Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) (7 page)
Read Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) Online
Authors: Sarah A. Hoyt
“Oh.” Lucius smiled suddenly, as though startled. It was an odd smile. Fleeting. When I’d met him before, we’d been in battle mode. I realized for the first time he’d been raised in the same world as Simon, if not in the same way; that he could probably be charming, if he wanted to, in a way that meant absolutely nothing. The smile was followed by a sigh. “Oh, likely neither can he. Simon—” He paused. “Simon’s…ancestor was created as a spy and someone who could play any role, and I don’t think Simon’s situation these last few years, knowing he was not like the other Good Men and remaining safe only by playing the fool and encouraging the idea his “father” might recover, helped whatever inherent tendencies were in his make-up.”
I nodded. I’d known about Simon’s original, the person he was cloned from; had learned it from someone who’d known the original. As for Simon playing the fool, I knew that too. I didn’t think I could explain—or wanted to explain—to Lucius the glimpses of someone more substantial beneath Simon’s playacting. Saving me at the expense of himself, even as his world quite literally crashed around his head, was not the act of a self-centered fool. I didn’t think I could explain that I felt as though someone were a prisoner, encased, in Simon’s playacting. Nor could I explain the sympathy I felt for his situation. So I said, “Yes.”
He nodded. “But that doesn’t answer my question. Are you involved? Physically or emotionally?”
“What difference does that make?” I asked.
He let air out through his nose. “It might. In how much I can help, within my limited capacity.” He raised a hand. “No, look. Our organization—not the military, but the organization that predates it—has an unbreakable policy of helping dependents: children and spouses or spouses equivalent. I can’t get you help officially, not from Olympus, that is, but you did render the Usaians a service, and though it’s stretching a point, I can take it to the council. If you’re Simon’s—If—”
I sighed. “We’re not. Not that close, and not physically. I was widowed less than a year ago. I’m not ready—”
“Understood. And emotionally?”
“I care for him,” I said. “Possibly more than I should—but I’m not sure how…” I looked up at those blue-gray eyes staring down at me like a judge from a podium. “Look, I don’t know if I have the slightest romantic interest in him, or if it’s just…just that I feel sorry for him. I always feel bad for people who are ducks out of water, because I am myself.”
This surprised a chuckle out of him. “Yes,” he said. “I do too, for the same reason. That’s why I said I’d help to the limit of my ability, but my ability is very limited. I can’t go with you and help you. I’m needed here. My superiors would skin me alive for risking myself in the hell Liberte has become. And we can’t send troops into the mess in Liberte because we don’t have troops to spare.”
The meaning of his words so far had sunk in—and I understood the sense of cold I’d got from our reception. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to help us, but that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. “But you’re the Good Man!” I said. “You can order someone like Nat Remy—”
I realized I’d gone too far. His gaze hardened. “I’m not the Good Man,” he said. “Not anymore. Unlike Simon, I didn’t declare the revolution, nor do I control it, as he thought he did. And as for Nat, he’s in enough danger without sending him on what will turn out to be a suicide mission. Even if I had the power to order him, which I don’t. I don’t remember the rank in his last letter. It seems to keep changing. But I warrant you he’s my superior.”
“Suicide?” I said.
“What do you think? You know more history than most people on Earth—So do I, for my sins. When a land, or in this case, a group of territories, takes it upon their head to make all humans equal, it always ends one way. It’s not that reality can’t be violated,” he said, and sounded suddenly very tired. “It’s that there is always a price to pay for it. Always. And the price for the fantasy of equality is always paid in blood.” He looked very sad but mostly very tired. Then his expression changed in a second, as he looked over my shoulder at someone behind me. “Ah. Brisbois. I would extend you the hospitality of my house, but as you see my quarters are reduced to a single guestroom, and I am about to offer that to Ms.—to Zenobia.”
“I can sleep anywhere,” Alexis said. I turned around to see that he had changed appearance almost as markedly as I had. He looked yet completely different from the man I’d guess I had glimpsed around the palace, in a formal and undistinguished gold and white uniform. And he looked again different than the man in cheap clothes who’d brought me here.
I didn’t know what clothes Lucius had arranged for him, and I hadn’t paid attention, but now I remembered seeing a young man in uniform walk in and down that hallway carrying clothes. The clothes Alexis Brisbois was wearing were the formal attire of the upper-crust of Earth, such as I’d seen Simon wear. Silk shirt with lace at collar and sleeves. A velvet jacket with shoulder padding that, in his case, wasn’t necessary, narrowing to make the waist look small—in his case not very convincingly because the man was a single square block of stonelike muscle—and ornamented with ruffles at the back. The pants fit like a second skin under all that, and the boots came to meet the pants just above the calf.
Lucius Keeva frowned at the boots. “I beg your pardon about those,” he said. “But I think your feet are at least a size larger than mine.” His gaze swept upwards. “The rest fits well enough.”
I realized these had to be Keeva’s clothes, and that the two men were almost exactly the same size. How had I not noticed it before? They were very different types of men. Lucius might be scarred, but the features beneath that were regular and beautiful enough. Carefully assembled, likely. As carefully as mine had been, gene by gene and protein by protein. Alexis’s had been assembled by an unkind Mother Nature. Living couldn’t improve on them. They weren’t exactly horrible to look at, but they were rough-carved and only the intelligent and attentive eyes beneath the heavy eyebrows relieved what would otherwise have been a brutal aspect.
Besides, there was posture. Lucius Keeva had been trained to command, and he looked every inch of his six feet six or seven, or perhaps more. Alexis, on the other hand, whatever he had been, wherever he’d come from—conspirator, condemned man, servant—would have been trained to hide his size and any appearance of menace. And he managed to project being much shorter and smaller than he was. But he was massive. No wonder he’d been able to drag me. And no wonder Simon trusted him to keep me safe.
“As I was saying,” Lucius said. “I can offer hospitality to Zenobia, and you can trust me to keep her safe as your…ah…Good Man commanded. But I don’t think I can accommodate you, at least not for the night. You can have dinner with us.”
Alexis looked like he was going to protest, but Lucius interrupted, “Through that door, there is a young man waiting. An ensign. I can’t for the life of me remember his name, they change so fast.” Tiredness again. “We send them out to fight much too early. But he’ll show you to the unmarried men’s quarters. You can make sure you have a place for tonight and then you can come back here, if you choose, for dinner or to verify I haven’t killed Zenobia. But I assure you, it’s not needed.”
Alexis looked like he was going to protest. There was a mutinous look in his eyes, and he looked like he wanted to give vent to it. Perhaps he would have, but I suspected the training to obey people who acted this way and gave orders this smoothly went bone deep. He didn’t exactly bow, and he didn’t exactly make a sound of acquiescence, but there was a suggestion of both in the way he headed out the door.
And I felt, unaccountably, bereft, as though I too couldn’t trust Lucius Keeva not to do something awful to me. Which was ridiculous, of course. I could at least trust him as much as I trusted Brisbois. As Luce had said, we’d fought side by side.
I returned to where I’d been before Brisbois had interrupted us. “Suicide?”
“What do you think it is, for any of us, the ones who look obviously modified, or at least…enhanced, to go to Liberte? If they’re hunting for those who stand out? We’d stand out just for being strangers—foreign. And what do you think our chances are of doing anything in time to free Simon?”
“I was hoping for armed men.” I stepped backwards, to let myself fall onto a chair. “So, when you offered help—”
He shook his head. “I could have got you help if you were…involved with Simon. Some help. Not personally,” he said. “Certainly not personally. My face is too well known the world over. And not Nat. If you saw him fighting on broomback, or really just fighting, you’d know his enhancements are as hard to hide as ours. Hereditary, sure. I don’t think his line has seen the inside of a test tube for generations.” He paused, as though a sudden thought had intruded, and chewed at the corner of his lip, as though trying to digest an unpleasant thought. “Though I wouldn’t bet on it either. But I understand they’re going after people who inherited enhancements, too. And most of my helpers, most of my circle here, is obviously enhanced. So I couldn’t ever offer you help of that kind. But…since you’re not involved with Simon, I don’t think I can even offer you that.”
I started to say that I could lie about being involved with Simon, then I thought about the implications—this would be claiming a relationship on the level of marriage. It probably meant that if we saved Simon, I’d have to stand by it. I’d been married once. I thought of Len, of what I’d had with him. Simon was a different creature. “I’d been dreading his proposal.”
“Understand,” Luce said. “I’m not trying to be unkind, but I think that to attempt to save Simon right now is nothing more than a complex way to commit suicide unless you went in with overwhelming force, and I don’t know if we can get overwhelming force.”
I bit my tongue, but I couldn’t keep it in. “We helped when you needed it. He helped with your…revolution. But now you turn your back on him.”
He let air out through his nose with a noise like a sneeze, but infused with something like repressed temper. “No. Simon helped us when it suited him. Yes, he was part of our councils and our efforts, because he’s been a friend of the Remys since they were all very young. But Simon is himself. If he’d been a true ally, an auxiliary, our group would put itself out for him, whether there was a chance of success—” He stopped. “No. Maybe not. That’s my own quixotic impulse. The Usaians always weigh their chances of success. Or at least they did when Nat was arrested—even though he’s one of their own. This is why they’ve survived so long. But I can’t even take the case to council. I don’t know how aware you are of what brought this about, but Simon was trying to manipulate things at a vulnerable moment, and he fell on his face. If someone is shot while trying to steal something, you can’t really say that others have an obligation to risk themselves to save his life.” He must have read my confusion. He shook his head. “No, I don’t propose to explain,” he said. “It would take too long and some of it I can’t tell you because I got it in confidential reports from Liberte. But let’s say that Simon was playing with fire, before he got burned.”
“Aren’t you all playing with fire, though?” I asked. “Isn’t that the definition of a revolution?”
For a moment he looked like he couldn’t believe I’d say something so incredibly stupid. Maybe it was even true. Maybe I had violated good sense. It’s impossible to know in a different world. There are different ways; different expectations. He narrowed his eyes. “Not…in the way I mean.”
“Do you mean that he failed to conform to your ideals?” I asked, as I thought I understood his hints. “But he’s not of you. He’s not a Usaian. How can you demand he conform to your ideals, before you assist him?”
I got the impression I’d upset him. “There are,” he said, “ideals of human decency of—of being human, without which we revert to the rule of the Good Men. Or worse.” He seemed about to say a lot more, but I got the impression he was holding himself back by an effort of will. “I can’t help you, in any case. I couldn’t help you even if Simon were more closely allied with our cause. The council would never permit it.” He took a deep breath. “You’re an old battle comrade. You’ve helped me and…and us…our cause, in a very tight spot. I will extend you my hospitality as long as you wish it, and will help you find more permanent accommodation.
“As for Simon, he’s become a matter for international bargaining and international maneuvering.” He held up a hand before I could speak. “It’s not that I don’t want to help, understand me. It’s that I can’t. With all the best will in the world, I can’t even plead for the council to send someone on a suicide mission to save him from the results of his own folly. He made himself head of a revolution that meant to make all men equals, knowing he could never be equal. Things were bound to leak, and things were bound to happen. He knew my identity is out in the open and that we broadcast. He helped us defeat controls on the broadcasts. Did he think the knowledge would never make it to Liberte?” He took a deep breath and seemed to draw himself into composure by an effort of will. “And now, please excuse me. I have work to do. I do not know if I’ll be able to take time to eat, but I’ll make sure you’re served dinner. You are, of course, free to go where you please, but remember the house is a military installation, and refrain from making the guards nervous.”
Piracy Preferred
And he left me. Standing alone in the middle of his perfectly decorated room, with its white carpet, its polished pine shelves, its low, cushiony seats, its broad glass doorway facing the sea, I tried to think of what to do next.
I didn’t realize I was furious until I noticed the images forming at the back of my mind were of kicking my way out through that glass doorway to the terrace and—
And what? Plunging to the sea below? The idea made me smile, because it was so much the act of a romantic lover, and I wasn’t one—certainly not Simon’s. But what else could I do? Challenge Lucius to a fight? The thought came and for a moment there was a feeling of relief, because Lucius was definitely someone I could with impunity be furious at. If I lost control and attacked him, he’d probably stop me before I landed a single punch. He was as fast as I was, and as strong. No, stronger, because behind his enhanced capabilities were his not inconsiderable bulk and his not inconsiderable masculine advantage.
But then if I attacked him, I’d get no satisfaction either. And besides, what could I get him to do? Send a rescue party for Simon? He’d said he couldn’t, and I remembered Simon telling me that when Nat was captured and condemned to death, the Usaians had refused to help. Lucius and one of Nat’s sisters had gone in, and the young woman had died in the attempt. I remembered that story particularly because Simon had been affected by her death and seemed genuinely fond of her. He’d said she was like a little sister to him.
I took deep breaths. Lucius might have been unpleasant about Simon—had been unpleasant about Simon—in saying no, but he’d also said, and I had to believe it, that his “no” was more dictated by circumstances than by his dislike of Simon. And he had to know more about what had happened in Liberte than I did. Could I swear there was no reason at all for him to say that Simon had brought this on himself? Could I even say that Simon’s intentions had been good?
I realized I’d been clenching my fists so hard it hurt, and let go.
Granted that Simon was not the best person in the world, for whatever the definition of “good” might be. I knew that he was manipulative and deceived others and possibly himself, but I also knew how he’d come to it. Whoever had said to know all is to forgive all was a child and an idiot. I could understand most crimes without in the least thinking they were forgivable. But there was a point to it. Up to a point, if you could understand how someone had got twisted and turned inside, you had to forgive them, because—what else could you do?
In Simon’s case I could see all too well how he’d gone astray—how desperate he’d been to survive. And from what I’d heard, from himself and from others, if a Good Man were taken down, it wouldn’t just be him dying, but most of his retainers and dependents. It wasn’t just sheer selfishness and desire to keep himself alive that led Simon to do what he did, to play the fool, to dissemble, to act—often—like saving his skin was the most important thing in the world.
I doubted that it had never occurred to him, Earth born and bred, that as large as this world was he could just have left Liberte, he’d have had plenty of places to hide. Perhaps—I thought—as spoiled as Simon was; as used to being in power and having everything he wanted, it would have seemed like dying for him to go away, perhaps, leave his power and privilege behind, and have to do more than sign forms for a living. On the other hand, considering how many years he’d lived with the dire threat to his life from the other Good Men, even Simon might have considered it a better option.
Then I realized if he’d gone into hiding, Liberte would have been taken over and all his retainers and servants destroyed.
Seen that way, it was almost altruistic for him to stay in Liberte and to pretend to be a fool and inoffensive.
If that was his motivation, then trying to control the revolution he knew was coming was the only thing he could have done.
I had no proof that Simon had ever done anything—much less that—for altruistic reasons. But I remembered his face, his screaming at Alexis to get me out of there. He could have found a way out. He could have disappeared. Or he could have demanded Alexis defend him and die protecting him while he made an escape. Instead he’d chosen to see me safely away.
That action alone argued in favor of a man who had been trying to do the best he could for his dependents and those who couldn’t survive without him.
And that meant—
And that meant, inescapably, that I couldn’t leave him to die.
Even if I didn’t really have a chance of saving him, I’d tried to get help, the sane thing to do. It hadn’t worked. Only the insane thing remained. I had to do it alone.
I didn’t like the conclusion. I didn’t want to go back to Liberte. Lucius Keeva had said it would be suicide, and there was a very good chance he was right. I remembered those heads on poles. Once madness sets in and crowds are out for blood, a place won’t be safe until sanity is restored, and judging from historical reports of such events, that could be years. Or decades.
The French Revolution wasn’t the model for this. The Turmoils were. They’d taken almost twenty years to burn themselves out.
And they’d only really stopped the insane killings when the Mules themselves, experienced and trained at crowd control, had taken over under a new guise again.
They’d gone on long after the mobs had killed every bioimproved person that could be easily spotted and onto killing anyone who was a little too beautiful, a little too fast, a little too smart, though not smart enough to hide it.
But Simon had been captured, and if Lucius—and Alexis—were right, then he’d be used as a bargaining chip in a power game. But bargaining chip or not, he was going to end up dead.
Right.
I realized that as satisfying as kicking out the plate glass—if it wasn’t transparent dimatough—window of Lucius Keeva’s room might be, the thing to do was to get out of here as quietly and as quickly as I could, and to find my way back to Liberte.
Fortunately, Lucius had left that option open by telling me I could go anywhere I wished in the house, provided I didn’t upset the guards.
I went back to the bedroom and found my slippers, and put them on my bare feet. They were the dance slippers I’d worn to the ball. Immensely impractical, but better than nothing. Then I tried to think through what I’d need.
Money. That was the first thing. I’d need cred gems. Preferably unmarked credgems. And I’d need weapons, and I’d need—I sighed—to get a lot of awful hair dye again and perhaps a dress even more awful than the pink one.
I had nothing to sell. Robbing Keeva seemed foolhardy, and at any rate what, other than his liquor, could bring any substantial money?
I eyed the cut-crystal decanters with their mysterious contents, and then told myself it was stupid. I had no idea what liquor was good, or even expensive, on Earth.
Then I thought that Simon had opened an account for me. Not much—at least not by his reckoning—but enough to get me immediate necessities or little luxuries if I went out shopping alone.
I’d never gone shopping alone. Unlike most women, I’d never understood the purpose of shopping for its own sake, and he insisted on giving me things before I’d even expressed an interest in them.
But I remembered there was an account with the main bank of Liberte—Finance de Liberte—and that it was coded to my genetic print.
I wondered if the revolutionaries had taken over banks. I didn’t think so. Not yet. They were still very much in the phase of breaking things and killing people, and I doubted they’d thought of more sophisticated things, like hacking into bank accounts.
So, I needed to find a bank.
I headed out of Keeva’s lodgings, in the sort of purposeful walk that makes people assume you know what you’re doing. Which, of course, is particularly important if you don’t.
I wandered purposefully down three consecutive corridors, until I glimpsed what looked like daylight. At which point I collared the impeccably uniformed and very young man guarding the doorway and said, “Pardon me, could you tell me the way to the nearest bank?”
He blinked at me, in utter confusion. Then gulped and turned very red. This might have been the effect of interacting with a woman, or at least with a woman outside of an official framework. Or it might have been that he wasn’t good at personal interaction with any human being. He swallowed hard and said, “Down the street. Turn right at the clock. It’s the first building on the right.”
I thanked him and wandered down the street, with my hands in the pockets of my borrowed outfit, trying to look casual and at home. It came home to me that my looks were a real problem. Men stared at me. The more subtle of them tried not to gawk directly or at least not to stare. But the younger just looked. Women looked too, often with some malice.
The men and women all seemed to be in some form of uniform, which might be the other reason they stared at me: because I wasn’t. Also, I started wondering about something else. I’d noticed in my time in Liberte, and when interacting with people from Olympus and other seacities or territories, that they all had slightly different gestures, slightly different ways of standing, slightly different ways of holding themselves up. Which is to say, they would have stuck out as different, as strangers in Eden. I remembered when I’d first met Kit’s wife, who’d been raised on Earth, and how odd her every gesture, her way of moving seemed.
Eden is a small place. Sure, some professions—my own old profession as a navigator of darkships, for instance—had their own slang, and their own way of behaving. But that was conscious and by choice, and not something you learned from birth to identify as the normal way to do things.
I started worrying long before I reached the bank. If I stuck out like a sore thumb everywhere I went, would there be any point in going back to Liberte? They could identify me, track me, arrest me, kill me or use me as a hostage.
In the back of my mind, I heard Lucius say “It’s a suicide mission.” I didn’t want to commit suicide. For one, my committing suicide would not help Simon. I needed to go in, fit in, bring him out.
Right then and there it seemed impossible.
The coward in me—and I’m not really a coward, I think, but there is a coward in my mind, one who tries to convince me to take the easy way every time—whispered that I should just stay here and let Liberte take care of itself. After all, I’d escaped with my life.
But it was not that easy. Year after year, I’d wonder if I could have saved Simon, and feel like I should have. It was no use telling myself it would have done no good. If I didn’t try it, I couldn’t be sure.
Like that, I was standing in front of the bank. It had never occurred to me to fear that it might be one with employees, because the only bank I’d seen was the one where Simon had taken me, when he’d established my account. And I wasn’t even sure if it normally had human employees, or if it was an exception made for him.
In any case, I must have feared it at the back of my mind, because I felt perceptible relief when I entered the swinging glass doors and found myself in a broad, polished white ceramite lobby, surrounded by row upon row of teller booths.
This was one step up from the place where you either pushed in your thumb or your credgem. The booths were usually controlled, ten to one operator, which meant they could handle more complex operations than simply withdrawing or depositing credits.
A lucky break since it had just occurred to me I needed to do some fancy financial work. If I didn’t, if I left my money in an account in Liberte, then sooner or later the revolutionaries would find a way to breach the accounts. It was an unfailing habit of revolutionaries to take the property of those they deemed had offended them. If Lucius Keeva was telling the truth, even the Usaians had taken most of his home for their headquarters.
I let that thought go, as right then the Usaian movement was the least of my concerns. Instead, I advanced to the nearest empty booth, and closed the door behind me. I checked that the door opened several times before closing it and locking it.
It was one thing to lock myself in a small room of my own volition; another and completely different to allow someone else to lock me in. One of them was unpleasant, the other was crazy-making. In fact, part of the reason I had decided to stay on Earth had been that. I couldn’t stand the idea of being locked in a vehicle, alone, stranded months’ travel away from the nearest source of help. It had been fine before. But now I was aware of what it might mean.