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because there wasn’t the usual several days’ growth of stubble on that sweat-clammy face.
    Koscuisko touched the backs of his fingers to the Nurail’s forehead and waited, counting breaths. The prisoner was hot, Joslire could feel the radiation of body warmth clear through the blanket. Feverish. And there were other reasons a man would lose body heat at the back.
    “I don’t suppose you’ve got any transmit docs?” Koscuisko called over his shoulder, to the key-man. To Joslire in a quieter tone, he said, “Let’s see about unwrapping him, carefully. Tell Toska I’m going to want my kit.”
    “No documentation,” the key-man replied, sounding relieved. To be shown an out? That he couldn’t be made to say where the prisoner had come from or who had brought him? “Some Fleet Security, I think, sir. Brought him, took the first available cell, left.”
    Oh, yes. Of course. Right.
    Fleet Security.
    And it could be. That was the hell of it.
    Koscuisko worried the blanket free from the prisoner’s nerveless fingers gently, and the man — or boy — opened his eyes suddenly, staring up at Koscuisko without moving his head. Terror, wild and anguished, and the white of the eye gleaming in the light reflecting off the back wall; terror and a good deal of pain, and Joslire beckoned for the officer’s kit, where he kept his drugs — his anodynes.
    “Shh,”Koscuisko said. Not as if the prisoner had said anything. “We just need to have a look. We’ll try not to hurt you.” And drew the blanket back in careful folds, hissing through his teeth at the sight of the prisoner’s exposed shoulders.
    Raw meat.
    And there was more of it, most of the prisoner’s back had been laid bare, as though his back were all half-masticated flesh abandoned mid-meal by a predator.
    “Your Excellency — ” Joslire started to say.
    “It looks like a peony to me, Joslire. Open for me my kit, I want a strong dose of asinjetorix. Kaydence? No, don’t come in, name of the Mother.” The horror Koscuisko felt at the suffering those wounds represented resonated in his voice, muted though it was to avoid giving alarm to the tortured man. “Go order me a litter for emergency care. And tell them I want it now. And I will need a surgery, as soon as one can be opened for me.”
    Joslire found the dose and passed it to Koscuisko, who took it in his hand to show the prisoner.
    “A pain relief drug,”his Excellency explained, as quietly and soothingly as Joslire could imagine. Their officer had a gentle touch with patients. “Not any other kind. I’m not going to ask you what happened. The Bench has forfeited its right to ask you any questions, any more, ever, about anything.”
    No comprehension on the prisoner’s face, but why would there be? Joslire wasn’t quite sure he caught his officer’s meaning himself.
    The key-man’s anxiety would not let him keep still and speak when spoken to, apparently. “Your Excellency, what is it?”
    Pressing the dose home, Koscuisko waited for a moment, then stood up. “Fleet Security, you say? We will want a statement. It is abuse of prisoner outside of Protocol. He has been put to torture without authority of Writ, because there was no Writ at Eild until I got here, and if I had taken the peony to any man I would remember it.”
    The peony was the ugliest whip in the inventory, its multiple thongs heavy and barbed. Koscuisko never used the peony except to Execute. It could kill quickly; there was a species of mercy in a quick death — even when it had to be by torture.
    Otherwise the peony was good for very little but to chew up flesh like warmed spreadable, and it was accordingly a proscribed weapon outside the custody of an Inquisitor. It was illegal for anyone but an Inquisitor to carry a peony, unless it was the bond-involuntary under orders.
    “I don’t understand, your Excellency. Peony?”
    Maybe the key-man didn’t know what it was. Maybe whoever it was who’d been responsible had been