Koscuisko ran up the slope at a quick jog; the people between him and wherever he was going gave way to him, bowing, until he reached his goal.
Smish Smath had the best eyesight at distance, so Stildyne asked her, though he thought he knew the answer. “Who is that, Smath, can you tell?” He spoke quietly, moving his mouth as little as possible to preserve the appearance of waiting in respectful silence at attention rest.
After a moment, Smath answered. “Tallish woman compared to the women around her. Dark hair, fancy headdress. His Excellency takes her stirrup. Maybe what — kissing her knee?”
“Her apron,” Lek corrected, tolerantly. Lek didn’t have Smish’s keen sight, but he did have the advantage of knowing what went on between Dolgorukij. “He’d be kissing the hem of her apron. His mother. The sacred wife of the Koscuisko prince. A Flesonika princess, if I remember right. Old blood, in his Excellency’s family.”
Family. What a concept.
Koscuisko’s father mounted and turned his horse’s head, and the hunting party started to move. Koscuisko himself started to walk back to where Stildyne and the others were waiting for him; even mounted, the Koscuisko familial retainers backed the horses out of Koscuisko’s path rather than turn their backs on him. They all seemed so much alike, in a sense; the body types were similar and yet strange to Stildyne.
In the midst of that crowd of Dolgorukij, Koscuisko seemed strange to Stildyne, and the realization was an unpleasant one.
Andrej Koscuisko was his officer of assignment, a man whom Stildyne had trained on an almost daily basis for physical fitness and to improve on the fighting skills that Chief Samons — Koscuisko’s Chief of Security prior to his assignment to the Ragnarok — had so ably established in him. A man Stildyne had nursed through countless drunks and alcohol–induced psychotic episodes, dreams so vivid and horrible that they could not be dismissed as simple nightmares, agonies of mind and spirit that had sensitized Stildyne to the concept of guilt and sin and spiritual pain for the first time in his life.
This Andrej Koscuisko was none of those things. Koscuisko had been transformed from the man Stildyne knew and understood into a complete stranger, somebody’s son, a man with a community so alien and self–contained that Stildyne could not begin to reach out to him.
These people were Koscuisko’s family. All of these people were, in a sense. And here in the midst of his family, what need did Koscuisko have of Stildyne — or anybody?
Koscuisko walked down the grassy slope to rejoin them, but he didn’t look the same. His posture was different. Not even his face was truly familiar; he looked years younger than he had when they had landed, and his uniform did not seem to fit, somehow. It seemed wrong on him. It was the clothes that those other people wore that would be natural on this Koscuisko’s body; Stildyne had never even seen Koscuisko in anything but a uniform, or pieces of a uniform, or in no uniform at all.
Stildyne hated this.
He had anticipated Koscuisko’s re–absorption into his birth–culture; he had resigned himself to the probable fact of Koscuisko’s becoming so involved in personal business that he would have little time or attention to spare for his Security. But he had not realized that Koscuisko would become an alien to him, a man he could recognize only on a superficial level.
As painful as it was to be held at an arm’s length by his officer of assignment, it was worse than Stildyne had expected to realize that Koscuisko might be so far away from them in spirit once he had got home that there would be no reaching out at all to make or deny contact.
Koscuisko reached them, nodding to Stildyne to signal that they should all get back into the ground–car and get on with their business.
“Blessed or berated, your Excellency?” Lek asked. Stildyne was surprised that Lek spoke, but Koscuisko didn’t seem to be, so clearly it was something to do with the culture that Lek and Koscuisko had in common.
Koscuisko tilted his chin a bit, looking up into Lek’s face as Koscuisko climbed into the ground–car. “Blessed as well as I deserve, and a good bit better than that. My father says he will not Sanfijer my Scathijin. So it was much better than I had feared, even though the Malcontent has been talking.”
Lek could probably explain that to them all later. “Right,” Stildyne said, just to regain some illusion of control. “Let’s just go clear in–processing and be out of here, your Excellency, shall we?”
What was a scathijin, and how did one sanfijer, and why was that something that Koscuisko and Lek both seemed to understand was a good thing for fathers not to do to their sons?
This Koscuisko was a stranger to Stildyne. Having Koscuisko a stranger was almost like not having him at all; and unhappiness of a sort Stildyne had never felt possessed him, as they drove off to the airfield’s receiving station.
###
Cousin Ferinc sat in his secured observation station, watching through the heavy plate–glass window as the ground–car came across the tarmac toward the administration center where Koscuisko’s people would surrender custody of the courier ship, and have their purpose and presence here cleared and documented, by the grace and favor of the Autocrat.
There was no further sign of Koscuisko’s family; the hunting party was gone from view. Cousin Stanoczk — Ferinc’s reconciler — said that Ferinc was to come to Chelatring Side some day, to view the Gallery. Ferinc was hungry for it, for the chance glimpse he might have there of Koscuisko’s father and Koscuisko’s mother and the youngest of Koscuisko’s brothers, the barely twelve–year–old prince Nikolij. Nikosha. Koscuisko’s favorite brother, it was said. There was no love lost between Koscuisko and his brother Iosev who was the next eldest of the Koscuisko prince’s sons, and . . .
Ferinc shook his head, angry at himself, and tied his braids together at the back of his head to keep them from falling across his face. Stanoczk tolerated his obsession with Andrej Koscuisko, but only just. And without Stanoczk’s charity there was no hope of reconciliation for him in the world. He dared not risk incurring Stanoczk’s disappointed anger.
It was so hard.
The communications booth was fully equipped for secure transmit, but no one here would have listened in had it been open. There was no profit to be had from interesting oneself in the Malcontent’s business, that was no one’s business but the Saint’s alone. Ferinc sent the codes that he’d been given into the relay stream with the toggling of a switch; and spoke.
“Swallow’s nest, for client at Chilleau Judiciary. Transmit on schedule. As follows, confirm receipt.”
He could watch. He could. It would take moments for the screen to clear, because the client at Chilleau Judiciary was suspicious and trusted no one. And was not, in fact, at Chilleau Judiciary, but Ferinc wasn’t supposed to know that. Not supposed by the client to know that, at least.
The ground–car pulled up to the foot of the loading dock, almost immediately below the window. They couldn’t see him. The panes were treated for thermal management. He knew they couldn’t see him. They had no reason even to look.
Ferinc stared down at the party gathered on the tarmac. Security. Chief Stildyne he recognized, with pained surprise; he was a hard man to forget, and that could have been Ferinc himself in Stildyne’s place, though their acquaintance dated from before Stildyne’s promotion. Petty Warrant Officer Stildyne, and Ferinc. They had had some times.
Oh, he could not think of that, and most especially not —
There was Andrej Koscuisko himself, climbing out of the ground–car, pausing half in and half out to share some joke or another with one of the Security. Ferinc stared hungrily at the man who had haunted his dreams, haunted his nightmares ever since. It had been more than seven years. It felt as though it had been yesterday that Koscuisko had made his mark on Ferinc, body and soul, and left him ruined and destroyed forever.
It had been deserved. Ferinc knew that. And yet he could not shake the horror of it, and the ferocious intensity, and that slim blond officer who stood there smiling �
� talking with Stildyne — still owned him.
Koscuisko doubtless thought it was all over. If Koscuisko ever thought of it at all, and why should he? What had Ferinc been to Koscuisko, after all, but a man meriting punishment, out of so many that had come under Koscuisko’s hand?
The transmission’s chime repeated for the third, and then the fourth time. Ferinc turned away from the window.
“Confirming arrival of Andrej Koscuisko with party of Security assigned.” Security 5.3 had been expected; Ferinc had made it his business to find out about them, in order to let Marana know what to expect. This wasn’t Security 5.3. There was a woman there. But the client hadn’t asked; she only wanted to know when Koscuisko set foot to his native soil — so it wasn’t up to Ferinc to tell her.
Cousin Stanoczk said that the client was unstable, unnaturally obsessed with Andrej Koscuisko and desirous of knowing his whereabouts from moment to moment. Cousin Stanoczk was most likely to remark on the client’s instability of mind when reproaching Ferinc for his own obsession.
The Malcontent made good profit from the weak–mindedness of persons unnaturally interested in specific Inquisitors, however. The client at Chilleau Judiciary paid well for her reports. In kind, and in specie. And Ferinc himself was bound to the Saint on Koscuisko’s account, self–sold into slavery of his own free will out of his desperate need to be reconciled with what he had seen in the mirror of Koscuisko’s eyes in that cell at Richeyne, so many years ago.
It would be a moment before the countersignal cleared, because the client had been linked on redirect. That always slowed things down. Ferinc went back to the window.
The transit–wagon had come up for Koscuisko’s party now. Koscuisko — having apparently stepped through to the airfield master’s office for a quiet official signature or two, while Ferinc had been transmitting his report — was coming out of the building, Security forming up around him in perfect order.
Precise to the mark, a pleasure to behold, professional, competent, completely secure in their roles and who they were and what they were called upon to do at all times —
The pain of loss in Ferinc’s heart was nearly physical, looking at them. And it was Koscuisko who had ruined him, Koscuisko who had destroyed him, Koscuisko who had taken it all away from him forever and left him broken and bereft.
Just as he reached the transit–wagon Koscuisko looked up, back over his shoulder. Looking up at him. Ferinc shrank back and away from the window, shuddering in terror. Koscuisko could not know. He could not.
What would Koscuisko do if he ever learned the truth behind the role “Cousin Ferinc” had come to play at the Matredonat — Koscuisko’s child, and the woman who was soon to find herself Koscuisko’s wife —
The relay stream’s confirmation signal was noise without meaning. Ferinc reached out his hand to shut it off, barely conscious of his own actions.
Then Ferinc sank to his knees on the floor of his secured communications station and wrapped his arms around his belly to keep his stomach from turning itself inside out, and rocked back and forth in agony, remembering when.
Chapter Five
Home Is the Hunter
Marana Seronkraalya stood in formal dignity well to the front of the assembled household arrayed on the graveled ground before, the great doors into Andrej’s house and wished with all her heart that Cousin Ferinc could be here with her.
She hadn’t seen Andrej in more than nine years.
He had sent letters, gifts, tokens, records, but she could no longer hear his voice in his letters, and when she did hear his voice — in the records that he made from time to time, the hologrammic cubes — it was not the voice of the young man she remembered. It was not the face of her Andrej.
Her son stood waiting in the forefront of the household behind her, with his nurse, wearing his best clothes. His little coat. He should have had the white and red and gold of the son of the son of the Koscuisko prince, but wore the blue–and–yellow of the son of the master of the house instead. Why should she resent the colors Anton wore? It had never been a possibility. And it had been her choice to take a child of Andrej’s body before he was married. She had known that his family would resent the claim she made. She had not cared.
She had come to care. For her son’s sake she was prepared to demand that the entire Combine reverse itself, and conform to her desire. She had not anticipated the effect that her child would have on her ability to accept the place of a man’s second and secular wife and see another woman’s son take pride of place over her beautiful Anton.
Closing her eyes against the glare of the bright sun Marana struggled for psychological balance. It wasn’t Andrej’s fault. It wasn’t even her fault. Who had known? His letters were unfailingly kind, and sometimes all but heartbreaking. And yet his letters never really spoke to her as Andrej had once spoken to her. There was the work that Andrej never discussed; it stood between them.
This is not about me, Marana reminded herself, opening her eyes. This was about Anton Andreievitch, who had never met his father. Anton knew what his father looked like; she was careful to keep plenty of pictures. Cousin Ferinc spoke frequently and with admiration of Andrej to Andrej’s son, and Andrej sent records to Anton from time to time in which it was clear to her that Andrej had no idea how to speak to a child, no idea of what Anton knew or understood at what age, no possible understanding of Anton’s own personality.
She smoothed her palms against the apron that she wore, a formal apron, almost as long as her old–fashioned skirt which dropped to her ankles. There was a little breeze; it was a very pleasant day. The branches of the ranks of shield–leaf trees lining the grand allee leading from the side of the house at her left to the motor stables and the stables proper beyond rustled pleasingly, and sent their subtle perfume far and wide.
The house itself all but glittered in the sun, its windows washed, its pillars whitened, its black–slate roof scraped and oiled, its every odd corner and half–forgotten closet cleaned and freshened and made beautiful to receive the son of the Koscuisko prince. It was her home, after all, and he was but a guest in it — all things considered. He had lived here for only a short time out of the years during which it had been in his possession, and she had been here since before Anton was born.
There were people coming from the motor stables, a party of men emerging from the shadows of the allee. She knew when they’d arrived; she’d been getting the reports in series as they had left the airfield and passed onto family land and thence to the estate perimeter of the Matredonat. She had waited until the very last to call the nurse out with her young son Anton. He was a very intelligent child, but he was a child still. His attention span was limited. She didn’t want him to have time in which to become frightened.
If only Cousin Ferinc were here Anton would not be frightened. Anton loved Cousin Ferinc almost as much as Anton loved his nurse, and Cousin Ferinc seemed genuinely fond of Anton. She was Anton’s mother. She could tell.
Six people.
Marana watched them come. It was a long way from the end of the allee to the front of the house. The Matredonat was a large house, as befit the gift of the family of the mother of the son of the Koscuisko prince to that son on the occasion of his acknowledgment by his father as his father’s son and heir. The cutting with the knife at the inside of the cheek, on the steps of the family’s estate at Rogubarachno; the solemn declaration of blood to blood, Koscuisko to Koscuisko. Andrej had been eight years old.
Anton was eight.
Anton had had no such public trauma, nor would have. That was a privilege reserved for the first son of the Ichogatra princess, the woman who had been betrothed to Andrej since his eighth year, the woman who would be Andrej’s first and sacred wife. It would be her son, not Anton, who would stand beneath the canopy of Heaven and submit to wounding at his father’s hand, the cut, the kiss, the declaration. Give me to drink of thee. Andrej had not even met the Ichogatra princess more than a few times in his life,
and had not thought he liked her particularly well on those occasions — at least from what he had said to her about it.
She needed to focus.
Six people. Ferinc had told her how they would be. Two in front, Security. Andrej next. Two in back, and the chief of Security last, outside of the box of secured space in which they kept their officer of assignment and one step out of alignment with his back. One step to the right, because Andrej was left–handed.
She couldn’t get a very good look at Andrej, not with those Security in the way. Her messengers had said that his family had gone to meet him at the airfield; they had never come to the Matredonat. They had never asked her to them at Rogubarachno or at Chelatring Side. She had known that she was snapping her fingers in their faces when she had decided on a child before Andrej’s marriage, but she had not understood how angry it would make her for them to slight her son.
She could see Andrej’s figure now, at last, as the party drew nearer. All in Fleet uniform, and Andrej wore the raven’s wing. It was very odd for so young a man to wear the color of age and piety, but it was the Fleet color for a man of Andrej’s rank. It had no reference to what the color signified on Azanry.
She could see his figure, but it was not familiar. Not more so than that of any man might be, familiar only in that it was Aznir Dolgorukij of the shorter run.
Something was odd. One of the Security was female.
Ferinc had not said anything about a woman in Andrej’s Security; and he had said they would all be green–sleeves, all bond–involuntaries, all Security slaves except the Chief of Security who was called Stildyne. She saw only one man with the bit of green on the cuff of his sleeve and the edge of his collar. Ferinc had not known about this.
They passed in front of her at a small distance of five paces’ remove, and when Andrej stepped on a magical spot that was directly in front of her they all stopped, very suddenly, without a word or gesture of command that Marana saw. It startled her. Then all at once they turned toward her, and Marana stood face–to–face with the father of her child, the loving friend of her young age, for the first time in more than nine years. Her Andrej.
The Devil and Deep Space Page 11
