Hour of Judgement

by Susan R. Matthews

  Slipping back quietly into the crowded room, Robert returned to his post. No one seemed to have missed him; it had taken him only a short period of time. He smoothed his face into its mask of professional readiness and stood at his post.

  What had he done?

  He couldn’t think about it.

  But it was too immense, and too unimaginable, and he couldn’t not think around the edges of it, no matter how desperately he tried.

  ###

  The First Lieutenant was unhappy to begin with, and the sight of a Nurail workman staring greedily through the clearwall at his masters and their women within was intrinsically offensive. “You!” Wyrlann shouted, meaning to call Security from within doors, raising his arm and pointing. “You, you scabby piece of Nurail trash, what do you think you’re doing?”

  The workman seemed to jump, as if startled, turning a pale anxious — guilty — face toward the Lieutenant, backing away. Opening his mouth to speak, but Wyrlann wasn’t interested in anything any Nurail had to say to him.

  “Lurking around out-of-doors, you’ve no business here. Free Government, is it?”

  Advancing on the workman where the Nurail stood with his back to a tall while pillar. Security had better be here quickly, or they’d look foolish in front of the Danzilar’s house-staff. There would be penalties assessed for embarrassing Captain Lowden in front of the Danzilar prince.

  “I’ll have Security on you before you can — ”

  Something hit him.

  Something struck him in the throat, he couldn’t breathe.

  Cast down into a black unreasoning world of blind bewilderment Wyrlann tried to fix his mind on what had happened, but could not.

  And died.

  ###

  A door in the clear-wall of the great assembly room had been left halfway open, because of all the people that were inside, Hanner supposed. There was a man come out into the night; and Hanner didn’t see him, didn’t so much as notice he was there, until the harsh shout of confrontation shook him from his anguished focus on Sylyphe and the Inquisitor at last.

  “You!”

  The First Lieutenant, Wyrlann. It had to be. He had heard the man described to him, and there was the uniform, Command Branch markings — this was the man who had hurt Megh that way, the black beast, the obscene monster, it was him.

  “You, you scabby piece of Nurail trash, what do you think you’re doing?”

  The dreadful image of his friend’s abused body rose up white and red in Hanner’s mind’s-eye to overlay the figure of the Lieutenant as he stood like a chipped piece of semi-opaque layer-rock stuck in a hole in his gardener’s shed to let a little bit of light in. Skelern could not focus on the man. He could scarcely even stir, for the horror of it. To see the Lieutenant, and not so much as spit on him, after what he had done — to see him standing on his feet, in his fine uniform, and Megh helpless and naked in the white light of the recovery room, with just a hospital blanket to cover her over from the casual gaze of any stranger —

  The Lieutenant stalked toward him imperiously, and Hanner shrank back against the roof-pillar but could not seem to move himself further than that to flee. There was too much conflict in his heart between hatred and self-preservation.

  “Lurking around out-of-doors, you’ve no business here. Free Government, is it?”

  In the extremity of his surprise and shock Skelern’ s senses seemed preternaturally sharp. The Lieutenant’s voice sounded as if it was a very long away. He could hear himself breathing. He could hear his heart beat. He could hear the little sounds all around him, behind him, as if of something or someone with them on the veranda. An animal in the shrubbery, or a little breeze.

  Except that there was no breeze, no little wind, no animal free to move about within the Danzilar’s garden. This was too large an animal. What Skelern heard was footsteps.

  A sudden and irrational panic paralyzed him, held him to his place without a single movement. There was another sound now, a sound like the swift passage of a diving-bird, or the drop of a heavy piece of ripe fruit from the highest branches of a tree. A knife, a thrown knife, passing swift and sure over Hanner’s right shoulder to strike the First Lieutenant with such force that the blood shot upward like a fountain, clean and bright, and Wyrlann’s head reeled sideways from his neck to hang at the tether-end of a narrow scrap of flesh as Wyrlann’s body collapsed from the blow.

  It was a frightful thing, gut-wrenching, and Hanner’s face worked without any sound, trying to call out. Trying to shout. Trying to warn the Lieutenant by sheer reflex, but it wouldn’t do the Lieutenant any good, because the Lieutenant lay crumpled across the wide white steps that led down to the garden, with the blood running down into the earth and his head hanging from his carcass by a thread.

  Trembling, Hanner took step forward, desperate to give the alarm. But an entire ocean of people was coming toward him now, rushing out of the great hall onto the veranda steps like the water in a tidal bore. Security. And they had seized Skelern and bound him, carried him down into the garden toward the grisly thing and forced him to his knees on the blood-sodden lawn next to the still-twitching body on the stairs before he could so much as catch his breath.

  ###

  Sylyphe Tavart was awake, and at the same time dreaming.

  She had never seen so grand a dancing hall in all of her life. It outshone even the great ceremonial cathedral at Saldona, where her mother had been chief of accounts.

  She was wearing the traditional colored scarf of a marriageable woman for the first time in her life, and before she had left the house her mother had examined the folds of fabric over Sylyphe’s modest bosom and sighed — but declined to rearrange the folds, a habit of her mother’s that Sylyphe had been dreading.

  And then walking down the reception line Andrej Koscuisko had called her out, spoken to her, kissed her hand with flattering courtesy and released her fingers from his grasp with something that seemed very like reluctance to Sylyphe. Dance with the daughter of the house, he had said, and Sylyphe had loved him then and there for treating her like the grown girl that she was, if her mother only realized.

  Had loved him for suggesting it, yes, and had not dared to put any more weight on it than that; so when Andrej Koscuisko — the reception line broken up, the dances about to begin — had sought them out and presented himself to her mother once more to “request the pleasure of your daughter’s company” it was almost more than Sylyphe could believe.

  It was a sallbrey, the first dance. She had studied the Dolgorukij folk-dances diligently in order to be able to be a credit to her mother and to Iaccary Cordage and Textile when the time came to demonstrate their desire to participate in all of the Danzilar prince’s goals. She knew the steps in a sallbrey, they were among the easiest to learn and to perform, and she could concentrate all of her energies on fixing this moment in her mind forever and ever after this.

  He was the inheriting son of the Koscuisko prince, and in the Dolgorukij Combine he outranked the Danzilar prince himself. The wealth of the Koscuisko familial corporation was staggering, but more than that, he was the Ship’s Inquisitor, a man with the power of life and death — sweet easeful healing or atrocious torment — both under his authority.

  Dancing with her.

  A little taller than she was, but not too much so; she felt perfectly at ease with him — or at least she didn’t feel awkward. Taller, and all in duty black, for everyone to see — the warmth of his body, the feel of the supple muscle of his fore-arm, the elegance of his small white hands, the effortless grace with which he danced, the strength held in reserve . . .

  The figure of the dance carried them across the dance floor and back again. She could catch glimpses of their reflection in the clear-walls at the side of the room, the bright lights reflecting off the glass like a mirror. He was her lord, and she was his princess — at least while they danced the sallbrey.

  She was beautiful.

  Partnered by the son of the Koscu
isko prince, a grown girl now even in her mother’s conservative estimation, she was a princess in his arms, and he smiled and chatted with her with unaffected simplicity and candor while they danced.

  How does the daughter of the Tavart this evening? The medication you prepared is very good indeed, it works quite well. And kind of you to take thought for the leavings. I saw a man for an arthritis of the joints who sat and wept as we our interview conducted, and all to be back at his home for so long as he could smell the flowers.

  He carried a faint perfume with him for his own part, a musky-peppery scent that seemed to be a thing of soap and skin rather than a grooming-fragrance. She could not analyze it into its component parts, but she dizzied herself trying to fix the exact taste of it within her heart and mind forever. Oh, if she could only make it last, if she could fold the fabric of time back upon itself and keep this instant of transcendent joy forever she would not grudge the price. Whatever it might be.

  The dance could not last forever.

  But they were interrupted even before the last few measures of the tune signaled an end to bliss and fantasy.

  One of the Danzilar’s house-men stood at the front of the ranks of observers, and as Sylyphe passed by in the arms of the Koscuisko prince she noticed one of the Ragnarok’s Security was there as well — a very tall man, and ugly, with a ruined face so flattened by nature or by accident it looked as though his features had been razed flat from forehead to chin. She saw them there, and knew that the Koscuisko prince could see them too; maybe they had only come to watch?

  She knew as soon as she caught sight of them that she was not to be so lucky. Koscuisko turned his head away when they passed, but almost at once turned back and gave a nod. So it was over.

  “Oh, this is — very unfortunate indeed,” Koscuisko said. “Come, we must escape. Follow with me.”

  He danced her out of the figure of the dance, off of the dance floor, so gracefully it seemed part of the dance itself. The Security were waiting for them; how had Koscuisko brought them so precisely to the place? She could spare little of her mind to wonder at that. She was to be deprived of her lord, who had never been her lord, who had been hers only so long as she could dance with him. She was bereft. She was her mother’s daughter all the same, and knew she could not show her disappointment.

  No words passed between Koscuisko and his man, who only bowed. His fingers seemed to twitch, was it just nerves? Or was it a message? Because Koscuisko sighed, and spoke to the Danzilar’s house-man.

  “Escort the daughter of the house Tavart back to her mother, then, with my profound apologies. Sylyphe. Miss Tavart. I must beg that you excuse me. I am asked for.”

  He was not just asked for but desired. Profoundly. Passionately. Fiercely. Couldn’t he tell how much she wanted him?

  Or could he tell, and saved her face as best he could?

  She cast about for some polite response, but Koscuisko didn’t wait.

  Koscuisko bowed and kissed her hand, and it seemed to Sylyphe that he almost touched her fingers to his cheek as he straightened from his bow.

  She could not be sure.

  And he was gone.

  The house-man bowed in turn and gestured with his hand for her to precede him through the crowd. To go back to her mother. To sit alone for the rest of the evening, for how could she countenance another partner, who had danced with the Koscuisko prince?

  Chapter Seven

  “This piece of trash.” Hanner knelt low on the ground beside the now-covered corpse with someone’s boot planted firmly between his shoulder-blades to ensure he wouldn’t be tempted to try to run away. He couldn’t see a thing except for blood, and the boots. What he could hear was hard for him to understand, stunned as he was by the shock of the event and Security’s rough handling. “Andrej. Is there anything to be done? Anything at all?”

  “No, nothing, Captain.” He’d heard that voice before, not long before, cold and moderate in pitch, with an accent. Dolgorukij accent. “Traumatic amputation, there’s complete severance for spinal, and the brain is more than six-eighths gone already. It would be a very slim chance even if we had the resources and had caught it sooner. And the resources are not here, and we did not catch it soon enough by half. There’s nothing I can do.”

  He didn’t know what a Dolgorukij accent might be, but Koscuisko was Dolgorukij, and he had heard Koscuisko in hospital. And in the Tavart’s parlor, of course, later on.

  “Were you able to actually see anything, Captain Lowden?” Maybe that voice was familiar, too. But Hanner was still too confused in his mind to put a name to it.

  “Unfortunately not, Specialist Vogel.” Captain Lowden, again? That would make sense. The dominant voice one way or the other, or so it seemed. Skelern felt sick to his stomach, and hoped he wasn’t going to vomit. It would be such a mess. And there was such a mess already . . . “All I really saw was Wyrlann turn and point. And then his head jumped off his shoulders. Quite a sight.”

  The Captain’s voice came closer; the foot moved off his back. “And this is the man poor Wyrlann was pointing at. Hadn’t expected to be caught about his dirty business, obviously. I’m surprised he had the nerve to go through with the assassination, what with Wyrlann looking right at him.”

  What man was that? There’d been someone On the veranda, moving as quietly as a small breeze in the bushes?

  “You’re quite sure there was nothing else, sir,” the second voice urged. Someone kicked Hanner in the stomach, suddenly and very hard, and laid him flat on the ground, gasping for breath. The lawn held the blood like a sponge, and yet somebody put his foot to the side of Hanner’s face and pressed down hard.

  “Vogel, I as good as saw him throw the knife. We need to move quickly on this.”

  Hanner couldn’t breathe for tasting blood. The knowledge that it wasn’t even his own blood sickened him, and the pressure of the foot against his face filled him with irrational fear. He tried to breathe as best he could through one nostril, shuddering at the stink of the fluid that he could not help but draw into his lungs.

  Shuddering was a mistake.

  The Captain stepped down harder on his face, and Hanner stilled himself as best he could in desperate horror. Captain Lowden was still talking; and though Hanner couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of the words, he knew with sickening certainty they meant that something terrible was going to happen to him.

  “I don’t doubt but that there’s Free Government behind this, in light of the recent intelligence reports. We can’t leave the port to the Danzilar prince with a potential cell of insurrectionaries unaccounted for.”

  The horrid pressure of the booted foot shifted at last, and Hanner gulped his breath in great gasping sobs. There were people at him again, pulling him to his feet, straining his arms painfully against the restraints that they latched around his wrists behind his back. He was having a hard time keeping his balance, but fortunately for him Security still held him fast.

  “I’ll want you to get started right away, Andrej, bring me confession before fast-meal and I won’t ask First Officer where Security were when all this happened. Though come to think of it — ”

  Things began to come back into focus as he finally caught his breath, now that he was no longer doubled over to the ground. The body. Andrej Koscuisko, his rival in a contest for Sylyphe’s attention that could be no real contest at all. Security, and some other people, important people he’d no business even looking at. Why had they shackled him?

  Captain Lowden was looking past Koscuisko at one of the few Security troops here that Hanner had met before. “I don’t think I saw you on post, where were you? No. Never mind.” The Captain of the Ragnarok. Hanner stared up at him in awe. “We have more important issues to address. I’ll let it go for now. Confession in due form, Koscuisko, and go as lightly as you can, we wouldn’t want to cheat the Bench of its lawful revenge.”

  Koscuisko bowed; and Hanner could not see the expression on his face, shadowed as it was by t
he light from the great room within. There hadn’t been an alarm. Had there been? He could hear music, laughter, as if the party was continuing, oblivious. Why hadn’t there been an alarm? Shouldn’t they raise the hue and cry, to track the murderer?

  “Instruction received is instruction implemented. Stildyne,” Koscuisko said. “If you would go relieve the other gentlemen. Specialist Vogel. There is a Record still at the Port Authority, one presumes? And come to think of it, will the courthouse have power?”

  The Captain clearly had other ideas. “Take my Security one-point-three rather, Andrej. Your people have been worked too hard, too long. You told me so yourself, as I remember. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Then Captain Lowden moved away back toward the lights, back toward the warmth, back toward the music.

  “What was that all about?” The voice was the one that had been identified as Specialist Vogel; the man wore a different uniform, one without rank-markings. “Captains interfering in the First Officer’s business?”

  “A game.” Koscuisko’s response was savage. Hanner wondered what Koscuisko was so angry about. “Captain Lowden likes to play games. In this one he reminds me that if I don’t do as he has instructed me he has a complaint to cry against my Security. Just in case I had had any ideas about consulting my own judgment in how quickly a lawful confession was to be obtained.”

  “I’d say he made it pretty clear what he expected.” Vogel’s agreement was not an entirely approving one. “Makes a man a little uncomfortable, if you don’t mind my saying so. He didn’t actually see the murder.”

  Hanner had. Hanner had seen the murder. But no one had asked him about the murder. Why hadn’t anyone asked him about it? Maybe they had, and he didn’t remember. His head was spinning. He could hardly keep his balance, and his stomach was going to pitch at any moment. Just as well he hadn’t had his supper.