Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  “You can’t give up your responsibility just because you’re tired,” Brisbois said, softly, in the sort of voice a man uses to speak to an injured child. “I understand your exasperation, and I understand why you’re tired of it all. I approved of and agreed with your plan, remember? You were going to give up rule, and you were going to go off and be a colonist in the territories, with no more responsibility to Liberte than any other citizen.” He glanced sideways at me, for just a second, but suddenly I knew, with absolute certainty, as though it had been said, that part of Simon’s plan included marrying me. I wasn’t sure if I was offended at the idea that he thought he could just marry me if he wished, or if I was touched at his plan. Of course, someone like Simon wouldn’t know rejection. How could he? He’d been born the heir to the Good Man of Liberte. Anything within the confines of the isle would have been his for the asking. Everything except freedom to be himself.

  And on that I was flattered that he understood he couldn’t have me as his lady, as a Good Man. He wanted me as a friend and a partner, not a decoration. I looked at him with softer feelings than I’d ever entertained, as Brisbois went on, “Then when this horrible attack happened, I went along with the rougher plan that we were going to get you executed—and to hurry it up with false rescue attempts—so that you could disappear, knowing that at the same time that you and I were going to rescue every one of our kind we could. But that plan has escaped our hands as much as your former plan, Simon. We can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Simon’s protest had all the petulant defiance of the very young.

  “Because, Patrician, it’s gotten out of control. We meant to re-create the revolution, did we not, without the dark side of it? Well, you meant to do so. I wasn’t sure the feat was possible, but I liked the idea and encouraged you to try it. Except that, just like the first revolution, back in ancient France, it has all fallen in the wrong hands. For reasons beyond our control, you couldn’t stay in power and slowly guide people to greater freedom and a more equitable society. You were deposed, the palace was attacked, people got killed, and then Rose seized control and more people were killed.”

  “Rose…” Simon rubbed his hand across his face, as though trying to get rid of cobwebs. I wondered how tired he really was. “She is a problem.”

  “No, what Rose is,” Alexis said, “is insane. She’s not in control of the populace because she’s not in control of herself. There are ways people like us can go. We, I mean, not the improved ones, not people like Jonathan LaForce or Corin who are enhanced, but were still raised by real mothers and fathers, but people like Mailys and myself, and, I suppose you: the motherless ones, the surrogate born, the crèche raised. Once we find out who and what we are, we can come to terms with it and scream defiance in the face of the world, saying, yeah, I’m unnatural and what of it? I’ll show you what someone unnatural can do. Or we can hate what we are and envy everyone who was born of a real mother and a real father. We can let that corrode us and destroy the basic decency within us and our sanity too. It is insane to want what you can’t have. Most of us—you, I think—choose a mixed path. But Rose—Rose chose self-hate and envy at full throttle. She chose to hate herself and all like her, and to work to make sure that no one was ever created or ever lived who wasn’t born in the natural way and of natural parents.”

  “Myself, you suppose?” Simon said. It felt like a scream, and wasn’t any less scary for being said at normal voice. “Do you have any idea how much more I had to bear, finding out I’d been born, not even as someone designed for a purpose, but as a blank, one of those kept down in the…in the lab. That I was no one and nothing, but a body my putative father could take over to continue his life? Do you have any idea how that felt, particularly when I’d been raised to think of myself as…as special…the son and heir of the Good Man? Particularly when I had all these plans for what I was going to do to improve the lot of the seacity?

  “And then to find out it was all a lie. And that yet, somehow, unless I wanted to be responsible for a monstrous invasion and massacre, I had to stay on; I had to devote my entire life to perpetuating a horrible regime because the alternative was worse? No, Alexis, you have no idea what I, myself, faced. And you have no right to tell me I have to keep on facing it. You don’t own me.”

  The last came out as a roar.

  Alexis Brisbois was quiet a long time after that, staring at Simon, who glared up at him. I thought that pose of indignation must be hard to maintain, that pitch of anger difficult to keep. I could almost see the flagging of his indignation behind his eyes, replaced not by calm but by an immense tiredness.

  Alexis spoke again in the slow, patient tone, as though Simon were an overwrought child. “No one owns you. And some of us will help you, always, for the sake of what you’ve already done; what you’ve tried to do. But some of those people who served you are like Jonathan, Simon. They have families. Both the parents who agreed to have them improved, and the children they’ve sired. There are children like Tieri, orphaned and lost, who will get killed by the turmoil, or killed in the invasion. Right now, our best hope for resisting the invasion and coming out on the other side alive are the enhanced and trained people who are scattered and running. They will come to your voice, but to none other. Simon, the good and the bad will die together if this isn’t stopped.”

  Simon’s face contracted in a snarl. “Damn you,” he said. “Damn you.” Then the snarl became something like a hiccup. “And I can die trying to protect the innocent, but no one, no one can stop this. Certainly not I. I am dead, Brisbois, as far as the seacity is concerned.”

  Alexis shrugged. “Not so far as those of us who know you are concerned. I suggest, Simon, that to begin with we organize our people and take down—” He took a deep breath. “My wife and Jean Dechausse and the whole merry circus of bloodthirsty, power-hungry moral cripples. And then we can…perhaps, organize a defense. Hasty and of course it’s not guaranteed we’ll survive, but we can perhaps defend Liberte?”

  Simon looked at him a long while, his eyes slightly unfocused. “I wish I could believe we had a chance.”

  “I’ll stay,” I said. “I’ll help.”

  “Will you?” A quick look of Simon’s and the old laughing mockery—maybe self-mockery—was back in his eyes. “You don’t have to, you know? We’re not your people and you owe us nothing, and there’s a good chance it’s going to end up with all of us dead.”

  “Will it?” I asked. “And how am I not your kind? I also was assembled protein by protein and have no real parents. If I’m not your kind, I don’t know who is. And I also learned that it’s my responsibility to care for others, because they are weaker than myself.”

  He put his hand to me and touched my fingers—just the tip. “I should send you away,” he said.

  “Are you under the impression she’d stay away?” Brisbois asked, amusement in his voice. “Have you met Madame Sienna?”

  Simon gave me a look with a raised eyebrow, as though asking me to corroborate or deny. I shrugged and shot what I hoped was a quelling glance at Brisbois, but I said, “I’m not going to hide and quake while you two go face danger. It’s not my style. And I owe you too much to repay it with indifference.”

  “In the name of gratitude, she helped organize an attack on the prison.”

  “You mean people died in it,” I said. “And I do understand that, but—”

  “No, Madame Sienna. People dying in a situation like ours is inevitable. The point is to make sure the right people die. From what you said, you both killed some of the infiltrators making war on our people, and you freed some who were headed for execution. Your effort might have been misapplied, and that is our fault for not informing you of our plans, but even so you did more than we could have done on our own.” He gave Simon a look. “You see, Patrician, it is useless to keep her out of our plans.”

  I was so stunned at being praised without irony by Brisbois and on something in which I thought I was guilty of a mistak
e too, that all I could do was mumble, “It was LaForce’s idea.”

  But Simon only nodded as though all of this made perfect sense. He set his mouth in a hard line, and said, “Fine, then. Let’s set out and start gathering people who can help us fight Madame Parr and stop the invasion of the seacity.”

  Search the Sky

  Brisbois reached out and grabbed at Simon’s arm. “Not yet,” he said.

  Simon looked up at him and scowled. “If it’s true,” he said, “that we’re about to be invaded and if you add that to the bloodbath taking place more or less continuously, people like us hunted down and killed both here and in the territories, certainly you can’t mean we should delay. Delay why? Delay how?”

  “Delay,” Alexis said, “because you’re dropping on your feet, Simon. When is the last time you slept?”

  “I?” Simon seemed surprised at the enquiry. He ran his hand across his face, again. “Couple of days ago, I think. I can’t risk being caught. And I was looking—”

  “You have both of us to watch over you,” Brisbois said. “No one is going to surprise you. And with you being officially dead, you have some protection. Unless I’m very wrong, I know how to watch over the entire area.” He went into the bathroom and we heard him banging on something. He returned and announced, “Yep. We can go up on the roof and watch the whole neighborhood. There’s roof access in the bathroom. I thought there might be.”

  “Why?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Because these motels aren’t dimatough. They’re ceramite. If one of them catches fire, the entire motel will be an inferno, and your only chance at survival is a broom from the roof.”

  “Is a broom provided?” Simon asked, sounding as curious as I felt.

  Alexis nodded but made a face. “Four, which is the maximum occupancy for the room. But I don’t know if—any of them will fly. Never mind. You and I are provisioned, and should it become needed to clear out, Madame Sienna can double up with one of us. However, in our situation, taking off flying from the roof might be more of a problem than roasting. It will attract attention from the Revolutionary Guard watching the air.”

  “So,” Simon said. “Why delay in this fleabag fire trap? Let’s go and—”

  Brisbois shook his head. “Unless you are at your best, you’ll get killed, and if the complete list of people like us isn’t in your head, I’d bet you know a lot more about where to find the right people, how to command their loyalty and where to find the vehicles and weapons needed for defense. I was your second in command, the master of your guard and your defense, and yet you often told me things I didn’t remember or had never known about. What’s more, you have their loyalty.” His voice changed from explaining to begging. “Simon, we can’t do this without you. That’s the whole point. If we could, we would go ahead without you, and I’d gladly take you to a place of safety as I took Doctor Dufort and his wife.”

  “But I am fine. I don’t need to sleep,” Simon said. He tried to look alert but the tiredness was visible behind his eyes. “And besides, what if someone followed Zen here?”

  “They would have shown up by now. I have been paying attention to every sound nearby,” Brisbois said. “There is no one in pursuit, or they didn’t make it this far. My guess is Jonny threw them a spectacular distraction, to keep them from finding her.

  “Fine, so we’re safe,” Simon said. “And it’s time to work. How do we start? Whom do we contact?”

  “We contact Jonathan LaForce,” Brisbois said. His eyes were narrow as though he were calculating something. “And we wait for his answer. And should he not answer, we try Mailys and then on down my list. When one of them answers, we arrange a meeting with everyone they can reach. Then we figure out the best way to start, by taking Madame out first, I think, but I would like their opinion. It’s not going to be done quickly.”

  “But surely,” Simon said, “nothing can be gained by waiting.”

  Brisbois suddenly made a sound somewhere between an exclamation of surprise and a shout, while looking behind me, at the door to the motel. He reached in his pocket.

  I turned. There was nothing but motel door, locked and completely uninteresting.

  I turned around again, and pulled my burner, pointing it between Brisbois’s eyes, as he was holding Simon, who had lost consciousness. Or at least I hoped that was it, and not that Brisbois had killed him. I shouldn’t have turned. Oldest trick in the book. Obviously, Simon had turned too.

  “Soporific. Injector. Fast acting,” Brisbois said, ignoring me and the burner, as he half-carried, half-threw Simon onto the bed. “Stop glaring. He was not going to sleep any other way and we can’t risk having him blundering around sleep-deprived. Help me get the dresser in front of the door for double insurance, and then we’ll go up to the roof and keep watch while he sleeps. I’ll send coded messages out and see if either Mailys or Jonny answers. And in a few hours, we’ll see what is sane to do.”

  I hesitated a moment before putting my burner away and lending him a hand moving the ceramite dresser—heavy, ungainly and poured by someone who didn’t mind if he left sharp protrusions in the furniture—in front of the door, solidly blocking it.

  He led me into the bathroom, where he stepped up onto the vanity, which groaned and creaked under his weight, and reached up to pound his fist on a barely visible trapdoor in the ceiling. It was only visible because there were stains from its having leaked, all around the edges. It took a moment to open at his pounding, possibly because of the rain and some decay on the finish, sealing it shut.

  When it opened with a bang, bringing an influx of night air into the room, he lifted himself up by the force of his arms, and pulled himself onto the roof.

  Then he lay flat and extended a hand down to me, to help me up. I ignored his hand and instead clambered up on the vanity and reached both arms up. At which point he put both hands just about at my underarms and pulled me up, while I tried vainly to make it up on my own.

  “I didn’t need help,” I said as I landed on the roof, and then I wanted to bite my tongue in two for making such a childish remark.

  His eyes danced with amusement but he didn’t say anything, except, “Down.” He had settled on his belly.

  The top of the unit was completely flat, covered in dust and debris, of course, from years in the elements, but mostly crusted with a white salt coat, like almost everything in this artificial seacity in the middle of the ocean. Around the edges was a little lip, probably not more than had been left by the extruder, but enough to hide us when we fell flat on our bellies. There were roughly cut holes on the edges of the lip, to let rainwater out.

  “I will settle myself there,” Brisbois said, pointing to the hole across the way, which looked out to the back of the cabin. “And you can stay here,” He pointed to the nearest hole. “Do try to look through the hole and only to look above the lip now and then,” he said. “There is no use exposing your head to a casual shot. On the other hand, looking above the lip will give you a panoramic view. So it’s worth looking up through it sometimes. Just not always.”

  He went and laid down across from me. We were over the little protrusion that was the bathroom of the unit, so our legs lay side by side, while we looked over opposite sides of the building. I had a pretty good view of the front door, and I assumed he had a good view of the alley behind, the one that ran between the cabins of the motel.

  I settled myself down and took a cautious look above the lip of the roof. Everything was still, almost too still, in the near vicinity. There was no one out, no one on the streets. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Doesn’t this place do any business?”

  Brisbois made a sound like a cough. “Oh, yes, but that’s because it’s just up from the port. Normally it rents its rooms by the hour. But the traffic in and out of the port has stopped, and I suspect any strangers caught here are lying low, not out looking for company.”

  “Oh,” I said. “A whore motel? In Eden—I mean, where I come from—”

>   “Yes?”

  “Well, I suppose there are some like this,” I said. “But the ones you hear about are the really nice ones. The better sort of courtesans tend to…you know…purchase permanent rooms in places with all the amenities so their clients feel pampered.”

  There was a long silence and then he said, in a tone of hesitancy, “Prostitution is legal where you come from?”

  “We don’t have laws,” I said.

  “Oh, we do. And around here it’s illegal. I’m sure the better sort of prostitute has nicer places to take her clients, but this is pretty average for your normal, run-of-the-mill prostitute. And run-of-the-mill prostitutes aren’t doing much business just now, certainly not in the usual way.”

  I looked again and everything around seemed peaceful. I doubted Brisbois had chosen this particular motel at random. The place was on a little rise, probably built on top of a set of warehouses or something else that was a half-level up, and therefore commanding a broader view of the neighborhood than any other place around.

  In the distance there were shouts, and flares. It looked like something being set on fire, because the flares were too large for a burner, but it all seemed very far away, and nearby there was no sound at all, save a cricket chirping somewhere to the left of the building.

  I heard Brisbois say a couple of words. At least I thought they were words, but they were in no language I knew. I turned around to see him doing something with a ring on his finger. He said another couple of words that were in no known language, then let go of his ring, picked up his burner and looked over the lip of the building, while he said, “Sending a message to Jonny and Mailys.”

  “I figured,” I said.

  There was a short silence, and then he said, “I thought while Simon is asleep, I might explain to you…anything that you don’t understand or don’t know about what is going on.”