Sword of the Lamb (14 page)

“We was on the same—the same workgang, Jeron and me. It was . . . before the noon stop. He was driving a full loader to the red shelves. There’s a bad turn before . . . anyway, he—he run into a shelf, and the loader turned over and everything come crashing down, and . . . and then the . . . foreman, he—the black spell come over him, and he started in on Jeron with his lash, and then with—with his fists. Oh, ’Zion, he wouldn’t
stop
! He kept on hitting him and hitting him, and—and finally Jeron went down. The loader—he hit his head on . . . he hit his head . . .” Selm doubled over, burying his face in his hands, his body shuddering with renewed sobs.

Alexand left him to his grief, too numbed, too filled with impotent rage to ask or hear more. When at length he looked at Hezaki. he found him watching him intently. Something in his eyes made Alexand uncomfortable. He didn’t understand it.

“Hezaki, is this true, what he says of Jeron’s death?”

“I can only say that I heard the same story from others of my flock who were there.”

“There were witnesses, then?”

“Only Bonds, Ser.”

There wasn’t a hint of bitterness in his tone, and Alexand wanted to weep. There
should
have been.

“If you can, question him further about this afternoon.”

“I’ll try, Ser. Quin?” It was some time before Selm was capable of responding. Hezaki rose and went to him, resting his hands on his shoulders. “Quin, you said that today when you saw the Ser, you thought it was a Beyond Soul, that it was Jeron.”

Selm nodded, swollen eyes downcast. “Yes, Father, I . . . thought it was . . . Jeron.”

“What did you do then?”

“I . . . seen it
wasn’t
Jeron. It was . . . the Ser.” He didn’t even glance at Alexand, turning his look of abject appeal on Hezaki. “All at once, I knew who he was, and there he was—and . . . and Jeron was dead, and . . . the black spell come over me. I felt the breath of the spirits of Nether Dark, and—oh, Father, the Mezion have mercy on my soul, I—I lifted my hand against—to . . . to …” He covered his face again, rocking back and forth.

Hezaki said gently, “The Holy Mezion tests his faithful to know the worth of their souls. Perhaps you had your Testing today.” There was a chant-like cadence in that, and Selm seemed to take comfort from it; his hands fell away from his face, although his gaze remained fixed on the floor.

“Quin, Ser Alexand said that at the last moment you turned the loader. Is that true?”

“I—I guess . . . yes. The Ser spoke to me. He shouted . . . something. Oh, Father, I never wanted to kill him. I never wanted to . . . to kill
anybody
. I only . . . I don’t know what I wanted. I don’t know . . . I don’t know. . . .” The words died with a whimpering sigh.

The Shepherd looked at Alexand questioningly, and he nodded.

“That’s enough, Hezaki. Thank you.” For a time the small room was a place of silence encompassed in the Bond’s desolation. “Quin?”

Selm finally managed to meet his gaze, but only briefly. “Yes, Ser?”

“Are many of the foremen prone to ‘black spells’?”

“Not . . . like this one.”

“What is his name?”

“Oh, Ser! If he knew I told—”

“He won’t know, and I can find out, but it would be better for you if I didn’t have to go through House channels.”

Hezaki returned to his chair and sank into it. “Quin, you’d best tell him. He won’t betray you.”

That assuaged Selm’s doubts. He swallowed hard, frowning down at his clasped hands.

“He’s called . . . Fer Naylor, Ser. I—I don’t know his forename.”

“The surname is enough. Now, I want you to take a vow.”

Selm stared at him. “A vow, Ser?”

“A vow of silence. I want your word that you’ll never speak of what happened today, nor our meeting tonight, to anyone at any time. Will you swear to that?”

Selm nodded solemnly, then turned to Hezaki in mute appeal, and after a moment, Alexand understood why.

Hezaki shaped the vow into words for him.

“Quin, swear this on the Holy Words and on the holy saints, who never sleep, and on your immortal soul. You will never speak of these things as long as you live to another soul living or dead on pain of eternal damnation.”

Selm repeated the oath after him, word for word, and the last phrase put a cast of dread in his eyes that was still there when Alexand said, “Thank you, Quin. That’s all I ask. You may go now.” Then, at the Bond’s incredulous stare, “Yes. I know you tried to kill me, but I can understand grief. The important thing is that you
didn’t
kill me. I only hope such a . . . black spell never overcomes you again.”

“Oh, Ser, I . . . may the Mezion smile on you in this world and the Beyond.” He rose and with a hasty bow stumbled to the door. But there he paused and said softly, “Ser, you are of the Blessed.”

Before Alexand could even wonder at that term, he was gone, the door snapped shut.

And now the toll of pain and exhaustion came home to him. He pulled himself to his feet, resting his hand on the table until the dizziness passed. At least he had his answers.

“Ser, are you well?”

Alexand only nodded absently to that. “I must hurry, Hezaki, and I haven’t the time—even if I had the words—to thank you adequately for your help and for all I’ve learned from you. You’re a man of true wisdom.”

Hezaki bowed. “Ser, you do me honor.” Then he added, “Perhaps you’ll do me another honor—or grant me another boon. Let me go with you to the compound gate.”

Alexand smiled. “I’d be grateful for your company.” And his protection. That was the real reason for this “boon,” but he didn’t force Hezaki to put that into words.

Phillip Woolf stared out at the snow-shrouded lights, feeling in the silence of this incomprehensibly empty room the chill grip of fear. In his right hand he held the golden disk of his pocketcom, open, but for the moment forgotten.

He turned, his eyes moving to the empty bed. He should have known. Something rang false about that accident. He should never have left Alexand alone.

The soft buzz of the ’com brought his head around. “Yes, Ensing?”

The image framed in the ’com was helmeted, a captain’s chevron on the scarlet cloak.

“My lord, we’ve found Ser Alexand.”

Woolf’s muscles sagged with relief, then tensed again in anger—at Alexand, for making his father suffer like a damned soul this last half hour.

He asked levelly, “Where is he?”

“He just left the plaza chapel in Compound A, my lord.”

“Is he alone?”

“He’s with the Shepherd. They’re on one of the radials headed for the north gate. He seems to be talking with the old man. I can’t see his face; he’s got his ’screen on.”

Woolf nodded. “Keep your men out of sight, but someone must be close to Alexand until he’s out of the compound.”

“Yes, my lord. Should we hold the Shepherd?”

“Hold him? Why?”

“Well, I just thought . . .”

“Captain, didn’t it occur to you that he might be with my son at his behest? Unless the Shepherd makes a clearly threatening move against Alexand, he’s to be left alone. ’Com me when Alexand leaves the compound.” He snapped his ’com shut impatiently. His hands were shaking, but that didn’t surprise him.

One son dying, and now for Alexand to take such risks—

And there would be no more sons.

Perhaps Elise was right in keeping it secret even from Alexand. Woolf closed his eyes. It had been such a heartbreaking blow to her. Even now he knew it was sometimes hard for her to believe he loved her too much for it to matter.

Thank the God she wasn’t here now.

The last report had been from a guard on the estate landing roof. Woolf sat in a chair near the empty bed, containing the anxiety and irrational anger that still threatened to erupt within him. It seemed an interminable length of time before he finally heard the whisper of the door opening.

He came to his feet, but for a moment stood silent, staring across the room at his son, who looked back at him with a level gaze in which there was no hint of guilt or surprise; only a shadow of regret.

Woolf’s anger dissolved. He crossed the room, stopping a pace from Alexand. The anger was gone, he realized, because he was suddenly aware that his son had crossed the line between childhood and adulthood tonight. The decision to embark on this solitary and dangerous sojourn was an adult decision. The aftermath of fear was in his face; he had recognized the risks and found them worth taking.

“Alex . . .” Woolf reached out to him, drawing him into his arms as if with that embrace he could hold on to that vanishing childhood.

“Father, I didn’t want to worry you. Believe me, I didn’t want—”

“I know, Alex, I know.” He felt the chill of his cloak; he was shivering, swaying on his feet, and Woolf’s concern shifted to the immediate problems of the broken bone, the sedative not taken, the exposure to cold.

“Come, Alex. First, I’m getting you into bed, then I’m going to call Dr. Dall. Holy God, you’re half frozen.”

“I—I know. That’s . . . one of the things . . . I must talk to you about.”

Woolf turned the thermblanket to high, too distracted to make sense of that, concerned only with his son’s pallor, and the tension around his mouth that was an index of pain. But when Woolf reached for the intercom, Alexand stopped him.

“No. Not yet.” He took a shaky breath and added, “Give me a few minutes first. Then you can call Dr. Dall.”

Woolf didn’t argue further, but occupied himself with getting Alexand undressed and under the thermblanket. When this was done, he sat down on the bed beside Alexand. It was some time before the chill left him.

Finally, Woolf said, “Well, Alex, I hope your venture was successful, whatever its purpose.”

There was a shadow of grim memory in his eyes. “Yes, it was successful, but I’d hoped you wouldn’t have to be . . . concerned by it.”

Woolf laughed. “So you thought you’d take a little stroll in Compound A, and by the time I returned, you’d be back in bed, sound asleep, and I’d never be the wiser. Well, you underestimated Dr. Dall’s conscientiousness. She came in to check on you about an hour after I left.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d have had to tell you anyway. I . . . made an inadvertent tour of inspection tonight, and you must know about some of the things I saw and learned.”

Woolf hesitated, on the verge of suggesting that those things might wait until morning, but said instead, “All right, Alex. Tell me about them.”

“First, I gave my word that no harm would come to the people I talked to.”

“Then I’ll back it up, unless you were entirely outside the bounds of reason.”

Alexand shook his head, frowning. “I can’t betray these people, but I will if you won’t honor my word. And I’ll betray them in another sense if I can’t tell you what happened—what
is
happening out there.”

Again, Woolf didn’t argue. “Very well. I’ll honor your word even if you
were
outside the bounds of reason. But you must make me a promise in exchange—that you’ll never again break the rule and go into a Bond area alone.”

“I can’t promise I’ll
never
go into a Bond area alone.”

“Until you reach Age of Rights,” Woolf amended with a short laugh. “By then you should know better, anyway.”

“All right. I . . . can promise that.”

“Good. Now, tell me about your inspection tour.”

He nodded, looking past Woolf to the windowall, eyes as cold as that night vista.

“Some of it’s simply subjective impressions. The feeling that the Bonds were too quiet; too subdued. And the guards too arrogant. Some of it’s secondhand information.” He turned his head to look at Woolf. “For instance, in the Montril compounds it’s customary to count workdays lost to illness against a Bond’s free days.”

Woolf raised an eyebrow. “That’s certainly not House policy. You said this was secondhand information?”

“Yes, but I trust my source. The Elder Shepherd Hezaki. A remarkable man. I doubt he’s capable of falsehood.”

“That
would
make him remarkable.”

Alexand studied his father, then turned away with a nod.

“You’d have to spend some time with him to understand or believe that. I also learned that the compound infirmary is apparently so short of medical supplies that it couldn’t—or wouldn’t—treat a Bond suffering from pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia? That’s impossible.”

Alexand laughed caustically. “My words exactly. Impossible both that no help was available to the man, and that he should be suffering from pneumonia. I wouldn’t believe it either, except for certain facts I observed—personally—that make pneumonia reasonable in Compound A.” He paused, looking out past the windowall. “Father, the atmobubbles weren’t on in Compound A, nor I’m sure in any of the compounds. I doubt that A would be singled out for any purpose.”

Woolf stared at him, groping for an explanation. “A malfunction. Something must have gone wrong . . .”

“How long would it take to repair a malfunction? Long enough for snow to accumulate to a depth of a meter? And in the park the fountain was off and the pond frozen. That’s more than a malfunction, and so was the fact that only a quarter of the helions were on in the park.”

Woolf felt the pounding of his pulse in his temples, the chill tension of anger that drove him to his feet and to the windowall. The snow was a silvery mist beyond the estate’s ’bubbles, and it had never occurred to him that the miniature cities beyond weren’t shelled with similar invisible protective barriers.

This morning he’d checked the general accounts for the Montril plant, and now one figure was starkly clear in his memory: 1,680,000 ’cords; the cost of maintaining the ’bubble systems for 210 days last year.

It could only be Kelmet.

“Damn him!
Damn
him!”

He turned and found Alexand watching him and realized he had already reached the same conclusion about the perpetrator of this insupportable fraud. Woolf took a deep breath; it came out in a weary sigh.

“Elise was right, Alex. She never trusted Kelmet simply because she didn’t like him. I’ve never liked him, either, but I didn’t accept that as reason enough not to trust him.”

Alexand nodded. “It isn’t enough; not in itself.”

“I wonder. But corruption can’t be tolerated on any level, and the higher the level, the more dangerous it is.”

“Father, there’s more going on in the compounds, but uncovering all of it will mean a thorough investigation.”

“Yes. What else did
you
uncover?”

“Only one other piece of . . . concrete evidence.” His mouth tensed. “I . . . I saw a rat in the compound.”

“A rat!” Woolf stared at him and found himself again objecting, “That’s impossible!”

“No, it’s only intolerable, and there’s no chance I’m in error. The creature was dead. I had a very good look at it at close range. I don’t know a great deal about rats, but I do know that if there’s one, there are many. And considering the other evidence of negligence, deprivation, and cruelty, this isn’t surprising.”

The word “cruelty” stopped Woolf for a moment; it seemed too intensely subjective. He returned to the bed and sat down.

“Well, I’ll have to change my schedule for tomorrow,” he said briskly. “The first thing on my agenda will be a personal inspection of Compound A.”

Alexand’s eyes flashed up to his, reflecting both hope and gratitude, but that quickly turned to calculating doubt.

“You’ll probably find everything in good order there if Kelmet happens to overhear this conversation.”

Woolf laughed and reached for his hand. “I’ve never trusted Kelmet enough not to expect him to slip monitors into my private rooms. However, I
do
trust Master Dansig; he checked both our suites a few minutes before we arrived this morning.” As he spoke, he turned Alexand’s palm up and with his index finger drew the letter C.

Alexand’s quick smile said he understood that silent message and knew Woolf intended to inspect compound C, not A.

“Thank you, Father.” He lay silent for a moment, eyes narrowed. “I was thinking, if this kind of thing can happen here, in a DeKoven Woolf compound, what must it be like in compounds where indifference and neglect are House policy? Like Selasid or Cameroodo compounds, or Hamid and Fallor, Tesmier, Orongo—the list is endless.”

“Well, not quite endless, but I suppose it must include a majority of the Houses in the Court of Lords. Mathis and Trevor Robek and I are rewriting our resolution for a standard of Bond treatment, you know, but I haven’t much hope for it.”

“But don’t the Directors realize—” Alexand subsided with a sigh. “No. If they did, the resolution wouldn’t be necessary. Well, I admire your tenacity, you and Trevor and Grandser. I’m . . . proud of you.”

Woolf smiled. “At least you know my intentions are good. Now, perhaps you should tell me why you went into that compound. It began this afternoon, didn’t it? With that so-called accident.”

Alexand nodded, letting his head fall back into the pillow. “That Bond
did
try to kill me, but it was so badly thought out, it couldn’t have been premeditated, and the important thing was that he
didn’t
kill me. He was ready to crush me with that loader, but at the last moment he changed his mind. I saw his face, and he was suddenly . . . horrified, and he turned the loader. The turn was so fast it threw the load, and that’s the only reason I was injured.”

“But, Alex, whether he changed his mind or not—”

“I know. For perhaps ten seconds he
was
intent on killing me. Should a man die for a few seconds? If his case came before a court, the plea would be lapse of sanity.”

“But his case won’t come before a court, and you—”

“No, of course it won’t. He’s a Bond. But isn’t he also a citizen of the Concord? Why should Bonds be excluded from the Concord judicial system?”

Woolf frowned slightly. “It’s up to the Houses to deal with Bond discipline, punishment, or grievances. That’s why we have Litigation Boards in every compound.”

“But not every House has them, and what good are they to a Bond with a grievance if it happens to be against his Fesh overseers? The boards are manned by Fesh.”

“Who would you
have
man them? Bonds?”

Alexand leaned forward intently. “No, that’s not—a
Concord
tribunal, not a House board. We must give them some meaningful legal recourse for their grievances; some recourse other than . . . He stopped and, as if suddenly aware of pain, sank back into the pillow, breath catching. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, Father, I seem to have lost track of my story. That Bond, Quin Selm—that’s why I went to Compound A tonight. I wanted to know the reason for that lapse of sanity. I had to talk to him on his own ground or I’d get nothing from him except more hysterical vows in the name of his saints that it was an accident. Even then I doubt I’d have had any answers if it weren’t for Hezaki. Quin would talk to him, even in my presence, but not to me. He was . . . afraid of me.”

“Under the circumstances, he should’ve been. So the Shepherd acted as your liaison?”

“He asked that
boon
of me. He also asked the boon of accompanying me to the compound gate, and I’m sure I could have walked through a crowd of rioting Bonds without a face-screen and been perfectly safe with Hezaki at my side. He has power over them we don’t; power over their souls.”

“All the Shepherds do, and that worries me sometimes.” Woolf put that in as a reminder; Alexand spoke of that power with such naïveté. “Alex, we must always be concerned when power over the behavior of so many falls into the hands of so few. Now, what did you find out about Selm?”

Alexand hesitated, for a moment distracted, then, “I found out why he tried to kill me. Quin had a younger brother, Jeron. They were on the same workgang. One day Jeron was ill—yes, he was the one who was told nothing could be done for him at the infirmary—but he decided to work his shift anyway. He didn’t want to lose a free day because he was saving them for . . . he was going to be married soon. He probably wasn’t functioning too well, or perhaps it was only carelessness; I don’t know. Anyway, he ran a full loader into a storage shelf and turned the loader over. I assume the damage was considerable, but should a man die for that?”