Under the Rushes

by Amy Lane

  “I volunteer,” Taern said smugly. “But first put on your gloves, Dorjan. It’s damned near winter.”

  They had not held hands (because what was the point in thick-lined gloves, for one), but they had walked shoulder to shoulder until Dorjan had needed to stop to catch his breath. Taern wasn’t winded at all, and Dorjan felt a pang of disappointment.

  “What, Nyx?” Taern asked. They were standing in the graveyard, since it was a pretty place for all its grim intent, and Taern had stretched up and leapt to grab hold of a bare tree limb a foot or two over his head.

  Dorjan tried to hold on to his sigh. “You… you move well,” he admitted, embarrassed. “I was looking forward to running with you on the street again, as silly as that sounds, and, well….” He shrugged, holding his hands out at his shoulders.

  “You get winded walking around the block?” Taern asked, stating the obvious while swinging from the tree. He adjusted his grip on the way back so he could swing farther without ripping his skin or his gloves and then did the same as he flew forward, releasing his hand at the apex of the swing and landing quite a few feet beyond the tree. He turned and grinned at Dorjan, and Dorjan had to laugh because he was not only gleeful, he was charming as well.

  “Yes, brat! I do. But I’m not sleeping through my Forum sessions, so that’s an improvement.”

  Taern stopped, his quick mind missing nothing, and came up alongside him. “You looked like seven hills of shite last week. Did anybody notice?”

  Dorjan sighed. “I told them I was ill, but yes, it was noticed. I lost my temper, when I never lose my temper, and some of the older gentlemen started taking it upon themselves to elbow me through the bloody meetings in order to keep me awake.”

  Taern swore, wide-eyed. “I thought those were fresh bruises! Wanking fuckers. I’ll slit their throats in their sleep!”

  Dorjan rolled his eyes. “If you did that to everyone who displeased you, Taern, there’d be more blood in our bedrooms than there is on our streets!”

  Taern chuckled, the evil sound warming Dorjan to his chilled toes. “Aye,” he said, breathing out dreamily, and Dorjan laughed outright, feeling less winded.

  Taern wasn’t distracted for long, though. “The wankers on the Forum, some of them suspect me, don’t they?”

  Dorjan swore to himself. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have fallen aslee—”

  “Balls,” Taern snapped. “Don’t say it. You weren’t taking a bloody nap, you were lucky to be walking the halls in the first place. They suspect me.”

  Dorjan nodded, kicking at a tree root moodily. “Some of them do, but it’s more than that.”

  There was a stone bench in the cemetery, dedicated to a long-dead Triari, and Dorjan sank down on it pensively, lost in a fruitless yearning for more strength.

  “What is it?” Taern asked, coming to sit by him. He was close enough that their shoulders touched, and Dorjan was forcibly reminded of their weekend, their time spent skin-to-skin, private and sublime. His whole body strengthened from the touch of their shoulders alone.

  “There is an undercurrent in the Forum,” Dorjan said, trying to think it through. “The riots didn’t sit well with many of the members, and the use of the military against civilians seems to be smacking a great lot of them in the face with what Thenis was supposed to be and what it has become. They’ve been asking hard questions—things I’ve been begging them to ask for years, but suddenly it’s fashionable to wonder why we’re spending our best and our brightest and all of our resources on a war that brings nobody anything but heartache.” Dorjan didn’t try to keep the bitterness from his voice here, not in front of Taern, who knew every secret already.

  “So?” Taern asked, leaning against him subtly. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Dorjan suddenly realized they would be together tonight, when darkness fell, after dinner. There might be civilized things in the way—Lady Krissa and Areau certainly deserved some of his time, and now that both he and Areau were in fighting form again, he had much to say in the way of strategy, but that was not the point. The point was, there would be a time, a private time, when it was Dorjan and Taern and the touch of their skin and the beat of their hearts. The tingling started in his groin and spread, stomach, spine, chest, throat, eyes—Taern. Oh yes. Taern.

  “Yes,” Dorjan replied, getting his mind on track with difficulty. “It’s a good thing. But they’re bringing up my name in the process, and given I spent those days looking sickly and unthrifty….” He looked at Taern meaningfully, and Taern groaned.

  “Then people who are Septra’s, body and soul, are now looking at you very suspiciously, aren’t they?”

  “Indeed,” Dorjan said. “And they will be looking for some way to discredit me, which means that—”

  “It’s only a matter of time before someone starts to question your young, pretty page that has never been seen again,” Taern finished glumly, and Dorjan nodded.

  “It’s true. But Colny can’t do it—you lead right back to him and he knows it, and perhaps two other people saw you in the Forum that night. So that buys us some time, but not much. The Forum has a… an odd feel to it. It’s as though the monster has escaped their control—the death of all of those soldiers from a weapon we ourselves make, that has shaken people. The wise ones are asking the hard questions, but the shriller voices are asking the silly ones. The size of a market bag, the right of the poor to have free public transportation, whether the country should pay their doctors as well as their military men—hell, the right of the sly to even exist—these are important matters, but they’re secondary ones to the big frightening question, and so they concentrate on these things.”

  “The size of a market bag is important?” Taern asked dubiously, and Dorjan rubbed his knuckle against his forehead, a gesture Areau might have recognized from their schoolroom days.

  “It’s important because it allows our conservative element, the side that doesn’t like change, to take power. It makes them feel powerful, and that keeps them from feeling that they’ve been used and manipulated. If they can maintain that they are right on the ridiculous smaller matters—”

  “My right to exist is small?” Taern asked indignantly, and Dorjan glared at him.

  “No, it’s bloody well incontrovertible! That’s why the damned arguments are so much shite! Like I said, it gives people an excuse. If they can argue on this and someone can give way because they’re bloody-minded wankers, that means they don’t have to worry about feeding their country or saving the lives of their citizens. They can sleep at night feeling good about themselves because—”

  “Because they’ve argued over stupid things and taken away the rights of people who haven’t so much as looked at them cross-eyed?” Taern snarled indignantly, and Dorjan snapped back.

  “But don’t you see? You’re doing it too!”

  “I’m what?” Taern asked, suddenly drawing up short.

  “You’re distracted. There could be men digging into my past as we speak, looking for you, looking for Areau, finding things that could ruin all my work over the last ten years, and you are—”

  “Being an arse,” Taern said glumly, and Dorjan nodded.

  “But I don’t blame you. It’s hard to watch someone argue for something so wrongheaded. It makes you violent—I know it makes me violent.” And unlike most of the Forum members, Dorjan actually knew violence as a lover, intimate and close enough to cause an ecstasy of destruction if he needed to. “I’m terrified that if we give up even one right, the conservatives will take that as a sign of weakness. But while they’re arguing over stupid, obvious things, children are starving in our streets, and everyone is missing the point. We are going to have to do something—something drastic—to change the face of the Forum before it comes to a head.”

  Taern grunted and stood up and then offered Dorjan a hand up, which he took gladly. His arse was frozen and stiff thanks to the damned marble bench and the breath-smoking cold.

  Together t
hey turned and walked from the cemetery, drawing their scarves closely about their ears and jamming their stocking caps more tightly over their heads.

  “So,” Taern asked when they’d walked past the cemetery gate, “what did you have in mind? Assassination?”

  Dorjan had to laugh again. “Oh, I wish. But no. Assassination leads to anarchy, and we’ll have played right into Septra’s hands. We simply need to change their minds, but it’s easier said than done.”

  “Take them on a tour of a dust house!” Taern said brightly. “Or maybe bring an orphanage into the Forum to lunch!”

  Dorjan longed for that arm around his shoulder. Taern was precious, and Dorjan adored him. “Alas, no. It takes a truly great man to see that he’s been wrong and to apologize for it, even in the face of the obvious.”

  Taern hmmed in his throat and scuffed idly at a rock as they passed it. “True, true. So what did you have in mind?”

  Dorjan grinned fiercely, because this had been shaping in his head since the run-in with Colny, but he was finally well enough to give it voice. “How about a little old-fashioned breaking and entering, followed by blackmail,” he said, enjoying this idea very much.

  Taern laughed, his breath fogging whitely into the brittle chill of the darkness. “Most excellent!” he crowed. “Wonderful! I want details! When do we start?”

  Dorjan felt a bit of fatigue in his leg muscles, and some behind his eyes as well. “Give me another fortnight,” he apologized, and he must have sounded wearier than he meant to, because Taern stopped dancing down the walkway. Instead, he turned to Dorjan soberly, walking backward so he could keep an eye on him as they returned to the house.

  “It’s just as well,” Taern said moodily as they made their way through the stables so they could come in the back way through the kitchen.

  “What’s just as well?”

  “That it’s going to be a while before we start.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well,” Taern said, unwrapping his scarf in the warmth of the stable and stuffing his hat into the pocket of the wool peacoat he’d ordered from the tailor, “for one thing, you need to be in top form, or nobody will let you go.”

  “True enough. And for another?”

  Taern grimaced. “It’s that thing you said, about it taking a great man to admit that he was wrong after all this time, and to turn around his thinking.”

  Dorjan’s eyes widened. “You actually went a little deeper than what I said, but yes. What about it?”

  “Well, I think I’m going to have to apologize to Areau before we start our endgame, and it’s going to take a fortnight at the very least for me to get that out without choking on it and falling down dead.”

  They had stripped off enough of their outerwear to have bare hands now, and Dorjan seized Taern’s while they navigated the narrow hallway to the kitchen. In the quiet privacy, he brought Taern’s knuckles to his lips and kissed softly, and Taern turned to him, pale skin flushing, a pleased expression in his midnight-blue eyes.

  “That was sweet,” he said. “What was that for?”

  “For telling me what he said when I was sleeping. For apologizing to him for anything at all,” Dorjan said, meaning it. Having Areau care about his well-being that evening had made his chest swell with all sorts of emotions he didn’t think he’d ever have again.

  “Well,” Taern sniffed, “if you’re going to be that way about it, I may be able to choke it out sooner. A seven-day at the most.”

  “Oh my.” Dorjan smiled. “Submit to me some more!”

  “You like that, Nyx?” Taern asked, reaching down to squeeze Dorjan through his trousers. He was, to Taern’s surprise, growing hard from the closeness of the hallway alone. “Oh my,” he purred in return. “Perhaps I shall submit to you! I like where that thought takes us!”

  “Hush,” Dorjan murmured, because their conversation had taken them to the kitchen, and they would need to wait for after dinner to see where the other would lead this night.

  THEY ate dinner with Krissa and Areau, waited upon by Mrs. Wrinkle and her two new charges in the kitchen. When Mrs. Wrinkle mentioned how tickled she was to have the girls to keep her company, Dorjan told Taern quietly to send word to Madame M that they would take any other innocents or refugees from the dangers of the streets, should M feel she could not shelter them all. When he said this, he saw a moment of regret cross Taern’s delicate features.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The last time I saw her was that night I’d gone looking for you. We’ve exchanged letters since, but….”

  “Taern?” He still wriggled like a schoolboy when he got caught acting less than the gentleman.

  “I was not kind,” Taern said shortly. “I was worried.”

  “Have you apologized in your missives?”

  “Of course. But….” Taern grimaced, and Dorjan filled in the blank.

  “You miss your friend and you want a chance to make it right face-to-face.”

  “Quit reading my mind,” Taern growled. “It’s rude.”

  “Visit her tomorrow, if you like,” Dorjan told him gently, and they turned their attention to Krissa and Areau—and to Areau’s long-neglected strategy meeting.

  The strategy meeting was actually pleasant. It was, in fact, most unlike the days when Areau ranted and screamed, demanding more from Dorjan, more, stronger, faster, more painful, simply more, and Dorjan, well, Dorjan had been pitifully willing to do anything he asked.

  This was different. This time they simply talked, pushing back their plates and discussing the state of the world through dessert, getting input from Taern and Krissa as they put together a likely list of their first blackmail victims.

  Taern and Krissa turned out to be invaluable. Not only did they have a working knowledge of Forum members who were sly, unfaithful, or embarrassingly insatiable, but they also told Dorjan how to watch for things like too much drink or an abuse of a drug besides dust. When they were done speaking, he had an entirely new list of members to at least consider flipping over to his side. It was invigorating talking to them, making a plan, but he must have yawned once too often, because suddenly the others pushed their seats back from the table.

  “Time for good boys to go to bed,” Areau said meaningfully, and Dorjan knew his cheeks heated from the implication.

  Taern simply laughed. “Bad boys too,” he said smugly. “Come along, Dorjan, and don’t dwell too long on which one you are. It will only spoil your dreams.”

  But as Taern closed their bedroom door behind them and kissed Dorjan voraciously, Dorjan pondered that nothing could spoil that dream of having Taern in his arms. The moment alone was too perfect for even dreams to destroy.

  IN A fortnight he was running his regimen again, and it was time. He and Taern suited up the evening before the two rest days, and Areau helped them, walking them through improvements in the armor itself.

  “What’s this?” Dorjan asked, grimacing at the black thing that was supposed to cover his mouth. He put it on and spoke, grimacing at the growling sound it gave him. “Seriously, Ari, what in the bloody hell is this?”

  “Protection,” Areau said shortly. “You’re going to sneak into the hornets’ nest and whomp about that thing with a shillelagh. It would be good if the hornets didn’t have any more of a way to find you. Taern, here’s yours; it’s affixed to your mask. Don’t lose them, either of you, and don’t converse without them, especially when your mark can hear you, you understand?”

  “Oh,” Taern spoke up, his mask held over his head for a moment. “That reminds me. You’re Nyx—what am I?”

  Dorjan laughed. “Would you believe I gave this some thought?” he said, and Taern raised raven’s wing eyebrows, waiting for his answer.

  “I’m breathless with suspense.”

  “Cricket!” Dorjan said, grinning with the aptness of it.

  “Oh, I like!” Areau approved. “Speedy, can leap, versatile, noisy, and a colossal pain in the arse in its true form.�
��

  Taern crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at Areau, who did the same in return. They weren’t exactly sweet to each other, but Taern’s apology must have settled something in Areau the same way that Areau’s had settled something in Taern.

  Which was good—and reassuring to know, because they had a job to do.

  As they set out, whispering through the shadows, Dorjan was more than a little chagrined to realize that he knew the stews of Thenis better than he knew his own neighborhood.

  “Are you sure this is it?” Taern’s distorted voice hissed from the hexagonal mouthpiece, since it was their third look into a house on this particular block.

  Dorjan risked a look inside and saw the luxury rabbit, shining chrome exterior and all. “Yes, dammit,” he hissed back, unused to the garble of his own voice. “Yes, it’s him. I’m sorry!”

  Taern’s chuckle was distinctive, even through the distortion. “Well, remind me of this the next time we want to walk in this neighborhood—it would be best if we didn’t hold hands in front of a hated enemy!”

  “Oh hells.” Dorjan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was all very good to lay out this plan on a table, with friends, over dessert, but he was used to dealing with thugs and criminals. Even when they rose up in the streets because they had innate intelligence denied by the world around them, they still didn’t have the same advantages of weaponry, strategy, and basic education he’d had. Even when grossly outnumbered, Dorjan very rarely felt at risk.

  But not this time. This time he was both robbing and accosting a member of the Forum, and if he and Taern couldn’t be smart about it, there was no place on the planet—none—where the two of them could expect to find haven.

  “Remember,” he whispered, his voice low enough not to trigger the voice disguise, “beware of trip wires, buttons, and traps. He has servants, security, bodyguards—if these people are innocent, we don’t want them harmed. Hit his study first, the books in his library, cubbies in his desk. He’s obsessive about paperwork—he will have proof of those girls. I don’t doubt it.”