated his meal tray, and for one moment Joslire cherished a forlorn hope that the officer would permit himself to be distracted. Would change his mind and decide that the satisfaction of one appetite would serve as well as that of another.

He should have known better, he told himself, and laid his trousers neatly to one side of his folded blouse and his five-knives. It was better not to indulge in such fantasies. The more quickly the officer’s appetite could be satisfied, the more quickly he could get on with the rest of his job, and the Tutor would receive the report on Koscuisko’s sexual activity as a positive sign of a healthy libido functioning in more or less traditional ways. Joslire reached for the drawstring of his hip-wrap, anxious — if not eager — to be on the other side of the next few eighths; but Koscuisko’s cold voice stopped him a scant sixteenths short of total nudity.

“That’s quite all right, Joslire, I should like you to turn to the wall, if you would. I understand that the posture is a familiar one?”

Familiar, perhaps, but not because of frequent and fond practice. Joslire turned to the wall and set his hands flat against the unforgiving steel, his arms stretched well out, turning his face to the floor. “At the officer’s discretion.” At least his voice was neutral, level, betraying no hint of his inner turmoil. It was a little unusual, still. He had been more frequently flogged against the wall like this than . . . than what the officer would seem to have in mind.

He could sense Koscuisko behind him, his skin prickling unpleasantly from the heat of Koscuisko’s own newly showered nakedness. Koscuisko was reaching his hands out, touching his back, touching his shoulders — perhaps it would be over quickly.

Koscuisko’s touch was light and clinical, considering, touching with the tips of his fingers, not his whole hand. Settling gently against Joslire’s skin before stroking his back, as if he was being careful not to startle him — as if Koscuisko could startle him, Joslire thought, and knew the bitterness of the betrayal that he felt in the helplessness of that necessarily passive resentment. He should have known better than to have imagined that Koscuisko was different than any of the others. He should have known better than to have thirsted after the respect Koscuisko had seemed to show him, as grateful as a starving man for any casual gesture Koscuisko made that could be taken as an acknowledgment of Joslire’s personal dignity. He was a bond-involuntary. He had no dignity. No title to his name, no title to his person, no title to his body. Nothing.

Koscuisko hadn’t said anything, still touching Joslire’s back, lingering for a moment from time to time over a particular spot, always moving his hands slowly enough to keep the skin from crawling in reflex trepidation. What was going on in his mind? There did seem to be a pattern, perhaps . . . Koscuisko seemed to be working his way from Joslire’s spine toward his sides, from the small of his back up to the back of his neck and across his shoulders. Almost Joslire had an idea, but no, it couldn’t be. It was too far-fetched. Just more wishful thinking, and why wouldn’t Koscuisko have just asked?

Koscuisko put his left hand out to Joslire’s hand, splayed as it was stubbornly against the wall. “I’m sorry, Joslire,” Koscuisko said. “But I require a more extreme angle. Move your arms out a bit, if you would please.”

What was Koscuisko after?

And why was waiting so much harder than being put to it, as brutal as that could be?

Koscuisko had both hands at the back of Joslire’s shoulder, and Joslire could feel those questing fingers traveling along the line of the muscle stretched taut by Joslire’s constrained posture, lingering — briefly but perceptibly — over a knot that Joslire knew was there.

No, it couldn’t be . .

Down along Joslire’s flank, now, tracing the thin line of unresponsive skin — the scar tissue that shielded the insulted flesh from pain by refusing to admit all further sensation. Joslire caught his breath in a sudden sobbing gasp, startled out of all his discipline by the shock of his realization — and the paradoxical shame he felt. His scars. That was what Koscuisko wanted, his scars, Koscuisko was reading his body with his hands, feeling and finding the scars that did not show on the surface: the little dead knots where the uttermost tip of the lash had bitten deeply, the long lines down his side where the Student Interrogator had tested his silence with hot metal. The cry escaped his tightly clenched teeth in something like a cough, and Koscuisko flattened his damned hands against Joslire’s back and stilled them there, waiting.

“It is very difficult?”

Koscuisko spoke gently, quietly, leaving plenty of space for Joslire to respond.

“Would it be easier for you if I consulted the record, instead? Is there a record that will tell me what I want to know?”

How could he respond? He could be honest, or he could do his duty. And his governor would not permit him to commit a violation, not if it noticed one coming.

“The officer holds the Bond.” He sounded half-strangled, even to himself. “The officer is to be provided whatever the officer wishes. The information is on Record.” Usually restricted, because of the secrecy of the program, but Tutor Chonis would surely release it to Koscuisko if Koscuisko asked, now that there was no further sense in trying to keep anything from him. “The instructional tape. Is on file. To be viewed at the officer’s pleasure, in the Tutor’s library.” As if he wanted to even think about that, when it was all he could do to keep his voice from breaking . . .

“I should not have asked it of you,” Koscuisko murmured, as if to himself. “You will forgive me, Joslire, please. I hope.”

Joslire could sense Koscuisko turning away, stepping away, moving toward the inner room.

“On the other hand . . . ”

It was forlorn, that note in Koscuisko’s voice; forlorn, and utterly desolate.

“On the other hand, after all, you are obliged to.”

He did not trust himself to move; nor had he been given leave to, come to that.

“Dress yourself, Joslire. I do not wish to examine your medical records, or your . . . the tapes. There is word from Tutor Chonis for me? Never mind, I will be out in a moment; tell me then.”

There was the sound of the privacy barrier sliding to, and Joslire was alone in the outer room, alone and shaken all out of proportion with what little had actually happened to him.

Koscuisko had been so careful, in his touch . . .

Pushing himself away from the wall, he willed the rock-hard tension that ran through his body to subside. There had been no threat. There had been no assault, no intent to assail. And he would not have been permitted to do other than submit, had there been any.

He wiped his face and dressed himself as quickly as he could, and hoped that the officer’s meal might still be judged acceptable.

It was humiliating to be so grateful to Koscuisko for the simple fact that Koscuisko hadn’t used him.

But well-brewed rhyti was the only way he had to show that he was grateful, humiliating or not.

###

Oh, Mother of this man, Mother of us all, look upon his suffering, and may it be enough. May honor be satisfied, may you find it full punishment, and condescend to shield him from his sins in your sweet favor. Mother, so we pray, accept his suffering in atonement, and grant it be sufficient; frown no longer upon him .
. .

But the Holy Mother cared only for the Aznir, her children, and Joslire was Emandisan. What could the litanies of his childhood avail him here? When he sought to do his duty, there was suffering. If he sought to relieve suffering, he made it worse. There was no getting away from it; it had been torture for Joslire to suffer his touch, and so much more torture was attested to by the mute but damning evidence of all of that subdermal scar tissue. He had no right to reach for Joslire’s private heart, and expose him to his own shame. There was victim guilt to consider, Andrej reminded himself. The more one’s servants were beaten, the more completely they became convinced that they deserved even stricter discipline yet — a folk truism authenticated by the common psychology of sentient species, a defensive trick played by the order-greedy mind to make sense of an arbitrary world.

Oh, he wanted a drink. Or . . . No, he corrected himself, he didn’t want a drink; what he wanted was to be drunk, and not thinking about anything. Not about what he had done to that bond-involuntary, either earlier or later. Not about what he had done to Joslire’s fragile sense of self-determination just now. Certainly not about how pleasant it had been to torment St. Clare, up to the moment when he’d realized that there was something that they were keeping from him. Yes, that was it, he wanted to be drunk; and still he couldn’t shake a persistent feeling that there were reasons why he couldn’t be, not yet.

Joslire had surely had time to dress and to regain his composure by now. Andrej stood up from his sleep-rack, sighing, pushing his hair up out of his face with the spread fingers of his right hand. He supposed he should get dressed, since he’d been staring at his uniform so intently. He couldn’t hide in this tiny closet of a bedroom forever.

When he slid the partition open, feeling embarrassed and abashed, he noted to his relief that Joslire had his back to the room, standing at the door. He was spared the awkwardness of initial eye contact, at least. There was someone in the corridor beyond, and that was unusual. Andrej didn’t think he’d seen anyone else in this corridor since he’d got here — part of the Administration’s scheme to isolate them all and make them vulnerable to the Tutors for approval and validation, it went without saying.

Perhaps if he concentrated on what was going on, he could salvage some self-respect for himself and for Joslire alike. Standing by the study-set, Andrej poured himself a flask of rhyti and waited for Joslire to finish with whatever transaction it was that occupied his time.

“Student Koscuisko has just awakened. He’ll be ready once he’s had a bite to eat. I’d give it an eight or so.”

Nor did Andrej believe that he’d ever heard Joslire refer to himself in the first person. His thoughtless demands had upset Joslire, breached Joslire’s careful defensive formality. What must Joslire have thought he meant to do? Andrej shuddered at the enormity of it.

And still Joslire did not sound as though his nerves were on edge.

“Patient prep can start whenever.” He thought he recognized the voice of whomever was in the hall. Female voice. His guide in Infirmary yesterday? Travis, her name had been. He thought. What had he been doing in Infirmary yesterday? “Just give the word.”

Joslire closed the door and turned back toward the study-set, giving an almost imperceptible start at the sight of Andrej standing there beside his fast-meal. There was a documents-cube in Joslire’s hand; Andrej reached his hand out to take it, realizing — now that he remembered — what they had probably been talking about. “Who was at the door, then, Joslire?”

And yet Joslire didn’t surrender the cube when Andrej grasped it. Startled, Andrej looked more directly at Joslire than he really wanted to, meeting Joslire’s dark, sharp, glittering eyes, trying to decipher what he thought he read there.

After a moment Joslire lowered his eyes and bowed in respectful salute, releasing the cube into Andrej’s outstretched hand.

“Travis, from Infirmary, by the officer’s leave.” Joslire sounded a little subdued but otherwise much the same as ever. “The officer may wish to review the surgical record?”

It had been meant deliberately, as a substitute for some light quip, to show Andrej that he’d been forgiven. Andrej felt his face reddening with gratitude and relief. Wordless gestures were all a bond-involuntary had to communicate interpersonal issues to superior officers. Andrej didn’t feel superior. Just now he felt — not for the first time this Term — that Joslire was very much the better man than he, governor or no governor.