“Torture them until they say what’s wanted — what you mean . . . ”
Joslire couldn’t see what Koscuisko did, but the strained, anguished rail in the prisoner’s throat was clear enough. Too clear. “Well, then, they’re for it one way or the other, aren’t they? And it will go easier with them if you have already confessed to the deception. Tell me.”
Whatever it was that Koscuisko was doing, it was finally too much for his prisoner.
“Stop. Stop. Please stop. Please. I’ll tell — I’ll tell you, tell His Ex’lency, stop — ”
Koscuisko passed the firepoint to Cay and took the prisoner’s head between his hands with his thumbs at the base of his prisoner’s skull, rolling his fingers until he found the place he wanted. “There. Better, yes? Now talk to me.”
No drugs, and still Koscuisko could shut a portion of the pain away with pressure upon nerves. Koscuisko was a sorcerer: Joslire had known that from the moment Administrator Clellelan had declared the Record closed on St. Clare’s punishment. The prisoner’s voice was stronger now, but his dead hopelessness was all the more difficult to ignore, that way.
“Yes, Y’rex’lency. I get munitions; four, there are four manufacturies, all small. None local. One in the Gystor prefecture, a collective, Irmol city, Irmanol commune. One in Silam, owned by a family, Fourrail.”
Koscuisko made an adjustment in his grip at the prisoner’s neck; and the man continued, swallowing hard between his phrases. “One near Baram, in a place called Hafel, owned by a woman named Magestir Kees. And one at Getta, in Nannan — ”
Silence, as if it had become too difficult for the prisoner to speak. Koscuisko waited for a moment, but took the question up again, relentless.
“There are many manufacturies in Getta. Probably several in Nannan. Which did you have in mind? Specifically?”
Koscuisko had loosened his grip from its warding place, and the prisoner turned his head restlessly, as if seeking the comfort of that touch — the relief of pain that it seemed to have provided.
“No, surely there will be enough, how can I give them over . . . to the torture . . . no one should have to suffer, as I have — ”
“Come, now, they will.” Oddly enough — in Joslire’s understanding, at least — Koscuisko had settled his hands back in their place, blocking the rise of pain messages to the brain. Maybe Koscuisko wanted to be sure that the man was listening to him, and had the strength to understand. “You’ve told me Getta, in Nannan, you must tell me more. Or they will all suffer, every manufactury in Nannan, you know that it is true.”
“It’s monstrous, there are six or eight in Nannan, no — not even Jurisdiction butchery — ”
“I have not lied to you, not in all of this time. Is it not so?”
Something was driving Koscuisko forward now, something quite different from his lust for torture or the twisted pleasure that he too clearly took from pain and used to further his Inquiry. Koscuisko sounded focused, keenly aware, no longer distracted either by the sounds of his client’s torment or the prisoner’s submission to his hand.
“Excellency, please, just one of four, just one.”
“It will be six or eight instead of one unless you say the word. You have given the evidence, and the Bench will be satisfied.”
“The Bench can rot and burn for all I care — ”
“Only one of six or eight is even involved, but you have condemned them all, unless you tell me which one. You must tell me which one. We do not have much more time.”
“And once I’m dead I can’t be made to tell, so that’s just fine.”
“Tell me which one,” Koscuisko said. And Joslire believed Koscuisko’s desperate determination; believed that he understood Koscuisko’s change of mood. Koscuisko was telling the absolute truth. Now that the Record showed that a manufactury in Nannan was supplying munitions for the illegal sale of weaponry to Free Government terrorists, the Bench would not be satisfied until every facility in Nannan with capacity for such production had been intensively audited. And that meant Inquiry, which of course assumed Confirmation, which would almost inevitably require Execution.
“No, no, I’ll not . . . I’ll not — ”
“Which one,” Koscuisko said. “Or they are all for it.”
Taking his hands away, he let the prisoner’s head drop back to rest against the tabletop, deprived of even the small protection Koscuisko had been providing against the pain. Joslire was surprised that Koscuisko risked so much, so late. Certainly it seemed the most that Koscuisko dared, if he wished to get the word he wanted before the prisoner died and condemned who knew how many honest souls by his stubborn silence. “Which one?”
“My. Mother’s people. Excellency. Damn you.”
It was enough.
Koscuisko did not need to know what “my mother’s people” meant exactly. The local Judiciary would be responsible for that. But it was enough to isolate one manufactury from any other. Koscuisko would know that much.
“It is well done of you,” Koscuisko said. “For every soul the Bench will make to suffer, you have saved as many as you could. And for this may all Saints remit your punishment. Tutor Chonis?”
Joslire was humbled, in his heart. He had not believed that Koscuisko would have mastery this time. He should have understood that Koscuisko would have mastery in all things, he told himself. Because it was the temper of Koscuisko’s will.
Chonis leaned forward, keyed his communication channel. “As you like, Student Koscuisko,” Chonis said.
Koscuisko set his hands at the back of the prisoner’s neck again, and the body’s tension seemed to ebb away. Then there was a crack as of a sodden stick underfoot in heavy leaf-fall, clearly audible over the sound channel; and the prisoner’s head fell to one side in Koscuisko’s grasp, fell to one side at the wrong angle. Dead. Koscuisko had taken the man’s resistance and his secrets. But then Koscuisko had taken the man’s pain, and finally his life.
“You’d best go and collect your Student,” Chonis said, switching the monitor off. “Keep me informed about your status. Any changes. And be certain that we’d hate to lose you, Curran, even to Student Koscuisko. All right?”
Joslire bowed in respectful silence and left the room.
Koscuisko would want a shower, a lefrol, wodac, maybe even his third meal.
And he had to study how he was going to ask.
###
Andrej was too tired to think. It had gone on for so long. He had indulged himself so shamelessly. He went back to his quarters with Joslire and stood naked in the shower with his face between his hands until the stream startled him by cycling off of its own accord. Had he been standing there that long? Giving the control an impatient, unbelieving push, he set the stream for as hot as he could bear it, hoping to lose some of his tension in the waste-stream.
It didn’t work.
Drying himself in a desultory fashion, he left his wet hair only half-combed and went out again into the main room. There was his supper; there was his wodac; there was Joslire, with his face professionally empty of expression and his uniform as perfect as it ever was. Andrej sat down at the study-set heavily, suppressing an irrational and uncharitable urge to scuff Joslire’s boots. There was no sense in being offended at Joslire simply because Joslire was safely collected within himself while Andrej felt frayed at every seam of his being.
There was no sense in grieving for his innocence.
It had been bad enough when he had lost a patient for the first time — an infectious disease case, referred too late for certain intervention. He’d tried the recommended course, and he’d got permission to try an additional intervention; but when neither had stemmed the course of the disease, he had been forced by the absolute logic of Mayon’s medical creed to transfer all of his energy to supportive care to ease the dying. He had hated it, hated to give up, hated to be beaten even by one of the most virulent of plagues under Jurisdiction. And he could not argue about it. He was expected to concentrate on his
patient, and ignore the outraged protests of his ego. He had to bend his neck and submit himself to the service of mortality, and ensure that the passage he so fiercely wished to bar would be accomplished smoothly, with as little fear or pain as possible.
His proctor had sent a priest to see him a few days after that. One of his brother Mikhel’s priests, not Uncle Radu’s, Andrej had been grateful to note. Unfortunately the message could not have been more offensive had it come from Andrej’s supercilious uncle in person; he was not to feel depressed, the priest had counseled him, because it was not his fault that the patient had died. He was not responsible.
And that had made him angry, as well as depressed, because a Koscuisko prince’s life was defined by responsibility. To suggest that he was not responsible — simply because he had not been at fault — was a profound violation of Andrej’s basic sense of self-definition.
After he’d thrown the priest out into the street, however, he’d begun to understand what the man had actually been saying. He couldn’t practice medicine at its highest level without accepting the fact that disease was no respecter of Dolgorukij autocrats. He had to separate his absolute responsibility for his Household from the more limited responsibility of a professional physician. The rules were different. He had thought that he had understood that fact; but after his first patient death, he had found himself evaluating his understanding all over again.
Now he was a murderer three times over, and he had no more tolerance within himself to entertain the polite fiction that he was not responsible. Yes, he was only one of many Students, to be one of many Inquisitors. True, that the prisoners accused at the Advanced Levels were as good as dead from the moment Charges were Recorded against them — because even if they declined to confess, the implementation of the Protocols would kill them. There was no question that had he not killed whomever it was — no, Verteric Spaling, it was a man he had murdered, not an anonymous abstraction — had he not murdered the man Spaling, someone else would have, or someone else would have left him to die of worse wounds than Andrej had given him.
None of the rationalizations proper to the practice of medicine could be applied appropriately to murder.
He was Koscuisko, and he was responsible for the work of his hand, the more so because he had enjoyed it. Or much of it.
Joslire wanted to take his now-cold food away to be replaced with a hot meal, but Andrej waved him off. He wasn’t very hungry, and the food had little savor in his mouth. He made a point of drinking the tepid rhyti in his flask; he had been working hard all day. Or he had been exercising himself all day, if it was not proper to try to call it “work” when one derived such obscene satisfaction from it. He needed fluid, one way or the other, especially if he was to end up drinking yet again. There was his wodac, right enough, still cold in its icer tray, sitting promisingly next to the glass with its saucer and its bit of sharbite-peel as if it really thought it was an aperitif and not an end in and of itself.
He was too tired to drink wodac. How long had he been sitting here, brooding about the sin that stained his honor? How could he grieve for his innocence, when the Fleet and the Church and his father all three refused to acknowledge that it was a sin against the Holy Mother’s Creation to put a soul that could suffer to such torture for any purpose?
Emptying the rhyti flask of its last swallows, Andrej stood up and turned toward his bed.
He was so tired.
If only sleep could bring him rest, this time . . .
He could not close his eyes, because the stubborn habit of his weary mind was to review what he had done, and each time he closed his eyes, he saw his work once more — and shrank from it. He lay on the sleep-rack, trying to let go of his conflict, promising himself accommodation after accommodation to try to soothe his guilt-wracked spirit to sleep.
He would buy prayers for their souls.
None of them were Aznir, and why should their gods listen to his coin, when the Holy Mother herself almost never listened to anyone who was not Dolgorukij?
He would find their families, lie to them about their next of kin and about the manner of their dying.
Their families were probably either dead or compromised, or had sold the victims of his lust to Jurisdiction in order to save themselves.
Whatever it was that he was doing — Andrej told himself finally, with disgust — resting was not it. There was little sense in wasting energy struggling with himself. He needed all the energy he had to keep him through the ordeal of this place.
“Very well.” He said it aloud to himself, pushing himself up off the sleep-rack with an effort. He was not too tired to drink after all, as he had thought. He would go out to his supper and try again.
The wodac would not have gotten very far, surely?
###
“There, if the officer would consent to rest for a moment, it’ll get better now, just rest. Shallow breaths, if the officer please . . . Yes, that’s right . . . ”
Andrej Koscuisko lay sprawled ungracefully across the washroom floor. Joslire supported Koscuisko’s shoulders against his knees as best he could while struggling to keep Koscuisko’s head from falling too heavily against the basin set in the cold gray tiling. The lights in the washroom were harsh and unforgiving, and Joslire couldn’t help but think Koscuisko was as ashen as a corpse — considering what Joslire could see of Koscuisko’s face, clay-colored, beaded with sweat, his forehead an anxious agonized cording of care, his eyes shut tight against the brutal glare. Koscuisko was sick to his stomach with the drink, and Joslire was only surprised it hadn’t happened any sooner in light of all the drinking that Koscuisko had done throughout the Term.
Koscuisko tried to move, evidently wishing to push himself up into a more normal seated position. Koscuisko didn’t have the strength for it, and Joslire caught him around the chest from behind to stop him from falling over backward. “Just breathe, if the officer please, don’t try to get up just yet. Just rest, yes. Like that, that’s good.”
It did seem that the drink was minded to be revenged upon Koscuisko; for now — having gotten sick to his stomach with the drink finally — Koscuisko was not only sick, but unstrung, shaken to the floor with the violence of the action of the poison, wrung too weak to so much as keep himself levered adequately over the basin. A thorough man, Koscuisko, Joslire told himself, putting the damp hair out of Koscuisko’s eyes absentmindedly. When he studied his lessons, he studied the references as well as the text. When he was to administer discipline, he spent his spare hours practicing the whip and studying the physiology of Nurail so that he could do the thing to his best satisfaction. And when he poisoned himself with alcohol, he did so with characteristic care and concentration, if the violence with which he vomited the wodac could be taken as any indication.
Dozing again, now, Koscuisko was a dead weight in Joslire’s arms. Joslire didn’t want to wake him, not at any cost — no matter how awkward it was to be half-lying on the washroom floor, embracing his drunken charge. Drunken was not the word any longer, Joslire decided, shifting one arm forward carefully to make a pillow of sorts between Koscuisko’s head and the basin. Koscuisko had been drunk hours ago. What Koscuisko was now was a perfect paradigmatic picture for a cautionary tale about people who put their faith in wodac to redeem them.
Koscuisko woke with a spasm of retching, sudden and fierce. They didn’t need the basin any longer, not really — there wasn’t anything left in Koscuisko’s belly to vomit up. Still, Koscuisko clung to the basin’s rim with a trembling hand as he struggled for breath against the convulsions that wracked him; as if, in the middle of his exhaustion and his pain, the thing that really worried him was the danger that he might disgrace himself by heaving onto the floor.
“You’re fine, you’re fine. Your Excellency. No, just lie still, try to think. Is there something I can get for you?”
It didn’t matter what he actually said to the officer, at this point. He could probably call him Andrej and ask him for a loan of Ju
risdiction specie, and Koscuisko would remember none of it in the morning, and the Administration wouldn’t care. Although if Koscuisko were capable of thinking for long enough to tell him, he could go and request whatever antispasmodics or painkillers might ease the suffering of a bad case of ethanol toxicity in Aznir Dolgorukij.
Koscuisko was out again, asleep, limp and defenseless and utterly trusting — or too tired to care. He couldn’t really leave Koscuisko, not just yet. A man as sick as Koscuisko was could lapse into hypothermia lying on a cool tiled floor, without the protection of Joslire’s body heat. And there was no sense in even beginning to gamble that there wasn’t enough fluid, enough matter, enough anything left in Koscuisko’s stomach to choke him if he turned wrong in his sleep — without somebody there to ensure the airway remained clear. A man could choke on his own blood as easily as on wodac, and if Koscuisko wasn’t bleeding yet, he would be soon unless the dry heaves eased up more quickly than Joslire judged they would. He could be wrong, of course, he knew that well enough. Koscuisko could sit up and rub his face and demand his fast-meal, for instance. There was no telling with Dolgorukij.
He just couldn’t afford to take that risk.
He settled himself as best he could to wait the liquor out.
###
Usually — Ligrose knew — only she and the Tutors attended the Administrator’s morning report; there was no need for the Provost’s attendance. What was going on? Clellelan looked grim. And only Chonis was here of all ten Tutors on Station, this time.
“Doctor Chaymalt.” Not only that, but Clellelan was being formal with her. “This concerns your favorite Student, or at least your favorite this Term. Come in, sit down, close the door. There’s a problem.”
Koscuisko, was it? His man St. Clare had spent some more time in Infirmary lately, she’d noticed that. She’d made it her business to find out why; she’d even gone so far as to review the tapes of Koscuisko’ s Eighth Level, and what had happened after. She should have known better than to look at Koscuisko’s tapes. His control and his precision were just as impressive when he was beating his Security as she had found them when he’d been performing surgery; and she’d already decided that she didn’t want to get involved.
An Exchange of Hostages Page 38
