Free A Few Good Men by Sarah A. Hoyt

Man’s private quarters would make any artist’s career soar.
    Whichever it represented, Max or my father, it confirmed for me how startlingly like them I looked, and how different all the same. My face was battered and scarred in a way neither of theirs had been, and over the years of my captivity it had settled into bitter lines.
    It had been a while before I tore myself away to get in the bath, and even longer to get out. And I did take a bath, in the deep-sunk marble bathtub, instead of just a shower.
    When I came out, water-wrinkled, I rubbed myself with the towel kept in the warming shelf, and wondered how I could have forgotten how soft towels are. But I had. The softness against my skin sent unexpected shocks of pleasure through my body and I smiled to myself, thinking that next I would become a serial towel abuser.
    Outside, in my room, someone had laid out a suit that made me raise my eyebrows. Really? Was that what they were wearing? It was gold and blue and more ornate than anything I would have seen in polite society before.
    And that was the moment, as I stood there frowning at the suit, thinking it would make a very funny contrast with my scarred features, that Nathaniel Remy burst into the room.
    Burst is an advised term, though he wasn’t a large man, and I’d never think of him as a particular attention-getter. He was tall. I’d guess six two or so, probably enough to appear very tall to most people, but his build was—much as his father’s and Ben’s for that matter—lean and long-legged. With pale hair and pale skin, dressed in dark colors, he looked like he should have faded into the background—a dry little clerk going about an uninteresting dry little life.
    But as my door burst open, he came in with his fists clenched, his face taut, and his whole body giving the impression he was a powder keg all too eager for a match to set it off.
    He closed the door behind him as I turned to stare, so surprised that if he’d taken a burner to me, I’d not have reacted even in time to dive for cover. Fortunately he didn’t, though his eyes looked like he’d like to.
    Looking up at me, he brought his pale eyebrows down over his dark eyes, and said, with the type of finality that implies both that the person spent a considerable time thinking of what to say, and that he’s afraid of being challenged, “I’m here. But you needn’t think . . . You needn’t think . . .” His eyes flashed inarticulate hatred.
    I never was an angel, even before I was responsible for the deaths of anyone. Ben and I had run a broomers’ lair together, after all.
    I will grant you we were the sort other broomers called play-broomers. Unlike them, we didn’t live outside the law, we only visited there in our spare time.
    Other than riding brooms, in situations not of an emergency nature—a serious enough infraction in most territories and seacities—we had committed few crimes. We had stolen from a drug transport once, and we’d engaged in territorial fights, like any broomer lair. And never once, in those circumstances, had I ever seen anyone stare at me with so much hatred. Not even my father when he sent me to jail.
    It made me feel defenseless, unprepared. I thought that this was Ben’s nephew, that this man had Ben’s eyes, and that he hated me. And why shouldn’t he? Whether I’d killed Ben to halt his suffering or not—that had just been the last step in my involvement in Ben’s life. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that if I’d never got involved with Ben, Ben would still be alive, probably Sam’s right hand in administration and a fond uncle to this young man.
    The idea of that alternate future; the image of Ben mature, assured, respected, made my throat close and my heart shrink, which in turn made me unable to speak.
    And it allowed Nathaniel Remy to close the space between us, an inarticulate growl emerging between his clenched teeth and turning into words. “You!” he said. “You