Musketeer Space

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  She was glad it was dark so that he couldn’t see the stupid smile that broke out across her face. “Are you going to invite me into your creepy man-cave, or what?”

  “Come on down,” Athos called out, faking the same cheerfulness. “Mind the stairs in the dark, don’t want you breaking your fool neck. Grimaud took my last medipatch. But no one else, D’Artagnan. I don’t trust anyone else.” His voice trembled, and it chilled Dana for a moment. He sounded far from okay.

  “Close the door behind me, but don’t bar it,” she said softly to the landlord. “I’ll have him out within the hour and all this will have been like a bad dream.”

  “Expensive fucking bad dream,” muttered the landlord, but he did as she asked.

  Dana descended the stairs, her hand trailing along the wall to keep her steady. “Have you been in the dark all this time, Athos? No lights down here?”

  “Didn’t want to waste candles,” said Athos. A light flared somewhere in the cellar: a flame in a genuine lantern.

  “Kicking it old school,” Dana said, looking past the yellow blaze of light to Athos’ face. He looked like shit. “What have you done to yourself?”

  Athos raised a half-full wine bottle in an uneven salute. “Gave myself too much time to think.”

  Grimaud moved into the circle of yellow light, throwing a blanket off her own shoulders on to Athos’ lap. “And on that note,” she said, her eyes holding Dana’s for a brief moment. “I’m going for a bath. I presume you can keep him from offing himself for an hour or so? I’ll meet you outside.”

  The engie stomped up the stairs. “You,” she called sharply to the landlord, just before the door shut behind her. “Hot water. This is an emergency.”

  Dana sank down on her knees beside Athos. She had to move a couple of empty bottles out of the way to sit down. “Want to tell me what she meant by that?” she asked softly.

  “She was joking,” he said, his hand still circling the neck of the bottle. She wanted to take it away from him, but even wrecked his reflexes would be better than hers.

  “I don’t think she was,” Dana sighed. She reached out an arm, giving Athos a rough hug around the neck. He smelled like sour wine and engine oil. He didn’t shrug her away, but leaned into her neck, like he was actually willing to take comfort from her touch.

  Valour had broken him, then.

  “You came back,” Athos sighed, half asleep.

  “Someone had to save you from yourself.” She shoved him with her hip. “I told you I would. Porthos and Aramis are here, too. We’ve been looking all over. Should I get them in here?”

  “No, not yet.” He shuddered under her arm.

  Dana curled around him, her other hand smoothing over his until the tremble lessened. “Athos, you’re a mess,” she sighed. “What’s wrong? Can you tell me?”

  “They don’t know. Never wanted them to know.”

  “How is there anything those two don’t know about you?”

  Athos shoved her away, then. He rocked up on his heels, disappearing into the darkness, and stumbled back with another bottle. Not wine this time. It smelled like some kind of brandy, when he uncapped it. When he collapsed, he pushed the lantern between them to keep Dana at a distance. “They don’t know that I’m not worth saving,” he said flatly, and necked the bottle.

  Dana resisted the urge to smack the bottle away. At this rate, getting him to drink himself unconscious might be the only way to drag him off this bloody planet.

  She considered her options. Porthos and Aramis were both capable of flying everyone home between them. There was no law that said she had to do this sober.

  Dana held out a hand for the bottle of brandy. “Give,” she ordered. Athos handed the bottle to her, and she took a deep swig. It had a smooth heat to it that warmed her all the way down. She couldn’t remember when she had last eaten anything. “Bullshit you’re not worth saving,” she added, and held on to the bottle as long as she could before Athos motioned for it back. “I call double bullshit on that.”

  “You’ve been running towards the Musketeers for your whole life, D’Artagnan.” He sounded defeated. “Arms outstretched. Haven’t you noticed that the rest of us got here by running away from something?”

  She let him take one swallow, and dragged the bottle back for herself. “What makes you special, Athos? What makes the demon you’re running away from so much more dramatic than everyone else’s?”

  He made a noise like a sob. She realised he was laughing and that was actually worse. Dana had never heard him laugh like this before. She would be quite happy never to hear it again.

  “I am worse,” he said. “You saw it when the ship came down.”

  Silver hair tousled over the back of a neck. Bare feet on soft grass. “The happy memory that made you sad,” remembered Dana.

  “My beloved husband,” said Athos, with sarcasm hovering around the word beloved. “Before I killed him.”

  Dana handed him back the bottle of brandy. “You know you don’t get to leave the story there, right?”

  He huffed out a long breath, his fingers curling and uncurling around the neck of the bottle. “You’re welcome to drink with me. But you’re not entitled to anything else.”

  Time to call in reinforcements, to contact Porthos and Aramis and Bonnie and Bazin and Planchet and gang up with them to drag Athos’ sorry drunken carcass out of here. It was amazing Grimaud had lasted as long as she had in this cellar without using the pearl stunner on him and dragging him out by his feet.

  But the words ‘my beloved husband’ hung in the air and Dana knew, she knew that once they left this cellar, he would seal himself up again like a barrel.

  The mystery that was Athos had been nagging at Dana for a long time, and this revelation that there was a story from his past that even Aramis and Porthos did not know … that was too intriguing to be ignored. Selfish, but she wanted to know.

  So she drank. They drank together, gulp after gulp, and Dana told him of the adventures he had missed, of Buck and the replacement diamonds and the mysterious Milord de Winter.

  As the brandy dipped low in the bottle, she confessed about Conrad, his disappearance, and the ominous conversation she had shared with Rosnay Cho. Her voice broke as she repeated the words, “I’m sorry, buttercup, but you’re not getting him back.”

  Athos shrugged.

  “Seriously?” Dana howled at him, snatching back the bottle. “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “Either the lad went back to his wife, or his own meddling in politics got him killed. If you want sympathy, Aramis will hug you until the end of time. Porthos is good at tea and kindness. I don’t give a fuck.”

  “Are you dead inside?” Dana snarled.

  Athos gave her a thin smile. “Basically.”

  “Because you killed your husband.” A low blow.

  “Not even that.” He reached for the bottle. Dana held on to it stubbornly. Athos growled. “I have no interest in epic love stories. Even yours, sweetness.”

  “How did you end up on that mountain, miserable out of your skin, the day that Aramis and Porthos rescued you?” she challenged him. “What happened to you on this planet?”

  “It didn’t happen to me,” Athos said, tugging more forcefully on the bottle. Dana held on to it, using all of her muscle to keep the brnady in her lap. “It happened to someone else.”

  Dana felt the cellar tilt around her. She was drunker than she had meant to be, and she wasn’t sure about anything except that she was not going to let Athos swallow another mouthful. “Who?”

  Athos gave a last desperate lurch, and Dana gripped the bottle harder. The glass cracked between their fingers, and the brandy leaked out over their boots.

  “It happened to the Comte de la Fere,” Athos snarled, barely noticing that the glass had slashed a bloody line into his palm. “He’s dead, and good riddance.”

  30

  In the Cellar of the Gilded Lily

  “You’re wearing my jacket,” At
hos observed, as Dana picked slivers of glass out of his shaking hand by lantern light.

  They had to get out of this cellar. Athos had drunk enough of the Gilded Lily’s printstock of wine and brandy to poison him. Dana felt half-poisoned herself, even if the bottle they had shared most recently was of exceptional quality.

  Right now, she was trying to make sure he did not bleed too badly.

  “Gauze strips in the inner pocket,” Athos added, which was lucid of him. “Why are you wearing my clothes, D’Artagnan?”

  Chances were high he would never remember this conversation. “I missed my friends. Shut up.”

  He laughed softly.

  “I hate you,” she told him.

  “As is only right and proper.”

  Dana made a huffing sound. “You are the king of self pity.”

  “I wasn’t the one complaining that the Cardinal’s mysterious secret agent and/or political advisor kidnapped my boyfriend before I got a chance to jump his bones.”

  “That is not how I phrased it at all,” she said, smacking a gauze strip over Athos’ cut much harder than necessary.

  “Ow.”

  “Time to sober you up.” She brought out her trump card, a Sobriety patch she had tucked into one of the many useful pockets in this jacket.

  Athos’ eyes widened as he saw it. “Fuck no. I’ve been working on this bender for most of the week, D’Artagnan. You wouldn’t be so cruel.”

  “Come outside with me now, and I won’t sober you up until we’re off planet. This is my final offer.” Never mind his tragic past. Removing him from this cellar had to be her priority.

  Athos gave her a searching look. “Open another bottle and I’ll tell you the worst story you’ve ever heard.”

  Dana refused to give into temptation. “Athos, another bottle might kill you.”

  “Half a bottle. I’ll share.”

  “Half a bottle might kill me.”

  His blue eyes were so very intense in the dim light. “I told you that I murdered the man I loved, and you don’t want any more details?”

  “Wine, not brandy,” Dana whispered. She was dirt. Curious, weak dirt.

  Athos reached out without looking, his hand closing around the neck of a new wine bottle. “I’m sure the landlord won’t mind.”

  “He’s going to call the local militia if we don’t pay your tab,” Dana replied, but she let him unseal the bottle. “Start talking, or I’ll break that one too.”

  Athos took a long, steady swallow and wiped his wet mouth with his unbandaged hand. “There was a Comte who lived in the far North of this continent, who fell in love,” he said. “Which was the first stupid thing. But they were young, and stupidity was his elemental privilege. They were students together at the university, and they were going to change the world.”

  “Students of what?” Dana asked. She took the bottle off him and tasted the wine. It mixed badly with the brandy already sloshing around in her stomach.

  “Philosophy. Politics. If you could get a degree in being wide-eyed and idealistic, these two young idiots would have signed up without a second thought. The Comte was a New Aristocrat through and through – he wasn’t supposed to have a purpose beyond keeping his lands from burning down around him, and solving the disputes of his province. That had been the Fleet’s excuse for not allowing him to sign up for service when he came of age during the War against the Sun-kissed, anyway. An excuse he had accepted all too readily.”

  “But now he wanted more,” Dana prodded.

  “Because love,” said Athos. That word had never been spoken with such venom in the history of the solar system.

  “I’m sensing this story doesn’t end well.”

  “Oh, you think?” He paused, his breaths slow and steady. “The second stupid thing the Comte did was to marry his lover after university. They were on fire together, determined to use the power and privilege of the New Aristocracy for something good. The war was over, and the Valour government had played lapdog to the Crown during the conflict, in exchange for keeping their brightest and best out of the war.” His head drooped for a moment, and Dana thought for a moment he had nodded off. “There might have been poetry.”

  Dana almost laughed at the sheepish, despairing way Athos said that. He needs to tell someone, she insisted at the spark of guilt that she was taking advantage of his drunken state. “Poetry,” she repeated.

  “It’s traditional, in love affairs,” Athos said, so pompous that it was all too believable that he had once been a baby-faced, politically charged New Aristocrat who ruled a province, rather than a drunken Musketeer who couldn’t fly his ship without chemical assistance.

  “Poetry, philosophy, politics… and love,” Dana said lightly. “A heady cocktail.”

  Athos nodded grimly. “For a happy marriage. Right up to the point that the Comte’s husband fell ill. He contracted a midwinter fever that no medipatch could cure. A burning fever that lasted for three days and nights. During that time, he spoke of – secrets, awful secrets. And that was how the Comte learned that his husband was a fraud. He had spent all that time thinking himself deliriously happy, but here was genuine delirium, and the cruel truth.”

  “What truth?” Dana whispered.

  “He was so fucking beautiful,” Athos said in a ragged voice. “Pale skin, like moonlight. That hair. And – I never saw how false he was until it was all too late.”

  Athos tipped the bottle up to his mouth and Dana let him take a drink before she reclaimed it. “Why was it too late?” she asked.

  Athos matched her question with another. “What do you know about the Sun-kissed?”

  Hardly the time for a history lesson, but she went along with it. “They’re ruthless. Alien. They hide in plain sight, because…” The words faded on her tongue. Dana stared at her friend in horror, suddenly realising how this story fit together with the other story, the one he had told her when they were crashing and burning. “No.”

  “They hide in plain sight because they can look like us,” Athos agreed through gritted teeth. “They can look like any fucking thing they want. But after three days of fever, of genuine illness, he couldn’t hold on to the transformation any longer. So the Comte’s beautiful husband rolled over in the sheets and his skin turned dark red like he was sunburned, and the war tattoos spilled across his back, line by line, and light poured out of his eyes and mouth, and it turned out that it didn’t matter that we thought the war was over and that Valour had made it through untouched. The Sun-kissed were still among us, hiding spies in plain sight. Placing them near people they thought could be of use.”

  Athos was bitter and tired, and Dana wanted to take it all the hurt away from him. She had not imagined something as awful as this. She was sick at the thought of it – of discovering you had shared a bed with an alien and an enemy. Of being deceived so vilely. She could guess how the story ended. Athos had already told her that part.

  “The Comte – executed his husband personally?” There was only one way to ensure that a Sun-kissed was dead, Dana knew from school. She had been twelve years old when the war ended, and it had all seemed so theoretical. You take their head, and you burn the remains.

  “It was his duty,” said Athos, closing his eyes and leaning back against the nearest barrel. “Damn,” he added. “That’s a good wine, that one. Too drunk to do it justice. We should take a bottle or two when we leave.”

  “We should go in,” said Porthos, bouncing impatiently on the soles of her boots.

  She and Aramis had waited outside the tavern for over an hour. A little while earlier, Grimaud had emerged into the late afternoon sunshine with damp hair and sonic-scrubbed clothes. Aramis made a token payment towards the landlord’s exorbitant bill with the last of the credit they had and pledged Amiral Treville to cover the rest. They sent Grimaud back to the Hoyden and the Morningstar with Bonnie and Planchet, to file the flight plans and ready the ships for the long trip home.

  “Give them a little longer,” said
Aramis. “We don’t know what state he’s in.”

  “Dana’s a puppy. She doesn’t know what she’s up against.” Porthos had seen Athos at his ordinary worst a hundred times or more, but his rock bottom was something she had only glimpsed twice, and had hoped to never see again.

  Aramis squeezed Porthos’ shoulder. “She’s not that young. It’s good for him, to have someone other than you and me to pick him out of the gutter from time to time. With Dana – he might manage to summon some pride.”

  Porthos gave her a filthy look. “That’s not fair on her. He’s her hero…”

  “And today she gets to find out that he’s human,” Aramis said serenely. “It will be good for both of them.”

  “I hate when you’re spiritually calm,” Porthos muttered.

  Aramis gave her a gentle hug. “Isn’t it nice, though? Just a little. To share him.”

  “He’s not a food parcel.”

  “My shoulders are feeling lighter.”

  “Probably the love letter burning a hole in your pocket.”

  “Could be,” Aramis smirked.

  The door to The Gilded Lily opened. Athos walked out, blinking in the light of the sun. It came in at a piercing angle, about to descend into the mountains beyond Amiens. Athos looked rough, his beard back to the long, untended horror it had been before Aramis last got her hands on him with a sonar clipper. He had lost some weight, probably from drinking too many meals, and he was unsteady on his feet.

  He carried Dana slung over his shoulder like a dead weight. “Kid can’t hold her drink,” he muttered as he approached them.

  Porthos wanted to hug him, but she feared any sudden movements would pitch them all on to the historically authentic cobblestones at their feet. “Credit’s covered,” she informed him. “Grimaud gave the landlord an approximation of the damage in the cellar.”

  “Let’s get moving before he discovers how much she was underplaying my consumption,” said Athos.

  The three of walked down the street together, falling into step as they always did.