A Few Good Men (7 page)

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.

I became aware that I’d stared at Nathaniel much too long and possibly too intently, and that he was staring at me in a definitely odd way, somewhere between fright and hatred, with his throat working, as though he were fighting hard not to make a sound.

And Sam looked from one to the other of us with a puzzled expression.

I managed enough control over my wayward body to say, stiffly, “Pleased to meet you, Nathaniel. Am I to assume you have been trained in business and are your father’s assistant?”

“Not business primarily,” he said, but his voice came out squeaky, as if he were a too-young boy just at the age when voices change. “More law, though I am learning the business administration from my father as fast as I can.”

“I see,” I thought. So, crazy and a lawyer, par for the course. And of course his eyes looked like Ben’s. They would. He was Ben’s nephew. Which probably explained the hatred in his eyes. He probably knew I’d killed Ben. Fine then.

Something like a wave of mingled nausea and grief hit me full force, because I hadn’t been back in this house without Ben, and it felt like Ben had just died, all over again. “I . . . I will look forward to working with you,” I managed, then looked over Sam’s head, at Savell who stood by, hovering. What I wanted to do was run through the crowd, screaming, run away from all this, from the servants staring at me, from the much-too-f hallway, from the press of bodies, their smell, their heat far too close after my life as a recluse. From Nathaniel Remy’s all-too-explicable hatred. But I couldn’t. The Good Man might be an absolute dictator—most are—but he’s also a prisoner of his house and position.

My throat had constricted, my body hurt with the effort of my holding in place, but my voice sounded calm and composed in my own ears. “Savell, if you would order a bath run, I need to change into”—I looked down and made a small self-deprecating shrug—“more appropriate clothing.”

“Ah, sir, of course, only—” He looked like he was about to say something, then bowed. “Of course, sir. I shall order your room cleaned and prepared.”

“Forget it. I just need a bath. Now.”

There was scurrying and moving, as Savell clearly gave instructions to his underlings by gesture and look.

And Sam was still there, still staring at me. Something in his expression was unreadable. I thought I saw surprise and a faint disgust, but most of all there seemed to be pity. Why he should feel sorry for me was unfathomable, but I was sure that he felt it nonetheless. “Sir,” he said, “you will need to speak to Nat. There are legal issues which must—”

“You mean someone will dispute my right to be the Good Man?” I asked, and hoped my voice sounded more incredulous than I felt.

“Oh, not that, sir,” Sam said. “But we must make sure everything is watertight all the same. And as quickly as possible. Before the council of Good Men meets.”

I realized what he meant by that. The retainers had been living in fear, as I expected, of someone taking over and what it meant for them and the seacity.

“Nathaniel”—I said, and spared that worthy what I hoped was a withering glance—“can come to me in half an hour.” I wanted to meet with him about as much as I wanted to saw off my head with a rusty saw. But I supposed there was no avoiding it. “I must have some privacy, first. And my mother? Has anyone told her I’m here?” I was surprised she had not come running yet. Perhaps she too could not forgive me. Perhaps even she hated me.

Nathaniel seemed to go paler, but it was Sam who answered, steadily, “The Lady Isabella passed away, sir. Two years ago.”

I looked at him and I know my look was disbelieving, even if I didn’t mean it. “What?”

“An accident, sir. Her flyer caught fire. She didn’t escape in time.”

And then I did run. I ran, most indecorously, between two flanking rows of retainers, back to the front hall. I pelted up the stairs, as I did when I hurt myself in the garden, when I was little, and ran up the stairs to my mother’s comforting lap.

Only I ran past the rooms that had been hers, and down the side corridor, to what had been my own bedroom. I went in without even thinking, and then stopped, because this room didn’t look at all like mine.

It looked like my father’s.

Clothe Him in Silk,
Cover Him in Gold

Nathaniel charged into my room as soon as I came out of my bath, while I was still mother-naked, and completely vulnerable. My fault.

It wasn’t just that I hadn’t locked the door—I’d spent so much time locked from the outside, it never occurred to me that someone might want to come in to my room. And besides, I’d grown up with retainers coming in and out of my room to lay out clothes or clean something, more or less at will. The Good Man or even his scapegrace son could never lock the door without interfering with the smooth running of the household.

But that wasn’t the problem. The main problem was that I had dawdled and not just because I’d cried in the bath, where no one could see me, overcome suddenly by the loss of my mother on top of what felt, irrationally, like the recent loss of Ben.

It was that I’d also wandered around the room in a daze for a while before bathing. I suppose I should have expected it to have changed. But I didn’t.