The Devil and Deep Space (14 page)

It was beyond possibility that the Ichogatra princess would accept anything less than the first place in Koscuisko’s household — for herself or for her children. That was to have been Marana’s place, the subordinate wife, the secular wife, the acknowledged but not–privileged children, the match a man made for pure affection and not by his father’s devising. The Ichogatra princess would never consent to take second place to a mere gentlewoman.

“We will talk about it later.” If he thought for one instant that he was to escape explaining, he was mistaken. “We have already upset your son, Andrej, by this unexpected departure. Now come with me and greet your child. He will be worried. He will not understand what is going on.”

Anton Andreievitch had just made an unimaginable leap in status over the heads of the sons and the daughters of Andrej’s brothers and married sisters. Over even Andrej’s brothers themselves, conceptually. The enormity of it all should stagger Anton, but he was only eight years old, and fortunately would only understand that something unusual had occurred.

Andrej held out his hand; Marana took it. Turning around, she led her now–husband to where Anton Andreievitch stood bravely in his little blue–and–yellow coat, waiting to be introduced to the alien creature in black that was his father.

###

It had been so long since he had seen her that Andrej couldn’t tell how angry Marana might be, or what might be going on in the privacy of her mind. Once they had been so close that they knew each other’s joys and disappointments as though they had shared one mind between them; now she was a stranger. Nor could he afford to open up his heart and mind to his Marana, ever again, for fear of what she might see there.

Her legal position and that of their son was as firmly grounded now as he could make them. She would have power, but Andrej was afraid she would have very little support. The election was unblessed. Marana was to remain the anomaly, the gentlewoman, the woman who would continue to represent the loss of face and failure of contractual arrangements that this marriage entailed. He was leaving. He had the easy part.

She led him by the hand in the correct manner to where a little boy was standing, waiting with his nurse. Little brown shoes of soft brown leather. A tiny jacket of blue, and yellow trimmings; an absurdly formal lace cravat, and a face that wrung Andrej’s heart because it was like Marana’s face and like his own, together, and yet a face distinct unto itself.

He had seen pictures. Hologrammic records. Nothing had prepared him for this moment.

“Here is your son, my lord,” Marana said. “And if he is not filial, may all Saints under the canopy of Heaven rise up to rebuke me. This is your child, whom I have named after his father to be Anton Andreievitch.”

For a moment the absurdity of the situation, the tyranny of tradition, threatened to overwhelm Andrej. Filial.
If he is not filial may all Saints rise up to rebuke me
. Why should Andrej Ulexeievitch rejoice in a filial son, when he himself was not a filial son?

Why should any son be filial, when it had been in the name of filial piety that Andrej himself had sacrificed his honor and his decency and his ability to sleep untroubled by his dreams, and become Inquisitor?

“He has his father’s name, lady, and I am very pleased to know him for my son.”

The ritual just completed would not have been reviewed beforehand with this little boy, but they were safely returned to anticipated ground now. This piece of the homecoming speech was the same for almost any circumstance. The little boy looked up into Andrej’s face with a look of relief and expectation.

Andrej didn’t want to waste a moment longer with ritual and ceremony; this was his son. But his son was a child, and children could be frightened easily by the unexpected. Anton had lines that he would have been coached in and rehearsed to speak. There was no help for it but to go forward.

Andrej finished the required text. “If he can also claim his mother’s courage and her strength, he will be blessed indeed. Anton Andreievitch. Do you know who I am?”

Anton was concentrating so hard on what he was to say that it seemed to take a moment for him to realize that this was his cue. He gave himself a little shake, then, that reminded Andrej almost irresistibly of a puppy climbing out of an unwelcome bath. “You are my father, sir, Andrej son of Alexie who is son of Slijan before him. Give me your blessing, sir, I beseech you, so that I may grow in wisdom and in learning to become worthy that I bear your name.”

It seemed a very long speech for a little boy to have to learn. Full of archaic constructions and little–used words. It was the end of the speech making, though; or almost the end.

“With all my heart I bless you, my own son.” Now it was over. Now Andrej could sink down slowly to crouch on his heels at Anton–height and look at him, really look at him. His son. His. “Come to me, then, Anton, let me have a kiss. I am so glad to finally meet you.”

Anton did not seem inclined to do any such thing. Why should he run into a stranger’s arms, and kiss him dutifully? Anton’s nurse gave Anton’s shoulder an encouraging pat that was at least one part gentle push. Anton stepped forward. Putting his little hands on Andrej’s shoulders he kissed Andrej shyly, one cheek, the other cheek, the first cheek again.

Andrej held out his arms and Anton, if a little reluctantly, permitted himself to be picked up.

Andrej stood with his son in his arms. He hadn’t thought Anton would be so light. “Your mother has told me so many good things about you.” And people would tell Anton things about Andrej sooner or later that were not wonderful at all. “I’d like to introduce you to my Security, because they have heard all about you. From me.”

A lie. But perhaps one that could be forgiven him. Andrej didn’t like to talk about Anton; he was ashamed of never having met him, though his rationalizations for not having gone home were well rehearsed and firmly in his mind to be available whenever he might need them. And what business was it of anybody’s but his own? What difference did it make to anybody whether he had a child or not?

He carried his child slowly back to where Security waited, noting with amusement that the look on Chief Stildyne’s unlovely face was almost one of horror. Security did not have much to do with children as a rule. Still, Anton was a brave young soul, and looked up into Stildyne’s ravaged face with grave courtesy that showed no tinge of fear or horror, putting his arms out unbidden to be held by a man of whom Andrej himself could be afraid — and yet was not, knowing in the marrow of his bones that Stildyne would never do him harm.

Did Anton know that? Was there some special insight that a child’s heart enabled that gave Anton the power to look into Stildyne’s very ugly face — the flattened nose, the mismatched eyebrows, the cheekbone smashed up beneath the eye, the thin pale lips, the narrow squinting eyes — and see only a man who loved his father?

“My Chief of Security,” Andrej explained, as Stildyne held the child in his arms and the others gathered around him. “Like unto the house–master, and these the people of his team. His crew. How do you say it in plain Standard, though? His what?”

“His watch, sir?” Anton guessed. It was the first thing Anton had said to Andrej after the rehearsed speech of welcome, and it was very apropos. Lek Kerenko caught Andrej’s eye and grinned, openly and freely, with obvious approval

“Quite so.” Andrej was a little surprised, even, because it was the best word for the problem. Also because Anton had clearly been not only listening, but thinking. “Here is my good Smish Smath. Do you see many women on guard–watch here, Anton Andreievitch?”

He was going to have to cut this short in a moment. The household stood waiting; he had to let Anton lead him into the house. It would not be so very much longer, though, surely.

“No, my lord father,” Anton said, with his eyes so wide that the whites showed all around. “Is she very fierce?”

And Andrej wanted his Security to know his son, because Anton Andreievitch was the best part of himself that he had left to share with people who had earned his deep regard and gratitude.

###

It got very late, and Marana was exhausted from the emotional strain of the day and its shocking surprises.

Andrej and his people were still on a different time, perhaps; and Andrej seemed to be genuinely besotted with his son, which more than anything endeared the stranger with the face of the friend of her childhood to her once more.

He might have become a stranger to her; he might not move or sound or even smell like Andrej as Marana had once known him. But at least he knew to cherish their son Anton. She could forgive him much for that, and save the aching outrage that she nursed with regard to his long absence for later contemplation.

She had a much more immediate situation to address. The household had to be allowed to stand down, and to sleep. The master–bedroom suite had been opened for Andrej Ulexeievitch for the first time in more than nine years. There was to be no getting around it; custom and practice and common expectation required her to wait upon her husband in his bed.

There was no escape that Marana could see. As soon as Andrej had sent word that he was coming home, she’d known that she was going to have to sleep with him, at least in the most obvious sense of the term — in the same bed. This bed was an antique, an old–fashioned Dolgorukij autocrat’s bed with two tiers of steps up to the platform, its great carved headboard with the family seal of one of Koscuisko’s maternal antecedents, more than twice as wide as it was long, with room for a man and his wife and the nurse and the baby.

When Ferinc came to speak privately with her he cradled her close in the dark in her own bed and slept with her in his arms, with his dark hair spread over the pillow.

Being in this bed with Andrej was almost not even being in the same room. There were two sets of curtains that marked the bed space off from the rest of the room, marked off in turn from the rest of the house by its own interior walls, like a house inside a house.

What was she to do? Engage with him? How could she?

She thought about feigning sleep. That had the burden of tradition to recommend it, a signal Andrej would understand without any potentially dangerous words exchanged. To feign sleep would only put things off, however; she would still have to face him tomorrow. And tomorrow night. And the night after that. She was expected to sleep with him for five nights running, in token of her gladness at his return — tradition. It would be awkward to feign sleep for five nights running. It would not be fair to Andrej.

Marana sat at the edge of the great bed in her dressing gown with her hands in her lap, trying to decide how she was to approach this. What she was to say. The problem wasn’t Ferinc, not really; Andrej would be hurt, perhaps angry, if he ever found out, but she was well within her rights to accept reconciliation from a Malcontent in the absence of her lord. In the long absence of her lord. In the long and frequently silent absence of her lord, who scarcely spoke to her from his heart, even when he did send her some word. No.

The problem was not really so much Ferinc, and why should it even become an issue, when Ferinc was Malcontent and people minded their own business where Malcontents were concerned?

The problem was Andrej. The thought of exchanging intimacies with a man she had only just re–met made her skin crawl, and yet Andrej gave no sign of any such reservations.

Andrej was coming in through the bed curtains to his bed now, in sleeping dress as she was; which for a man meant a shirt, of course. And slippers and a robe, as well, but there was no way around it — this was a man who was naked beneath his garment, and he was coming into the bed enclosure to sit down next to her.

Looking at her he smiled with a sort of defeated hopelessness, and Marana realized with a shock of icy horror that not only was Andrej stark naked beneath his shirt but so was she. She looked at her hands, and not at him.

Seating himself at the edge of the bed at a respectable arm’s length from her, Andrej spoke, almost the first time he’d spoken directly to her since he’d arrived. “This bed is the size of my room on the
Ragnarok
,” Andrej said. “And I’m an officer. I have twice as much space as anybody. You could put a full Security team into a room the size of this bed. I had forgotten. It is a little bit intimidating, Marana.”

She didn’t know what she could say. He had offered her conversation, clearly trying to solicit her reaction. She had no reaction. She was benumbed with disgust and dismay to think that she was naked in a bed with a naked man who might as well be a complete stranger.

“That’s why there are curtains, my lord. To dampen the echo.” She didn’t want to be hurtful or cold to him, just because he was a stranger. He had a right to expect at least basic courtesy from her. He had just made her the second–most important woman in his entire family, not excepting his elder sister, not excepting Zsuzsa, the Autocrat’s Proxy.

Her son would inherit the controlling interest in one of the oldest, richest, most powerful familial corporations in the entire Dolgorukij Combine. Surely that called for friendly behavior, at least, on her part.

“And the entire bed, perhaps the size of the bolster. Perhaps not quite so large as that. You have slept in decent beds these years past, Marana. Tell me, which side of the bed is it that you prefer?”

She could set that bolster between them, under pretense of desiring the support. Then it would be less like being in bed with him. “I take the near side, Andrej. When Anton was a baby, it was this side that was nearest to the nursery.” Not this same bed, of course, but her own bed, in her own apartment. The bed that Ferinc shared with her from time to time, and took the far side of the mattress when he did.

Andrej nodded, but did not get up immediately to go to the other side of the bed. He was looking at the bed curtains right in front of her. Maybe he was just not looking at her, Marana thought, and the fact that there were curtains there was incidental.

“My lord father and my lady mother came to the airfield today, Marana. I suppose you heard.”