A Few Good Men (17 page)

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.

But even if Sam Remy knew very well that the Good Men he’d served had both—all three?—been the same Good Man, he’d never have thought about it. His entire life, possibly since he was a little boy and his father the manager of the Keeva affairs, he would have seen the Good Man awaked like this.

“Sam,” I said, “I’m very sorry if I embarrassed you. Truly, I don’t do mornings well, and do try to think of my position. Not only have I wakened alone for the last fourteen years, I’ve been absolutely alone for the last fourteen years. Imagine what it’s like to wake to that . . . circus.”

He frowned a little, but a grin was trying to tug at his lips. It was an expression that reminded me too much of Ben for my mental well-being. He said, slowly, “Well, there is . . . I will admit that must have been disconcerting. Also, I am an idiot. I should have realized how that would have appeared to you.” He straightened his shoulders. “I would like to tender my resignation effective today. I am clearly getting past my job, and my knowledge of past Good Men does not apply to—”

I poured a cup of coffee in a clean cup and looked up at him. “Do you take sugar and cream?”

“Patrician?”

“Luce,” I said. “You always called me Luce. And please unbend. I remember the walloping you gave me when you caught Ben and me in the apple tree.”

He looked briefly confused, then sighed. “I didn’t have the authority. I shouldn’t have touched you. But I was so scared you were both going to fall and break your heads. Dancing on the branches!”

“Yeah. As an adult, I imagine what I would have felt. It worked. We never did it again.”

“No, and you never complained about me to your parents, either, which, trust me, didn’t go unremarked.”

“How could I? You were the closest thing Ben had to a father. And that I had to a father too, now that I think about it. Do you take sugar and cream?”

He came over. “I’ll do it,” he said, and reached for the creamer, poured a dollop in his coffee, while I poured myself a new cup of coffee. “Are you sure you wouldn’t want my resignation?”

I didn’t even look up. I poured myself cream and sugar and stirred. “You just want to punish me by making me work with Nat,” I said. Then into the sudden silence. “That was a joke, by the way. You’ll have to get used to my not-very-sparkling humor this early, I guess. I suspect eventually I can work just fine with Nat, but he’s a little scary and, besides, he orders me around.”

“If Nathaniel was improper in any—”

“Yeah, he very improperly saved my worthless life. No, he was not improper. He just told me things I needed to do and I needed to know, which, incidentally, are many, and he did it without ceremony, which I suspect I needed also. But he does scare me a little. So much intentness and competence.”

Sam took a sip of his coffee and made a face. “Nat has always been driven,” he said. “Sometimes I’ve thought . . . but you don’t want to hear a father’s worries. Am I to infer you don’t want anyone in your room when you wake?”

“It’s fine if you come in,” I said. “Or the coffee, if we arrange it that way. I just need to know who it will be, and I need it to be the same every day. It takes me three cups of coffee to even function,” I said. “You don’t want to do that to me.”

“No, Patri—”

“Luce.”

“Luce.”

“Right. Now, do those papers really need my signature or can you make do?”

“Unless I borrow your genetics,” he said, “I really need your signature. They’re mostly routine matters, and I’ll explain each, but they’re essential to keeping the seacity running.”

“Other than that and meeting with the merchants—and what am I supposed to tell the merchants?”

“I’ll be with you. I’ll do most of the talking, but, yes, you’ll need to be present. It’s all a matter of public relations and ensuring that they realize you care about what you’re putting them through. Mostly you’re supposed to reassure them that they’re important to you and to the seacity. It’s very easy to start discontent that is very hard to put down.”

I thought that last had come from a book of maxims, somewhere, possibly passed from Remy to Remy throughout the generations. But I didn’t say it. I was learning. “What else do I need to do today?” I asked.

He hesitated. “There are supplies to arrange and siege logistics to finalize and—”

“Do I need to do those?” I asked. “Personally?”

“No, sir. I suspect you wouldn’t know how to do most of them.”

“At least that last is disarmingly frank. Now if we could stop with the ‘sir,’ I, for one, would greatly appreciate it. Now, be honest, by not taking a hand in that, am I adding to your burden of work?”

He shrugged. “I suspect mostly my daughter, Martha, will do it. I’ll just have to sign it.”

I looked at him. “You should take a break for a few hours and go home and rest.”

“I intend to. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“None of us are.”

He wrinkled his nose. “The only other thing on my agenda today is to . . . that is, Nathaniel told me that—”

“Yes, Nat said he was arranging a meeting of some sort.”

Sam looked incredibly relieved, but only for a moment, because when I asked, “Where is Nat?” his face created tension lines, immediately relaxed as I said, “and Goldie, for that matter?”

“I’ve told Nat,” he said, “that if you want Goldie—”

“No, no. More than glad to share him. Just wondered where he was.”

“I suspect Nat has taken him for a run. He usually does around this time.”