The Commission of Ends and Means had a weighty book governing how its soldiers were to comport themselves, ninety per cent of which boiled down to Do What You’re Told. The remaining ten per cent was the prey of every bright soldier who reckoned they could get away with something.
They had told Prassel one of her people was up before the tribunal, and naturally she thought Banders. And Banders was in the demoted phase of her life cycle, and normally she had the grace to wait for reinstatement before doing something chargeable. Technically she could be made an Accessory, and that would be a permanent thing, a career life sentence; it didn’t seem likely that Banders had done something bad enough to warrant that. You had, as precedent showed, to be pretty damned villainous before someone started personalising the rank structure for you.
Halfway to the tribunal, word reached her that the charge was murder, and naturally she thought The Butcher. And stopped, because it wasn’t as though the thought had never occurred to her. That this moment might come, when the tenuous arrangements gently dropped into place around the man would fail to hold. Ollery was a good servant, a useful man. Irreplaceable, really. Except what were they supposed to do if he didn’t play his part nicely?
The dawn light, up here in the air, was crisp and chill and clear. She rather liked it. She, too, had gone to the very edge of a Gallete island once. Stood there with the toes of her boots over empty air and looked down. Imagined the advancing shadow the impossible thing cast was the encroach of perfection over the world. Not felt even the slightest urge towards throwing herself off, which all three of her companions of the time had claimed. She wasn’t given to morbid fancies. It wasn’t advised in a necromancer.
Around her, as she cut her course through the tight-packed camp, people were stirring. Slowly, sluggish with the knowledge that nobody would be attacking and there wasn’t free space enough for a surprise muster. Of course, the regular soldiers didn’t have the paperwork she did. Which was, presumably, about to be considerably increased because one of her idiot medicos had got themselves in trouble.
Formal army business on the Gallete wasn’t conducted out of tents. Instead, some family had kindly donated their house to act as administrative headquarters for the duration of the journey. One of the larger houses, but doubtless the generous donors had kin they could stay with. And honestly, they wouldn’t have wanted to share once Higher Orders moved in. Who would cohabit with that much paperwork unless it was part of your job?
Sherm met her outside the door. He was a peer from Correct Speech, another Fellow-Inquirer, though jurisdictionally her senior in any matter not directly involving corpses. A man who’d attached himself to Higher Orders and now performed necessary but unpopular pieces of administration like running disciplinary tribunals. He’d been busy, she guessed. Between a soldier’s natural inclination to start acting up the moment a little leisure time presented itself, and Uncle’s prohibition on alcohol, the tribunals had probably been running dawn til dusk since the army embarked.
“Is he already in?” she asked him. “May I speak with him?”
“And a good morning to you too,” he observed. “No, he’s not in. No, we’re not even convened yet. Yes, the army thanks you for your punctuality. Question: would you like some tea?”
“Your messenger gave me the impression that this was an urgent matter for which I was immediately required.”
“How very enthusiastic of her,” Sherm observed. He was a hollow-cheeked, balding man who’d always been philosophically cheerful about his work, up to and including the cases where he’d sentenced a mutinous prisoner to death. “Well, we all seek perfection in our own way. I can hardly rap her over the knuckles for being slightly more perfect than the moment demanded, can I? And you’re here now, so let’s have tea and I can tell you how happy I was that you won me thirty shillings on the piste yesterday.”
Prassel caught herself about to actually smile and stomped down on the impulse irritably. “Well, tea then,” she said with poor grace.
“Licit or Illicit?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Oh the latest dodge. If you put Vhon grain spirit into army tea, you can’t smell the difference but it knocks the top of your head off. Spent all yesterday afternoon arguing with some amateur jurisprudent about whether the addition of the tea placed it outside of Uncle’s ban. And it didn’t get him anywhere but I’ve marked the man down for watching because that kind of corkscrew mind might make for a good addition to my department. When he’s recovered from the lashes, obviously.”
“Obviously. And ‘licit’ tea, thank you very much. I prefer not to imbibe even when it’s not expressly banned by my superiors.”
Sherm gave a tsking noise, as though it took all sorts, and if Prassel wanted to go through life with weights on her ankles then she could just watch people like Sherm flying past with their crooked tea and breezy interpretation of the rules.
Inside the house’s main room there was tea, as advertised, served up by some clerk of Sherm’s department who looked like she’d far rather still be in bed. There was also a big, angry-looking man, uniform straining at every buttonhole, even the collar clasped about his bull neck.
“Fellow-Inquirer Prassel, head of the experimental hospital department,” Sherm introduced her. “This is Companion-Monitor Gowry.”
“Goffry,” the man snapped.
Sherm consulted his day list. “Are you sure? It says Gowry on here and, obviously, these things are never wrong.”
His dry humour utterly failed to hit the mark, and there was some wrangling before Prassel got a look at the paper and it turned out the man’s name was Goughry, which was a name just begging to be perfected as far as she was concerned. Goughry, she also discovered from the paper, was a department head within Third Company, and apparently he had a dead soldier on his hands.
“Died in a fight,” she noted. The details on the incident sheet were incredibly brief. She knew things were a bit unruly, but it seemed scant epitaph for an actual death. As if whoever dictated it had been leaving things out that they hadn’t known how to say. But a fight wasn’t what she had expected. Not exactly the modus operandi of any of her reprobates. And then she twitched the paper out of Sherm’s hands entirely and squinted at it. “Wait, it says here, died in a fight with someone called Havery. There’s nobody of that name in my department.” She fought down her exasperation. “Sherm, is this even anything to do with me?”
“Well I’m afraid it is,” he said. “And it’s a rum piece of business. As you’ve doubtless worked out from the gaps in the narrative.”
“I have a dead man in my department,” Goughry said implacably. “Because of your freaks.”
A clerk put his head into the room and signalled. Sherm bolted his tea and palmed off the possibly incriminating cup. “He’s coming. Let’s convene then. This is going to be a knotty one.” In the manner of a man happy to have a little knot to break the tedium of his routine. Prassel, whose routine could use more tedium, rolled her eyes. They took up their position behind a table. No camp stools and folding furniture but actual artisan-made solid stuff for once, courtesy of the Galletes. Sherm took the centre, as the duty Inquirer. Goughry as complainant was to his right, and Prassel, as advocate, on the left.
“Ready!” Sherm called, as though they were calling someone in for a surprise party. She wondered how much tea he’d had.
The man they brought in was, of course, Maric Jack. He saw her and contrived to look embarrassed that she’d been dragged into this. Which wasn’t really worth a great deal. He was stood off on her side of the room and Sherm ticked him off. After that another soldier was brought in, a young woman who looked profoundly shaken about something, and who started visibly when she saw Jack. She tried to approach him but got hauled off by her own escort to Goughry’s side of the room. Sherm ticked her off, too. Prassel craned over. Apparently this was Trooper Lidlet, for whatever that was worth.
“Very good,” Sherm said. “I’m convening us as of now.” He nodded to his notary clerk who had already written down the words he’d just said. “Disciplinary tribunal in the matter of Accessory Jack, also known as—” and then the door opened again. Sherm glanced up irritably and then shot to his feet and saluted, and everyone else followed suit a moment later. The man who came in was lean, with a haggard, tired face that seemed to sag slightly, as though the wrong shock could see it sloughing off his skull in an avalanche of tumbled features. Except Prassel knew the man’s life had been more than full of shocks received and given, and he’d weathered them all. He was into his sixties now, cropped hair the colour of iron and his eyes utterly joyless. The expression his face settled into was one of general disappointment.
“Magister, I wasn’t notified of your interest or I’d have w—”
The newcomer waved Sherm to silence, stepping fully into the room. “Just pretend I’m not here, Fellow-Inquirer,” he said in his parched-sounding voice. “Consider me an unofficial observer to proceedings. But I’m told this matter may go beyond the usual bounds of misdemeanour and punishment.” And he smiled. Prassel, whose professional speciality meant she had to face up to a variety of unpleasant smile-resembling expressions in her charges, would have traded any of them for this man’s. It was the withered and utterly humourless look of a thousand-year-old corpse that had learned about smiling from a badly-translated book. It sucked all possibility of mirth from the room.
This, then, was Sage-Monitor Runkel, officer in command of Forthright Battalion. He took a seat at the edge of Goughry’s end of the table and continued to wither them with that utter negation of a smile.
“Ah, well, yes then,” Sherm said, writhing in its bleak radiance. “In the matter of Accessory Jack, also known as Havery—”
“No,” Goughry said.
“It says clearly that your man died in a fight with—”
“Trooper Havery is in my department. I’ve already disciplined him for brawling.” Goughry frowned. “You should have my report on—”
“Well it’s not been attached to this case.” Sherm’s eyes flicked nervously to Runkel. “Presumably because nowhere does it mention this man as being involved. Did he prescribe this Klimmel some sort of stimulant for the fight, or—”
“He cursed him,” Goughry said flatly.
“That is not in my—”
“It is not the sort of thing I would commit to an official report,” Goughry stated. He stood, jolting the table, making the wood groan as he leaned on it. “My man Klimmel, and this woman here, Trooper Lidlet, they were cursed by this Maric magician.”
Lidlet opened her mouth, but shut it at a glare from Goughry.
“That is,” Sherm said, “an interesting accusation.”
“Lidlet, give them it,” Goughry ordered. “As you told me.”
The woman hung her head for a moment, then looked up. Her subsequent recital was flat, almost droning. Someone telling not the story of events that happened to her, but the story of the time she told the story of them. How she, Klimmel and another got left behind by the retreat. How they met up with some of the hospital department and together made a run for their own lines. How they were ambushed by Loruthi cavalry scouts. How one had died and how she and Klimmel had both been wounded. And how Jack had stepped in.
“He told us,” Lidlet explained, “that if we so much as raised a hand against anyone, we’d get it all back with interest. He told us over and over. We – didn’t believe him.” A slight catch in her voice, right at the end, that said, It could have been me. It might still be me.
Klimmel had got into a scrap with another soldier, this Havery, later. Just the usual sort of thing that wouldn’t have troubled Sherm’s desk, let alone the Sage-Monitor’s. Save that he’d dropped dead on the instant, gutshot, no baton in sight nor sound of one being used. After which Lidlet had let on to what none of the truants had mentioned when they rejoined the army.
“Accessory Jack,” Sherm said, and the Maric started. He’d been staring into nowhere while the testimony had been read, looking as miserable as if sentence had already been passed.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. Not exactly the most promising start from the point of view of a woman charged with advocating for him.
Sherm frowned. “Is that a confession? Did you actually curse Trooper Klimmel?”
“What? No. Magister. No, magister. I don’t do curses.”
“What do you do?”
“I heal, magister,” Jack said. “Or, I can make healing happen. But it’s complicated. It’s conditional. What was I supposed to do?”
“Did you tell them you’d remove your healing if they…” Sherm checked his notes, “harmed anyone.”
“It’s not like that. It’s not something I make happen. It just does. It’s the way it is.” And any moment he’d start babbling about priests and gods and all that heathen stuff, surely, and that would be the end of him. Throwing him off the edge of the island too good a fate. Except he was just about wise enough in the ways of Perfection to let the truth squeak out sideways, with all the godliness washed off it, and for that Prassel was grateful.
“Your actions ensured that Trooper Klimmel was struck down,” Goughry said portentously. “You have condemned Trooper Lidlet to a living death.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack miserably. “I didn’t want to. What was I supposed to do?”
Sherm opened his mouth, but Runkel shifted slightly in his seat, which brought silence.
“What did he think would happen when they were called on to fight again?” he asked, as if he was just posing himself a rhetorical question.
“Well, yes, quite,” Sherm said, and then, as if the idea had just occurred to him, “What did you think would happen—”
“I don’t know, magister. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. It was just me and them, right there.”
“And this isn’t even the first incident,” Runkel observed to the ceiling.
Sherm had a panicked moment of trying to find evidence for this in his papers and then decided it was Prassel’s problem. “I understand this isn’t even the first time this happened,” he threw at her, in the manner of a drowning man reaching for help.
“That is correct,” she admitted. “A casualty believed healed by Accessory Jack also died.”
“This doesn’t sound like very effective healing. Are you sure he’s a good fit for your department?” Sherm asked.
“I understand he’s also a good orderly. Bandages and needles and the like,” said Prassel, deadpan.
Sherm blinked. “A good orderly. Who can also restore people to health from the brink of death. Until, that is, they do anything with that health. I mean, this is ridiculous. What’s this Lidlet supposed to do now, except sit under threat of execution? She’s a soldier. He’s ruined her life.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said again, and then, directly to Lidlet, “I’m sorry.”
Prassel looked at him sourly. He was, very obviously, a liability who would only become a greater one over time. So much for that. Let him take the fall for this absurd turn of events. Her life and department would be so much simpler going forwards. Except that if she was one thing, it was a pedant, and perfection began at home as far as she was concerned.
“If the tribunal would hear me?” she asked and, at Sherm’s nod, “In the matter of this Klimmel’s death, there’s no case to answer. The man brought about his own demise, judge, accused and executioner in one. So much for that. But I feel—” speaking louder to cover Goughry’s expostulations, “I feel that’s not actually why we’re here.” She glanced at Runkel, who looked back stony-eyed.
“The man needs to be made an example of,” Goughry said.
“That’s the worst possible idea. Better stuff him in a sack and throw him over the side under cover of darkness. Which I feel is not a remedy traditionally open to the tribunal.” Said pointedly just in case Sherm had been considering it.
“I don’t see why,” Goughry said stubbornly.
“I’m standing next to you after they’ve just socketed Jack’s neck,” she said pleasantly. “I ask you, ‘So, what was that about?’ How do you explain this mess, exactly. Is it the bit about how your man died brawling with someone else entirely so the Maric got executed. Or how he’s been executed because he wouldn’t leave your man’s corpse on the field. Which part of that inspires trust and faith in the proper procedures, exactly?”
“It’s… the curse…?” Goughry managed to look furious and clueless all at the same time. “But we have to do something. For the look of it.”
“That is not a good reason to do anything,” Prassel told him flatly.
“And yet this situation cannot continue,” Sage-Monitor Runkel pronounced. “You, Maric. Look at me. This is an army. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, magister,” Jack whispered.
“And an army does what?”
“It fights, magister.”
“We cannot have our soldiers fearing to fight, because it might bring back their wounds. Where would our morale be? Our spirit. We would have an army of cowards. Fellow-Inquirer Prassel, your tenure at the hospital department, and indeed your department’s continuing existence, is predicated on it being a benefit. The moment that is not the case then you will be reassigned, and your department dissolved.” With an emphasis on the last word that put Prassel in mind of vats of acid.
“Sage-Monitor, while it seems contrary to reason that I instruct a member of the hospital department not to use whatever talents he might have for healing, that may be the easiest way out of this.”
Jack twitched at the suggestion. She wasn’t sure if it was outrage or relief, and possibly he couldn’t have told her himself.
Runkel stood. “Clarity and precision as always, Fellow-Inquirer. A satisfactory solution. As for the others, Companion-Monitor, all involved in the brawling incident have been disciplined? And I imagine drink was behind it, in contravention of my orders. Have it looked into. Make sure that everyone involved is too busy cleaning up after themselves to spare this business much thought. For this one,” he looked at Lidlet. “I’m not sure what the point of her is. She’s probably due her own set of stripes just for being involved. Sometimes the example is all, in matters of wider discipline.”
“I’ll take them,” Jack said. Runkel looked at him as though one of the chairs had ventured an opinion.
“Ten lashes for the Maric,” he decided. “For his part in this business. And another two for speaking out of turn. Prassel, you’ll deal with it?”
“Yes, magister.”
Runkel progressed to the door and then turned to glower at the lot of them.
“Keep this screwed down,” he admonished. “Bad for morale, if it got out. Prassel has the right instincts. No grand show. No public execution. Just spread the whip around until everyone has their own backs to think about. Enough of it.” And then he was gone.
“Paraphrase,” Sherm advised his clerk. “Write it up later in the proper form.” He looked brightly from Goughry to Prassel. “Well, wisdom from on high has visited us, and now we, too, are wiser. I think that clears everything up. Thank you for coming, and—”
“What am I supposed to do with her?” Goughry jabbed a finger at Lidlet, who was standing as though she was every bit as accused as Jack. “What’s the purpose of her now?”
“I suppose that her case will sort itself out the moment we’re back in combat,” said Sherm philosophically.
“Permission to question the accused, magister,” Lidlet herself broke in.
“The accused? Oh, the Maric here. I’d say you’ve earned the right to slap him about the jaw, but under the circumstances that’s probably not recommended.”
Lidlet was fumbling a tatter of paper out from inside her jacket. “I’ve got some questions I wrote down,” she said, before Sherm’s incredulous stare.
“Good lord,” he said. “You made notes. Very diligent. Top of the class. I suppose you’d better go on, then. Be quick. I’ve got a pair of theft cases before lunch.”
“Maric, you said I can’t harm anyone or it comes back,” Lidlet said, squaring off against Jack. At his nod, she went on, “What if I got someone else to hit you?”
“It still counts,” he said dully.
“Does it matter if I pay them or not?”
Jack frowned. “Why would it – no. I mean, harm is harm. The commerce of it doesn’t really—”
“What if I threatened you?”
“Does this have to be me, specifically?” he asked plaintively.
“Answer the question,” Sherm cautioned him, because apparently this passed for entertainment in judicial circles.
“I don’t think threats do it. I mean, I think if you sort of made to hit me, you might feel a bit of a twinge. I’ve heard that’s how it goes. And maybe if you were just pretending then you wouldn’t even feel that. And if you lamped me straight out, then… well…”
“All right.” Lidlet consulted her notes. She had a peculiarly desperate look to her. “What about if I poisoned someone?”
“That’s still harm.”
“Okay, so what if I put poison in a cup and,” reading her own untidy writing again, “left it somewhere without knowing whether someone would drink from it or not.”
“Why would you do that?” Jack demanded.
“Just what if?” she insisted.
“I… don’t know. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing people do.”
“What if I set a trap. Would I die if someone triggered it later, or would it be when I set it?”
“I don’t know,” Jack repeated.
“What if I set a hunting trap for an animal, but a person fell into it by mistake?”
“I… I really don’t know.”
“What if I accidentally hurt someone? Like, we’re looking out on the edge of the Gallete and I turn round and knock them off without meaning to.”
“I… no.”
“No?”
“I think. I think intent is the thing. So all of the above, if you know you’re going to, or you mean to, then it counts. And if you… don’t…. then… not? Possibly not?” He was looking profoundly harried by the line of questioning.
“What if I help someone who goes on to hurt people, although not through my,” consulting her notes again, “express instruction.”
“Oh my god, you’ve really thought about this haven’t you?” Jack complained.
“Just answer the question. I mean, do I die the moment they hurt someone, or how does it work? What are the rules?”
“You’re fine,” Jack told her. “I know this one. Because I healed you, and Klimmel. And I was all broken up not that long before, and I was healed too. So if it worked that way then I’d be just as dead, wouldn’t I?”
“So you’re in the same boat,” Lidlet concluded.
“I suppose I am.”
She straightened up. Not, Prassel thought, as if a weight had been taken from her, but as though it had shifted a little, balanced more evenly across her shoulders. “Magister.” Addressing Goughry.
Of everyone there, he hadn’t really followed the exchange. Now he stared at his subordinate suspiciously. “What is it, trooper?”
“I am requesting a transfer to the experimental hospital department.”
“You what?” He stared.
“On the basis that I can perform military duties in support of the army through the hospital. And I cannot do so as a regular soldier any more, magister.” She wasn’t looking at Goughry, staring straight ahead in the soldier’s final defence against just about anything.
Goughry was going to refuse, because he was that sort of officer. But then he must have thought just how it would look, morale-wise, with Lidlet dropping dead the moment the first command to fire was given. Or her refusing, and them being back before the tribunal for her own trial. No good options.
He was loathe to look Prassel’s way, but it was her hospital.
“Trooper Lidlet, do you have any medical training whatsoever?” she asked.
“Magister, I can carry one end of a stretcher if there’s someone to take the other,” Lidlet said stoically.
Prassel glanced at Jack. There was a terrible hope in his face. There is a limit to how many stretcher bearers this army needs, she considered. He better not take this as precedent.
When they stepped out into the open air, though, she was giving orders to report to Banders for the relevant induction. Her department had grown by one.