A Few Good Men

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  “Yes,” I said. “But I . . . I got out and I tried to talk to Javier Nobles and I—”

  “Javier?” he said. “How did you get away? Where are you now?”

  I wasn’t so completely off my balance that I would tell him the last, but I said, “I hit him on the head. He might need help.”

  Not-Hans shook his head. “Like hell. I hope the bastard dies.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “You really don’t know anything, do you?” Not-Hans said. “You were Hans’s friend. I thought that you— Clearly they thought you— But . . .” He paused. “Have you talked to Nat?”

  “Nathaniel Remy? Yes, he’s arranging the papers for—”

  Not-Hans looked exasperated, like someone dealing with a child or the mentally ill. “Go home,” he told me. “Go home now. As fast as you can. You are not safe.”

  And with that Cassandra-like pronouncement, he turned off.

  I could go home, of course. But I don’t take orders well and it hasn’t improved with time. So, instead, I pulled out the other link button and dialed the first pre-set at random. It rang for less than a second, and then a face that I couldn’t immediately recognize appeared midair. It was a handsome face, or at least it would be if you looked really up close and personal. At the first casual glance it was an unexceptional face, topped with short brown hair.

  The bit-off words as he looked at me sounded like French, and he frowned and said, “You are not Max.”

  “No,” I said. At least this reaction made sense, though it didn’t make sense that these buttons should be programmed to someone who expected to talk to Max, but perhaps the new possessor of the code was a friend of Max’s. “I’m his older brother, Lucius.”

  “His older . . .” The man opened his mouth, closed it. “Merde,” he said, very carefully. “This is an unexpected . . . uh. Will you pardon me, for just un petit moment? My other link is ringing. It seems like . . .”

  I couldn’t say why but I knew the other link was not-Hans calling him. And the face I’d just seen was the face of Good Man St. Cyr of Liberte Seacity.

  I took a deep breath. None of this made sense, and I would presently wake up, safe and snug in my cell.

  At that moment, the link buzzed loudly. I thought it would be Good Man St. Cyr again, and I pushed the call receiving button. But the face that formed, midair, glaring at me, was Nathaniel Remy’s. “You just couldn’t wait to stir up trouble, could you? You couldn’t even wait for the legal action to tell them there would be trouble on the horizon.” He didn’t look angry, though his words were forceful. He looked more exasperated and a little fearful. “Come home. I’ll keep watch. And then we need to talk.”

  “I think I’m going insane,” I said, in response, not the least because one of my own servants was ordering me to come home. No, not even ordering me to come home. Exhorting me to come home, with the sort of gentle authority a mother or a nanny might use.

  “Going?” he asked, and snorted. “Come home. I’ll . . . explain what I can.” He frowned. “Seems like I’ll have to, just to prevent you running your foolish head into trouble, won’t I?”

  Without waiting for an answer he disconnected.

  I could ignore his summons and not-Hans’s orders. Perhaps I should. I did not like the idea that they were telling me to go home. I did not like trusting in them. I was almost sure I didn’t like Nathaniel, though I would do a lot to spare his father grief or trouble. On the other hand, I had the feeling that not-Hans and Nathaniel, at least, were genuinely worried for me. Not about me, not about what I might do—though perhaps that too—but for me, and about what might happen to me. And I shivered thinking of Javier and Josia.

  And then I got on my broom and went home.

  Hell on Broomback

  I’d taken part in many high-aerial broom battles. A few territorial disputes, a few fights over primacy. But those were never played for life or death. The stakes hinged on disabling brooms and, sometimes, on cutting off access to some place.

  But the battle that raged just short of my rooms, in Olympus, was anything but for broom disabling.

  From a distance I saw it, and wondered what my guards were doing. My guards. How odd to think of them that way. But then I had no reason to think that the men in black broomer suits with red piping, like the one I was wearing, weren’t in fact my guards. It didn’t explain how a guard suit had got in my secret storage, but it would make more sense than anything else.

  This fight was for real, with burners blazing. As I watched, one of the probably-not-my-guards went plunging down, dead, his weight pulling his broom down.

  I’d determined to go around and in through the front entrance, except as I got closer, I saw the people attacking the men who were probably my guards—or being attacked by them, it was hard to tell—were wearing the subtly better-tailored, distinctive non-reflective black broomer suits of Scrubbers.

  I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried. There were three men against eight or so Scrubbers, probably ten originally—judging from two corpses down on the rocks near the ocean—and they were fighting like hell on broomback.

  And anyone, anyone, including the devils of any mythology, who went against Scrubbers, were by definition friends of mine.

  I jumped into the fray, burners blazing, wishing I’d brought the additional burners that I’d sequestered in my room. Fortunately I never, ever, ever leave home without at least two. And unless one of these burners failed, having more wouldn’t have helped. It’s not like I could also fire with my nose, or perhaps my elbow. In fact, given the need to maneuver quickly, I could only fire with one hand, the other being on the broom controls.

  The moment I entered the battle, the Scrubbers converged on me. It was as well. I burned a swath towards my room, but even with my extraordinary speed, only managed to hit one of them—who fell towards the rocks—the others moved away too fast.

  Not as fast as those people on my team did. Two of them, at least, seemed to be as fast as I was, and flanked me, aiming fire at people ahead of us.

  A burner ray flew by my ear, and the man who had shot it screamed and fell. And I realized he’d been shot by the third man in the defenders group, who was not only as agile as the others, but who must be touched in the head because . . . well, let’s just say there are very good aerodynamic reasons why riding your broom upside down is near impossible. It is also one of the scariest things you can do. Relax the pressure of your thighs on the broom, and you’ll fall to your death. It does, however, leave both hands free for firing and gives you an unusual angle to fire from.

  One of the Scrubbers shot at him, and I cut the Scrubber down, while still in the act of firing. I thought that there was no way the poor guy could right himself or maneuver in time to avoid getting shot. It would have been hard enough, if he’d been firing with both hands while flying head-up. But at least I’d avenge him.

  Then I concentrated on shooting two more of the Scrubbers while they were aiming for my friends. And I ducked barely in time before a burner ray got me through the heart.

  The problem with this sort of fighting is that there is no way to think and no way to plan. You fight by the sense that someone somewhere might be about to shoot you, and you duck out of the way when your premonition tingles and says they’re aiming for you. You don’t pause, you don’t think, you don’t slow down. And you don’t take time to breathe.

  Until it’s one Scrubber alone, and he’s turning tail, and two of the not-guards are taking off in pursuit, but before you join them, there is the man who saved your life, and who should not have been able to right himself on his broom, or escape that burner ray, but who has, and is moving his fingers rapidly at you.

  Broomers use sign language. You have to, when you’re flying midair, and half the time wearing a mask and goggles, and have to communicate with team mates to coordinate actions.

  I hadn’t used broomer sign language in years, but this particular broomer was willing to repeat the same
gestures over and over again until I got what he was saying. And what he was saying was: To the terrace and inside now. Safer.

  Right. Very guard like of him. I landed on my terrace, then went through the door into my room. The guard landed right behind me, which I expected.

  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?