The officer’s quarters they were shown to were small, and made smaller by the continual eddy of soldiers in and out of the front study, attending to various hospitable tasks. Du Rau and Alsburg had been reduced to human flotsam in the bedroom, huddled in clean training knits and robes. Alsburg was still shivering, and there was a pinched, pale look in his face. He had had to part with nearly all of his own clothing, which the Ryswyckians had cheerfully mounted on hangers and stretching trees and larded in the drying-cupboard along with the fatigues of their escort—all of their escort, when the other half returned from bier duty. Du Rau had managed to retain all of his underclothing, as it was only faintly damp. The room’s heat, which appeared to be supplied by the same geothermal line that serviced the drying-cupboard, was turned up full blast.
Amid this bustle, a tray with a pot of tea and two plain cups appeared and was set down rattling on the table between them. Alsburg emerged from his inward huddle to blink at it, then reached gingerly out of the bundle of his robe. He lifted a steaming cup suspiciously to his lips, tasted it, and recoiled.
“My lord,” he muttered urgently, trying not to attract the Verlakers’ notice, “don’t drink this.”
“Relax, Alsburg,” du Rau said. “It’s probably what they call ‘home blend.’” He reached and poured himself a cup. “It’s difficult and expensive to grow real tea here, so Verlakers rely on a blend of various herbs.” A sip proved him correct; du Rau buried his wince. “Yes, that’s the taste I remember. Drink it,” he said, perversely amused at Alsburg’s faintly nauseated look. “It will warm you.” With an air of misery, Alsburg obeyed. He winced at every sip, but he did stop shivering and took on color.
Du Rau took his own herb tea in careful swallows, blowing at the steam that tickled the cold tip of his nose. He watched Alsburg recover and begin to look around him at the shabby dignity of their surroundings: the water-spotted ceiling, the plain-dressed bunk where he sat and the fraying armchair du Rau occupied. The boy was getting an education, to be sure. No army staff his age had had much field experience outside of basic training. Alsburg’s expression had deepened throughout this trip to a troubled contempt, increasingly as much troubled as contemptuous.
In the other room du Rau could hear the soldiers of his escort clattering teacups and murmuring amongst themselves. Presently one of them, clad as they were in Ryswyckian training knits, came back to check on the progress of their fatigues in the drying-cupboard, and reported through the doorway in a loud baritone that they were nearly ready. A note of cheer warmed the voices in the other room; by the sound of it the soldiers had disported themselves on all the available furniture—chairs, table, and desk, and against the walls. Despite the thick accents, the boisterous sound of enlisted men woke pleasant memories of his field days. Command was easier, more fluent, he thought, when the commander was down among his men sharing the common hardship. At a certain point of ascent—never recognized till it was passed—the common situation became distorted into a sense of distance, a skewed illusion. This place was poor and damp and foreign, but in this one way it was infinitely more comfortable than Bernhelm Palace.
Du Rau put down his empty teacup and went to check their clothing himself. Neither of their overcoats was dry enough, and their shoes still felt cold inside, but everything else was only damp at the seams. He closed the cupboard door firmly and went into the bath.
Verlaker baths were primitive: a sink, mirror, toilet, and cramped shower cube with no seat and no regulation of the flow of water. This one was militarily clean, and when he hit the light, both the overhead light and the bright panel above the shower came on. Artificial sun, du Rau remembered. Light in a box. He finger-combed his drying hair in the mirror, smoothed down his moustache. His eyes were overbright, he observed, and had developed bruise-like hollows at the inner corners. Reynard would have to figure out a way to cover for him, when he got home. But there was no time for collapse, really. Damn Barklay for spending his energy for him.
When he came out, the escort soldiers were handing along fatigue jackets and trousers on hangers to their owners. A little warmth and tea had revived them completely, and du Rau felt a pang of simple envy for their youth and resilience. Alsburg, not much older, was watching them silently, his look unreadable.
He would lose his drive if he did not press onward. Du Rau took out his own clothes and dressed himself. His shoes were unpleasantly cold and damp, but bearably so. He opted to leave his overcoat in the cupboard till they left, as the walkways between buildings were covered and ran for short distances. His leather gloves were a dead loss; he tucked them into the pockets of his overcoat.
Leading his ragged little contingent, du Rau emerged to find Admiral Douglas waiting for him under the canopy of the main walk. He had changed into dark-gray army fatigues, made formal by a collared linen shirt under the jacket. The assembled host had disappeared as if they had never been; this was a working installation, and no doubt they were already dispatched to their business. The rain (of course) had lightened a bit; the sky had lifted from its earlier close oppression, and du Rau was made uneasily aware of the precarious ceasefire at the coastal front not far from here. The air smelled of damp, and cold winter foliage.
“Mess hall is this way.” Douglas gestured him down to the left, and fell into step beside him. His imperturbable self-containment had returned; as if his paroxysm of grief had passed through him leaving no mark.
They passed into the main building and into a large, stone-flagged main court, cold and damp except where they passed the baseboard registers, and from there to a double doorway with its doors pinned back. A lieutenant noticed their entrance and leapt to ring a bell bracketed on the wall; at once all voices stopped and benches scraped back so the soldiers could stand at attention. Douglas gave them a nod and a casual wave, and they settled back down.
This mess hall was large enough, du Rau guessed, for the student body, but with companies of extra soldiers it would require eating in shifts. That would explain why the room was not stuffed to capacity, and why soldiers were already carrying finished trays to the hatch. There was a small dais at one end with a battered lectern and a set of banners depending from a timber above, but no head table, or at least, no table distinguished from the others. He could see a clutch of senior officers at the table nearest the dais.
Admiral Douglas led them through the serving line without ceremony. Du Rau surprised a few covert glances, but most of the diners had returned to their conversations and lost track of their presence. Following Douglas’s example, du Rau collected a tray with a bowl of stew, a spoon, a napkin, an upturned glass for water, and a roll. By this time Alsburg was beyond protest; he followed suit in a numb horror and trailed after them with his tray to where the senior officers sat. Captain Speir’s men found themselves places at the other end of the table; they had become downright cheerful at the prospect of a hot meal, though du Rau noticed that the lieutenant still kept an ear and an eye cocked his direction.
The senior officers had largely finished their meal and were preparing to resume work. Douglas took his seat next to a weary thin-faced man in navy fatigues whom he introduced as Captain Marag, a member of Ryswyck’s teaching staff; then went on to name the others around them. Captain Marag and the officers offered nods and murmured greetings, then one by one glanced at Douglas for dismissal and got up with their trays. Douglas was left alone, across from du Rau and Alsburg. He brought a carafe of water within their reach, offered to fetch some tea (Alsburg declined; du Rau accepted), and began to eat.
For field rations the stew was palatable, if a bit salty. Du Rau ate steadily without complaint, and studied Douglas between bites. The young man was certainly a frustration but not, he thought, very much of a mystery. He ate in quick bites, without savor, as if taking sustenance were the next chore in the list. It was no wonder his brevet rank sat lightly on him: the work itself was burden enough, directing an installation and preserving the remnants of the school Barklay had left behind. Du Rau’s gaze sought Douglas’s left hand where it rested on the table, and found as he expected that it had been marked by sustained labor. More recently, he had torn his knuckles badly; the injuries were healed but the pink lines of new skin remained. Battle wounds, came the thought, only to be discarded at once.
Douglas caught him staring, and lifted his hand to glance at the marks himself. A small puff of breath escaped him, not quite a laugh. “A lifetime ago,” he said. “I was in a fight.” He bent back to his stew but stopped and looked up to meet du Rau’s eye. “With Captain Speir, actually.”
Alsburg stopped in the act of breaking open his roll. Du Rau canted back his head to size Douglas up. “Who won?” he asked.
The lines of Douglas’s eyes gathered up in an incipient smile. “She did.”
Somehow du Rau did not find this surprising. He waited for more.
Douglas’s gaze wandered off thoughtfully to the far distance. “If she hadn’t, I suppose I’d be dead on Cardumel Base right now,” he said, without rancor.
The words were cryptic, but a connection clicked into place: if he took a second look at that list of people Barklay asked to his council, du Rau thought, he would find that Speir was that other officer from Cardumel. “And why was she not there?” he said. A question he already knew the answer to. Because she also came here to Barklay’s council.
Douglas didn’t miss the catch. He gave du Rau a long, appraising look. “She went back,” he said slowly—yes, he was taking the measure of du Rau’s inside intelligence— “to help manage the anti-aircraft works. She’s a cartographer, and knows the ground.”
And was willing to risk her own life alongside her subordinates. Several of the escort had stilled their conversation to listen to this. Du Rau considered the evidence before him; considered Speir’s claim on Barklay as a friend—her presence in this delicate operation, if not by Douglas’s insistence at least with his blessing—her candid recognition of Barklay’s wrongs, like Douglas acknowledging the atrocity at Solham Fray—the marks on Douglas’s knuckles and the cry that had broken from his lips…. If you give it back to me, I will keep it.
You can stop this, sir.
By doing what? du Rau had asked.
Douglas had stopped eating and was studying him, intently, openly.
And you think Ryswyck is the answer, du Rau had said.
Beyond me, echoed Ahrens’s voice down the long corridor. Ask Douglas.
Aloud, he said: “I am sure Captain Speir knows the ground very well.”
Douglas sat back to appreciate this on all its levels, and as he did, another officer in army fatigues approached with his tray. It was the large captain who had attended on Douglas after the funeral. He put his tray down next to Douglas, favored the Berenians across the table with a short nod, and settled himself on the creaking bench.
“Lord Bernhelm,” Douglas said mildly, “let me make known to you Captain Stevens, on permanent staff here at Ryswyck.”
“Sir,” Stevens acknowledged. He did not smile. Du Rau sensed his withheld hostility, not as a threat but as a fuel for his own courtesy.
“Stevens and I,” Douglas went on, “served together in the junior leadership here. In fact—” his lips twitched— “you’ve now met four out of five of the junior officer leadership cadre of our year.”
“I wouldn’t introduce him to Cameron, if I were you,” Stevens murmured into his tea. Douglas flicked him a quelling look.
“…The fifth?” du Rau said, expectantly.
Douglas obliged him. “Commander Cameron, First Navy. She is currently serving as a logistics officer at Amity Base.”
And are there more of you where that came from? No wonder Alban Selkirk had been so galled by Barklay’s endeavor—he’d taken the cream of Verlac’s soldiers and shaped them for himself. Let me show you what I’ve done, Barklay had said. Yes, he’d gathered all his country’s best human assets and put them on one indefensible campus, and du Rau had run out of time to destroy them. Maddening.
Douglas was watching him, as if reading du Rau’s thoughts off his face. Then he called off his gaze abruptly. “Well,” he said, “our time is not unlimited. Stevens, what from Wallis?”
“He says he’s worked out a logistics plan for transport for the Berenian wounded, and can file it in dispatch as soon as we’re cleared, sir,” Stevens said. “You can make inspection at any time.”
“Very good. Lord Bernhelm, if you are finished, would you care to accompany me across the way?”
“Certainly.” Du Rau took up his napkin and wiped his lips.
“Meanwhile, Stevens, if you would brief Lord Bernhelm’s escort and see them situated for the return journey, I would be obliged. You remember Lieutenant Ell.”
Stevens and the lieutenant nodded at one another.
“With your leave, Lieutenant,” Douglas said, “I will borrow Lord Bernhelm from you briefly. You can send one of your men with us and we’ll brief him subsequently.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll see to your trays, sirs,” Stevens said, as they rose from the table. Du Rau hadn’t exactly been waiting for reassurance on that point, but Captain Stevens seemingly had not been calculating a slight; he had simply begun to take du Rau’s presence for granted as a person to be assimilated in the peristalsis of Ryswyckian hospitality.
Du Rau was determined not to be so easily swallowed. “I thank you, Captain,” he said, putting his napkin down by his empty bowl. Alsburg followed suit silently, leaving his crumbled roll and picked-at stew.
“This way, sir,” Douglas said.
“Lead on.”
~*~
They passed through a cloister that opened on a briefly-uncovered walkway before rejoining the canopy that skirted the now-empty quad, and thence to the doors before which Barklay had lain in state. Immediately inside, du Rau found himself in a large training room whose floor was almost wholly taken up with rows of occupied cots. There was a fug of sweat and sickness overlaid with cleaning solvent. Captain Marag and another navy captain in a medic’s smock were counting folded sheets, but stopped at their approach. “How do you fare?” Douglas asked them.
The medic shrugged one shoulder. “Middling, sir. I think we can get most of the men prepped for transport inside of an hour. All but three of them will need to be carried by litter, though.” As he spoke, du Rau stared out over the ranks of wounded, estimating the number of Berenian men under treatment.
“Did they get the trundler working?” Douglas asked Marag.
“No, sir.”
“Nothing for it but to hand-carry them, I guess.”
“Aye.”
“There’s not room enough in the shuttle for all of these,” du Rau observed.
“No, sir,” Douglas said. “We would have to scramble a larger transport to follow on.” The medic started to say something, but refrained at Douglas’s look.
Du Rau frowned, thinking. “Are these all of them?”
“Yes,” Douglas answered. “We had to burn the dead. We collected as many identities as we could and made up a list; I have a copy to give you for your records.”
“Thank you,” du Rau heard himself say. He was looking down at one of his lieutenants, dozing fitfully in the cot nearest them. As he watched, the man opened his eyes and fixed an unfocused gaze on du Rau’s face. A flicker of confusion; then the man shut his eyes again, unequal to parsing the image of his highest commander here in this place.
“I’ll take them,” he said. “Send them after in your transport, and I’ll hold my ship to take them on board.”
“Very well. Marag, will you oversee their transfer to a shuttle and escort them to the rendezvous?”
“Yes, sir,” Marag said. “I’ll go and transmit the dispatch at once.” He saluted, a plain Verlaker military salute, and went out.
Du Rau thought that he and Douglas would soon follow Marag out the way they had come in, but Douglas had other ideas. “This way, sir,” he said, indicating a curved corridor to the side. Du Rau saw the medic give Douglas a wry, almost sympathetic, look; Douglas pretended to ignore it.
The corridor continued to curve as they followed it; when they came to a tunneled opening, Douglas stopped to look at him. “You should see the arena before you go,” he said, with an unreadable look. If Barklay had been giving this tour, du Rau thought, he would have been expansive and obnoxious about it: Douglas was strangely diffident—as if calculating exactly how much guard to drop for his own purposes. Du Rau had not forgotten Speir, however, and was not going to be drawn twice. “Are you adept with the foil, Admiral?” he asked.
“I prefer the baton,” Douglas said, as they started up the dark incline of the tunnel.
They emerged into a spacious combat theatre, domed above, with facets of curved glass in the center to collect what natural light was available and shed it to the deep, sawdust-lined pit below. Bench seats lined the space all around, interspersed with entrances like the one they’d just come out of.
“It’s dormant just now,” Douglas said, a little wistfully. “Match schedule’s off for the duration.” His eyes were on the rail above the pit. Du Rau became aware that they had been gravitating toward a place for a private conversation. Did he want to speak to Douglas alone? Yes, he decided.
He turned to Alsburg as he started after them. “Alsburg, you may wait here. And the corporal with you.”
Alsburg stiffened, balking at last. “My lord!”
“You can stay within eyeshot,” du Rau cut across this. “It’s perfectly safe. I won’t be long.”
Alsburg had no choice but to obey, but let his look of dismay stand as a continued protest. As he watched from the entryway, du Rau followed Douglas down level by level to fetch up at the rail, looking down into the pit. The polished steel panels took the light from the dome and magnified it, so that the sawdust, raked smooth and pristine, shone brighter than the white paint on the seating aisles. He took note of the perch for the judge and the platform positioned behind it in the midst of the ranks of benches; then looked back at Douglas.
He was staring down into the sawdust as if seeing through it to something else. A memory, perhaps. “You are standing at the soul and center of Ryswyck Academy,” he said, with a faint, sad smile. “In the arena, everything is magnified to the height of its compass. Lethal danger; exalted joy; outpoured humility. We all wanted to be here, and nowhere else.”
“Innocence without naivety,” du Rau quoted, with only a breath of irony. “Honor without contumely. Force without cruelty.”
Douglas looked up. In his expectant glance du Rau saw no recognition. “Barklay said those words to me,” du Rau said. “You are not familiar with them?”
The same little smile returned to Douglas’s lips. “He must have made up a new slogan for the occasion,” he said.
“Are all his slogans so obnoxiously earnest?” du Rau inquired.
“That’s one of his better ones. If it’s not costly, it’s not courtesy was the one I particularly—appreciated.”
“It does carry a bit of irony,” du Rau agreed. “Captain Ahrens quoted that one to me. At a point when he had paid a very steep cost indeed. I asked him,” he sighed, “if he thought Ryswyck was the answer to all of this. And he referred the question to you.” He looked at Douglas levelly.
Douglas looked away and gave a breathless, sickened laugh. “Ach, Ahrens,” he murmured. “Why did you think I was wiser than you?”
“You don’t have to be wiser than he,” du Rau said. “But you might have to be wiser than Barklay.”
Douglas nodded absently, staring down into the combat pit. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Been thinking about that. Barklay did all this—” he gestured briefly— “because he had a vision. But he never did take a good account of his blind side. If it was in his shadow, he couldn’t see it. Vision isn’t enough for this.”
It was clear enough to du Rau why Ahrens had referred him to Douglas. Somehow, in the midst of scandal and heartbreak and fighting for his life, Douglas had found time to think about this. He had been planning for Ryswyck’s future despite knowing that Ryswyck likely had no future at all. And why not, after all? Why not hazard everything, at a time like this?
And he could benefit from Douglas’s thinking labors, if he knew what to ask. “Tell me how a match is played here,” he said.
“Three formats,” Douglas answered, eyes cast down into the bright pit. “Baton, open-hand, foil. Lethal force is allowed, even expected. The least breath of insult to your opponent is never allowed.”
“You play with sharps?” Du Rau raised his eyebrows.
“Alas, no. Too wasteful. Perforate too many good students. I suspect that’s why most Ryswyckians don’t favor foils—no bite; no danger. Three rounds. All very standard. The real innovation,” Douglas said, warming to it, “is the arbitrary fault. If you can learn to accept a fault without actually having committed one, you find that courtesy is easier to keep in general.”
A pang he could not immediately interpret hit du Rau under the breastbone. “And is the arbitrary fault often given?”
“Often enough to bite,” Douglas answered.
Testing Douglas’s dignity would require a subtler touch. “That sort of rule could lend itself to exploitation,” du Rau said.
“Yes.” Simple agreement, without surprise. Douglas had been thinking about this too. “But Speir thinks it cuts both ways. A way to take degradation and torture and still keep your own soul.” And even, du Rau thought, issue a challenge while doing it. “I can see she’s right up to a point,” Douglas went on. “But I don’t think its limits have been tested.”
“It seemed to work for Captain Ahrens,” du Rau murmured. “Or at least,” he added as sorrow crossed Douglas’s face, “it got him to his death with his soul intact. Long-term survival would be the real test, I think.”
“An experiment we are unlikely to get to make,” Douglas said calmly. It was indeed a memory he gazed at in the combat pit, du Rau decided. He had no memories of this place to contemplate, but the smoothed sawdust seemed to invite memories of his own, and du Rau was growing too tired to resist them. The face of his infantryman they had just left behind in the foyer; the cold fever-glints in Captain Ahrens’s steady eyes; Speir’s little smile as she straightened Barklay’s collar. Another generation of children consigned to the fire, children he could only have, and only sacrifice, by proxy. For the first time in years he was visited with a memory of the day the doctor had given him and Ingrid the news that neither of them could be made fertile. The doctor had left the room, and they had clung together and wept. I’m sorry, they had said to one another, as if either or both of them really had done something wrong. The cruelty of arbitrary faults, he thought. His eyes burned, and the light on the sawdust flared and magnified through his rising tears.
He turned his face away to recover, only to find that Douglas was looking at him, head tilted, lips slightly parted, gaze curious. Drinking him in. Du Rau’s tears subsided instantly, and his spine straightened.
“Damn you,” he grated, “do you think I love cruelty and savagery?”
“No, sir,” Douglas said quietly, unabashed. “You clearly don’t.” Then he said, even quieter: “But cruelty and savagery is all that is left to you now. It’s all that is left to us.”
That was true. Du Rau had no stomach for it. If he were going to go on as he began, he would have to do it with his insides burned out. “Then to your view,” he said slowly, “what would it take to make peace?”
Douglas looked away; looked back. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if it can be done. You cannot draw back your hand without something to show for it. And we cannot allow our sovereignty to be violated without reprisal.”
Succinctly put. “Why not?” du Rau said. “I have killed your countrymen, laid waste to your superior officers, seen your friends put to torture and death. And yet instead of reviling me you bring me here at great personal cost and show me the best hospitality at your disposal. Why not?”
Douglas’s eyes were intent. “Because reviling you is too small a privilege to purchase with the lives of my friends,” he said. “But I cannot speak for Ilona in this. I can’t even speak for Ryswyck Academy. I can delay our reprisal; I can’t stop it.”
“This can’t go on,” du Rau said. “As word gets out about your missile program, we’ll have arbitrating nations beating down both our doors. And both our sovereignties will be vapor within weeks.”
“But we’ll be alive to appreciate the loss,” Douglas said. “Is that better or worse, I wonder. Worse, I suppose. I could not live in my own home by a stranger’s sufferance.”
“At least Berenians are your cousins and speak your language. Why not use your considerable powers of persuasion, Douglas, and convince your people to surrender.”
“Why not use the powers of your command and convince your people to desist?” Douglas countered.
Du Rau sighed. “The powers of my command only stretch so far. As Barklay’s mission proved.”
“It seems to me you regained your footing very quickly,” Douglas said. “And surely you are not the only one of your people who does not love cruelty and savagery.”
“Mm. Would it be harder for you to get Lord Commander Selkirk to pursue terms of surrender—or admit that Barklay was right?”
“I have made some headway on the latter,” Douglas said, with a crooked smile. “But if bringing you here hadn’t held some promise of keeping us all alive for another six to twelve hours, I wouldn’t have had a chance of convincing him anything. Would you even have accepted a surrender two days ago?”
“Probably not,” du Rau murmured.
“So then.” Douglas made an indeterminate gesture toward the combat pit. Whatever he meant by it, du Rau understood one thing: Douglas, like Speir, was playing offense. Why fight your way to surrender when you could fight your way to entente?
Honor without contumely. “How did he achieve you?” du Rau said, musingly. “I still can’t figure it.”
“If I knew that,” Douglas sighed, “I’d know how to plan for the future.”
“So your default plan is to pick up where he left off.”
Douglas made a thoughtful moue, but gave no other answer.
“His last dying act was an attempt to give me your honor salute,” du Rau told him. “Captain Speir tells me it is given by the loser to the winner at the end of a round.”
Douglas went still for a moment. “Yes, that’s true.” He hesitated, but then lifted his gaze to meet du Rau’s eye directly. “It is also,” he said carefully, “given by the victor to the loser at the end of the match.”
And which did Barklay think it was, in his dying breath? Du Rau had a suspicion. You bastard.
“You killed him cleanly.” Douglas’s voice was soft. “You didn’t have to.”
“A weakness,” du Rau said coolly.
“A risk.”
“I won’t trouble you for your thanks,” said du Rau.
“Oh, I’m not going to thank you,” Douglas said. This time his smile was broad and full, and at the same time it revealed a weariness du Rau recognized. “Unless you meant it as a favor.”
“I’ve done one favor for a Ryswyckian,” du Rau said dryly. “It wasn’t Barklay, and it isn’t you.” And I haven’t stopped paying for it even yet.
“Then the day you ask me for a favor,” Douglas said, “is the day I’ll thank you.”
He closed his battered hand and laid it against his heart.