Under the Rushes

by Amy Lane

  “Did we not decide—”

  “Well, yes, Triari. But what is a Forum Master’s new conveyance or summer home when meted against the families who have sacrificed for their province?”

  Septra smiled indulgently and patted his cheek. “Such a good-hearted boy,” he said. “Your father would be proud.”

  Dorjan smiled back with as many teeth as he could show at one time. “You have no idea,” he said and then turned around, wishing he could look behind him and see if Septra was afraid yet.

  He should be.

  THAT night, Taern was there to meet him in their pickup spot, but he didn’t greet Dorjan with a kiss, and Dorjan didn’t blame him. The pressure on the streets was palpable, and the two of them didn’t showboat as they pelted, as fast as their soft-booted feet would allow, back through the streets. It seemed like no time before they arrived at Dorjan’s sweet neighborhood with the great houses and the manicured lawns and shrubs and the hectare-sized courtyards in the back. They were truly invisible in their black, unadorned with blood or open weapons, and Dorjan headed straight for the stables, where he started stripping without a word in front of the armor cabinet.

  “No dinner?” Taern said, sounding strained, and Dorjan shook his head, reaching for the armor practically before the satchel with his robes and paperwork hit the ground.

  “Did you feel the temperature?” he asked, struggling to take his left boot off so he could put the armor on. Taern trotted over in front of him and yanked at the boot without saying anything. “The rain isn’t going to break until later. That’s wonderful. It can wash away the blood.”

  Taern pulled the boot off with a pop and went to work on the other one. “Hold just a moment when you get it on,” he said quietly. “I know you’ll bring your satchel—you can put a sandwich in it.”

  Dorjan looked at him, condescension in his eyes, and Taern snapped at him.

  “No, a sandwich isn’t going to save the fucking city, Dorjan, but it could give you energy when you need it. I’m looking after you, don’t laugh at me.”

  Dorjan relented then. “It takes me a minute anyway,” he said, nodding. “Go. I can wait.”

  He was, in fact, still struggling with the catch on the side of his healing ribs when he heard Taern come back.

  “How is the household?” Dorjan asked without glancing up. “I forgot to ask.”

  “Much improved,” said Areau dryly, and Dorjan looked up. He knew his expression was half-hesitant, half-hopeful, but he didn’t seem to be able to school it to his usual expression of complete neutrality.

  “Master Areau,” Dorjan said, inclining his head. “I trust you’re feeling better.”

  Areau’s hair was clean and queued back from his eyes, and his suit was new, pressed, and buttoned impeccably. When they’d been children, Areau had always been so beautiful. He’d known he was beautiful, and Dorjan had paid for him to have the best suits, the trendiest clothes—straight from Gretzky province, which specialized in those things—so his friend could be the prettiest one.

  It was that young man, the beautiful, charming companion he had loved, both platonically and, for a while, romantically, who stood before him at this moment, and Dorjan was uncertain whether or not to trust that vision at all.

  Areau inclined his head. “I am, thank you,” he said, and then his face darkened. “It’s like dust, though, Dori. That craving—I shall always have it, and sometimes I shall need it indulged.” Areau flushed and looked around the stables and then at Dorjan in his armor. “But not by you,” he said formally.

  Dorjan shook his head rapidly, nervously. “Good,” he said, meaning it. He took a step or two forward and offered Areau an awkward embrace. “It’s good to see you looking happier, Ari,” he said into Areau’s ear, and then he stepped back, his flesh still shrinking from the taste of Areau’s like a slug would shrink from the sea.

  Areau gave a partial bow. “Lady Krissa said I was not to stay too long,” he said by way of apology, and he turned around and brushed past Taern, who stood near the stable door with a paper-wrapped sandwich in his hand.

  “I shall be working on your armor tomorrow, Taern,” Areau said with something approaching civility. “I do hope you can forgive me the delay.”

  “If he comes back in one piece tonight, I’ll think about it,” Taern muttered, and Dorjan grimaced.

  Areau turned and looked at Dorjan, seeming to see him from his distracted air of inner serenity for the first time. “It will be dangerous in the streets tonight?” he asked, and Dorjan shrugged.

  “As it ever is.”

  “Take care, Dori,” he said, his low voice graced with concern since the first time in… Dorjan didn’t want to think about it.

  He gave another incline to his head. “As I ever am, Ari”—and on that note, Areau nodded thoughtfully and left.

  Taern huffed and walked up with the sandwich, shaking his head.

  “I’m not buying,” he muttered, finding Dorjan’s smaller satchel and putting the sandwich in it, as well as a small flask of what Dorjan hoped was water.

  “He seems much improved,” Dorjan said cautiously, and Taern shook his head.

  “I don’t give a hexashite,” he said bluntly. “He could be as sane as Bimuit and Karanos on their best days, and I’d still hate his guts until his entrails boiled.”

  Dorjan grimaced and struggled with the catch, wishing twisting were not quite so difficult.

  Taern walked over to his side and clicked the armor together in two deft moments of his fingers and then picked up the gauntlet. “Here, give me your hand.”

  “Can you not complain about Areau as you’re helping me?” Dorjan asked, mostly seriously.

  Taern grunted. “I still think it’s a load of shite. Yes, I think Krissa groomed his pubes until he likes the way they lay, but… he still hates you. He still wants his revenge for the shite-dump his life has become, and he wants it from your skin. I won’t trust him until he stops looking at you like he’d like to dissect you like a hieter on a student’s table.”

  Dorjan grunted. “I take it that’s a no, you can’t not complain about Areau,” he muttered and went to pick up the other gauntlet.

  Taern took it from him and held it out so Dorjan could put it on. “I’m fighting your entire childhood whenever I look at him,” Taern muttered. “Not to mention the last ten years of suffering he’s put you—”

  “I think we did it to each other,” Dorjan sighed, flexing his fingers to make sure the gauntlet was tight enough. “There’s no denying that.”

  Taern grunted. “Give me some time out of this wretched stable, and I will tell you, in detail, why deny it you should. But in the meantime, here—your greaves aren’t hooked yet, and they’re attached to the groin plate, and I think we need to make sure that whole area is put together right so you get a chance to use it as it’s intended to be used.”

  Dorjan laughed a little and took his help gratefully. He was just about to slip on his black knitted mask when Taern stopped him.

  “Not before a kiss for luck, Nyx,” he said soberly, and Taern’s lips on his were an unhurried, sweet miracle in a night that crackled with tension and violence.

  Dorjan smiled as he pulled back. “You have nothing to fear from my memories of Areau,” he said quietly, thinking he should give Taern something before he ventured out into the night without him. “Were it not for the… the perversion that followed our grief, he would have been a crush, nothing more.”

  A wholly adult look crossed Taern’s face as Dorjan pulled the knitted mask over his head. “You are so very young,” he said gruffly, patting Dorjan’s cheek.

  Dorjan was stung. He pulled on the metal mask, with the great bug eyes and the shape like a diamond with the bottom point cut off. “I am over ten years your—”

  “Not that way,” Taern snapped. “I’ve taken the virginity of men who had done more than you.” He took a deep breath. “It would be a real shame if you died on the streets before we had a chance to
fix that. Do me a favor, Nyx, and come back to me tonight, do you hear?”

  Dorjan nodded soberly. “I’ll do that, Taern. You do me a favor and think of what you want me to call you once you have your armor. If I’m Nyx, you must find a name that suits you. I won’t be calling your real name when we’re on the streets together.”

  Taern shook him off, which was too bad. Dorjan hoped that subject, at least, would have distracted him. “You can call me Prick Face, Nyx, as long as you come back. Now go. Stop trying to cheer me up and get out there and do your job.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dorjan said, grinning past his mask. He wanted to touch Taern’s face or pull him in for a kiss or let slip some of the tenderness he had welling up in his breast. But he couldn’t, and he’d been there entirely too long. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he said, heading for the door.

  “You’ll see me in here,” Taern snapped. “As Karanos is my witness, you will not bandage your own wounds, Dorjan. Now go.”

  Dorjan had no choice.

  Flight

  TAERN stalked back and forth in front of the doorway of Areau’s basement workshop. He was not allowed in—Krissa was the one who laid down that edict, or he would be right in there, right over the bastard’s shoulder, urging him on with every fucking breath.

  “I can hear you out there!” Areau shouted. “Hear you! Hear you muttering! Hear you cursing! Go the fuck away! Give me a fucking hour to do my job! I’ve got asteroid dust in here, you ass-fucking rabbit—let’s see how you like a lungful!”

  Krissa sat patiently in a new gown, doing some sort of complicated needlepoint thing right there in the hallway, and she looked up, some of the strain of the past days showing in the shadows under her eyes. “Come along, Taern. Let’s take a turn around the courtyard, shall we?”

  “I’ve taken turns in the courtyard,” he snarled. “Several.”

  Krissa jerked back, and he felt like hexashite. The past three days hadn’t been easier on her.

  “Forgive me,” he said, swallowing. “Please, forgive me. Let’s go steal an apple from Mrs. Wrinkle, shall we?”

  Krissa nodded and smiled, obviously relieved, and stood up. She set her needlework down on the cushion and grasped Taern’s hand as they walked up the stairs in the back of the house to the kitchen.

  Mrs. Wrinkle was in there, cutting up autumn apples and crying. She didn’t make any sound, but her shoulders shook, and the paring knife wobbled as she cut an unbroken strip from the skin of the fruit. Taern let go of Krissa’s hand and took the apple from her before she cut herself.

  “I think Krissa and I need to pull our weight,” he said stoutly. “How many bushels do you need skinned?”

  Mrs. Wrinkle wiped her eyes on her shoulder and shook her head. “Just the few there,” she said. For a moment she looked indecisive, and then her jaw firmed with resolution. “I know Master Areau’s down there making you some armor,” she said lowly after a moment. “When? When can you go help him come home?”

  The stews had turned into battle zone, and the Nyx was everybody’s enemy. Dorjan hadn’t come home that first morning. Dorjan hadn’t been home in three days.

  The first morning Taern had fallen asleep in the rabbit, covered in furs. He’d awakened with a start, aware that it was past Dorjan’s usual sleeping time, and rushed out to see if he’d arrived and Taern had slept through it.

  No armor in the closet, no Dorjan in the bed. Just a faint roaring from far away, like a thunderous ocean pounding on the crumbling concrete streets of Thenis.

  Taern had torn inside to get dressed to go out to find him. He’d been upstairs, putting on his running kit, when Mrs. Wrinkle had opened the door and two girls barely in their teen years had entered, shaking and tearful. Krissa greeted them, and Taern recognized them too. They were daughters of two of the serving women who worked at Madame M’s. They both had satchels over their shoulders, and as soon as they saw Taern running down the stairs, they handed him a small envelope with Madame M’s simple flower sigil stamped in scarlet wax on the back.

  Taern broke the seal and pulled out the missive, painfully aware that his lungs were blazing with held breath and his hand was shaking almost too hard to hold the page. Krissa’s hand closed gently over the back of his, and he focused. This sort of hysteria did nobody any good.

  Taern,

  I trust you and Krissa are doing well—would it kill you to visit, you horrid brat? I do miss you. A mutual friend of ours spent an hour or two sleeping on the couch in our basement room. I worried over the girls in the city during the riot, and he worried about his household. He agreed to escort the girls to safety if they would deliver a message for him. He promised they could spend the remainder of the riot safe with you, and the house is much grateful to him. He said to tell you not to worry, and to wish the others in the household well. When I asked him if he had something in particular he wished for you to know, he said, “Yes, but as with so many things, I have no words. Tell him I have every intention of returning. Tell him”—He paused quite some time here, my boy; what have you been doing to tie this boy up in knots?—“Tell him he’s a reason to return.”

  Now I’d say that’s high praise. Tell Krissa I miss her, and it wouldn’t kill her to write back—but not right now. The streets are dangerous. Stay safe, my lovelies.

  Madame M.

  Taern read the letter twice and then sat down abruptly on the stairs. He looked up at the girls—Evvy and Alla—and tried to gather his thoughts.

  “These riots,” he said after a moment of trying desperately to think like Dorjan. “Tell me about them.”

  Dorjan’s feeling of trouble on the streets had been dead on—the two gangs had started a showdown on the fringe of the stews, near the river, and according to what the girls knew, it had seemed like the usual. Nyx had been there, keeping civilians inside, keeping the violence away from the doors of the innocent, kicking the people who wanted to kill each other back into the central playing field when they strayed.

  Taern was aware that this happened three or four times in the course of a year, and that he was lucky. As Dorjan said, the violence very rarely escalated to the brothel district—just like a barn animal didn’t like to shit where it ate, even the lowest man on the street didn’t want to bleed where he fucked.

  But in the past, the vestigial military that served as law enforcement had left the gang justice alone.

  “What would compel them to interfere now?” Krissa asked when the girls had finished their story.

  Taern shook his head, having his suspicions based on what Dorjan had told him, and looked at Evvy and Alla. “Would you two like to go eat? I’m sure Mrs. Wrinkle hasn’t tended to little girls in quite some time.”

  The girls smiled tentatively. Evvy was a big blonde girl with wide blue eyes. She was smart enough to survive on the streets, but there was something… untouched about her, in spite of where her mother worked. Madame M made sure the servants’ children stayed far away from the true business of the brothel, but she was also willing to let them help their parents. It was difficult to find a safe place for children on the streets—Madame M tried to make one, as much as it was possible in a whorehouse in the slums.

  Evvy’s companion, Alla, was tiny and quick, with caramel skin and dark hair, and if Taern wasn’t very much mistaken, she was a year or two older than Evvy.

  “Alla,” he said quietly as they turned to follow Krissa. He knew the girl would remember the times he’d snuck down to the kitchens to play jacks with them. “How far did the Nyx escort the two of you?”

  Alla thought a bit. “There were patrols on the edge of the stews—even some of the safer neighborhoods were locked into the pit of it. He took us to where we could see the great cemetery, the one with all of the Forum Masters, before he turned away.”

  Taern grunted as though struck in the stomach. “Why… did he say why he didn’t come farther?” he asked, and Evvy made a hurt sound.

  Alla grabbed her hand. “There was… there was a
gang of men raiding a house—looked like just a regular house, but there were screams from inside. Nyx picked both of us up and ran until we were safe,” she said, and then her voice dropped. “But I think he went back to help those people. They… you could hear their screams really loud.”

  Taern nodded his head then and watched as Krissa disappeared down the hallway toward the kitchens with them before he pounded up the stairs and hammered on Areau’s door.

  “What in the fucking he—”

  Taern grabbed him by the front of the tunic and bore him back against the wall. “Not another word. We sat patient while you mewled like a fucking kitten and hauled the whole lot of us down into the cesspool in your head. Well, you’re out of it now, and he’s outside, trying to save the city from a fucking riot while the goddamned soldiers have a hazard zone marked to make the place like a pressure cooker, you understand?”

  Areau blinked hard, but suddenly the petulant expression on his face sharpened, and Taern could see the young military student he’d once been. “What do you mean, pressure cooker?”

  “Nobody can get out. Not the innocent, not the frightened. They’re locked in there by curfew, and the military”—Taern shuddered hard—“the girls say they’re the worst of the lot. The criminals, the ones pressed to service and full of hate. They’re equipped with steam spears, you hear me? They’re killing anyone who tries to get away.”

  Areau shuddered. “He’s still there?”

  Taern closed his eyes and released him, taking a step back. “He brought two friends of mine within eight blocks of home.”

  “He what?” Areau roared. “That selfish, self-righteous, presumptive git! What did he do after that? Go save some child’s kitten? Go redistribute the wealth of the whole quarter? Bring all the junkies soup? What was so bloody important that he had to go running back into that bloody hieterfuck of violence!”

  Taern opened his eyes and looked squarely at Areau. “The same thing he’s been doing for ten years. And I’d be happy to help him, but I’m not a martyr. I need some fucking armor, and that means you need to be functional for more than five minutes at a stretch. Do you think you can master it, Areau, or do I need to go knock some soldier over the head?”