by L D Inman
Speir held his fear for him. But now Douglas was angry. “I wanted to stay clear of this,” he said, bitterly.
“Mm. And how does your luck lie, with that?”
His luck? Like piss in a dung channel. Douglas took a long breath. “I’m not here on Selkirk’s behalf,” he said finally.
“Or Barklay’s either,” Stevens guessed.
Douglas sighed: acknowledgment enough. “If Ryswyck gets out of this unscathed,” he said, “I’ll be very surprised. But I don’t aim for it. I’m no enemy of courtesy. You know that.”
He couldn’t help the pleading note that crept into his voice at the end; nor could Stevens help the tiny flinch that moved the hard lines of his face. “I don’t know what I know, anymore,” he whispered.
You should have just told them, Douglas thought at Barklay. Should have told them about Solham Fray from the start. We’d have had twenty years to work through this, not twenty hours. It isn’t like you’d had no practice at defiance. And it’s the whole country’s shame. But you wanted the fault all to yourself.
“I couldn’t refuse to come,” Douglas said. “But I don’t think any good will come of it.”
Stevens would have answered, but the door clacked open behind them, and they turned to see one of Lord Selkirk’s captains emerge into the lamplight. “Captain Douglas?”
Douglas straightened. “Sir.”
“The Lord High Commander would like to have a word with you. With me, please.”
Douglas glanced briefly at Stevens, who gave his sober answer at last. “I think you’re right. Good night, Douglas. Captain.”
“Good night, Stevens.” Douglas followed the captain through the far door, listening to Stevens’s quiet, heavy strides in the other direction.
It was full dark now. Under the captain’s direction, Douglas cut off the path to the arena complex, heading straight for the officers’ blocks, for what he knew to be the largest suite, where Selkirk was staying. The captain knocked at the door, and then left him.
“Enter.” Douglas obeyed. “Ah. Captain Douglas. Shut the door and come in. Thank you. You may stand at your ease.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Lord Selkirk stood with his back to the table, hands braced comfortably on its edge. His attitude was relaxed, his demeanor benevolent; but he hadn’t returned Douglas’s salute, nor did he now ask him to sit down where two chairs had been drawn up by a small table. A pair of tea cups stood half-drunk and abandoned on its surface. Douglas did not cast his glance toward the door to the next room, but he could see in his peripheral vision that it was ajar. Of course. He stood waiting for Lord Selkirk to speak.
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” said Selkirk mildly. “General Inslee speaks very highly of you.”
“That’s very kind of him, my lord.”
Selkirk eyed him. “He says there is not as much scope at Cardumel for your talents as might be wished.”
Douglas sighed inwardly. Of course Inslee knew he was bored. “I always study to do my duty, wherever I am, my lord.”
“Of course. But do you like it there?”
Surely Selkirk didn’t think Douglas would attempt to answer that. “I am of course very pleased with my commission, my lord.”
Selkirk waved this away. “I wouldn’t doubt it. But Inslee was not the first of your superiors to speak well of you to me. Commander Jarrow told me that your grasp of situations in their wholeness is second to none among your peers. He even went so far as to recommend you to me for promotion, when you finished your studies.”
This wasn’t like dueling wits with Jarrow at all. Lord Selkirk had no need to insinuate: his eyes were frank and direct, his broad face open, and he was infinitely more dangerous. “That is a rather ambiguous compliment, my lord,” Douglas said.
Selkirk seemed amused. Briefly. “Did he speak of such a recommendation to you?” he asked.
Douglas did not dare lie. “Yes, my lord. In a roundabout fashion, he did.”
“And what was your answer to him?” Their eyes still met, but Douglas was tinglingly aware of that cracked door. Barklay was surely on the other side of it, made to listen to whatever indictment might come from Douglas’s lips. So far, nothing he was saying was bound to come as a surprise.
“I avoided giving him one,” Douglas said. “Until that became its own answer.”
“Why?” Selkirk said, deceptively bland.
“I did not wish to involve myself in the obvious struggle going on between the commander and General Barklay, my lord.”
“You saw a connection, then, between Jarrow’s patronage toward you, and his opposition to Barklay?”
Douglas took a fortifying breath. “It was understood among the students, my lord, that Commander Jarrow had been tasked to observe and report to his superiors about Ryswyck’s operations. His dislike of General Barklay seemed to spread to the school in general.”
“And you thought that unfair, did you?”
Douglas did not answer at once, remembering how he had felt then, his worry for Ryswyck’s sake, his concern about what had seemed to be Barklay’s isolated indiscretion. He was not worried now; he was angry, like a small sun casting its rays on everything around him. Douglas did not move or change expression, but still he felt himself transparent to his superior’s implacable gaze. Very well, let him see. “My grasp of the situation in its wholeness, my lord,” he said, “was less complete then than it is now.”
Selkirk’s lips twitched. “So was mine,” he said. “So then, after you made clear to Commander Jarrow that you were not interested in his patronage, a classified file was leaked in the weekly dispatch. You were the officer in charge of communications that week, weren’t you?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Who was the officer on duty when the dispatch came through?”
Selkirk already knew the answer to this, Douglas was sure. “It was Field-Commander Speir, my lord.”
“She showed the file to you?”
“No, my lord. She thought I should not see it. She asked my advice as her superior what she should do about a security breach, and I went with her to make an immediate report to General Barklay.”
“So you have not read the file, then?”
“No, my lord; I have read it. General Barklay asked me to view the whole.”
“Why?”
Douglas overrode his own hesitation. “I couldn’t say, my lord.”
“Couldn’t you? I can think of a few reasons. To obstruct me from cashiering then-Lieutenant Speir before her career was even started, for one.” Selkirk was shrewd; he had clearly read the apprehension in Douglas’s precise answers. “To justify himself to you, in a perverse sort of way, as having a compelling reason to found and run an unorthodox military school. To pull you to the inside of a distasteful secret, so that you would not be able to part yourself from him easily.”
Yes; all of those. Douglas decided that Selkirk did not actually require an answer. He stood silent, meeting his gaze. Finally he said: “I never did understand, though, why Jarrow would do something so obviously out-of-bounds.”
“Perhaps Barklay didn’t tell you. He is a close relation of the one man who was court-martialed over the incident at Solham Fray. Tell me, Captain Douglas—did the contents of that file affect your opinion of General Barklay?”
How could they not? “Yes, my lord.”
“For the better? For the worse?”
“For the worse.” Douglas could almost see Barklay hearing this answer; remembered Barklay getting up to face the darkened window, away from Douglas’s regard; remembered the flinch between them, the day he had gone to hide in his shower cubicle. The visions of his grief cleared, and he firmed his feet and his gaze. “You didn’t want that file exposed, my lord.”
“No.”
“And you still don’t.”
“Do you disagree?”
“I don’t know if I disagree or not, my lord. I don’t know why you would support General Ba
rklay in his experiment, knowing what you know, and then change your mind. I don’t know why you would send Jarrow here to report, with such a conflict of interest to jaundice his opinion—” Douglas inhaled— “and why it would surprise you that he was more interested in vengeance than truth. I don’t know why you are doing what you’re doing now. I don’t know if Barklay’s experiment is worth saving, I don’t know if Barklay was being honest when he founded Ryswyck, I don’t know if we’d have been better off if the words Solham Fray had been on everyone’s lips the last twenty years. I only know—” and all at once his breathing slowed and he felt himself calm through and through— “that I’m not going to cooperate with vengeance. Is that what this is, my lord?”
For an instant, their eyes touched, and it seemed to Douglas that the older man was a living mirror for his anger and bewilderment—or that he was a mirror to Selkirk’s own. Then the instant had passed and Lord Selkirk said, cool and passionless: “What is the nature of your relationship to General Barklay?”
Grieved, Douglas thought. He stood there, hands open at his sides, and said nothing.
The silence stretched out.
Then, “Forgive me,” said Lord Selkirk gently. “I have upset you. I won’t try you further tonight. Take the evening to think on it. Then tomorrow let us see if you are willing to give a proper deposition.”
“Thank you, my lord. I’ll do that.” Selkirk answered with a sardonic look; the I’ll see you in hell first undertone must have been clear in Douglas’s even answer.
Dismissed, Douglas headed down the path along the officers’ blocks. He really needed to talk to Speir, now. To his relief, he saw the square window of her assigned quarters lit up behind its drape. He tapped quietly at the door; heard the thread of her voice, a wordless sound like an appeal; diffidently, he turned the latch and put his head in.
Speir lay on her bunk, turned away from him and curled in a tight ball. She had jammed her pillow over her head, but it wasn’t enough to hide the sound of her broken sobs; her whole body was wracked with them. He doubted she was even aware he was here.
Silently he closed the door behind him and rounded her bunk to look down at her, and as he did so a fresh wail tore at her ragged voice. Her stamina was nearly spent, but her grief was hardly touched: she had been unstrung by something, and he had never seen her so helpless against pain. “Ach, dearling,” he uttered before he could stop himself.
Even now he wasn’t sure whether she knew he was there; gingerly, he perched on the edge of the bed and waited for her to register his presence. Presently her sobs gave way to exhausted pants; her grip eased on the pillow over her head, and he pushed it gently out of her way. She didn’t flinch: he relaxed where he sat, no longer fearing to touch her with his proximity.
Douglas watched silently as Speir reclaimed her breath. She blinked swollen eyes and swallowed stickily. A flash of fresh anger passed through him: she had once again taken all the burden for herself—but no; she had shown her fear to him and he had mocked it, and asked her to bear his in addition. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have thought about how hard this would be on you.”
“It’s harder than it ought to be.” Her voice was a whispering rasp. She turned over onto her back and stared bleakly up at the ceiling. “There are so many ways I’m not fearless, Douglas.”
A fresh tear started down her temple: prelude to a confession, Douglas was sure. He brushed gently at it with the back of his forefinger, and waited.
“The last time I went home at the break,” she began quietly, “I went to see my father at the Med House. I knew he was getting worse. I thought I was ready for that. The nursing staff told me he was having constant nightmares, and his…recognition of the world was intermittent. I thought I was ready.” A short silence. “I went into his room, and he turned. And his face was just…wiped, like there was nothing left of him in his body. Cold. No smile. No….” Another silence, in which Speir dragged in a breath before going on, in a calm beyond grief. “He said, ‘Who are you?’ In this voice I didn’t know, empty even of contempt. And I was halfway back down the hall before I knew that I had turned on my heel. I went home and hid.” She swallowed. “It would have been the new normal—I would have gone on, with him like that—if I’d gone back the next day, but somehow it didn’t happen. And then the next day came, and the next. And then I was back on the shuttle for Ryswyck. I never saw him again, never talked to him until the courier came to tell me he was gone.”
She had stopped crying. But she kept her gaze fixed on the ceiling, as if afraid to look at him and confirm his judgment of her. This was the secret she had shielded from his view. The guilt that had bound her to Barklay despite all she knew to set against it. Douglas blinked away his own tears and reached out to lay his palm silently on her brow. It wasn’t his place to absolve her, but he could—speak to her of absolution, may be. Under his hand, she closed her eyes. The stillness in the room gathered under the single lamp over her bed.
When she stirred, he took his hand away; she glanced at him before turning her head to stare away into the shadows. “I left Ryswyck that same day,” she went on. “Everyone was very kind. At the funeral I gave up my privilege to sing the dirge, as chief mourner…but not so I could weep. I couldn’t. It was like there was a boulder between me and any grief I might have felt. I hadn’t any right to weep. I didn’t know why people were kind. I abandoned my only family in his last hour.”
Douglas stirred. “Don’t paint it too black, Speir. Yes, you funked it that day. But you’d been taking care of him for years. Hadn’t you. You stood in mother’s place to him more than he did to you.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” she sighed.
“It wasn’t yours either. If anyone bears fault, it’s Berenia, for putting him to torture.” And possibly Barklay, for justifying them in it. “He’s free of his pain now. And so are you.”
“Yes,” she said, calmly. “I felt the relief of it, when the captain told me. It felt shameful to me. And I…there’s so much I don’t understand. There was no one point when I could say that he left me. But when we arrived here today…it all came back to me. I thought, if I went inside I would find myself abandoned all over again. The way I failed him, right there where I left it.”
“Are you talking about your father?” Douglas said. “Or Barklay?”
Her mouth moved in answer to the dryness of his question. “I meant my father,” she sighed. “I haven’t failed Barklay. Much.”
You haven’t failed him at all. He refrained from saying it, but she read correctly the tightening of his grip on his knees.
“Oh, Douglas. How I envy you sometimes. You always know how you feel and think.”
“It’s not the advantage you think it is,” Douglas said. He looked down at his hands. He owed her truth for truth. “The day I asked Barklay to end it…I went back to my quarters, and hid in my shower cube, and cried my heart out. I could see it all clearly, and it still didn’t matter. It seemed so small, what he asked of me, and yet I couldn’t give it to him any more. And that was a failure no matter what I knew.”
“And then later,” she said softly, “when you had time and space to think, you were angry that he ever asked it.”
He met her eye. “You understand better than you think.”
“I told you,” she said, and they both cracked a tiny smile.
“The day you asked him to end it,” Speir repeated, thoughtfully. “That would have been the day we couldn’t find you. Right?”
“Yes,” Douglas admitted, after a hesitation.
“Barklay was so worried,” she said. “I thought he was overreacting. He was near frantic.”
“He was overreacting,” Douglas said, irritated. “I wasn’t about to do myself harm. I just wanted to weep my hour in peace.”
He had felt transparent to her—to everyone, but most of all to her—that day, helpless and open to her shrewd, speculative look. She was giving him that look now.
“You shoul
d ask him,” she said. “You should ask him why.”
Because you know what’s behind it, he thought. “What did he tell y—no. No. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be sucked in to all that again.”
She said: “I think it’s too late for that.”
“Aye,” he groaned.
“Ask him.”
“I thought you weren’t going to stand between us any more.”
“This is me not doing that. Just giving you a sole piece of advice. Talk to him.”
He didn’t need to tell her what Selkirk had said to him; what she didn’t already know, she could guess. And perhaps what she knew and guessed had been the thing to unlock her grief. They bore equal burdens; there was scarcely anything at this point to share. He nudged her. “Budge over.”
She made room for him, and he stretched out next to her on the bed. Their heads came to rest tilted together, both of them looking up at the water stains on the ceiling. For just this small time, he thought, they were safe in their little pool of light.
“Did your parents write down their names together?” he asked her idly.
For an instant he feared he might be trespassing by asking such a thing, but she did not tense. “No,” she said, in the same tone. “My grandmother was always at my mother to do it, for my sake. To give me dynastic provenance, you know, in case I ever wanted to go into politics.” He chuckled obligingly at her obvious joke. “But they put it off and put it off, and then my mother shipped out for the last time, and that was that.”
“How old were you?”
“Eight when she left. Almost nine when her sub cruiser was lost.”
Douglas thought of his own mother, with her merry black eyes and her always-moving, callused hands; once again his imagination foundered at a whole childhood without such a presence. “Do you remember her?” he asked, more tentatively.
“Not well now,” she said. “Our picture on the shrine at home keeps a better image. But I remember some things. She taught me how to pray. How to hold a foil.” Douglas heard her smile, and relaxed at last. “And what about you? Did your parents make fast together?”
