A Few Good Men

by Sarah A. Hoyt

Meanwhile, I crawled into the big bed, wishing that I could have kept Goldie, wishing I didn’t feel so alone. It had all seemed so simple, even if it had all seemed to be my fault. I still preferred simple to complex. And that guilt was like an old friend, like a blanket I’d held over myself for all these years. And now . . . Now I was truly alone, truly forsaken. And people wanted to kill me. People had wanted to kill me for a long time. My father, for one. Apparently since birth.

  I stared at the ceiling, blankly, thinking this room was too big. I’d have a wall built around the bed. I’d have—

  Now you’re just being crazy, Ben said. You know I always told you that you weren’t guilty.

  “Ben?”

  Right here. Always right here. I told you I wouldn’t leave you alone.

  I turned and fell asleep.

  And woke with Goldie licking my face, ten seconds before the room exploded.

  All right, in retrospect, the room didn’t explode. But that is what it felt like to me. A blaze of light, the zing of a burner, a scream.

  I yelled “Lights,” and the light came on, and Nat stood at the side of my bed, a burner in each hand.

  And I reached for the burner I’d slipped under my pillow—I told you I’m never without one, not by choice—and cut down the Scrubber who stood by my door and who was aiming at Nat, before he could fire. And then Nat cut his fellow down. Just to be sociable I shot the next. Nat held up the side by taking the remaining ones out. As he fell, I noted they were all Scrubbers.

  And then we were both of us awake in a brightly illuminated room, with six corpses, and Goldie nowhere in sight.

  “Goldie?” Nat called, as he holstered the burners, which is when I realized he was wearing only his underwear and two holsters. As a fashion choice went, it was odd enough, but what was more remarkable was that he seemed perfectly composed wearing it. “Goldie!”

  A whine-bark came from under the bed, and Nat called him again. I could hear in Nat’s voice fear that Goldie was hurt, but when Goldie came out, tail between his legs, it became obvious that he was just scared.

  It was only when Nat had run his hands over Goldie and satisfied himself about this, that I realized the door to my room was open, blown up on its hinges. And Nat was on a com before I could think I should do it. “Father? Father? Dad?”

  There was enough of a delay in answering that my heart started hammering in my chest with almost painful strength, and I realized I couldn’t bear for Sam Remy to be dead. He’d been . . . as close to a normal father to me as people who have real fathers have. Besides if he died, Nat would be in charge, and right then I didn’t think that was a good idea. Nat looked over his shoulder at me, and I thought he was thinking the same thing I did. “Daddy?” Nat’s voice was suddenly much, much younger.

  Then Sam’s voice came on, “Yes, son. You’re in the Good Man’s room. How is Luce—the Patrician?”

  “He’s well. Unscathed. But we have six bodies to dispose of.”

  “Ours?”

  “Scrubbers.”

  “Ah.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’m fine. I was just getting the resealing crews to start. I didn’t realize any Scrubbers had got in. There must be a hole somewhere else in the house. I repelled them at the front door, though the door was damaged.” There was some sudden talk, a couple of shouts in the background, and Sam’s calm, very tired voice. Then Sam came back. “There was a breach at the kitchen door. A couple of people wounded. None dead. It seems the . . . ah . . . Scrubbers were too intent on making it to the Good Man to make sure that the victims were well and truly killed.”

  “If they’d killed him they’d then have made sure afterwards,” Nat said, his voice flat.

  “Likely. Son . . . uh . . . You . . .”

  “I came in through the tunnel. From the . . . the secret tunnel.” A hesitation and a sigh, as if he were confessing something terrible and his shoulders were thrown back, as though he anticipated and prepared for censure. “Max and I had a secret tunnel.”

  “Oh.” Sam said and, unaccountably, he sounded both worried and relieved. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to sound both. “Nat, it might be best if you stay . . .”

  “I will sleep in front of my master’s door,” Nat said, an ironical note in his voice. “As soon as someone can get the corpses out of that spot. And, uh . . . cleans the carpet. Or takes it out. Or something. I refuse to sleep in a pool of blood.” He looked at the door to my room, hanging on its hinges. They’d cut with burners on the hinge side, soundlessly. “It would also be a good idea if someone repaired this damn door. And if a guard were put outside all doors.”

  “How secure is your secret entrance?” his father asked.

  “No one ever found it that Max and I didn’t tell about it, and the two people in this world who know about it right now wouldn’t talk. Possibly not even under torture.”

  “I see.”

  In moments, Sam and what looked like a battalion of helpers arrived. The corpses were carried out, the carpet, fortunately not attached to the floor, was taken out also. The marble floor beneath the carpet was scrubbed. It all took no more than minutes. The door was repaired.

  Sam frowned and smiled at Nat at the same time, and told him he was a good boy, in the exact same absentminded tone that Nat used for Goldie, but I thought there was more emotion there, just not an absolute certainty on how to express it. Then he told me I was a good boy, too, which just goes to show you how tired and distracted the man was, because calling me a good boy was roughly like calling a mastiff a nice puppy.

  One of the servants came back with a blue silk robe which Sam handed to Nat, saying, “You’d best put this on.” I wasn’t sure exactly what the robe did, except hide the holsters. I could see from Nat’s look that he wasn’t entirely sure either. Except perhaps he should be protected from my notorious self.

  I’d like to say right now and for posterity that the thought of laying a hand on Nat Remy hadn’t even crossed my mind. Certainly not while he was ably fighting off intruders, no matter what his state of undress. And not even afterwards. Laying hands on Nat Remy, I thought, would be much like laying hands on nitroglycerin: only to be attempted if one had tired of living.

  In no time at all, the room was empty save for me, and Nat and Goldie. And the door was closed.

  Nat opened the closet, got out a blanket, rolled himself in it, and laid down on the floor across the door. So that whole thing hadn’t been figurative.

  “Why . . . why did you come back?” I asked.

  He sighed, as I turned the lights off, and his voice sounded much younger than he was, in the dark. “I went home, and then I thought this was possible. Though I never thought it was probable. But the fact that my father decided to sleep in his office, to supervise security . . . well. I thought I’d come through the tunnel and check on you. And Goldie and I had just come in, when the door came down. I’d come in the dark the whole way, so I saw them clearly. You know the rest.”

  “I know the rest,” I said. “The tunnel. You’ll have to show me where it is. It doesn’t seem safe to me.”

  “It’s very safe,” he said, defiant. “I hadn’t even told my father. He’d never even suspected it before. And no one ever found it. It’s secure.”

  “But, for the love of . . . why the tunnel? Why in hell a tunnel to this room of all places?”

  There was a long silence, a forceful exhalation. And then a defiant voice, in the dark, “Because I slept in this room almost every night.”

  And then Ben’s voice, distinct, in my ears, Stop being dense, Luce. And stop picking on the boy.

  “I wasn’t picking on him,” I said sullenly.

  “What?” Nat said.

  “Nothing,” I said, with immense dignity. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “But—”

  “And it’s none of my business, either,” I said to both of them. “And I couldn’t care less.”

  “Fine then,” Nat said.
r />   In my mind Ben chuckled. I punched my pillow and turned on my side, as I felt Goldie jump on the bed and climb in beside me. It really was none of my business. Sam Remy could take his suspicions and . . . and do whatever with them. I wanted nothing to do with Nat. I wanted nothing to do with anyone, in fact.

  Now that I knew that even if I married, I could never produce offspring, all I wanted was for people to stop trying to kill me. Then I could be the best Good Man possible for my city. And when I died, hopefully of old age, it could all do whatever it wanted. By then I would have—hopefully—arranged for safety for my retainers. No one could ask more of me.

  I turned again and punched the pillow again.

  The problem, Luce, and you know it all too well, is that it’s highly unlikely they’ll stop trying to kill you. Not when they just organized an expedition against your house. You’re going to have to come up with a better plan.

  I was going to have to come up with a plan. I was going to have to come up with a better defense. Much as I appreciated Nat’s loyalty, how much did I want to trust him with my safety?

  Goldie got really close to me and licked my face. I put an arm over his soft, warm body.

  I don’t remember falling asleep.

  I knew I’d wake up to a world that would never be the same. Not for me.

  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

  WE DECLARE THE REVOLUTION

  Lord and Master

  I woke up with my curtains being opened, the light coming in to shine against my closed eyelids.

  Before my eyes opened, before my conscious mind connected this with the events of the previous night, my hand was under the pillow, grabbing the burner, and I’d brought it out, pointing it in the direction of the voice.

  “Patrician!” the voice was outraged, rather than shocked, and there was a tinkle of glass, a noise of porcelain. I opened my eyes to see a man I only very vaguely recognized pouring out coffee into a cup—I knew it was coffee because I could smell it—and setting out toast and who knew what else.

  Then I realized the room was full of people. And by that, I mean exactly what I said. Full of people. People swarmed in every possible corner, doing things I only half understood. A team of three people, for instance, seemed to be removing all the suits from the closet, and even the stuff that had been Max’s from the drawers.

  I turned my attention and—mindlessly—my burner on them. “What are you doing?”

  The nearest man, holding an armful of suits, dropped them on the floor. He might also have pissed himself. I don’t know. I didn’t look. But his face had that mortified look, and his eyes crossed slightly as he looked at the burner. I turned the burner safety on, and put it back under my pillow, then crossed my arms. “I said, what are you doing?”

  “T-t-t—” the man said.

  “Taking your suits, Patrician,” the man behind him said, looking somewhat doubtful. “I mean, your predecessor’s suits. I mean, Mr. Remy said—”

  “And where in hell is Nathaniel Remy?” I asked, because I hadn’t seen him in the crowd, and realized only now that this seemed odd, since he’d fallen asleep in front of my door. I snorted. His master’s door indeed.

  “Nat-Nat-Nat—” the man who’d dropped my suits said.

  “Do you wish to speak to Nathaniel, Patrician?” Sam’s voice from near my bedside table. I turned to see him holding a bunch of those papers that could only be signed by the touch of the thumb with the right genetics, the kind of thing my father seemed to always be signing.

  “I want to know why he’s interfering with my clothes!” I said, and then realized that I was yelling at a man who was twice my age, who looked incredibly tired, who’d spent half the night up helping defend my house, whose underlings had got wounded and possibly killed, and who had always been kind to me. I said immediately, “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m not a morning person.”

  “Do you wish to keep those clothes?” he said. “Nathaniel didn’t make those decisions. I did. I noticed that the clothes you were wearing don’t fit you, and I presumed from the fact that you were wearing what the last Good Man wore before ascension that you didn’t like the more . . . colorful suits he chose afterwards? We had some clothes made, though far from a complete wardrobe, and I thought—”

  I waved my hand. “Sorry.” I looked at the terrified man, and waved at him. “Carry on, never mind me.” Then I turned back to Sam. “Who are all these people? Why are they in my room this early in the morning?”

  Sam cleared his throat. “Those people”—he pointed—“are making sure that your windows are secured, and the balcony door, too. Last night, they used a disrupting device that unlocked the back door. We must make sure—”

  “Fine, fine.”

  “Those people are making sure that any drinks on the drink table are replenished. Those people”—he pointed to five people by the window—“are merchants of the seacity, whose business is disrupted by our present . . . situation, and they would like to talk to you. And those people,” he said, pointing to four men by the entrance to the bathroom, “are waiting to help you bathe and dress.”

  I opened my mouth. Then I closed it. I’d read about rulers in the middle ages and shortly after. I’d read about rituals called the levee, in which everyone who had business with the king came to see him rise, and talk to him while he went about the necessary wakening routine. I remembered being highly amused by stories of how courtiers would loiter around while the king answered a call of nature, or turn a blind eye while the king’s latest fling slipped out of the king’s bed and through the door.

  It wasn’t so amusing to be in the position of those poor kings, though I supposed, now that I thought about it, that the government of the seacity and its territories was much like the government of one of the medieval countries. Certainly I was the ultimate and absolute ruler. I didn’t know why I was surprised. But I knew why I was upset. I’d be damned if I’d wake to this every morning. Perhaps my fath—whatever the hell he’d been to me, had enjoyed it. Perhaps it made him feel how important he was. Maybe he liked that.

  I wanted privacy to take a leak. I wanted a cup of coffee. And I’d be damned if I was going to have four men help me bathe.

  I thought I heard Ben’s voice in my mind say, I’ll have you know people pay very well indeed for that sort of thing. It was exactly the kind of thing Ben would have said, with a quirk of a smile.

  “Sam, get all these people out of here.”

  “Patrician?”

  “Well, make sure the windows and door are secure first, then get everyone out of here. All of them.”

  He blinked at me, as if I’d spoken in ancient Aramaic. “Patrician?”

  “Sam, you’re neither deaf nor stupid. Get all these people out of here, now, or I’m going to. And I won’t do it diplomatically.”

  He hesitated. “Even the merchants? I don’t scruple to tell you, public relations—”

  “Don’t give them the right to watch me use the bathroom,” I said. “Surely we have receiving rooms or parlors or something of the sort in this house where we can stow very important visitors while I wake up and make myself presentable? Serve them breakfast, or something? Surely they’ll enjoy that more than taking a look at me in my birthday suit?”

  He inclined his head. “And your bathers?”

  “Sam! I’ve been bathing myself since I was three. You know that. Surely—”

  “All right,” he said. I had the impression there was something very like quiet satisfaction in his voice. He walked around the room, rapidly, talking to each group of people, including the men now hanging clothes in the closet. I don’t know what he told them. They looked over their shoulders at me, as though he’d told them in another ten seconds, I’d cut loose with the burner. They hung up those clothes in record time and made for the door with almost comic haste. As did all the others. As Sam was heading for the door after all of them, I said, “Not you, Sam, stay.”

  He stopped, and turned around, as the door closed behind
the last of my would-be bathers. “No offense meant, Patrician, but I also have not the slightest interest in seeing you without clothes.”

  “Was that a joke?” I said, and smiled at him. “Very creditable.” Because it was either that, or take it as insubordination. My father would have. “Wait just a moment. I’ll be right back. I just want to ask you a few things. I have no idea how to be Good Man.”

  I ran to the bathroom, relieved the pressure on my bladder, washed my hands, splashed cold water on my face, ran my fingers back through my hair, gave up on it, tied it back with an elastic band, made a face at my far more than five o’clock shadow and came back into the room.

  Sam Remy was where I’d left him, still clutching his stack of papers. “Put the papers down on the bed, Sam. And help yourself to a cup of coffee.” I noted there were five, as though my server had expected me to share my breakfast with the merchants. Perhaps he had. I couldn’t tell. My cup, which he had poured, was lukewarm, but I downed it, realizing after swallowing, that it had been without sugar or milk. Maybe if I kept drinking it like this, it would put hair on my chest. Or maybe I already had enough.

  Sam laid the papers down and came towards the table, but made no effort to help himself to the coffee. I looked at him, and realized his features were frozen, very much in something like . . . embarrassment? Anger? Confusion? I couldn’t tell. And then I realized that he looked both relieved and offended. I wasn’t sure about the relieved, but I thought I had a handle on the offended. I’d just told him I didn’t like the way he had been doing his job. It occurred to me to wonder why he’d thought I liked it, then I rolled my eyes at myself.

  Even if Sam Remy knew the truth about the Good Men—did he? Nat had been very careful to indicate that himself and Ben had been members of a secret and subversive organization, but he didn’t say anything about his father or the rest of the family. Which, I suspected, was very much Nat and his way to protect them. Even if he were low man on a conspiracy and everyone else around him had more power and more decision-making ability, he wouldn’t admit anyone but himself and a man who’d gone beyond the reach of the law, had been implicated.