A Few Good Men (11 page)

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t have time to argue it. I was in his office. That meant, by definition, we were surrounded by his men. And there was naked hatred in his eyes, and I didn’t know who or what he was, but he wasn’t my friend Javier. There was neither refuge nor protection here. There was neither advice nor affection, not even the consolation of talking to someone else who had been friends with Ben. What there was instead was danger.

The moment I let go of him, he would call his security, if he didn’t just get a burner and try to kill me. The alternative was I killed him, but every sense rebelled at the idea. I couldn’t kill Javier, even if he’d gone insane.

I transferred both his hands to one of mine. Easier said than done, while he squirmed and fought, but I was bigger, and I was much stronger than I’d been when I’d last seen him. With one hand, I unclipped my broom. There are ways to hit a man that won’t kill him. I’d have to try really hard for one of those, as out of practice as I was.

As the broom hit him, I thought nothing had happened. He opened his mouth as though to scream, and I let go of his hands to clamp my hand over his mouth. But then he convulsed and went still. Was he dead? I couldn’t stop to see. I was in danger. Someone could come in any minute, and how would I explain this?

I grabbed my broom, went to the terrace, and took off. I was well away from the island when I realized I should have called for help. After all, I was now a Good Man. Who would try to stop me, if I said Javier had had a stroke, or something.

But then, when Javier woke up he would accuse me of . . . what? Being impossible to kill? Javier had tried to kill me? I felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under my feet. I might not have trusted him as implicitly and as wordlessly as I trusted Hans, but I had trusted him nonetheless.

What insane world had I escaped to? Perhaps it would have been better if I had drowned in my jail cell after all.

The World Turned Upside Down

Some instinct, some feeling, prevented me going home at once. No, I don’t know what except thinking that Javier might have woken up, and if he woke up, he would try to send people to intercept me on the way to Olympus. He would assume I would return there, right?

So instead, I took a detour, and went to Liberte Seacity, where I landed on a deserted beach.

I’d had some time to think, and thought the best thing I could do was to talk to some of my other old friends. Perhaps they could explain what was happening, and perhaps they could tell me what had happened to Javier and why he spoke that way. Perhaps it was a stroke, I thought. In which case, my hitting him on the head could have done no good at all. But I didn’t see how I could have got around it. I couldn’t even find the stuff I needed to bind him, could I? There hadn’t been anything I could use nearby. And to let go of him and go in search of it, I’d have needed to knock him out first, anyway.

No, I’d done the only thing I could, even if the violence of it bothered me. I didn’t want to fight and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. There had been enough of that, and anything that required me to do more of it, made me feel tired and old. Very old.

So I landed and took the portable links out. One of them had a series of programmed numbers, but I recognized none of them, so I took the other and dialed another of the Hellions—Josia Bruno, from New Verona Seacity. It took a while for him to answer because, I supposed that was his private number, and he was the Good Man, now. The face I got, floating midair, looked like Josia well enough. I’d chosen a deserted beach well, because landing in a broom was not strictly legal, but also so I could have sight as well as sound. But he didn’t look like he recognized me at all. Which I couldn’t blame him for, I supposed. I wouldn’t have recognized myself either. “Jos?” I said. “It’s Lucius.”

“It’s who?” he said.

“Lucius Keeva,” I said.

He blinked. “You mean . . .” he said. And then frowned. “Dante?”

Don’t ask me to explain it, please, but his expressions were all wrong. And what he said was all wrong. I pressed the phone off and took a deep breath.

Perhaps I was the one who had gone crazy. Perhaps I had gone completely around the bend and just hadn’t realized it. Perhaps . . .

On a whim, on a desperate moment of insanity, I dialed Hans’s number. It rang and I reached for the turn off button, because who would have it, except maybe someone new who had been assigned it? Or the person who had inherited from his father—his brother? I had a vague memory that he had one, the only other of my friends who had had a brother, though in his case we all thought it was double insurance because his father was so old. He wanted to make sure that the line didn’t die out.

“Hello?” The face that appeared midair looked exactly like Hans, but there was no doubt it wasn’t him. I’d seen Hans dead.

“Hans?” I said, anyway, for lack of anything else to call this face.

“What? Jan. Jan Rainer. And you are . . . ?” His eyes widened suddenly. “It can’t be!” he said.

“My name is Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva, and I didn’t kill your brother,” I said. And in the annals of stupid things to say, that might take the cake.

The face hesitated, and I thought he was going to call me a murderer or threaten me with the law or something equally bombastic. But, proving once more that nothing would go as I expected today, instead he frowned, but in the way of a man who is thinking desperately through something. “Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous. But . . . how did you escape the execution? And where have you been these . . . fifteen years?”

“Never-Never,” I said. It didn’t even occur to me to lie. “Well, Never-Never for fourteen years, another jail for one.”

He blinked. “Oh. And you escaped in the breakout?” he asked. “It’s almost too . . . Have you gone home yet? To Olympus.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I . . . I got out and I tried to talk to Javier Nobles and I—”

“Javier?” he said. “How did you get away? Where are you now?”

I wasn’t so completely off my balance that I would tell him the last, but I said, “I hit him on the head. He might need help.”

Not-Hans shook his head. “Like hell. I hope the bastard dies.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“You really don’t know anything, do you?” Not-Hans said. “You were Hans’s friend. I thought that you— Clearly they thought you— But . . .” He paused. “Have you talked to Nat?”

“Nathaniel Remy? Yes, he’s arranging the papers for—”

Not-Hans looked exasperated, like someone dealing with a child or the mentally ill. “Go home,” he told me. “Go home now. As fast as you can. You are not safe.”

And with that Cassandra-like pronouncement, he turned off.

I could go home, of course. But I don’t take orders well and it hasn’t improved with time. So, instead, I pulled out the other link button and dialed the first pre-set at random. It rang for less than a second, and then a face that I couldn’t immediately recognize appeared midair. It was a handsome face, or at least it would be if you looked really up close and personal. At the first casual glance it was an unexceptional face, topped with short brown hair.

The bit-off words as he looked at me sounded like French, and he frowned and said, “You are not Max.”

“No,” I said. At least this reaction made sense, though it didn’t make sense that these buttons should be programmed to someone who expected to talk to Max, but perhaps the new possessor of the code was a friend of Max’s. “I’m his older brother, Lucius.”

“His older . . .” The man opened his mouth, closed it. “
Merde
,” he said, very carefully. “This is an unexpected . . . uh. Will you pardon me, for just
un petit moment
? My other link is ringing. It seems like . . .”

I couldn’t say why but I knew the other link was not-Hans calling him. And the face I’d just seen was the face of Good Man St. Cyr of Liberte Seacity.

I took a deep breath. None of this made sense, and I would presently wake up, safe and snug in my cell.

At that moment, the link buzzed loudly. I thought it would be Good Man St. Cyr again, and I pushed the call receiving button. But the face that formed, midair, glaring at me, was Nathaniel Remy’s. “You just couldn’t wait to stir up trouble, could you? You couldn’t even wait for the legal action to tell them there would be trouble on the horizon.” He didn’t look angry, though his words were forceful. He looked more exasperated and a little fearful. “Come home. I’ll keep watch. And then we need to talk.”

“I think I’m going insane,” I said, in response, not the least because one of my own servants was ordering me to come home. No, not even ordering me to come home. Exhorting me to come home, with the sort of gentle authority a mother or a nanny might use.

“Going?” he asked, and snorted. “Come home. I’ll . . . explain what I can.” He frowned. “Seems like I’ll have to, just to prevent you running your foolish head into trouble, won’t I?”

Without waiting for an answer he disconnected.

I could ignore his summons and not-Hans’s orders. Perhaps I should. I did not like the idea that they were telling me to go home. I did not like trusting in them. I was almost sure I didn’t like Nathaniel, though I would do a lot to spare his father grief or trouble. On the other hand, I had the feeling that not-Hans and Nathaniel, at least, were genuinely worried for me. Not about me, not about what I might do—though perhaps that too—but for me, and about what might happen to me. And I shivered thinking of Javier and Josia.

And then I got on my broom and went home.

Hell on Broomback

I’d taken part in many high-aerial broom battles. A few territorial disputes, a few fights over primacy. But those were never played for life or death. The stakes hinged on disabling brooms and, sometimes, on cutting off access to some place.

But the battle that raged just short of my rooms, in Olympus, was anything but for broom disabling.

From a distance I saw it, and wondered what my guards were doing. My guards. How odd to think of them that way. But then I had no reason to think that the men in black broomer suits with red piping, like the one I was wearing, weren’t in fact my guards. It didn’t explain how a guard suit had got in my secret storage, but it would make more sense than anything else.

This fight was for real, with burners blazing. As I watched, one of the probably-not-my-guards went plunging down, dead, his weight pulling his broom down.

I’d determined to go around and in through the front entrance, except as I got closer, I saw the people attacking the men who were probably my guards—or being attacked by them, it was hard to tell—were wearing the subtly better-tailored, distinctive non-reflective black broomer suits of Scrubbers.

I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried. There were three men against eight or so Scrubbers, probably ten originally—judging from two corpses down on the rocks near the ocean—and they were fighting like hell on broomback.

And anyone, anyone, including the devils of any mythology, who went against Scrubbers, were by definition friends of mine.

I jumped into the fray, burners blazing, wishing I’d brought the additional burners that I’d sequestered in my room. Fortunately I never, ever, ever leave home without at least two. And unless one of these burners failed, having more wouldn’t have helped. It’s not like I could also fire with my nose, or perhaps my elbow. In fact, given the need to maneuver quickly, I could only fire with one hand, the other being on the broom controls.

The moment I entered the battle, the Scrubbers converged on me. It was as well. I burned a swath towards my room, but even with my extraordinary speed, only managed to hit one of them—who fell towards the rocks—the others moved away too fast.

Not as fast as those people on my team did. Two of them, at least, seemed to be as fast as I was, and flanked me, aiming fire at people ahead of us.

A burner ray flew by my ear, and the man who had shot it screamed and fell. And I realized he’d been shot by the third man in the defenders group, who was not only as agile as the others, but who must be touched in the head because . . . well, let’s just say there are very good aerodynamic reasons why riding your broom upside down is near impossible. It is also one of the scariest things you can do. Relax the pressure of your thighs on the broom, and you’ll fall to your death. It does, however, leave both hands free for firing and gives you an unusual angle to fire from.

One of the Scrubbers shot at him, and I cut the Scrubber down, while still in the act of firing. I thought that there was no way the poor guy could right himself or maneuver in time to avoid getting shot. It would have been hard enough, if he’d been firing with both hands while flying head-up. But at least I’d avenge him.

Then I concentrated on shooting two more of the Scrubbers while they were aiming for my friends. And I ducked barely in time before a burner ray got me through the heart.

The problem with this sort of fighting is that there is no way to think and no way to plan. You fight by the sense that someone somewhere might be about to shoot you, and you duck out of the way when your premonition tingles and says they’re aiming for you. You don’t pause, you don’t think, you don’t slow down. And you don’t take time to breathe.

Until it’s one Scrubber alone, and he’s turning tail, and two of the not-guards are taking off in pursuit, but before you join them, there is the man who saved your life, and who should not have been able to right himself on his broom, or escape that burner ray, but who has, and is moving his fingers rapidly at you.

Broomers use sign language. You have to, when you’re flying midair, and half the time wearing a mask and goggles, and have to communicate with team mates to coordinate actions.

I hadn’t used broomer sign language in years, but this particular broomer was willing to repeat the same gestures over and over again until I got what he was saying. And what he was saying was:
To the terrace and inside now. Safer.

Right. Very guard like of him. I landed on my terrace, then went through the door into my room. The guard landed right behind me, which I expected.