Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  What we got instead was Monsieur LaForce coming back, cat-footed, and sliding back into his chair, sliding his burner on the table in front of him. The burner was good quality, I noted, better than the burners Simon’s guards had carried. I could see the settings from narrow cutting to total burn. He had it on total burn, and he had the safety off. It seemed foolhardy near a child, but then I realized LaForce had his eye on the child and was watching her carefully. I stopped paying attention to the burner and looked at him. He shrugged. “It could be,” he said. “There could be someone scouting around the house. You see, Madame managed the attack on the palace,” he said. “And I think the main reason was to get the list I found in Brisbois’s files. I’m sure he had it locked, but doubtless, having been married to him, she knows him very well. At least, she had somehow unlocked it,” he shrugged. “And so I assume all of us are in danger, all of us have had assassins sent against us.”

  “Because she hates modified people?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Because she knows we know she’s also one. After her appeal to the natural people, if such exist in any of the seacities, she can’t reveal herself to be more enhanced than any of them, can she?”

  “Could we reveal her as such?” I asked.

  “Corin, maybe, or Doctor Dufort,” he said. “No one else. Which is why she tried to eliminate the whole family. But still, you know, if it’s one or two of us saying it…but if it were a crowd, and there were files.”

  “Yes, I see,” I said, and I sort of did, though the politics of a land this big and with so many people seemed bewildering at the best of times. Something he’d said bothered me. “Would you say, honestly, that the objective of raiding the palace was to get the list? Not to imprison the Good Man?”

  He pursed his lips. “I suppose that is possible,” he said, “though I suspect she never thought she could do it. I mean, the Good Man is not that easy to capture. None of them are. People have tried for centuries.”

  It occurred to me with sudden clarity that while he knew Simon was made, a Mule and a clone of the last Good Man, he had no idea what made him different from the other Good Men. He didn’t know that for centuries the Good Men had their brains transplanted into the bodies of their putative sons. The previous Good Man, Simon’s father, had done that over the centuries. And he might have, with the experience of centuries, been a hardy survivor, difficult to kill. But Simon was my age and inexperienced in all these games.

  I thought of him throwing me at Brisbois, telling Brisbois to get me out of there, to get me out of danger. I thought of Brisbois who had tried, as hard as he could, to take me to Olympus and keep me there and safe. Now Simon, who had turned his last moments of freedom to taking care of me and not himself, was imprisoned, and Brisbois, who had tried so hard to keep me away from this madhouse, was probably dead. At least, I didn’t see how anyone could survive what had happened on the beach. And I was here, in the middle of the madhouse. And no one was going to save Simon but me. If I could figure out how to do it.

  LaForce was still talking. “I think she was so surprised at capturing the Good Man that she doesn’t know what to do with him. But…I don’t know if you’ve looked at the com.”

  “Only the…the…trials…or the…” I looked at the young girl, and searched for a word that she would not understand, and thought maybe, just maybe Jonathan LaForce knew enough history. “Madame la Guillotine.”

  “Oh, yes, that. That’s on most channels, yes, but there are others, though perhaps you need to know how to tune the com to get the frequencies from outside Liberte. Particularly the ones from Olympus.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, in silent questioning.

  “The armies of the Good Men are moving into position,” he said. “Strategically. Around the isle.”

  For a moment, I felt Simon’s arm around my waist, and heard his voice telling me those were just for show. “Simon,” I said, my mouth dry, and then corrected. “The Good Man said that those were for show, that they were likely empty, that if they hadn’t been empty they’d already have attacked, that—”

  “Ah, that,” Jonathan LaForce said. “That for sure. It was all a show of force without actual force. The Good Men were committing as many of their forces as they could to the fight with the Usaians of Olympus and its territories. They had nothing left for a true show of force. But the situation has changed. To take Liberte while we were governed and unified, while the defense troops were in place; while the Good Men’s secret service operated, they were going to need a lot of men.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. “Now? While we’re fighting and killing each other? Some people, after these last two days, after what Madame has done, would rather kill other people of Liberte and side with the armies of the Good Men. Whatever they were before, now the Good Men promise stability and an end to killing. And I don’t know what to do about it.” He looked up and his dark eyes met mine. “I had hoped Brisbois was with you, or that you knew where he was. He’s a cunning fox, Brisbois, and he could get us through this, even now. But Brisbois—”

  “Is probably dead,” Mailys said. “Or he’d have surfaced by now.”

  “Yes, that is what I believe too,” he said. “Which means we need to find a way to organize the scattered remnants for defense.”

  “We should free the Good Man,” I said. I saw doubt cross LaForce’s face, and I said, “Look, you might think whatever you want to of him. I know you think he was a fool for not listening to Brisbois and not realizing that Madame had undermined his authority, but he’s not stupid, and he knows this seacity and his people.”

  He made a face. “Yes, but…He’s not as cunning as he thinks. He was captured.”

  “That’s because he was trying to save me. I interfered with his ability to save himself,” I said.

  He pursed his lips. “All right. Perhaps. Women can do that to men. But all the same, I’m not sure…”

  “She’s right about one thing, at least,” Mailys said. “The Good Man is the only person, other than Brisbois, who knows most of the people on that list, and who probably has caches of information unknown even to Madame. If nothing else, it would allow us to gather the others, to defend ourselves and those like us.”

  “The Good Man is imprisoned,” Corin said. “I presume in the palace dungeons, if those still exist. You know what they call that prison. The Stronghold. Those people it swallows, it never disgorges again.”

  LaForce was quiet a long time. Then he put his finger to his lips, motioning us to be silent. He stood and walked down the hallway once again, and then looked through the back window at the dark backyard. He came back. “There are no sounds out there, but I think there are. I mean, I think there are people up front. At the back, I’d bet there aren’t.”

  “I could go listen and look,” Mailys whispered. “I have better senses than—”

  “My senses are enhanced enough,” LaForce said. “The question is, Madame Sienna here is suggesting that we get the Good Man out of prison to find the list with the rest of us. This might work or not. The Good Man…” He hesitated and gave me the sort of look people give you when they’re afraid you’re going to be offended. “The Good Man is, of course, very capable, but he’s not the most…responsible of beings. It seems to me he always cared more for himself than the people or even the land in Liberte.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Mailys said. “Sometimes I felt it was all an act. Brisbois thought it was an act, at any rate. That’s why he was loyal to the man. Loyal to the death.”

  I started to open my mouth to tell them of Brisbois meeting someone in the dark, then reconsidered. Really, what did I know? I had a feeling I couldn’t judge Brisbois at all, a feeling like something moved beneath my feet, like solid ground giving way. And then I was sure I heard a sound, from the front. I jumped up and reached for the burner.

  “Yes,” LaForce said, acknowledging my reaction. He swept a burner into his pocket, and then took the kitten from Tieri’s grasping hands
, and slipped him into his jacket pocket, closing the clasp on top of the little creature. “He’ll be quite safe, Tieri. And I’m going to take to you to my wife.” Then he spoke very quickly. “Look, I have just enough contacts and just enough reach that I will whip up a crowd in front of the palace, and we’ll get them to attack the prison.”

  “But—” Corin said. “The prison is impregnable.”

  “The prison was impregnable,” LaForce said. “When we guarded it. It’s also booby-trapped, but I know where those are and can disable them. I might be the last person alive and free who knows those codes, in fact. I will make it easier for us to get in. Yes, there will be guards. Some of them will be like Madame and Brisbois. But, my dears”—he spoke very quickly—“if we overwhelm them with force, they can’t stop us. Even supermen can’t stop a mob. There aren’t enough of them. And in this confusion, there will be enough people I can reach who have relatives in the prison and who want them out.”

  “But most of those—”

  “Conspired against the Good Man? At this point what difference does that make?” LaForce asked. “Most of them are chronic cases, who oppose all authority figures, and who will be as much against Madame as they were against St. Cyr. Any who were loyal followers of Madame will already be out.”

  “So, you’re going to gather a crowd?” Mailys said. “And us?”

  “If you can, without giving yourself away, go to as many of the houses of our people as you know, and try to get them out safely. Let us hope it’s not too late. I will take Tieri to a safe place. Bring as many of our people as you can to the plaza at…” He looked at the clock. “Midnight?”

  “Three hours?” Mailys said. “Will that be enough?”

  “No amount of time will be enough,” he said. “We must make of it what we can.”

  The sounds out front were now obviously footsteps and whispers. Perhaps not obvious to anyone with nonenhanced hearing, but I could discern them clearly enough. Jonathan LaForce grabbed a dark blanket from the com room sofa and wrapped Tieri in it so she was an indistinct package, which he threw over one shoulder. He opened the back door. He’d somehow managed to get his burner in his free hand and he stood very still, listening. Mailys killed the lights in the kitchen, but even dark against the dark, I saw LaForce move, quickly, with that catlike movement of his.

  An explosion sounded up front. Someone said, “Merde.”

  And we were running out the door, around the graves dug in the backyard. Rather than use the gate, which was locked, we scrambled over the wall at one corner, emerging in a packed dirt alleyway that smelled of lilac.

  We’d slept the day away and evening had fallen, with deeper blue shadows in the edge of the wall. We moved along the wall, away from the gate. It seemed to me there were human silhouettes by the gate, men who had been waiting for us.

  Then, behind us, the house we’d just left exploded, in blues and yellows, in deafening sound, in a shower of debris.

  Someone grabbed my hand and pulled and we ran along the wall, in the deeper portion of the shadows, our footsteps lost in the greater noise.

  The Gleaners

  The next three hours were the most bewildering I ever lived through. I was trying to process who I was and what I meant, in this particular context.

  Look, for years, ever since I’d known myself, I’d been the fastest, the smartest, the strongest in any gathering you’d care to mention. As such, I’d been responsible for all the others, the weaker and more vulnerable people. It had been my job to keep them from getting hurt and, sometimes, from hurting themselves.

  But now I was with two people, one of whom was at least my equal, and the other who didn’t seem much different. And we were going to houses in the dark, houses that I couldn’t find my way to on my own, trying to get the inhabitants to come with us.

  We didn’t separate. I didn’t know what to think about that. Surely we could have gone to more houses, faster, if we’d gone individually. On the other hand, we’d have been more unprotected. Did we do right? To this day I don’t know. One thing was sure. I couldn’t go alone. We took backyard paths and side streets. We climbed over walls and zigzagged along garden walks. We cut across woods and parks.

  I’d lost all sense of where I might be, even though one of the things engineered into me was a sense of direction. Oh, I could have told you where the Palace was, or what remained of it, at any given time. But I didn’t know where we were going, or where the individual houses were in the grand scheme of the seacity, so my sense of direction was useless and my sense of vision was not much better than normal people’s in the dark. Fine, it was better, but not as good as Len’s had been. So the night, dark and filled with acrid smoke of many fires, became sort of a dream landscape.

  I stumbled along, and sometimes Mailys or Corin would reach back and pull me, or one of them would put a finger to lips indicating silence.

  The first three houses we went to were gutted and empty. Whether the inhabitants had escaped or been burned inside was something none of us could answer. We moved on.

  In the fourth house, we found a couple. They recognized Mailys, who spoke hurriedly to them.

  After much discussion, on the beach, while walking to the next house, slogging through fine dry sand, Corin said, “We should send the children and old people to sanctuary.”

  “Sanctuary?” I said.

  “It’s a place,” Corin said, “Brisbois it had prepared for…the for the Good Man if he should need to escape. Most people don’t know of it, but I can take the first one there and charge him with opening doors.”

  “What if we let a traitor in?” Mailys asked.

  Once more I had the impression that while they were both children compared to me, and while she was probably around Corin’s age, she’d lived a more difficult life, or perhaps one that involved greater vigilance. After all, enhanced or not, he’d had parents and had lived with them. She was one of the…what had LaForce called them? Motherless ones. I too was motherless, I realized, even if a part of me protested at this and said that my foster parents had done the best they could, that they’d tried to protect me, keep me safe, teach me to be human. But it wasn’t quite true. They’d taught me to protect humans, which meant I wasn’t one.

  “Then we’ll have armed people we trust, ones who won’t let them out.”

  Mailys sighed. “I suppose we’ll have to risk it.”

  I felt very alone, as we stumbled to the next house and the next. The first had all able-bodied adults who chose to come with us. The second had two elders, who were not, no matter how enhanced, willing to risk their lives in a melee. Corin left with them, after arranging with Mailys to meet at some other house, and Mailys and I trudged on.

  As our group grew, we sent some ahead to wait at the plaza in front of the Palace with instructions not to be noticed and not to cause any trouble until we were there and they knew it was time to strike. Again and again we told them the time to strike would be obvious.

  We gave them no details in case we might be betrayed.

  And we walked to the next house. After a while it became obvious we were not only not taking the longest, most winding route but the least likely one, going to houses further on and backtracking to houses closer to us, winding and unwinding across the seacity, in a dark broken only by the light from occasional fires.

  “Of course,” Mailys said, when I told her. “We’re also avoiding all the places where we’ll come across possible hostiles.”

  My sense of direction reestablished, I realized we were going to homes of all social classes, in all sorts of places, from highest—both in money and placement—to lowest, in the area from which Brisbois and I had taken off. I wondered why enhanced people would be living in the almost-slum conditions in some of the places.

  Once, in the glow of a fire, it seemed to me I saw Brisbois walking with someone who, from his body type, looked a lot like Simon. If Simon were dead, I’d think they were both ghosts. As it was, I just looked away an
d we went deeper into the trees of a little wooded area, then up a lawn-smooth slope, and then, finally, to the door of a cottage next to a big house. The people there—husband, wife, and children—were all well and terrified. Corin joined us then and gave the wife instructions on where to take her children, while the father chose to come with us to the plaza. Along the way, Corin had taken word of where to go to some people with children whom we’d left behind.

  It seemed to me we’d been walking for hours when Mailys said it was time to start winding towards the plaza. I don’t know how many houses we’d alerted. It wasn’t enough and it certainly wasn’t everyone. So we had sent others on to continue looking.

  My feet hurt and my legs felt like they’d fall off as we climbed through a circuitous route, the path to the plaza in front of Simon’s palace.

  Party Line

  The plaza was full. At first I thought our recruiting efforts had successful beyond all expectations. Then I feared none of them had anything to do with us.

  I was wrong on both counts, I realized as I caught a glimpse of LaForce in the crowd. He had changed his clothes, and wore something that looked like a vending-machine worker suit in bright blue. There were other familiar faces in that crowd, faces I vaguely remembered seeing around the palace and which I had assumed were Simon’s surviving guards and other servants. There were a lot of them, too many considering how many people we had contacted. But then we’d recruited those people and told them to warn and recruit others. I knew the mechanics of exponential buildup, so I knew this was possible.