Hour of Judgement (13 page)

“Of course, your Excellency. Thank you, sir.” And once he was well settled as an uncle she found her own voice as a niece. Was it his imagination, or was there a suspicion of regret in her tone? “And a very good day to you, your Excellency.”

“The best of good days,” Andrej agreed heartily. He was not a man. He was the adult male relative of her mother, and that was something else entirely. “My respects to your lady mother, Miss Sylyphe, and my very great appreciation for your hard work. Perhaps I will see you again in three days’ time.”

And perhaps he would be very sure to have people with him when he did so. There was only so much a man could be expected to take.

She nodded, blushing, and walked away through the wait-room without more words. Andrej watched her go, trying not to notice what a sweet soft cushion there was to her hips, nor how nicely she carried her back and shoulders.

Well.

“My apologies for the delay, gentles, if I might have the first patient. Please.”

That had been a pleasant start to a man’s morning, and by the grace of the Holy Mother he had neither disgraced himself nor soiled the innocence of that woman-child by taking advantage.

Now he had better concentrate on work.

###

Fleet Captain Lowden stepped across the cracked flooring that paved the threshold to the hospital’s wait-room with precision born of distaste. What a depressing place this was, this public-funded; and yet his errant Ship’s Surgeon took to even so pathetic a clinic like debris to an intake pump. Drawn in so strongly that a man could almost hear the suction.

“Captain Lowden. A surprise, sir.”

Alerted by the orderlies Koscuisko came out of a treatment room to greet him. Koscuisko’s smock was soiled and his face was haggard, but there was amusement in his expression that Lowden could identify — if not appreciate. “Just in to port, your Excellency?”

Wiping his hands on a bit of sterile toweling. The orderlies were showing Koscuisko’s patient out of the treatment room; a young woman, infant in arms. She only glanced in their direction. Her eyes were all on Koscuisko’s back when she did.

“Oh, it’s been the odd hour, Andrej. We weren’t expected for another day or two, yes, I know.”

Or else Danzilar would be all ready for his party, and they could get that over with and leave. Yes. But also Koscuisko should have been at the landing field to greet his superior officer, and Koscuisko hadn’t been. Lowden could excuse that, but he wasn’t going to let it pass unremarked upon.

“Were we not.” Koscuisko was tired; it took him that extra fraction of an eighth to realize that he was being called to account. And still it was clear to Lowden at least that Koscuisko had genuinely lost track of the time. “I must then beg your pardon, Captain, not to have joined the welcoming party. No disrespect was intended.”

Once he did realize, however, Koscuisko accepted the rebuke with grace and dignity, not stooping to insist on tiresome details that would explain and excuse his failure. On the one hand it was appropriate that Koscuisko bend his neck in submission to his superior officer. On the other hand Koscuisko’s very humility only emphasized how little Koscuisko cared.

That was all right.

Lowden had never required Koscuisko to care. Merely to obey.

“I’ve been reviewing the discrepancy lists with the Danzilar prince’s people, Andrej, and there seems to be a problem with drugs-stores. And I wonder if that problem has your name on it.” He had time. He had four more years to break Koscuisko to his will. Koscuisko was well humbled already. Inside of a few months Koscuisko would be his, body and soul; and all it would take was enough bodies for the torture, and no time in between.

Koscuisko bowed, only barely not grinning. “I felt it my right and due prerogative, Captain. Have I my authority exceeded? Because I the Lieutenant outrank, after all.”

And Lieutenant Wyrlann’s self-indulgence, also noted in the discrepancies lists, cost the Bench almost as much as what the allowance for the medication Koscuisko had issued over the past few days amounted to. It was an interesting approach. Lowden smiled in acknowledgement of the creativity it displayed.

“I’ll take that into consideration, Andrej. Now that we are here I’ll expect you to return to your Command, of course.” And stop playing doctor with this roomful of stinking unwashed Nurail. He would provide Koscuisko with other playthings soon enough.

“Of course, Captain. But. If I may be permitted. I have these gentlemen been working hard, I owe them — and myself, with your permission — a holiday. Perhaps I may have your leave to the service-house to go, before this team which has been so overburdened is relieved.”

Lowden thought about it.

Koscuisko was tired.

Koscuisko had few opportunities to go to service houses, and Lowden liked it that way, because the less frequently Koscuisko enjoyed human intimacies in a perfectly bland and pathetically mundane manner the keener the tension Koscuisko had stored up within him to focus on his work in Secured Medical. But a man could not be kept from women too strictly; a certain degree of access was required to maintain Koscuisko’s bodily health. Captain Lowden was a firm believer in preventive medicine.

“Very well, Andrej. You’ll have to take your kit with you, of course.” Lowden called up one of his Security with a beckoning gesture of his hand. “I’m not sure how it happened, exactly, but you seem to have left the ship without it.”

Koscuisko’s field interrogations kit. Had he known Koscuisko would be asking leave to go to the service house he would have left it under guard at Center House, but that was academic now. Koscuisko had not gotten the full benefit of the joke Lowden had set up for him, after all. Vogel had mined the punch line. Koscuisko could just hang on to his field interrogations kit.

Koscuisko grimaced, but bowed. Koscuisko knew perfectly well that Lowden was his master. “Of course, Captain. Even as you say. And to report in the morning, then?”

It always gratified Lowden to see how clearly Koscuisko understood his position. Koscuisko’s submissiveness sweetened Lowden’s mood now.

“Mid-meal, Andrej,” he corrected genially, extending Koscuisko’s holiday to midday. “I’ll see you at table.”

Koscuisko could go to the service house, but Koscuisko would brood; and carry the field interrogations kit with him, to serve as a constant, unwelcome, reminder of what his duty was.

There would be some salvage value to his joke after all, and Lowden carried that pleasing knowledge with him as he left the hospital for Center House.

###

It was cold in the curfew-darkened streets of Port Burkhayden, a cold that chilled to the bone even in the absence of wind. There was a little rain, but only a little one, so that Andrej could not decide whether it was soft mist or a very low cloud — or the spume from the sea-spray, come up from the marsh to plaster itself greedily against glass and window and leach as much warmth as it could suck from frame and sash.

Captain Lowden doubtless expected them to go to the service house, but what Captain Lowden didn’t know wouldn’t harm Andrej — at least not tonight. He had not so much as told the Port Authority where he was going, though he had no doubt they could find him if they had to. Stildyne was going to be angry with him about that. He would work it out with Stildyne somehow. In the morning. Later.

The local escort Andrej had recruited at the hospital brought them through black narrow streets to a secret part of town, hidden away behind warehouse walls and traffic diverters, to a dark house standing in the middle of a lot that seemed surprisingly large to Andrej for the middle of the city. Dark house, narrow gate, overgrown path, overgrown garden; and though there was no wind, the trees in the half-wild garden seemed to creak and clatter at him in a manner that Andrej did not find in the least welcoming.

Once inside, though, once through the heavy weathered wooden door cracked reluctantly open only so far as necessary to let them in, once safely within the house it was quite different. Dark, yes, because most of Port Burkhayden was without power yet again tonight, and only a few public utilities — the public-funded hospital, the service house, Center House itself — were on auxiliary power. Dark but welcoming even so, because it was warm inside, friendly with occasional lights powered on reservoir and candles.

Andrej stood bemused in the great foyer while their guide, one of the physician’s assistants from the hospital, went forward to complete final arrangements with the management. Candlelight. Candlelight was more practical than not in any service-house, but especially in an off-license house, where the women were by and large of a wider range in age and looks than one might find at the more elite establishments. At an off-license house at least they were all volunteers, or as much volunteer as a man could fantasize any woman to be whom necessity had forced to tender the privilege of her flesh as a commodity for lease.

A girl came out of a side door with a hand-held beam and invited them to follow her with a wordless gesture and a very pretty bow for Andrej himself. She was a pretty little thing all in all, and would be a woman some year doubtless, though she was surely no older than the daughter of the House Tavart — and he was not even going to speculate about that. A man did not have to do with children. No matter how prettily their petals trembled on the border between innocence and experience. No.

They sat all together in a common dining hall and took their meal: Andrej, his Security, their guide, the lady of the house, some girls. Well, some of the house’s women. It was a species of pleasure in and of itself to sit in near-darkness and have his supper, while his gentlemen — knowing that it was a holiday, having been strictly instructed that they were on holiday and not on duty — relaxed by degrees, to disport themselves with ladies.

And Pyotr, being black, was very exotic, and liked two at a time, and could give good account of himself as well — at least from report. And Hirsel was generally open to affectionate play from any direction, and the female direction was fully as enticing to him as any other.

Godsalt could usually be prevailed upon to make a woman with dark hair feel appreciated, which was just as well since there were more dark-haired ladies present than otherwise. Garrity was celibate, within the requirements of the community of bond-involuntaries, and would happily sleep alone, which only left all the more for Robert.

Robert liked ladies in more than a casual sense. He really liked women, and from all Andrej had been able to determine women by and large returned his genial if impertinent interest with charitable forbearance —

When Godsalt threw a pinch of bread at his senior fellow Pyotr, and Pyotr in retaliation sent an only half-cleaned fruit-pit into Godsalt’s glass of drinking-spirit to splash half of the liquid into Godsalt’s plate, Andrej decided it was time he went upstairs.

The lady of the house rose and withdrew at the same time, pausing only to nominate one of the girls to show “the officer” up to his room. It was one of the girls who carried serving-dishes back and forth; she did not mean for Andrej to take his guide to partner — Andrej was secure in that. But it was clearly high time he withdrew and left his gentlemen to their holiday.

He was not going to be the least bit sorry to have a bit of a holiday himself. Even if only a few hours’ worth.

Up the stairs, then, and to the wing of the house furthest away from the dining-room. The girl let him in to a large well — warmed room with an actual fire, a wood fire, burning in a grate against the wall; charming, if anachronistic. She wished him the best of his bath, and asked if anything seemed lacking, and made sure he knew how to summon her up should anything be found so; and then while Andrej stood on the threshold of the bathing-room, toying with the concept of asking for her help to scrub his back, trying to determine whether or not he had designs on her — she excused herself, and went away.

Probably just as well, Andrej admitted to himself. And no denying that he took particular pleasure in being left to himself for a little while. On board ship there was always the officer’s orderly, always, whoever’s turn it was to pull the duty. And whenever he was not on board ship he lived in the middle of a Security squad. A man could hardly so much as urinate in private.

Andrej had been raised in public, in a sense, because he had been raised by body-servants in his father’s household. Even as a child Andrej had realized that there was something wonderful about being alone, quite alone, hiding in the closet or riding perversely in an unexpected direction to disappear into the winter forest before anyone could stay him.

But never for long. And never long enough.

It was not decent to hide for long. A person’s servants got anxious, and it was not in the least bit thoughtful or respectful to play tricks on them.

Andrej took a good long hot soak in the old-fashioned water tub, concentrating on shutting everything out of his mind except the soothing comfort of the bath and the to-be-anticipated company of a lady. His reenlistment, his ruined hopes of freedom, his despair in facing the future — shutting it all out of his mind. Sylyphe Tavart, with breath so sweet a man all but had to taste that pretty little mouth, so young — and so willing to be charmed with him —

Shutting that out as well. She was a child. A man did not insult the innocence of children, no matter if they thought that they were ripe to be enjoyed. He knew; Sylyphe did not; it was not for him to be the one to teach her. That was all.

When he was washed and dried and belted into the wrap that lay warming on the rod for his use Andrej went out into the bedroom. Someone had come and gone, so quietly — in the manner of servants in such places — that Andrej hadn’t noticed; the fire was refreshed, the table laid with snacks and wodac. Also some rhyti. The bed was large, but the mattress was uneven; sitting down at the edge Andrej noticed that a book had been laid open on the bedside table, the bright colors of its illustrations catching his eye. He picked it up, curious.

A fishing-book.

A book of fish-stories.