Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  I wondered if that was true. I suspected Alexis Brisbois didn’t tell everything he knew, not even to himself. Not if he could help it.

  “And now you may go clean up,” Lucius said. It wasn’t an order, but it was. Alexis hesitated, but he got up and said, looking at me, “I’ll be right back.”

  I wondered what he feared, exactly, from Lucius. I didn’t think he intended to attack me. But Lucius waited till Alexis had vanished into the room beyond, before saying, “Ms. Sienna?”

  “Zen.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “If you’re Luce, I’m Zen.”

  “Very well, then, Zen. What…what is your relationship with Simon?”

  “What?”

  “Your…relationship. Are you…involved?”

  “He—” I said. The problem with Simon is that you couldn’t help liking him. But it came to me that one always felt slightly guilty for doing so. “He has been very kind to me. He’s…he let me live in his palace and…and get acclimated to Earth. I suppose you could say we are friends.”

  A short silence, then he frowned. “Yes, but…but that covers a vast array of terrain. Excuse me, but…are you emotionally involved?”

  Was I emotionally involved? What did he even mean? “I owe him a debt,” I said, stubbornly. “I think he…I think he likes me very much, but—”

  “But?”

  “I can’t…I think he arranged for an innocent man to murder his fath—predecessor. I think he enjoys power and being the center of the seacity. He says he loves me, but I can’t tell if he means it, or is just playing at it.”

  “Oh.” Lucius smiled suddenly, as though startled. It was an odd smile. Fleeting. When I’d met him before, we’d been in battle mode. I realized for the first time he’d been raised in the same world as Simon, if not in the same way; that he could probably be charming, if he wanted to, in a way that meant absolutely nothing. The smile was followed by a sigh. “Oh, likely neither can he. Simon—” He paused. “Simon’s…ancestor was created as a spy and someone who could play any role, and I don’t think Simon’s situation these last few years, knowing he was not like the other Good Men and remaining safe only by playing the fool and encouraging the idea his “father” might recover, helped whatever inherent tendencies were in his make-up.”

  I nodded. I’d known about Simon’s original, the person he was cloned from; had learned it from someone who’d known the original. As for Simon playing the fool, I knew that too. I didn’t think I could explain—or wanted to explain—to Lucius the glimpses of someone more substantial beneath Simon’s playacting. Saving me at the expense of himself, even as his world quite literally crashed around his head, was not the act of a self-centered fool. I didn’t think I could explain that I felt as though someone were a prisoner, encased, in Simon’s playacting. Nor could I explain the sympathy I felt for his situation. So I said, “Yes.”

  He nodded. “But that doesn’t answer my question. Are you involved? Physically or emotionally?”

  “What difference does that make?” I asked.

  He let air out through his nose. “It might. In how much I can help, within my limited capacity.” He raised a hand. “No, look. Our organization—not the military, but the organization that predates it—has an unbreakable policy of helping dependents: children and spouses or spouses equivalent. I can’t get you help officially, not from Olympus, that is, but you did render the Usaians a service, and though it’s stretching a point, I can take it to the council. If you’re Simon’s—If—”

  I sighed. “We’re not. Not that close, and not physically. I was widowed less than a year ago. I’m not ready—”

  “Understood. And emotionally?”

  “I care for him,” I said. “Possibly more than I should—but I’m not sure how…” I looked up at those blue-gray eyes staring down at me like a judge from a podium. “Look, I don’t know if I have the slightest romantic interest in him, or if it’s just…just that I feel sorry for him. I always feel bad for people who are ducks out of water, because I am myself.”

  This surprised a chuckle out of him. “Yes,” he said. “I do too, for the same reason. That’s why I said I’d help to the limit of my ability, but my ability is very limited. I can’t go with you and help you. I’m needed here. My superiors would skin me alive for risking myself in the hell Liberte has become. And we can’t send troops into the mess in Liberte because we don’t have troops to spare.”

  The meaning of his words so far had sunk in—and I understood the sense of cold I’d got from our reception. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to help us, but that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. “But you’re the Good Man!” I said. “You can order someone like Nat Remy—”

  I realized I’d gone too far. His gaze hardened. “I’m not the Good Man,” he said. “Not anymore. Unlike Simon, I didn’t declare the revolution, nor do I control it, as he thought he did. And as for Nat, he’s in enough danger without sending him on what will turn out to be a suicide mission. Even if I had the power to order him, which I don’t. I don’t remember the rank in his last letter. It seems to keep changing. But I warrant you he’s my superior.”

  “Suicide?” I said.

  “What do you think? You know more history than most people on Earth—So do I, for my sins. When a land, or in this case, a group of territories, takes it upon their head to make all humans equal, it always ends one way. It’s not that reality can’t be violated,” he said, and sounded suddenly very tired. “It’s that there is always a price to pay for it. Always. And the price for the fantasy of equality is always paid in blood.” He looked very sad but mostly very tired. Then his expression changed in a second, as he looked over my shoulder at someone behind me. “Ah. Brisbois. I would extend you the hospitality of my house, but as you see my quarters are reduced to a single guestroom, and I am about to offer that to Ms.—to Zenobia.”

  “I can sleep anywhere,” Alexis said. I turned around to see that he had changed appearance almost as markedly as I had. He looked yet completely different from the man I’d guess I had glimpsed around the palace, in a formal and undistinguished gold and white uniform. And he looked again different than the man in cheap clothes who’d brought me here.

  I didn’t know what clothes Lucius had arranged for him, and I hadn’t paid attention, but now I remembered seeing a young man in uniform walk in and down that hallway carrying clothes. The clothes Alexis Brisbois was wearing were the formal attire of the upper-crust of Earth, such as I’d seen Simon wear. Silk shirt with lace at collar and sleeves. A velvet jacket with shoulder padding that, in his case, wasn’t necessary, narrowing to make the waist look small—in his case not very convincingly because the man was a single square block of stonelike muscle—and ornamented with ruffles at the back. The pants fit like a second skin under all that, and the boots came to meet the pants just above the calf.

  Lucius Keeva frowned at the boots. “I beg your pardon about those,” he said. “But I think your feet are at least a size larger than mine.” His gaze swept upwards. “The rest fits well enough.”

  I realized these had to be Keeva’s clothes, and that the two men were almost exactly the same size. How had I not noticed it before? They were very different types of men. Lucius might be scarred, but the features beneath that were regular and beautiful enough. Carefully assembled, likely. As carefully as mine had been, gene by gene and protein by protein. Alexis’s had been assembled by an unkind Mother Nature. Living couldn’t improve on them. They weren’t exactly horrible to look at, but they were rough-carved and only the intelligent and attentive eyes beneath the heavy eyebrows relieved what would otherwise have been a brutal aspect.

  Besides, there was posture. Lucius Keeva had been trained to command, and he looked every inch of his six feet six or seven, or perhaps more. Alexis, on the other hand, whatever he had been, wherever he’d come from—conspirator, condemned man, servant—would have been trained to hide his size and any appearance of menace. And he ma
naged to project being much shorter and smaller than he was. But he was massive. No wonder he’d been able to drag me. And no wonder Simon trusted him to keep me safe.

  “As I was saying,” Lucius said. “I can offer hospitality to Zenobia, and you can trust me to keep her safe as your…ah…Good Man commanded. But I don’t think I can accommodate you, at least not for the night. You can have dinner with us.”

  Alexis looked like he was going to protest, but Lucius interrupted, “Through that door, there is a young man waiting. An ensign. I can’t for the life of me remember his name, they change so fast.” Tiredness again. “We send them out to fight much too early. But he’ll show you to the unmarried men’s quarters. You can make sure you have a place for tonight and then you can come back here, if you choose, for dinner or to verify I haven’t killed Zenobia. But I assure you, it’s not needed.”

  Alexis looked like he was going to protest. There was a mutinous look in his eyes, and he looked like he wanted to give vent to it. Perhaps he would have, but I suspected the training to obey people who acted this way and gave orders this smoothly went bone deep. He didn’t exactly bow, and he didn’t exactly make a sound of acquiescence, but there was a suggestion of both in the way he headed out the door.

  And I felt, unaccountably, bereft, as though I too couldn’t trust Lucius Keeva not to do something awful to me. Which was ridiculous, of course. I could at least trust him as much as I trusted Brisbois. As Luce had said, we’d fought side by side.

  I returned to where I’d been before Brisbois had interrupted us. “Suicide?”

  “What do you think it is, for any of us, the ones who look obviously modified, or at least…enhanced, to go to Liberte? If they’re hunting for those who stand out? We’d stand out just for being strangers—foreign. And what do you think our chances are of doing anything in time to free Simon?”

  “I was hoping for armed men.” I stepped backwards, to let myself fall onto a chair. “So, when you offered help—”

  He shook his head. “I could have got you help if you were…involved with Simon. Some help. Not personally,” he said. “Certainly not personally. My face is too well known the world over. And not Nat. If you saw him fighting on broomback, or really just fighting, you’d know his enhancements are as hard to hide as ours. Hereditary, sure. I don’t think his line has seen the inside of a test tube for generations.” He paused, as though a sudden thought had intruded, and chewed at the corner of his lip, as though trying to digest an unpleasant thought. “Though I wouldn’t bet on it either. But I understand they’re going after people who inherited enhancements, too. And most of my helpers, most of my circle here, is obviously enhanced. So I couldn’t ever offer you help of that kind. But…since you’re not involved with Simon, I don’t think I can even offer you that.”

  I started to say that I could lie about being involved with Simon, then I thought about the implications—this would be claiming a relationship on the level of marriage. It probably meant that if we saved Simon, I’d have to stand by it. I’d been married once. I thought of Len, of what I’d had with him. Simon was a different creature. “I’d been dreading his proposal.”

  “Understand,” Luce said. “I’m not trying to be unkind, but I think that to attempt to save Simon right now is nothing more than a complex way to commit suicide unless you went in with overwhelming force, and I don’t know if we can get overwhelming force.”

  I bit my tongue, but I couldn’t keep it in. “We helped when you needed it. He helped with your…revolution. But now you turn your back on him.”

  He let air out through his nose with a noise like a sneeze, but infused with something like repressed temper. “No. Simon helped us when it suited him. Yes, he was part of our councils and our efforts, because he’s been a friend of the Remys since they were all very young. But Simon is himself. If he’d been a true ally, an auxiliary, our group would put itself out for him, whether there was a chance of success—” He stopped. “No. Maybe not. That’s my own quixotic impulse. The Usaians always weigh their chances of success. Or at least they did when Nat was arrested—even though he’s one of their own. This is why they’ve survived so long. But I can’t even take the case to council. I don’t know how aware you are of what brought this about, but Simon was trying to manipulate things at a vulnerable moment, and he fell on his face. If someone is shot while trying to steal something, you can’t really say that others have an obligation to risk themselves to save his life.” He must have read my confusion. He shook his head. “No, I don’t propose to explain,” he said. “It would take too long and some of it I can’t tell you because I got it in confidential reports from Liberte. But let’s say that Simon was playing with fire, before he got burned.”

  “Aren’t you all playing with fire, though?” I asked. “Isn’t that the definition of a revolution?”

  For a moment he looked like he couldn’t believe I’d say something so incredibly stupid. Maybe it was even true. Maybe I had violated good sense. It’s impossible to know in a different world. There are different ways; different expectations. He narrowed his eyes. “Not…in the way I mean.”

  “Do you mean that he failed to conform to your ideals?” I asked, as I thought I understood his hints. “But he’s not of you. He’s not a Usaian. How can you demand he conform to your ideals, before you assist him?”

  I got the impression I’d upset him. “There are,” he said, “ideals of human decency of—of being human, without which we revert to the rule of the Good Men. Or worse.” He seemed about to say a lot more, but I got the impression he was holding himself back by an effort of will. “I can’t help you, in any case. I couldn’t help you even if Simon were more closely allied with our cause. The council would never permit it.” He took a deep breath. “You’re an old battle comrade. You’ve helped me and…and us…our cause, in a very tight spot. I will extend you my hospitality as long as you wish it, and will help you find more permanent accommodation.

  “As for Simon, he’s become a matter for international bargaining and international maneuvering.” He held up a hand before I could speak. “It’s not that I don’t want to help, understand me. It’s that I can’t. With all the best will in the world, I can’t even plead for the council to send someone on a suicide mission to save him from the results of his own folly. He made himself head of a revolution that meant to make all men equals, knowing he could never be equal. Things were bound to leak, and things were bound to happen. He knew my identity is out in the open and that we broadcast. He helped us defeat controls on the broadcasts. Did he think the knowledge would never make it to Liberte?” He took a deep breath and seemed to draw himself into composure by an effort of will. “And now, please excuse me. I have work to do. I do not know if I’ll be able to take time to eat, but I’ll make sure you’re served dinner. You are, of course, free to go where you please, but remember the house is a military installation, and refrain from making the guards nervous.”

  Piracy Preferred

  And he left me. Standing alone in the middle of his perfectly decorated room, with its white carpet, its polished pine shelves, its low, cushiony seats, its broad glass doorway facing the sea, I tried to think of what to do next.

  I didn’t realize I was furious until I noticed the images forming at the back of my mind were of kicking my way out through that glass doorway to the terrace and—

  And what? Plunging to the sea below? The idea made me smile, because it was so much the act of a romantic lover, and I wasn’t one—certainly not Simon’s. But what else could I do? Challenge Lucius to a fight? The thought came and for a moment there was a feeling of relief, because Lucius was definitely someone I could with impunity be furious at. If I lost control and attacked him, he’d probably stop me before I landed a single punch. He was as fast as I was, and as strong. No, stronger, because behind his enhanced capabilities were his not inconsiderable bulk and his not inconsiderable masculine advantage.

  But then if I attacked him, I’d get no s
atisfaction either. And besides, what could I get him to do? Send a rescue party for Simon? He’d said he couldn’t, and I remembered Simon telling me that when Nat was captured and condemned to death, the Usaians had refused to help. Lucius and one of Nat’s sisters had gone in, and the young woman had died in the attempt. I remembered that story particularly because Simon had been affected by her death and seemed genuinely fond of her. He’d said she was like a little sister to him.

  I took deep breaths. Lucius might have been unpleasant about Simon—had been unpleasant about Simon—in saying no, but he’d also said, and I had to believe it, that his “no” was more dictated by circumstances than by his dislike of Simon. And he had to know more about what had happened in Liberte than I did. Could I swear there was no reason at all for him to say that Simon had brought this on himself? Could I even say that Simon’s intentions had been good?

  I realized I’d been clenching my fists so hard it hurt, and let go.

  Granted that Simon was not the best person in the world, for whatever the definition of “good” might be. I knew that he was manipulative and deceived others and possibly himself, but I also knew how he’d come to it. Whoever had said to know all is to forgive all was a child and an idiot. I could understand most crimes without in the least thinking they were forgivable. But there was a point to it. Up to a point, if you could understand how someone had got twisted and turned inside, you had to forgive them, because—what else could you do?

  In Simon’s case I could see all too well how he’d gone astray—how desperate he’d been to survive. And from what I’d heard, from himself and from others, if a Good Man were taken down, it wouldn’t just be him dying, but most of his retainers and dependents. It wasn’t just sheer selfishness and desire to keep himself alive that led Simon to do what he did, to play the fool, to dissemble, to act—often—like saving his skin was the most important thing in the world.

  I doubted that it had never occurred to him, Earth born and bred, that as large as this world was he could just have left Liberte, he’d have had plenty of places to hide. Perhaps—I thought—as spoiled as Simon was; as used to being in power and having everything he wanted, it would have seemed like dying for him to go away, perhaps, leave his power and privilege behind, and have to do more than sign forms for a living. On the other hand, considering how many years he’d lived with the dire threat to his life from the other Good Men, even Simon might have considered it a better option.