Ryswyck

by L D Inman

  Speir closed her hand on the table; the adhesive on her knuckles pulled taut. “Yes, my lord.”

  “It sounds like you weren’t very well served, by any of them.”

  It was true; and yet it angered Speir to hear Selkirk say it. “I stayed away from politics, my lord,” she said, “but politics came to me.”

  That roused Selkirk, as nothing else had done so far. “Then you will appreciate the opportunity to tell the simple truth,” he said. “General Barklay exploited your sympathy by telling you things you should not know. Did he exploit your obedience by making emotional demands of you?”

  Their gazes battled; the table between them was a fraught border, like a storm-whipped sea. “Yes, my lord,” Speir said, her voice even. “Many times.”

  “Did General Barklay ever make a sexual approach to you?”

  “No, my lord.”

  But Selkirk had seen her minute hesitation. “No?” he repeated, eyebrow cocked.

  “I made it clear he would receive no encouragement in that direction, my lord.”

  “As you made it clear to Jarrow you would not be suborned. Thus far and no farther, is your motto. Yes?”

  “I do have my limits, my lord,” Speir said, looking Selkirk in the eye.

  “That is very clear.” Selkirk’s voice became light and arid. “Did it shock you to think Barklay might make an inappropriate advance to you?”

  “Shock, yes; surprise, no. General Barklay is a very lonely man, my lord.”

  “It would read as loneliness and not exploitation to you, then?”

  “The two are not mutually exclusive, my lord,” Speir said.

  “Indeed they are not. But this is a house of courtesy, as General Barklay so loves to explain to us. Wouldn’t you expect his relations with his students to be straightforward and professional? Wouldn’t you expect him to be more careful about trespassing, rather than less?”

  “Generally speaking, my lord, yes, I would.”

  “But it so happens we are not speaking generally. We are speaking of particulars. You are all taught at Ryswyck Academy to be open and obliging; and the force of that custom bore on you when Barklay drew you into his confidence. Is that not so?”

  Speir resisted the urge to grip the edge of the table. “I don’t think the custom of Ryswyck is the common factor, my lord,” she said, matching Selkirk’s arid tone.

  “Then what is?”

  “I don’t think there is one, my lord. I think it depends upon what you call particulars.”

  “Very well. What are your particulars?”

  Speir took a breath. “My sense of care. My family history. My…balance. Those all have conspired to make me,” she took another breath, “even more complaisant than the average Ryswyckian.”

  “And what made Douglas complaisant?”

  “I couldn’t say, my lord.”

  “Oh, come, Field-Commander. You are his friend. He may have tried to spare you unpleasant confidences, but you have your own eyes. Wisdom rewards a clear eye, didn’t you say? Douglas loved General Barklay, didn’t he?”

  Speir sat silent, burning him with her gaze, her nostrils flaring. It perturbed Selkirk not at all.

  “He loved Barklay, and it wasn’t just you who knew it. Commander Jarrow saw it too, didn’t he. He wanted to make Douglas acknowledge the exploitation Barklay was capable of, and he drew you in so that Barklay couldn’t put Douglas off with a facile explanation.”

  “And so he committed a treasonable offense,” Speir said, sharply. “I thought you disapproved of that, my lord.”

  “Which is why you see me here, taking official depositions under oath, Field-Commander, and not contriving to leak damaging documents to junior officers. To your certain knowledge, Field-Commander Speir: did Captain Douglas accept sexual advances from General Barklay?”

  “Captain Douglas did not confide in me—”

  “I’m not asking what Douglas said about it. I am asking what you know. Do you know that there was a sexual liaison between Douglas and General Barklay?”

  “I never observed any impro—”

  “If you could observe it, it would be much less improper, wouldn’t it? Answer my question, Field-Commander. Do you know there was such a relationship?”

  “How admissible is a second-hand—”

  “Do you—”

  “Yes, I knew!” The reverberations of their voices cleared to silence in the room, till the only sound was Speir’s shallow near-sobbing breaths. She clutched the table’s edge, half-ready to overturn it.

  Selkirk sat back wearily in his chair. “Thank you,” he said.

  After a moment, Speir caught her breath and drew herself up, ignoring the tears burning in her eyes. “My lord,” she said, her voice taut, “may I ask to what these questions tend? I would like to know that I am betraying my dear friend for some good purpose.”

  Selkirk looked at her a long moment without moving. It only made her angrier to see that her revelation had not given him pleasure. Finally he said: “I am trying to determine the value of an institution that was apparently set up, among other things, so that General Barklay could identify soldiers who might help him channel off his compulsion to dominate and exploit. I want to know what can be said for a man who has twisted the obvious virtues of good soldiers to protect him from inquiry. I want to know if there is anything of Ryswyck Academy worth salvaging for Ilona’s good.”

  Speir believed him. Douglas was wrong, this was not vengeance—not yet. “May I speak freely, my lord?” Speir said.

  Selkirk opened a hand. “Please do.”

  “If I learned anything from my father,” she began hardily, “it was that people should not be left alone to bear what they did or suffered in war. Yet it can’t be helped. I did what I could for my father. I tried to do something for General Barklay. It wasn’t enough. And what they really needed, I couldn’t do. It may be true what you say. It may be that General Barklay founded Ryswyck for another purpose beneath his vision. If so, I don’t think Barklay knew it himself. I think you know that, my lord. You say that Barklay has cost Ilona dear by what he has done in secret. But what happened across the strait is still a secret too. And each soldier it touched had to bear it alone.”

  Selkirk’s eyes were glittering hard. Speir drew breath to go on. “I don’t know the answer, my lord. But I know why you’re here. When he came to Cardumel last week, General Barklay told me about the suicide of your younger brother John.”

  “My brother is not relevant to this inquiry,” Selkirk said dangerously.

  “But he is, though, my lord. John Selkirk helped General Barklay found Ryswyck Academy. He also—” she swallowed— “served at Solham Fray, in Barklay’s unit. He committed war crimes there. The same war crimes that were committed against my father by Berenians in their turn. They both came home, my father and your brother. They seemed to survive. But they didn’t, either of them, really. You’re angry with General Barklay for keeping a secret liaison with your brother, for making his suffering worse, for disavowing him to save Ryswyck. He lost all his friends and he died alone, and you couldn’t stop it. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “That is no comfort to me,” Selkirk said, deadly quiet.

  “I know,” Speir said, direct to his eyes. “In Barklay’s office once, I saw a snap of yourself and your brother and General Barklay, taken when you were younger. Your brother was handsome and hale.” Selkirk was gathering himself, his color rising, but Speir was committed now, and she did not stop. “To look at, he’s a bit like Captain Douglas, isn’t he?”

  Selkirk broke. “Thank you, Field-Commander Speir,” he said, very quietly. He stabbed off the recorder, pushed back his chair, and strode from the room. Out in the corridor, Speir could hear him giving low, curt orders. Then silence. Speir was alone in the conference room, the door standing open, the air she breathed spent and dead.

  Exhausted, Speir put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.

  ~*~

  By S
elkirk’s orders, the senior staff were brought in to line the walls of Barklay’s office; sparring court and classes cancelled, the cadets and juniors told to study quietly or go about their maintenance duties as usual. Douglas sat silent as the personnel trooped in slowly, spine straight, gaze unfocused, eyes burning. At his left, Barklay stayed where he was, still and quiescent, head bent. He had looked up only once, when Speir had said, her voice on the projection strained and grieved, that John Selkirk bore resemblance to Douglas; he had seen Douglas take the blow in a slow flinch, and lowered his gaze again. Barklay had not looked up since.

  Where would he be, if Speir had not taken the worst of that blow for him? For a moment Douglas despaired of seeing her—had Selkirk put her under arrest? The councilors were darting looks at him, looks that guarded either sympathy or disgust, Douglas didn’t know or care which. He kept his eyes on the windows: through the sheer white of the drapes, the ghostly shape of a shuttle could be seen making its approach to the airfield beyond the tower.

  Then Speir came in, and Douglas felt he could breathe again. His gaze focused and went to her face: she looked pale and faint, her eyes red-rimmed, but her step was firm. For the briefest of moments their eyes touched before she went to stand at quiet attention next to Stevens. The last officers followed her in, and the room went still.

  Selkirk returned quietly: Barklay’s office was now full of people, but even in his weariness and rage he seemed to add five more as he shut the door. He returned to his place at the table, but he did not sit down.

  “Councilors,” he said, “you have heard the sworn testimony of Field-Commander Speir.” They nodded acknowledgment. Selkirk did not look at Douglas at all, and Barklay seemed to sink even further below his notice, as if it would be too much trouble to Selkirk even to hold him in contempt. “And I think we need not hold further inquiry. It is my recommendation that this institution be closed immediately pending review—” a frisson of dismay ran around the room, even among those who expected such a declaration— “and its senior staff be placed under arrest and charged with complicity in treason.”

  The murmur that had begun died suddenly, as if sliced away from the breaths of every Ryswyckian in the room. From the foot of the table, Marag spoke up, his voice as thin and pale as his face. “My lord, as a member of this council, I must make objection.”

  “Objection to your own arrest, Captain Marag?” Selkirk said. “To be sure. I would be only too pleased to hear why you think you don’t deserve it.”

  To this broadside, Marag made answer with effort. “I can’t speak to that, my lord. But—”

  “But you can speak to your own observations of General Barklay’s behavior, can’t you,” Selkirk said. “I would be surprised to hear he had spoken about his relations with Captain Douglas to you. Did he?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Yet you were in a position to draw the same conclusions as Field-Commander Speir, weren’t you.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Marag said faintly.

  Douglas glared at Selkirk; Selkirk superbly ignored him.

  “You have taught at Ryswyck Academy for ten years. For five of them you have been here full time. For three of them you were head of the teaching staff. You were in a position to guess that General Barklay made grievous use of some of his students, either sexually or otherwise, and you either refused to guess it, or refused to report it if you did.”

  Marag drew a breath. “The construction I put upon the situation—”

  “—was a Ryswyckian construction. The only question a Ryswyckian will ask is, Does it break courtesy? And even Captain Douglas refused to say that it did. No doubt General Barklay made his confidants think they were operating in a fair arena.” Across the room, Douglas saw Speir close her eyes briefly. “They are young and still impressionable. You don’t have that excuse, Captain. The waste that has been perpetrated here is so stunningly criminal that I don’t think treason too heavy a charge. Direct treason, for you.”

  Douglas stirred, but Barklay spoke first, in a voice that sounded dragged over gravel. “Lord Selkirk, I will not allow you to fasten my fault upon Captain Marag. It’s not fit to lay a charge of treason on a soldier as faithful as he is.”

  “What, General,” Selkirk said smoothly, “don’t you approve of arbitrary faults? I am sure Captain Marag would be happy to own a fault for your sake.”

  “As you are happy to mock his generosity to spite me.” Barklay braced his hands on the table, but did not rise.

  “You have destroyed lives, shamed their mother’s names, and you call me spiteful?” Selkirk snarled. “I’ll cut this cancer out of my forces, starting this moment.”

  Half the room drew breath, four councilors started to speak, but Douglas was ahead of them all, his voice carrying clear. “You can’t do that, my lord.”

  Selkirk turned to him. “Your tongue unfettered at last, Captain Douglas? And to tell me what I can and can’t do?”

  “I advise you to think what you’re saying, Lord Selkirk,” Douglas said. “If all this amounts to treason, it’s not enough to close the school—you’d have to execute us all outright.”

  “Do you think that such an absurdity, Captain?” Selkirk said coolly. The whole room felt the chill.

  “You have just informed me what my opinion is worth, my lord,” Douglas said. He stood up, and the aides in the room braced, watching to see if he were about to attack the Lord High Commander. “Absurd or not, if Ryswyck is a sickness, you will have to behead us all to get rid of it. And you will oblige me by starting with me.”

  So saying, Douglas unpinned the ribbons from his epaulets and the links of his fatigue-jacket collar and laid them on the table between himself and Selkirk.

  “This is no time for grand gestures,” Selkirk snapped. “Captain, put your insignia back on.”

  But Douglas wasn’t finished. He reached down and removed his boots one by one. “This is not a grand gesture, my lord. I am simply demonstrating from where my authority comes.” He set his boots together on the table next to his ribbons. “I was born the son of a farmer in the district of the Bay of Arisail. I can die the same way and not lose my honor. You say that Ryswyck Academy made me, and that is true. I say also that I make Ryswyck Academy. It stands or falls with every student who goes out of it to serve in your forces. If you say that it falls,” he finished simply, “then I accept the fault.”

  “No arbitrary faults for you, then?” Selkirk’s voice was soft.

  “No, my lord,” Douglas answered. “None of us here are alone.”

  The silence in the room was complete. Even the rain seemed to have suspended its course in the stone troughs outside the windows. Equally suspended were the tears in Barklay’s eyes, as he stared up between Douglas and Selkirk standing face to face.

  “I will close the school,” Selkirk said at last. “I will not press charges of treason. And let the discipline fall where it will. Now for the love of wisdom, Douglas, put your boots back on.”

  “Certainly, my lord,” Douglas said. As he reached to do so, the door to the outer office rattled and pushed open, and the Ryswyckians nearby made room for a disheveled army officer who came in and saluted Selkirk as soon as he identified him. Douglas paused with his boots still unfastened, and straightened up to face him.

  “Lord High Commander,” he said, “Field-Commander Dearborn, First Army, East Heights Division.” He drew breath to go on.

  “Field-Commander Dearborn,” Selkirk said sternly, “this is a closed session. We are not to be interrupted.”

  “I’m sorry, my lord. It can’t wait. I’m taking news by hand to the bases between Colmhaven and here—the codes were compromised, so Central killed them, and hasn’t been able to reconstruct the signal network. There’s a massive force attacking Colmhaven via Cardumel Base, my lord; they overwhelmed the Boundary and started on Colm’s Island just before dawn. Cardumel has fallen, and now the harbor is under heavy air fire from scudders and bombers.”

  A split
second of horrified silence, and then: “Taronas, go up the tower and start transmitting on the emergency frequency,” Selkirk said quickly. Taronas got up from the table and shouldered around Dearborn at once. “Go on, Field-Commander Dearborn.”

  “I’ve got to fly on to Amity as soon as I can, my lord,” Dearborn said. “Every alarm needs to be raised as soon as the signal is back on line.” He looked ready to leap back into his shuttle at Selkirk’s word.

  “Field-Commander,” Douglas said, “Captain Walter Douglas of Cardumel Base. My unit and officers and I need briefings and orders. Can you put me in touch with the ranking officer surviving from the assault at Cardumel?”

  But he already knew—knew by Dearborn’s look, by the glance exchanged between Selkirk and Barklay behind his shoulder, by the peculiar quality of the silence of the room.

  “That would be you, sir,” said Field-Commander Dearborn.

  Three: Ilona

  1

  Douglas’s hands hit the polished table top and braced him up, the weight upon him as sure as if a real yoke had suddenly cloaked his shoulders. He held himself still and breathed quietly, adjusting to the sensation.

  Selkirk was speaking.

  “…give us a briefing, Field-Commander Dearborn?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Dearborn, beyond Douglas’s shoulder.

  “Right.” Selkirk’s voice was brisk and calm. “I suggest this meeting reconvene in one quarter hour to hear Dearborn’s briefing and whatever Taronas gets from Central by then. During that time, Ryswyck Academy staff will issue a Red Mark Alert and follow its protocols for such emergencies. Such senior staff as can be spared from that process will return here to be briefed. Someone should provide Field-Commander Dearborn with food and drink in the interval.”

  “I can do that, my lord,” Stevens said, from his place next to Speir.

  “Very well, Captain. Field-Commander Speir, I would have you brief the soldiers in your charge and direct them to assist with the preparations for defense conditions. You’ll return here for the briefing if you are able.”