Prisoner of Conscience (16 page)

“If his Excellency is pleased to direct me to entertain his Security — ”

They had called her “cousin.” But that wouldn’t make any difference. They would all do what the officer wanted. If the officer wanted that.

“No, not at all. Oh, this is going nowhere.” Whatever it was that was on Koscuisko’s mind, she clearly wasn’t catching at his meaning. He wasn’t angry at her for her stupidity, and that helped. She wasn’t stupid. She didn’t understand him. “We will forget I ever raised the thought, Ailynn, I can find no solution to this trap, and you are in it.”

Chief Samons had said he could be violent, but why would he try to shield her from that? She had been leased to service his desires. She couldn’t imagine that he didn’t understand that.

“Does his Excellency bathe tonight or shower?”

If it wouldn’t come together then it wouldn’t, and she was safer to retreat into routine either way.

“Run the bath, please, Ailynn. I’ll have a soak
.
”
He started to strip slowly, and she slipped past him to run the bath before collecting his soiled clothing for the housekeeper to see to in the morning.

“Beg for me Cook’s indulgence, and ask for some of his good casserole. I will want cortac and some cards, have you to play the game of relki ever learned?”

It was his custom in the evenings, so far. He bathed before he ate, and played card games with his Security, drinking quantities of cortac brandy that staggered her — without setting him to staggering. And interfered with her as little as though he had been stinking drunk, which was to say not at all.

She could deal easily enough with this, if Koscuisko were to turn out to be a mere drunkard; drunk men posed few threats, unless it was a beating.

All of this concern for her, lest she should suffer violence at his hands — did they think she didn’t know what it was like already?

But as long as she could avoid it, she would take their care for her and be grateful to be treated like a human being.

Instead of a Nurail.

###

Bench Lieutenant Plugrath came escorted by Chief Samons, and did not look to be in a happy state of mind. Toska could appreciate that. It had been five days, here at the Domitt Prison, and nobody in a happy state of mind except the Administration, who were coming to understand what the officer could do with captive souls when time and inclination both permitted.

“Lieutenant Plugrath reports to wait upon his Excellency’s pleasure,”
Chief Samons said to him. Chief was bearing up all right. Koscuisko did what he could to insulate them.

Toska bowed to signal his receipt of her instruction. “Yes, Chief, I’ll just go tell the officer. The Lieutenant may wish to wait here — ”

No, the door to the torture cell opened, and here was the officer himself. “Toska, I want — ” Two hours into his morning’s work, lost to the appetite within him, Koscuisko was flushed of cheek and glittering of eye. Smoking a lefrol.

Toska cringed in his heart from the sight and smell of the officer’s lefrol, and not because he objected to the stink of it so much as that he knew Koscuisko’s mind. A smoldering lefrol was an honest stink. The officer was as likely to find a dual use for it, inside.

“Your Excellency,”
Lieutenant Plugrath saluted. Very formally. “You’ve asked for a report. Shall we go to your office, sir?”

Because Lieutenant Plugrath had never been in torture cell before, so much was clear, Koscuisko only smiled.

“Not necessary, Lieutenant, come on in. Toska. Come with me, I’ve a small task for you. Lieutenant?”

There was no graceful way for a junior officer to refuse a senior officer’s instruction. Toska had even less choice in the matter. Reluctantly, as if making up his mind only as he went whether he was going to object or not, Plugrath followed the officer into the torture-room. Toska stepped across the threshold and secured the door.

“Your Excellency.” Plugrath’s formality was one way of insulating, himself; Toska knew that. Formality was one of his own best defenses. “You’ve asked for a report on our investigation. There’s been a concerted effort on the part of the Port Authority — ”

But Koscuisko held up his hand. “One moment.” Gloved hands. The officer wore his gloves when he was working to save the tearing of the skin over his knuckles when he struck someone. Toska supposed it protected the bandage on the officer’s left hand as well. “Toska, you are to strip the rest of this clothing, leave the hip-wrap for the present. Then I will have you to set up the wheel. Go to it.”

Their officer was sensitive to the constraints imposed upon them by the governor. Koscuisko was usually careful to suggest, advise, request, rather than put his orders in so short a form. It helped them preserve some dignity, howsoever artificial, to comply with instruction because they had been asked politely; rather than because the requests were actually orders which they had no choice but to obey.

In the middle of a torture-room Koscuisko took the opposite approach, but it had its source in the same consideration. Koscuisko gave orders to his Bonds in torture-room, short, blunt, unambiguous. In order to keep clear the understanding that they had between them: None of the Bonds would do any such thing of their own free will, if given the choice. Koscuisko took pains to emphasize the fact that for a Bond there was no choice.

Toska had wondered why Koscuisko had taken the Writ to Inquire, when the officer had first been assigned; bond-involuntaries had no choice, but Koscuisko was not under Bond. Since then Toska had learned that not all such coercive “bonds” relied upon a governor. Koscuisko was under Bond to his father’s will, and for Koscuisko at least that was enough to hold him to the work he feared and hated.

Koscuisko had started on this one yesterday at about mid-meal, and there was little difficulty managing the prisoner accordingly. Difficult to handle, yes, because the body had been cruelly marked already, and it hurt the man to move him even as little as was required to strip what was left of the prisoner’s trousers and footgear from off that misused flesh. Toska cut fabric away with a utility knife swiftly, with practiced skill. The officer did not like to be kept waiting. And the sooner he was done, the sooner the officer would let him leave the room.

“You will give me just a moment, Lieutenant, I should not like to lose momentum. Momentum is very important in maintaining interest in a conversation, don’t you think? H’mm?”

Standing at his prisoner’s head while Toska worked, Koscuisko nudged the man’s cheek with the toe of his boot. The prisoner groaned, but with more fear than pain. Koscuisko smiled.

“Yes, I think so, too. Continuity. You are only one part finished with your story, and it is interesting, I am eager for more details.”

Toska bundled the rags of clothing into a wad and set it aside, hastily. The wheel, the officer had said. Slipping the catch, Toska raised the framework from its storage space in the floor-slot, locking the axle into the lifts. The officer preferred the wheel to the more traditional stretcher because the wheel was only chest-high, and could be adjusted. The officer liked to be close to his work. He liked to be able to concentrate on the expression on a prisoner’s face without straining his neck.

Toska couldn’t spare a moment to look at Lieutenant Plugrath, but the subtle desperation in Plugrath’s voice as he protested was as expressive as anyone could have wished. “Excellency, really, it will take just a moment to update you, shouldn’t we step outside while these — preparations are going forward?”

The prisoner couldn’t move himself to help or to hinder them. Toska took the man by the naked ankles to move him to the wheel; Koscuisko had clamped his lefrol between his teeth and taken the prisoner by the bleeding shoulders. Helping out.

It was another of the things Koscuisko was careful about, he didn’t call them in unless he needed them, and when he did Koscuisko did his best to minimize the extent to which they had to do things that would actually hurt.

So Toska got the ankles, which had been bruised through the foot-wraps by the occasional blow but which were otherwise undamaged. The officer himself handled the raw skin of the prisoner’s shoulders, lifting with Toska to arrange the body on the narrow stalloy rim of the wheel.

Chest-high.

Just as his Excellency liked it.

Toska fastened the prisoner’s newly bared ankles to the anchor in the floor. While the officer chained the prisoner’s wrists at the other end, Toska leaned down to fetch the cross-braces up from the storage well. Cross-bracing fixed behind the prisoner’s knees and elbows along the curve of the wheel was called for in order to provide the required stretching effect.

“Quite impossible,”
Koscuisko insisted. “Toska needs my help. My client needs to be decently settled here before we can go on, isn’t that right?”

Talking to his prisoner, talking to Lieutenant Plugrath. The prisoner’s head hung down against the wheel’s rim, the sweat of his pain shining in the bright lights overhead. Koscuisko gave the floor-pedal a few experimental taps, and the wheel rose by a few eighths. Toska got the elbows fixed just in time.

“You were telling me, Lieutenant?”

Toska stood away and waited. Koscuisko would send him out when Koscuisko noticed him. But Koscuisko would have to notice him first. And it could be that Koscuisko wanted him for something else; there was no telling what the officer would come up with next, during his exercises.

Toska hoped it wouldn’t be very long before Koscuisko noticed him.

None of what Koscuisko had in hand to deploy against a prisoner could be said to be pleasant: but the wheel was terrible. Koscuisko had no idea. If Koscuisko had known how frightened Toska was of the wheel, he would have had Kaydence in to help instead. Toska was as certain of that as he was sure that the sun would rise over Port Rudistal in the morning.

“You asked for a status report.”

Now Plugrath was furious; he knew that he was being manipulated, now, and as deliberately as the officer tipped hot ash from his lefrol into his prisoner’s eyes to make him cry out.

“Concerted effort on the part of the Port Authority has failed to disclose significant information to date. Investigation is ongoing. Findings include confirmation that the Domitt Prison — Administrators Geltoi or Belan, preferably both — were the intended targets of plotted ambush activity in Port Rudistal. We’re on to a few strands, but the braid is fraying fast, the trail’s running cold already. Captain Vopalar has authorized resources not needed to secure the relocation camp to assist in the legwork. That is all I have to report at this time. Your Excellency.”

Koscuisko had leaned his elbows up on his prisoner’s naked chest, and smoked his lefrol thoughtfully with his forearms crossed in front of him. Nudging the wheel’s level fractions higher from time to time, to make the prisoner whimper. Toska knew that Lieutenant Plugrath couldn’t want out of this any more badly than he did: yet was constrained by Koscuisko’s superior rank almost as effectively as a bond-involuntary under orders was constrained by a governor.

Neither one of them could flee until the officer was graciously pleased to let them go.

“It is not good enough, Bench Lieutenant,”
Koscuisko said. Touching the fat coal end of his lefrol to a bloody welt across the prisoner’s belly. Making him choke back a shout of protest and of pain. “I don’t care who they thought they were attacking. I don’t care why. Someone has bereft me of one of my Security. It is bad practice to permit one’s Security to be shot down around one. I want better news than this the next time I see you, Lieutenant. Would it inspire the search to greater effort if I asked your subordinates to me also, to express my sense of urgency in person?”

Burnt flesh stank, and the knowledge that it was living flesh seemed to make it even more nauseating. Plugrath was as white in the face as Toska imagined he could ever get. “Sir. With respect. This is beneath you. And to bring hardworking troops in here — I resist that notion, sir, as strenuously as I possibly can, and will do so to my Captain if necessary.”

“Lieutenant.” Koscuisko only sounded entertained. The Lieutenant didn’t know how Koscuisko was, during times like this. The Lieutenant had only seen the better part of the officer up till now. “Your threats amuse me. It will be even more amusing to receive you at my workplace should you try to avoid the reports you have promised. I want results, and if I need your squad leaders’ attention I will have it, and if I want reports every day I will have them too. Do we understand each other?”

He stepped on the floor-pedal, and the wheel moved, and the prisoner shrieked out loud. “Oh, please, oh, please, I can’t tell you, I don’t know — ”

Plugrath ignored the prisoner as best he could, but Toska couldn’t help but understand. There was no defiance there, at least not up front. Koscuisko was tormenting the man for Plugrath’s benefit. Of course it was up to the officer who he tormented, and how; how long, and to what end. But it was a bad sign.

This was only going to get worse, as time wore on.

“His Excellency makes himself transparently clear.” Plugrath was at least as much angry as disgusted. Toska granted the Bench Lieutenant good marks for a strong stomach: it wasn’t that he lacked grit. “I will wait upon his Excellency in two days’ time to make report. It will not be necessary to invite the shift supervisors. Sir.”

Koscuisko eased off the wheel by a few marks, and the prisoner caught his breath in surprised gratitude. Terrified and surprised gratitude. Toska could empathize. He didn’t want to.

“I will to myself reserve the pleasure of being judge of that, Lieutenant. But am content to wait for the decision. That is all there is for you, Toska, show the Lieutenant out, and don’t come back. Oh, except to bring some rhyti, have Kaydence do it.”

Toska hoped his own gratitude was not too obvious; it would be a breach of etiquette to imply that he wanted out of there, howsoever indirectly. Their officer valued their professionalism. They valued his selfishness in Inquiry.

“According to his Excellency’s good pleasure. Your mid-meal, sir?”

Koscuisko waved him off; Plugrath was already at the door. Koscuisko wouldn’t talk to them with the door open. “I will call for mid-meal when I feel the want of it, Toska, rhyti for now. And leave me.”