Darkship Thieves-ARC

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  He made the broomer sign for down, and pointed at the deserted warehouse. I followed.

  We landed on a crunchy layer of burned debris. I wondered if I was walking on my other broomer lair associates, even as Max dismounted and turned. "Athena!" he said. "I'm glad we came here at the same time. I am so glad to meet you."

  The hair I didn't have, prickled right at the back of my skull. Something was wrong, very, very wrong. I didn't dismount. Instead, I set the broom on hover, near the floor, and toyed with it, acting as though I were just taking my time. I gestured around. "What happened?"

  Max frowned, if at my not getting up, or at what, I don't know. "Fire," he said. "One of Fuse's booms gone wrong."

  This was perfectly plausible. Fuse, Aka Ajith Mason was a firebug. Well . . . and an explosion fanatic. He'd been both our demolition expert and our speed demon before his accident. After it, he'd become . . . Well. In all the rest of his functions, he was a child of six or so—a child of six with a lame leg and the manners of a two year old. But he was still very good at making things go boom. He just didn't always understand when he shouldn't.

  So it was plausible, but the back of my neck was still prickling and the skin of my skull would stand on end, if it could figure out how to do so. "I see," I said. "Who else died?"

  He shrugged, looking impatient, and shook his head. "Not many people," he said. "We moved. We're . . . elsewhere."

  "Did Nat get out all right?"

  He looked up and seemed surprised for a minute. "Nat?" Then he shrugged again. "Yeah, I'm sure. Everyone got out fine. Even Fuse. We have a new Lair. If you follow me, I'll take you there."

  Right. Come into my lair, said the lion to the lamb. I smiled, big and idiot, and nodded like I'd lost all my marbles. "Sure. You go ahead. I'll follow you."

  He looked a little suspicious, but he got on his broom, and took off, then hovered outside the entrance, waiting for me to follow. He'd have been a lot more suspicious if he knew that as I turned to follow I had my hand on my burner and pointed at him through the leathers' pocket.

  And then, as soon as I was sure he was ahead of me, leading me somewhere and not looking back, I dropped, suddenly, way down. I feinted into an alley, and I actually flew among the pedestrians, till I backtracked into another alley, where I flew down to stop at a balcony wedged between two adjacent buildings. I didn't know to whom the balcony belonged, only that the door leading to it was dimatough and shut tight. And that the balcony had waist-high, enclosed dimatough walls all around. I fell into it, and crouched in a corner, so that I was in the shadows, even if Max should fly above me.

  No, not Max. That wasn't Max. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't my friend. It was as though someone else were wearing Max's body.

  I felt bitter bile come to the back of my throat.

  Oh, maybe he'd hit his head and gone as potty as Fuse, but in a different way. Somehow, though, that didn't feel right. My lair mates—Fuse excepted—never called me Athena and rarely called me Thena. Or at least not unless we were in company. The rest of the time they called me Lefty.

  And I couldn't imagine a place in heaven or hell where Max would be completely indifferent to Nat. Nat was the son of Max's Father's accountant. He had also been, since the two of them had developed an interest in sex, Max's lover. They weren't the only monogamous broomers, but they were pretty damn rare. In fact, part of Max's interest in joining the lair had been because it gave them a place to hide in, since his father could not be allowed to discover what the two of them were up to. They had other arrangements. I'd heard that Nat had a secret passage leading to Max's room and they slept together most nights. But the lair allowed them to be together and be themselves and accepted them implicitly.

  To be indifferent to Nat's survival or not sure he had survived or—seemed like—not sure who he was meant only one thing. That person . . . that thing back there was not Max.

  I squeezed myself into a tight ball and had a fit of the shudders. Was it possible to erase someone's mind and superimpose another? It was one of those technologies one kept hearing rumors of, but which never seemed to exist. Maybe that was what Daddy wanted to do with me. It explained so much.

  The thought of myself with a superimposed personality and memories, behaving like Daddy's Little Daughter made me want to throw up again, but I didn't have the strength to get up and do it, and besides it might not be safe. For a while I couldn't even think how to get out of here or what to do next. I could just sit and tremble.

  I hadn't tried to mind-touch Kit since I'd left the mansion, partly because I'd been running and partly because I didn't want him to feel my distress, but now I did. I reached my mind towards him, and touched his.

  I had the feeling of a hastily cut-off scream, and then Kit. Thena! And in relief, You're alive. You must make it to the powertrees and find a ship to take you back.

  No. We are both going to go.

  Thena, you damn stubborn Earthworm.

  Yes, you horrible bio, my beloved husband?

  I don't know . . . if it's possible to save me.

  Oh, it will be. Don't get too attached to the accommodations, because you won't have time to use any of the drawers.

  I got back a mental attempt at a laugh, and the sensation of his arms around me. By the time that subsided, I'd steadied myself. My mind was not going to be rewritten. I was not going to let Daddy get away with it. Because if I did, then Kit would be left alone and probably die. And that wasn't going to happen either. We were both going to get the hell out of Earth and back home. Together. We were probably worrying Kath, as was, and that was not a good thing.

  I waited, in case the faux Max was in pursuit. I didn't think he would be. I had a strong feeling he wouldn't be any too at home in Deep Under. I though I heard someone fly by once or twice, but there was a good chance those flights were unrelated. Meanwhile I was thinking where I could find my lair. If they hadn't all died in whatever had destroyed the lair, they would have relocated somewhere.

  Right. After a while, I flew straight down from the balcony, hooked my broom on my belt and, as soon as I could, ducked into a store that sold communicators. Some of them were the classic, palm-sized computer and phone, with enough memory to keep track of several families. And a very distinct electronic signature. I didn't want that, because if the call I made went wrong, I was likely to end up having to throw it away before being tracked.

  In the end I picked a ring-com. A pain to dial, really, since it all hinged on twirling three rings around, like doing a very old combination lock. But they were disposable, had a very low signature and I could discard it without tears, since it cost me only half a narc.

  I walked away with it, until I found another shop—this one selling rugs. I pretended to be interested in the merchandise and walked all around, amid the people.

  Since the rugs were displayed by being strung up from the ceiling beams, it created so many convenient partitions where one could hide.

  I made it to the back of the store, between two rugs, and I dialed Ettiene. It was no big puzzle which code to dial. Not his home, since that had a good chance of being answered by some employee. You see, Ettiene's Father . . . well, he hadn't exactly died, but he'd been in a horrible flyer accident when Ettiene was thirteen. And he'd been a vegetable ever since. No one had unplugged his life support, because only Ettiene could do that when he came of age and inherited in two years. Until then, his father's managers were the de-facto regents, but Ettiene had to do all the ceremonial occasions and was often referred to as a Good Man. Which meant he had a secretary and several assistants. Not his official personal code, because something funny might have happened to that and at any rate too many people knew it.

  But Ettiene and I had been friends-who-slept-together for several years. Oh, not like Max and Nat. We were never going to set the world on fire and neither of us was monogamous.

  Ettiene proposed, mind you, every other month, but I had no more intention of marrying him than I had o
f growing a second head. And besides Daddy, for some reason, disapproved.

  Still, when you have that kind of relationship, it is useful to be able to contact each other without anyone knowing. Ettiene had had a com—voice only—embedded into his wrist in a shop around here, years ago. Embedded coms were illegal in most of the world, as were other mechanical enhancements, but here in Deep Under, people installed them quite gladly.

  I dialed that code. For a moment no one answered, setting my heart hammering, because what could possibly be happening? If Ettiene was away from his wrist . . .

  But then Ettiene's voice answered, husky and hurried "Thena. Thank heavens you're alive." He sounded horribly like Kit, and the Thena part was all right, because that's what he called me in private and not in the lair.

  "Shouldn't I be?"

  "There's a bulletin for you. your father said they recovered you from captivity . . ." He paused as if he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "Amid the darkship thieves. And that you'd escaped . . ."

  "While unsound of mind, yeah, I imagine. Ettiene, tell me, what is my favorite ice cream?"

  "What?"

  "What is my favorite ice cream flavor?"

  "Uh . . . mint," he said. "But—"

  "No. Who put salt in the dessert of the representative of the Northern European Territories at the banquet when we were fifteen?"

  "Max."

  "Why?"

  "The bastard had treated Nat like a servant."

  "Right."

  "Thena, have you lost your memory?"

  "No. What was our biggest fight when we were kids?"

  "When we were playing house."

  "Why?"

  "I wanted to be the mommy. Thena, have you gone crazy? Why do you want me to tell you all this stuff?"

  I heaved a deep sigh. "Because I just met Max."

  There was a silence and then "Oh."

  "Is there an explanation?"

  "Uh . . . several. Fuse thinks he got hit in the head by something. Jan thinks that he got hold of a bad set of oblivium and Nat . . ."

  "Nat?"

  "Thinks he's possessed. Nat has gone . . . uh . . . a little funny."

  Yeah, I could imagine. I'd have gone down right hilarious if this had happened to Kit. But I didn't go into that. I asked Ettiene about the lair. He gave me the new directions. Everyone had got out alive, he said. They'd used the skedaddle plans. And that, now I thought about it, was another thing that Max didn't seem to know about.

  I wasn't absolutely sure that Nat wasn't right. Perhaps it was possession.

  Forty One

  Approaching the lair—located almost up against the wall of the desalination plant, where someone had carved a cave out of the material that had formed the isle—I didn't recognize the person on guard. He looked very young, too. Maybe fourteen or fifteen, that age where guys have just stopped growing but haven't put in any muscle. But he wore the right colors.

  As I approached, he flourished a burner, and pointed it at me. "Evening. What business?" he asked, giving me the once over from top to bottom.

  "Lair business."

  He raised his eyebrows. "No beast so fierce, but knows a touch of pity."

  "But I know none, and therefore am no beast."

  He gave me another once over, this time more relaxed and smiled, in a cheeky way a young kid his age shouldn't. I would have flattened him, but he made me think of Waldron, so I didn't. "Who are you?" I said.

  "Abidan Kwasi, and you?"

  "Athena Hera Sinistra."

  Like that the burner was pointing at me. "She's dead."

  "Rumors of my death are largely exaggerated." I jumped him, but remembered what Kit had to say about my obsession and kicked his hand. His burner went flying and we both ran for it.

  I had just grabbed it, when a voice from the doorway said, "Abi, leave Lefty alone."

  Abidan turned, and then I did. Jan Rainer was walking towards us, informally dressed as people got when they'd been in the lair for a while—i.e., he was wearing leather pants but not full riding leathers, which meant he didn't intend to go out. On top he wore one of the almost disposable white shirts that everyone seemed to wear. "Lefty," he said, and grinned at me. "Stop playing with the noob."

  I still held the burner anyway, as I stood up, and slipped it into my pocket to keep the other company. Amazingly useful things, burners. One can't—really—have enough of them.

  Jan knew me well enough he made no comment. Instead he turned to Abi. "I just came to tell you that she was expected. Ettiene called." Jan was Ettiene's second in command, when Jan wasn't in the lair. He wasn't quite so mentally coordinated as Ettiene, but he was good at keeping things going if Ettiene had given him precise instructions. "He'll be along as soon as he can get away."

  Abi, who had turned a lovely shade of red, gave me a sheepish look. "I can't be blamed for not recognizing you, now, can I? You're not ten feet all and you don't have balls the size of elephants."

  I grinned at him. It was a good attempt. I was trying to remember the name Kwasi from our general circle. I seemed to remember he was the son of one of Jan's family's administrators. "It's these clothes," I said. They disguise my height, and at any rate the balls were always largely metaphorical."

  He was a cute kid, about the color of aged walnut with startling blue eyes. Pre-Eden-Thena would be earmarking him as someone to get to know a lot better in three or four years. Now he just made me think of Waldron—even if he looked quite different—and feel a pang of missing the whole family. I hoped no one else had got captured . . . I hoped . . .

  I followed them into the lair. It looked amazingly like our other lair, which probably shouldn't surprise anyone. Like nomadic and rootless cultures, the broomers could replace everything they owned fairly quickly. Particularly since they commanded the purse of the children of Good Men.

  There were partitions, most of them made of the sort of stiffened fabric that is used to make separations in stores and offices. White, allowing the light to shine diffusely through it, it made the whole place look exotic and strange.

  As per normal, there were some common areas, and then little cubes that each broomer claimed for himself and filled with his possessions—usually a mattress and any number of boxes containing more specific stuff.

  Lairs were very safe inside. At least no one from outside would steal anything and if someone inside the lair stole from one of his brothers or sisters . . . Well, there would be hell to pay, and someone would make sure he would pay. So the little partitions weren't closed, though some people had hung rugs or towels or just pieces of fabric across the doorways, to protect their privacy.

  We walked along a sort of hallway between cubes. From one of them came a sound like dice being rolled. From another came soft moans and what I would bet was the sound of copulation, and then past a cube I knew was Fuse's just from the chemical smells.

  Up through to the innermost area, and Jan had his arm around my shoulders. I couldn't remember if I'd ever bundled with him. Probably, once or twice. But it had left no mark, and I didn't think he was interested in a reprise, and besides, I was tight and coiled and had my hand on my burner, inside the pocket. One false move and he'd be a briefly glowing bonfire.

  But he didn't make any false moves. He took me all the way to the back, where he called someone to get me a sandwich and a beer. There were about ten broomers in residence, counting—or not counting—Fuse, who mostly stayed in his cube and only bothered them when he wanted someone to steal explosives for him. "I think he's gone more unstable since you disappeared," Jan said.

  Since I couldn't imagine a more unstable Fuse, I kept quiet and drank my beer and ate my sandwich.

  It wasn't like I sat idle for very long, either. Not many minutes after I'd arrived, and I'd met the other new member besides Abi, a shy young blond named Irma Fratelli, people started bringing me brooms, and asking me if I could take a look. It ranged all the way from "It makes a funny sound when I take off in vertical free
fall."—to which I refrained from answering if the sound is not zoom, splat, you're doing well, though the old Thena would have said just that—to "I found this on the street and don't know if it works." To "My Dragonwing stopped working and you know you're the only one who can make it okay again."

  By the time Ettiene—looking debonair in tailored leathers—made his appearance, I had six brooms in front of me, in various stages of disassembling and someone had found me my old toolbox, carefully salvaged from the fire. I was testing the starter circuits on a Flipper that had seen better days, and eating a second sandwich with my right hand.

  Ettiene greeted me as he always did. By hauling me up with an arm around my waist, and kissing me stupid, barely giving me time to swallow the bread in my mouth. I pulled away as soon as I could because I was almost absolutely sure that Kit wouldn't approve—though how people greeted each other in Eden ranged all over, just like everything else did.

  Ettiene Boulanger, son of Good Man Boulanger—one of the reasons he often used the nom-de-guerre Baker—was of mostly French ancestry and looked it. His family were hereditary rulers of Liberte Seacity which had, at some point, been set up by a group of French and Swiss financiers. He looked like his ancestry too—being only slightly taller than I, slim, with an oval face and dark hair. He'd have been totally unremarkable except for two things—his nose, which was sharp and beak-like, and his caramel-colored eyes, which always seemed to know some joke they weren't sharing with the rest of his face.

  "Now, now," I said, as I slipped from his arms and onto sitting cross-legged on the floor again. "You mustn't kiss me like that, Ettiene. I'm a married woman."

  He raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything. It didn't occur to me till much later that he probably thought I was joking.

  Instead he looked at the brooms in front of me and at the various broomers assembled around me looking on with the anxious expressions of parents while the doctor looks at their child. He looked back at me, and this time his eyes were shining with pure mischief. "Oh Lefty, damn it. You don't have to fix their brooms. Tell them to scat all of them. I've told them to replace the pieces of crap months ago."