by L D Inman
The neighborhood was a warren of dingy residences, far from any of the capital’s ombrifuges, poorly drained and dimly lit; the only green was of creeping moss-algae and broken arbors, and the morning light of waning summer only made the slumped house-rows seem more derelict. He had never seen this street before, but he had known as soon as the tram docked what it would look like; had known before he jumped onto the shuttle from Ryswyck in dark pre-dawn, three hours ago.
The house he wanted was obvious; as he turned the corner he slowed his heavy trot and approached the knot of city officials and military police that lingered around the door.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the captain who stopped him with a hand; “the Lord High Commander said no one is to be allowed inside.”
“I must see him,” Barklay said, urgently.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the police tech with her tablet. “It’s already over. They’ve taken the body away. Are you a relative of Warder Selkirk?” She used the blankest-possible title for him: there was nothing else to use but his last address to mark his home-place.
“I…,” Barklay briefly considered naming himself chosen family of the deceased, but the claim stuck in his throat, along with the certain knowledge that John was dead. He cleared it. “I’ve come all this way,” he said, helplessly.
A broad figure emerged from the dark maw of the open door then: black tunic picked out only with ribbon-crested epaulets and the double row of brass buttons, the normally-smooth badger-grey of his temples frizzled by the fetid air. His eyes were lightless and distant.
“Alban,” Barklay said.
Lord Selkirk’s gaze focused on his face at last. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“I came as soon as I could,” Barklay said, fumbling. He did not quite dare to reach toward his old friend. “But I’m too late.”
“Yes,” Selkirk agreed. “They’ve taken him away. There’s nothing left here, only a few effects. And a very long parting letter.” He came down the broken steps of the house-stoop, slowly. “You can read it if you like. It’ll save me copying it to you.”
“Alban,” Barklay said, “I’m—”
Lord Selkirk reached past Barklay’s outstretched hand to grip his shoulder. He leaned in to speak into Barklay’s ear, so softly that even Barklay could hardly hear the words.
“I will end you.” His breath was warm against Barklay’s cheek. “And I will end that pernicious school of yours.”
You don’t mean that. But Barklay could not dare to say it: Selkirk’s hand on his shoulder was kind, almost brotherly; and Barklay had never felt so chilled.
Selkirk stepped away. “Let him go in,” he said to the others, waving a hand. “Let him see whatever he wants.” He walked on, without looking back.
The rain fell harder, between Barklay and the dark doorway.
The guard-captain popped open a rainshade.
~*~
The trouble didn’t surface until after breakfast. Speir had just left the mess hall and was headed toward her quarters to pick up the equipment she’d need for the perimeter inspection, when she was intercepted by Corporal Beaton, wearing the clip that marked him as on duty for the head office.
“Field-Commander,” he said, “General Inslee would like to have a word with you.”
“With me?” Speir was nonplussed, but she recovered quickly. “Yes, of course, Corporal.”
She followed Beaton up to General Inslee’s office on the second floor. “Come,” Inslee said in response to Beaton’s knock.
“Field-Commander Speir to see you, sir.”
“Good. Send her in. And go take this to the comm tower.”
Speir entered, taking a covert first glance at the general’s office as she came to attention before his desk: a small office, cramped by comparison with Barklay’s, strictly organized in a rearguard defense against the encroaching clutter of files and old record-books. Inslee had positioned his desk so he could face outward to the window-wall overlooking the tower and still see who entered the room from his left; at his right, a door stood ajar, giving Speir a sliver view of the staff meeting room. Behind Inslee on the corridor wall hung a glass-framed Berenian banner, captured souvenir of his service across the strait, and a silk Ilonian banner, unframed, draped with the pendants of the eastern coast. Despite the portentous background, Inslee regarded her from his chair with a wry, unassuming ease.
“Field-Commander Speir,” he said. “You may stand at your ease.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Inslee leaned back in his chair. “Do you know why I’ve asked to see you?”
“No, sir.” Douglas had said that Colonel Marshall had commended her to Inslee, but Inslee didn’t look like he was in a commending mood. Perhaps she was to be reprimanded for something; but what?
Speir had got as far as a quick review of her most recent duties when Inslee said: “Did you sleep with Captain Douglas last night?”
“…Yes, sir,” she said, blinking. “I did.”
Inslee raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t clear it with me.”
Speir shut her mouth before it could drop open. Inslee appeared to be perfectly serious. “I’m…sorry, sir. I didn’t realize I should have.”
Now both Inslee’s eyebrows were up. “You’re not familiar with the handbook on the subject?”
The handbook. There’d been a section on fraternization, which she’d half-dismissed as mostly irrelevant to her situation. What had it said?—In order to maintain discipline and order between the ranks…. “Ah,” she said, carefully. “I appear to have misread the handbook on the subject, sir. I was under the impression that fraternization was only forbidden between the senior and junior cadre. Captain Douglas and I are both in the senior cadre, so it didn’t occur to me to consider his higher rank, sir.”
There was a mordant twist to Inslee’s smile that didn’t bode well at all. “The actual wording of the handbook is: In order to maintain discipline and order between the ranks, all fraternization is forbidden, subject to the approval of the general staff as existing relations and changes in status may admit. All fraternization. The plain sense is, the senior cadre sets an example by staying out of one another’s beds.”
He was obviously daring Speir to comment on the policy, but a lifetime of military discipline plus three years of practice accepting arbitrary faults made Speir very comfortable letting that go. “In that case, I am clearly in contravention of the policy of this base, sir. I await your judgment.”
Inslee heaved a sigh and turned an eyeroll into a surge up from his chair. “And I,” he said, “await my deliverance.” He went to the meeting-room door and pushed it further open. At his beckon, Douglas emerged; he exchanged an abashed glance with Speir and came to stand next to her, facing Inslee where he regarded them with folded arms standing before his desk.
“Interestingly,” Inslee said, “Captain Douglas made the exact same mistake in interpreting that section of the handbook that you did. So I can only conclude that either the two of you worked out a marginally plausible excuse in advance, or you were so used to a different policy that you failed in basic reading comprehension.”
Neither of them answered this. “Speir?” Inslee said.
“Given what you say, sir, no excuse would be plausible,” Speir said calmly. Douglas’s face remained sober, but she knew he was indignant, and that she had amused him.
Inslee was no fool. “Or to put it another way, any excuse would be quite as implausible as the plain sense of the policy. That is what you meant, isn’t it? I take it the policy at Ryswyck Academy allows for fraternization within cadres?” He looked between them both, waiting.
Douglas was clearly leaving that one to Speir. She mentally promised him a good kick, and took a breath. “There is no policy regarding fraternization at Ryswyck Academy, sir,” she said.
Inslee’s eyes narrowed as he smiled, dry, pleasant, and deadly. “No section about it in the handbook there?”
“There is no pol
icy handbook at Ryswyck Academy, sir.”
“You surprise me,” said Inslee, not sounding surprised at all. “This particular problem with Ryswyckian alumni is new to me, but it’s of a piece with others I’ve had. No wonder you’re all so cavalier about rules, if there aren’t any. Yet you must negotiate discipline somehow, or you’d all be abject failures in the field. Yes?”
Speir set her lips, determined to wait Douglas out; he sighed and acquiesced. “The General Military Code is in effect at Ryswyck, sir,” he said. “For the rest, the rule of courtesy dictates discipline. Which does, as you say, require negotiation. I would not be the first Ryswyckian to forget that you can keep courtesy to your comrade and still break it to your community; and for that I apologize, sir.”
“Your conscience becomes you,” Inslee said, very dryly. “If you wish to oblige me—” yes, he’d had Ryswyckians under his command before— “you will cease to assume that discipline can be negotiated at will. You will make yourselves properly familiar with the rules that are operative on this base. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Douglas said; “Yes, sir,” echoed Speir.
“And now I will oblige you by issuing you some direct, unequivocal orders. This will not happen again. You will not exercise your appetites with each other, or—which should go without saying but clearly it doesn’t—with anyone else. You’re henceforth banned from sparring together, without exception.” Inslee had meant that last as insurance and not punishment: Speir saw him take note of her and Douglas’s involuntary reaction. Inslee’s lips twitched, and he went on: “If I ever hear of this again I will have you both in front of the senior staff for review and disciplinary action. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” they said. Douglas ducked his head; Speir resisted making the Ryswyckian gesture of contrition and blinked the smart from her eyes.
“Good. Dismissed.”
They filed out silently into the corridor, where they waited till the door had fallen shut before drawing a long breath and letting it out.
“Ach, Speir,” Douglas said, “I am sorry. I should have read the handbook more carefully before I invited you to bed.”
“I bear the same fault,” Speir said. “And if you hadn’t initiated, I would have, sooner or later. And now we’ve lost our sparring privileges.”
“That’s the worst of it,” Douglas agreed, ruefully. “Foolish of me to ask permission for the one, and not the other. But it didn’t even occur to me.”
“How—” it would take some care to frame the question— “did Inslee hear we’d gone to bed?”
Douglas sighed deeply. “Inslee happened to be passing our table in the mess when Lemaire was taking me to task for keeping him awake with the noise.”
“Lemaire? Ah—your neighbor. Yes, he glared at me from his doorway as I left.”
“Apparently we completely ruined his sleep shift.”
Speir snorted. “You’d think he’d have made the best of the situation.” Her gesture was slight, but it made Douglas duck his head in silent laughter. “But do convey my regrets, if you get the opportunity.” Speir felt suddenly more Ryswyckian than she ever had at Ryswyck.
“I gather he envied me my good fortune,” Douglas said.
“He could as well have envied me mine,” she replied, gallantly. Douglas spread a hand on his breast and bowed.
“Well,” she sighed, “I guess I’ll see you—” and then realized—she wouldn’t. Without their regular sparring appointments, she was unlikely to cross paths with Douglas until the staff meeting later in the month. Or any month, for that matter. She read an equal dismay on Douglas’s face. “…later.”
There was a silence, until Douglas found voice for a goodbye. “I will always be grateful for your generosity,” he said quietly.
“And I will always remember your hospitable kindness,” she answered.
He offered her another small bow, and then went away. She watched him down the corridor, then turned to go the other way and nearly walked into Inslee, who had come out of his office outside her notice. “Oh! excuse me, sir.”
Inslee looked both quizzical and amused; he said nothing, and she ducked around him in confusion.
~*~
Inslee had been going to follow his message up to the comm tower, but was called back to his desk by a chime that turned out to be the answer. Before the tower officer could sign off, Inslee said on impulse: “And get me an open line to Ryswyck One, please.”
There is no policy handbook at Ryswyck Academy. It was the nonplussed look on Speir’s face as she said it, as if a military installation having a handbook was the anomaly, and not the other way around. Inslee had felt equally wrongfooted—it had never occurred to him, in all his years dealing with Barklay’s students, that Ryswyck might not have a local policy code. But it explained much, so much that the instant she’d said it, it had become permanent truth, part of the landscape.
Douglas, however, had been much more guarded, from the moment Inslee had taken him to his office to question him. There was something there Inslee didn’t understand: if they’d had a prior relationship before being posted here, the whole thing would have made more sense, but Douglas had denied it; yet he’d gone stiff and silent when Inslee asked whether he and Speir had taken the same posting to be near one another. Douglas, unlike Speir—unlike any Ryswyckian he had ever commanded—was prickly when asked about his time there, and Inslee had seen that Speir was bothered by that.
None of which altered his plan to apply straightforward discipline to the situation; but some background would be helpful. “I’d like to speak to General Barklay on an open line when he’s free,” he told Ryswyck One when the connection came through.
“I’m sorry, sir. General Barklay is not on campus at the moment. He’s expected back late this evening. Would you like me to ask him to contact you when he gets in, sir?”
Inslee was silent a moment, absorbing the unexpected answer. “…Sir?” said Ryswyck One.
“No,” Inslee said at last. “No, I’ll catch up with him at another time. Thank you. Inslee out.”
4
From his vantage at the top of the comm tower, Douglas watched Cardumel descend into deep night. The blackout screens of the tower, and the black covers of the walkways, hid all activity below, so that he and his comrades of the midnight watch seemed to be working in a bubble of dim light, floating above the restless sea. Outside, the wind rose and fell in a muffled roar; inside, the quiet was broken only by the murmurs of the soldier at the air traffic monitor panel and the chime of occasional incoming requests. The atmosphere was nothing like Ryswyck One—for one thing, Douglas was never alone—and yet he still found he could steal a few contemplative moments during late shifts.
Now, he set a queue of recorded transfers to the general staff at Colmhaven, checked the monitors for new messages, and settled down with his abstracted gaze out on the curling black. His shift partner passed him a tablet on his way to the lav, without remark. Immediately after his and Speir’s misadventure with the handbook, there had been a brief spell of ribald digs aimed his way—and no doubt at Speir, as well—but the incident had passed out of comment after a few weeks, and Cardumel had nearly forgotten altogether that its new officers had broken the rules about getting laid on base.
But though Douglas had responded to the jests with good temper, inwardly he was disturbed. It was hard to forget the blessing of Speir’s touch on his skin, her delighted laugh, her tensile strength. She had kissed him savoringly and caressed him freely, luxuriating in their mutuality; she had acknowledged him to their superiors and accepted with open hands the consequences of their bout of pleasure. His friend could do these things for him; his lover had found it too much to encompass.
Douglas didn’t regret going to bed with Speir. But the net result had left him with a deeper ache than he’d begun with. Before Speir arrived on Colm’s Island, Douglas had been well on his way to thinking of Ryswyck as nothing more than a vivid and beautiful dream wi
th an unpleasant aftertaste; of his love for Barklay as a strange shadow that altered the texture of his perceptions until it passed. Of his commission here as a rough, bracing reality, welcome and desired.
But then Speir had come, and even in her grief, even without the buoyant polyphony of mutual courtesy to announce her, she had shown this place for the stark and colorless gate that it was. Let Speir think that was an accident if she wanted to; Douglas knew it was no such thing. It was Barklay taking away with one hand what he gave with the other—freedom to leave, yet no freedom to be left. I want you to be able to walk away clear, he had said. I don’t want to be a lover to you, he had said.
No, he had wanted Douglas to stand in the gate of that damaged twist in his soul and defend it for him. While preaching to him of undefendedness.
“All right, Douglas?” said his shift partner, returning.
Douglas looked up, offered a brief assuring smile. “Aye.”
“Quiet night tonight.”
“Aye.” Douglas didn’t respond to the implied comment on his reverie.
“Just as usual. Any new dispatches?”
“No, the lines are clear.”
“Go have your break, then.”
“I’m much obliged,” Douglas said automatically, and rose from his station chair.
“Go down the bottom of the tower and get a taste of that wind. Clear the cobwebs out.”
“I’ll do that,” Douglas said.
~*~
Ryswyck One that night was quieter still. Barklay recorded three messages and sent them out with his securest code. Checked again for an answer from Central One: nothing. He allowed himself a small sigh and dry-washed his face, then got up for the last look out the windows before going down. The coastal hills were dark on dark, the lights from the main block a cold twinkle in the soft rain that was falling.
