by L D Inman
“Yes? What about it?” du Rau said grimly.
“If we attack the Boundary, the Verlakers will likely take that as incentive to fire another missile before we’ve identified the launch point. And if we don’t attack the Boundary….”
“Their subs will be free to launch missiles at will,” du Rau finished for him. On the projection, Ryswyck Academy mocked him over the edge of the leaf-file.
“My recommendation is that we hold our fire while threatening them with short flights, at least until the reports come back.” When du Rau didn’t answer, he leaned forward intensely. “My lord—we need to buy time.”
“No,” du Rau said suddenly. “Verlac needs to buy time. What I need is leverage.” He tossed down the leaf-file and strode out of the room.
Just as he slapped open the stairwell door to the detention chambers, he met Reynard coming up, panting in his haste. “My lord. I just got the lockdown order. I felt the bomb—where did it hit?”
“Vardray Reservoir. I expect the report to confirm total destruction.”
“That’s three-quarters of the drinking water in Bernhelm,” Reynard said, appalled.
“Exactly.” He had not been aware of his own rage until he saw the growing recognition of it in Reynard’s face. “Their cup runs over, and they would knock down our little thimble. Is Barklay’s man still alive down there?”
Reynard’s hand and lip quirked a small shrug. Du Rau pushed past him and down the stair at a nimble pace.
The detention chambers were four flights below ground level and down a long, dim concrete corridor. The floors were polished to a watery gleam under the cold blue lights; du Rau’s light footsteps were met with a sharp, brief echo. Behind him Reynard was hurrying to catch up.
The chambers were cells interspersed with larger bays for conference or interrogation; one of these bays was fully lit. As du Rau approached, he saw that the Verlaker soldier had been raised by the wrists on the reel system in the doorway; his bluff outline against the gray-white walls of the room behind was half-obscured by the light pouring into the corridor. Du Rau stopped before him and let his eyes adjust.
He was stripped to the waist and barefoot, his toes searching fitfully for solid purchase on the floor, breathing in shallow pants. He had been allowed to soil himself; du Rau could feel the faint current of cool air brushing his hands and face, moving toward the vents in the bay opened to draw out the stench of sweat and cess. His head drooped helplessly: du Rau tilted his own to see under the matted hair to the soldier’s bent face.
“Well, this is a reversal, isn’t it, Captain?” he said softly.
The captain’s glazed eyes opened wider, tried to focus. He peered at du Rau, for a moment uncomprehending. Then his face moved, shockingly, into a wrecked, beatific smile.
“Ah. It’s you,” he said, in a rough whisper. “Good. Good.”
Du Rau turned to Reynard, who had caught up quietly and was now standing at the edge of the doorway, watching in silence. “You’ve broken him too far, Reynard,” he said. “He takes me for his friend.”
But Reynard shook his head. “He was like that from the start. I don’t think he was any too sane to begin with.”
Du Rau turned back to the captain: “Do you know who I am?” But the captain could not get the breath to answer. Impatiently du Rau gestured at Reynard, who reached for the reel’s release lever. The captain abruptly dropped with a crack to his knees, and would have pitched onto his face if his wrists had not still been bound. Reynard adjusted the reel to keep him sitting up; du Rau waited till he had lolled to a steady position and then crouched down to face him.
“Do you know who I am?” he repeated.
The captain drew in three staggering breaths, eyes fluttering open and closed. “Lord Bernhelm,” he managed at last.
“That’s right. And do you know who you are?” du Rau said dryly.
The captain barked a laugh that turned instantly to a sob. Du Rau watched dispassionately as he mustered strength for the reply.
“Captain. Willem Niall. Ahrens.” He paused, panting to get ahead of an outbreak of tearless weeping. “First Ilona—Army. Ryswyck Division.”
He had probably reeled off his identification a hundred times by now; du Rau waited with concealed impatience for him to spit it out, but the last phrase captured his attention. “Ryswyck Division,” he repeated gently. “As in, Ryswyck Academy?”
“If it’s—not costly—” Captain Ahrens’s voice suddenly strengthened— “it’s not—courtesy.” His head dropped again, and he sobbed silently; his sweat-grimed shoulders heaved. Du Rau recognized Barklay’s sentiments. Innocence without naivety. Honor without contumely. Force without cruelty.
When he recovered, du Rau asked another gentle question. “Were you a cadet at Ryswyck Academy?”
The captain lifted his head, eyes still closed. “Cadet. Lieutenant. Teacher. At the last.”
“What did you teach, Captain Ahrens?” du Rau asked softly.
“Weapons systems.” He answered easily, as if under hypnosis, or dreaming; after the long duress of having intelligence forcibly extracted, he had no resistance left for gentle questions. Du Rau knew he could pull answers from him as easily as silk handkerchiefs, so long as he spoke quietly and reasonably.
“Weapons systems. Theory, or application?”
“Both,” the captain murmured. “Marksmanship. Equations. Put them together.”
“So you’re an engineer,” du Rau said.
“Aye,” sighed the captain.
“Did you specialize?”
He drew a shuddering breath. “Ballistics.”
“Were you commissioned, after teaching at Ryswyck?”
Captain Ahrens’s eyes blinked open. He didn’t say anything.
“Classified work,” ventured du Rau.
“Operational security,” Captain Ahrens said, his gaze unseeing. “Not enough…for me to come.”
Du Rau looked up at Reynard. He was staring wide-eyed.
“Operational security,” du Rau repeated casually. “For the bomb that hit Vardray Reservoir half an hour ago?”
The captain’s eyes opened wide, and he raised his head, as if listening for an impact tremor. He moaned softly. “Too late.”
Yes—too late for you, du Rau thought. Ahrens dropped his head. “I’m too late,” he whispered.
With an effort du Rau held his voice soft. “You worked on that missile. How is it launched?”
“Don’t know,” said Ahrens. “I’m…only one.”
“Only one engineer among many. Of course. You worked on one part of it. The guiding system…or the warhead.”
The captain’s head was low, his voice only a breath. “Warhead.”
“How many warheads, Captain?”
“Don’t know.” Du Rau waited, sensing more; after a moment Ahrens sighed it out. “Three generations. First gen, explosive. Magnesium. Second gen…toxic. Third gen. Bio.” Heavy lines deepened in the captain’s stubbled face. All aimed at Berenia’s reservoirs, he didn’t need to say.
“Lights above,” du Rau heard Reynard say in a sickened whisper. Du Rau rested his forearms on his knees, breathing down his own horror.
The silence pooled; it seemed to have its own echo. I’m too late, Ahrens had said. Force without cruelty, Barklay had said.
“My lord,” said Reynard, “I don’t understand. Why would they send a weapons engineer on a dead end mission like this?”
“You heard him,” said du Rau evenly. “Operational security. He has just enough intel to give us a picture of the horrors we can’t stop. Useful all around. He can defuse mines, read schematics, aim a rifle. Has practice adjusting tactics. Experience leading men. And,” he finished, unable to curb the edge in his voice, “he’s a Ryswyckian.”
“My fault.” If Ahrens hadn’t been parched, he would be shedding tears from his tight-shut eyes. His right hand closed and curled inward against the black cords of its restraint. “I own.”
Innocence wi
thout naivety. Du Rau leaned close, breathed with intimate venom: “Were you aware, Captain, that General Barklay was the author of war crimes on our soil?”
Captain Ahrens was in no condition to process a question like that. Du Rau didn’t expect an answer, but as he watched, the young man relaxed and his breathing evened. “Yes,” he said, eyes still closed. “He told me so.”
Of course he had. Only Thaddeys Barklay could make an orgy of confession. “And what do you make of that?” du Rau asked. Whatever Barklay had said to justify himself, his student would now repeat.
He could see Ahrens thinking, as if thoughts were a shelf on which he could rest his exhaustion. “A fault too heavy,” he said finally. “Too heavy for one.”
It didn’t sound like Barklay, but the sentiment was kin enough. “And he recruited you, I suppose, to help him carry it.”
Captain Ahrens considered. “He never asked me.” Then he looked up. Their faces were still close enough to share breath: the dimmer light over their heads picked out the curve of the young man’s broad cheekbone, the granular shine of sweat and grime, the fringe of his pale lashes. “But you have. I am…much obliged.”
He really was, du Rau could see—and his very gratitude was an accusation. Weaponized grace. Reynard was right, he wasn’t broken in the normal way. But no sane man would invite the hurt deeper, with no real hope of shaming his captors. Though, du Rau thought bitterly, it wasn’t for want of trying.
Ahrens was at the end of himself now: he swayed with the effort of keeping upright, like a candle flame eddying in a draft. He leaned close, his eyes seeking du Rau’s.
“You can stop this, sir.” His voice had sunk till it was barely audible even at close range. “I heard. What you said.” What he’d said about the missiles just now? Or had Ahrens been listening while Barklay tried to convert du Rau in that airless room, day after day?
Du Rau held his ground, his own gaze fierce. “And you think Ryswyck is the answer.”
A half-smile tugged the captain’s cracked lips. “Beyond me. Sorry. Ask Douglas.”
The cryptic words woke du Rau to his danger too late. Their gazes were locked, and du Rau could not back away even if he wanted to. “Barklay sent you,” he whispered, “to cozen me.”
But the accusation drew no recognition from Ahrens. “You can stop this,” he repeated. Because I can’t stared out of his eyes, clear as a shout.
“By doing what?” du Rau breathed back.
A tiny shake of the head. Then: “Barklay’s dead,” said the captain. “Isn’t he.”
Du Rau blinked acknowledgment. Ahrens leaned closer, as if he might rest against him. “Can it be my turn now?” he said, in a searching whisper. “Please, sir.”
Whatever needle Ahrens had threaded himself to, du Rau thought, it was meant to get him only to his death. He’d seen men suffer the same and worse, and recover, but one never knew whose soul would heal and whose wither. In the end, it would be a kindness, to give the captain what he wanted. But du Rau could not afford to betray kindness. He didn’t even want to bear kindness, not to this Verlaker, this boy who had helped to build bombs that would burn his people’s throats out with their own drinking water.
And Ahrens knew it. He had built those bombs fully aware of the suffering they would unleash. And he had come here to try to ward off the inexorable necessity of using them. His eyes were fixed on du Rau’s in a steadiness weirdly akin to trust. He wasn’t begging. He was asking.
They were so close that du Rau did not even need to nod: Ahrens saw his decision before the blink, before the flare of his nostrils. He slumped forward. The cords at his wrists drew him back, creaking at his weight.
Du Rau rose, ignoring the ache in his legs, and turned. Reynard stood there, watching him silently; beyond him stretched the dark corridor, suddenly alien under its periodic lights.
He paused only to murmur to Reynard: “Strip the body and pile it with the others,” and went on briskly, fury gathering with every step.
In the growing distance behind, a pistol shot cracked.
Du Rau strode faster.
~*~
Ingrid arrived in his office as he was detailing his orders to Captain Alsburg, bearing Barklay’s knife wrapped in a dark napkin and a sealed cleaning wipe. He made no move to take it from her, so she left it at the side of his desk and retreated to a chair nearby, watchful.
She watched as men came in and went out, all of them grim as they received briefings and orders. She would listen carefully to everything that was said, and synthesize what he wanted from her, whether he knew it himself or not. And she would not be able to help observing in his men the cold fear that was only magnified by her presence.
They had done as he ordered: Reynard called by com to show the communication he had prepared for du Rau’s approval. It was in the same style as the defiance Verlac had sent to them, with an image and a one-word message: Likewise.
At his orders, the soldiers of Barklay’s team had been stripped and piled together on the stones of the front court, doused in oil, and set afire. The smoke of their burning rose in the clear evening air, a pitiful plume to the smoke and steam still billowing on the southeast horizon. Above the pyre rose the Lantern Tower, monument to wisdom, like the Lady in the palace frieze. In accordance with blackout regulations it had not been lit for twenty years, but Bernhelmers had never ceased to think of that as a temporary condition. From the top of the graceful tower, du Rau had ordered that Barklay’s body be hung. His men had blanched, but they had done it.
Another hour came and went. Alsburg appeared to brief him: security at the reservoirs was on high alert; so far, Verlac had not responded to du Rau’s message, or launched another missile; the scudder runs had not yet located any Boundary subs near to the surface; men were still calculating trajectories for likely launch points based on the assumed targets.
Du Rau thanked Alsburg; Alsburg saluted and crept away.
He and Ingrid were alone. At last she spoke.
“What is wrong, Emmerich?”
My swift and furious invasion has foundered, and my country is about to be poisoned to death. But he knew she wasn’t asking about that. He considered his answer.
“I no longer care,” he said, “if I appear as one of the old war-lords.” Or he wouldn’t, once he had throttled the last screaming bit of him that did.
Ingrid’s insight was unfailing. “He got to you,” she said. He rounded on her. “The Verlaker captain.”
“He didn’t get to you.” He couldn’t help it coming out as an accusation.
She shrugged. “I had the advantage of having a few more immediate practical goals in front of me.”
He shook his head, brushing this aside. “You are more ruthless than I,” he said, daring her to deny it.
“I can afford to be,” she said quietly.
He turned away. “I can’t afford not to.”
“No,” she agreed. Then: “Speaking of immediate practical goals.”
“Yes?” he said, anticipating what she would say next.
“You have not eaten. You have not slept. It is time for you to do those things.”
He had been right. “I’ll eat,” he said irritably. “I won’t sleep. We may have to renew the attack at any moment.”
She didn’t argue. But he knew he would end by following her advice: just as he knew that this hiatus would harden into stalemate by morning.
“I’ll bring you something.” Ingrid got up and crossed to the door. He followed her image, undulating from one stained glass panel to the next, until she disappeared from view. He sighed.
He sat down, more heavily than he had intended, in the armchair across from the one Ingrid had vacated, and knew at once that it was a mistake. Dusk was falling: in the fanlights around the palace atrium outside his office door, he could see the deepening color from the winter sky. The textured glass picked up gleams from the Lady’s lantern below. Barklay’s knife mocked him from his desk.
Du Rau put h
is head against the chair wing, shut his eyes, and fell asleep.
9
Speir meandered toward consciousness like a bubble rising through submerged moss, clinging by stages, until she rested at the surface with her eyes open, unselved and peaceful. In her ears was a soft burr, interspersed with small flicking sounds like gnats striking a lightshade; voices coalesced and disappeared into distance, then curled nearer again like aromas. Nearer at hand, a rattle and thump gave way to a stifled oath. Speir blinked, and the bubble was gone.
She was lying on her back, and her field of vision consisted of a dark sloping ceiling, lower near her head and stretching away upward in the direction of her feet. The rattle had come from that direction. Her aching head was too heavy to lift, so she turned it with slow effort and tried to get a look.
A sturdy young man in medical insignia and a stained apron was fiddling with a tray on a rickety trolley. Having arranged whatever it was to his satisfaction, he lifted his head and worked his hands into a fresh pair of gloves. Lamplight from some direction touched his face. Speir felt her mouth stretch into a smile. She tried to speak, but was overtaken by a dry stinging cough instead. The young man looked up. “Ach, now!” he said cheerfully. “You’re awake. You’ll be wanting something to wet your throat with, then.” He moved the trolley aside and produced a bottle with a straw. Speir took an awkward pull of it and tasted cold herb tea, diluted from its usual strength. She could only manage a few swallows, but still it helped.
“Where’d you get that pretty black eye, Corporal?” she asked, in a voice rusted over—from screaming? Shouting, anyway. Grievous overuse. In a moment, she thought, she would remember; she didn’t think she wanted to.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I got it from you, Captain.” His cheeky grin flashed at her as he went back to his first task. “I was obliged to hold you still at one point in the proceedings. You called me Stevens and punched me so fast I didn’t even see it coming. You almost had us both on the ground. Whoever Stevens is, he must have done a great offense.”
