The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - BRIGADIER DENIZ (Part 2)

(Chapter 41 Part Two)

Sitting on the crucifix lying on the hilltop, I blinked like an owl at the confused mob in the road. Traffic from the city oozed through slowly, one lorry or waggon or ground-car at a time, as the better folk milled around, climbing into the field on the other side of the graveled highway to where their ground-cars were parked in straggling lines. Journalists pestered the bailiffs and militia and anyone of high rank they could find but evidently got few explanations because I never saw approved articles in the newsjournals that did much more than announce the mass execution’s cancellation. Fine by me. It wasn’t news about my doings that needed to get out.

The prisoners were dressed in whatever got thrown at them: Barsina’s undershift I never saw again, nor the clothing taken from me at the Palace of Justice. Clad in some random kitchen-skivvy’s filthy chemise, I clung to Efan and Barsina as the last of the seda-t released my mind, hobbling down the hill and a few hundred meters away to his blue official ground-car.

The subaltern stared at us when we reached him. “What in the hells is this?”

“Alagon, really, such language in front of Miss Fenek?”

“She’s no Miss Fenek anymore; I see her neck. Never was, I think. Eh, Nosy-panties?”

“Well, be kind to her; she’s been through a lot,” Mardonios said. “Where’s Fortunato’s daughter? And Miss Thelumene?”

Alagon pointed at another ground-car, out of which a pair of gray eyes in a frightened face looked out. A feminine shadow sat beyond her. At the sight of me, the shadow became quite agitated.

“You’ll be so good as to detain them in a private room in the Palace of Justice,” he said. “The ones for quality women.”

“Will do, estro,” he said. “And, ah, Nosy-panties here?”

“She’s mine,” Ensign-Captain said flatly. “I own her paperwork.”

“Very good, sir. Off limits, understood. You’re coming back to the commissariat?”

“Later. I’ll be doing reports half the night, I expect.”

Subaltern Alagon entered the ground-car with a young cornet who looked wide-eyed at the humiliated aristoi and drove off.

“Sir,” I said. The world began to slide sideways.

“Efan,” he corrected.

“Efan … I need a nurse.”

“I’ll get you a doctor,” he said. “Catch her, Barsina!”

I was ill on the grass again, then they laid me in his ground-car.

He took me not to a clinic, but to an actual enfermerio—Sankta Koro, the big one on Avenuo de la Mizerikordo—with clean floors and roentgen scanners for looking inside one, and actual doctors, three of them—three!—nothing against nurses, mind—but I’d not been seen by a doctor since I left crèche, and that was twenty years. But there were nurses as well, and they rounded up a clean chemise for me and didn’t chase Barsina off, and she sat by and held my hand. They had seda-t in me again. This took the throbbing out of my head and the beaten feeling in my downbelows.

They put a needle in my arm to drip saltwater into me—and who knows what else—and gave me pathys—proper hospital ones, not off the shelf in a bodega. Three doctors, Lady knows at what cost: a generalist, and a mentist, and a ginekologue, and me drugged forgetting the other women stowed in the Palace of Justice without such attentions. There was sunlight and song in my ears, and Barsina would not let go of me, and that was the way I wanted it.

“I told you I had a plan,” I said woozily as the ginekologue examined me. It was like she was on the mountains of the moons, not the mountain of Venus. Oh, so far away.

“About that plan,” Efan said.

“Yes?”

“Please don’t do that again. Doctor, will she be all right?”

“She will be,” she said. “If you give her a couple of weeks. But she’s going to need a lot of rest for a while, and I have orders for medication—antiinflammatories and more pathys. The mentist wants a thorough psycholothe done. Ah, if I may be frank for a moment—”

“Yes?”

“Doctor Holze, the radiologue, was concerned about the beatings she’s received, both in the past and recently; you should see her scans. They are excessive—”

“That was not I. That was her previous contract-owner.”

Her countenance cleared. “Ah, I see. She’s had … lots of broken bones.”

“How many?”

“Hard to say. Arms, legs, ribs. Skull fractures. Eye orbit. Many are quite old. Some fingers. And she has two implanted replacement incisors, healthy ones and good quality, but it’s as if she had the original teeth knocked out.”

“I imagine she did.”

“La,” I murmured, remembering the day.

“There are also rebreaks, which makes it more difficult to tell. You intend to treat her better?”

“Infinitely, Doctor.—Can you assure me she won’t be released or removed today by anyone except myself?”

“Of course, Ensign-Captain.”

One does like being looked after, but one does feel like a mute thing when they talk over you like that.

“Dardana,” Efan said, sitting by me after the ginekologue left and taking my hand, “I have to do reports on this mess, and I expect Deniz, once he puts everything together in his mind, will have me on the carpet. I’ll count it as a good day if I’m not demoted. Please, please, please stay here.”

“I’ll stay here,” I smiled. “It’s pretty, like crèche.” I waved feebly at a vase of flowers. “I won’t go anywhere.”

“Barsina?”

“Sir, I swear by my life she will not leave.”

“Thank you.”

Efan disappeared somehow, but I think he kissed me.

“ … Was he mad, Barsnjo?”

“Very, sister doula. He did not realize it was me until we left the Palace of Justice and he saw my hand on the arm-rest in the ground-car. He was so angry, sister!” She stroked my fingers and kissed them. “But I told him you had a plan.”

“He asked you to explain it, didn’t he.”

“And I could not. He was worried; I never saw a man so worried about something. In the morning, I begged to come with him—”

“You wanted to see me executed?” That got through the seda-t, and I raised my head to look at her, quizzical, and made myself dizzy.

“I want to know for certain you were dying so I could kill myself and be there waiting, the first thing you would see in the lands after,” she said.

“Barsina!”

“What else would I have to live for, Darnjo?—He left me far back with Subaltern Alagon, but the subaltern ignored me. Then, a fine ground-car came late, and Miss Scyros and Miss Orestia in it. She looked dangerous, forcing her way through the crowd, and my feet followed after as if under her will.”

“Sounds like an excuse.”

“She found Ensign-Captain, told him she demanded justice and possession of the servants, and said there was evidence. She did not have to ask him twice, love.”

A nurse came then and measured my pulse and pressure and breath, and before she was done, I fell asleep.

I woke for a meal in the evening. It was the night of Thirdsday. The syndex funeral for Fortunato was Foursday night.

And so I fell asleep again, Barsina curled on the bed next to me.

The syndex—well, I am sure you know the syndex. Well, perhaps not. It’s a city thing and a militia thing, so if you’re not from one of the big towns, it may have escaped your notice. In the city, you find large temples dedicated to the Lady, but those dedicated to Her Consort, Temes are fewer, built underground or in actual caves, if they’re lucky: temeaeums managed by militia syndexes. They are, naturally, for men only. What they do there is unknown to us women, just as many of Her rites, such as the bacchanales in the countryside, are not for men, and we’ll say no more about that.

It was, therefore, quite a surprise, after lying in a bed in the enfermerio all day with Barsnjo taking care of me and doctors and nurses coming and going—another five hundred drachms, I imagine—when the Ensign-Captain entered in the evening wearing his best dress blues, bringing clothing wrapped in brown paper for Barsina and me.

“I thought perhaps you’d forgotten us,” I said, pert for a woman who nearly got executed. “What is this for?”

“It’s for you to dress,” he said. “I’d not forgotten you at all. But we need to go to a funeral.”

“Surely not,” I said. “Not—his?”

“The same. A funeral, and a trial.”

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( … This way to Chapter Forty-one part 1 … ) ( … This way to Chapter Forty-one part 3 … )

… ( … This way to Chapter One part 1 … ) …

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