An Exchange of Hostages (13 page)

“Your name. And the crime for which you were arrested. Answer to me ‘yes, your Excellency,’ else we will have to talk about your manners. Yes?”

Perhaps Lussman was simply a little dazed.

The best thing for that would be a sudden shock, to bring him out of it. Andrej swung the cudgel-butt of the whip in a wide, high arc and down across the Nurail’s injured shoulder. He liked the sharp and stifled sound of the Nurail’s cry of pain, the certain knowledge of his own absolute control over the next few measures of his prisoner’s life. There was no sense in lying to himself, not now, not since he finally understood what he had been trying to hide from himself for all those wasted years.

“N-no, if it p-p-pl — ”

Lussman started to speak but stopped himself, swallowing his words before Andrej could guess where he had been going with them. Andrej waited. He could afford to allow Lussman a few moments in which to collect himself.

“That is . . . I mean . . . your Excellency. Rab Lussman. Falsely accused. Your Excellency. S-sir.”

Had he asked for an evaluation of the Charges? He had not. He had only asked what the Charges were.

He was all but compelled by this cogent fact to strike Lussman in order that the Nurail would gain from instruction, learning how a man would be well advised to conduct himself in the presence of an Inquiring officer.

He unwrapped the cruel thin length of the whip’s lash from around his fist and took the cudgel-butt into his hand instead, striking Lussman across the face with the doubled lash so hard that the blood came in the furrow of the welt it raised in passage.

He was Andrej Koscuisko, before the Holy Mother, before all Saints under Canopy.

He was Andrej Koscuisko, Surgeon and Inquisitor, and when he left this place he would carry the Writ to Inquire, and uphold the Judicial order by its lawful exercise.

He was Andrej Ulexeievitch Koscuisko.

And he was come into his dominion now at last.

Chapter Five

Joslire Curran stood in his place behind Tutor Chonis’s chair, dividing his dismayed attention between listening to the Tutor and watching Student Koscuisko. The Record was off-line; Tutor Chonis had apparently made all the official comments he felt might be appropriate. Now there was only Chonis’s musing, half to himself, half for their benefit, watching the two exercises.

“I think I like that hook for the present,” Student Koscuisko was saying. “Gentlemen, if you please. Yes, both arms, and perhaps you could contrive to see his left shoulder is to bear the most part of his weight.”

He’d told Robert St. Clare that Koscuisko was a fair-minded man, and would only hurt him enough. Something had gone wrong from the beginning of this exercise, however. Because the pressure that Koscuisko brought to bear on his prisoner-surrogate had been more intense than any Fourth Level Student exercise Joslire had ever seen.

“Willful destruction of Bench property is a species of treason, friend Rab, we must have details in order to measure out the penalty. I cannot say that you have been very forthcoming. One would almost think you did not feel remorse for what you have done.”

Koscuisko had not exceeded the Protocols, so in that specifically limited sense Koscuisko had in fact hurt Robert only “enough.” But there was no trace of fair-mindedness in his Student’s behavior. Koscuisko was clearly enjoying the brutal tricks he had contrived to play on his prisoner. There was a confusing dislocation between the officer Joslire had believed Koscuisko to be and the mocking torturer that he’d been watching for these few hours past. Something was happening to Student Koscuisko, and Joslire did not quite understand what it was; but he was certain that he didn’t like it.

“Once again, from the beginning. I am heartily sick of your refusal to acknowledge your whip-worthiness, there is Evidence enough to convict you a liar. You are not doing yourself any favors by withholding.”

There had been Students who had liked pain, his pain, their prisoner’s pain, any pain they could get, always excluding their own. There had been Students who had simply been indifferent to pain, or who had actively deplored the use of it. Koscuisko was not a man to be unmoved, from what little Joslire had learned of him. He reacted with genuine and innate compassion to the sufferings of the accused in the paradigm tapes. It made no sense for that resistance to have been superficial; Joslire had been completely convinced of the honesty of Koscuisko’s empathic sympathy. But if Koscuisko’s horror had been real — and this, this sharpening skill with whips and mockery was also convincing — it did not augur well for Student Koscuisko’s future. For his sanity.

“Noycannir seems to have run out of options, Hanbor, wouldn’t you say?”

Tutor Chonis’s voice interrupted Joslire’s brooding and brought him back into real time. The Tutor was being charitable, in Joslire’s view; it seemed to him that Noycannir had lost control of her interrogation early on, when her “prisoner” had declined to even start to cooperate. Chonis had wanted to see how she’d handle it. Koscuisko had found a way to encourage Robert to surrender at least his false identification as a start. Noycannir had asked once or twice and then gone directly into beating her partner with the black-stick, apparently content to reproduce the paradigm tapes that she and Student Koscuisko alike had studied blow for blow.

Joslire knew which index-level tape that particular beating was on, having seen it with each of his previous Students.

It was a Fifth Level tape, preparation for the next exercise. She’d gotten her Protocols confused.

“Student Noycannir is apparently trying to pretend that her prisoner has not lost consciousness. She’s unlikely to get anything more out of him today. Sir.”

There was a perverse sort of professional pride on Orientation staff, a black-humored brand of “my Student is more efficiently cruel than your Student” running joke. Lop Hanbor sounded genuinely disgusted with Noycannir’s overzealous approach, since she’d put her prisoner-surrogate out of the arena for a few hours. Joslire had felt that way before. Given that their Judicial function involved the methodical application of pain, bond-involuntaries tended to evaluate Students based on their ability to use enough to satisfy the requirements and accomplish the task, but no more than that. It was precisely that prejudice that gave their function what little meaning it could be said to have. They were here to support the least-wasted-pain approach to Inquiry.

“Well, we’ll give her a minute to call the exercise. Wouldn’t want to interrupt young Koscuisko. Speaking of whom — shall we have the sound, Curran?” Tutor Chonis asked, and it was not really a question, needless to say. Joslire didn’t much care for the prospect, but perhaps Chonis only wanted to get a flavor of what Koscuisko was saying.

Lop did the honors, bringing up the sound from one exercise theater even as he muted the sound from the other.

Robert had been stretched from the ceiling, and since Student Koscuisko had specified it, Security had given his bad arm less slack so that most of Robert’s weight was on it. Robert kept trying to stretch his other arm up to the anchor-bolt to grasp the hook and take some of the weight off of the injured joint. Koscuisko, however, wasn’t having any of it; and Joslire suffered for the young Nurail.

“I can tell that this is going to take some practice,” Koscuisko was saying. “For now I can only trust that my lack of craft does not offend you.”

Robert was already off balance because of the unequal length of the chains that bound him. The impact of the whip was throwing his whole weight upon his injured shoulder, and Robert — it seemed — couldn’t help but cry out against it.

“Your feedback will, of course, be critical to the success of this training exercise, although I fear I cannot promise you that it will remain confidential. Unless you would prefer to discuss some of the more interesting details of your crime. What was it, again? Willful destruction of Jurisdiction property?”

For all his disclaimers, Koscuisko had a natural talent of some sort; his eye-to-hand coordination was obviously more than adequate. Nor did he seem to be afraid to put a bit of muscle into the blows. Whether it was weals or blood there was no question but that Andrej Koscuisko was making his mark on Robert St. Clare.

Who could not catch his breath, tormented by the whip even as he was distracted by the pain in his shoulder. “I . . . won’t.”

They weren’t picking up Robert’s voice very well. Chonis frowned, gesturing for Lop to increase the directional on the plait. Even then it wasn’t easy to figure out what Robert was saying. His breath came in fits and starts, his sentences chopped up into disjointed, fragmentary phrases almost devoid of meaning. “Can’t. Won’t. Risk. Not long enough for . . . ”

Long enough? It didn’t have to mean anything. But he should not have said “not long enough.” Would Koscuisko pick up on the phrase?

“With respect, Tutor Chonis — ”

Koscuisko had demonstrated his ability to take an appropriate tool and use it on his prisoner; and that was all that the Administration really required, at this juncture. Whatever else he might be demonstrating was beside the point.

Lop apparently had a more immediate problem. Student Noycannir had kicked her prisoner as he lay on the decking, in an apparent paroxysm of frustration at his failure to respond.

“With respect, sir, Student Noycannir has violated the restriction at the Fourth Level, request the Tutor call the exercise?”

Student Noycannir kicked her prisoner again, at the point of his jaw this time. Joslire recognized that maneuver from the index-Level tapes as well. On the index tape, the Student Inquisitor had indeed kicked a prisoner while he was down, and hard enough to bring blood to the victim’s cheek.

Joslire knew that Tutor Chonis had temporarily forgotten about Noycannir, absorbed in watching Koscuisko. He’d been absorbed in watching Koscuisko, too, but he had a better excuse — not that he was going to hint that to Tutor Chonis, who took one look at the companion screen and smashed his fist against the emergency-call toggle.

“Administrative orders. All exercises to cease.”

The signal went to both theaters, and Joslire watched his officer lift his head toward the talk-alert with a look of confused apprehension on his face.

“This is Tutor Chonis. I repeat. Administrative orders, all exercises to cease. Students will disengage at once.” Toggling off-braid, Tutor Chonis pushed himself angrily out of his chair, swearing at himself and moving so quickly that he was halfway to the door before he’d finished his directions.

“Son of a cuckoo, useless excuse for a . . . Hanbor, come with me. Curran, shut down the monitors before you go and collect Koscuisko. Perdition take . . . ”

There was a world of difference between kicking a prisoner’s face and kicking him at the back of his head or up from underneath the point of his jaw. From the unnatural angle of the prisoner-surrogate’s head as he lay, Student Noycannir’s blow had compromised Idarec’s spine — perhaps fatally so.

Alone in Observation, now, Joslire closed down the monitors and secured the tapes. Koscuisko would be expecting him.

Koscuisko was all he had to worry about.

###

Student Noycannir crouched down beside the prisoner where he lay, desperate to discover whether he was only trying to put a joke on her by feigned unconsciousness. The bastard couldn’t be unconscious. She hadn’t hit him that hard, didn’t she know as well as anyone how hard you really had to hit before some thickheaded gravel-stamper finally lay down to be quiet?

The prisoner didn’t move.

She could have shrieked in frustrated rage, but strangled the curses in her throat so fiercely she was sure only she had even heard the sound. He couldn’t do this to her. He was pretending. She could deal with pretense, she knew how. Snatching the man’s limp arm out to the farthest extent of its length on the floor she hammered the elbow joint with the heavy cudgel, once, two times, three times. Pain never failed to get a man’s attention, it had never failed her before, but the prisoner did not respond. She could hit again, but she couldn’t be sure that she was clear to damage the joint more severely at this Level. She didn’t dare. If she should splinter bone, they would hold it against her as proof of her lack of fitness for the Writ.

Mergau stood up.

A man who lay silent and unmoving through such blows as she had given his elbow was not pretending.

If he was unconscious, how could she gain confession? Sudden mindless fury swamped her heart and mind and soul. This was unfair. They had no right. They had given her a weakling for a prisoner, a man so fragile he escaped to silence before he had so much as said his name. They would blame her for it. It wasn’t her fault, it was their fault, their fault and his fault, the fault of the prisoner who mocked her where he lay in unresponsive stillness.

Be damned to all of them,
she decided.
All of them be damned. Their tricks. Their superiority.

“Get up.” Snarling at the prisoner, Mergau did not bother trying to disguise her disgust, her contempt. Let them make of it what they liked. “I said get up, you pathetic coward.” He didn’t move, and by now she knew he wasn’t going to. It made kicking him all the more satisfying, a good solid blow striking sharp against his ribs. When he woke up again, he would know she had meant to punish him. “Don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’re trying to pull.”

She kicked again, and at his head this time, to see if she could take a few of his teeth for souvenirs. She was beginning to feel better. As long as he was unconscious anyway, why shouldn’t she?

There was a sharp click at the talk-alert, and suddenly Mergau wondered if she had overstepped somehow.

“All exercises to cease. Students will disengage at once.”

Tutor Chonis’s voice, and sounding very intent. What, there was a problem?

What had Koscuisko done?

Was it her imagination or were the prisoner’s lips turning blue?

A mistake. She had made a mistake. Terror seized her bowels and bones, but Mergau dampened it sternly. She’d made a mistake, but the last thing she could afford to do was show it. Show weakness and there would be no mercy.

She knew what to do when she’d been caught doing something wrong. Her ability to project innocent nonchalance was part of her survival. Turning her back on the prisoner on the floor, Mergau set the truncheon back with the other instruments on the table, arranging them neatly. She would not have long to wait, she was sure.

Tutor Chonis’s signal was almost welcome.

“Student Noycannir. You will return to quarters, instruction to be forthcoming.” He was excited about something, but she — quite naturally — could have no idea what it was. Mergau schooled her face to a bland mask of mild, concerned confusion to overlay the turmoil in her heart. It didn’t have to fool anybody. All it had to do was get her safely out of here.

Mergau bowed to her Tutor and left the theater, standing aside to let the medical team through as she passed.

She was glad to go to quarters.

She had to understand what had gone wrong.

But more than that, she had to decide how she was going to cover up for it.

###

“Administrative orders. All exercises to cease.”

The sudden announcement startled Andrej. He lost his focus on the lash, stumbling clumsily to one side as he missed his prisoner entirely.

“This is Tutor Chonis. I repeat, administrative orders, all exercises to cease. Students will disengage at once.”

Staring at the wall-monitor, he tried to understand Tutor Chonis. Disengage? How could they ask him to disengage when that meant he would have to leave his prisoner? Had he made an error in procedure? They’d been given instructions about command disengage, true. Under emergency circumstances the Tutor would call the exercise. No hints about what emergency it might be were forthcoming from the now silent wall-monitor; and after a moment, Andrej shook himself out of his paralysis of arrested movement.

He didn’t want to disengage.