The World Turned Upside Down
Some instinct, some feeling, prevented me going home at once. No, I don’t know what except thinking that Javier might have woken up, and if he woke up, he would try to send people to intercept me on the way to Olympus. He would assume I would return there, right?
So instead, I took a detour, and went to Liberte Seacity, where I landed on a deserted beach.
I’d had some time to think, and thought the best thing I could do was to talk to some of my other old friends. Perhaps they could explain what was happening, and perhaps they could tell me what had happened to Javier and why he spoke that way. Perhaps it was a stroke, I thought. In which case, my hitting him on the head could have done no good at all. But I didn’t see how I could have got around it. I couldn’t even find the stuff I needed to bind him, could I? There hadn’t been anything I could use nearby. And to let go of him and go in search of it, I’d have needed to knock him out first, anyway.
No, I’d done the only thing I could, even if the violence of it bothered me. I didn’t want to fight and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. There had been enough of that, and anything that required me to do more of it, made me feel tired and old. Very old.
So I landed and took the portable links out. One of them had a series of programmed numbers, but I recognized none of them, so I took the other and dialed another of the Hellions—Josia Bruno, from New Verona Seacity. It took a while for him to answer because, I supposed that was his private number, and he was the Good Man, now. The face I got, floating midair, looked like Josia well enough. I’d chosen a deserted beach well, because landing in a broom was not strictly legal, but also so I could have sight as well as sound. But he didn’t look like he recognized me at all. Which I couldn’t blame him for, I supposed. I wouldn’t have recognized myself either. “Jos?” I said. “It’s Lucius.”
“It’s who?” he said.
“Lucius Keeva,” I said.
He blinked. “You mean…” he said. And then frowned. “Dante?”
Don’t ask me to explain it, please, but his expressions were all wrong. And what he said was all wrong. I pressed the phone off and took a deep breath.
Perhaps I was the one who had gone crazy. Perhaps I had gone completely around the bend and just hadn’t realized it. Perhaps…
On a whim, on a desperate moment of insanity, I dialed Hans’s number. It rang and I reached for the turn off button, because who would have it, except maybe someone new who had been assigned it? Or the person who had inherited from his father—his brother? I had a vague memory that he had one, the only other of my friends who had had a brother, though in his case we all thought it was double insurance because his father was so old. He wanted to make sure that the line didn’t die out.
“Hello?” The face that appeared midair looked exactly like Hans, but there was no doubt it wasn’t him. I’d seen Hans dead.
“Hans?” I said, anyway, for lack of anything else to call this face.
“What? Jan. Jan Rainer. And you are…?” His eyes widened suddenly. “It can’t be!” he said.
“My name is Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva, and I didn’t kill your brother,” I said. And in the annals of stupid things to say, that might take the cake.
The face hesitated, and I thought he was going to call me a murderer or threaten me with the law or something equally bombastic. But, proving once more that nothing would go as I expected today, instead he frowned, but in the way of a man who is thinking desperately through something, “Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous. But…how did you escape the execution? And where have you been these…fifteen years?”
“Never-Never,” I said. It didn’t even occur to me to lie. “Well, Never-Never for fourteen years, another jail for one.”
He blinked. “Oh. And you escaped in the breakout?” he asked. “It’s almost too…Have you gone home yet? To Olympus.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I…I got out and I tried to talk to Javier Nobles and I—”
“Javier?” he said. “How did you get away? Where are you now?”
I wasn’t so completely off my balance that I would tell him the last, but I said, “I hit him on the head. He might need help.”
Not-Hans shook his head. “Like hell. I hope the bastard dies.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” Not-Hans said. “You were Hans’ friend. I thought that you— Clearly they thought you— But…” He paused. “Have you talked to Nat?”
“Nathaniel Remy? Yes, he’s arranging the papers for—”
Not-Hans looked exasperated, like someone dealing with a child or the mentally ill. “Go home,” he told me. “Go home now. As fast as you can. You are not safe.”
And with that Cassandra-like pronouncement, he turned off.
I could go home, of course. But I don’t take orders well and it hasn’t improved with time. So, instead, I pulled out the other link button and dialed the first pre-set at random. It rang for less than a second, and then a face that I couldn’t immediately recognize appeared midair. It was a handsome face, or at least it would be if you looked really up close and personal. At the first casual glance it was an unexceptional face, topped with short brown hair.
The bit-off words as he looked at me sounded like French, and he frowned and said, “You are not Max.”
“No,” I said. At least this reaction made sense, though it didn’t make sense that these buttons should be programmed to someone who expected to talk to Max, but perhaps the new possessor of the code was a friend of Max’s. “I’m his older brother, Lucius.”
“His older…” The man opened his mouth, closed it. “Merde,” he said, very carefully. “This is an unexpected…uh. Will you pardon me, for just un petit moment? My other link is ringing. It seems like…”
I couldn’t say why but I knew the other link was not-Hans calling him. And the face I’d just seen was the face of Good Man St. Cyr of Liberte Seacity.
I took a deep breath. None of this made sense, and I would presently wake up, safe and snug in my cell.
At that moment, the link buzzed loudly. I thought it would be Good Man St. Cyr again, and I pushed the call receiving button. But the face that formed, midair, glaring at me, was Nathaniel Remy’s. “You just couldn’t wait to stir up trouble, could you? You couldn’t even wait for the legal action to tell them there would be trouble on the horizon.” He didn’t look angry, though his words were forceful. He looked more exasperated and a little fearful. “Come home. I’ll keep watch. And then we need to talk.”
“I think I’m going insane,” I said, in response, not the least because one of my own servants was ordering me to come home. No, not even ordering me to come home. Exhorting me to come home, with the sort of gentle authority a mother or a nanny might use.
“Going?” he asked, and snorted. “Come home. I’ll…explain what I can.” He frowned. “Seems like I’ll have to, just to prevent you running your foolish head into trouble, won’t I?”
Without waiting for an answer he disconnected.
I could ignore his summons and not-Hans’s orders. Perhaps I should. I did not like the idea that they were telling me to go home. I did not like trusting in them. I was almost sure I didn’t like Nathaniel, though I would do a lot to spare his father grief or trouble. On the other hand, I had the feeling that not-Hans and Nathaniel, at least, were genuinely worried for me. Not about me, not about what I might do—though perhaps that too—but for me, and about what might happen to me. And I shivered thinking of Javier and Josia.
And then I got on my broom and went home.