The Devil and Deep Space (26 page)

“You meant to come home last year, sir.” So there was only one other thing else that Koscuisko could possibly be talking about. And only one thing it could mean. “Has there been some movement on the part of Chilleau Judiciary?”

Chilleau was expected to put a bid in for First Judge, and it would be a solid bid. As far as Stildyne’s limited interest in politics went, he understood it to be a very real candidacy. Koscuisko was Stildyne’s officer, but — though it had been easy to overlook on board the
Ragnarok
— Koscuisko was in fact a great deal more. Chilleau Judiciary would want Koscuisko’s voice on their side. Stilled, if not raised in active support.

“I have executed documentation. It was this morning. I only heard last night. And I so much regret leaving the people behind, Brachi, but I am to be relieved of Writ and sin no more against the natural laws of decency.”

I so much regret leaving you behind
, Stildyne thought to himself. A fantasy; but an appealing one. When what Koscuisko meant was Lek, and Smish, and Pyotr, and Taller, and Murat. Godsalt. Robert St. Clare.

Stildyne knew what Koscuisko’s people would feel when they found out. It was pure selfishness of him to wish Koscuisko bound to his Writ, in order to have him back on the
Ragnarok
.

“Revocation of Bond, then, in a sense.” Freedom unimagined and wonderful. “We’ll all be very happy for you, sir. I’ll write to you. If you would like to hear.”

Lowden was dead, and unlamented. Stildyne didn’t know anything much about ap Rhiannon, but he knew that First Officer had been taking careful notes, over the years, of the ways in which Koscuisko had protected his people. First Officer was a very intelligent man, for an officer. It wasn’t going to be the same with Koscuisko gone, but it was never going back to Lowden days. Stildyne was sure of that.

Koscuisko nodded, in apparent appreciation of Stildyne’s calm acceptance. Calm on the surface, at least. He had believed Koscuisko to be going home less than a year ago; he had had practice in imagining his life without Koscuisko in it.

Whomever they assigned as Chief Medical Officer could hardly be one–eighth the trouble that Koscuisko had been. If they assigned a new Chief Medical Officer at all, with senior officers in such demand these days.

“I should speak to the gentles,” Koscuisko said. “Do you tell them first? Or do I?”

“I’ll do the dirty deed, sir. Let it alone. You can make a speech when we say good–bye. When do we leave?”

If Koscuisko had accepted relief of Writ, Stildyne’s people didn’t have an officer of assignment any more. Technically speaking, they probably should be on the next courier out to rejoin the
Ragnarok
, bringing the news with them.

“You shall not, before time,” Koscuisko said, decidedly. “The Bench specialist says that there will be some days before the documentation is complete. And that until my codes have been revoked, I am still entitled to the Bench’s protection as a Bench officer rather than a private person. And it was to have been a holiday.”

A good story. It would probably work, too, especially with the backing of the Bench specialist. If Chilleau Judiciary wanted Koscuisko’s goodwill this badly, they were unlikely to risk tainting the enthusiasm of his endorsement by petty insistence on the proper allocation of Fleet security resources.

“I’ll tell them,” Stildyne repeated. “It’s my job. You’d better go and dress, your Excellency — it will be dinner soon.”

Koscuisko nodded, accepting both direction and the reasoning behind it. The simple gesture went to Stildyne’s heart; would he ever again have an officer who listened so well to him? Rising to his feet Koscuisko went to open the door, to leave the room; but paused with his hand on the latch–lever.

“Will you come to me, when you retire?” Koscuisko asked. “I would welcome you to join my household. Though you would almost never hear yourself called Brachi, even then.”

There was no point Stildyne could see to it. But no sense in giving gratuitous offense. Koscuisko doubtless meant well, even if it was plainly guilt that had inspired the offer.

“Thank you, your Excellency. I’d be honored.” He was years short of being able to retire, if he lived that long. Koscuisko would have forgotten all about it, when the time came. Or if Koscuisko hadn’t, Stildyne would have come up with some good excuse, by then.

Still, why not? Since he had nowhere else under Jurisdiction to be, why not find a comfortable berth among the many members of his Excellency’s household in which to spend his declining years?

Because he wouldn’t take favors from Koscuisko. He’d die sooner than turn into Cousin Ferinc, never recovered from Koscuisko’s mark on him, obsessed and distracted to this day.

Koscuisko bent his head and left the room. Stildyne sighed, and put the bottle away from him, and left the room himself to go to find some rhyti in the kitchen. To give himself time to think, and sober up, and make up his mind on how he was to tell Koscuisko’s people that they were going home to the
Ragnarok
without Koscuisko, who had taken such good care of them over the years.

###

In the summertime the light lasted beyond the hour at which a young lord should properly retire to his bed, making the young master of the house fractious with reluctance to go to sleep.

Marana sat in the master’s parlor after dinner stitching a piece of fancywork, waiting, listening. Andrej sat at the desk next to the double–harp and read over accounts. She knew that it was not because he was concerned, but because he was expected to review the journals when he came back to his house, and assure himself that the books had been honestly and honorably maintained in his absence. He would have to call an assembly within a day or two and thank the house–masters in each department for their good husbandry of his resources, and distribute tokens of his appreciation and approval. Tradition.

Not all of the traditions of family life were in church records or the acts of saints, however. Andrej had been away for years. She owed him her decision, and she owed it to the love that they had once borne for each other to make it soon.

There was a pounding of young feet down the carpeted corridor outside the room, a gleeful shriek of slightly manic excitement; it was Anton, pursued by his devoted but distraught nurse, coming flying into the room with something in his hand.

When Anton saw his father in the room he stopped, visibly taken aback, unsure of how he was to proceed without error. Anton’s delight in his treasure was too much for his dignity, though, even in the presence of his awesome and alien father; smiling, Anton advanced upon Andrej, holding out his prize.

“Look what I have here, lord father, Cousin Ferinc has brought me a wheat–fish. From Dubrovnije.”

Andrej had half turned from the desk to face his child, holding a stylus in his left hand, arrested in mid–notation by Anton’s unexpected appearance. She could not read his face. Ferinc had told her that there’d been history between them; but Anton loved Ferinc. Now, which would rule? The personal disgust that Andrej had for Ferinc, or a true father’s willingness to be tender of his child’s passions, and handle them with care and with respect?

“Indeed?” Andrej asked Anton, his voice soft and affectionate. “May I see?”

Anton stood at his father’s side as Andrej admired the wheat–fish, with its fine black beard and its gleaming body of woven golden straw. Two blond heads bent over a wheat–fish, Anton gazing up at his father’s face with transparent adoration, Andrej’s own face shadowed by the tilt of his head but concentrated clearly on his son. She had never seen Andrej so strongly in Anton, ever before. The visceral reminder of who Anton was and why it was that he should be so like Andrej caught her by surprise, a movement in her belly as though Andrej’s hand lay across her womb where Anton had been cradled as he grew.

“I was having my lesson. He gave it to my lady mother. I must write him a note . . . ” No, Ferinc had brought it to her and fled, because Andrej had told him that he wasn’t to see Anton ever again. But he had kept his promise to Anton. “Isn’t it fine? I have never seen so nice a wheat–fish in my life.”

Marana smiled, but she was still waiting to know what Andrej would do.

“This is very special, I think,” Andrej said, playing his fingers delicately along the long beard of the grain heads. “No common wheat–fish has so black a beard. I am impressed. Ferinc must have picked it out for you very carefully. I’d better give it back to you, though, and you must take very good care of it, and tell him your thanks for his kindness.”

Black–bearded grain was the most holy. Andrej was right; it was a special fish. Andrej would have been within his rights as a Dolgorukij parent to have taken it away and destroyed it; Anton had not asked Andrej’s permission to accept gifts from a man who was not related to him. Andrej did not. Andrej praised the wheat–fish and its donor and Anton’s keeping of it instead. It was his pledge. There were to be no recriminations.

“Ferinc is very good to me, sir. I wish I could have taken him to meet you. But I didn’t have the chance.”

“Perhaps next time, son Anton. I am sure he must be a very good friend to you to have brought you this fine gift. Go and show your lady mother. And then you must go with your nurse.”

Anton took his wheat–fish and kissed his father’s cheek with spontaneous affection, pure and true. Andrej had passed. Andrej had declined to slander Ferinc to Anton who loved him, though Andrej himself, by Ferinc’s report, despised the Malcontent. He had earned the right to try with her, to see if they could be wedded again as fiercely as they had once been, before they were married.

Marana praised Anton’s treasure, kissed him, sent him away; and stood up. Andrej had turned away from the desk to look after Anton and watched her now, his attention apparently arrested. Setting her needlework aside, Marana closed on Andrej across the floor of the parlor.

When she was less than an arm’s length from him she put her hand up to her hair, slowly, keeping her eyes fixed upon his face all the while; and pulled one of the long bone pins that kept her headdress secure, loosing a thick braided strand of her heavy, wheat–colored hair. His pale eyes were darker by the moment as the pupils widened; an encouraging sign. Holding out the pin, she waited for Andrej to raise his hand to receive it, dropping it into his open palm.

One moment longer she stood, looking at him. He’d said nothing to her about Ferinc. If he said nothing now, he never would. She turned around. Slowly, she walked out of the room, doing her best not to strain her ears to hear if Andrej had got up to follow her. She was willing to try to reach out to him. Was he willing to meet her midway?

He was behind her.

He followed her down the hall to the bedroom. Marana plucked the pins out of her hair one by one as she went, Andrej following after to gather them up as they fell, and her hair draped ever more loosely around her shoulders with every discarded pin.

The bedroom door stood open; the servants had been here. The curtains were drawn back from the great bed, the lamps turned to a welcoming yellow glow, the windows open to the deepening twilight to let the cool air come into the room. Andrej shut the door.

She was too shy of him to turn around, and that was humorous, because she was the one who had laid claim. Andrej was close behind her, at her back; he put the thick hair away from the back of her neck with a careful hand and kissed her there, thoughtfully. It made her shiver.

Andrej seemed to find that an encouragement. Lacing his fingers through her hair he kissed her neck, her throat, at the back and the side of it, with contemplative moderation. Pressing his lips against her skin; tasting the salt of her body with a considering tongue, slowly.

She turned around, with her long hair trailing slowly through the open fingers of Andrej’s right hand. He wore country–dress, very informal. She had not seen his body in all this time, and yet his body was her property, in a sense. She had a right to assess its condition.

She opened the front plaquet of his simple smock, the embroidered band that ran down the front of the garment from shoulder to hem, offset from the collar by the traditional hand’s span. Since it was summer, the garment that he wore beneath was as thin as gauze; the heat of his skin beneath her fingertips, even through his undergarment, brought the blood to her cheek, as though she stood too near the fireplace.

Smoothing the open smock back along his shoulders, she put her palms flat to his undershirt and felt the flesh beneath. Andrej. There was something still familiar about the fall of his ribs as they belled toward his diaphragm, the contours of his skin stretched over them; her hands remembered.

She needed the heat of him. She was cold. She put her hand to the back of his neck to draw his mouth down to hers for a kiss, but there was something at the back of his neck that startled her, and she drew away from him with her mouth still half open as it had been to seek his mouth. There was a line, there, across the back of his neck, beneath his skin, between the back of his ears and his hairline at the nape of his neck.

A scar. She touched it with her fingers, and Andrej stood with his hands at her waist and waited for her to be satisfied. Scars. Why was he scarred there? Where else was he scarred, that he had never mentioned to her in his letters?

Sliding his hands up from her waist Andrej gathered her to him and kissed her mouth. She could feel the tension gather in his body. There were his fingers at the back of her shoulders pulling the knot of her kerchief free, pulling the kerchief itself away from her shoulders; uncovering her bosom. It was summertime; her dress had no sleeves. There was no obstacle to interfere with Andrej’s unbuttoning her bodice and peeling the fabric open, down her arms, to the floor.

He held her with an arm around her waist and slipped his fingers beneath the garment’s neckline to touch the naked skin of her softly rounded shoulders. The sensation made her catch her breath. Andrej’s breath seemed to come a little shakily on his own part; he turned the neckline of her undergarment back to bare her shoulder and kissed her where her neck met her body, and shuddered with desire.