Prisoner of Conscience (12 page)

Some of the bread.

Quite a bit of the side-vegetable.

And one of the two glasses of caraminson wine, no more than two mouthfuls of fluid really, but a powerful soother and muscle relaxant that would ensure they both slept well and deeply, to the effective healing of their bodies — when they slept.

She couldn’t talk to the officer.

She kept getting distracted.

It was not precisely comfortable, but it wasn’t awkward, either; she couldn’t say quite how she felt about it.

The servers took away the dirty dishes and laid out fruit and cheese and sweets, and went away. Koscuisko crossed his forearms on the table’s edge and leaned forward, regarding her with a very inquiring look in his mirror-silver eyes.

“Tell me what is in your mind, Chief,” he suggested. “It may be that I should know, and if I have offended I can only ask for consideration. But I am very stupid just at the moment. And I am not accustomed to the sight of your shoulders — ”

The sleep-shift was a little loose, and the wrap-robe was not snug. The collar lay open across her shoulders; it might even have slipped to one side or another during the course of the meal without her taking much note of it.

“ — and it becomes very difficult to remember that you are Chief Warrant Officer Caleigh Samons. Rather than a woman whose body I desire very much.”

Well, that was nothing new. Was it? He’d never told her, not in so many words. She’d never needed to be told. It had always been obvious enough.

She was making a mistake.

She shouldn’t be considering it, only — only she couldn’t shake the thought. One eight, two eights, that was all she would ever ask. Two eights to lie in the arms of a man who could take care of her. She was more than Koscuisko’s match in combat drill; it wasn’t that.

Joslire had trusted him.

Joslire was dead.

“That’s two of us tired, Your Excellency.” To gloss things over and go away would be best. It would be safer. Koscuisko did not have to do with subordinate troops; and had apparently set that between them in his mind from the beginning. She had always appreciated his respect for her professional skill. She didn’t want to lose that. “I should go see about a room. I’m glad to have had company, though. After what’s happened.”

Stupid Koscuisko might be, and she might be in shock. He looked at her directly, no defenses, no pretense. He was not the Chief Medical Officer, nor the Ship’s Inquisitor. He was Andrej Koscuisko. Just at this moment that was all he was.

“It is not strictly speaking necessary for you to go out to an empty bed. There is in the next room one which is very suitable, and already made up to welcome you. We will be Caleigh and Andrej just this once, perhaps. I could take comfort from your body, Caleigh. And it could be that you would have some comfort from mine.”

Oh, yes, precisely. The idea exactly. Yes.

She didn’t know exactly how to say it, so she didn’t say anything. She only stood up slowly, debating moment by moment about the wisdom of this course of action.

She walked uncertainly in slippered feet toward the bedroom and stopped in the doorway.

Now or never. Point of decision. Make or break.

Koscuisko took her carefully around the waist from behind, and kissed the side of her neck with contemplative deliberation; and she knew that at that moment she was the center of Koscuisko’s universe.

He had the power of complete absorption, absolute concentration on whatever had caught his interest at the moment.

Right now he was centered on her; and raised his bandaged hand to stroke the opposite side of her throat as he kissed her.

She was drunk with arousal, but whether it was the pleasure his caress gave her or her enjoyment of the intensity of his attention — or even the caraminson wine — Caleigh didn’t know.

She didn’t think it mattered.

He had said that he admired her shoulders, of all things?

She shrugged the wrap-robe down around her elbows, and leaned back against Koscuisko’s welcome strength.

To affirm life honored life, and to honor life was to respect the dead.

Koscuisko kissed her throat, and Caleigh shivered with the pure pleasure of it, and ceased to think about anything at all in the world except Koscuisko’s touch and Koscuisko’s kisses.

###

Andrej awoke to a restrained bustle of activity in the other room and blinked his eyes at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the confused memories that jumbled in his mind in the disorder of an uncompleted dream. It was not a familiar bed. There was a warmth to it that was more than of his body, and a fragrance that was familiar, but out of place. What was going on?

Someone was speaking low-voiced in the outer room. Kaydence. “Packed and ready, Chief. There’s word with the housemaster from Lieutenant Plugrath. Wants to inspect the officer’s escort before we’re to leave. Something like that.”

“I’m not going to ask you how you know, Kay.”

There, that was Chief Samons’s voice, quiet and serene and even affectionate. Kaydence had an insatiable appetite for information that he was not supposed to have, and was always fraying braids in which he had no business just to see whether it could be done. Within limits. Kaydence’s governor kept him from too much meddling.

It had been meddling with Bench systems that had gotten Kaydence his Bond in the first place, after all. “Chief.” Kaydence sounded aggrieved. “I came by the information honestly. Courier delivery, voice confirm. You slander me.”

It was like an addiction of sorts with Kaydence, and in the years Andrej had known him he had fallen foul of his governor more than once when enthusiasm outran prudence. There was something else, though. Andrej frowned, thinking hard.

“I don’t know if that’s possible, Kay. You’d be twice as offended if I implied you couldn’t find out.”

Chief Samons.

It was the fragrance of her body, in the bed.

Sitting up suddenly, Andrej stared at the still-dimpled pillow to his right.

Chief Samons?

It had been Caleigh, and there was one of her long blond hairs on the pillow.

Caleigh, and she had called him by his name, and he had numbered all the secrets in his mind that he had ever wanted to know about her body and solved them one by one with self-indulgent thoroughness.

His fish rose up amidst the bedclothes and crested at the very thought of it, but Andrej could not be bothered with the importunities of his masculine gender. Let his fish breach. There were people in the next room. He had to get dressed. It was morning. The clock-panel in the headboard of the bed made that quite clear.

“How’s the officer?” Kaydence asked.

Andrej had turned to get up and find his under-linen, but the question froze him in mid-pivot with a handful of bedclothes half-raised in the air.

“He slept well, I think. There’s a Chigan masseur. And he prescribed caraminson, I’d tip him twice if I could.”

Nothing.

No hint of hesitation, no vague suspicion of a concealed truth, no stutter. Nothing. Freed from his paralysis, Andrej set foot to carpeted floor to find his clothing. It was to be their secret, then.

“I don’t know how well Code slept, Chief, not even with all the help he had.” Kaydence’s voice sounded thoughtful. “What about our Chief, how is she doing?”

It wasn’t the sort of question a bond-involuntary would normally ask a superior. It was a little too personal; and that could mean impertinent. But Kaydence asked it quite naturally and calmly, taking care of Chief Samons as though she were one of them — one of the Bonds. In a strictly limited sense.

Kaydence’s artless question brought home the full enormity of Andrej’s loss with renewed force. They had all taken care of each other. Now one of them was dead; and if they weren’t careful, Code might follow where Joslire had gone. A bond-involuntary who couldn’t work his way through survivor’s guilt could force his governor into overload. It was one of the ways in which a bond-involuntary could commit suicide: a particularly self-punitive way, to brood on one’s own failings until one’s governor took over the task of self-flagellation and carried it to its ultimate extreme. Very horrible.

But not as horrible as what he meant to do to the people who had stolen Joslire away from them. A governor on overload meant death in agony, but without the proper drugs that death could take mere hours to conclude. He would execute a masterpiece, a Tenth Level Command Termination that would last eight days and more before it was concluded. Joslire would be avenged.

He had to get to the Domitt Prison, because he had experiments to perform before the Port Authority found his prey.

That meant getting dressed.

His uniform was waiting in the bedroom for him, but his boots were not; Andrej went out in slippered feet to see how he was to speak to Chief Samons, and get his boots at the same time. Kaydence had gone. Chief Samons sat at the meal-table having some cavene; and stood up as he entered the room, bowing her salute.

“His Excellency slept well?”

Only a very subtle hint of the joke, there. And no mockery. But no trace of the woman who had welcomed his embrace, either. Just as well that his fish had got tired of being ignored, and tucked its head back sullenly into his hip-wrap, where it belonged.

“Thank you, Miss Samons. Excellently well. And you?”

“Just what the doctor ordered. With respect.”

No awkwardness, and no denial. This was not so difficult as Andrej had feared. It was not to be necessary to pretend that nothing had happened; it was not to be expected that it would happen again.

Fair was fair.

“I’m glad to hear it. Did I hear Kaydence telling you about a word from Plugrath?”

He was better off without the distraction she would represent, had she hinted that he might again embrace her.

He wanted nothing to interfere with his vengeance for Joslire.

###

Administrator Geltoi watched the small convoy approach, frowning into the early morning sun. To have waited so long for a Writ, only to be delayed at the last moment by this unfortunate accident — really, he had suffered reversals before, but this was a bitter one.

That wasn’t even all.

Koscuisko had injured his hand during the attack, and would doubtless need some days yet of recovery time.

Couldn’t he just direct his Bonds to the work, wasn’t that what they were for? Yet a wounded man had a right to expect light duty in respect for an injury. Try as he did, Geltoi couldn’t make out the execution of the Writ to be “light duty” no matter how he approached the problem in his mind.

The little convoy was closer by the moment, and would soon be hidden behind the compound wall that circled the administration building and the prison alike. Geltoi got out his conning-glasses; he could tell which one was Koscuisko from Belan’s description — seated in the senior officer’s place, wearing duty black in token of his station as one of
Scylla
’s Ship’s Primes, short and fair-headed, no beard.

Geltoi frowned.

From where he stood, Koscuisko almost looked Nurail.

A trick of the light, surely, and there was no cause to suspect any such thing. The officer’s brief said his system of origin was the Dolgorukij Combine. There were no Nurail in the Dolgorukij Combine that Geltoi had ever heard of, still less any Nurail contaminating the blood of one of the Combine’s oldest and most influential — if not richest — noble houses. It was an accident of nature, a freak of genetics. Yes.

The convoy didn’t swing wide at the crossroads to make for the gate outside the prison’s entrance, though. Instead the convoy took the branch that led toward the administration building.

This was interesting. For Koscuisko to come to him straightaway — and it would be Koscuisko’s own idea, Belan had his instructions — was the behavior appropriate to a subordinate officer; and very gracious of Koscuisko to have made the public gesture. Geltoi smiled.

Yes.

Not Nurail at all.

The convoy cleared the perimeter gate and pulled up in front of the administration building, out of Geltoi’s line of sight beneath the second-story overhang. Geltoi sat down behind his desk-table to wait.

After a moment’s time Belan signaled. “Administrator. Your pardon, sir. The Judicial officer has asked for a short meeting.”

Yes, very nice. It was an interesting sensation, to receive such public tokens of respect from a ranking Fleet officer. Making up his mind to forgive Koscuisko in advance for the days he would surely be less than productive, Geltoi keyed his respond.

“A surprise. Of course. Immediately, Belan.” If he’d been able to foresee this, he might have laid a small welcome out in his office, some pastry, something to drink. But that might indicate that he’d expected Koscuisko’s courtesy as his right, rather than being pleasantly surprised, not at all intending on asserting his technically superior rank as Koscuisko’s administrative commander, and so forth. So perhaps it was just as well this way after all.

When the door to Geltoi’s office opened it was both wings of the double doors at once, two people opening the door, two people coming through it — and behind them, Andrej Koscuisko. With his surviving Bonds, yes, the green piping on the sleeves of their uniform set them apart as bond-involuntary. The woman behind Koscuisko in turn would logically be the Chief of Security who would accompany a senior officer: and a stunning Chief of Security she was, too.

Koscuisko stopped four paces in front of Geltoi’s desk-table and bowed with formal and unforced respect. “Administrator.” Well, he could still be taken for Nurail, Geltoi supposed; tear his clothing, soil his face, let his hair grow unkempt and greasy, and perhaps some confusion might exist. But for the rest of it Koscuisko was clearly too intelligent and too well-educated to be taken for Nurail. He had manners.

“I am Andrej Koscuisko, I present myself with apologies for the delay. We are obliged to you for your kind understanding.” In the matter of a day for mourning, clearly. “That the Domitt Prison has also some loss suffered, our condolences. I have brought the Writ to Inquire to support the Judicial function at the Domitt Prison, Administrator, and to that end I am at your disposal and command.”