Warring States Read online

  From the inside pocket of her blouse, she pulled the piece of paper she’d been carrying around with her for days. “While you’re busy looking at things, Balkney, have a look at this.”

  He took the paper by one corner and held it up, shining the light from the lantern full on its surface. Frowning, but a frown that smoothed over into surprise — and then a kind of amused recognition. “Hah,” Balkney said. “Well. Interesting. I found a bookmark in a text that turned up in my queue, myself. Didn’t bring it, sorry.” He handed the sketch back, the little drawing Karol had done, the Hangman. Not guilty. “I didn’t connect it with Vogel at the time.”

  Balkney had said that he hadn’t heard anything about Karol’s whereabouts. He could easily have been lying, but that wasn’t the way Balkney did it. Balkney didn’t tell lies. He simply avoided making statements that were counter-factual in such a way as to facilitate whatever assumptions he didn’t mind being made. And he’d made a positive statement of negative contact with Karol Vogel.

  “So what’d yours say?” Jils asked, interested. The walls of the air-well seemed to be moving, drawing in on her, closing in. It was an intriguing effect, but not one that she particularly appreciated. “Here, you can tell me on the way out.”

  Moving slowly and deliberately she turned toward the rung-ladder on the wall, listening and waiting. It would be so easy to leave her here. He wouldn’t have to lay a hand on her. And he was a Bench executioner; it was his job to make people disappear.

  “It said Ivers didn’t do it,” Balkney said, his voice measured and thoughtful from the bottom of the shaft. He couldn’t possibly be having reservations about his own position, could he? She climbed up past the access in order to swing into it feet-first, and back down the shaft on her belly as she had come. It hadn’t been so long a trek from the corridor to the air-well, but it took longer to crawl than it would have taken to walk. Of course. She could see Balkney jump up lithely to take the first rung, and stayed to watch — just in case he was wondering if she had murder on her own mind.

  “At least that’s what I decided it meant. You tell me.” She had to hurry backwards to give him room to get in. His boots were a little on the worn side of relatively new, Jils noted. Leather soles. The stitching would need attention in another few months.

  What was she doing, getting distracted by shoe-leather? Leather soles didn’t grip like some other materials, nor were they as quiet. Balkney hadn’t intended on sneaking up on anybody or on having to dance if he did. Shouldn’t she be listening to what he was saying?

  “It was a peculiar piece of cutlery, with a solid line on the curved edge. Shadowing the blade, but not the edge. I thought it might be Vogel’s style, but it took me some time to decipher the message. Ivers is clean.”

  Backing down the vent-conduit shaft on her hands and knees Jils realized suddenly what Balkney wasn’t saying. Battle-axe. The image caught her by surprise and she laughed, a short sort of a barking sound that startled her almost as much as it seemed to have startled Balkney.

  “Right,” she agreed, to let him know that everything was under control. “I understand.” The edge was sharp and clear, no clean-up necessary. Battle-axe. It had been a long time since anybody had called her that. Balkney might be one of the few people left in service who would connect it to her.

  Or Balkney could be making it up. He had nothing to show her; he’d said so. If he’d brought the sketch with him she’d have suspected that, too, and wondered if he’d fabricated the sketch in order to mislead her. For that Balkney would’ve had to know that she was going to find a doodle on a courier from Chilleau to Brisinje. That was stretching it. Unless he’d planted the doodle, but that was stretching it even further.

  “So what’s next?” she asked. Balkney hadn’t said anything, busy working his way down the vent-shaft after her. All right, he knew she trusted him to a limited extent, she knew he trusted her. She could have left him at the bottom of the air-well just as easily as he could have left her there. “Something I need to know?”

  He stopped moving in the shaft. “Nion,” he said. “Has a new sort of way of thinking, a little like Delleroy and maybe Rinpen and possibly Tanifer. Privileged model.”

  So it hadn’t been just her imagination. It was good to think that she hadn’t just been seeing things, but not good to think that Padrake could have lost his focus to such an extent. “Why do you say that?”

  Balkney had started to move again, but slowly. They were near the entrance to the shaft. “She spoke to me,” Balkney said. Though Jils couldn’t see his face, the tone of his voice made her think that he was trying to pick his words very carefully. “Maybe to some of the others, I’m not sure. About executing a Writ. She’d heard stories about me. She seemed a little too interested in some of them. Mosch, for one.”

  Bench intelligence specialist Elipse Mosch. She’d lost her way amid the lawless confusion of the Lettel uprising sixteen years ago, and started to behave like a warlord rather than a guardian of the Judicial order. Balkney had removed her for the good of the Bench and its citizens, but it hadn’t been easy — or without controversy.

  Some people still affected to believe that Mosch had been a Bench-sanctioned agent provocateur, but Balkney’s point — Jils supposed — was that the hit had made his reputation, in the small secretive community of Bench specialists. Now Balkney wanted her to know that Nion might be looking for a target of opportunity whose acquisition might do the same for Nion.

  “Whoever killed Verlaine is mine.” She had no intention of meekly surrendering her revenge to bolster the reputation of a young Bench specialist. Showing her throat would be as good as a confession of guilt anyway. Reputations were to be earned by hard work and personal achievement; assassination was the easy way out, a short-cut. “I mean to have satisfaction.”

  They were back at the corridor, Balkney dropping out of the vent-shaft to land lightly on his feet beside her. His expression remained mild, but betrayed a little surprise. Yes. She supposed she was angry. “I won’t be getting in your way,” he said. “I’ve got a wife and children to think of. I think Capercoy is solid. Maybe Rafenkel. Just watch yourself.”

  It wasn’t much to ask, and had been well intentioned. It wasn’t his fault she was so keyed up. “Thanks,” she said, and offered her hand. “I appreciate it. But how are we going to know about the air-well?”

  Shifting the conversation back into neutral territory, careful to ensure that nothing was said that couldn’t be safely overheard. Balkney nodded in apparent appreciation of the tactic and started down the corridor with a quick firm grasp of her hand.

  “The question would be how deep it was capped off, if it’s been capped. We could come back with a crawler, but those things are slow.” Because the little mechanical climbers were very safe, and proceeded cautiously in order to successfully navigate difficult terrain. Vertical surfaces, for one, but the air-well had been dressed rock for at least a portion of its depth, and that would be relatively easy for a crawler to negotiate. “Maybe if we look at the station’s life support protocols we’ll find something.”

  That was an idea. If life support had a safety consideration hidden away somewhere in its library, it might tell them whether the original builders had made any allowances for a catastrophic failure of transport or ventilation. If she had built this data station, she would certainly have wanted to be sure about that, but these people had done some rather odd things. Light wells. And were those light wells wide enough for an adult hominid to ascend?

  It was a welcome distraction from the issues on her mind, and looking for ways out helped her to manage her discomfort at being more or less trapped. There was only the one lift that anybody seemed to know of. If something happened to that — she supposed someone might climb the elevator shaft, but there was no way of knowing even if it was a straight line of ascent, and an accident could as easily have jammed the escape routes as anything else —

  “After third-meal,” she suggested. �
�In the maintenance area.” This was not so large a station that it took very long to walk from place to place; they were coming back into the living area already. Balkney would have to go and observe Capercoy versus Rinpen on whether a new Judge should be raised from the subordinates available at Fontailloe. She was due to argue Chilleau against Zeman, with Padrake watching.

  “See you, then,” Balkney agreed, and turned off down a side corridor as they neared the kitchen. Jils stopped in mid-corridor, listening keenly to the sound of nobody near her, nobody at all. Padrake. Balkney had said that he thought Capercoy was solid, and Rafenkel probably. Nothing about Padrake. Was that odd?

  Was that a data-point that contained information, or just noise? Had he not mentioned Padrake because he assumed Jils had come to her own conclusions, or had his remark been a little more deliberate than that?

  Suspicion was a Bench specialist’s friend, but it could become a liability if it was not carefully controlled. There was sometimes a thin line between healthy caution and paranoia. Jils meant to stay on the sane side of it, if she hadn’t strayed too far already.

  Putting the question in her mind away for the time being, Jils went though into the kitchen to take mid-meal and prepare her thoughts to challenge Zeman for the honor of Chilleau Judiciary.

  ###

  The signs were not good. First Officer was pacing like an animal held in close confinement, her eyes fixed fiercely on some spot on the floor always three-eighths ahead of her no-longer-quite-flawlessly-shined boots, smoothing her light brown hair back across the rounded top of her narrow head with a gesture that stopped only barely short of clutching at hairs in sheer frustration. Caleigh Samons had seen this behavior before. First Officer was in danger of blowing her retard circuits past any hope of immediate recovery.

  “Munitions packs. Expired propulsion recharges. Quantifiable rounds. Nothing else? Are you sure? A spare shallop, perhaps, for ap Rhiannon to use to send out for fresh sallets out of season?”

  The depot master kept to her seat behind her desk, calm and imperturbable. She didn’t seem unsympathetic; in fact she seemed quite aware that she was throwing propellant packs into the conversion furnaces, almost glad of the conflagration Caleigh feared would explode upon them soon.

  “Well, battle cannon, First Officer, and a spares set for five Wolnadi fighters since the basic issue is more than ten years old. The Ragnarok asked for nothing less than a full munitions load, accordingly approved for release by Emandis Station’s home defense fleet administration.”

  First Officer stopped at one side of the depot master’s office to look into the watch-monitors. Loading docks. Container after container after container, munitions and stores and consumables and perishables and new boots for everyone, and — standing in the middle of a small clear space on the docks on one monitor — a very tall man and a very large bat.

  He was easily twice as tall as the bat, and he wore uniform. Caleigh didn’t think First Officer could actually discern the Ragnarok’s ship-mark on the man’s shoulder, not on watch-monitor, not from here. There was no doubt of his identity, all the same: Serge of Wheatfields, Ship’s Engineer, Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok. And the Intelligence officer, assigned same.

  First Officer Saligrep Linelly swore and spun on her heel to put the clearly irritating sight behind her. “Don’t get me wrong, depot master,” she said. “No intention of butting into your business, fully satisfied at all times in the past with the professionalism and performance of the Emandis Station depot. I just can’t help wondering how ap Rhiannon rates. We wouldn’t dare dump a requirements ticket as deep as that one had to be on you, not without adequate warning. And very good reasons. And negotiations with the supplier chain further on up.”

  The depot master nodded in solemn agreement, and closed her portfolio. “I appreciate that, your Excellency,” she said. “And to be fair to the Ragnarok I can understand, abstractly at least, why they have to have so much right now. They never did get primary load, in all likelihood, it’s never been formally commissioned as anything but a test bed. I told them to wait for Fleet clearance. I was over-ruled, First Officer.”

  And resented it, too, the depot master made no secret of that. There was no reason why she should. A person was welcome to feel as much resentment as she liked over incidents that could properly be resented, so long as a person didn’t let it interfere with her duty.

  “Over-ruled.” First Officer sat down, a little heavily, and folded her hands across her belly, slumped in her seat. “In what way? By whom?”

  “By the Emandis home defense fleet, your Excellency. Having apparently elected to accord the Ragnarok’s chief medical officer the status of an Emandisan knife-fighter, it is the duty of the Emandisan fleet to oblige him with defensive supplies as he sees fit.”

  First Officer let her hands drop to the sides of the chair, letting them hang dangling in mid-air. After a moment First Officer spoke, very calmly really, Caleigh thought. “The Ragnarok’s chief medical officer is not Emandisan, so far as I know.”

  The depot master nodded solemnly. “No. The Ragnarok’s chief medical officer is not Emandisan.”

  “He is in fact Dolgorukij, I believe,” First Officer suggested; and the depot master nodded again. She was beginning to think about smiling, Caleigh thought; it was lurking in the corners of her eyes. It wasn’t a malicious smile by any means, no, it was a cheerful supportive smile a-borning, yes, you are right, it makes no sense.

  First Officer took a deep breath and seemed to be weighing her next words carefully, but said them all the same, and once she started to speak the words gained momentum and passion and life and brilliance until they shimmered in the air.

  “He is in fact Andrej Koscuisko, Andrej-freaking-Shoeskoe, Andrej never learned in all of these years and about to get himself killed and his entire command with him Shoeskoe, Andrej how one poor crèche-bred brevet captain was expected to make a dent in his thick Dolgorukij skull Shoeskoe, Andrej Captain Irshah Parmin is really going to regret not having killed him when he had the chance Shoeskoe — ”

  “That’s the man,” the depot master agreed. “The first man from an alien bloodline to carry Emandisan steel in the history of Emandisan steel, and the history of Emandisan steel is the history of the Emandisan. So they tell me. Gone downplanet to visit some people he knows, I understand. To talk to someone he used to know, at the memorial site.”

  Of course. Joslire Curran. “Well, I heard,” First Officer said, looking back over her right shoulder at Caleigh — who was glad she’d left her team outside the office, now, and not just because it wasn’t over-large an office. “I heard that Koscuisko didn’t even know it was Emandisan steel. Didn’t have a clue. Carried five-knives for more than three years and never once wondered about them.”

  It was true. And of course it was hard to believe now that the story was out. Why should Koscuisko have wondered? Curran had provided them; only a man with considerably more ego than Andrej Koscuisko would have suspected that he’d been made bearer of a priceless artifact. Koscuisko’s ego was perfectly healthy, but he had not been prone to delusions of grandeur in the time that Caleigh had known him.

  “I was there,” Caleigh said, in response to First Officer’s implied invitation of a remark. “I saw it. It was Curran who made them sacred to Koscuisko. All of the rest about Emandisan steel, I don’t think that ever meant as much to him as the fact that Curran’s life’s-blood was on those knives.”

  “You know, Koscuisko used to be under Irshah Parmin’s command,” First Officer said to the depot master, thoughtfully. “Maybe if we let the home defense fleet know that, we’d get clearance to draw from reserves. Worth a try, anyway, don’t you think?”

  No, the depot master didn’t; she didn’t seem to have much of an opinion either way. Caleigh knew what First Officer had on her mind, though. He was ours before he went to the Ragnarok, and if having him is the key to Emandis Station’s depot, well, we can arrange that. The captain wants to sit d
own for a talk with Koscuisko anyway.

  First Officer covered any potential awkwardness by standing up, talking on just as if the question had no answer. Perfectly true, in a manner of speaking. “Well. Thank you for your candor, depot master. We’ll be in touch, and if you would go ahead and initiate load of what you can release to us we’d appreciate it. Crew’s been anticipating extra shifts required to stow supplies all the way from Brisinje, hate to disappoint them.”

  This was something that the depot master clearly understood, and she seized it all the more happily for being a return to business as she was accustomed to it. “Very good, First Officer, slips four-eight and five-one, and as far away from the Ragnarok crew as possible. We can begin to load in about eight, your Excellency.”

  Not that there was much left to load on First Officer’s manifest, not after the depot master had run it against stores available. Caleigh could find it in her to resent it a little bit herself. Scylla deserved the stores. What was the Ragnarok going to do with a munitions load, if it did not mean to defend itself against its own Fleet using its own Fleet’s own resources, as it had at Taisheki?

  Peculiar things had always happened around Koscuisko. Failure of Writ at the Domitt Prison. The Emandis home defense fleet shaking the whole purse of the depot out for Jennet ap Rhiannon to pick and chose what struck her fancy, because Andrej Koscuisko wore Emandisan steel.

  The captain was going to have a thing or two to say to Caleigh’s former officer of assignment, and she followed her First Officer out of the room with her sense of resignation warring with her presentiment of peculiarities yet to come in Andrej Koscuisko’s wake.