Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  All of the people his Excellency had examined in the past three days were prisoners detained for Inquiry, though no Charges had been filed absent a Writ — until now. When they got to the Domitt Prison, his Excellency would himself record Charges where appropriate, but for now the Relocation Fleet Captain wasn’t pressing him. There was no question but that he had as much as he could manage, just working his way through these eights of sixteens of people, trying to decide whether they were fit for the trip and free from communicable diseases.

  Finished in yet another overcrowded eight of cells, his Excellency came out of the dark low-ceilinged shed into the chill light again. Koscuisko had been working hard, he was tired; and if Joslire knew his officer, the prospect of having all these souls to be subject to his will at the Domitt Prison was beginning to eat away at him inside.

  “I will for a moment in the air sit,” his Excellency said to whoever was listening. “I would not mind a cup of rhyti. Very much would I like to smoke. But it would be more cruel than decent to those around, if I did that.”

  Lefrols stank, but they had their place. His Excellency was not an habitual smoker of lefrols: instead of being mildly addicted to them, for the stimulus they provided, he had recourse to the herb when he needed distraction and could not get drunk. The relief from his cares the lefrols provided was moderate, to be sure; but at least afterwards he was not hung over.

  Kay snapped the camp-stool he was carrying smartly into shape and set it down in the middle of the barren graveled patch that led between the long lines of temporary cells. Toska had the jug across his back, and broke the thermal seal to pour a steaming cup of rhyti as Koscuisko sat down wearily. Koscuisko took his cup of hot rhyti but didn’t take a sip, not right away, resting the cup on his left knee, staring at the drink with an anxious frown on his usually tranquil face.

  It wasn’t easy for any of them to be here.

  It was going to get a good deal worse before it got any better.

  “How much further do we go today, gentlemen?” Koscuisko asked, squinting up into the sun with slumped shoulders. Code Pyatte flipped the status-leaves and squinted in turn, gazing down toward the end of the line.

  “Says two more cellblocks in this section, sir. Eighty souls — no, sorry, hundred thirty. Doubling up a bit. It’ll be just sundown, sir.”

  As difficult as it was to be here during the day, it only got worse at night. The whole camp was like one large, dark, cramped and overcrowded room at night. And then it started to get cold. It was a sharp depressing thing to know that he was warm and well-clothed, if a bond-involuntary Security slave, while there were children shivering in their parents’ arms unable to sleep for the chill in the air.

  Koscuisko drained his cup of rhyti and handed it back to Toska for safekeeping. “Better pick up, then. Thank you, Kaydence, I’ll go on. Code?”

  Koscuisko wanted the roster for the next cell-building; Code found it for him and passed it over. Koscuisko scanned the ticket and seemed to set his mouth against something unpleasant.

  “All right. Joslire, if you would go ask for the key-man, please.”

  The key-man had been waiting, and propped the door wide open so that the officer would have as much natural light as possible. It was dark in the cells. Nobody in the cells had any grounds to insist on light — except that it wore upon the spirit to be kept in the dark like a chained animal.

  These were Nurail, not animals.

  But leave them alone in the dark for long enough and there would be no difference.

  The first few cells were opened for the officer’s inspection and closed again without incident, their occupants distressed and dispirited — hungry, cold, and thirsty, rations being adequate but on the frugal side — but hale and whole beyond that. It was only at the fourth cell at the back of the cell-building that the prisoner refused to move when spoken to, and Koscuisko tested the air as though he smelled something that he did not like. What was there to like in the smell of a temporary prison? None of these people had been permitted to wash for days. They weren’t going to be here long enough to justify construction of facilities.

  “Open here,” Koscuisko suggested to the key-man. “Erish, if you would bring up the spare light. What can you tell me about your prisoner, key-man?”

  The key-man looked anxious and weary himself. It couldn’t be easy, Joslire decided, to have eight souls in care, with so little to do about basic problems of light and warmth. “I’ve had custody these four days past, your Excellency.” The key-man was local, Joslire realized, with a bit of a start. Maybe he’d been a collaborator. Maybe he was thinking he’d backed the wrong side. “I can’t get much out of him, he just lays there. He wasn’t brought as sick, though, sir. I’ve let him be.”

  The key-man knew something was wrong, and was afraid he’d be blamed for it. So it seemed to Joslire. Koscuisko stood in front of the now-open cell as the portable beacon Erish had brought in lightened gradually to full illumination; it had to be brought up slowly, or else the sudden brilliance could be very painful to people who’d spent a week in a dim room.

  “Has he eaten? Taken fluid? Voided body waste?” Thoughtful and considering as the officer’s voice was, Joslire could hear contempt and reproach there. The key-man as well, to judge from his response.

  “I don’t want anyone neglected under my care, your Excellency.” Stiff, and offended, but more than that convinced that despite his best efforts he was going to be held responsible for something he hadn’t done. “I’ve had the man in the next cell see to feeding him. And the rest. You could ask him.”

  If the prisoner was ill, the key-man would have known to report it right away, or risk an epidemic in camp. So what was going on?

  “Thank you. Perhaps in a moment. Joslire.”

  The prisoner lay on one side with his back to the room, with a standard-issue blanket wrapped around his huddled body and his knees drawn up a little as if to try to conserve warmth. Still wearing Nurail foot-wraps, Joslire saw, but at least one of them was torn, or had been rewrapped by third parties who weren’t familiar with native footgear. It was beginning to look ugly.

  The cell was almost too small for both of them at once, but the closer he got to the prisoner the more convinced Joslire was that he knew what the officer smelled. The prisoner’s tag said he was a young man, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years of age Standard. Nurail could run short and slight for their age. Taken as a whole they tended to be underfed and undergrown, which only made a man wonder what they could have done against the Bench if they’d had adequate nutrition.

  The Nurail in his blanket looked unnervingly like a child to Joslire, pale skin and clean-shaven cheeks and all. Nurail shaved till they were married. This one’s beard clearly didn’t grow quickly, if it grew at all, because there wasn’t the usual several days’ growth of stubble on that sweat-clammy face.

  Koscuisko touched the backs of his fingers to the Nurail’s forehead and waited, counting breaths. The prisoner was hot, Joslire could feel the radiation of body warmth clear through the blanket. Feverish. And there were other reasons a man would lose body heat at the back.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got any transmit docs?” Koscuisko called over his shoulder, to the key-man. To Joslire in a quieter tone, he said, “Let’s see about unwrapping him, carefully. Tell Toska I’m going to want my kit.”

  “No documentation,” the key-man replied, sounding relieved. To be shown an out? That he couldn’t be made to say where the prisoner had come from or who had brought him? “Some Fleet Security, I think, sir. Brought him, took the first available cell, left.”

  Oh, yes. Of course. Right.

  Fleet Security.

  And it could be. That was the hell of it.

  Koscuisko worried the blanket free from the prisoner’s nerveless fingers gently, and the man — or boy — opened his eyes suddenly, staring up at Koscuisko without moving his head. Terror, wild and anguished, and the white of the eye gleaming in the light r
eflecting off the back wall; terror and a good deal of pain, and Joslire beckoned for the officer’s kit, where he kept his drugs — his anodynes.

  “Shh,” Koscuisko said. Not as if the prisoner had said anything. “We just need to have a look. We’ll try not to hurt you.” And drew the blanket back in careful folds, hissing through his teeth at the sight of the prisoner’s exposed shoulders.

  Raw meat.

  And there was more of it, most of the prisoner’s back had been laid bare, as though his back were all half-masticated flesh abandoned mid-meal by a predator.

  “Your Excellency — ” Joslire started to say.

  “It looks like a peony to me, Joslire. Open for me my kit, I want a strong dose of asinjetorix. Kaydence? No, don’t come in, name of the Mother.” The horror Koscuisko felt at the suffering those wounds represented resonated in his voice, muted though it was to avoid giving alarm to the tortured man. “Go order me a litter for emergency care. And tell them I want it now. And I will need a surgery, as soon as one can be opened for me.”

  Joslire found the dose and passed it to Koscuisko, who took it in his hand to show the prisoner.

  “A pain relief drug,” his Excellency explained, as quietly and soothingly as Joslire could imagine. Their officer had a gentle touch with patients. “Not any other kind. I’m not going to ask you what happened. The Bench has forfeited its right to ask you any questions, any more, ever, about anything.”

  No comprehension on the prisoner’s face, but why would there be? Joslire wasn’t quite sure he caught his officer’s meaning himself.

  The key-man’s anxiety would not let him keep still and speak when spoken to, apparently. “Your Excellency, what is it?”

  Pressing the dose home, Koscuisko waited for a moment, then stood up. “Fleet Security, you say? We will want a statement. It is abuse of prisoner outside of Protocol. He has been put to torture without authority of Writ, because there was no Writ at Eild until I got here, and if I had taken the peony to any man I would remember it.”

  The peony was the ugliest whip in the inventory, its multiple thongs heavy and barbed. Koscuisko never used the peony except to Execute. It could kill quickly; there was a species of mercy in a quick death — even when it had to be by torture.

  Otherwise the peony was good for very little but to chew up flesh like warmed spreadable, and it was accordingly a proscribed weapon outside the custody of an Inquisitor. It was illegal for anyone but an Inquisitor to carry a peony, unless it was the bond-involuntary under orders.

  “I don’t understand, your Excellency. Peony?”

  Maybe the key-man didn’t know what it was. Maybe whoever it was who’d been responsible had been counting on just that; or didn’t care whether they left clear evidence. Populations were subject to multiple abuses in the aftermath of a final defeat, and this was one of them. And no, Joslire was not in the least interested in what the prisoner’s feet would look like once they got this anonymous victim to Infirmary.

  “Take a message,” Koscuisko suggested. “I am logging this prisoner as released without prejudice due to Judicial irregularity. I will not tolerate abuse of prisoners outside of Protocol. And I don’t care who knows it.”

  And at the moment, here and now, it was because Koscuisko’s better nature shuddered at the damning witness of the wounds on the prisoner’s back. And not because Koscuisko was jealous of interference.

  “If you say so, sir.” The key-man sounded dubious. “I had no way of knowing.”

  Like hell he didn’t.

  How could any man keep a torture victim for four days and not know?

  Still, the key-man got credit for letting one of the others nurse the prisoner, Joslire supposed.

  He’d better get a word in to Chief Samons as soon as he could manage.

  Something told him this was going to cause trouble for his Excellency. The funny thing was that it was precisely the better part of the officer that was constantly creating problems. The worse part — the appetite Koscuisko had for pain — won him praise and commendation: though not from Fleet Captain Irshah Parmin.

  And Fleet Captain Irshah Parmin — the Bench Captain by extension as well — would certainly have expected Koscuisko to raise this issue privately before taking the irrevocable step of logging release without prejudice.

  ###

  Chief Warrant Officer Caleigh Samons, Chief of Security for Andrej Koscuisko, found her officer of assignment in a surgery within the temporary hospital that served the displacement camp. Having no brief to interrupt, she stood and watched him work through the sterile barrier that set the surgery apart.

  The patient would logically be the Nurail who was responsible for Captain Vopalar’s summons, the one Koscuisko had so summarily removed from the jealous grasp of the Dramissoi Relocation Fleet. Koscuisko worked with a look of absolute concentration on his face, salving the man’s feet with exquisite care. From where Caleigh stood it looked like nasty burns on the soles of the apparently unconscious man’s naked feet, a firepoint most likely; from Koscuisko’s distressed expression he thought he knew exactly.

  And he probably did.

  What difference did it make?

  People were tortured without benefit of Writ all the time. The fact that it wasn’t supposed to happen was not material. There could have been information wanted, and no time to put in through formal channels for an Inquisitor’s services. Things got out of hand when people were stressed, and being shot at tended to aggravate people.

  Or maybe it had been something much simpler, someone taking advantage of the uncontrolled environment to express long-standing hatred for a personal enemy. Koscuisko could still be astonishingly naive, from time to time, for all the authority of his position.

  He knew very well that such things were done. And still he let it surprise him.

  “With you in just a moment, Miss Samons,” Koscuisko said, finally noticing her waiting on the other side of the sterile barrier. “Very nearly finished here. Sweet Saints, it is ugly.”

  Laying one final gauze wrap carefully across the raw skin of his patient’s foot, Koscuisko stepped back from the treatment table at last, nodding for the orderlies to come remove the patient. Pressing through the sterile barrier to join him now that the work was done, Caleigh handed him soap to lather up his bloodied hands, and stood by with the towel. This whole thing was off to an inauspicious start, but there was nothing to be done but make the best of it now.

  “Bench Captain Vopalar would like to see you, sir. First Officer and Chief Medical as well. In the Captain’s office.”

  It was well past sundown, cold and clammy with the fog. They’d been waiting for Koscuisko for more than two hours now. Her orders had been to find him and bring him when he was finished with whatever he was doing; that was a good sign, they weren’t simply arresting the officer. But senior officers waiting on junior officers in Command offices well past third-meal never made for good hope of a forgiving mood.

  Koscuisko had no comment as she helped him into his duty blouse, finger-combing his hair and setting his cuffs to rights in silence. When he was ready to leave, though, he asked the obvious question.

  “Am I in a very great deal of trouble, Miss Samons?”

  It was funny of him to be so formal with her, when she knew very well that he found her physically attractive. Koscuisko was all the more formal and reserved with her for the fact that he would like to go fishing, to use the Dolgorukij metaphor, in her ocean. No. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t going fishing. It was that his masculine gender was a fish, and her ocean shores the place where it would very much have liked to frolic.

  “I think it may be bad, sir.” It could be all right. Irshah Parmin had been white-hot furious with Koscuisko on more than one occasion, and Koscuisko had come through without scathe. “Let’s get it over with, one way or the other. Because your people are worried.”

  The Security that escorted them to the Captain’s office were Dramissoi resources. Vopalar had Koscuisko�
�s bond-involuntaries with her, a fact that could be construed as ominous. Caleigh didn’t particularly care to mention that. Koscuisko would find out soon enough.

  Command had administrative offices near the launch-field, in temporary buildings not much better furnished than the camp itself. Koscuisko was lodged in one of these, with his Security housed all five in a room of equal size adjacent, and a closet for his chief of Security between the two rooms. The Captain’s office was the size of Koscuisko’s quarters and Caleigh’s put together, but that didn’t mean very large. There was no room for the bond-involuntaries, for instance, so they were all lined up at command-wait in the hall, and Koscuisko was so surprised to see them that he missed a step and nearly fell on his face before he recovered his footing.

  Caleigh didn’t want to give him time to wonder what they were doing here. She hurried him through to where Captain Vopalar was waiting, instead.

  The orderly knocked at the door and opened it, and there they were, Captain Vopalar, the First Officer, and the Chief Medical Officer for the Dramissoi Relocation Fleet — Doctor Clontosh.

  “All we know for sure is that we’ve still got the right number of bodies in Limited Secure, Captain,” the First Officer was saying. Caleigh knew what he was talking about, and listened with keen curiosity.

  Nurail displacement parties arrived day by day to swell the ranks of prisoners and detainees in camp. There had been some confusion a few days past surrounding one particular group of detainees and prisoners; a near riot, in fact, only barely contained — with commendable restraint, Caleigh thought — by Dramissoi Fleet Security.

  She hadn’t realized that a question still remained about whether or not the bodies had all got sorted into the correct categories when it was over. That seemed to be what was on First Officer’s mind, though. “The numbers seem to add up. And if anyone ended up in the wrong part of camp, nobody’s saying.”