Prisoner of Conscience (33 page)

Belan had no answer but to stand in silent agony, biting his lips.

After a moment Geltoi sighed.

“All right. I’ll help you out of this one, Merig. It’s our honor that’s at stake.” Geltoi toggled into the braid on his desk. “Administrator Geltoi. For the penthouse, please. And shut down all of the access routes first, the lifts, the emergency stairs, everything.”

The penthouse?

Why the penthouse?

When the circuit cleared, it was the voice of Andrej Koscuisko. A little strained. Emphatically wary. Belan thought about the look he’d seen on Koscuisko’s face when he’d been watching through the window into the furnace-gate: and shuddered.

“This is Andrej Koscuisko. And you are Administrator of a prison in which much fault is to be found. What is it, your word to me?”

It was a voice-link; Belan was just as glad. He could hardly bear the sound of furious contempt in Koscuisko’s voice. To see it in Koscuisko’s eyes would be difficult: and yet Geltoi seemed unmoved.

“And good-greeting to you as well, Koscuisko. It has come to my attention that you have declined to support your Judicial function over the past few days, preferring rather to construct specious arguments against this Administration. You are to be replaced as soon as orders come from Chilleau Judiciary.”

Yes, well, but they hadn’t heard from Chilleau Judiciary. They didn’t know if Chilleau Judiciary was going to replace Koscuisko yet. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was getting Koscuisko out of there, with enough time to clean out the furnaces and clean up the work-crews before the next inspection. If there was a next inspection.

“For the exercise of my Judicial function it is not my intent to even consider apologizing, Geltoi. What good do you imagine it will do, to send me to
Scylla
back? There is evidence to convict the Domitt of failure of Writ.”

Geltoi smiled. Koscuisko had stepped foot into a Pyana trap, it seemed. “Which can only be cried by the Writ on site, Koscuisko. As of now I no longer consider you to be the Writ on site. You should be quite comfortable in the penthouse while you wait for orders. For your sake I hope it won’t be long. Geltoi, away here.”

Grinning broadly with evident self-satisfaction, Geltoi pulled the braid. Belan stared, confused and worried; Geltoi rose and stretched, signaling for his car.

“And that’s — that. Security’s shut down the penthouse, Belan, there was a reason why we wanted to be able to control access.”

Shut Koscuisko up on the roof.

He could not cry for vengeance to the Bench if he could not gain access to the Bench.

And once Koscuisko’s orders arrived from Chilleau Judiciary, he would have no standing to complain of the Domitt Prison; it would be only the new Writ assigned who could do that. By then they could be ready. This experience had been valuable, if too nerve-wracking for Belan’s peace of mind. They knew better how to comport themselves in front of Inquisitors, now.

“Of course, Administrator.” Belan didn’t need to pretend, to be impressed and humbled. Geltoi had it all in hand. Why had he ever worried? “My instructions, sir?”

Because he had been down to the furnace-room with Andrej Koscuisko. That was why he worried. He was the one who’d seen. Who’d heard. He was the one who’d been there.

“Take the furnaces off line as they complete cycle, Merig, clean them out and let them stand. We’ll dump the leavings underneath the dike-wall when we’re ready to pour the next course, and in the meantime we can just get ourselves so sweet and fresh and pretty that there’ll be no proving we ever burned so much as a scrap of steak-bone in those furnaces.”

“And in the penthouse, sir?” There were prisoners being held in the store-rooms by Koscuisko’s office, prisoners secured under seals only Koscuisko could lift. There was water in the store-rooms, which had been built for cells. But who was to feed these people, if Koscuisko was to be prisoned in the penthouse?

“Oh, it won’t be but a few days.” Geltoi hadn’t forgotten about the extra prisoners, surely. Geltoi had been too angry about them at the time Koscuisko had called for them: because they diminished his work-crews, and he needed every available man on work-crew to make his ambitious construction schedule work. And because he couldn’t figure out why Koscuisko had called for these people by name.

Belan knew.

Belan knew that the fog had told Koscuisko.

Belan also knew better than to even hint as much, to a Pyana like Geltoi.

And Geltoi was still talking, as he moved past Belan where he stood to go back to his gracious home in Rudistal once more and enjoy his middle daughter’s birthday. “Won’t do them any harm. Have a schedule ready for me in the morning, Merig, we can discuss the furnaces, all right? I’m sure you didn’t have anything else planned.”

No. He didn’t have anything planned. And Geltoi knew quite well that Belan couldn’t leave the Administration building if he was caught here after dark. The fog rose. And there were voices. “Of course not, Administrator. I’ll get right on it. The least I could do, sir, after failing you so miserably in the first place.”

He had to say it. He did feel utterly miserable: though he wasn’t quite sure it was because he’d failed Administrator Geltoi. How had he failed? What could Geltoi have done differently?

Why was it wrong to reveal the corruption at the heart of the Domitt Prison, rather than conceal it?

“Never mind that, Merig, we’ll recover.” Geltoi didn’t think it was a problem. Geltoi only thought that other peoples’ mistaken perception that it was a problem could create awkwardness. “We’ll speak no more of it, but see you have that schedule in the morning.”

There was work to do in his office, waiting for him.

And a bottle to drink himself stupefied as soon as he was finished with it.

###

Caleigh Samons rejoined the others in the officer’s front room, shaking her head. “No luck, your Excellency. Locked down. Tighter than drunk-detention on an abstention ship.”

Koscuisko sat on the couch, leaning well forward with his hands clasped across his splayed knees. He’d finally stopped shaking.

They were prisoners here.

Kaydence knelt down next to his officer with a cup of hot sweet rhyti, holding Koscuisko’s hands around the cup as Koscuisko drank. All right, Koscuisko hadn’t quite managed to stop shaking. As shocking as the impact of the furnace-room tour had been, she didn’t think that was the entire explanation for Koscuisko’s fit. This had to be something that had been creeping up on him, perhaps for weeks, possibly without his conscious notice.

“It is clear to me what must be done.” Koscuisko’s voice shook, even as his hands did. “Administrator Geltoi. I have given him too much time in which to understand. He means to keep us out of the way until he can get orders to relieve me.”

The housekeepers had locked themselves into their rooms; Cook was in the kitchen, with nowhere else to go. The emergency exits were sealed shut: blast walls, solid across the floor of the stairwells. Solid as the lift-accesses were sealed, both of them.

This had been coordinated.

“What is happening? Sir.” Ailynn was much more confused by this than anyone. She hadn’t been down to the furnace-room.

“Thank you, Kaydence. Again, please.” Koscuisko seemed to have recovered sufficiently to be able to drink his cup of rhyti on his own power. Kaydence hovered over him like an anxious parent, and it was always funny to see Security being protective of Koscuisko, when they could so easily have needed protection from Koscuisko instead. And not gotten it, being bond-involuntaries.

Beckoning for Ailynn to come and sit beside him, Koscuisko waited until Kaydence had come back with more rhyti, bringing the brewing-flask with him.

“Ailynn, I do not know what they say in service house about the Domitt Prison. I do not want to know,” Koscuisko said quickly, to forestall a reply. “There will be time in which to provide testimony, later.”

Chief Samons didn’t think the penthouse was on monitor. They’d swept during the first few days, and periodically since. Koscuisko was being careful not to compromise Ailynn, just in case there were monitors that they didn’t know about.

“We made an unannounced inspection of the furnace-room just now, Ailynn. We have seen things that will be difficult for the prison administration to explain, and you heard Geltoi, they do not wish to be called to account for any of it. I hope they feed those men in second-holding.” The thought seemed to distract Koscuisko for a moment. But he was surrounded by people waiting for his word; after a moment he returned to his main stream.

“The prison administration is fatally corrupt, and the people who have been responsible must be brought before the Bench to face extreme sanctions. It is called failure of Writ.”

Koscuisko was speaking so calmly and carefully for the benefit of a woman who might not know the jargon that the critical phrase almost passed before Caleigh snagged on it.

Failure of Writ?

With the sanctions the Administration potentially faced, it was not out of the realm of imagination that the prison administration might try to arrange an accident —

“Administrator Geltoi must have me replaced before I can go on Record, if he hopes to evade his responsibility. Or face the possibility of a Tenth Level command termination.”

Ailynn should have some idea. Surely. She had been the one to translate the narrative, after all. On the other hand, Koscuisko did not discuss the results of interrogation with anybody: and Ailynn might easily have assumed that Koscuisko would take the torment of Nurail prisoners as inconsequential, the way the rest of the Judicial establishment seemed inclined to do.

“Sir, have you found — all true — ” Ailynn’s horror reached out and touched Caleigh’s own feelings about the furnace-room; and Caleigh shuddered. She’d read the narrative, too.

Koscuisko nodded. “And the evidence I have taken in these last three days is damning. I have been blind to the enormity of this thing, Ailynn. And now that I understand what has been going on I must not fail in my duty. There are so many dead to cry for justice.”

“If the officer, and his party. Should meet. With an unfortunate – accident – ”

Erish had trouble getting the words out; Caleigh was surprised he spoke at all. It was a good sign, though. All of the things that had happened to them here. And her troops still knew that they could trust Koscuisko.

“It is an option.”

Koscuisko’s frank endorsement of what she’d been thinking was a little unnerving, in its calm acceptance of the possibilities. Calm? They had pulled Koscuisko away from the furnace-room in a fit. Maybe he was just in shock. He sounded perfectly lucid. But shock could do that.

“It would create more problems than it might solve, however, and upon this I must rely for now. There has been one threat against my life in Port Rudistal already, if one may be excused for interpreting Joslire’s death in so selfish a fashion.”

Well, that was all Fleet and the Bench made of it. Security’s job was to die in the place of senior officers of assignment. Koscuisko simply wasn’t very rational about the issue. But he did have a good grasp on the official interpretation of the incident.

“The Port Authority would be called upon to validate that any accident was not sabotage or terrorism, and if it could be covered up there would still be my family to deal with. The Combine would be sure to take an interest in how an accident could be permitted to damage the management resources of the Koscuisko familial corporation.”

This seemed to comfort Koscuisko as he spoke; he even smiled. “In fact it would be almost certain to invoke the Malcontent, and no secret is safe from the slaves of Saint Andrej Malcontent, gentles. They are the Bench intelligence specialists of the holy Mother’s church. No. I do not think a prudent murderer would try it, and we have no reason to suspect that Geltoi is a desperate or imprudent murderer. For now I think we are just prisoners.”

There were pieces in Koscuisko’s logic that Caleigh didn’t quite follow. That was all right. She had no need to follow his meaning. She trusted his judgment. And it was true that Koscuisko was a political figure in his own right, even only in the Dolgorukij Combine, even only as an inheriting son.

Geltoi might not know that . . .

“For now we are safe. I must cry my claim to the Bench before orders of reassignment are received by the Domitt Prison. And I must do so before Geltoi has a chance to destroy the evidence of his crimes. Miss Samons. We will need to get to the Administration building tonight; please explain how we are to do so.”

Desperate men did desperate things. Anybody with a potential Tenth Level facing him could be excused for becoming desperate. Koscuisko was right, if for different reasons than Koscuisko might think.

Koscuisko was determined to declare failure of Writ while he still could.

Once Koscuisko was on Record, killing him would no longer be of any earthly use to anyone.

###

Night, and the sky was black and clear and cold. The breeze that had blown from the river to the land in the hours around sunset had fallen still and calm, but the damned furnaces still sent their plumes of milky smoke into the sky. Andrej shuddered at the sight of the white feathers in the night. To think. No. He could not afford to think.

“Miss Samons, please forgive me, and I hope to ask you this question only this one time.” He stood a little apart with his Chief of Security, watching Toska and Erish secure the cable around the anchors they had built in the garden. “It is a reflection of my ignorance, I do not mean to challenge your judgment. You are sure that this will work. It is a long way.”

He was the one who had said they had to get to the Administration building.

That she should go over the wall on a cable braided of torn sheeting had not been something he could have anticipated.

“It’ll hold, sir. And the distance parses out.”

Two eights until daybreak, two hours until sunrise. The lights had been on in the Administration building all night. There would logically be someone in there on night-watch, if only for appearance’s sake.