The Devil and Deep Space (27 page)

Skin. She wanted skin. He was distracted; he was not paying attention. Taking a fistful of linen in each hand Marana tugged up and away to free his undergarment from the waistband of his full trousers. The undergarment had no fastening; it wrapped across the front of Andrej’s body, and in the winter it would close with ties — but for now, once she had the hem free, it was easy to pull open and away.

Marana backed away, toward the bed; Andrej watched her go. She looked into his face, wondering if he had second thoughts. She felt so naked, with Andrej watching her. It was intolerable that she should be timid in front of him.

Marana shook her head, and her hair settled like a fine spun shawl across her shoulders. Andrej closed his eyes and bit his lip, the fish that had carried his half of their child into her ocean stiffening visibly beneath his wrap even at several paces remove. Yes. That was better.

She climbed onto the bed, unfastening her hip–wrap as she went. Andrej followed her, his mind apparently focused on her shoulders. Rolling beneath him on the bed’s surface, Marana tucked her thumbs beneath the band of his hip–wrap, and then that was gone, too.

Here was the fish in which they had both once delighted. Marana embraced it between her palms and stroked it with affectionate greed; she had not had Andrej’s fish since the night before Andrej had left the Matredonat, more than nine years ago. It had been a brisk fish, then.

Andrej knelt on the bed and trembled while Marana beguiled herself by caressing him; then he caught her hand away and carried it to his lips to kiss her palm. Taking control of the encounter, prisoning her hands in his to protect himself from the distraction of her touch while he tested the curve of her flesh with kisses, tasting her, drinking her fragrance, relearning the feel of her body against his cheek.

He touched her as carefully as though they had never known each other. In all the years that he had been with Fleet, Andrej had been unlikely to have been celibate; what did his hands remember? Was it one woman? Any five women? Or simply the knowledge of alien woman–flesh?

She had known no other lover but Ferinc while Andrej had been gone. But Andrej had been her first love and her first true lover. Even after all of these years, her body remembered that, and craved the caresses that she and Andrej had practiced together to increase their pleasure in one another.

“Andrej,” Marana whispered, hoarsely. “Come to me. I want your fish, Andrej. Let me feel him wriggle to his place.”

He raised his head, he shifted his body, he half lay over her with his arms straight to the bed on either side so that she felt the heat of his bare flesh, but had no contact with it. His face was flushed, his mouth gone ruddy, his eyes glittering with erotic intoxication beneath their half–closed lids.

“Come to me,” Marana urged him. Using small words, speaking to his fish. Her own minnow, the fishlet between her thighs, surged for the pressure of his body; she was not thinking very clearly herself. “Now.”

He settled himself against her. In small and careful steps his fish tested the straits of passage, venturing ever more deeply within her with each trial. He had forgotten what it was to lay with a woman of his own race, perhaps.

She ran her fingers down his back with fierce hunger, pressing as deep into the long muscles on either side of his spine as she had strength. The bending of his back in reflex beneath her hands caught at his hips like pulling at the string of a longbow to bend its tip, and Andrej’s fish was at home within her. Hers.

Every thrust of Andrej’s fish maddened her minnow even more; the passion that consumed her was beyond naming. It was hot in the room; her skin was on fire, she could feel the sweat on Andrej’s belly against hers as his fish strove within her, and the salt scratch of his fish’s beard against her body worked upon her flesh like the judgment of Heaven.

He destroyed her.

He was her lover and her husband and the friend of her childhood, and even so he destroyed her without mercy, utterly and entirely, and completely. She screamed in terror and in ecstasy as her entire body caught fire and was consumed from the inside out with living flame.

The bed would burn. The room would catch the blaze, the house would be destroyed. The roof would come down through the blackened structure; they would be buried alive in fire and smoke —

Slowly, very slowly, Andrej collapsed in her arms, and fell over onto the surface of the bed to one side of her. Drowned. The fires cooled as the tides retreated, the bed’s cover damp with sweat and exercise. The house would not burn. She carried the ocean within her; they were safe.

Andrej reached out a hand behind him and pulled the bedcovers up from the far side of the bed, pulling her limp body to him away from the rumpled portion of the bed to cover them both with the draped coverlet and rest in the middle of the bed now, together, and for the first time since Andrej had come home. Nestling his face against the back of her shoulder, Andrej slept almost at once.

She rested with him for a little while, her body still shaking within itself in the echoing reverberation of the pleasure he had given her. It was different than when Ferinc loved her. But it had worked. She could still be Andrej’s lover; she could be his wife. She could adjust, adapt. There was strangeness to his body — exciting as well as intimidating — and he was not the man that she had known. But neither was she the woman that he might have remembered. It was not impossible that they should begin again, and perhaps be happy.

His sleeping smell had something in it still of the Andrej who had once been hers. Marana set her mind on hope for the future, and slept.

Chapter Ten

Alternate Means of Procurement

Cousin Ferinc sat at the receiving station, watching the traffic analysis reports; he didn’t pay much attention to the fact that someone had come into the intelligence station until a hand came down on his shoulder. By then it was too late.

“What interests you, Ferinc?”

It was Stanoczk. And Ferinc was to have met with Stanoczk, almost an hour ago. He had let himself become distracted. How could he do that? Stanoczk was his reconciler. And his reconciler was the single most important person in the world to him . . . after Anton Andreievitch, and Marana, and perhaps Andrej Koscuisko.

Turning in his chair Ferinc stood up quickly, taking Stanoczk’s hand away from his shoulder to kiss Stanoczk’s knuckles in greeting. “Stanoczk. I’m sorry. You startled me.”

“You should not have been startled,” Stanoczk pointed out. “You should have been waiting for me. Elsewhere. I despair of you, Ferinc. What have you found?”

Sometimes his gratitude for Stanoczk almost overwhelmed him: Stanoczk’s patience and forbearance, equable temper and genial goodwill. The hand of the Malcontent rested lightly on Ferinc, because it was Stanoczk’s.

“If it’s Noycannir, she could have done it.” No, wait, that didn’t make much sense. “I’ve found something interesting. It’s proximity, but it’s suggestive.”

Ferinc nodded at his analysis screen, wanting Stanoczk to see, hoping Stanoczk would find the information interesting. Maybe interesting enough to overlook Ferinc’s lapse in leaving his own reconciler to wait, and wait, and finally come find him. Malcontents were beaten for lesser faults; more or less frequently, as the need and inclination required.

Stanoczk scanned the screen and raised an eyebrow.

“What does this mean to me, Ferinc?”

Stanoczk had to see it. It was that obvious. “Just look how depressing a person she must be. Over the last three years. Five suicides. Five.”

A Clerk of Court on the Second Circuit; an evidence disposition manager at a sub–court headquarters; a Security troop on detached assignment for debriefing of troops at a Fleet station under the Second Judge’s aegis. A third–level communications specialist at Chilleau Judiciary.

And his favorite: a documents release controller at Fontailloe Judiciary itself, where the First Judge presided. That one had been carefully investigated at the time, because of the sensitive nature of the dead woman’s job. Everything had cleared. Ferinc didn’t think they’d looked hard or long enough.

“Ferinc, despair is more bitter a pain than many can bear. Surely you know this.” But Stanoczk was still looking at the screen; the cross–tracking, the time elapsed between a personal contact with Mergau Noycannir and the unfortunate death of an officer of the Court by her own hand. “None of them murdered?”

That was the question, of course. In one instance at least, the cause of death had been recorded as due to an overdose of a recreational drug; there had been a record left. The drug had been of such exceptional purity that a pharmacy audit of the Court’s administratively attached medical personnel had been conducted. There had been no findings, and the investigators had left it at that.

There was no recorded curiosity about the chemical signature of whatever batch the drug had come from, and Ferinc thought that was a shame, because he was almost ready to convince himself that such a trace would have led far away from the actual site of the incident and back to Chilleau Judiciary.

Maybe the trace had been done. Maybe it had led back to Chilleau Judiciary. Maybe the investigators had assumed a political assassination, and elected for prudence over justice.

“The pattern intrigues, Ferinc,” Stanoczk admitted. Ferinc had been confident that it would.

What would one have to do if one set out to accomplish the unthinkable, and subvert the justice of the Bench? Bench warrants did not come out of nowhere. They had to be validated and cross–validated at every step of the process of issue; at any given time, somebody knew where it had come from and where it would be going.

And the further along the process of issue moved, the fewer obvious questions were likely to be asked about the integrity of the validations that the warrant had collected.

When a man came before the Court to argue in the face of the grieving widower’s tears that he was guilty of manslaughter, but not murder, for the death of the security guard during an attempted robbery by cause of temporary intoxication depriving him of the use of his reason, it rarely occurred to anyone to ask whether the security guard was dead.

“There is a flaw in the argument, of course,” Ferinc pointed out, as Stanoczk frowned over the data. “I am starting from a supposition. So I may be entirely mistaken. But why is it worth so much to her to know exactly where Koscuisko is?”

Stanoczk nodded, but Ferinc hadn’t asked a question in a form that Stanoczk could answer with a nod. “I think we need to prefer the question, Ferinc. And also. I have sent the Malcontent’s thula to Chelatring Side.”

The two halves of that did not quite connect, but they came close enough together that Ferinc could draw the bridge between them. Andrej Koscuisko would arrive at Chelatring Side within five days’ time to be present as his father gave the Autocrat’s Proxy the wishes of the Koscuisko familial corporation as regarding the Selection of a new First Judge.

The Second Judge was scheduled to announce her candidacy within the next ten days. Now that Verlaine had bought Koscuisko off, there was little doubt that Koscuisko would support the Second Judge.

It was the Malcontent’s mission to maximize the concessions that the Combine could demand in return for its support, before Chilleau Judiciary realized that it would win its bid — and no longer needed to purchase the support of member worlds.

“I could tell Noycannir that Koscuisko stays at home,” Ferinc suggested. “There’s no telling but that I might be marked for a convenient suicide myself, in the near future. I can feel no particular sense of obligation, with that in mind.”

Grinning, Stanoczk shook his head. “There is no such word as suicide in the Malcontent’s vocabulary, Ferinc. No. We will fulfill our contract. We do not yet know that her motive is sinister. And . . . ”

Ferinc waited. Stanoczk seemed to reconsider what he was about to say. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he continued.

“And she is at Pesadie Training Command, and expected to remain there. Those deaths, they have all occurred after she had been physically present. But you will see to it that the thula is ready should we need to bring news with speed. And open up the Gallery for me, Ferinc. I want to take your Stildyne on a tour.”

Ferinc paled. He couldn’t help himself. “What business does Stildyne have with the Malcontent?” Even as he asked it he knew the answers, both of them. He knew. And it wasn’t his to ask. Stanoczk put a hand to Ferinc’s shoulder kindly, but didn’t answer; Stanoczk changed the subject, instead.

“You have spoken to the lady?” Yes, several days ago. He hadn’t seen Stanoczk since. He hadn’t wanted to. He’d had permission to see Marana, but not to create a disturbance in the garden and arouse the wrath of Andrej Koscuisko himself.

“She knows where her duty lies. And accepts it.” Willingly, he could have added, except that he wasn’t sure how willing that acceptance was. Or how willing he might be that Marana could turn her back on him, and seek the embrace of her lord. “I’m going to miss Anton. Worse than poison.”

Not the best choice of phrases, considering the several drug–accomplished deaths — murders, or suicides — that he had just been reviewing. But the point was made. Why did Stanoczk shake his head, as if in wonder?

“What has happened to you, Ferinc?” Stanoczk asked. “You speak as a man with no feeling about the other man, in your life.”

What did that mean? Koscuisko? “Did you talk to Koscuisko about me?”

Now Stanoczk snorted in apparent disgust. “Egoist. Have I nothing better to discuss with my own cousin? As though he could be bothered about you, with other issues on his mind.”

That was true. Koscuisko had given Stanoczk the Bench warrant on the same day that Ferinc had given Anton’s wheat–fish to Marana and fled. Perhaps Koscuisko had been distracted when he’d seen Stanoczk.

“I only wondered. I am forbidden to see Anton until he’s had a chance to consult with you and ensure that you know what sort of a depraved creature I am. The sooner you and he have that discussion, the sooner I may seek for visitation rights.”

Stanoczk gave him a shove that sent him staggering, but it was pure affection on Stanoczk’s part. Ferinc could smell it. “Visitation? And rights! You are Malcontent, Ferinc, or at least we have pretended that you may someday be a Malcontent in fact, and you can speak such a word? You are impossible, Shut up. Get out. Go to Chelatring Side.”

He’d forgotten.

“Visitation privileges?” he asked meekly, with a grin he could not quite repress and a sharp eye out for Stanoczk’s boot. Stanoczk was quick with his feet, when he was provoked. “Opportunities, options, avenues, potential approaches — ”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Stanoczk cried, almost helpless with laughter. “May all Saints witness what I have to do, to treat with such a donkey. Out. Get out. Go. And I will meet you.”

Stanoczk was right. Something was changed. He had seen Andrej Koscuisko, and lived. Open up the Gallery, for Stildyne’s benefit?

He had a lot of work to do. He needed to get his reply through to Noycannir at Pesadie, still pretending that she was at Chilleau. And then he needed to bestir himself and get into the mountains, to the Koscuisko’s stronghold at Chelatring Side on the breast of mighty Dasidar himself, to see to it that the thula — a Kospodar thula, one of only twenty–seven ever made, the fastest ship of its size or any larger under Jurisdiction — was ready to serve the Malcontent’s purpose. Whatever that would turn out to be.

He had faced Andrej Koscuisko, and Koscuisko had been angry at him, and he had not fallen to his knees and begged for mercy. The peace of the Malcontent was his at last.

He could even share his reconciler, without too much distress; and hope that Stildyne might find a share of that peace, in the Gallery.

###

There was no signal at the door, and yet it opened.

Admiral Brecinn looked up from her desk with surprised displeasure: who dared enter her office without signaling?

More to the point, who could? The door had been secured —

Mergau Noycannir. Standing there in the now–open doorway with a flat–file docket under one arm. Brecinn could not read Noycannir’s expression; the office was dim by choice and the light coming through from the corridor beyond put Noycannir’s face into shadow.

“I beg your pardon, Admiral,” Noycannir said. She certainly sounded confused and apologetic. “They told me you weren’t in. I meant to leave a message.”

An important message, no doubt, or else she wouldn’t have forced the door’s secures to leave it on Brecinn’s desk. Brecinn smoothed her involuntary grimace of irritation away with an effort. “Come in, Dame. Close the door.”

Yes, she’d had her people say that she was unavailable — especially to Noycannir. Noycannir might ask questions that Brecinn wasn’t interested in having to avoid just at the moment. It had been five days since the
Ragnarok
had left for resupply at Laynock. Brecinn had told Laynock to expect the
Ragnarok
, and ensure that its resupply contained every surplussed ration and expired supply set they could get rid of.

It was an opportunity to take the garbage away and shut ap Rhiannon up at the same time. The redirected stores might not be very exciting in terms of market value, but what was the sense in wasting an opportunity? She hadn’t heard back from Laynock. The
Ragnarok
was evidently dawdling.

Noycannir approached the desk, but didn’t sit. Just as well — Brecinn hadn’t invited her. “I wanted to let you know,” Noycannir said. “I feel I should make a short visit to Chilleau Judiciary to see what’s become of that warrant. It must be caught up in processing somewhere. We haven’t received it, have we?”

It was not surprising that the Bench warrant for those troops had not come back from Chilleau. She hadn’t requested one yet. She needed the official report from the preliminary assessment team; she hadn’t gotten it. The
Ragnarok
was not merely dawdling, but dragging its feet, and there hadn’t been a sound out of the assessment team for days. That was the only thing that stopped her from sending a corvette after them: if something was wrong, she would have heard something.

Could ap Rhiannon have detected the leak, and plugged it?

Possible, if improbable. For that to happen, ap Rhiannon would need the cooperation of Ship’s Primes, and Ship’s Primes were very unlikely to cooperate with any one mere junior officer, especially one as abrasive as ap Rhiannon. Besides which, even with the cooperation of Ship’s Primes, ap Rhiannon could not plug every leak.

“No, we haven’t gotten our warrant approved. Thank you, Dame Noycannir.” The
Ragnarok
would be back soon; there was a natural limit to how long they could make a simple supply run last. She’d see to it that the report was suitably back–dated, and make a stink about Chilleau Judiciary’s loss of an important Fleet disciplinary document.

It would remind Chilleau of Pesadie’s importance to the successful transition of the Bench to its new First Judge . . . because Chilleau could not afford to treat the investigation into the death of Cowil Brem, a Command Branch officer, with anything less than the utmost discretion.

So it wouldn’t matter, in the end, that ap Rhiannon was dragging her feet on her report. Brecinn would have names and a warrant. Ap Rhiannon would have only the extra demerit marked against her name in the intangible register of Fleet and reasonable people everywhere. “I appreciate your assistance in this matter. When will you return?”

Noycannir frowned slightly, as if in thought. “Well, that naturally depends on what the problem with the warrant might be, Admiral. It could take days. Shall we say — back in nine days, to get to work?”