A Few Good Men

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  I got the tears to stop after a while. I tried to retreat into my mind, to achieve that state in which I’d convinced myself that Ben’s voice, his memory in my mind came from elsewhere, that they were in fact his ghost. But Ben wasn’t there. And if he’d truly been a ghost, wouldn’t he have told me Max had died?

  I bit the inside of my cheek till that pain distracted me from the less physical pain.

  What to do now? I had half thought of hanging around in this kind of area, until I could afford surgery to change my features, and then perhaps get some manual labor somewhere, until I could acquire some useful occupation. Any useful occupation. I liked learning and had a turn for organizing things. I’d been sure I could support myself.

  But now everything had changed. My father and Max were both gone. The article said that the Good Men would gather shortly—perhaps as early as a month—to decide who got Olympus.

  This had happened five or six times in history. A family died out without descendants and another Good Man annexed their territories. It was what happened with Shangri-la. What it meant in practice was that the city left leaderless became subjected to the other city. Its hereditary retainers were despoiled of their positions and, over time, the absorbed territory lost its economic status and its wealth, as the absorbing territory claimed pride of place and everything of any value.

  Ben’s family were second only to mine in Olympus, but that wouldn’t last. Not if another Good Man took over. And they weren’t the only ones. There was a never-ending hierarchy under them, most of it hereditary. They’d immediately become subordinate to even the lowest servants of whoever took over. Their homes would be taken, their possessions looted. And though it was never mentioned in the news, and would be denied if it had been, there were stories one heard. Intrigues and assassinations. Even the widows of Good Men weren’t safe. Anyone who might wield the smallest amount of power by tradition or custom would be despoiled, reduced, removed, until the people were left leaderless and ready to accept the new leader.

  My life wasn’t worth much. And my rule would be worth even less. I’d never been trained in it. But if I claimed the isle, I could protect Olympus. Now that there were no other candidates of the blood left to rule, no one could really dispute my right.

  I could at least protect Mother and our retainers. And I could find out who had killed Max. I read the description of how they’d found him and shuddered. If this had been done by the Sons of Liberty, they’d answer to me. I’d personally destroy them one by one.

  The one thing I knew for sure was that Max might look like me, but, having known him when he was very young and unable to disguise what he was, I could tell that there had been no malice in him. I knew he could not possibly have grown up to deserve this fate. And I would find the ones who had killed him and I would relish wielding the power of the Good Man of Olympus if it meant I could torture them as they’d tortured Max.

  I stood up from the booth and got ready to claim my inheritance.

  Long Live the Good Man

  Olympus Seacity is, perhaps appropriately, more vertical than most seacities, climbing up to a high summit where my ancestral palace was, occupying the center of carefully tended gardens, surrounded by high walls. Around it, in almost defensive array, stood the mansions of our favored retainers.

  I knew several ways into the palace. Ben and I had started getting around security, probably with Mother’s behind-the-scenes help, when we were very young, but by the time we were teens, we knew how to exploit real security flaws.

  There was a way to go around the back, over the wall, into the trees in the garden, and then to a spot where there were no cameras, and from there to my room. For a moment I considered it, but it would be insane.

  If anyone in there remembered me—well, the retainers would and I hoped Mother did too—most would think I was long dead. One doesn’t come back from the dead by sneaking into one’s old room and pretending to simply have overslept by fifteen years or so.

  No, when returning from the dead it behooves the newly alive man to make as much of a splash as possible. Knock on the doors, rattle the windows, demand that his shocked retainers put silk attire on his back and rings upon his hands. At least that’s how every fairytale treated the lost prince.

  I didn’t know how I’d deal with it, if the front gate had been closed, but it wasn’t. Even stranger, the guards normally stationed at it didn’t stop me, or even look at me twice as I walked up the long drive that led to the front door.

  I’d heard it said that some Good Men’s palaces were architectural witnesses to hereditary madness. Syracuse’s for instance is almost a declaration of paranoia in cement and stone, with staircases that lead nowhere, sudden drops at the end of a passage, and all the style and taste of a brothel. A cheap brothel.

  Our family’s madness seemed to be of the more controlled kind. The kind of control in a fist that clenches tight over the levers of power and will never let go.

  It was rectangular and sprawling, and perfectly symmetrical, its front displaying a broad, white dimatough staircase leading to a shining door that looked like crystal, but was translucent dimatough.

  I’d never seen the door closed during the day, but it was closed now. Maybe this explained the gate being open, or the inattention of the guards. Or perhaps it was that they didn’t have anything real to guard anymore. After all, the Good Man was dead. Both of them. But I wasn’t going to think about that, because this truly was not the time to cry over Max.

  Instead, I gritted my teeth and walked straight up to the door, and thumbed the comlink lever next to it. Looking through the slightly green-tinted sheen obscuring the doorway was like looking through a heavy sheet of falling water. It took a moment for anyone to respond, and I thought when they did that I’d ask to speak to Patrician Isabella Keeva. Best to be admitted to Mama’s presence, and explain everything to her, then let her make the announcement to the family and get the lawyers to deal with the legal issues.

  I wasn’t sure how Mother would feel about me, but grieved and horrified though she might be, I couldn’t imagine a time or place where she wouldn’t love me or be on my side, even if I’d turned into a monster.

  But when a voice said, “What do you wish?” creakingly, from the other side, my body apparently had different plans from my carefully thought out ones. I heard the words that came out of my lips in utter disbelief, “This is Good Man Lucius Keeva. Open the door.”

  There was a long silence, then an almost scared squeak, all the stranger since it sounded like it came from a grown man. “What?”

  “I am Good Man Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva. Open the door.”

  From the scuffles and sounds and the shifting shadows and movements on the other side, the squeaky-voiced man called a hysterical woman, who called a booming-voiced man, who in turn called another man, who called a woman, who called another woman.

  As the discussion on the other side reminded me of nothing so much as three catfights going on all at once, another voice came in. At first I couldn’t hear it at all, just the sort of vibration that indicated someone was speaking in normal tones and at a reasonable volume in the middle of the cacophony.

  Strangely, this caused the other voices to stop, and I heard what seemed the last words of his sentence. “No, he’s not dead. Yes, of course it could be him.”

  The squeaky-voiced man said in the tone of someone accusing someone else in a crime, “He looks just like Patrician Maximilian Keeva. Older.”

  “Yes,” the controlled, patient voice said. “He would. About eighteen years older.”

  And even through the door, attenuated, I’d recognized the voice. It was Samuel Remy, Ben’s much older brother, my father’s steward and man of affairs, and the only person who’d ever treated me like a son.

  I heard locks slide and bolts pulled, and wondered why they were barricaded in the house. Then I remembered the seacity was up for grabs, and it wouldn’t be the first time nor probably the last that a Good Ma
n solved that kind of issue by force, ahead of official meetings and declarations.

  Finally, a pale face looked up at me. It was endowed with two dark eyes, and the hair above it was mostly white, but I remembered it mousy brown, and the face found a place in my mind as Savell, my father’s butler.

  “Hello, Savell,” I said, smiling. “It’s certainly been a long time.”

  His eyes widened at me. Whatever instrument he’d seen me on before—I seemed to remember a holo viewer just inside the door, to screen visitors, though the door was never closed and anyway I didn’t open the door myself, ever—must have failed to get the full effect of my scarred face, my bulk, and my attire. Now he gave me a quick up and down look, and seemed just a little scared.

  But my manner, cordial but distant, had been perfect to etiquette, and that probably helped him steady himself, because he swallowed once or twice, then flung the door open, and stood straighter, saying in perfect butler-mode, “So it has, sir. Welcome home.”

  I stepped into the front hall of my ancestral home. Like the outside, it was of classical design and might have been more at home in the eighteenth century than in the twenty-fifth—or even the twenty-second, when it had been built. Oh, the yellow and black tiles, laid in squares on the floor were probably dimatough, rather than marble. And the high vaulted ceiling overhead was probably poured dimatough rather than plaster, the same way that the massive chandelier hanging from the middle of it was probably transparent ceramite rather than crystal, but it was the sort of home that a well-to-do Englishman of the eighteenth century would have recognized.

  Only even I had trouble recognizing my retainers. Not that they had changed. The two women hugging each other and looking at me as though I were holding burners to their heads were, I was fairly sure, the housekeeper and the second floor manager. The man with his mouth wide open and the sort of look like he expected me to pull out a weapon and mow him down, was the chef. Behind him, holding a rolling pin as a defensive weapon, was our baker. Other people in various positions of defense or incredulity were known to me as household personnel. The lanky blond man against the wall, turned pale as milk, with most of his fist crammed in his mouth was a total unknown, but—from his grey pants and shapeless grey tunic—was a secretary or clerk.

  In the middle of all this, Samuel Remy looked odd by looking perfectly normal and perfectly calm. “Sir,” he said. “Welcome home. It is a relief to find you are alive and able to assume your place.”

  “What if he isn’t?” the chef said.

  “What?” Samuel asked, wheeling around on him.

  “What if it isn’t him? They do wonderful things with surgery, you know? I wouldn’t put it past—”

  Samuel inhaled, noisily, and I thought he was going to scream, but when he spoke, his voice was perfectly composed. “What test would satisfy you? I recognize Patrician Lucius, but if you don’t . . . I understand he’s much changed. So, what test would satisfy you? Would it be proven he’s himself if he can open the genlocks? As we know all males in the line have close enough DNA to do it.”

  There were scattered nods of agreement, though the blond man by the wall scrabbled with his feet at the floor and managed to get yet more of his fist into his mouth, which didn’t stop something much like a shriek from escaping.

  Samuel Remy looked at me, and I saw he was trying to phrase this as a polite request. I decided to make it easier for him. “I don’t mind, Sam,” I said. I’d never called him Sam, but my father had, and it seemed like I should. “Will my father’s office do? Is it locked?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I turned to the third hallway on the left, figuring this was part of convincing them I was really myself, and walked down it. This floor was mostly service areas, offices, administrative rooms and public areas: the ball rooms, the dining room that got used only for official receptions and, at the far left, my father’s offices and those of the people who worked closest to him.

  Walking down the high, ceilinged hallway, I felt my throat close. The holos on the walls were those my father had favored. For all I know those holos had been the ones that had hung on those walls since my first ancestor had taken possession of the house. They displayed peaceful meadows and the occasional flight of birds.

  They should have soothed and comforted me. They should have. But they didn’t. Instead, I felt that this had all been a mistake, or perhaps a trap. My father had arranged for me to be given a doctored gem reader. I would walk up to his office and the door would open, and he’d emerge. And behind him would be guards, ready to drag me back to the lonely, antiseptic confines of Never-Never.

  I don’t know if any of it showed, but I know I was holding myself steady and normal-seeming with all my will power. I suspect my step acquired a mechanical, artificial rhythm as I led the small throng of servants along the hallway, past various doors, to the last one. It was closed. Which meant, I thought, that Max hadn’t gone off knowingly or willingly with whomever had killed him. Because no Good Man thinking he might be away for more than a few minutes would leave that office locked. Particularly not when he was the last survivor of his line. That meant someone would have to blast through the genlock to get in. And no one would. Not until the Good Men decided which of them was to take over. Doing otherwise would mean hell to pay.

  That meant that if anyone else—most likely Sam Remy—had papers or work in there, he would have to wait in abeyance until the new owner of Olympus took over. And then the Olympus functionary would have to submit to whatever the new Good Man thought of his unfinished business. A bad business all around—one to which no Good Man should subject his loyal servant. Not a Good Man interested in the loyalty of his servants, at least.

  The door, black and unreflective, didn’t open as I approached. Blindly, trying not to think of what would happen if somehow my genes didn’t open it, I shoved my finger into the soft grey membrane of the genlock.

  A deep click sounded and the door opened slowly inward. I had a moment, nothing more, to register that the office looked exactly as it had under my father, meaning that Max either had lacked the time or the interest to redecorate, then I turned around to face the crowd of servants.

  Sam Remy was the closest, bowing. He reached into his pocket and brought out a small box. “Sir,” he said. He need not say more. The box he was extending to me had a large, golden K on the lid and I knew it. It was the box into which every night, before going to bed, my father had sequestered the signet ring of the Keevas.

  I hesitated a moment, then took the box, opened it, and took out the ring, as I said, as casually as I could, “I assume the police returned it?”

  Was that a momentary hesitation? He shook his head and I got the very strong impression he was trying not to look at someone. But I didn’t know whom. I just got the impression he was exerting the strictest possible discipline over his eyes. “No, sir. Your brother disappeared from his bed.”

  Ah! Max had been enticed away. Honeypot then, most likely. It happened. Though Max should have known the risks as well as I did. At least I didn’t have to worry about whether the ring, which besides a signet was also a data gem that contained a lot of the needed information and codes to run my territory, had been corrupted.

  When I looked up from slipping the ring on my finger, and noting in some surprise it fit perfectly, the household was bowing to me. More people had gathered than before. I never understood how news passed around the house, but clearly they had heard. And Sam Remy was gesturing wildly at a young man who stood at the edge of the crowd, looking up at me with an unreadable expression.

  Sam hissed, “Nat,” which should not be a word that could be hissed, and gestured more wildly.

  The young man, the same who had been doing such a creditable job of stuffing most of his fist in his mouth, now approached, reluctantly, doing as much of an impression of robotic walking as I must have done on the way here. He stopped next to Sam, who bowed just slightly, in that sort of bow people give when indicating this is
a formal occasion, and said, “Good Man Keeva, this is my oldest son, Nathaniel Remy.”

  Nathaniel was so pale that he might have been cast of the same white dimatough that imitated plaster on the ceiling. He was taller than Sam by a head. His hair was the sort of pale blond normally described as white-blond, a color not normally seen in anyone over two years of age. His features looked older than he could be. Because if he’d been in his late teens when I’d been arrested, I’d have known him well enough. In fact, I seemed to remember that Sam’s marriage had occurred when I was twelve or so. I remembered my mother talking about it. And Sam was not the type of man to have a son outside marriage. I had a vague idea of his having a son and a daughter, five or maybe six by the time I’d been arrested.

  But Nathaniel looked at least late twenties, more likely early thirties, and not easy ones. There were no wrinkles on his skin, mind, not even the sort of very fine ones I’d traced on my own face yesterday, in front of the mirror. But he looked like his face was all angles and hollows, the sort of sculpted, spare features that you didn’t get before your late twenties, or later than that. Or perhaps he suffered from bad insomnia.

  It was his eyes that stopped me cold, though. They were haunted and strange, as though he were looking at some horror no one else could see in my face. But in shape, in dark color, in the way his eyelids opened very wide for a moment as though he tried to but couldn’t absorb the reality of my existence, they were Ben’s eyes, staring at me from this stranger’s face.