A Few Good Men (12 page)

What I didn’t expect was that as he pulled back the hood of his suit, he revealed the pale, precisely cut hair of Nathaniel Remy.

He pulled off his goggles and oxygen mask and threw them on the floor as though they annoyed him. “Order perimeter,” he said, and his voice cracked with what had to be exhaustion.

“Beg pardon?”

“Perimeter alarms,” he said. “And electromagnetic shield at least over the terrace. Too easy for them to come that way.” He walked towards the door to the terrace and locked it, and much to my shock, because I couldn’t imagine why he’d have the family codes, punched in the code to activate security on that door, so it wouldn’t open under anything including an armed assault. It was, like the front door, dimatough, because my father had been a paranoid bastard.

I didn’t move. I was too stunned. The last five hours had been insane, but this just might top it: Nathaniel Remy, trained lawyer and clerk of my house, wearing an illegal broomer’s suit, and showing that he was no stranger to air battles, as well as hell on broomback. When in the name of all that was holy—or unholy—had he learned such a skill? What did he do with it? Highjack drug transports in the dark of night? What could he possibly mean to do? And how did he know the family codes? Who was he? What did he want?

He gave me a darkling look, as he undid his suit and pulled it off, to reveal the outfit he’d been wearing before, but which was now clinging to his body in sweaty patches. “Please, Patrician,” he said, emphasizing my title with a near-ironic exasperation. “Would you call the front door and tell them to lock and to exert siege measures? They can very well rush through the front door, you know? And while committing suicide is your prerogative, I think you owe it to your retainers not to let them be cut to pieces and made to disappear just because you got the Scrubbers on your ass, sir.” The last “sir” rang with ironic strength.

He was right. I went to the com panel on my desk, and punched through to my security and guards, and barked instructions for siege measures. They’d only been used, once, in my time before arrest, when my father was having a trade war with another Good Man, one he didn’t trust not to attempt to kill him, but no one questioned or demurred in following them. Instead they jumped to it. I heard people running in the hallways, orders barked, and shortly the house announcement system crackled, informing everyone we were now under siege measures, no one would get into the house without being personally approved by myself or Samuel Remy, and that anyone who was out had to be approved and searched before being allowed in, similar measures would apply on supplies that might be incoming.

And Nathaniel Remy had dropped onto one of the spectacularly uncomfortable-looking ornate chairs and was shaking, his hands over his face. I wondered if he was wounded, then realized he was shaking with exhaustion. Berserkers don’t feel it until they come down and then it hits them all at once. I wondered how long the battle had been going on, before I joined.

I stepped over to the bottles of liquor I’d seen earlier, uncorked the brandy that had been my father’s favorite, poured one of my father’s dainty crystal goblets full to the brim, and tapped Nathaniel on the shoulder. He removed his hands from his face and looked at me with a dull expression. I pushed the goblet at him, and for a moment I thought he would say he didn’t drink, but instead he took it by the stem and drank it in one gulp, though he was still shaking so much that his teeth chattered against the crystal.

“Thank you,” he said, at length, and took a deep breath, and seemed to shake less.

“How long have you been fighting?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “There was a while before Simon— I found them, in ambush. And we didn’t have guards on duty, and besides, these are Scrubbers. If I lost that battle, they’d kill me. But they’d also kill anyone else who’d joined on my side. I couldn’t involve the guards.” He looked baleful. “They’re not free to choose to join battle or not.”

“I understand,” I said, and filed for future reference the fact that Nathaniel not only knew what Scrubbers were but seemed to have an inflexible moral code that included keeping innocents out of the fray, even if the innocents were trained guards. Annoying though the man might be, that was one quality I couldn’t help but find admirable.

He looked up at me and barked a half-laugh. “You do, don’t you? Odd.” His hands were patting at himself, the way they’d done before when he’d been looking for his cigarettes, but this time, perhaps not being in the grip of such a strong emotion, or perhaps being tired, he remembered himself and stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I smoked this morning without asking you, didn’t I?”

I shrugged. “Never mind. Smoke again, if you wish.” I took the porcelain box from the drawer I’d hidden it in, and opened it, offering it to him as an ashtray.

He looked at it, then at me, brought out the cigarette case and extracted one, which he shook to light. “Thank you kindly, Patrician Keeva,” he said. “I was dying for a smoke.”

For some reason his using my title annoyed me. “Call me Lucius,” I said. “I don’t know how you kids consider these things, but when I was a broomer, if you’d fought beside each other, you were broomer-brothers, and there were no barriers and no titles between you.”

He looked at me, and his eyebrows arched, and I got the odd impression that I was being measured very carefully. “Very well,” he said. “Lucius. And you may call me Nat. Nathaniel is a mouthful and not even my mother uses it. And Remy is my father.”

I got the odd impression I was being offered a high honor in his agreeing to call me by my name, instead of my granting him a boon by allowing the familiarity.

He took a deep lungful of tobacco smoke, then expelled it. “I suppose,” he said, “we will need to talk.”

“I believe so,” I said. Unless I had become completely insane, I was facing something I simply didn’t have the data to understand. And I wanted the data—I wanted to understand—now.

It wasn’t amazing he’d shaken. It wasn’t amazing he looked like someone had dropped a mountain on his back, or like he’d aged ten years since I’d last seen him. What was amazing was that he was alive and coherent.

“Can I have dinner for two delivered to the room?” I asked him.

He blinked at me. “What?”

“Pardon me. Of course I can have dinner delivered. I am, after all, the Good Man. What I meant was, will you dine with me? If I have dinner brought in?”

He gave something that might be a laugh or a cough but which somehow sounded sad. “It’s not necessary.”

“Sure it is. You’ve been fighting for what? Half an hour at least. You need something.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, and made little circles, as though massaging it. The sort of gesture someone made to get rid of an unbearable headache. Or to avoid crying, but I didn’t think Nathaniel Remy was the type to burst into tears. “What I need,” he said, flatly, “is a good dose of cyanide.”

I had to assume he was joking. “No such luck,” I said. “I wanted one of those for years. If I couldn’t have it, you can’t either.”

He looked up, and again there was the shocked laugh-cough. “Do as you will, Patri—Lucius. I’m starting to believe you’re the sort who will always pretty much do so, whether it is advisable or not.”

I called down and ordered a dinner for two, confusing the kitchen by telling them I didn’t care what was provided as long as it was fast, warm and had at least two courses. Just before I flicked the link off, Nat said, “Tell them to bring Goldie. I left him in the kitchen, in care of Mrs.—in care of the cook’s adjutant because I was walking him when they—when I got the call about what you’d been up to.”

I snapped, “And bring Mr. Remy’s dog, which he says he left in the care of the cook’s adjutant. Have someone walk Goldie up before the dinner is ready, please.” I spoke more tersely than I meant to.

When I turned around, Nat was smoking as if it were the most important thing in the world and required his whole concentration.

“Keep that up,” I said sharply. “And you won’t need cyanide.”

He laugh-coughed and looked at his cigarette as though he’d never seen one before. “What? These?” he said. “My dear Lucius! Have you not kept up with science? They’re practically non-carcinogenic these days.”

“I’m not your dear Lucius and you don’t believe that any more than I do. If you smoke enough, even trace carcinogens will get to you.”

“No,” he said. I wasn’t sure to what he was replying.

“Look,” I said. “I know you don’t like me. I don’t know why but, of course, there is no reason you should like me. Plenty of people have not liked me in my life, starting with my father. But you saved my life today, and I appreciate that.”

He gave me a half-smile. “Likewise. But don’t feel exaggerated gratitude, please. I have three very good reasons to keep you alive. The first is that without you we’ll be at the mercy of every Good Man who chooses to take us over. Mind you, please, you might just have involved us in a war, but—never mind. At least you present an appearance of legality to the world-at-large, who doesn’t know what is really going on.”

“I don’t know what’s really going on.”

Cough laugh and a deep pull on his cigarette, and Nat shook his head. “Clearly. You shall be enlightened. Second, while you rub me wrong on the personal level, I don’t think you’ve done anything to deserve the long shitstorm that’s been unleashed on you, or the one that’s still to come.” He paused and sucked on that cigarette as though his life depended on it. His long, elegant fingers were nicotine-stained. His ornate silver ring glowed dully and I realized it encircled the finger normally used for a marriage ring. Was Nat married? If so, what was he doing involving himself in aerial battles? Didn’t he have a responsibility to his family?

“And the third?”

“The third? Oh. Right, the third. My father likes you. My father and I have . . . our differences. But one thing he’s very good at is telling the sheep from the goats, or in this case the sheep dogs from the wolves. He likes you. He says—” He shook his head. “Never mind. He likes you. And because he likes you, I assume you’re a worthwhile human being.”

“I’m glad—” I started intending to say that I was glad Sam Remy liked me, but I didn’t think he knew the half of it. He might or might not know what his brother and I had been up to, but he wouldn’t know, couldn’t know how Ben had died. Not if he liked me still. And besides, Sam couldn’t possibly know
me
. He’d known twenty-two-year-old me, but there had been so many years since. That pampered princeling was as dead as Ben.

But I didn’t say anything because there was a knock on the door, and one of the younger servants that I didn’t know came in with a curly-haired golden setter by his side. He looked so much like Bonnie, which my mother had got me, and which my father had got rid of when I was ten, that I couldn’t help smiling. Seeing Nat, Goldie came into the room, tail wagging, and put his head on Nat’s lap. Nat patted him and told him, “Sit. Sit, sir,” while I nodded at the servant to leave.

I don’t know how well-trained Goldie was. My own experience with setters tended to make me think they were the dumb blondes of the canine world, and all the training in the world might as well fly in and out through their ears. But he ignored Nat’s order to sit, and instead turned towards me. The tail that had wagged madly went between the legs, and the ears went back. The defensive-aggressive posture of a dog facing someone he thinks is going to kick him. Great. Even dogs hated me.

But Nat scratched at the base of the dog’s ears. “It’s all right Goldie. He’s ugly, but he doesn’t bite.” A quick glance at me and he started to rise. “I’ll take Goldie to my father, shall I? One of my brothers can—”

I dropped into a squat, so I wasn’t looming over the dog. I was still much larger than him, of course. “Come here, Goldie. Come here, boy.”

Goldie hesitated half a second, then seemed to decide I was safe. His tail started again, and he rushed to me, ears flying. Moments later, I was fighting to make him stop licking my face, exerting pressure on his hindquarters to make him sit, and Nat had forgotten to smoke, and was holding his cigarette in what seemed to be nerveless fingers, while the ash grew long.

I managed to make Goldie sit, and stood up, leaning a little to scratch his ears. “There boy, I’ve already washed my face. Nat, I’d appreciate it if you shook that ash off before it falls and burns the carpet.” And, as he obeyed, reflexively, I cast a disgusted look at the carpet. “Not that this is worth saving. I swear it looks like my father’s stuff. If this was Max’s taste I don’t think highly of it. I wonder where my furniture is. You said they never throw anything away.”

“It must be your voice,” Nat said, looking at Goldie and me. Goldie was now leaning on my leg. “Or perhaps your smell. You are wearing Max’s clothes.”

“Uh?”

“Goldie,” he said. “I’ll explain. After . . . when they bring dinner.”

Which they did immediately, wheeling in a table, with tablecloth and all, and a serving cart. It was a regular procession that came into my room. I’d had dinner brought to my room before, sometimes to share with Ben, but I’d never had this type of thing. Usually our dinners came on a large tray. I guessed it was different when you were the Good Man.

In the lead, two servants pushed a wheeled table, with white tablecloth. Following them were two servants, one carrying two branched candlesticks with candles—candles?—and the other carrying a tray with plates, glassware and silverware. Following them came two more servants wheeling a multi-tier serving cart, of the kind that has surfaces to keep food cold and surfaces to keep food hot, and which contained more covered trays, platters of fruit and vegetables, tastefully arranged cheese plates and silver trays with dainties than would feed a family of ten for three days. And following those were other, uniformed servants carrying two chairs.

Before I could blink, the table was set by the window, the candles burning, the lights dimmed—did they think this was a romantic assignation? Had rumors of my misdeeds preceded me? No. It was just that my father probably only had dinner for two in this room when it was an assignation—plates and silverware in place, the serving cart disposed nearby, and a servant disposed behind each chair, waiting to serve us. That wouldn’t do, not if I wanted Nat to talk. And Nat wanted to talk. I could see it in his eyes. And frankly, I needed him to talk, if I was going to stay alive in this brave new world.