Ryswyck

by L D Inman

  “Ach, no,” he snorted. “My mother was always more interested in progeny than partners. She started out with an inheritance of two farms when she was seventeen. She contracted for a child almost every year and acquired the holdings to match. At one point she had oversight of twelve farms, one for every child. She sold some off, though, when the war came and some of my brothers and sisters went off to the military. I’m the thirteenth. And the only unplanned one of the lot. My father had just mustered out of the army and was headed to the North Circle to join a crew as a surveyor. He summered at Arisail and he and my mother took a liking to each other. She had to send him an urgent message, when he’d gone almost beyond comm reach, when she found herself pregnant. He signed a sponsorship contract by proxy.” It seemed odd now, that they had never taken trouble to tell one another these things; but time and acquaintance made the facts less bald. “He did well by us, my father. Not much to spend your pay on at the North Circle, so he put most of it by and sent me to university on it. Which was very generous.”

  “So you never met him, then.”

  “I met him once. He came down when I was six. We were both shy of each other, but he seemed a nice man. My mother liked him very much. It was my oldest brother Magnus who helped with the raising of me, when he wasn’t on duty with the Coast Guard, that is. We all pitched in on that sort of thing. But I’ll always be the youngest.”

  “I like your family,” Speir murmured.

  “I’ll take you to meet them,” he promised, “when we get the chance.”

  And what kind of chance would they get? Well, if Selkirk was feeling vengeful enough, their military careers might both be swept away; he could be back on his mother’s homestead mending orchard nets and running herds in due course after all. Speir had more to lose; she had breathed military duty all her life, and all her family had been given up in that duty. He tried to picture her in the local guard at Arisail, or policing traffic in the capital. No; she needed a better scope for her gifts, and a fairer prospect for her generosity. Perhaps Barklay had thought about this. He should have, Douglas thought, in return for the grief he’d brought her. Perhaps he’d said something of it to her already. “Speir?” he said.

  But he knew already that she was asleep beside him. He should get up and leave her to rest, and go take her advice. He would just close his eyes briefly first.

  ~*~

  He woke without moving and opened his eyes. It felt hours later, but he’d have to get up to see the clock. Beside him Speir was soundly asleep, nestled against him, radiating warmth. After a moment of sleepy resistance, Douglas eased himself away and slipped out of bed; to his relief she did not wake, only turned to her side and settled again with a sigh. He pulled the folded blanket gently from under her feet and spread it over her, tucking it over her shoulder. He glanced at the clock, half-shadowed behind the range of Speir’s bed-lamp; it was indeed now very late.

  Speir sighed again; then her breath slowed and evened. A filament of her hair caught the light where it draped disarranged over her brow. Douglas reached down and smoothed it back over her temple. His memory was teased, of a passage in one of his practical-philosophy courses, something about the hypothesized shape of the universe and its implications for electromagnetic fields: if the universe had a shape, he thought, perhaps it was something like this moment. He and Speir stood free of one another, and yet moved together in mutual certainty. Even when they were at odds; even when they were both confused. And Speir had said it herself: Ryswyck seemed to stand as the image of all that was both perfect and unfinished, redeemed and unredeemable. Stevens, too, was right; it wasn’t a coincidence that everything had converged here.

  Still thinking, Douglas went out into the night. The rain was falling lightly, a brittle sound on old leaves, softer on the walkways. Not many windows remained lit under their blackout shades in the officers’ block; the entrance to the arena complex glimmered under its brooding awning, and the tower lights glinted afar off—it seemed strange now to Douglas that Ryswyck’s tower had no proper blackout shield, but it was entirely characteristic of its founder to neglect provision for such defense.

  Douglas could not, from this angle, see Barklay’s windows directly, but he could see the faint glow cast from his office lights against the lawn, light glinting on the stone channels under the eaves. Barklay was still awake; not surprising. Douglas crossed the lawn to the west portico in long, unhurried strides. Inside, he brushed perfunctorily at the drops on his hair and jacket.

  Barklay’s door was open. At the sound of Douglas’s step he looked up from his desk.

  Douglas hadn’t made up his mind what to say. He decided not to attempt speaking at all, and accepted Barklay’s gestured offer of a chair across the desk without a word. He sat, hands quiet on the armrests, and looked at Barklay silently. Barklay acknowledged the scrutiny; then after a moment he went back to the keypads on his com-deck. He reached for a tablet and docked it; compared its contents to the screen under his glass; then handed it across to Douglas with an impenetrable look.

  Douglas took it and scanned its file headings: the current roster of Ryswyck students and their areas of study, scoring averages, and arena schedule numbers. The current staff, their positions and months left on rotation. The requisitions schedule, and current inventory of supplies, goods, and ordnance. Reports from Commodore Beathas and Captain Marag; a report from Stevens summing up his briefings from the rota captains.

  The import was obvious. Twelve hours ago Douglas would have rejected both the import and the loaded tablet, with impatience and loathing. Four hours ago he would have pointed out to Barklay that Selkirk would likely reject out of hand any successor Barklay himself wanted. Now, he opened each file, deliberately, and paged carefully through its contents, absorbing quickly as much as he could. Then he handed the tablet back.

  Barklay loaded it again and returned it. This time, a list of pending commissions for junior officers at the end of their course of study; contact information for the original board of sponsors for Ryswyck’s founding who still lived; and a small list of Ryswyckian alumni and their current rank and posting—probably strategic contacts who had been close to Barklay at one time or another.

  If ever you loved me, find out the truth, Barklay had said, and A grasp of situations in their wholeness, Selkirk had said. The brief woundedness in Selkirk’s eyes; the wounded cry in Speir’s voice. He’s free of his pain now. This all came back to Solham Fray, somehow. Without Solham Fray, there was no Ryswyck, for both good and ill. Undefendedness as offense. Himself crouched in anguish in his shower cube. Barklay and his heavy faults. You’d have to find something else to weigh you down, Speir had said. Speir understood the situation in its wholeness better than she thought she did; it was just that it was so blood-and-bone close. The truth was here; he just had to get all the sheep in the pen.

  Douglas’s gaze focused on Barklay, and he realized that Barklay was just pretending to work, to keep Douglas company while he thought. The shadows were clearly visible under his eyes, the creases of his skin heavy and sad. Douglas felt a distant compassion for him, that seemed to exist in balanced tandem with his calm anger. Even love grieved held its timeless shape.

  He put the tablet, forgotten on his knee, on Barklay’s desk, and stretched to his feet. Barklay looked up, silently, and Douglas offered him a nod. It wasn’t enough: after a hesitation, Douglas gave in and laid his closed hand against his heart, the old bruises on his knuckles plucking at his awareness.

  Barklay didn’t return the gesture. He bent his head as if receiving a rebuke; as if their positions were already reversed. The time under their feet was shifting, Douglas felt, like shingle on a storm-lashed strand. Then Barklay looked up again and gave him a tired nod.

  Douglas went away to bed.

  8

  The next day began inauspiciously with news that the comm lines were down at Ryswyck One. Lieutenant Orla reported that the available signals were strong, but intermittent, and no code s
he had tried so far would establish a connection. The Lord High Commander himself went up the tower, to try his own codes, but had no better luck; he instructed Orla, and those who would take her duty next, to keep trying for another few hours. Selkirk was loath to begin transmitting an emergency signal right away: he did not want to disrupt normal operations for a technical issue unless he had to.

  The news served to eclipse whatever remained of the gaiety of last night’s supper; Speir had never known breakfast at Ryswyck to be so quiet. As she got her tray of farina, she cast a glance across the mess hall: their Cardumel escort, she was pleased to see, had mixed in with the cadets and were talking with them as they ate. This subdued atmosphere would seem quite normal to them.

  Which didn’t mean they weren’t alert to the undercurrents of tension. Lieutenant Ell marked where she sat down with her tray and swiftly took the place across from her, claiming it firmly with his own tray instead of taking it to the hatch. “I see you are up betimes, Lieutenant,” Speir said, nodding at his empty bowl.

  “Yes, ma’am. I spoke with Captain Douglas last night,” he went on. “He says we’re to follow the schedule Captain Stevens gave us, and that Captain Stevens would be coordinating with you and him for any changes. I’m just checking in to see if there’s another briefing.”

  “Thank you, Ell,” Speir said. “Continue to take briefings from Captain Stevens. He’ll be running the course while we’re here. Check in again with me or Captain Douglas at supper; I look forward to debriefing you about your first day of the course.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” He gripped his tray as though to get up, but then hesitated. He shot a brief glance at the high table and said in a lower voice: “I wasn’t expecting to see so many high brass here.”

  The implied query was obvious. Speir answered him calmly. “Yes. I expect Captain Douglas and I will be taken up with several important meetings today. I advise you to keep your own counsel while you’re here—the rumor turbine at Ryswyck Academy runs swift and furious.”

  Ell’s lips quirked. “I’ve observed that already, ma’am. And I’ll pass that along.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” Speir said, by way of dismissing him. He ducked his head for salute, and went away.

  His place was filled almost immediately by Stevens, who set down his tray across from her with a clatter; the bench creaked underneath him as he sat. He shot her a look from under his brows and took a large bite of farina.

  “Come for a briefing also, Stevens?” Speir said, amused.

  “That depends,” Stevens said. “You think your briefing will be any more substantial than the one I got from Douglas last night?”

  “You mean he didn’t fill you in satisfactorily?” Speir said, smiling over her next bite. “You shock me,” and Stevens snorted. But his manner softened.

  “How do you fare, then, Speir?” he asked her, seriously. “You disappeared quick after supper.”

  “I’m well,” Speir assured him. It was true. She was still getting used to the absence of her secret: she felt both exposed and unfettered, as if she had been mummed up in invisible batting. In retrospect, she thought, it might have been simpler for her and Douglas to confide in one another in the first place, instead of wrestling one another so disruptively from sparring ring to bed and back again; but perhaps the latter had made the former possible. In any event, they were here now; and bearing the fear for both of them seemed a much less fraught task this morning.

  “You’ve cut your hair,” Stevens observed.

  “Aye. It seemed the thing to do.”

  Stevens took a restive bite, looking at her. Then he said abruptly: “Do you know what he’s going to do?”

  “And which ‘he’ would that be?” Speir said dryly. “Douglas? Barklay? Lord Selkirk?”

  “Any of them. All of them.”

  Speir cocked her head. “Sources all tapped out, my comrade?” she said, biding comfortably as he glared.

  “You could say that.”

  “I can’t give you concrete intel,” Speir told him quietly. “But I’ll venture a few predictions. Barklay will try to maneuver Ryswyck out of fire with a misguided gesture. Lord Selkirk will care less than he should about collateral damage. And Douglas will find a bit of ground he likes and dig his heels in.”

  At that last, Stevens barked a small laugh. Speir followed his glance over her shoulder to see that Douglas had arrived with his tray. His eyes were shadowed, but his air was calm.

  “She’s got the measure of you, lad,” Stevens said to him—and couldn’t resist adding, “In all sorts of ways.”

  The breath of a smile crossed Douglas’s face. “I’m aware,” he said equably, sitting down next to Speir. He paused before eating to glance at her. “How do you fare?” he asked.

  About to brush away his inquiry with impatience, Speir bit her lip and met his eye. “You’re the second person to ask me that. I didn’t realize I had drawn any notice. But I’m well.”

  His glance searched her a moment longer. Then, “Good,” he answered, and bent his attention to his bowl. He didn’t say, Because we’ll need it, but it must have been strongly implied, because Stevens said quietly, “I take it Speir is next on the Lord High Commander’s list?”

  Speir put down her spoon and looked at Douglas. “‘Next’?” she prodded him.

  He admitted, “I had an interview last night. Before I talked to you.”

  Stevens was silent, looking from Douglas to Speir and back again. She could see what he was thinking: what could have stopped Douglas from mentioning it when he spoke with Speir last night? It was a mark of the situation that Stevens’s conclusion didn’t jump to the lascivious. He frowned thoughtfully at Speir. She ignored him. “And how was it?” she asked Douglas.

  Douglas hesitated. Then said very quietly, “He wants vengeance for something.”

  “Yes,” Speir said.

  He looked up to meet her eye. “And you know what it is.”

  Speir sighed. “Yes.”

  “Speir—” Douglas began—Stevens was watching them intently—but Speir headed him off. “Did you talk to Barklay after you saw me?” she said.

  She watched Douglas gathering himself to answer, and at the same time was aware of the three of them, a tiny council, an island in the mess hall. Barklay hadn’t told Douglas about John Selkirk. There was not time enough for Douglas to absorb that story before dealing with Lord Selkirk’s vengeance. And there, beyond Douglas’s shoulder, one of Selkirk’s staff was picking his way between the benches, making purposefully toward them.

  “I saw him. We didn’t touch the subject,” Douglas said.

  There was no more time. “Do you trust me?” Speir said, urgent and low.

  Douglas blinked, but after that he did not hesitate. “Yes.”

  “Trade me burdens.”

  In her peripheral vision Stevens’s lips moved, forming a question, but her gaze was locked with Douglas’s. “Trade you,” he repeated softly.

  “Grief for fear. Will you?”

  Their eyes touched, a live contact as unbroken as the moment they had first met in the compass of the arena. You’ll always know where north is. “Yours the grief and mine the fear?” he said, almost inaudibly. Speir nodded.

  Douglas opened his mouth, no doubt to ask her why she wanted the hold the grief now that both their fear was lighter. But at that moment Lord Selkirk’s man invaded their ambit, and broke their contact.

  “Captain Douglas,” he said. “You are wanted. Will you come with me, please?”

  Douglas looked up at him, then back at Speir. “All right,” he told her. “As you ask.”

  She nodded firmly. “Leave your tray,” she said. “I’ll take it for you.”

  He touched his closed hand to his heart, with more ease than she had seen him do it in months, got up from the table, and followed the officer away without looking back.

  “Right,” Stevens said, “what was that about?”

  Speir took a fortify
ing breath and picked up her spoon. “Douglas needs his hands free,” she told him.

  Stevens was no fool. “It’s going to grieve him, what Selkirk has to say. It’s going to grieve him in particular.”

  There was no need even to affirm that with an answer. Speir merely started eating again.

  “Can you really shield him from that?” he asked, frowning deeply.

  “No,” Speir said. “But I can take a portion of it for him.” Breakfast was ending; the high table was getting up, and there was an increased clacking as trays went to the hatch. Speir would have no more time to explain the bearing of burdens to Stevens than she had to prepare Douglas for the painful truth. Instead she asked: “Stevens—will you stick close to him? It’s more than me he’ll need for these days.”

  He didn’t answer right away. “It’s been said,” he said carefully, “that Douglas might not stick with us.”

  Speir smiled and held up her fist to show the healing tears on her knuckles. “He’s heard it. You can trust him, for what power he has.”

  “I’d better trust him more than that,” Stevens said grimly.

  ~*~

  The conference table in Barklay’s office had rarely reflected so many exalted insignia in its gloss. Barklay sat at the table’s head, ushered there after the opening chant in a stiletto gesture of courtesy by Selkirk: every councilor and officer sitting at the table could see Barklay’s face, which was Selkirk’s real intent, Barklay was sure. The Lord High Commander sat comfortably at Barklay’s left, regarding him with a feline gaze. The place at Barklay’s right was ominously left empty.

  Barklay felt benumbed and weightless. If it were merely time for him to answer for his wrongs, he would have felt relieved. But now it had come, the point to which he had subconsciously looked for so long, and the shame had been turned from medicine to poison. It wasn’t an abstraction, the grievous harm he had done. You didn’t listen to me then or any time since, Douglas had said, and it was Douglas who would pay the price for it. Douglas, and Marag, who sat near the foot of the table looking wary; Beathas, who had been excused from this meeting, a stunning insult to her seniority; the senior and junior officers who had kept faith with him, and the cadets who had trusted him: Selkirk was going to force him to watch them all pay the price for his folly.