Prisoner of Conscience (18 page)

Trying to reassure Darveck would do no good; Andrej knew that. The best thing was to simply go ahead, and let the action of the drug speak its own truth. “There is nothing here to be afraid of,”
he promised, pressing the dose through at the prisoner’s throat.

After a breath or two young Darveck blinked once or twice, in clear astonishment. “Yr’Excellency?”

“This is going to hurt. I’m sorry. Here we go.” Loosening the vice, pulling the needle-pins whose job it was to find the nerves within the joint and wear on them. Pain receptors within a joint produced a signal that did not decay in the same way as those nearer the skin. For fierce white-hot bright pain that would not abate there was nothing like prying a joint apart fiber by fiber; and certainly nothing like that now. He had finished with this one interrogation. That was all.

Finished, but had had no resolution for the thirst within him —

Not an issue. The vice came away from the ankle joint, the skin beneath livid with bruises and insult. There would be a matter of days before Darveck would be able to put weight on that leg without danger of an injury. The drug did good work, Darveck did not scream.

By the look on Darveck’s face — the relaxed muscle of the cheek and jaw, the eyes traveling with slow deliberation from object to object in the room — the drug had taken hold, now. Andrej pressed the second dose through, just to be sure, because he wanted to assure himself that Darveck would not succumb to shock and die.

It was late.

Too late to start with a fresh prisoner.

The gentlemen had been on their feet for hours and hours on end, on either side of the door outside.

Andrej went to the door, toggling the switch. “Kaydence.” Security could sleep standing up with their eyes open, that was true. That was no excuse for keeping them on watch without a break simply because his body ached with the pleasure of the torment he’d put Darveck to and the fierce consuming desire to have more.

“Kaydence. Yes. Call to Infirmary. This one is to be dismissed to the civil authority, but he’ll need a few days in hospital, Infirmary must stabilize before we can in decency refer.”

It wasn’t the best idea to send torture victims to civilian hospitals. The infirmary at the Domitt Prison would logically be both equipped to address the injury and more inured to the sight of it. Kaydence bowed low with a calm serene face and stepped away from the doorway to the common call; Andrej leaned up against the doorjamb and rubbed his eyes. Oh. He should remember. It was prudent to remove one’s work-gloves before one rubbed one’s eyes.

Infirmary was perhaps not much occupied, this time of day — this time of night. There was a litter and a team with a physician before too much time had passed. Andrej waited to let the staff physician make preliminary examination; then the doctor came to him and saluted.

“His Excellency intends us to release this prisoner, sir?”

Sounding a little dubious. Well, it was a prison, and one of the reasons Andrej had particularly wanted to be here when the doctor came was in order to be very clear about his intention.

“Precisely so, Doctor — Forlop, yes, thank you. You have the documentation with you brought? You will need this.”

The Infirmary staff would be responsible for developing the medical record, but Andrej was the only one who could sign disposition of prisoner. He, and Administrator Geltoi.

He had not satisfied himself —

Doctor Forlop bowed in polite acceptance. “As his Excellency says, sir. Thank you. I’ll send a report to your office. Shall we be going?”

A hint. Straightening up — he had been slumped against the wall, trying not to think about tension — Andrej gave the nod.

The party left.

He was alone with his Security.

They needed to be sent to bed; and he needed to wash.

The penthouse was warm and quiet. Andrej sent his gentlemen through to the kitchen. He couldn’t remember if they’d eaten.

He couldn’t remember if he’d eaten; but he didn’t want to eat, his hunger was for screaming, not for food. The sooner morning came the sooner he could satisfy his need. He had to go to sleep, so that it would be morning when he woke.

His bedroom was quiet and dark, familiar with the smell of his favorite soap and comforting with the fragrance of a woman’s hair. Ailynn. There was a thought. Perhaps he could lull the beast to sleep in Ailynn’s arms.

She only slept beside him in the bed because he liked the companionable warmth; waiting for him, she was not in the bed now, but napping on a low cot behind the screen in the comer. He knew she had a pallet there, and he didn’t like it; but that seemed to be the only allowance for her privacy in this place. He hadn’t told her to put it away. He could hear her breathing, calm and regular. Soothing. Could he not take comfort in her embrace, and be at peace, even if only for a few hours?

He had to wash.

She had been ready for him, there was his nightshirt on the warmer with the bath-towel, and the other things that he might want for grooming laid out ready in a tidy array. A comb. A nail-brush. A jar of fragrant lotion to take the stink of sweat and blood and terror from the forefront of his senses.

He started the shower to run, to get the temperature of the water right. Ailynn usually took care of that small chore, she’d learned the precise mix he liked almost immediately — people learned quickly, when their safety depended upon avoiding aggravating some slave-master. And he was one. At the very least he was to Ailynn a slave-master, and if there was to be no help for it why should he not at least make use of her body?

Scarred, she had said.

Stripping, he left his clothing on the floor and unfastened the sheathing of Joslire’s five-knives with fatigue-clumsy fingers. He wondered whether he should be wearing Joslire’s knives in torture-room; wasn’t it a little like making Joslire come in there, with him? There was something unusual about the back-sheath knife, as well, though he didn’t think he could tell anybody and have them take him seriously.

The knife had gotten heavier, since Joslire’s death.

Andrej set the knives and the sheathing up on a shelf apart and stepped into the shower. There was a little draft that lasted for a moment; that would logically be Ailynn, Andrej knew, awakened by the sound of water running, creeping into the washroom carefully to carry away his soiled clothing.

Lathering up the soap, Andrej started washing, rubbing hard at the dried blood that had soaked through his clothing to his skin. His fish was half-tumescent, irritable in his hand, half-ready to raise its head and rage against the world: at such times his fish was no friend to him, but a quarrelsome member of his household for whom he was responsible but whose behavior he was powerless to amend for the better.

His fish had been stroked by the anguish of tortured souls all day. Now it resented being rubbed down with soap and warm water and bidden to sleep, and grumbled at him while his belly ached with unresolved tension.

His body was as clean as he could wash it. More or less.

Andrej dried himself, grateful for the small luxuries of warm clean toweling and a quiet room. Slipping his sleep-shirt over his head, he went back out into his bedroom, knotting half the ties absentmindedly and ignoring the rest.

He liked Ailynn; he didn’t want to distress her.

But he was on fire with the remembered sound of that Nurail’s weeping. If he could not find some way to ground the tension, he would not be able to sleep.

Ailynn was sitting very straight-backed on the edge of the bed with her hands resting on either side of her, flat against the coverlet.

Waiting for him.

The bedclothes turned back, and she herself in her bed-dress, which meant that the contour of her shoulders was clearly visible beneath the thin white fabric even in the dim light of the night-glows. Her hair was drawn back in a thick heavy braid, tied neatly in a knot for sleeping. Andrej sat down beside her, taking her braid into his hands to undo the ribbon-loop that kept it from coming undone in the night.

Her braid came loose and lay against his palms, heavy and silky. He laced his fingers in between the plaits, remembering Marana. The joy he’d had in taking down her hair, knowing she would welcome his fish within her ocean.

Ailynn didn’t speak.

That was fine, too.

He unraveled her braid twist by twist until he’d worked his hands up to the base of her skull, and paused, cupping the heat of her skull against his palms, feeling the seductive caress of her hair against his fingers.

Oh, he wanted.

And he couldn’t have.

But he could have Ailynn, and maybe that would do the trick.

She put her hand out to the back of his neck, very sweetly indeed, and drew him down to lie with her across the bed. There was no reason she should know what a Dolgorukij would have meant by such a gesture. Andrej took no offense; and teased her little tongue out of her mouth with kisses, so that he could suckle at her while he reveled in the sensation of her unbound hair against his arms wrapped around her back.

It was a very pretty little tongue, a cunning tongue, a sweet and tempting tongue, and would it be very wrong — Andrej asked himself, half-drunk once more with passion and with need — if he pretended to himself that she was willing?

Her body was soft beneath his hands as a woman’s body properly was, as he had learned to define and appreciate what was desirable about women’s bodies when he had been young. He had learned to appreciate the desirability of other sorts of women’s bodies since, and that of Chief Warrant Officer Caleigh Samons — as an example — exemplified one of those other sorts neatly indeed.

But there was no arguing with one’s fish.

And his fish felt that the woman in his arms was just exactly what a woman ought to be; and wished to crest the breakers of her surf and gain her ocean now, right now, immediately.

And still there was the thing that she had said to him, days ago, what had it been?

Scarred.

Andrej kissed her parted lips a few more times for friendship’s sake and went exploring down the lines of her throat. Her shoulders . . . but he was not going to be distracted, because there was a natural limit to how long he could demand that his fish wait before it disgraced him by breaching the dikes and expiring of exhaustion on dry land.

Soft and fragrant, and open to sensation, too, as far as that went, willing to admit pleasure when it came — Andrej mapped out the soft woman-flesh of Ailynn’s breast and shoulders, and all the while set his right hand to find out about her scars.

She stiffened, when his fingers slid gently between her thighs; stiffened in fear, and opened to him in duty. Which was not of course the best reason, but it would suit his purpose here and now.

Whether the warm moisture he sought out was arousal or simply the sensible precaution of a professional woman made while he was in the shower, Andrej didn’t know. There was an easy way to find out, but he didn’t care to know. It would be awkward. He stroked her carefully instead, making up his mind as to where it was that she was scarred and whether she could be enticed to take any delight at all from his caress. Imposed on her or no.

The fish that complicated the lives of men was a stout and very self-respecting thing that did not hesitate to breach and put its head up to see what might be going on around it. That which was private to women was a more modest and reticent little minnow, though sweet to the taste; unlike other fish, which were stronger in flavor and indelicate in their appreciation of an affectionate salute.

Ailynn’s little minnow was of brave heart, willing to be coaxed out of its safe place beneath the shelf by the seashore to permit itself to be admired and stroked. She had been scarred by rape, then, and not otherwise mutilated by design. That was something.

But his fish was urgent with him to let it seek the ocean.

She would have been within her rights to suffer his embrace in stoic silence, or return only what caress or endearment he might instruct her to employ. That was the privilege of paid women. One could purchase the hire of their bodies: but it was in poor taste to demand that they pretend that they enjoyed it.

Ailynn was more generous and charitable with him than that.

The shaking of her breath was unfeigned, the flush of sweat that made her sweet breast taste salt was not cosmetically created, the eager stiffening of her nipples did not result from surreptitious pinching or a light touch of astringent. She consented without words, without being asked, to trust her body into his hands to be gently used by him, and the frank honesty of her arousal served to keep him focused on what a man was to do with a woman in bed.

Seek the ocean, yes, that was what it was all about. But carefully. Mindful that too great a splash at once could lay bare rock. Ensuring that the wake of his fish’s passing washed well over her minnow in the shallows, to rock it to its ultimate delight as his fish pleasured itself in the salt deeps of her secret ocean.

He tried.

But there had been too much.

He’d spent long hours keyed up to a keen-edged anticipation, only to have denied himself gratification at the last. The flesh was intent on being recompensed for being made to wait so long, with such persuasive provocation to his lust.

His fish went all the more furiously to work because it was half-mad with being denied, determined to have its pleasure before its opportunity was withdrawn.

He worked the angry tension of his body out within hers, caught up and consumed by the day’s pent-up frustration, desperate to find physical release.

He didn’t want to hurt her.

But he had to have an end to the thirst that tormented him.

And when the crisis of his body’s need resolved itself at last, he was too grateful for the grant of two breaths of time spent without thought to want to drop back into conscious awareness before he absolutely had to.

Gathering Ailynn up into his arms, Andrej laid her properly in the bed and pulled the covers up over them both.

Oh, for just one hour, to exist without awareness —