Chapter Text
“Get up!” Somebody was kicking his bed. “You’ve slept the whole afternoon away, you layabout!”
Tilrey forced his eyes open. Mom? Was it a school day? Panic tore through him. How had he slept so late? What if he’d missed a test?
Then he sat up woozily, and the room swam into focus—a too-clean, too-white little room with exposed beams and a single window. Outside, a view of pines and hazy blue sky.
He was in the Southern Range, in Fir Jena’s vacation residence. And the voice berating him wasn’t his mother’s. The big, crooked-nosed face of Fir Jena’s driver glowered down at him. “Didn’t you hear me? Up!”
Tilrey had been away from home for four days and five nights (he had to keep careful track, because sap clouded everything), and every morning was still a horror show. First the relief (it was all just a dream). Then the awareness that it was not a dream settling on his head like a thousand-pound weight, pushing him down into the mattress.
This is my life now.
“Okay,” he said, pushing back the thick, plush comforter. “Okay, I’m awake.”
Last night was coming back, and for once it was a night he could stand to remember. He’d been up until nearly dawn talking with her—the Upstart girl, Fir Jena’s daughter. What was her name? Vera. She had a cloud of red hair and such a pretty accent, the consonants clipped and neat. She’d stumbled into Tilrey’s little room (his cell) looking for a book and somehow ended up staying for hours, and they’d kept talking, and—
“Into the shower, now,” the driver practically snarled. “You got somewhere important to be in an hour—or did you forget?”
Tilrey swung his feet to the floor. He couldn’t let the driver know Vera had been here, because he wasn’t supposed to talk to anybody in the house but the driver and Fir Jena. Not that he had a chance, since the room’s door was always locked from the outside. At least sleeping all day had been a relief from the boredom of staring out the window.
“I didn’t forget,” he said.
Sometimes, waking like this, he felt like someone was peeling off his skin by inches and leaving him raw and bleeding. Then he remembered Dal saying, “Don’t be soft, Tilrey,” and he pushed the pain far away and focused on the important part: He was still here. He was still him.
Vera could see that. She didn’t make the assumptions about him that every other Upstart did; she’d asked him intelligent questions and listened to his answers. And she’d promised to sneak back and see him tomorrow, before they returned to Redda. That was something to look forward to.
“You’re sure acting like you got nowhere to be tonight,” the driver said.
Tilrey stood up and recited obediently, “Tonight Fir Jena and I go to meet Fir Magistrate, and Fir Jena gives me to him.”
He’d say the words, but they meant nothing. No one could “give” him to anyone.
The driver nodded with distinct satisfaction. “So come and fucking shower. It always takes you forever to get dressed.”
Tilrey let the driver escort him down the hall to the bathroom. The house was quiet; everyone must be out. No lively arguing from Vera and her brother, no rumbled scoldings from Fir Jena or civil murmurs from his wife.
The hot water felt good on his scalp and shoulders. He closed his eyes and tried to forget the driver was waiting right outside.
Back in the room, he dressed in his new clothes, which didn’t feel like his, way too tight and fussy. The driver was polite enough to look away till he was done. Then he made Tilrey stand still and examined him. “I’ll get a comb for your hair. Drink this,” he said, handing over a vial of sap.
The vial looked full. Tilrey still wasn’t used to sap, and that first time—well, never mind that. Given what was supposed to happen at Fir Magistrate’s house, he was probably better off downing the whole thing. Anyway, the driver was watching him, and Tilrey knew the man wasn’t above forcing the vial’s contents down his throat.
Dal used to say he needed to learn to stand up for himself. Tilrey knew now that when things got bad enough, he could stand up for himself just fine. For the first two days, he’d argued and reasoned and struggled. And then he’d discovered he had a more vital skill in this particular situation: He could disappear.
When Fir Jena was with him in this room, telling him things like “Most Skeinsha boys would consider this the opportunity of a lifetime” or “You’re only making things harder for yourself,” he closed his eyes and flew away back to Thurskein. He lay on his back beside Dal after making a snow angel, flakes melting into his mouth, and gazed up at the turbulent sky.
Still here. Still me.
He unstoppered the vial and drank every drop; it took about five swallows. It was sickly-sweet with a bitter aftertaste, but he was getting used to it.
The driver kept watching, grinning now. “You know how pure that stuff is? You’re a lucky boy. Councillors get the best.”
Tilrey nodded, already fuzzy-headed, and handed back the empty vial. He didn’t feel lucky, but now at least he’d be numb.
***
Malsha Linnett had never had any use for his son-in-law. Arvan Jena considered himself brilliant when he was actually the worst kind of narrow-minded snob. He wasn’t even pleasant to look at—certainly not worthy of Malsha’s daughter.
But Malsha didn’t think he’d ever despised Jena as much as he did tonight. The pathetic little man had come over for tea towing a ravishing boy who was barely conscious.
Jena introduced the lad as his new kettle boy, which Malsha knew was just a way of keeping up appearances. This was an offering for him, a gift of sorts; Jena’s own tastes didn’t run to boys. But the veneer of custom didn’t make the whole situation any less abhorrent. The boy’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. He seemed barely able to stand on his own. Jena had to remind him to offer his hand when he and Malsha were introduced.
Did Jena really think Malsha wanted to enjoy the poor creature when he was sapped senseless? It was an insult, pure and simple. Jena thought he was a brute.
And the worst part was that Malsha kept proving him right, because he couldn’t keep his eyes off the boy. Even in his current state, slumped on the couch against Jena, he was stunning with his golden hair, spun-sugar complexion, and look of almost feral innocence. Too stunning.
Jena blathered on about the Human Services committee, but Malsha barely heard a word. He knew the gist: His son-in-law wanted the committee chair.
Idiotic entitled ingrate.
The boy was so pale, so heartbreakingly lovely. His brown lashes fluttered as Jena tried unsuccessfully to tug him into a proper sitting position. Did the child even know he was a pawn being used to advance the Councillor’s interests?
“Vanya, dear,” Malsha said, interrupting a monologue on preventative-care clinics, “I must ask, where did you find this young man? Are you quite sure he’s of age?”
Jena flushed with irritation but kept his voice level. “He’s from Thurskein. And yes, his record puts him at eighteen and a few months.”
“You’ve been doing business in Thurskein, then?” Someone had clearly briefed Jena on Malsha’s tastes or procured the boy for Jena with those tastes in mind. Who? The precise targeting gave Malsha a skin-crawling sensation of being observed. No one should know him quite so well.
His son-in-law shook his head. “There’s an Admin working Thurskein—Makari, his name is. He’s got an eye for such things.”
Ah, yes. Makari was a climber; Malsha had encountered his flattery and clumsy attempts at manipulation before. He’d have to devise a way to slap him back in his place.
“A man of discernment, apparently,” he said.
Of course, it was quite possible Makari didn’t know Malsha’s tastes as well as he thought. For instance, this Skeinsha boy could be stupid. He didn’t look particularly bright right now, practically drooling on Jena’s shoulder. The refined features made Malsha want to believe in a good mind behind them, but he’d been fooled before.
Stupid pretty boys were fine for a night or two, but after that he had no use for them. Most of them were ridiculously grateful just to be in the General Magistrate’s bed. They had no shame, which made them excruciatingly dull.
That was why Malsha had been so happy to find clever, hot-tempered Artur, who was now his secretary. Oh, for a boy who was as bright and sensitive and proud as Artur and as pretty as this one. Well, one could dream.
Jena glanced at the boy in an almost repelled way, as if he weren’t the one who’d propped him up on the couch. “He’s pretty, yes,” he said. “But a little inexperienced. It’s unnerving.”
As if inexperience were a problem. Malsha tented his fingers. “But mainly the lad lacks a certain . . . alertness, I fear.”
“I know, I know. Green hells! Excuse me.” Jena shouldered the boy upright and gave him a little shake. “This keeps happening. He’s still a bit of a lightweight.”
“Or you’re dosing him too much.” Malsha watched the boy struggle to keep his eyes open. Something inside him cringed fastidiously. He himself had used sap to enforce compliance once or twice, but this was different. He couldn’t possibly enjoy someone without a proper conversation first.
Jena had gone beet-red. “I’ll have a talk with my driver about the dosing. He says the boy’s difficult.”
“Yes, do talk to him.” Time to cut this foolishness short. Malsha rose, giving Jena his cue to leave. “If you brought him here for me, I’m honored, Vanya. But, for the record, I prefer my partners conscious.”
His son-in-law’s flush deepened as he realized his offering was being rejected. “Or maybe he’s not to your taste?” he suggested.
Malsha wanted to repel Jena’s pathetic gambit with stinging scorn and send him on his way. But, as the Councillor dragged the boy to his feet, the boy’s heavy-lidded eyes opened and focused on Malsha’s for the briefest moment. Their intense blue made Malsha blink as if he’d been slapped.
Fuck. He had to meet this one at least once more. When they were both conscious.
He cocked his head and told Jena sternly, “How am I to know if someone’s to my taste when I can’t even speak to him?” I’m smitten, he thought, amused with himself. Hopelessly smitten.
“Most wouldn’t mind,” Jena muttered.
Malsha graciously pretended not to hear that. “I hope to take tea with you and your young friend again when he’s feeling up to proper conversation,” he said, accompanying his son-in-law to the door. The boy came along like a sleepwalker. Malsha didn’t allow himself a second glimpse of those eyes; they were lethal.
Hope warred with shame on Jena’s face. “I’ll be back in Redda tomorrow. I’d—we’d—be happy to see you then.”
“Perhaps I could drop by on the first night of the session.” The day after tomorrow. Malsha knew what he’d dream of until then.
***
The door slamming against the wall was the first warning Tilrey got. He jumped up from the bed to find Fir Jena barging into the room, his normally placid features drawn tight with rage.
“You dirty little shirker slut.” The Councillor slapped Tilrey hard across the face, sending him staggering backward. “You really thought you could get away with it?”
What have I done? Nothing like this had happened so far in his six days with the Councillor (still keeping a careful count). Not at the vacation residence, and not since they’d returned to Redda yesterday. Fir Jena was always talking about having Tilrey’s best interests at heart, about doing what he did out of necessity and not for self-gratification. He had never struck him.
Then Tilrey remembered what he himself had done in the Southern Range (for self-gratification), and his heart sank.
A cuff to the side of the head caught him off-guard. “Are you even hearing me? How dare you put your filthy hands on my daughter?”
Tilrey backed away, ears ringing. He’d never been in a fight at school, had no idea how to hit back. What would happen if he tried? “It wasn’t like that, Fir. I mean—”
The wall slammed into him, the Fir’s fingers digging into his upper arms. When they released him, he came down hard on his knees with a breathless grunt.
“Don’t lie to me,” the Fir said, standing over him, face twisted in repulsion. “My son saw Vera going in and out of your room. He heard . . . things.”
For a moment, Tilrey saw with painful clarity how he must look to the Councillor. All the things that decent people in Thurskein said about the young whores who lounged outside Supervisor Fernei’s apartment were now true of him: filthy, lazy, disrespectful, freeloading.
Fir Jena continued with his diatribe. “After I took you into my home, after I had the charge against you expunged? How dare you, you brainless little shirker? I tell you not to speak to my family, and this happens?”
Tilrey crouched on the floor. The room was spinning. If Fir Jena already believed the things he was saying, there was no point in arguing, but he couldn’t help it. “It wasn’t like that, Fir. We barely even—” He stopped because he didn’t know the polite Upstart term for “made out.” “She came in looking for a book for school, and then she asked me to help her with a translation, and—”
The Upstart’s boot caught him in the solar plexus, making him gasp for breath. “Shut up!” Fir Jena delivered a kick with each word: “I felt sorry for you. What a fucking idiot. Was this part of some shirker plot all along? Get yourself taken into my home, then seduce my daughter?”
“I didn’t, Fir, I swear!” Vera had found her way into the room where Tilrey was locked up. She’d taken the lead, started the conversation, kissed him first. But he couldn’t tell Fir Jena that; he’d be accused of lying. He curled up on the carpet and covered his head.
None of this was really happening. People did not hit him, lock him up, drug him. He was the Lieutenant Supervisor’s son. He was in the top tenth percentile. It was all a mistake, and sooner or later someone would do something; someone would come and make it stop.
You did go to that shirker meeting, said a small voice in his head. You did translate that Harbourer message. Maybe it is your fault.
He tasted blood—the slap must have split his lip—but the kicks were done for now. Through the ringing and buzzing in his head, he made out two men arguing above him. Had the driver come in and interceded on his behalf?
No, it was another Upstart voice, calm and silky and somehow familiar, saying that Fir Jena needed to calm down. Fir Jena was reciting his accusations again, his voice practically breaking with outrage: “Putting his filthy paws on your own granddaughter!”
Tilrey raised his head enough to see that the newcomer was an elderly man with round glasses and a pleasant, angular face, wearing a Councillor’s robe of office. He looked like the grandfather in a children’s book, dignified and benevolent. Tilrey’s heart sank as he understood—this was Fir Jena’s father-in-law, the General Magistrate of the Republic of Oslov.
This was the person he was supposed to seduce, the man to whom Fir Jena intended to “offer” him. But Tilrey had been so sapped he could barely remember their first meeting, and now—
Now he trembled all over while Fir Jena detailed his general unfitness to be anyone’s kettle boy. “Makari swore to me he wasn’t a real shirker, just a kid testing the boundaries. I take him into my home, and he seems fine—just so skittish I almost felt sorry for him. Next thing I know, he dishonors us all.”
A fresh kick. Tilrey curled himself up tight, no longer pretending it didn’t hurt.
“There’s no call for that, Vanya.” The Magistrate’s voice was mild and reproving. “He’s scarcely more than a child.”
“He’s trash, and I want him disposed of. I paid that damned Makari with a promotion.”
They moved into the living room, still debating. Tilrey sat up and wiped his face. He knew he should be dreading the outcome, but six days, not even a ten-day yet, and he wasn’t aware of feeling anything except intense relief that Fir Jena would probably never touch him again.
Or not that way. He felt phantom hands moving over his skin and shuddered. Not here. Disappeared.
“It seems such a waste,” the Magistrate was saying. “Perhaps we can chalk this up to a youthful mistake. Unless you think he actually assaulted her?”
Jena gasped theatrically. “If I thought anything of the kind, you’d be looking at a corpse, not a boy.”
“But after all,” the Magistrate said, “Vera is his age, and capable of making her own choices. Why assume he was the seducer—or that anyone was seduced?”
“You’re mocking me, Malsha, mocking all of us, and I don’t appreciate it.”
“No mockery was intended.” The old man’s voice was arch now. “I simply hate to waste a potentially valuable property. With the right training—”
“No! The brat will poison any household he’s in. I’ll see him dead before I see him on any Councillor’s arm, even an Islander’s.”
Tilrey hugged himself tight as if to prove to himself he still existed. Verdant hells, what if they really did kill him? Did they have enough power to cover it up? Would anyone care?
To his relief, the Magistrate said, “Seeing him dead isn’t an option, my dear Vanya. What do you actually propose doing?”
A brief silence. Then: “One of those brothels you find in basements in the outer Rings. High-volume.”
“Let me take care of it.”
“You?”
“You need to rest your nerves, Vanya. Anyway, I think I know just the place. Krisha will bring him there.”
A brothel. That couldn’t be any worse than prison. It would be just like what Tilrey had already been doing, only in less luxurious surroundings and with fewer euphemisms. He could take it. With sap, maybe. Sap would help.
Or maybe he could stop this right now, before it went any further. He’d already inventoried the contents of the medicine cabinet: scissors, a nail file, painkillers. Probably not enough, considering what a fucking coward he was, but still, but still . . . He stood up gingerly, rubbing at the drying blood on his chin, and headed for the bathroom.
A strong arm yanked him backward. “Where you think you’re going, kid?”
It was a stranger—a strapping Laborer in a driver’s coverall, maybe a decade Tilrey’s senior, with dyed hair and dark, hooded eyes. Tilrey cowered before he could stop himself, not ready for more blows. “Gonna wash my face.”
“Do it quick while I watch,” the young man said in a rank Karkei accent, then gave him a shove. “I’m Fir Magistrate’s driver. Supposed to take you somewhere.”
Tilrey didn’t resist as the driver followed him into the bathroom to wash up. “Hurry. Fir Jena don’t want to see you again, from what I hear.”
While the driver bundled him through the empty living room into the coldroom and into his outergear, Tilrey ran through his options. He was in a city where he knew nobody. A few minutes outdoors could give him frostbite. He’d committed Dissidence, worth at least two years in prison according to Admin Makari, and he couldn’t be sure the charge was expunged.
As they took the few steps from the coldroom to the garage, snow gusted hard in Tilrey’s face. Wind. Air. Freedom. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he was kicking out at the driver’s calf. Taken by surprise, the driver loosened his hold. Fresh air in his nostrils giving him strength, Tilrey broke free and ran.
He skidded to a halt at the edge of the terrace and stared over the parapet, his knees weakening. He could see the lights of mag-cars on the grid, and larger vehicles bumbling along at least twenty stories below. Fuzzy-edged with new snow under a violet sky, the whole city was spread out down there—black granite spires, sandstone apartment towers, hulking factories. It was so big.
One step over the edge could end all this. But the world down there was too new, too full of lights. It filled his eyes and his brain and froze him in place, staring.
When the driver grabbed hold of his coat, muttering some of the same words Fir Jena had used, Tilrey almost cried with frustration. But he went limp, knowing he’d had his chance.
Maybe he was a coward. Maybe he just wasn’t made for a world that was this brutal and beautiful at once. But regretting his own nature was a waste of time. As he was hauled into the backseat of the mag-car, he decided his only power lay in choosing not to dread what came next.
He remembered Vera Linnett kissing him in the windowseat, her hand slipping up his thigh, and how her touch kindled a fire in his chest and a hardness between his legs. He didn’t love this strange Upstart girl, he loved Dal, but in that instant it didn’t matter—nothing did. He might never see Dal again, and even if he did, she might not be able to meet his eyes.
He pushed thoughts of Dal away and remembered Vera’s cultured Upstart voice saying, “You memorized all those irregular conjugations? You must be brilliant. I didn’t know kids even learned Harbourer in Thurskein.” And then, “Tell me more about it. Tell me about your friends.”
He had a secret: The Magistrate’s precious, sheltered granddaughter thought he was brilliant. So maybe he wasn’t trash after all, no matter what happened next.