A Few Good Men (16 page)

“Quite,” Nat said. He lit another cigarette and leaned on the table, very businesslike. “I don’t think we can do much about it,” he said, then, probably in answer to my expression, “I don’t mean my family’s fertility. That’s my parents’ business. Feel free to take it up with them if you feel the need.”

“I don’t have anything against or for it either way.”

“Good, because we have far more important business. Tomorrow we’ll go out, secretly, and meet with people. Martha, I suppose, but also Abigail and then, later St. Cyr and Rainer. We hadn’t meant for this to start right now, but I think . . .” He narrowed his eyes and blew a perfect ring of smoke. “I think that it might be time to start the revolution.”

Like a Thief in the Night

We put Goldie in a terrible spot. I unlocked the door, and a procession of servants removed the meal.

Nathaniel got up and said, “I’ll go back home.”

“But you can’t,” I said. “We’re on perimeter alarm.”

“For the seacity,” he said. “And electromagnetic shielding and missile shield and—”

“But my house is shut down.”

“Of course,” he said. “Your house will be the main target. But there is a tunnel between your house and mine. Please, tell me you and my uncle knew this?”

I shook my head. “Why would we?”

“Oh. Well. There’s sentinels in it, so I suspect it would have done you no good for clandestine meetings. My father uses it sometimes, just to avoid the weather, and I suppose it never occurred to anyone to tell you about it. It connects near the offices. My house is included in the perimeter. Think about it, with my family generally being the main administrators to yours, of course we were set up to undergo a siege with you and still be able to come and go.”

I thought that on my side that had been a single person, in new bodies. I suppose when you’re over three hundred years old you get set in your ways. Trusting a Remy would make sense, and seeing your future general overseer grow up and vetting him before he ever came of age would be terribly cozy.

So I nodded to Nat. He said, “I’ll arrange matters tomorrow, as we discussed. And meanwhile your guard probably knows what to do better than you do, but lock your door in either case. Come, Goldie.”

Goldie took two steps with Nat towards the door, then turned back and walked all the way to me.

Nat sighed and smiled, and shook his head. “Come, Goldie.”

Goldie took three steps towards him. Then he looked towards me. Then he sat down, exactly between us, and thumped his tail hard on the floor.

Nat looked at me in confusion. I cleared my throat. “He could stay with me.”

Nat shook his head. “He needs his walk in the garden before going to bed, and I don’t think you can do that. Or rather, I don’t think you should. You are a particular target, I’m not.”

I thought I’d be risking Goldie and I couldn’t bear that. So I patted him and squatted to be level with his face. “Go with Nat,” I said, pushing him in that direction. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Go, boy.”

He went reluctantly, looking back at me like we were being mean by forcing him to choose. Hadn’t Max done this, too? Or perhaps Goldie had mostly slept with Max?

I waited till my room was clear, and then Sam Remy came in to report on supplies and provisions for siege, since this was siege. He looked grave but perfectly calm, and I started to think that Nat and I had exaggerated the whole danger. Surely this had happened before in the history of Good Men. Once they realized I knew nothing—or had known nothing—and made no move to attack them or their position, they would forget about me. I might never be very important in their councils. In fact now that I knew what they were, I didn’t want to be very important in their councils. It was like being well received among the finest ghouls. But they’d forget me. Olympus was a small seacity and not particularly wealthy. It wasn’t worth their trouble. A few days of siege and then this would revert to normal and I’d be the Good Man.

After Sam left, I ran a bath, because I could. I couldn’t find anything to sleep in, which disturbed me more than it would have at one time. I used to sleep naked, when I was young. But in Never-Never, conscious that I was probably watched every minute, I’d got in the habit of sleeping in my suit. Now I felt like I couldn’t sleep without it, and there was nothing like it in the wardrobe.

So I settled for shorts and a loose tunic, the kind of thing people wore around the house in summer. I made sure to choose from the drawers that Nat had said were Max’s. Now I knew what my father—I still had no other name for him—had been, the idea of wearing his clothes had turned into a near-physical repulsion, a sense of the fabric itself being tainted. I would not touch them. Tomorrow I’d have them taken away and see if I could get new clothes. And I’d see if my furniture was stored somewhere in the house, too.

Meanwhile, I crawled into the big bed, wishing that I could have kept Goldie, wishing I didn’t feel so alone. It had all seemed so simple, even if it had all seemed to be my fault. I still preferred simple to complex. And that guilt was like an old friend, like a blanket I’d held over myself for all these years. And now . . . Now I was truly alone, truly forsaken. And people wanted to kill me. People had wanted to kill me for a long time. My father, for one. Apparently since birth.

I stared at the ceiling, blankly, thinking this room was too big. I’d have a wall built around the bed. I’d have—

Now you’re just being crazy,
Ben said.
You know I always told you that you weren’t guilty.

“Ben?”

Right here. Always right here. I told you I wouldn’t leave you alone.

I turned and fell asleep.

And woke with Goldie licking my face, ten seconds before the room exploded.

All right, in retrospect, the room didn’t explode. But that is what it felt like to me. A blaze of light, the zing of a burner, a scream.

I yelled “Lights,” and the light came on, and Nat stood at the side of my bed, a burner in each hand.

And I reached for the burner I’d slipped under my pillow—I told you I’m never without one, not by choice—and cut down the Scrubber who stood by my door and who was aiming at Nat, before he could fire. And then Nat cut his fellow down. Just to be sociable I shot the next. Nat held up the side by taking the remaining ones out. As he fell, I noted they were all Scrubbers.

And then we were both of us awake in a brightly illuminated room, with six corpses, and Goldie nowhere in sight.

“Goldie?” Nat called, as he holstered the burners, which is when I realized he was wearing only his underwear and two holsters. As a fashion choice went, it was odd enough, but what was more remarkable was that he seemed perfectly composed wearing it. “Goldie!”

A whine-bark came from under the bed, and Nat called him again. I could hear in Nat’s voice fear that Goldie was hurt, but when Goldie came out, tail between his legs, it became obvious that he was just scared.

It was only when Nat had run his hands over Goldie and satisfied himself about this, that I realized the door to my room was open, blown up on its hinges. And Nat was on a com before I could think I should do it. “Father? Father? Dad?”

There was enough of a delay in answering that my heart started hammering in my chest with almost painful strength, and I realized I couldn’t bear for Sam Remy to be dead. He’d been . . . as close to a normal father to me as people who have real fathers have. Besides if he died, Nat would be in charge, and right then I didn’t think that was a good idea. Nat looked over his shoulder at me, and I thought he was thinking the same thing I did. “Daddy?” Nat’s voice was suddenly much, much younger.

Then Sam’s voice came on, “Yes, son. You’re in the Good Man’s room. How is Luce—the Patrician?”

“He’s well. Unscathed. But we have six bodies to dispose of.”

“Ours?”

“Scrubbers.”

“Ah.”

“Are you—”

“I’m fine. I was just getting the resealing crews to start. I didn’t realize any Scrubbers had got in. There must be a hole somewhere else in the house. I repelled them at the front door, though the door was damaged.” There was some sudden talk, a couple of shouts in the background, and Sam’s calm, very tired voice. Then Sam came back. “There was a breach at the kitchen door. A couple of people wounded. None dead. It seems the . . . ah . . . Scrubbers were too intent on making it to the Good Man to make sure that the victims were well and truly killed.”

“If they’d killed him they’d then have made sure afterwards,” Nat said, his voice flat.

“Likely. Son . . . uh . . . You . . .”

“I came in through the tunnel. From the . . . the secret tunnel.” A hesitation and a sigh, as if he were confessing something terrible and his shoulders were thrown back, as though he anticipated and prepared for censure. “Max and I had a secret tunnel.”

“Oh.” Sam said and, unaccountably, he sounded both worried and relieved. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to sound both. “Nat, it might be best if you stay . . .”

“I will sleep in front of my master’s door,” Nat said, an ironical note in his voice. “As soon as someone can get the corpses out of that spot. And, uh . . . cleans the carpet. Or takes it out. Or something. I refuse to sleep in a pool of blood.” He looked at the door to my room, hanging on its hinges. They’d cut with burners on the hinge side, soundlessly. “It would also be a good idea if someone repaired this damn door. And if a guard were put outside all doors.”

“How secure is your secret entrance?” his father asked.

“No one ever found it that Max and I didn’t tell about it, and the two people in this world who know about it right now wouldn’t talk. Possibly not even under torture.”

“I see.”

In moments, Sam and what looked like a battalion of helpers arrived. The corpses were carried out, the carpet, fortunately not attached to the floor, was taken out also. The marble floor beneath the carpet was scrubbed. It all took no more than minutes. The door was repaired.

Sam frowned and smiled at Nat at the same time, and told him he was a good boy, in the exact same absentminded tone that Nat used for Goldie, but I thought there was more emotion there, just not an absolute certainty on how to express it. Then he told me I was a good boy, too, which just goes to show you how tired and distracted the man was, because calling me a good boy was roughly like calling a mastiff a nice puppy.

One of the servants came back with a blue silk robe which Sam handed to Nat, saying, “You’d best put this on.” I wasn’t sure exactly what the robe did, except hide the holsters. I could see from Nat’s look that he wasn’t entirely sure either. Except perhaps he should be protected from my notorious self.

I’d like to say right now and for posterity that the thought of laying a hand on Nat Remy hadn’t even crossed my mind. Certainly not while he was ably fighting off intruders, no matter what his state of undress. And not even afterwards. Laying hands on Nat Remy, I thought, would be much like laying hands on nitroglycerin: only to be attempted if one had tired of living.

In no time at all, the room was empty save for me, and Nat and Goldie. And the door was closed.

Nat opened the closet, got out a blanket, rolled himself in it, and laid down on the floor across the door. So that whole thing hadn’t been figurative.

“Why . . . why did you come back?” I asked.

He sighed, as I turned the lights off, and his voice sounded much younger than he was, in the dark. “I went home, and then I thought this was possible. Though I never thought it was probable. But the fact that my father decided to sleep in his office, to supervise security . . . well. I thought I’d come through the tunnel and check on you. And Goldie and I had just come in, when the door came down. I’d come in the dark the whole way, so I saw them clearly. You know the rest.”

“I know the rest,” I said. “The tunnel. You’ll have to show me where it is. It doesn’t seem safe to me.”

“It’s very safe,” he said, defiant. “I hadn’t even told my father. He’d never even suspected it before. And no one ever found it. It’s secure.”

“But, for the love of . . . why the tunnel? Why in hell a tunnel to this room of all places?”

There was a long silence, a forceful exhalation. And then a defiant voice, in the dark, “Because I slept in this room almost every night.”

And then Ben’s voice, distinct, in my ears,
Stop being dense, Luce. And stop picking on the boy.

“I wasn’t picking on him,” I said sullenly.

“What?” Nat said.

“Nothing,” I said, with immense dignity. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“But—”

“And it’s none of my business, either,” I said to both of them. “And I couldn’t care less.”

“Fine then,” Nat said.

In my mind Ben chuckled. I punched my pillow and turned on my side, as I felt Goldie jump on the bed and climb in beside me. It really was none of my business. Sam Remy could take his suspicions and . . . and do whatever with them. I wanted nothing to do with Nat. I wanted nothing to do with anyone, in fact.

Now that I knew that even if I married, I could never produce offspring, all I wanted was for people to stop trying to kill me. Then I could be the best Good Man possible for my city. And when I died, hopefully of old age, it could all do whatever it wanted. By then I would have—hopefully—arranged for safety for my retainers. No one could ask more of me.

I turned again and punched the pillow again.

The problem, Luce, and you know it all too well, is that it’s highly unlikely they’ll stop trying to kill you. Not when they just organized an expedition against your house. You’re going to have to come up with a better plan.

I was going to have to come up with a plan. I was going to have to come up with a better defense. Much as I appreciated Nat’s loyalty, how much did I want to trust him with my safety?

Goldie got really close to me and licked my face. I put an arm over his soft, warm body.

I don’t remember falling asleep.

I knew I’d wake up to a world that would never be the same. Not for me.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
WE DECLARE THE REVOLUTION

Lord and Master