Prisoner of Conscience Read Online Free PDF Page A

Protocols he had no difficulty at all implementing them.
    “Thank you, your Excellency.” The respect he owed his superior officer was offered freely, out of genuine appreciation. “I’ll tell someone to pack.”
    Three or four days, well, he’d have plenty of prep time with as many as three days to reckon with. But what had the Captain said?
    Letters from home?
    From whom, at home?
    From Marana, with pictures of his child, and news of how the son he’d yet to meet was growing?
    Or from his father, grim and formal and imbued with decorous grief over the fact that Andrej — in violation of the very filial piety after whose Saint he had been named — refused to be reconciled to the duty his father had set him to, and still declined to beg forgiveness for having challenged his father’s desire that he go to Fleet to be Inquisitor?
    His father had no more idea of what Andrej’s life was like in Secured Medical than Andrej himself had once had, before his training. Andrej had never tried to more than hint at the horrors that comprised Inquisition. His father would only take it as cowardice on his part, evidence of shameful reluctance to do his duty to the Bench and Jurisdiction.
    “Security Chief Warrant Officer Caleigh Samons. For his Excellency, Chief Medical.”
    The calm clear voice that sounded from the talk-alert provided a very welcome distraction for Andrej. Chief Samons. That was right. It was exercise period. She would be wondering where he was; or if not where he was, what excuse he might be thinking of to offer this time in his half-hearted but perpetual efforts to get out of the extra laps she would require of him.
    “Coming directly, Chief. Koscuisko away, here.”
    Nothing was going to change his father’s mind. Nothing was going to change the test to come, however many months at the Domitt Prison. Nothing could change the horror that he had of the hunger in his blood, but while he ran his laps he did not think about any of the things he could not change. He only thought of laps, while he was running.
    That relief from mindfulness alone would have compelled him to seek exercise, were it not for the fact that Chief Samons put limits on his laps, to prevent injury.
    Andrej went to join his Security and run his laps, and tried not to think too hard about the Domitt Prison.

Chapter Two

    It was five days after her early return from Worlibeg before Mergau Noycannir could get in to see First Secretary Sindha Verlaine, Chilleau Judiciary. She’d come back early on purpose to be sure that she was on site when the decision was made, only to discover that the decision had been made without her, the assignment she coveted given away to the last person in the world to whom she would wish it to go.
    She’d waited five days for an explanation.
    Admitted to the First Secretary’s office, punctual to the eighth, Mergau stared at him as he sat behind his desk and did what she could to disguise her hunger. He was a thin reedy man, red-haired and pale-skinned, with watery eyes and a thin high-boned nose that made him look like a prey-animal flaring its nostrils anxiously into the wind to scent for hunters.
    He looked small and rather insignificant, behind the great glaring expanse of his desk-table. And yet he held the power she desired above all things.
    “You have sent Andrej Koscuisko to the Domitt Prison instead of me.” She had been Clerk of Court under Sindha Verlaine for only five years, but she was the one who had earned the Writ for him. She was entitled to speak to him directly. She was different from the others. “Why? I thought it was my assignment. Especially after what I did for you at Worlibeg, First Secretary.”
    He didn’t look particularly receptive, his expression blank. Perhaps she should have been more formal with him: but no, she was expressing her natural sense of outrage at being denied a privilege well-earned and well-deserved. To be mistress of the Domitt Prison . . .
    Reaching for a