The Devil and Deep Space (13 page)

Ferinc shook his head, angry at himself, and tied his braids together at the back of his head to keep them from falling across his face. Stanoczk tolerated his obsession with Andrej Koscuisko, but only just. And without Stanoczk’s charity there was no hope of reconciliation for him in the world. He dared not risk incurring Stanoczk’s disappointed anger.

It was so hard.

The communications booth was fully equipped for secure transmit, but no one here would have listened in had it been open. There was no profit to be had from interesting oneself in the Malcontent’s business, that was no one’s business but the Saint’s alone. Ferinc sent the codes that he’d been given into the relay stream with the toggling of a switch; and spoke.

“Swallow’s nest, for client at Chilleau Judiciary. Transmit on schedule. As follows, confirm receipt.”

He could watch. He could. It would take moments for the screen to clear, because the client at Chilleau Judiciary was suspicious and trusted no one. And was not, in fact, at Chilleau Judiciary, but Ferinc wasn’t supposed to know that. Not supposed by the client to know that, at least.

The ground–car pulled up to the foot of the loading dock, almost immediately below the window. They couldn’t see him. The panes were treated for thermal management. He knew they couldn’t see him. They had no reason even to look.

Ferinc stared down at the party gathered on the tarmac. Security. Chief Stildyne he recognized, with pained surprise; he was a hard man to forget, and that could have been Ferinc himself in Stildyne’s place, though their acquaintance dated from before Stildyne’s promotion. Petty Warrant Officer Stildyne, and Ferinc. They had had some times.

Oh, he could not think of that, and most especially not —

There was Andrej Koscuisko himself, climbing out of the ground–car, pausing half in and half out to share some joke or another with one of the Security. Ferinc stared hungrily at the man who had haunted his dreams, haunted his nightmares ever since. It had been more than seven years. It felt as though it had been yesterday that Koscuisko had made his mark on Ferinc, body and soul, and left him ruined and destroyed forever.

It had been deserved. Ferinc knew that. And yet he could not shake the horror of it, and the ferocious intensity, and that slim blond officer who stood there smiling — talking with Stildyne — still owned him.

Koscuisko doubtless thought it was all over. If Koscuisko ever thought of it at all, and why should he? What had Ferinc been to Koscuisko, after all, but a man meriting punishment, out of so many that had come under Koscuisko’s hand?

The transmission’s chime repeated for the third, and then the fourth time. Ferinc turned away from the window.

“Confirming arrival of Andrej Koscuisko with party of Security assigned.” Security 5.3 had been expected; Ferinc had made it his business to find out about them, in order to let Marana know what to expect. This wasn’t Security 5.3. There was a woman there. But the client hadn’t asked; she only wanted to know when Koscuisko set foot to his native soil — so it wasn’t up to Ferinc to tell her.

Cousin Stanoczk said that the client was unstable, unnaturally obsessed with Andrej Koscuisko and desirous of knowing his whereabouts from moment to moment. Cousin Stanoczk was most likely to remark on the client’s instability of mind when reproaching Ferinc for his own obsession.

The Malcontent made good profit from the weak–mindedness of persons unnaturally interested in specific Inquisitors, however. The client at Chilleau Judiciary paid well for her reports. In kind, and in specie. And Ferinc himself was bound to the Saint on Koscuisko’s account, self–sold into slavery of his own free will out of his desperate need to be reconciled with what he had seen in the mirror of Koscuisko’s eyes in that cell at Richeyne, so many years ago.

It would be a moment before the countersignal cleared, because the client had been linked on redirect. That always slowed things down. Ferinc went back to the window.

The transit–wagon had come up for Koscuisko’s party now. Koscuisko — having apparently stepped through to the airfield master’s office for a quiet official signature or two, while Ferinc had been transmitting his report — was coming out of the building, Security forming up around him in perfect order.

Precise to the mark, a pleasure to behold, professional, competent, completely secure in their roles and who they were and what they were called upon to do at all times —

The pain of loss in Ferinc’s heart was nearly physical, looking at them. And it was Koscuisko who had ruined him, Koscuisko who had destroyed him, Koscuisko who had taken it all away from him forever and left him broken and bereft.

Just as he reached the transit–wagon Koscuisko looked up, back over his shoulder. Looking up at him. Ferinc shrank back and away from the window, shuddering in terror. Koscuisko could not know. He could not.

What would Koscuisko do if he ever learned the truth behind the role “Cousin Ferinc” had come to play at the Matredonat — Koscuisko’s child, and the woman who was soon to find herself Koscuisko’s wife —

The relay stream’s confirmation signal was noise without meaning. Ferinc reached out his hand to shut it off, barely conscious of his own actions.

Then Ferinc sank to his knees on the floor of his secured communications station and wrapped his arms around his belly to keep his stomach from turning itself inside out, and rocked back and forth in agony, remembering when.

Chapter Five

Home Is the Hunter

Marana Seronkraalya stood in formal dignity well to the front of the assembled household arrayed on the graveled ground before, the great doors into Andrej’s house and wished with all her heart that Cousin Ferinc could be here with her.

She hadn’t seen Andrej in more than nine years.

He had sent letters, gifts, tokens, records, but she could no longer hear his voice in his letters, and when she did hear his voice — in the records that he made from time to time, the hologrammic cubes — it was not the voice of the young man she remembered. It was not the face of her Andrej.

Her son stood waiting in the forefront of the household behind her, with his nurse, wearing his best clothes. His little coat. He should have had the white and red and gold of the son of the son of the Koscuisko prince, but wore the blue–and–yellow of the son of the master of the house instead. Why should she resent the colors Anton wore? It had never been a possibility. And it had been her choice to take a child of Andrej’s body before he was married. She had known that his family would resent the claim she made. She had not cared.

She had come to care. For her son’s sake she was prepared to demand that the entire Combine reverse itself, and conform to her desire. She had not anticipated the effect that her child would have on her ability to accept the place of a man’s second and secular wife and see another woman’s son take pride of place over her beautiful Anton.

Closing her eyes against the glare of the bright sun Marana struggled for psychological balance. It wasn’t Andrej’s fault. It wasn’t even her fault. Who had known? His letters were unfailingly kind, and sometimes all but heartbreaking. And yet his letters never really spoke to her as Andrej had once spoken to her. There was the work that Andrej never discussed; it stood between them.

This is not about me
, Marana reminded herself, opening her eyes. This was about Anton Andreievitch, who had never met his father. Anton knew what his father looked like; she was careful to keep plenty of pictures. Cousin Ferinc spoke frequently and with admiration of Andrej to Andrej’s son, and Andrej sent records to Anton from time to time in which it was clear to her that Andrej had no idea how to speak to a child, no idea of what Anton knew or understood at what age, no possible understanding of Anton’s own personality.

She smoothed her palms against the apron that she wore, a formal apron, almost as long as her old–fashioned skirt which dropped to her ankles. There was a little breeze; it was a very pleasant day. The branches of the ranks of shield–leaf trees lining the grand allee leading from the side of the house at her left to the motor stables and the stables proper beyond rustled pleasingly, and sent their subtle perfume far and wide.

The house itself all but glittered in the sun, its windows washed, its pillars whitened, its black–slate roof scraped and oiled, its every odd corner and half–forgotten closet cleaned and freshened and made beautiful to receive the son of the Koscuisko prince. It was her home, after all, and he was but a guest in it — all things considered. He had lived here for only a short time out of the years during which it had been in his possession, and she had been here since before Anton was born.

There were people coming from the motor stables, a party of men emerging from the shadows of the
allee
. She knew when they’d arrived; she’d been getting the reports in series as they had left the airfield and passed onto family land and thence to the estate perimeter of the Matredonat. She had waited until the very last to call the nurse out with her young son Anton. He was a very intelligent child, but he was a child still. His attention span was limited. She didn’t want him to have time in which to become frightened.

If only Cousin Ferinc were here Anton would not be frightened. Anton loved Cousin Ferinc almost as much as Anton loved his nurse, and Cousin Ferinc seemed genuinely fond of Anton. She was Anton’s mother. She could tell.

Six people.

Marana watched them come. It was a long way from the end of the
allee
to the front of the house. The Matredonat was a large house, as befit the gift of the family of the mother of the son of the Koscuisko prince to that son on the occasion of his acknowledgment by his father as his father’s son and heir. The cutting with the knife at the inside of the cheek, on the steps of the family’s estate at Rogubarachno; the solemn declaration of blood to blood, Koscuisko to Koscuisko. Andrej had been eight years old.

Anton was eight.

Anton had had no such public trauma, nor would have. That was a privilege reserved for the first son of the Ichogatra princess, the woman who had been betrothed to Andrej since his eighth year, the woman who would be Andrej’s first and sacred wife. It would be
her
son, not Anton, who would stand beneath the canopy of Heaven and submit to wounding at his father’s hand, the cut, the kiss, the declaration.
Give me to drink of thee
. Andrej had not even met the Ichogatra princess more than a few times in his life, and had not thought he liked her particularly well on those occasions — at least from what he had said to her about it.

She needed to focus.

Six people. Ferinc had told her how they would be. Two in front, Security. Andrej next. Two in back, and the chief of Security last, outside of the box of secured space in which they kept their officer of assignment and one step out of alignment with his back. One step to the right, because Andrej was left–handed.

She couldn’t get a very good look at Andrej, not with those Security in the way. Her messengers had said that his family had gone to meet him at the airfield; they had never come to the Matredonat. They had never asked her to them at Rogubarachno or at Chelatring Side. She had known that she was snapping her fingers in their faces when she had decided on a child before Andrej’s marriage, but she had not understood how angry it would make her for them to slight her son.

She could see Andrej’s figure now, at last, as the party drew nearer. All in Fleet uniform, and Andrej wore the raven’s wing. It was very odd for so young a man to wear the color of age and piety, but it was the Fleet color for a man of Andrej’s rank. It had no reference to what the color signified on Azanry.

She could see his figure, but it was not familiar. Not more so than that of any man might be, familiar only in that it was Aznir Dolgorukij of the shorter run.

Something was odd. One of the Security was female.

Ferinc had not said anything about a woman in Andrej’s Security; and he had said they would all be green–sleeves, all bond–involuntaries, all Security slaves except the Chief of Security who was called Stildyne. She saw only one man with the bit of green on the cuff of his sleeve and the edge of his collar. Ferinc had not known about this.

They passed in front of her at a small distance of five paces’ remove, and when Andrej stepped on a magical spot that was directly in front of her they all stopped, very suddenly, without a word or gesture of command that Marana saw. It startled her. Then all at once they turned toward her, and Marana stood face–to–face with the father of her child, the loving friend of her young age, for the first time in more than nine years. Her Andrej.

The Security who stood to either side between her and her lover took a side step each, so that no one stood between them. Marana stared fearfully at Andrej for a moment, trying to see something in his face that would reveal the man that he had been and remind her that she had loved him once.

It was his figure. His shoulders, although he was filled out and hardened in some way. His hands, his booted feet, the way he carried his head, the never–quite–tidy fringe of hair across his forehead, the always–almost–smiling look to the corners of his mouth.

She could not see his heart. It was his face, but there was little she could really recognize. “You are welcome to your house, my lord.”

The words were practiced; there was comfort in the ritual. She had never spoken them to him before, but she knew her lines. It was just not being able to believe that it was him that made it awkward. “Stop and take refreshment, for this house and all that are within are yours. Therefore be pleased to stay with us a while, and walk amidst these gardens green; my arms long to embrace you.”

He was not looking at her. He was looking past her, to where the household stood assembled, the members of and the members in his Excellency’s household. He was an Excellency in Fleet as well; Ferinc had explained it to her.

She thought that his considering gaze stopped when it fell where Anton would be standing, with his nurse. Andrej opened his mouth to answer her, but what he said was not the lines expected.

“ ‘How shall I come into this house when she who holds the keys is sacred to me? Not as your master, lady, but your suitor true and dedicate, to seek your blessing as that of the Holy Mother of us all.’ ”

She could not breathe.

There was a clattering sound that rattled in her ears, what was that noise? It was the jug of milk upon the tray that the wife of the kitchen–master held. That was it. It rattled on its tray as Geslij trembled, struggling to keep her body still.

The wrong words for a man to take possession of his house and everything that was in it, and her.

Not Powiss and Empeminij, but Dasidar and Dyraine, the end of the tale, the triumphant conclusion of the saga when the hero to whom all Dolgorukij traced their ancestry besought the beautiful and beloved Dyraine of the weavers to be his sacred wife.

The words that all Dolgorukij had used to marry ever since, but only once. No man would dream of marrying as Dasidar had been forced to promise himself to Hoyfragen, not after the offense that Hoyfragen had given Holy Mother and all Saints under Canopy, not after how nobly Dyraine had suffered to prove her merit matchless and unstained by any act in which virtue was not queen.

She knew the words to say. She just could not quite bring herself to say them, and said to him instead “What are you thinking of? You’ve got it all wrong. How could you have forgotten such a thing?”

The rattling of the milk jug on the tray that Geslij bore grew ever louder. In another moment, Geslij was going to drop the milk jug entirely; that would be a very bad omen.

“I wish I could have warned you, Marana,” Andrej said. There was the ghost of the voice of the man that she had loved in his words; even though he still said “warned,” and not “obtained your permission.” “I couldn’t risk the chance of interference. Please. Be my bride, and make your child my son. This must be done. I promise you.”

Her child was his son. That wasn’t what he meant. He meant son and heir. Legitimate; inheriting.

He meant to spurn the Ichogatra princess for good and all, and make her — gentlewoman though she was — the mother of the son of the son of the Koscuisko prince.

She was light-headed with shock and bemusement. She could get only very little meaning out of what he said, and what meaning she could grasp seemed too fantastic to be truly understood. Giddy with the unreality of it all, she folded her hands across her apron — to steady herself, as much as because that was what it was to be Dyraine — and raised her voice to say the words that she had never thought to hear coming out of her own mouth.

“ ‘I will be mistress of your hearth and bed, my lord, gladly and with my great entire goodwill, and may the Holy Mother bless and preserve us both to serve all Saints beneath the canopy of Heaven.’ ”

Reaching out to one side, not daring to look, Marana steadied the milk jug on the tray that Geslij bore. And just in time. Geslij’s trembling had so perturbed the jug’s contents that some of the milk had slopped over the rim, and made it slippery.

“ ‘Will you not come and drink with me? Let us be glad and take shelter in one another, so that we may have joy and comfort all our lives.’ ”

House–master Chuska stepped up to the other side of Geslij with the cup, antique and priceless, shining in the brilliant sunlight. Geslij poured the milk and Chuska passed the cup to Marana for her to offer to Andrej, who received it gravely in both hands, raising his voice to begin the end of the ritual, line by line in proper form.

“ ‘Sacred are thy feet to me, lady, for the bearing of the weight of this my child. Sacred is your apron to me, lady, for the cradling of the frame of this my child. Sacred is your breast to me, for the nurture and the comforting of this my child. And sacred is thy mouth to me, lady, for the speaking of the name of this my child.’ ”

Each sentence had to be interspersed with sips from the greeting cup. Andrej conducted himself with grace and precision; he knew as well as she did that the eyes of the entire population of the Matredonat were fixed on him, how carefully they all listened to be sure that it was done correctly. Once the final word was spoken, there was no going back; he had made witnesses of them all.

When a man married his first and sacred wife before she bore his child, the words were formulae and could be gotten around; but there was no dispensation under the canopy of Heaven that could sunder her from Andrej now, nor Andrej from her, not with the fact of Anton in evidence.

It was the stuff of opera and romance, melodrama, but also law and feud and bloody warfare. For as long as Dolgorukij had told each other stories of Dasidar and Dyraine, a man who cried the full four Sacred–art–thous had made his choice public and irreversible. Andrej emptied the cup and held it out to Chuska, looking at Marana.

“And I hope to be forgiven, once I have but had a chance to speak to you.” Because he made her position at once unassailable and more difficult than ever, and he who had done this thing would not be staying to help her bear up beneath his family’s displeasure. There would be unpleasantness. She could not imagine that he had his father’s blessing to publicly insult the Ichogatra princess and unilaterally revoke all of the complex business relationships that had been years developing — all based on the clear understanding that the Ichogatra princess would be Andrej Koscuisko’s sacred wife, and that the benefit that Koscuisko’s family enjoyed from the match would accrue to an inheriting son with an Ichogatra mother.