Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  For months, they’d watched me, I suspect in hopes of grandchildren. Len had known our union would not be fruitful. I was too enhanced to breed with normal humans. But he’d never told his parents.

  I couldn’t endure their hopes; I couldn’t endure their disappointment. I couldn’t endure seeing Len’s nephews and nieces grow, each with a little bit of him in gesture and word, in look and movement. I couldn’t stand it.

  And so I’d turned to my work, and I’d answered gladly the call to go off-world for a good cause. I’d run away from home.

  Only to find myself in a perilous situation, with a young man who looked an awful lot like Len, and with another man depending on me. I wondered if Simon was alive; if he knew I’d do my best to save him. He’d sent me away to keep me safe, but did he count on me to come back?

  I realized I’d been holding my hands so tightly closed that my fingernails bit into my palms.

  I relaxed, taking deep breaths, and became aware that Mailys was awake, sitting up, and staring in frozen horror at the link. Half-glimpsed, behind her, stood Corin, also giving an impression of not noticing anything around him.

  I turned to the comlink and it took me a moment to understand what I was watching, because…because I’d never seen anything like it on Eden, nor could I imagine it ever happening on Eden outside of my wildest nightmares.

  The scene was a little plaza to the side of the palace. The city had been built with self-conscious, generally “French” architecture, and this plaza looked it, surrounded by tall, stone-built houses with vaguely classical architecture. The houses were probably dimatough, as were the “cobbles” underfoot and the statue of blindfolded Justice in the middle. Whoever built it had seen Paris before the bombing that leveled it, and had set to consciously imitate it.

  I’d walked in that plaza before, when all the buildings around it had been filled with shoppers, inspecting clothes and jewelry in the shops, having breakfast at the small cafes whose chairs spilled to the sidewalk, and strolling around the statue.

  Now the statue made a strange background—twice as large as life, her eyes blindfolded, a scale in her hand—against which a motley group of people assembled.

  Someone had built a platform. It was square and seemed to have been made of imperfectly smoothed black ceramite or perhaps dimatough, except dimatough seemed too expensive for the purpose.

  The purpose was…Proof that the Sans Culottes had in fact read their history and had decided to pay it homage. The contraption puzzled me for a moment, consisting of two large poles with what seemed like a bar of light running across the top.

  Then a man I recognized as the Jean Dechausse that Brisbois had tried to kill, and whom he might have emulated himself in the process, announced, “Monsieur Professeur de la Fontaine, et Madame de la Fontaine!”

  Two people were pushed forward. They weren’t bound and, in fact, were holding hands. The husband was making an ineffective effort at pushing his wife behind himself, but there were five or six burly men in liberty caps surrounding them, and at least two had hands on their shoulders.

  The couple was forced forward, forced to kneel, heads down.

  The bar of light descended from the top and…their heads rolled. The crowd shouted “Ça ira!” and the song about setting the world on fire erupted again. I stared, not believing it, as the two bodies, still bleeding and twitching, were pushed from the platform, the heads grabbed by young women waiting at the base of the platform, who held them aloft with screams of glee.

  “Et Monsieur Jean-Michel Amonette.”

  A dark-haired man with a well-trimmed beard, wearing the uniform of Simon’s clerks, was pushed forward, forced to his knees, and the blade fell.

  Glee and screams of “Ça ira!”

  I realized I was sitting immobile, rigid, thinking this couldn’t be true. This had to stop.

  The people dancing on the screen looked not like humans but like blood-drunk demons who had lost every shred of humanity.

  “Madame Pascal!” A blond woman in a dress that looked like something she had worn for the ball Simon had given, the ball interrupted by the revolution.

  Her impeccably coiffed head had barely been gripped when the announcement went up, Dechausse sounding like a valet at a society party,

  “Etienne Robert D’Blogg.” Kneel, slice. “Ça ira!”

  “Monsieur at Madame Landry.” They were also in party clothes and must have been among the notables of Liberte. Kneel, slice.

  Monsieur Joseph Capdepon, Francois Fleming, Verite Romaine, Jason Delong, Elisabeth Piedligere, Etienne Louis, Monsieur et Madame Vert, Madame Clithero, Monsieur Laurence Michel, Monsieur Marc Algeres.

  Push forward, slice, heads lifted aloft.

  Mailys found her voice first. Her croaked “Mon Dieu” seemed to wake me from a stupor.

  “What is happening?” I asked. “What is this?”

  Corin jumped up suddenly and hurried across the room to turn off the com. He stood, shaking. When he turned to face us, he no longer looked nineteen but like he had aged through a long ordeal. “One reads,” he said, “about the revolution and how the aristos were killed by the guillotine and the righteous fury of the aggrieved, downtrodden peasants. But…Why are they doing this?”

  “What is it exactly? Do either of you know? Did either of you watch the beginning?”

  Corin nodded. He sounded hoarse as he spoke. “I came into the room. You were both asleep. Dechausse…” his voice failed him and he made a sound part clearing of his throat, part hiccup. “He said all these people had been captured either in the palace of the ci-devant Good Man St. Cyr. They were all his servants and all enhanced and now they would pay for their years of good living on the backs of the poor.” He took a deep breath. “I thought they were going to…to fine them or something. But then the platform came out and the machine, and there…the crowd was already there and…” He covered his face with his hands.

  Mailys got up and went to him. I’d seen them fight, and I’d seen them as a couple of squabbling children, but now she put an arm around his waist, and as he brought his forehead down to rest on her shoulder, he was every child, every young man, and she the mother-of-all-living consoling him.

  She made sounds at the back of her throat, the sounds women make to children and wounded animals.

  The ringing of the comlink echoed in the house, startling us all.

  I was the first to reach it, fumbling and trembling, till my fingers found the button that accepted the call.

  The link came on as a communicator instead of a broadcast unit, and a young bearded man looking like he’d slept rough, his eyes rimmed with red, his dark hair standing on end, stared at me in stupefaction.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  He was wearing what looked like the remains of a uniform of Simon’s guards. Its red fabric was tattered, the golden trim hanging in pieces, but it looked like it.

  “Zenobia Sienna,” I snapped, thinking it was easier.

  “You don’t—” he started, then his eyes widened. “I do believe you’re telling the truth.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “Jonathan LaForce,” he said, and saluted, which I didn’t think was strictly appropriate. “I’ve been trying to reach the Bonnaires, Madame, do you know where they are?”

  Corin spoke up then, from the side. “They’re dead, Jon. All but Tieri. She’s upstairs asleep. We arrived after they died. She was sealed in the safe room. Crying.”

  LaForce’s mouth opened, but it didn’t look like he was trying to speak. It was more like he was trying to process unbelievable information. He said something. Might have been “Mon dieu.” He swallowed hard. “I was hoping to be in time. I’ve been calling the others. There is no answer. No answer from your home, Corin. It was the first on the list.”

  “The list?” Mailys joined in.

  “Ah. Alors, Mailys. Why are you wearing that horrible cap?”

  She put her hand up to touch the libert
y cap, which she’d clearly forgotten she was wearing. “Brisbois gave it to me. He said it would help. Seems to have. What list are you speaking of?”

  “I found it in Brisbois’s office. There was a data gem. The only data I could get from it was a partial list, headed with your father’s name, Corin. And then there were…others of us. I thought…I thought if I’d got the list then someone else must have. The office had been ransacked. So I thought—”

  “You thought you would save those you could save?” Mailys said.

  He nodded. “Now I don’t know what to do.”

  “Where are you?” Corin said.

  “In the old guard rooms,” he said. “The ones—Ah, you won’t know. Mailys will.”

  Mailys nodded.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Jonathan LaForce said. “A man is trained to fight and to guard the weak, but this…One can’t fight a mob. Did you know they’re conducting executions in the Place D’Harmonie?”

  Corin nodded. “I saw them.”

  “I can’t fight an entire blood-maddened mob,” Jonathan said, obviously frustrated with this fact.

  “No,” Corin said.

  I took a deep breath. “Can you come and join us?” I asked. “Is it possible? I think perhaps we can do something, if we plan.”

  He looked dubious, but after a while nodded, curtly. “I can come. I shall knock like this.” He made a rhythmic knock on the wall next to him.”

  “Come by the back door, though,” I said.

  “You have to,” Corin said. “The front door is blocked with a display case.”

  LaForce frowned, but nodded. And the link went blank.

  Rebellion

  When Jonathan arrived, we were looking through the food stored in the fridge portion of the cooker. Cookers on Earth were baffling. There were two kinds: the very cheap ones that just heated things, and then the complex ones that you needed a degree to program. I was used to the cookers on Eden, where you chose what you wanted to eat, and it was delivered to you. This cooker was the one you needed a degree to program. Which was a problem, since the only prepared food needing only to be heated had been consumed at our other meal.

  The cooker contained frozen steaks, frozen fish, frozen vegetables, and, in the refrigerated compartments, fresh vegetables. All of which were useless, since we had no idea how to cook them.

  Corin flung the freezer closed and said, “I suppose we could always light a fire in the backyard and cook meat over it, like savages.”

  “Not the backyard, Corin, no,” Mailys said in a fainting voice. “The graves!”

  He looked contrite. “No.”

  And that’s when the knock at the door came, in the code LaForce had showed us. Even so, Mailys looked through a spy hole in the door, before opening, and I had my burner out and pointed at the man as he came in.

  Jonathan LaForce was, as the com had shown, dark-haired and bearded. What the com had failed to show is that he was also intimidating. Despite not being nearly as tall as Brisbois, he gave the impression of being at least that tall, perhaps more.

  He came in, his hair on end, and from the moment he entered the room, he somehow distorted the space around him and took charge.

  It started with his sheepish grin at my burner pointed at his belly. He said “Alors,” smiled again, and then, without seeming to care that I was still pointing the burner at him, he asked Mailys, “I wonder if I could use the fresher? And do you have any food?”

  Corin snorted. “Food enough, if we can figure out how to use it.

  LaForce cast a look at the stove. “Oh, an Elite 55? We have the cheaper model at home, but it works pretty much the same. Don’t worry about it. If I can use a fresher, first?”

  I put my burner away. If he was just going to ignore it, there wasn’t any point. I could pull it out fast enough anyway, should he get funny, and until then it clearly wasn’t intimidating him or putting him on his best behavior. If he was a hostile, after all, I’d have to count on my ability to shoot him suddenly.

  Mailys conducted him to one of the guest rooms on the bottom floor. He emerged impossibly fast, looking like a new man. He looked clean and his newly combed hair was still beaded with water. He’d trimmed his beard. He wore a dark blue tunic and pants, both of which stretched so much over his frame that it was obvious they’d been tailored for someone much smaller. Philip, I assumed, or maybe the Bonnaires, had kept spare guest suits.

  Corin had gone upstairs to get Tieri, who came down holding his hand, followed by the little kitten. LaForce looked sad, and then talked to the child, asking her about the kitten. In moments she was prattling on about how she’d found him in the backyard just before Maman had called and told her that she had to go in the little room, so Tieri had taken the little cat in the room with her.

  “But he doesn’t have a name yet,” she said. “I was thinking of calling him Soleil.”

  “For his being gold?” LaForce asked and picked the little girl up.

  “Yes. But I’ll ask Maman what to call him when she comes back. Will she be long?”

  “She has important work to do,” LaForce said. “What do you like to eat, ma petite? And what should we feed this little cat?”

  Moments later, he’d cooked a plate of chicken and corn for the little girl, and he was setting a plate of plain cooked fish in front of Soleil.

  Then he busied himself at the cooker again. This time it took longer. Tieri, done with her food, asked to go play. Play—we checked as we were afraid she’d turn on the com—was to take place in the playroom/nursery at the end of the house, where she had her dolls and toys that I couldn’t even understand. When we escorted her there, she showed us the dolls and also three different construction games.

  She seemed disappointed we didn’t wish to stay and play with her, though Corin told her he would perhaps be able to after we ate.

  Back in the kitchen, we sat down while Jonathan LaForce dished out a gourmet meal of steak, lightly seared and still rare inside, potatoes in butter, and a vegetable medley to which he’d added herbs and spices.

  I realized I was ravenous. The food we’d eaten earlier had barely taken the edge off my hunger. If I hadn’t been so worried, I’d have been aware of starving earlier.

  We sat at a round table, as Jonathan put plates in front of the three of us, before taking a plate for himself.

  He ate as bluntly as he did everything else. Not exactly with bad manners, but giving the impression that he had no time for flourishes or even much conversation.

  We each drank what we fancied from the stock in the house, in my case a dark beer.

  “And now,” he said. “I suppose you want to ask me questions, Madame? I suppose that’s why you asked me to come here?”

  I nodded to him, then looked at Corin, who got my question without my asking it. He went down the hall to the playroom and tiptoed back to tell us she was well enough entertained.

  “La pauvre petite,” Jonathan said. “I’ll take her to my wife, I think. One more in our brood won’t make a big difference. And she’s young. She’ll forget.”

  “Your wife…” Mailys said. “She’s safe?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve arranged for her to hide as…” He shrugged. “She and the children are safe, and I’ll take Tieri Bonnaire to her after dinner, if no one objects.” His eyes softened in a way I hadn’t thought possible. “We can always afford another child. Or at least, well, someone has to look after her, and my wife will love her like our own.”

  Since both Mailys and Corin, who had trouble agreeing that the sky was blue, seemed to think this was a great idea, I nodded, then said, “You said you had a list of people like…us? You? What did you mean?”

  He looked from me to Corin and Mailys.

  Mailys shrugged. “I’d never heard of her, but she is one of us. Has to be, or she wouldn’t have been able to keep up with us when we escaped after Brisbois was—After he tried to kill Dechausse.”

  “Ah,” LaForce said. “But Madame Parr i
s also one of us.”

  “Yes, but…” Corin cast me a confused look. “Zenobia helped us defeat the people besieging our house. Besides, Brisbois trusts her.”

  I was at a loss to think what part of my interaction with Brisbois had given Corin the impression I was trusted, rather than merely tolerated.

  At any rate, all LaForce said was, “But Brisbois is missing. And you were…ambushed?”

  Corin sighed. “She did refuse to take the rescue trip out of here. But so did I.”

  I could probably shoot them all, or at least two of them before they even realized what I was doing. My hand was in my pocket, clenched around the burner. But I didn’t press the trigger. Dead, they’d be no use to me.

  I needed to find out where Simon was, and figure out a way to rescue him. I needed to find my way around this bewildering city. I needed allies. And besides, if I shot them all, I’d become responsible for Tieri. I didn’t see myself dodging crazy revolutionaries all over town, while saddled with a child and a kitten. There were limits to even my self-delusion.

  I made a quick calculation. It had been important for me to not tell anyone—other than Simon, who already knew—about Eden, about how I’d come to be here and about what I was.

  Partly it was a habit of secrecy engrained in my people. When their ancestors had left Earth to found Eden, it had been important to keep Eden secret. It still was. As had been proven when Athena Hera Sinistra’s loss had caused the Good Men to start ambushing the darkships.

  So, our pilots and navigators kept all data in their heads and were prepared to kill themselves if captured. Which was why I’d killed Len and left Earth orbit as fast as I could, to avoid being interrogated or having Len at their mercy, because his only hope was regen and that would necessitate surrendering. After which I’d have no control over what happened, and neither would he.

  Eden had maybe a hundred thousand people. I didn’t know if anyone had counted lately. Maybe it was as many as half a million. At any rate, as inhabitants of a small asteroid on an eccentric orbit, we had neither the population nor the material resources to fight a war with a planet whose population topped five billion.