The Devil and Deep Space (25 page)

“Knowing what he was, though, Stanoczk, you let him come here, to this house, and endear himself to my son. To my son, Stoshik. How could you put my child at such a risk? Girag should hate me. The Holy Mother only knows what such a man might do to be revenged.”

Marana had said something about Ferinc earlier, when they had spoken together in the garden. What had it been?

“You would be happier if he did hate you, I think, Derush,” Cousin Stanoczk said gently. “He does not. You terrify him still. He knows that he has been a sinner. He has learned to do the Malcontent’s work here honestly and honorably. He teaches Anton to love you every day, Derush, you will not deny his worth once you have come to know him better.”

Andrej didn’t like the way this conversation was trending. He stood up to distance himself from what Stanoczk would say, taking the flask of rhyti with him. “Well, I am home, Stoshik,” he said. “And mean to remain here. I have told no one but Marana. So there is to be no need of Malcontents to teach my son to love his father. You can have him back. Take him away. I don’t want to see him here. Ever again.”

Stanoczk stayed where he was, sitting on the desk with his back to the room. “Perhaps it is so,” Stanoczk said. “But for the goodwill he has nurtured in your child there are thanks owing, Andrej, and the Malcontent has a word to say to you about your household. Will you hear me?”

Andrej wasn’t interested. Still, Stoshik was a Malcontent, a religious professional of a particularly dangerous sort. Starting his life once more at home here on Azanry by setting himself at odds with the Saint was not good precedent. A man could have all Saints against him and prosper under the protection of the Malcontent; and if a man outraged the Malcontent, all Saints could not protect him from ruin.

“To you, Stoshik, I listen,” Andrej agreed. “And also to Cousin Stanoczk. Out of my respect for your divine Patron, may he wander in bliss.” Stanoczk was his cousin, and Andrej loved him, Malcontent or no. Stoshi nodded solemnly, as if accepting the terms Andrej laid down — such as they were.

“You will stay here at home, you said, Andrej?” Stanoczk asked, as if he didn’t know. Perhaps he didn’t. It was always safest to assume that the Malcontent knew everything, except what one was going to do next. “We seek an understanding with you, Derush, you are your father’s son. For the sake of your soul you should forgive Ferinc, and thank him for the good service he has done here these years past.”

There was no man free from the Malcontent, no soul without some hidden shame in the past that the Malcontent could use against it. Or was there? Was any of his own shame hidden, shameful as it was? He had never sought to deny the horror of his crimes to himself or to anyone.

Yet he did not want to contemplate the day when his son should start to understand just what he was. Perhaps that was what the Saint held over his head. “You go too far, Stoshik.” It was worth consideration — how a man without shame might be invisible to the Malcontent. “Thank him?”

“For the good service he has done you, Andrej, in making you a hero to your son. And strengthening the spirit of the lady your wife, to face her daily trials.”

The flask of rhyti Andrej held dropped to the carpeted floor and bounced, splashing hot sweet liquid all over the rug.

Marana.

That was what she had meant when she had said it.
It is not for you to say whether Ferinc should be an obstacle
. He hadn’t understood. He had been thinking about other things. Not only Anton, but Marana, was there no end to this nightmare?

But Stanoczk was just telling him. So that he would know. So that he would not be surprised. So that he could rule his household wisely and with benevolence and charity. No man might raise his hand against the Malcontent. Stanoczk was only warning him, for his own good.

“If a man is to thank the enemy that comes into his home and woos his child and corrupts his wife, then a man is not the master of his household.” This was beyond all imagination. Stanoczk could not be serious. “Suppose instead I hunt this person down and scourge him naked from my boundaries, Stoshik, what penance must I pay for such a crime as that?”

Stanoczk stirred himself from the desk to come and take a napkin from the table that the servants had laid, crouching down at Andrej’s feet to blot the spilt rhyti up from the rug. “You will do nothing of the sort, Derush,” Stanoczk scolded, but very gently. “If you spoke again to Ferinc, you would know it is not revenge on his part. It has been the ordeal we set him to in order to test the quality of his obedience, to send him here. It is our fault if he loves your child. Promise to consider that you might forgive him, Derush; it is deserved, I attest it to you in the name of the Saint himself.”

To consider the possibility of forgiving Girag for coming here was distasteful, but at least Andrej could agree to do so much and still be honest. “I have said he is not to show himself to me again, Stoshik. But I will talk to Anton. Perhaps Marana also. And I will consider my debt accordingly. Yes. I promise.”

Stanoczk was done mopping up rhyti, and fixed himself a flask. “Good, it is well. Thank you. Now also your Stildyne. You have no cause to hold him so far from you, Andrej. You owe so great a debt that you cannot repay.”

Outrageous. “When was it that I invited you into my bed, Stoshik? You exceed all bounds of propriety.”

Stanoczk turned to face Andrej, very serious. “Well. We were told that there was an issue, Derush, that required the intervention of my Patron. And it is my only pleasure in life, to meddle in the private lives of other people, having none myself. You cannot blame me.”

Stanoczk had hardly ever been serious a moment in his entire life. It was how Stanoczk managed the pain that had propelled him into the embrace of the Malcontent. Had Stanoczk not been Dolgorukij, it could have been much simpler; he need not have suffered for desiring men if he had been born to a more liberal culture. Stoshi could have been born Chigan, and been happy.

“True enough.” Stanoczk looked at him; Andrej could only admit to the plain fact. “Have you been told also what it is, this issue? Or does the ritual require that I lay it at your feet in plain language?”

“That would be telling,” Stanoczk said. “Speak to me, Andrej, in what way can my divine Patron reconcile you to the life that the Holy Mother has decreed for you beneath the Canopy?”

Maybe it was just as well to do it now. He was already benumbed by shock and distress. What better time to talk about his own death?

“You brought to me Specialist Ivers yesterday, Stoshik.” The document was in a secure drawer in the library desk, along with the other things he had for his cousin. He had put them there this morning, when he had come down for his interview with Jils Ivers. “Did you ever know another Bench specialist who worked with her? Garol Vogel.”

“Garol Aphon Vogel.” Stanoczk nodded. “Yes. A sour and suspicious man, Andrej. I like him.”
Like
, not
liked
. That was potentially interesting. Ivers had said that Vogel had not been heard from.

“I saw him last at Burkhayden, it has been some months. The last time I spoke to him he gave me this, and suggested that I seek the advice of the Malcontent.”

The Bench warrant. Andrej drew it out of its secure place and passed it to his cousin, whose dark eyes widened at the sight of it. Yes. Stanoczk knew what a Bench warrant looked like.

“In the shortest possible statement, Stanoczk, someone wants me dead, and has the means to get the Bench endorsement. I must know how to protect myself, if I can. If I cannot, there is no sense in asking me to forgive Haster Girag, as I will not be available to do any such thing. Help me, Stoshik.”

In silence Stanoczk took the Bench warrant and opened it out in careful hands, looking thoughtfully at what elements Andrej could not guess.

Andrej could wait for Stanoczk to meditate on the document, and its meaning. He had something else in his desk. While Stanoczk turned the Bench warrant over in his hands and held it up against the light, Andrej took the notebooks out of the secured drawer, stacking them in chronological order.

He had almost forgotten all about them. But in Burkhayden he had had a dream that had reminded him of what a treasure he possessed, and how little he deserved it, and what his responsibility to posterity was with regard to it.

Finally Stanoczk sighed, and put the Bench warrant away in his blouse. “We cannot allow it, Derush, we rely on you for the future. I will submit the problem. What else?”

“I might ask you, Stoshik,” Andrej, countered. “A man does not seek aid from the Malcontent without paying the price.”

Cousin Stanoczk shook his head. “My Patron does you no favors, Derush. This is a question of Combine politics. You have the natural right to demand the Saint’s protection, without prejudice. I can’t pretend to extort concessions. Unless you would be kind to my Ferinc. I’ve become fond of him, Derush.”

Andrej could only shake his head in wearied wonder.

“You are all surprises today, Stanoczk. I have these documents. I need them to be safe and secured, if I am dead. They will be worth much more than money, in a generation’s time.”

And the Malcontent would know best how to conserve the information for the Nurail, still forbidden access to their own cultural heritage by the bitter and unreasoning enmity of the Bench. What Andrej had belonged to them, and had to be cherished carefully till it could safely be returned.

“This is then what, Derush?” Stanoczk asked, curious, picking up one of the notebooks to leaf through it. “Your penmanship has not improved with time, I must say.”

Andrej had to smile at that. “The circumstances were challenging. It was at the Domitt Prison, Stoshik. The Nurail there had no chance to pass their weaves except to me who was their torturer, but were willing to use even their own murderer as the tool to see the weaves remembered. Written down.”

Stanoczk let the leaves of the notebook riffle through his fingers. “It explains the hurried hand, I suppose. Does anybody know? They are proscribed under Jurisdiction, Derush, on pain of offense against the Bench itself.”

Yes and no. “Nurail may not sing their weaves, Stoshik, but there is no law that says a Dolgorukij may not write them down if it suits his fancy. Also I hold the Writ to Inquire, and may do many things with impunity forbidden other men.”

“Such as to my Ferinc,” Stanoczk agreed, but as if it was by the way. “I should not grudge you that. You did not ruin him. Had you not destroyed him he might never have reclaimed his sweet humility, which I love. Only you are not to tell him that, because I have little enough influence with him as it is, and should he realize that I am fond, he will take advantage, and be misery to deal with. More misery, rather.”

Andrej didn’t want to talk about Ferinc. He didn’t want to think about him. “Will you take these? There will come a time when the Nurail will have leave to come and find them, and they must be safe till then.”

Stanoczk nodded. “I will go to Chapter, Derush, and put these in trust for the future, and ask about the warrant. When I return to go with you to Chelatring Side, I will tell you what the Saint may have found out.”

There was nothing more that Andrej could do about it until Stanoczk came back, then. And he needed to speak to his Security before the sun set on the day. The news would come out. He had a clear duty to his people that they should hear of it from him.

“And I in turn will sound out my child and his mother, and give careful thought to if I should tolerate that your Ferinc breathes the same air as I do. It is my pledge to you, Cousin.”

Stanoczk came to embrace him, but informally, as his kinsman rather than as a Malcontent. “It really is so good to see you, Derush,” Stanoczk said. “You have been away for so long. Your family has missed you. I have missed you. Save a place at supper for me, in six days’ time.”

Andrej nodded, unwilling to speak, feeling overwhelmed by a species of nostalgia for the place where he was, the place where he could stay, the place that was his place. Stanoczk let himself out, with the notebooks — and the Bench warrant — secure in his custody.

An hour. He would take an hour to compose himself. Then he would have to tell Stildyne that he was not going to go back with him to the
Ragnarok
.

Chapter Nine

The Appropriate Channels

Marana had gotten a late start to the day, late in rising, much later in dressing, and only now was sitting down in the nursery office to review the status of Anton’s lessons with the house’s master of children’s education.

“The lesson plans have fallen a little behind, Respected Lady, but it is only to be expected,” Housemaster Janich said, but comfortingly. “Under the circumstances. Our young lord’s father does not come home every day.”

Marana closed the schedule log carefully. Nor would their young lord’s father be coming home ever again; he was here to stay. But it was for Andrej to make the announcement.

“Still, this is a lag of three days.” The single most pernicious fault that Aznir culture found with the members of its hereditary aristocracy was in the tendency of many to substitute privilege for perception. “How are we to recover?”

Anton Andreievitch had needed the very best education because he had been fated for a life as a bastard child, who could reasonably expect a good position within the Koscuisko familial corporation, but whose performance would be under constant scrutiny by the partisans of legitimate children jealous to ensure that no undue special favor was shown him. Now she didn’t have to worry about that any longer.

Now Anton needed an even better education, because he was to inherit the controlling interest in the familial corporation one day. Then history would judge her worth as a mother, and the value of her love for Andrej Ulexeievitch, by the prosperity that Koscuisko should enjoy during Anton Andreievitch’s tenure as its master.

Therefore she would have to pay twice as much attention to Anton’s lesson plans. The family would do its best to intervene, to take control of so important a task away from her. She would be ready to defend her primacy; she would accept help, but she would not yield control. Anton was her son.

Janich frowned. “The young lord does well with his languages, Respected Lady. Perhaps some time could be found in the schedule for Standard grammar and syntax. I will create a recovery plan, if this suggestion meets with your approval.”

And above all else Anton had to be allowed to be a child. It was lucky that he was intelligent and biddable; he did his lessons with as much diligence as one could ask any child his age, and learned them well. Ferinc helped Anton with his language. How was that going to work, with Andrej home?

“Thank you, house–master. We might find a way to do a science lesson outside of the classroom as well. If it can be worked into Anton’s play.”

Ferinc was here, standing in the open doorway to the nursery office, looking very pale. Janich had noticed Ferinc as well. “Very good, Respected Lady, until next time. With your permission.”

Janich had gotten more formal with her. Before Andrej had come home, she had been “Respected Lady,” but no one had taken leave of her “with her permission.”

Ferinc stood aside, smiling in wordless response to Janich’s greeting as the house–master left the room. Marana stood up and waited for Ferinc, who closed the door.

“What is it that they say about Malcontents, Respected Lady? That there is no trust or honesty in them?”

Something had happened. Ferinc was much worked upon by some emotion or another. Andrej knew about Ferinc; he had told her so in words that implied without accusing, earlier today, in the maze in the garden. Had there been some terrible sort of confrontation?”

“They say such things about all Malcontents.” Not Ferinc. Ferinc was her very great comfort. Almost her friend. “What is it, Ferinc?”

Ferinc reached into his blouse for a case of some sort, as long and as broad as her hand. No, as his hand, and Ferinc had long hands. Wincing slightly. “I’m lucky these boxes are as crushproof as they are, Marana, or else it would have been all over. Has the fish survived?”

Marana opened the case. A wheat–fish, secure in a padded container, carefully wrapped to avoid breaking off any fragment of the long whiskers in the beards of the heads of grain that had been used to plait the ancient good–luck charm. “How is that have you been scuffling? Ferinc.”

He was looking at the wheat–fish, not at her. “I’m glad. You must give it to Anton for me, Marana, and tell him that I love him, but I have to go away on the Malcontent’s business. The thing I never told you was that I had known your husband, once, under different circumstances. He has forbidden me to see his son.”

In all this time, Ferinc had given no hint — “He has good reason, Marana,” Ferinc added hastily. “The Malcontent knew, of course, but there are personal feelings. And. To be honest. I never meant to love either of you.”

It was worse than just that Andrej had discovered Ferinc to be her lover, before she had been able to come up with a good strategy for telling him. She had been the lover of a man whom Andrej had known, and did not like.

There were so many questions that she wanted to ask.
Were you a criminal? Why doesn’t he want you to see Anton? Is he jealous? What is it? Doesn’t he realize that Anton loves you? Not that I —

Ferinc was Malcontent, and any such questions were not to be asked. Marana swallowed hard, instead. “You deserve better for your care of Anton.” He had been as tender a parent as any woman could wish, and Anton was not even his son. “Is this to be forever, Ferinc?”

Too much was changing too fast. She had not thought far enough ahead, perhaps. There had been too much to do to cope with the immediate changes resulting from Andrej’s declaration of the Sacred–art–thous to leave her any room to think on more than the issues that lay directly before her.

Ferinc stood very close, and touched the hair beside her face. But not her face. “It’s his concern that makes him stern. So if Cousin Stanoczk can speak for me perhaps I’ll be allowed to see Anton. But you, Respected Lady, you owe your husband duty and honor, and a chance to be your husband. You know it’s true.”

Yes. She knew. It didn’t make it any easier, though.

“What becomes of us, if Andrej and I marry?” In the true sense, rather than the formal sense. “Ferinc. All of this time.” He had been so great a comfort to her. She was torn between the duty that she owed Andrej, both as a man and as her husband, her duty to be honest and true; and reluctance, inability, to discard five years and more of Ferinc’s quiet support.

“I will think about you on cold lonely nights, and wonder if you miss me,” Ferinc said. But wickedly. There was a streak of play running throughout his personality that took much of the sting out of even so melancholy a thing to say as that. “And tire my lover with I–remember–when until she kicks me out of bed, and bids me go hang myself. And then it will truly be a cold and lonely night.”

She’d known that it was going to come to this. Part of her had known that, anyway. She took him by the braids on either side of his face and kissed him, very carefully.
Good–bye
.

They didn’t embrace. The kiss was enough. He looked at her for a long moment, as if he was committing her face to memory and smiled, fondly, without much pain.

Then he kissed her nose. “Give Anton his fish,” Ferinc reminded her. “And my excuses. I’ve got to go. Thy lord has sent me away, and we don’t like to provoke the inheriting prince, because we have to apologize and it’s the wrong direction for the Malcontent’s preferred mode of operation, isn’t it?”

It was the end for them, one way or another. Andrej was to stay. If they were lovers ever again, it would be different. That was unavoidable. “ ‘Till later, Ferinc.”

Nodding, Ferinc left, and closed the door again behind him. She was alone. She owed Andrej a chance to be her husband in a modern, Standard way, as well as the traditional manner. She’d see what he had to say to her about Ferinc, and then decide.

But now she would carry a wheat–fish to Anton at his lessons, and interrupt his day just to tell him that Cousin Ferinc had loved him.

###

Stildyne set a watch on Lek to be sure he remained at peace with his governor, and went back to his room to see whether the bottle of liquor that was there was alcoholic throughout.

In time he began to sense a particular fragrance in the corridor through his open doorway, and knew that Koscuisko was on his way. Lefrols. Koscuisko’s smokes. A peculiar weed, and foully odiferous, but it meant Koscuisko to Stildyne, and that was usually a good thing. Even when it was a bad thing.

Koscuisko hadn’t changed since the morning, and it was late afternoon. He looked as though he had been sleeping on the desk, with his head buried in a pile of bound text — his face was creased, his eyelids falling half shut.

Coming into the room Koscuisko closed the door, and sat down, and reached for Stildyne’s glass. There was only one glass on the table. That would explain it. For a moment Stildyne was alarmed, because Koscuisko could drink him under the table and tended to run through bottles of liquor at a phenomenal rate when he was minded to self–medicate; then he relaxed. This was Koscuisko’s home ground. He probably had barrels of the stuff.

“What is it,” Koscuisko asked, holding out the emptied tumbler for a refill. “About what name you should be called. Talk to me about this, Mister Stildyne.”

Why not? Haster Girag had raised hard truths about Stildyne’s past that he’d never shared with Koscuisko; and he had been drinking. Koscuisko was doubtless already skeptically disposed toward him after the morning’s revelations; if he was going to quarrel with Koscuisko, he might as well do it when he didn’t have to compromise a period of amity and good communication to say what was on his mind.

“ ‘Chief,’ ” Stildyne said. “And ‘Mister.’ Never Stildyne, I suppose I could understand that, not without a ‘Chief’ or a ‘Mister.’ Robert you love. Him you call Robert. Lek maybe you don’t love so much as Robert, but you call him Lek anyway.”

Koscuisko watched his face, as though waiting for him to make his point. “Mister Stildyne. I call my orderlies also Heron and Diris and Lupally. A man should not call responsible people by their first names. It is not of due respect showing.”

Koscuisko’s dialect was deteriorating. They’d been here for some days now. The house staff spoke Standard, by and large, when they were talking in front of Koscuisko’s Security, but Stildyne strongly suspected that they all spoke their own language when they were alone. Or speaking to Koscuisko.

“Well, where I come from, you call a man by his last name when you have no relationship. But people that you know you call by first name.”

That wasn’t exactly true. He didn’t come from anywhere in particular. It was just a conflict between styles — his style, Koscuisko’s style — and Koscuisko had the rank, so it was not unreasonable for Koscuisko to assume that his style should define the terms of the relationship. It was all just the issue of whether there was a relationship. Of course there was a relationship. Stildyne was a Chief Warrant Officer, Koscuisko was his officer of assignment. That was a relationship.

“Were you with Girag then on the basis of Brachi and Haster?” Koscuisko asked, thoughtfully. It was not a challenge or a taunt; it was just a question. It was very, very good cortac brandy; it seemed to slip down almost by itself.

To everlasting confusion with it all. Stildyne poured the glass Koscuisko sought and kept it for himself, passing the bottle back. Less effort that way. The bottle needed refilling less often than the glass. “I’m not sure I remember. There was a crew of us at a Fleet base at Gotrane. We probably didn’t know each other all that well.”

Koscuisko took the bottle but didn’t drink from it, looking around him absentmindedly — for the glass. Stildyne knew that was what Koscuisko was looking for. “One is on intimate terms with one’s house–masters, but one does not call them by their private names, Brachi. Unless it is in private. And I dared not ever use Chief Samons’s name but once in my life that I can remember, because it was so important to try to avoid noticing what a spectacular beauty she was.”

Brachi
. Koscuisko had said it. Koscuisko was not drunk — or nothing like as drunk as he had to be before he started to get sentimental. He was not teetering on the brink of total psychological collapse. No one held fire to the soles of his naked feet, and that was just as well, because Stildyne would have had to kill them had anyone tried. Stildyne himself was more drunk than Koscuisko, and on only a little more liquor.

“Nor wished ever to use mine. For fear of being misinterpreted,” Stildyne said sourly, being drunk. Rising to his feet, he went to the drinks cabinet and took out a clean glass for Koscuisko. And another bottle of something. Just now he didn’t care what it was, exactly, so long as it had alcohol in it. “Now you are three times as determined. Now that you’ve heard about my past.”

Koscuisko looked at the empty glass Stildyne set down before him for a long moment. Sighing, Stildyne plucked up the bottle from Koscuisko’s hand and poured; then at last Koscuisko seemed to realize that it was meant for him.

“Your past distresses me, Brachi, but it is past. And means you are more greatly to be honored for that you have changed your manner.”

No, it didn’t. He hadn’t left off taking the occasional bite out of a bond–involuntary because he had developed any moral scruples. He had learned not to take advantage of them because Koscuisko disapproved. And that was all.

If there was more to it, Stildyne didn’t even want to know. He’d heard about morality. It seemed an unnecessary complication to life in an unjust and uncertain world. Koscuisko had opened his mouth as if to say something, and then closed it again. Stildyne waited.

“And I have struggled this day with how to say this to you, Brachi. But I also have a chance to step away from abuse of those within my power. It is the message that Ivers has brought.”

What was Koscuisko saying? Koscuisko had never abused his Security, nor any member of his staff — except the orderly who’d been caught stealing drugs. Koscuisko had beaten her very thoroughly for that, and then forgotten to report the crime to the Captain or the First Officer, to keep the woman from prison. So far as Stildyne knew, there had never been any further problem with the orderly in question.