DarkShip Thieves (43 page)

As I approached, he flourished a burner, and pointed it at me. "Evening. What business?" he asked, giving me the once over from top to bottom.

"Lair business."

He raised his eyebrows. "No beast so fierce, but knows a touch of pity."

"But I know none, and therefore am no beast."

He gave me another once over, this time more relaxed and smiled, in a cheeky way a young kid his age shouldn't. I would have flattened him, but he made me think of Waldron, so I didn't. "Who are you?" I said.

"Abidan Kwasi, and you?"

"Athena Hera Sinistra."

Like that the burner was pointing at me. "She's dead."

"Rumors of my death are largely exaggerated." I jumped him, but remembered what Kit had to say about my obsession and kicked his hand. His burner went flying and we both ran for it.

I had just grabbed it, when a voice from the doorway said, "Abi, leave Lefty alone."

Abidan turned, and then I did. Jan Rainer was walking towards us, informally dressed as people got when they'd been in the lair for a while—i.e., he was wearing leather pants but not full riding leathers, which meant he didn't intend to go out. On top he wore one of the almost disposable white shirts that everyone seemed to wear. "Lefty," he said, and grinned at me. "Stop playing with the noob."

I still held the burner anyway, as I stood up, and slipped it into my pocket to keep the other company. Amazingly useful things, burners. One can't—really—have enough of them.

Jan knew me well enough he made no comment. Instead he turned to Abi. "I just came to tell you that she was expected. Ettiene called." Jan was Ettiene's second in command, when Jan wasn't in the lair. He wasn't quite so mentally coordinated as Ettiene, but he was good at keeping things going if Ettiene had given him precise instructions. "He'll be along as soon as he can get away."

Abi, who had turned a lovely shade of red, gave me a sheepish look. "I can't be blamed for not recognizing you, now, can I? You're not ten feet all and you don't have balls the size of elephants."

I grinned at him. It was a good attempt. I was trying to remember the name Kwasi from our general circle. I seemed to remember he was the son of one of Jan's family's administrators. "It's these clothes," I said. They disguise my height, and at any rate the balls were always largely metaphorical."

He was a cute kid, about the color of aged walnut with startling blue eyes. Pre-Eden-Thena would be earmarking him as someone to get to know a lot better in three or four years. Now he just made me think of Waldron—even if he looked quite different—and feel a pang of missing the whole family. I hoped no one else had got captured . . . I hoped . . .

I followed them into the lair. It looked amazingly like our other lair, which probably shouldn't surprise anyone. Like nomadic and rootless cultures, the broomers could replace everything they owned fairly quickly. Particularly since they commanded the purse of the children of Good Men.

There were partitions, most of them made of the sort of stiffened fabric that is used to make separations in stores and offices. White, allowing the light to shine diffusely through it, it made the whole place look exotic and strange.

As per normal, there were some common areas, and then little cubes that each broomer claimed for himself and filled with his possessions—usually a mattress and any number of boxes containing more specific stuff.

Lairs were very safe inside. At least no one from outside would steal anything and if someone inside the lair stole from one of his brothers or sisters . . . Well, there would be hell to pay, and someone would make sure he would pay. So the little partitions weren't closed, though some people had hung rugs or towels or just pieces of fabric across the doorways, to protect their privacy.

We walked along a sort of hallway between cubes. From one of them came a sound like dice being rolled. From another came soft moans and what I would bet was the sound of copulation, and then past a cube I knew was Fuse's just from the chemical smells.

Up through to the innermost area, and Jan had his arm around my shoulders. I couldn't remember if I'd ever bundled with him. Probably, once or twice. But it had left no mark, and I didn't think he was interested in a reprise, and besides, I was tight and coiled and had my hand on my burner, inside the pocket. One false move and he'd be a briefly glowing bonfire.

But he didn't make any false moves. He took me all the way to the back, where he called someone to get me a sandwich and a beer. There were about ten broomers in residence, counting—or not counting—Fuse, who mostly stayed in his cube and only bothered them when he wanted someone to steal explosives for him. "I think he's gone more unstable since you disappeared," Jan said.

Since I couldn't imagine a more unstable Fuse, I kept quiet and drank my beer and ate my sandwich.

It wasn't like I sat idle for very long, either. Not many minutes after I'd arrived, and I'd met the other new member besides Abi, a shy young blond named Irma Fratelli, people started bringing me brooms, and asking me if I could take a look. It ranged all the way from "It makes a funny sound when I take off in vertical free fall."—to which I refrained from answering
if the sound is not zoom, splat, you're doing well
, though the old Thena would have said just that—to "I found this on the street and don't know if it works." To "My Dragonwing stopped working and you know you're the only one who can make it okay again."

By the time Ettiene—looking debonair in tailored leathers—made his appearance, I had six brooms in front of me, in various stages of disassembling and someone had found me my old toolbox, carefully salvaged from the fire. I was testing the starter circuits on a Flipper that had seen better days, and eating a second sandwich with my right hand.

Ettiene greeted me as he always did. By hauling me up with an arm around my waist, and kissing me stupid, barely giving me time to swallow the bread in my mouth. I pulled away as soon as I could because I was almost absolutely sure that Kit wouldn't approve—though how people greeted each other in Eden ranged all over, just like everything else did.

Ettiene Boulanger, son of Good Man Boulanger—one of the reasons he often used the nom-de-guerre Baker—was of mostly French ancestry and looked it. His family were hereditary rulers of Liberte Seacity which had, at some point, been set up by a group of French and Swiss financiers. He looked like his ancestry too—being only slightly taller than I, slim, with an oval face and dark hair. He'd have been totally unremarkable except for two things—his nose, which was sharp and beak-like, and his caramel-colored eyes, which always seemed to know some joke they weren't sharing with the rest of his face.

"Now, now," I said, as I slipped from his arms and onto sitting cross-legged on the floor again. "You mustn't kiss me like that, Ettiene. I'm a married woman."

He raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything. It didn't occur to me till much later that he probably thought I was joking.

Instead he looked at the brooms in front of me and at the various broomers assembled around me looking on with the anxious expressions of parents while the doctor looks at their child. He looked back at me, and this time his eyes were shining with pure mischief. "Oh Lefty, damn it. You don't have to fix their brooms. Tell them to scat all of them. I've told them to replace the pieces of crap months ago."

I shook my head, at the same time as one of the broomers—a young dark haired woman—protested, "But that was because we thought she was dead."

"Right. So the minute she shows up, you pile brooms on her. Do any of the rest of you work for your supper?"

I took a sip of my beer. "I like mucking with brooms," I said. "Sit down Ettiene. I need to talk to you." I gave the rest of the room the beady eyeball. "The rest of you scat. I need to talk to Ettiene in private. You can come back when I tell you to. I promise not to kill your brooms."

They rushed out. Like most semi-literate societies, broomers thrive on lore, but I wondered exactly what the lore about me said, that all of them were so prompt to get out. Hell, most of them knew who I was, had been my friends for years. What did they think I was going to do if they didn't run? Burn their feet off?

Now that I thought about it, I very well might. At least back in the days when I didn't have to explain to Kit why I'd done so.

I looked back down at the open broom in front of me, and Ettiene started pacing, which I knew meant he was about to talk, but before he could get a word out, someone ran in—or rather someone loped in, dragging one of his legs. Fuse. I stood up, because I knew what was coming. I was right too.

Fuse rushed me, screaming "Thena, Thena, Thena." He was a good six feet tall and he'd been—before his accident—a big, beefy man and not ugly with it.

Something had happened to him after the accident, because he'd never fully recovered his weight and looked stringy and underfed. I didn't know exactly what had happened to him, after that claw fell on him, except that he'd been in regen for weeks, and this was the best they could do. his father had since had another son, to replace him as an heir.

I had grown used to him, I supposed, but after all the time away, I had to make an effort not to flinch away from his half-paralyzed face, with the permanently droopy eye and the slouching down mouth. He kissed me on the cheek, a slobbery kiss, like a small child's. I resisted an impulse to wipe my cheek. I wondered, out of the blue, if Eden, which was far more advanced than Earth would know how to fix this, even as he said, in his usual, slightly slurred speech. "They said you were dead. Bad they." He glared at Ettiene, who rolled his eyes. "And no one will let me make big booms. Thena, I have to show you my new boom stuff."

"Not now," Ettiene said, impatiently, which was exactly the wrong way to handle Fuse. As I saw Fuse's face crumple—even more—and look like he was going to burst into tears, I said, "Fuse, sweetie, just sit there and wait, okay? I need to talk to Ettiene, and then I'll be right along to see your new stuff."

He looked like he'd protest, but then nodded, once, and went to sit with his back against the wall and his arms around his knees, looking expectantly at me. I looked up at Ettiene.

Ettiene looked at Fuse.

"Don't worry," I said. "Just talk."

Ettiene sighed. He resumed pacing. "I don't know where to start," he said. "Everything went to hell after you disappeared."

"Start with Max."

"Ah, Max," he said. And as he said those words, someone else slid into the room. Ettiene turned, looking like he was ready to bite the intruder's head off. You see, when Ettiene gave orders around the lair they were obeyed and I would bet right now both the guard at the door and probably an additional guard set halfway up the hallway would have orders not to let anyone come in unless Ettiene called for him.

Fuse had slipped by because frankly, no one was ever sure how to stop Fuse. If you put your hands on the wrong place on him, it was quite possible he would detonate. And this new arrival—well, it was quite possible he would detonate too but in a completely different way.

Nat had always been tightly wrapped in a way. Max was the relaxed, happy-go-lucky one in the association, always ready to make a joke or diffuse a situation. Nat, perhaps because he was a brilliant man growing up in system where his family had climbed as far up as it could go and yet would always be someone else's employees, perpetually gave the impression of being a carefully contained package of frustration. Except when he was with Max, when he seemed to unwind and had even been known to laugh.

Right now, it would be impossible to imagine him laughing.

He'd always been tall and thin, but now he looked spare to the point that where his flesh showed—between his gloves and his leathers, at the wrists, and on his face—it seemed to be insufficient to cover his bones, giving him the angular look of a hurriedly drawn caricature.

His eyebrows were low above his dark eyes and his lips were slammed shut in a thin line that admitted neither expression nor protest. I'd rather argue with a hurricane than with Nat right now.

Apparently so would Ettiene. He looked at Nat, then wheeled around to face me again. Nat didn't greet me. He went to stand near where Fuse sat, leaning against the wall.

"Right . . . Max . . ." Ettiene said. "He . . . his father went on a trip to Circum shortly after your father came back. Just after you disappeared. He . . . He borrowed your dad's ship. And . . . well . . . his dad had a stroke on the trip. And Max was acting weird when he got back, but we thought, you know, being Good Man suddenly. I mean, I remember when my dad had the accident, and I didn't exactly inherit, but I thought, you know . . ."

I nodded.

"But then he didn't . . . he didn't seem to become himself again. It could be shock . . ."

Still leaning against the wall, Nat said a swear word. At least I was fairly sure it was a swear word, though he said it in ancient Spanish, in which I'm not exactly fluent. "It's not shock," he said. "It's not Max."

"Oh, come, Nat," Ettiene said. "It is Max. I mean, we know it is Max. There is no way . . ."

It was my turn to intervene. I shook my head. "No, Nat is right. It's not Max."

"What do you mean?" Ettiene asked.

"Just . . . it's not Max." I told him about my encounter with the faux Max. "Even before he missed his cues," I explained. "My skull was prickling. Something was wrong. He didn't move like Max, if that makes sense."

"It doesn't," Ettiene said, and looked from me to Nat as though he thought we'd both gone over the exact same cliff together.

"I can tell you exactly what he moves like," Nat said. "And talks like. And acts like. Max's Dad. Good old Good Man Keeva, may he rot in all hells. I tell you, Max is possessed."

"Nat, that's insane," Ettiene said. "People don't get possessed. We've had centuries of science that . . ."

"Don't care," Nat said. "Max is possessed. And I want to send his father's soul back to the hell he should be in. He doesn't remember . . . he doesn't remember anything. He calls me
boy.
"