Chapter Four
Family Matters
Great Ragnarok had been built according to the plan of a cruiser killer warship — carapace hull above, docking facilities below — opening onto the maintenance atmosphere that clung to the belly of the ship, contained by a plasma field. General Rukota braced himself as his courier approached the boundaries. There was a peculiar sensory effect associated with passing the plasma containment membrane from space into atmosphere; it made his skin crawl. He had never gotten used to it.
“Eleven eights to docking, General.” The navigator was one of Admiral Brecinn’s people, but carried more rank on her shoulders than a navigator usually bore. All of the team were relatively senior for their roles; it increased his suspicion that these people were committed to some ulterior purpose. Rukota didn’t like it. “Thank you, Navigator. Send the request and stand by.”
Yes, it was gratifying to a man’s ego to be giving orders to people more accustomed to giving their own than taking anybody’s. Still, ego gratification only went so far with Dierryk Rukota. No man as ugly as he had been all of his life could afford to nurture too much ego. Every time he caught sight of himself in a mirror, it reminded him. But so long as his wife didn’t care, it made no difference if his mouth was as thin as the edge of a dull knife and his eyes nearly as narrow, to speak of only two of the most obviously unfortunate aspects of his face.
“Clearance is logged, General. We’re expected. Well. We’ll just have to hope that the evidence hasn’t been compromised already.”
What made the navigator suppose that there was evidence to be compromised in the first place?
Did she expect him not to realize that the mission upon which he had been sent was at least as likely, if not certain, to compromise evidence — if it was not actually bent on fabricating evidence that did not exist?
Rukota couldn’t decide how best to answer, and therefore decided not to. He was technically in command of this mission. He didn’t have to make nice with anybody.
The courier cleared the maintenance atmosphere with the familiar and unpleasant feeling of insects tunneling through his joints. Rukota concentrated on what the screens showed, to distract himself from his discomfort.
The entire working area of the Ragnarok’s underbelly lay open to the maintenance atmosphere, with the plates that would hull over the ship for vector transit stacked into a solid wall fore and aft. There wasn’t much activity: some tenders, one craft in free–float with its crew on EVA, their umbilicus tethers glinting in the powerful illumination from the Ragnarok’s docks.
Their destination was a slot in the hull of the ship, an envelope of stalloy big enough to park the Captain’s shallop — her personal courier — in. As the navigator maneuvered toward the slip Rukota thought he caught sight of a familiar figure in the basket of a crane near the entrance to their docking bay.
Short person. Stocky. Hair smoothed back severely across a rounded skull typical of a class–three Auringer hominid, but if it was who he thought it was she had six digits on either hand, and that meant Versanjer instead. He’d thought it through one day a few months ago when he’d been in a particularly bad mood.
Twenty–seven years ago the Bench had put down a bloody revolt at Versanjer. The slaughter had been horrific. And the vengeance of the Bench had not stopped at the execution of most of the adult population; the Bench had taken the children as well. Put them into crèche. Raised them to serve the Bench with fanatical devotion, making of the daughters and sons of dead rebels paragons of everything against which the insurrectionaries had rebelled.
The navigator brought the ship into the bay, and the tow drones took control to complete the landing sequence. Rukota decided that he needed some air. Following the system engineer up through the topside observer’s station Rukota straightened carefully, standing on top of the courier’s back.
Something fell past the mouth of the docking slip, something big and black and silent.
“Oh, no,” the system engineer said, as if someone had asked her a question. “I don’t deal with those things. All yours, General.”
She scurried back down into the body of the courier with unseemly and ungraceful haste. Rukota looked at the now–closed hatch for a moment, thinking about it; then he threw the catch with the toe of his boot, securing the hatch from the outside. Let the crew wait for the inorganic quarantine scans to cycle through before they left the ship. It would serve them right for abandoning him to a Desmodontae.
Something else was coming toward the mouth of the docking slip, but Rukota had an idea that he knew what this was. The crane. The basket came down across the mouth of the docking slip slowly, then slid carefully into the bay itself until it rested level with Rukota where he stood.
Jennet ap Rhiannon opened the security cage’s gate and beckoned him in with a wave of her hand. “General Rukota. A pleasure to see you.”
If she said so. He couldn’t say the same for her, and if he had been in her place he would consider his mission to be about as welcome as the tax collector the morning after an unreported gambling coup. Rukota stepped into the basket without comment, and ap Rhiannon moved the crane out and away from the docking slip.
He could see the Desmodontae now. A great black web–winged creature out of a horror story, a giant bat, subsisting on plasma broths that replaced its native diet of hominid blood. The Ragnarok’s Intelligence Officer. One of the very few non–hominids with rank in all of the Jurisdiction’s Fleet, her presence here on the Ragnarok part and parcel of Fleet’s confusion over what to do with her and what to do with the ship itself.
His wife said that Two had something on somebody, but that nobody had ever been able to decide if Two realized it or not.
“To what do I owe the honor of this meeting?” Rukota asked, watching Two carefully as she executed her aerial maneuvers. It was probably difficult for her to be confined on shipboard, rank or no rank. Rukota supposed he himself would grasp any opportunity to fly if he had been a bat.
“We’ll have a formal in–briefing later on, of course,” ap Rhiannon assured him. “I was surprised to hear you’d accepted the assignment, General. I’m sorry. We don’t have anything for you.”
Of course she didn’t. What else could she be expected to claim? “Brecinn thought I’d be an impartial observer.” Or a cooperative patsy. Maybe that. “Second Fleet doesn’t have much work for me just now. So here I am. Don’t get any ideas, Lieutenant.”
There had been awkwardness, during their earlier assignment together. The gossip about Rukota’s wife was widespread. Ap Rhiannon had apparently become intrigued by him, if for no other reason Rukota could guess than sheer contrariness. He had had to remind her that he was her superior officer.
Now she was the acting Captain of the Ragnarok, and technically outside his chain of command. Was he going to have to defend his virtue?
The Desmodontae was coming at them in full soar, gliding by very close overhead. Talking to herself, evidently, from the vibration Rukota felt in the buttons on his blouse. Maybe it was just her echolocation. Either way he wished she would stop it.
“Have you met my Intelligence Officer?” ap Rhiannon asked. Two did a spin and roll, landing on the arm of the crane and stopping abruptly. It was unnatural, that sudden absolute stop. Rukota held on to the railing. He didn’t like Desmodontae. They made him nervous.
Crawling up the crane’s arm to the basket Two climbed over the rim to hop down into the security cage, smiling up at Rukota cheerfully. It looked like a smile, at least; her mouth was open and the corners of her lips curled up in her face. Rukota could see her very white, very sharp teeth, set off to dazzling perfection by the black velvet of her pelt.
“Pleased,” Two said. Her translator had no accent, but Rukota suddenly thought about the farce stereotype of the Briadie matron, all flamboyant hand gestures and shrill nasal tones and insatiable nosiness. “Rukota General. Seventeen thousand saved at Ichimar, and casualties held at less than one in four sixty–fours. Very impressive.”
And a long time ago, but it was kind of her to mention it. “Very gracious, your Excellency. What’s your take on all of this, if I may ask, ma’am?”
Ap Rhiannon seemed clearly intent on controlling the investigation from the beginning. He could appreciate that. It was her natural right as the acting Captain of this ship. If she was going to give him access to her Intelligence Officer, though, he was going to take advantage of it.
“We have nothing to give or take,” Two assured him, happily. “But don’t take my word on it. Take your time. Enjoy your investigation. The food is not good, by report, and accommodation cannot be said to be luxurious, but what is ours is yours.”
Ap Rhiannon was not so happy as Two seemed about it all. “I’ll tell you what I think, General. I think Pesadie wants to find someone here on board of the Ragnarok at fault for that explosion. The plain fact that it’s incredible is not enough to stop some people. I won’t have it.”
There wasn’t anything he could say in response to this, because she was right on all counts. “Then the audit will show that you’re clean, Lieutenant. And we’ll be out of your way in no time.”
He hadn’t convinced her. No surprise there. He hadn’t sounded convincing to himself. “We’ve already done one assessment, General, ammunition, equipment calibration, electromagnetic emissions. Everything. Unexceptional on all vectors. So what? If evidence is not found, it can be created.”
Yes. That was the way it was. “So Fleet will run a few tests, and ask a few questions. You could lose a troop or six. That’s the way it goes, Lieutenant. There’s a Command Branch officer dead, and there has to be an explanation somewhere.”
“Pesadie can just find its explanations at its own expense. I have no intention of throwing a single life into Fleet’s maw, Command Branch or no Command Branch. These are my crew now, General, for howsoever short a time, and I will defend them. Are we clear?”
Two shifted her wings with an embarrassed sort of a shrugging gesture as ap Rhiannon spoke, and it was all Rukota could do not to jump.
“I’m just here to take the baseline, Lieutenant.” Yes, they both knew how easy it was to fake a baseline. But if she’d learned anything at all about him during their previous acquaintance, she would know that he didn’t play games. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. If there’s nothing here, that’s what I’ll tell Brecinn. If there’s something here, you’ll see it before she does. Can we just agree on that?”
So that he could get out of this crane basket, and away from the Ragnarok’s Intelligence Officer. He was probably sweating.
Ap Rhiannon glanced up into his face for a moment before she nodded, finally. “Very well, General. Welcome aboard.”
Oh, absolutely. A hostile Captain and suspicious crew to one side of him, a team he mistrusted — and whom he suspected of having their own agenda — to the other: just his idea of a welcoming environment.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Technically she was an Excellency, he supposed. But she’d been his subordinate Officer, once upon a time before, and he didn’t know quite how to relate to her as anything else. What did it matter if he antagonized her? She wasn’t happy about any of this anyway. “Pleased to be here. Well. Actually, no. But we’ll do our best with what we’ve got.”
With luck, he wouldn’t have to spend too much time with the Intelligence Officer.
But, with luck, he wouldn’t have been here in the first place; so Rukota sighed and resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have an opportunity to grapple with his fears, and climbed back out of the crane basket — when ap Rhiannon returned him to the docking slip — to open the hatch in the top of the courier and let his team come out.
###
Cousin Ferinc stood in the young master’s schoolroom with Anton Andreievitch in his arms, looking out the tall window across the courtyard to the old wall and the river beyond.
“There, now, that’s better,” he said encouragingly, as Anton rubbed his nose and wiped his eyes. In that order, unfortunately, but there were limits about what could be expected of an eight-year-old — even one so self-possessed as Anton Andreievitch Koscuisko. “Here’s Nurse, young master, time for your bath. You can tell me all about it when I get back, but be good and don’t fuss, or I shan’t bring you a wheat–fish from Dubrovnije.”
Anton’s bright blue eyes widened. “I shall be very good,” he assured Ferinc, solemnly. “And shan’t fuss at all. I promise.”
He always kept his promises, too; at least, as well as a child with the handicap of a developing attention span to contend with could manage it. He was like his father that way.
Ferinc put the child down. “Good man. Go along, I’ll just speak to the Respected Lady, and I’ll see you in a few days. Don’t forget. I’ll bring you a wheat–fish.”
He usually tried not to think about Anton’s father. Over the years it had become easier than he would have imagined not to think about Anton’s father. He still had dreams, but Cousin Stanoczk had reconciled him to that. Cousin Stanoczk was not Anton’s father. But he did look a very great deal like the man, especially in the dark of a dimly lit cell.
Ferinc watched Anton Andreievitch out of the room, smiling gently to himself: Anton was such a little man.
Anton Andreievitch’s mother spoke from behind him, and called his attention back to where he was. “And for me, Cousin.” It was a word for cousin that she used only seldom, and never except when they were alone. “What will you bring me from Dubrovnije if I am very good, and do not fuss?”
There was tension in her voice, and not a little bitterness. But there was to be no help for it. Andrej Koscuisko could not find him at the Matredonat. It would ruin everything.
“Surely the Respected Lady has nothing to fear,” Ferinc said with tender assurance, turning to face her. “What is it, Marana? Tell your Cousin Ferinc all.”
She smiled bravely at his teasing, reaching out for him, drawing him to her by pulling at the braids that he wore to each side of his face to keep his hair out of his eyes. Malcontents alone of all Dolgorukij men wore their hair long; at least some of them did, and Ferinc had let his hair grow as part of his way of separating himself from his former self. There were drawbacks. This was one of them.
“I have not seen Andrej for more than nine years, Ferinc. Nine years. And yet he is the master of this house, lord of the Matredonat, and all that is in it.”
Master of her body, at least in principle. That was the traditional understanding of her position here, at any rate.
“It will probably be a little awkward. Yes.” He had his arms around her now, and the trusting warmth of her body against his was familiar and comforting. She was tall for a Dolgorukij woman. But he was taller. He was not Dolgorukij, either. “Nothing I have ever heard of thy lord would make him out to be a man to impose himself on a lady’s privacy. He is probably as nervous as you are; consider, you know I’m right.”
She raised her head and looked up at him sharply. It couldn’t be that she had misunderstood him; they were speaking of Koscuisko in his capacity as a normal social creature. Not as Inquisitor. “But I’m not a lady, Ferinc, I’m a gentlewoman of yes–all–right–passable breeding — but poor judgment — who bespoke a child from a betrothed man before his sacred wife had been bred to his body. There are far simpler ways to say just what I am. You know them.”
Willful misunderstanding was to be his tactic, Ferinc decided. “Yes. Among them beautiful. Devoted. Precious beyond price. The hearth–mistress of the Matredonat — ”
No, none of those were the words she had had in mind, and she pushed him away from her with a smile. “ ‘In the mouth of the Malcontent, excrement is honey.’ You will be gone for how long, Cousin?”
Not so quickly as that, Ferinc decided, and closed the distance between them to embrace her. “Would I dare to kiss you,” he asked; and did so, carefully, gently, thoroughly, “if that were true? Be fair, Marana.”
She made a face at him, her hands at the back of his head, smoothing the long hair that fell unbraided down his back. “Lefrols, then, and it is very much the same thing if you would like to know my opinion. Answer the question.”
“Three weeks, maybe longer, Respected Lady. I don’t know for certain. I won’t know until Cousin Stanoczk tells me, and he hasn’t yet.” Koscuisko would be home for at least that long. Anton would be reconciled to Ferinc’s temporary absence after a day or two, and then six weeks would seem no longer than three to him. Marana was not likely to be as understanding, but there was nothing that Ferinc could do about that.
He was not going to Dubrovnije. But that was nobody’s business but the Malcontent’s. He would have to send for a wheat–fish for Anton Andreievitch.
“Think of me while you are gone, Cousin.” Marana stepped away from him and back into her status; one almost saw the power descend upon her shoulders like a shawl. “Yes. I’m nervous. It’s beastly of you to leave me now. But one does not expect decency from Malcontents.”
She was not actually angry at him. If she knew what duty called him away from her, she would be. She would be more than angry. She would be horrified and betrayed, and would quite possibly refuse to so much as see him again, ever again.
She was right about one thing at least, though. It was nobody’s business but the Malcontent’s. It could be true that Mergau Noycannir at Chilleau Judiciary had no good reason to know Andrej Koscuisko’s exact whereabouts: but the Saint had accepted the bargain she’d offered, and would fulfill its side of the contract. It was one way to be sure that they knew what she was up to, after all.
“The peace of the Malcontent be with you, Respected Lady. I will think of you. Depend upon it.”
She was to be Koscuisko’s wife, though she didn’t know it yet. Ferinc was not sure she would still be his lover when he returned. “The Holy Mother has ordained that women need not bless your divine Patron. So I will say only good–bye, Ferinc.”
It was in the hands of the Holy Mother. In whom he did not believe, but it would be imprudent to remind his Patron’s goddess of that. “I’ll be back to see you in a few weeks, Respected Lady. You have the home advantage with your lord; he is almost a stranger here. You will manage beautifully.”
Women were absolved from blessing the name of the Malcontent; Malcontents, from begging leave, as from most — if not all — of the otherwise common rites of ordinary life. Ferinc left Marana in the nursery and went down the hall to make his way out to the motor stables. There was a ground-car waiting.
Marana, in the embrace of her lord, soon to become her husband as well as her master. Marana, in Koscuisko’s bed —
He had to get out to the airfield in time to find his covert. He would simply have to submit the whole problem to Cousin Stanoczk, the next chance that he got to be reconciled.
###
Andrej Koscuisko stood behind Lek as the courier made its final approach to Jelchick Field.
The Magdalenja had made atmosphere, dropped out of space into stratosphere, several hours ago; it had shed the thermal load acquired in its re–entry over long, slow, high–altitude orbit, and it was ready to make planetfall in fact.
“We have for the final approach your clearance codes, Magdalenja. Stand by.”
The Standard was precise and uninflected, but the syntax was Dolgorukij. Andrej watched the long hills, the great broad course of the river Trijan, the black–green slopes of the spacious game preserve with its old forest scroll beneath the hull of the courier: home.
There were veserts upon veserts of fields in grain, still green and silvery in the sun; it was yet midway into the growing season, and Jan Seed–of–Life had only begun to show the long black beard that marked him for a man and ripe for slaughter. Well, for harvest, but harvest was slaughter, and tradition required it be approached with reverence and care.
“Thank you, Jelchick. Final approach. Beacon scan initiated.”
In all of the years that he had known Lek Kerenko, Andrej didn’t think he had even once noticed that he had an accent. The blood of his ancestors in the fields below reached out to him, cried out to him — corrupted him. Lek sounded Sarvaw to him, and Andrej shuddered to hear it. If he could think such a thing — he, who owed so much to Lek for openhearted charity — if he could think the word with scorn, how could he hope to keep Lek from shame at the Matredonat?
The courier slowed perceptibly moment by moment, falling fast. Jelchick Field took a sudden approach, but it had been the most suitable airfield — the one closest to home. Andrej was not going to Rogubarachno, the ancient house in the plains of Refour where he had been born; only later would he travel to Chelatring Side in the mountains, to attend to political business with his family.
They were for the Matredonat, an estate that belonged to him personally in his capacity as the son of the Koscuisko prince, the place where he kept Marana and his child. They were going there first. It had been negotiated. It had been agreed. So why were there riders in array at the very edge of the airfield, a hunting party, and one rider on horseback sitting apart from the rest?
“Send a security query, Chief,” Andrej suggested. He would not send the question himself. Let Stildyne do it. “Find us out who those people are. The airfield is secured. I want to know.” He needed all the advance warning he could get, if they were who he suspected they might be.
Stildyne stepped away from beside Andrej without comment as Lek drew the courier into its final descent. Andrej could see the emergency equipment drawn up alongside the end of the travel–path, could hear Lek talking to the traffic control center; but had eyes only for those people well out of range of the courier’s engines, waiting.
If he did not take care, Andrej told himself, he would convince himself that he recognized that one tall rider. And that was clearly impossible. He had not so much as seen his father in almost nine years.
Stildyne had returned. “Says it’s the landlord, your Excellency,” Stildyne said. “At least that’s what I think they said.”
“ ‘Master of field and grain, river and mountain’? Is that what they said?”
Stildyne didn’t so much nod, but merely lowered his head in confirmation. “So what does it mean, sir?”
Closing his eyes for one brief moment of frustrated fury Andrej swore. “All Saints in debauch. My father, Chief. Probably my mother. Doubtless at least the youngest of my brothers, but it was not what we had planned. I’m not prepared for this.”
It was far too late to tell Lek to abort the landing, and break space again. Nor would it have been fair if he’d let himself be forced so far as that. He wanted to meet his son.
“His Excellency presents his compliments,” Stildyne said, as if it was a question. “And regrets that an unfortunate desire to see you all in Hell prevents his meeting with you at this particular time or any in the foreseeable near future?”
As angry as Andrej was, he had to laugh. “Someone has corrupted you, Chief. You sound like a house–master in a bad mood. No. There is to be no help for it, and everybody knows that the prince my father left me with no choice when he elected to attend this event. I will have to go and kneel and beg for blessing.”
The courier had come to a complete halt, the ventilators equalizing atmosphere. Andrej took a deep breath to calm himself. He almost believed that he could smell the hot dust of the grain–lands in the summer. “When we approach them, hold the team at the same remove as my father’s house–master will be standing, with my father’s mount.”
“We brought smoke, your Excellency.” Lek surprised Andrej by speaking up, and Murat beside him took up the skein, in braid.
“We wouldn’t even use irritant fog. Just smoke.”
“Lay down a good field,” Smath added. “Run for it. Evasive action. Just to keep in practice, sir. Just say the word.”
They were so good to him. Or perhaps they simply preferred not to start a vacation with their officer of assignment in a filthy temper: so one way or another he owed it to them to face up to the coming ordeal like a man, and get it over with.
“Thank you, gentles, but the word must be ‘no.’ I will go and speak to my father. You may watch if you like. You will not see many Dolgorukij so tall as he is.”
Meeka had inherited all of their father’s height, and their father’s beautiful great black beard as well. Neither Lo nor Iosev nor Andrej himself stood any more near such height than the shoulder to the head. There was no telling about Nikosha, who had been a child; but even so, Nikosha seemed to take after their mother for his frame and his physique.
The ground crew had arrived. Andrej could hear Taller making the required polite conversation. A moment or two, and the passenger ramp descended, opening the side of the courier to the sight of late morning and the faint but unmistakable fragrance of sirav in bloom.
The perfume of the weeds of the country seized Andrej’s brain like a drug. He could not bear to stay inside the courier breathing Standard air for one moment longer. He had to get out. Even though it meant he would have to go and confront his father, he had to get out and breathe the air, feel the pull of his own earth, the caress of the warmth of his own sun.
Nine years.
He had spent years at school on Mayon before he had gone to Fleet; he had had difficulty with Mayon’s gravity as well. Off. Ever so slightly off. It had taken weeks for the uneasiness in his stomach to settle, but he had been away from home too long, and now he felt the land–sickness in his stomach all over again.
It was probably just nerves.
Out there in the near distance the hunting party was moving in bits and pieces, reacting to the appearance of the courier’s passengers and crew. It would be over all the sooner, and the more quickly, he engaged; therefore Andrej waited until Murat had finished his post–flight checks and spoke.
“If you please, Mister Stildyne.”
He was an officer under escort, his uniform a stark contrast to the hunting costume that his father wore. Men in their family did not wear black boots in the summertime, nor boots of hard leather of any color unless they were at court or at war. The blouse of the trousers was not creased unless one’s housekeeper were clumsy, stupid, incompetent, or insolent; no man of rank would fail to wear a broad belt over his jacket, from which to hang a pouch of this or a string of that. All in all, he was quite possibly as alien to them as Andrej’s father and his people were to Security 5.l.
Climbing into the waiting ground–car Andrej nodded to Taller, who had taken the driver’s seat. Taller knew quite well that they were taking a detour on their way to traffic control. Once Smath had hopped on board with the last of the luggage Taller headed out for the far side of the airfield, where the hunting party was gathered just to the near side of the security fence.
When the distance had shrunk to eighty paces or so Andrej stopped Taller with a gesture, and Taller secured the vehicle’s drive before joining the rest of the team on the ground.
His people formed up in the standard square around him with the efficiency of long practice and the ease of clear, if unspoken, communication. Andrej started through the long grass toward the hunting party, and three riders came down from the little rise that the hunting party had invested to meet him partway.
When they had closed one quarter of the distance Andrej’s father dismounted. So of course the escort dismounted as well, one of them taking the reins of Andrej’s father’s horse.
One half of the distance, and the two men who had accompanied Andrej’s father stopped. Andrej didn’t hear any word from Stildyne, but his people stopped too, Taller and Lek each taking a step to either side to give Andrej clear passage between them.
When Andrej was close enough to see his father’s face, close enough to meet an outstretched hand, he stopped and stood and waited for his father’s word. Looking up into his father’s worried blue eyes Andrej wondered what there was that he could say, what there was that he could do. He knew the obvious answer: he was to kneel and beg his father’s blessing. But it was not as simple as that.
This man was his father, and loved him, drinking in his face with an expression of fond thirst.
And yet Andrej’s knees could not be convinced that they should bend. His father, yes, but also the man who had sent him into Hell nine years ago and demanded that he abide there, the man who — once all had been said and done at the Domitt Prison — had rebuked him for unfilial behavior in having challenged Chilleau Judiciary in so public a forum. The man whose acceptance of Chilleau’s persuasions had left Andrej with no other escape from a servitude more horrible than even that which he had endured under Captain Lowden’s command than to submit himself to Fleet for four years more.
At the same time, this man had not truly done much of what Andrej found to blame. His father had been an officer in mere Security, and at a time when Inquiry had been informal and field expedient, bearing no discernible relation to the Protocols in their current form. His father could have no conception of what Andrej’s life had been like with Captain Lowden as his commanding officer.
This was a Dolgorukij father in the presence of a wayward son, and as much as Andrej regretted the shape into which his father had forced his life, there was no sense in reproaching a man for what he had no idea that he had done.
In the end, it wasn’t his father’s fault at all.
He could at any point have turned his back and stepped away from duty and obedience that required he execute sin and practice atrocity. No one had forced him to his duty but his own will to be dutiful. He had not in all of this time turned his back and said no, because he had not had the courage to shame his father and distress his mother.
Was that truly adequate an excuse to cover the torture and murder of feeling creatures?
Having submitted to such crimes to keep the pride of his family from stain and reproach, was he now going to shame his father in front of so many of the household by refusing the basic duty of a child in the presence of its father?
It was the act of a coward to blame another for something that was not truly their fault but one’s own.
Finally Andrej’s knees began to bend. He lowered his head to show his father the white of the back of the neck above the collar. Maybe it had taken all these years for Andrej to grasp the idea that he did not have to be a filial son, but so long as he was here and had committed such horrors in the name of filial piety and the Judicial order, it would be mean–spirited of him to deny his father the respect that should naturally be between father and son.
It was not his father’s fault.
His father reached out to him as Andrej started to kneel and prevented him from kneeling, drawing Andrej to him instead, to be embraced both gently and fiercely.
His father seemed to be weeping, and the notion sent Andrej into a panic that he didn’t really understand. So many people he had hurt so far beyond the power of tears to express, or cries, or screaming. Why should one man’s purely emotional grief distress him so?
“Please, sir.”
His father relaxed his grip on Andrej the moment Andrej spoke, but he didn’t let go of him. Andrej stood in his father’s embrace in an agony of confusion and embarrassment; too much happening too quickly between heart and mind for Andrej to be able to make sense of it.
“Please, sir, don’t distress yourself. I have been wayward and unfilial, but I am your child still.” And yet he was going to go from here to the Matredonat, where he would once again defy his father and insult his mother by acting as though he were an autonomous person rather than some body’s child.
His father tightened his arms around Andrej one last time, then let him go. “And yet Cousin Stanoczk has hinted, son Andrej. You know that you cannot have my blessing for your intended actions.”
What was worse, his father apparently knew what he meant to do. How had Cousin Stanoczk come by the knowledge?
Was there ever any knowing, with Malcontents?
He’d spoken to a priest on their way out of Port Burkhayden, in order to be sure of the correct and complete ritual. That was perfectly true. He just hadn’t expected it to get back to his father, and for the Malcontent to have transmitted the information made Andrej wonder what the Malcontent had in mind.
“I am bound for four years more at least, sir, and my ship of assignment has only recently lost two of its officers, even though we are not actively engaged.” One of whom he had himself murdered, but he wasn’t going to trouble his father with that surely trivial piece of information. And he had no idea whether the death of Cowil Brem was public knowledge as yet. “I must think of my son.”
“As I of mine.” Well, the Koscuisko prince had more than one son, and they both knew that. But Andrej was the oldest of Alexie Slijanevitch’s male children; that meant he counted for more than the rest of his brothers taken together. “And I have for too many years played Sanfijer to your Scathijin, son Andrej. I don’t pretend that Scathijin did not bring the most part of his grief upon himself. But Sanfijer had no one but himself to reproach for the fact that he had not been more natural a parent.”
Never, never, never had Andrej ever imagined that it could be possible for his father to say such a thing to him. The surprise betrayed him to himself, and the frustrated affection and aggrieved resentment of the years brought tears to his eyes.
“I do not ask for your forgiveness, sir, as I do not deserve it.” He was become unfilial. He would remain so. His father forgave it, even before the fact. “But to have your forgiveness for my fault. It would be almost as good.”
It was a fault only in the context of their culture. Andrej had just realized he was no longer fully part of it; but his family was. His son would be raised here on Azanry, and have to find a way to fit himself into the society to which Andrej had been bred and born. It seemed the traditions of his ancestors had power over him that he had not begun to suspect.
“I bless thee as my unfilial son Andrej,” Alexie Slijanevitch said, very solemnly, but there was the unmistakable softness of a loving parental heart within and around the words. “That is to say, my child, who has been a man in the eyes of the greater government of this Jurisdiction for these years past. Your father’s blessing on your misguided, ill–advised, self–willed, and all too clearly Koscuisko head, son Andrej, with a full heart I grant it.”
Something inside Andrej’s chest seemed to crack open, flooding his body with grateful warmth. He bowed over his father’s hand to kiss the family seal that Alexie Slijanevitch wore on his right hand; and his father embraced him once again, and held him close for a long moment as Andrej struggled for control of his emotions.
“Now. I have already violated the terms of our agreement, son Andrej. We know you are on your way to the Matredonat.” His father put Andrej away from him at arm’s length and looked him in the eye, lovingly. “You will perhaps forgive us in turn for having wanted too badly just to see you. Go and kiss the hem of your mother’s apron, and come to us at Chelatring Side when the Autocrat’s Proxy arrives.”
It was almost unfair.
He was to have his father’s forgiveness and his mother’s understanding after all, and it was all only now. Only now that he was under some mysterious and undefined sentence of death, only now that he had already made contract with Fleet for another four years.
If he had known that his father would have softened so much toward him as to be able to cite the story of the filial son wrongly accused — the tragedy of Scathijin the Self–Minded — he might not have done it. He might have come home and trusted his parents’ change of heart to keep him safe from the threat of Chilleau Judiciary.
With a full heart Andrej hurried through the tall grass of the un–mown verge between the pavement of the airfield and the perimeter to see his mother, his head too full of wonder and amazement to have a thought to spare for anything but the moment.
###
They were too far away to hear what was being said, but what Stildyne could see was startling enough.
Koscuisko’s father.
Stildyne had only negative associations with the concept. His own father was a man he’d hardly thought twice about since the day he’d sworn to Fleet to get off–planet and away before the local authorities started to make inquiries. The chances of anybody really caring who had killed Stildyne’s father were vanishingly small, and the pitiful remains of Stildyne’s young sister were no more grievous a motive in the world that he had left than other wrongs his father had done.
He’d never embraced his father that he could ever remember, and had successfully avoided other sorts of physical contact from the day when he’d been old enough to hit back. His younger sister hadn’t had a chance. She’d never gotten quick and clever enough to escape. She hadn’t lived long enough.
And here Koscuisko bowed to his father.
Was about to kneel, if Stildyne read Koscuisko’s body language correctly, and he had studied Koscuisko’s body language with care and keen attention for years now. Koscuisko was embraced by his father, and bore it; then bowed over his father’s hand.
There was something wrong. There was something altered in the slope of Koscuisko’s shoulders, something alien and unknown creeping into Koscuisko’s body to make him a different man, one whom Stildyne did not recognize. What was it?
Koscuisko ran up the slope at a quick jog; the people between him and wherever he was going gave way to him, bowing, until he reached his goal.
Smish Smath had the best eyesight at distance, so Stildyne asked her, though he thought he knew the answer. “Who is that, Smath, can you tell?” He spoke quietly, moving his mouth as little as possible to preserve the appearance of waiting in respectful silence at attention rest.
After a moment, Smath answered. “Tallish woman compared to the women around her. Dark hair, fancy headdress. His Excellency takes her stirrup. Maybe what — kissing her knee?”
“Her apron,” Lek corrected, tolerantly. Lek didn’t have Smish’s keen sight, but he did have the advantage of knowing what went on between Dolgorukij. “He’d be kissing the hem of her apron. His mother. The sacred wife of the Koscuisko prince. A Flesonika princess, if I remember right. Old blood, in his Excellency’s family.”
Family. What a concept.
Koscuisko’s father mounted and turned his horse’s head, and the hunting party started to move. Koscuisko himself started to walk back to where Stildyne and the others were waiting for him; even mounted, the Koscuisko familial retainers backed the horses out of Koscuisko’s path rather than turn their backs on him. They all seemed so much alike, in a sense; the body types were similar and yet strange to Stildyne.
In the midst of that crowd of Dolgorukij, Koscuisko seemed strange to Stildyne, and the realization was an unpleasant one.
Andrej Koscuisko was his officer of assignment, a man whom Stildyne had trained on an almost daily basis for physical fitness and to improve on the fighting skills that Chief Samons — Koscuisko’s Chief of Security prior to his assignment to the Ragnarok — had so ably established in him. A man Stildyne had nursed through countless drunks and alcohol–induced psychotic episodes, dreams so vivid and horrible that they could not be dismissed as simple nightmares, agonies of mind and spirit that had sensitized Stildyne to the concept of guilt and sin and spiritual pain for the first time in his life.
This Andrej Koscuisko was none of those things. Koscuisko had been transformed from the man Stildyne knew and understood into a complete stranger, somebody’s son, a man with a community so alien and self–contained that Stildyne could not begin to reach out to him.
These people were Koscuisko’s family. All of these people were, in a sense. And here in the midst of his family, what need did Koscuisko have of Stildyne — or anybody?
Koscuisko walked down the grassy slope to rejoin them, but he didn’t look the same. His posture was different. Not even his face was truly familiar; he looked years younger than he had when they had landed, and his uniform did not seem to fit, somehow. It seemed wrong on him. It was the clothes that those other people wore that would be natural on this Koscuisko’s body; Stildyne had never even seen Koscuisko in anything but a uniform, or pieces of a uniform, or in no uniform at all.
Stildyne hated this.
He had anticipated Koscuisko’s re–absorption into his birth–culture; he had resigned himself to the probable fact of Koscuisko’s becoming so involved in personal business that he would have little time or attention to spare for his Security. But he had not realized that Koscuisko would become an alien to him, a man he could recognize only on a superficial level.
As painful as it was to be held at an arm’s length by his officer of assignment, it was worse than Stildyne had expected to realize that Koscuisko might be so far away from them in spirit once he had got home that there would be no reaching out at all to make or deny contact.
Koscuisko reached them, nodding to Stildyne to signal that they should all get back into the ground–car and get on with their business.
“Blessed or berated, your Excellency?” Lek asked. Stildyne was surprised that Lek spoke, but Koscuisko didn’t seem to be, so clearly it was something to do with the culture that Lek and Koscuisko had in common.
Koscuisko tilted his chin a bit, looking up into Lek’s face as Koscuisko climbed into the ground–car. “Blessed as well as I deserve, and a good bit better than that. My father says he will not Sanfijer my Scathijin. So it was much better than I had feared, even though the Malcontent has been talking.”
Lek could probably explain that to them all later. “Right,” Stildyne said, just to regain some illusion of control. “Let’s just go clear in–processing and be out of here, your Excellency, shall we?”
What was a scathijin, and how did one sanfijer, and why was that something that Koscuisko and Lek both seemed to understand was a good thing for fathers not to do to their sons?
This Koscuisko was a stranger to Stildyne. Having Koscuisko a stranger was almost like not having him at all; and unhappiness of a sort Stildyne had never felt possessed him, as they drove off to the airfield’s receiving station.
###
Cousin Ferinc sat in his secured observation station, watching through the heavy plate–glass window as the ground–car came across the tarmac toward the administration center where Koscuisko’s people would surrender custody of the courier ship, and have their purpose and presence here cleared and documented, by the grace and favor of the Autocrat.
There was no further sign of Koscuisko’s family; the hunting party was gone from view. Cousin Stanoczk — Ferinc’s reconciler — said that Ferinc was to come to Chelatring Side some day, to view the Gallery. Ferinc was hungry for it, for the chance glimpse he might have there of Koscuisko’s father and Koscuisko’s mother and the youngest of Koscuisko’s brothers, the barely twelve–year–old prince Nikolij. Nikosha. Koscuisko’s favorite brother, it was said. There was no love lost between Koscuisko and his brother Iosev who was the next eldest of the Koscuisko prince’s sons, and . . .
Ferinc shook his head, angry at himself, and tied his braids together at the back of his head to keep them from falling across his face. Stanoczk tolerated his obsession with Andrej Koscuisko, but only just. And without Stanoczk’s charity there was no hope of reconciliation for him in the world. He dared not risk incurring Stanoczk’s disappointed anger.
It was so hard.
The communications booth was fully equipped for secure transmit, but no one here would have listened in had it been open. There was no profit to be had from interesting oneself in the Malcontent’s business, that was no one’s business but the Saint’s alone. Ferinc sent the codes that he’d been given into the relay stream with the toggling of a switch; and spoke.
“Swallow’s nest, for client at Chilleau Judiciary. Transmit on schedule. As follows, confirm receipt.”
He could watch. He could. It would take moments for the screen to clear, because the client at Chilleau Judiciary was suspicious and trusted no one. And was not, in fact, at Chilleau Judiciary, but Ferinc wasn’t supposed to know that. Not supposed by the client to know that, at least.
The ground–car pulled up to the foot of the loading dock, almost immediately below the window. They couldn’t see him. The panes were treated for thermal management. He knew they couldn’t see him. They had no reason even to look.
Ferinc stared down at the party gathered on the tarmac. Security. Chief Stildyne he recognized, with pained surprise; he was a hard man to forget, and that could have been Ferinc himself in Stildyne’s place, though their acquaintance dated from before Stildyne’s promotion. Petty Warrant Officer Stildyne, and Ferinc. They had had some times.
Oh, he could not think of that, and most especially not —
There was Andrej Koscuisko himself, climbing out of the ground–car, pausing half in and half out to share some joke or another with one of the Security. Ferinc stared hungrily at the man who had haunted his dreams, haunted his nightmares ever since. It had been more than seven years. It felt as though it had been yesterday that Koscuisko had made his mark on Ferinc, body and soul, and left him ruined and destroyed forever.
It had been deserved. Ferinc knew that. And yet he could not shake the horror of it, and the ferocious intensity, and that slim blond officer who stood there smiling — talking with Stildyne — still owned him.
Koscuisko doubtless thought it was all over. If Koscuisko ever thought of it at all, and why should he? What had Ferinc been to Koscuisko, after all, but a man meriting punishment, out of so many that had come under Koscuisko’s hand?
The transmission’s chime repeated for the third, and then the fourth time. Ferinc turned away from the window.
“Confirming arrival of Andrej Koscuisko with party of Security assigned.” Security 5.3 had been expected; Ferinc had made it his business to find out about them, in order to let Marana know what to expect. This wasn’t Security 5.3. There was a woman there. But the client hadn’t asked; she only wanted to know when Koscuisko set foot to his native soil — so it wasn’t up to Ferinc to tell her.
Cousin Stanoczk said that the client was unstable, unnaturally obsessed with Andrej Koscuisko and desirous of knowing his whereabouts from moment to moment. Cousin Stanoczk was most likely to remark on the client’s instability of mind when reproaching Ferinc for his own obsession.
The Malcontent made good profit from the weak–mindedness of persons unnaturally interested in specific Inquisitors, however. The client at Chilleau Judiciary paid well for her reports. In kind, and in specie. And Ferinc himself was bound to the Saint on Koscuisko’s account, self–sold into slavery of his own free will out of his desperate need to be reconciled with what he had seen in the mirror of Koscuisko’s eyes in that cell at Richeyne, so many years ago.
It would be a moment before the countersignal cleared, because the client had been linked on redirect. That always slowed things down. Ferinc went back to the window.
The transit–wagon had come up for Koscuisko’s party now. Koscuisko — having apparently stepped through to the airfield master’s office for a quiet official signature or two, while Ferinc had been transmitting his report — was coming out of the building, Security forming up around him in perfect order.
Precise to the mark, a pleasure to behold, professional, competent, completely secure in their roles and who they were and what they were called upon to do at all times —
The pain of loss in Ferinc’s heart was nearly physical, looking at them. And it was Koscuisko who had ruined him, Koscuisko who had destroyed him, Koscuisko who had taken it all away from him forever and left him broken and bereft.
Just as he reached the transit–wagon Koscuisko looked up, back over his shoulder. Looking up at him. Ferinc shrank back and away from the window, shuddering in terror. Koscuisko could not know. He could not.
What would Koscuisko do if he ever learned the truth behind the role “Cousin Ferinc” had come to play at the Matredonat — Koscuisko’s child, and the woman who was soon to find herself Koscuisko’s wife —
The relay stream’s confirmation signal was noise without meaning. Ferinc reached out his hand to shut it off, barely conscious of his own actions.
Then Ferinc sank to his knees on the floor of his secured communications station and wrapped his arms around his belly to keep his stomach from turning itself inside out, and rocked back and forth in agony, remembering when.