The Mountains of Mourning b-5

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Csurik bit his lip. "Yes, lord. If you keep your word."

  "Try me," suggested Miles. His lips wrinkled back on a vulpine smile, absorbing the implied insult without comment.

  Csurik climbed the yard beside Miles as if to an executioner's block. Their entrance created a tableau of astonishment among Karal and his family, clustered around their wooden table where Dea was treating Pym. Pym and Dea looked rather blanker, till Miles made introduction: "Dr. Dea, get out your fast-penta. Here's Lem Csurik come to talk with us."

  Miles steered Lem to a chair. The hill man sat with his hands clenched. Pym, a red and purpling bruise showing at the edges of the white tape circling his chest, took up his stunner and stepped back.

  Dr. Dea muttered under his breath to Miles as he got out the hypospray. "How'd you do that?"

  Miles's hand brushed his pocket. He pulled out a sugar cube and held it up, and grinned through the C of his thumb and finger. Dea snorted, but pursed his lips with reluctant respect.

  Lem flinched as the hypospray hissed on his arm, as if he expected it to hurt.

  "Count backwards from ten," Dea instructed. By the time Lena reached three, he had relaxed; at zero, he giggled.

  "Karal, Ma Karal, Pym, gather round," said Miles. "You are my witnesses. Boys, stay back and stay quiet. No interruptions, please."

  Miles ran through the preliminaries, half a dozen questions designed to set up a rhythm and kill time while the fast-penta took full effect. Lem Csurik grinned foolishly, lolling in his chair, and answered them all with sunny good will. Fast-penta interrogation had been part of Miles's military intelligence course at the Service Academy. The drug seemed to be working exactly as advertised, oddly enough.

  "Did you return to your cabin that morning, after you spent the night at your parents'?"

  "Yes, m'lord." Lem smiled.

  "About what time?"

  "Midmorning."

  Nobody here had a chrono; that was probably as precise an answer as Miles was likely to get. "What did you do when you got there?"

  "Called for Harra. She was gone, though. It frightened me that she was gone. Thought she might've run out on me." Lem hiccoughed. "I want my Harra."

  "Later. Was the baby asleep?"

  "She was. She woke up when I called for Harra. Started crying again. It goes right up your spine."

  "What did you do then?"

  Lem's eyes widened. "I got no milk. She wanted Harra. There's nothing I could do for her."

  "Did you pick her up?"

  "No, lord, I let her lay. There was nothing I could do for her. Harra, she'd hardly let me touch her, she was that nervous about her. Told me I'd drop her or something."

  "You didn't shake her, to stop her screaming?"

  "No, lord, I let her lay. I left to look down the path for Harra."

  "Then where did you go?"

  Lem blinked. "My sister's. I'd promised to help haul wood for a new cabin. Bella — m'other sister — is getting married, y'see, and -"

  He was beginning to wander, as was normal for this drug. "Stop," said Miles. Lem fell silent obediently, swaying slightly in his chair. Miles considered his next question carefully. He was approaching the fine line, here. "Did you meet anyone on the path? Answer yes or no."

  "Yes."

  Dea was getting excited. "Who? Ask him who!"

  Miles held up his hand. "You can administer the antagonist now, Dr. Dea."

  "Aren't you going to ask him? It could be vital!"

  "I can't. I gave my word. Administer the antagonist now, doctor!"

  Fortunately, the confusion of two interrogators stopped Lem's mumbled willing reply to Dea's question. Dea, bewildered, pressed his hypospray against Lem's arm. Lem's eyes, half-closed, snapped open within seconds. He sat up straight and rubbed his arm, and his face.

  "Who did you meet on the path?" Dea asked him directly.

  Lem's lips pressed tight; he looked for rescue to Miles.

  Dea looked too. "Why won't you ask him?"

  "Because I don't need to," said Miles. "I know precisely who Lem met on the path, and why he went on and not back. It was Raina's murderer. As I shall shortly prove. And — witness this, Karal, Ma Karal — that information did not come from Lem's mouth. Confirm!"

  Karal nodded slowly. "I… see, m'lord. That was very good of you."

  Miles gave him a direct stare, his mouth set in a tight smile. "And when is a mystery no mystery at all?"

  Karal reddened, not replying for a moment. Then he said, "You may as well keep on like you're going, m'lord. There's no stopping you now, I suppose."

  "No."

  Miles sent runners to collect the witnesses, Ma Karal in one direction, Zed in a second, Speaker Karal and his eldest in a third. He had Lem wait with Pym, Dea, and himself. Having the shortest distance to cover, Ma Karal arrived back first, with Ma Csurik and two of her sons in tow.

  His mother fell on Lem, embracing him and then looking fearfully over her shoulder at Miles. The younger brothers hung back, but Pym had already moved between them and the door.

  "It's all right, Ma." Lem patted her on the back. "Or… anyway, I'm all right. I'm clear. Lord Vorkosigan believes me."

  She glowered at Miles, still holding Lem's arm. "You didn't let the mutie lord give you that poison drug, did you?"

  "Not poison," Miles denied. "In fact, the drug may have saved his life. That damned near makes it a medicine, I'd say. However" — he turned toward Lem's two younger brothers, and folded his arms sternly — "I would like to know which of you young morons threw the torch on my tent last night?"

  The younger one whitened; the elder, hotly indignant, noticed his brother's expression and cut his denial off in mid-syllable. "You didn't!" he hissed in horror.

  "Nobody," said the white one. "Nobody did."

  Miles raised his eyebrows. There followed a short, choked silence.

  "Well, nobody can make his apologies to Speaker and Ma Karal, then," said Miles, "since it was their sons who were sleeping in the tent last night. I and my men were in the loft."

  The boy's mouth opened in dismay. The youngest Karal stared at the pale Csurik brother, his age mate, and whispered importantly, "You, Dono! You idiot, didn't ya know that tent wouldn't burn? It's real Imperial Service issue!"

  Miles clasped his hands behind his back, and fixed the Csuriks with a cold eye. "Rather more to the point, it was attempted assassination upon your Count's heir, which carries the same capital charge of treason as an attempt upon the Count himself. Or perhaps Dono didn't think of that?"

  Dono was thrown into flummoxed confusion. No need for fast-penta here, the kid couldn't carry off a lie worth a damn. Ma Csurik now had hold of Dono's arm too, without letting go of Lem's; she looked as frantic as a hen with too many chicks, trying to shelter them from a storm.

  "I wasn't trying to kill you, lord!" cried Dono.

  "What were you trying to do, then?"

  "You'd come to kill Lem. I wanted to make you go away. Frighten you away. I didn't think anyone would really get hurt — I mean, it was only a tent!"

  "You've never seen anything burn down, I take it. Have you, Ma Csurik?"

  Lem's mother nodded, lips tight, clearly torn between a desire to protect her son from Miles, and a desire to beat Dono till he bled for his potentially lethal stupidity.

  "Well, but for a chance, you could have killed or horribly injured three of your friends. Think on that, please. In the meantime, in view of your youth and ah, apparent mental defectiveness, I shall hold the treason charge. In return, Speaker Karal and your parents shall be responsible for your good behavior in future, and decide what punishment is appropriate."

  Ma Csurik melted with relief and gratitude. Dono looked as if he'd rather have been shot. His brother poked him and whispered, "Mental defective!" Ma Csurik slapped the taunter on the side of his head, suppressing him effectively.

  "What about your horse, m'lord?" asked Pym.

  "I do not suspect them of the business with the
horse," Miles replied slowly. "The attempt to fire the tent was plain stupidity. The other was… a different order of calculation altogether."

  Zed, who had been permitted to take Pym's horse, returned then with Harra up behind him. Harra entered Speaker Karal's cabin, saw Lem, and stopped with a bitter glare. Lem stood openhanded, his eyes wounded, before her.

  "So, lord," Harra said. "You caught him." Her jaw was clenched in joyless triumph.

  "Not exactly," said Miles. "He came here and turned himself in. He's made his statement under fast-penta, and cleared himself. Lem did not kill Raina."

  Harra turned from side to side. "But I saw he'd been there! He'd left his jacket, and took his good saw and wood planer away with him. I knew he'd been back while I was out! There must be something wrong with your drug!"

  Miles shook his head. "The drug worked fine. Your deduction was correct as far as it went. Lem did visit the cabin while you were out. But when he left, Raina was still alive, crying vigorously. It wasn't Lem."

  She swayed. "Who, then?"

  "I think you know. I think you've been working very hard to deny that knowledge, hence your excessive focus on Lem. As long as you were sure it was Lem, you didn't have to think about the other possibilities."

  "But who else would care?" Harra cried. "Who else would bother?"

  "Who, indeed?" sighed Miles. He walked to the front window and glanced down the yard. The fog was clearing in the full light of morning. The horses were moving uneasily. "Dr. Dea, would you please get a second dose of fast-penta ready?" Miles turned, paced back to stand before the fireplace, its coals still banked for the night. The faint heat was pleasant on his back.

  Dea was staring around, the hypospray in his hand, clearly wondering to whom to administer it. "My lord?" he queried, brows lowering in demand for explanation.

  "Isn't it obvious to you, Doctor?" Miles asked lightly.

  "No, my lord." His tone was slightly indignant.

  "Nor to you, Pym?"

  "Not… entirely, m'lord." Pym's glance, and stunner aim, wavered uncertainly to Harra.

  "I suppose it's because neither of you ever met my grandfather," Miles decided. "He died just about a year before you entered my father's service, Pym. He was born at the very end of the Time of Isolation, and lived through every wrenching change this century has dealt to Barrayar. He was called the last of the Old Vor, but really, he was the first of the new. He changed with the times, from the tactics of horse cavalry to that of flyer squadrons, from swords to atomics, and he changed successfully. Our present freedom from the Cetagandan occupation is a measure of how fiercely he could adapt, then throw it all away and adapt again. At the end of his life he was called a conservative, only because so much of Barrayar had streamed past him in the direction he had led, prodded, pushed, and pointed all his life.

  "He changed, and adapted, and bent with the wind of the times. Then, in his age — for my father was his youngest and sole surviving son, and did not himself marry till middle age — in his age, he was hit with me. And he had to change again. And he couldn't.

  "He begged for my mother to have an abortion, after they knew more or less what the fetal damage would be. He and my parents were estranged for five years after I was born. They didn't see each other or speak or communicate. Everyone thought my father moved us to the Imperial Residence when he became Regent because he was angling for the throne, but in fact it was because the Count my grandfather denied him the use of Vorkosigan House. Aren't family squabbles jolly fun? Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other." Miles strolled back to the window and looked out. Ah, yes. Here it came.

  "The reconciliation was gradual, when it became quite clear there would be no other son," Miles went on. "No dramatic denouement. It helped when the medics got me walking. It was essential that I tested out bright. Most important of all, I never let him see me give up."

  Nobody had dared interrupt this lordly monologue, but it was clear from several expressions that the point of it was escaping them. Since half the point was to kill time, Miles was not greatly disturbed by their failure to track. Footsteps sounded on the wooden porch outside. Pym moved quietly to cover the door with an unobscured angle of fire.

  "Dr. Dea," said Miles, sighting through the window, "would you be so kind as to administer that fast-penta to the first person through the door, as they step in?"

  "You're not waiting for a volunteer, my lord?"

  "Not this time."

  The door swung inward, and Dea stepped forward, raising his hand. The hypospray hissed. Ma Mattulich wheeled to face Dea, the skirts of her work dress swirling around her veined calves, hissing in return — "You dare!" Her arm drew back as if to strike him, but slowed in mid-swing and failed to connect as Dea ducked out of her way. This unbalanced her, and she staggered. Speaker Karal, coming in behind, caught her by the arm and steadied her. "You dare!" she wailed again, then turned to see not only Dea but all the other witnesses waiting: Ma Csurik, Ma Karal, Lem, Harra, Pym. Her shoulders sagged, and then the drug cut in and she just stood, a silly smile fighting with anguish for possession of her harsh face.

  The smile made Miles ill, but it was the smile he needed. "Sit her down, Dea, Speaker Karal."

  They guided her to the chair lately vacated by Lem Csurik. She was fighting the drug desperately, flashes of resistance melting into flaccid docility. Gradually the docility became ascendant, and she sat draped in the chair, grinning helplessly. Miles sneaked a peek at Harra. She stood white and silent, utterly closed.

  For several years after the reconciliation Miles had never been left with his grandfather without his personal bodyguard. Sergeant Bothari had worn the Count's livery, but been loyal to Miles alone, the one man dangerous enough — some said, crazy enough — to stand up to the great General himself. There was no need, Miles decided, to spell out to these fascinated people just what interrupted incident had made his parents think Sergeant Bothari a necessary precaution. Let General Piotr's untarnished reputation serve — Miles, now. As he willed. Miles's eyes glinted.

  Lem lowered his head. "If I had known — if I had guessed — I wouldn't have left them alone together, m'lord. I thought — Harra's mother would take care of her. I couldn't have — I didn't know how -"

  Harra did not look at him. Harra did not look at anything. "Let us conclude this," Miles sighed. Again, he requested formal witness from the crowd in the room and cautioned against interruptions, which tended to unduly confuse a drugged subject. He moistened his lips and turned to Ma Mattulich.

  Again, he began with the standard neutral questions, name, birthdate, parents' names, checkable biographical facts. Ma Mattulich was harder to lull than the cooperative Lem had been, her responses scattered and staccato. Miles controlled his impatience with difficulty. For all its deceptive ease, fast-penta interrogation required skill, skill and patience. He'd got too far to risk a stumble now. He worked his questions up gradually to the first critical ones.

  "Were you there, when Raina was born?"

  Her voice was low and drifting, dreamy. "The birth came in the night. Lem, he went for Jean the midwife. The midwife's son was supposed to go for me but he fell back to sleep. I didn't get there till morning, and then it was too late. They'd all seen."

  "Seen what?"

  "The cat's mouth, the dirty mutation. Monsters in us. Cut them out. Ugly little man." This last, Miles realized, was an aside upon himself. Her attention had hung up on him, hypnotically. "Muties make more muties, they breed faster, overrun… I saw you watching the girls. You want to make mutie babies on clean women, poison us all…"

  Time to steer her back to the main issue. "Were you ever alone with the baby after that?"

  "No, Jean she hung around. Jean knows me. She knew what I wanted. None of her damn business. And Harra was always there. Harra must not know. Harra must not… why should she get off so soft? The poison must be in her. Must have come from her Da, I lay only with her Da and they were all wrong but the one."r />
  Miles blinked. "What were all wrong?" Across the room Miles saw Speaker Karal's mouth tighten. The headman caught Miles's glance and stared down at his own feet, absenting himself from the proceedings. Lem, his lips parted in absorption, and the rest of the boys were listening with alarm. Harra hadn't moved.

  "All my babies," Ma Mattulich said.

  Harra looked up sharply at that, her eyes widening.

  "Was Harra not your only child?" Miles asked. It was an effort to keep his voice cool, calm; he wanted to shout. He wanted to be gone from here…

  "No, of course not. She was my only clean child, I thought. I thought, but the poison must have been hidden in her. I fell on my knees and thanked God when she was born clean, a clean one at last, after so many, so much pain… I thought I had finally been punished enough. She was such a pretty baby, I thought it was over at last. But she must have been mutie after all, hidden, tricksy, sly…"

  "How many," Miles choked, "babies did you have?"

  "Four, besides Harra my last."

  "And you killed all four of them?" Speaker Karal, Miles saw, gave a slow nod to his feet.

  "No!" said Ma Mattulich. Indignation broke through the fast-penta wooze briefly. "Two were born dead already, the first one, and the twisted-up one. The one with too many fingers and toes, and the one with the bulgy head, those I cut. Cut out. My mother, she watched over me to see I did it right. Harra, I made it soft for Harra. I did it for her."

  "So you have in fact murdered not one infant, but three?" said Miles frozenly. The younger witnesses in the room, Karal's boys and the Csurik brothers, looked horrified. The older ones, Ma Mattulich's contemporaries, who must have lived through the events with her, looked mortified, sharing her shame. Yes, they all must have known.

  "Murdered?" said Ma Mattulich. "No! I cut them out. I had to. I had to do the right thing." Her chin lifted proudly, then drooped. "Killed my babies, to please, to please… I don't know who. And now you call me a murderer? Damn you! What use is your justice to me now? I needed it then — where were you then?" Suddenly, shockingly, she burst into tears, which wavered almost instantly into rage. "If mine must die then so must hers! Why should she get off so soft? Spoiled her… I tried my best, I did my best, it's not fair…"