by Lisa Henry
“Did you travel far?”
“A long way,” Darragh replied. “Days.”
The king looked more closely at him. He had a shrewd gaze. What kind of man had he been, before? “How did you get here?”
“I walked.”
“You walked?”
Darragh nodded. What other ways were there? He remembered with sudden clarity a children’s picture book his mother used to read him, each page glossy and colourful. Buses and planes and cars and ships and barges and bicycles. Darragh hadn’t had any of those, and he couldn’t risk taking a horse, not when the others depended on the beasts to do the farming and heavy lifting. He had perfectly good legs.
“There were no bandits on the road?”
“Maybe.”
The king arched his brows. “Maybe?”
“Maybe there were bandits. Maybe they didn’t bother me because I’m big.”
“Too big for bandits, he says!” The king’s men all laughed on cue. “No, I’ll tell you why. Because I’ve made it safe again, that’s why. Because even though big dumb culchies like yourself don’t know it, the roads you travelled are under the king’s protection!”
Darragh didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t think it was true, but he’d be as dumb as the king thought he was if he said it aloud. He hadn’t met anyone on the road, not bandits and not the king’s men. But he’d also kept off the road whenever he could. After all, he may not know much, but he knew that the garda had gone from Ireland, and without them, surely the criminals would have the run of the place.
Perhaps the king was a criminal himself. A king of criminals.
The king’s smile faded, all playfulness vanishing from his expression. “But you never did say, culchie, what you wanted at the hospital.”
“Medicine,” Darragh said. A king, a criminal, or both. What did it matter if the man had medicine?
“Are you sick?” the king asked, a spark of fear appearing in his dark eyes.
The pandemic had ravaged Dublin. He wasn’t sure if the sickness had come after everything else, or had been the cause of it. But he had seen pictures on the television of hospitals overflowing, of bodies—wrapped in garbage bags or bedsheets—piled up waiting for burials that never came to pass. It had seemed so strange and distant, like a sad movie. But it had come to Cúil Aodha, too. At least there, Darragh and the other boys could bury their dead, even if there were no stones to mark their places in the churchyard or the field.
Darragh shook his head solemnly. “For home. For the winter, so nobody dies.”
The king spread his arms magnanimously. “What medicine do you need, then?” In contradiction to his body language, however, his smile was back: that teasing, cruel smile. If the king was a boy in a man’s body, then Darragh imagined him as the sort of boy who pulled the wings from flies.
Maybe he thought Darragh was an idiot who wouldn’t know the answer, but Darragh didn’t hesitate. “Antivirals. For the flu.”
He wasn’t a fool. He was on a fool’s errand maybe, but he wasn’t a fool. He and some of the others had pored over the books left in the tiny village library, learning what they could when they weren’t working. Farming, first aid, carpentry, husbandry, sewing—all skills that their ancestors had known but the modern world had forgotten. Well, they remembered now. They’d taken what they could from the books, and the rest they’d learned by experience. Hard-won, sometimes deadly experience. Last year, six had died of the flu. This year, they had the knowledge to be prepared. Antivirals hadn’t done much to stay the original outbreak; there hadn’t been enough of them stockpiled, especially not in a country on the verge of economic collapse like Ireland, and even then their effectiveness had been hit or miss. By the time they’d gotten their beggars’ hands on more, it was too late. The drugs hadn’t worked consistently or on a large scale, but maybe they would work better on the newer strains of the illness, or on these hardier survivors. Maybe, maybe not. Darragh had to try, even if it only saved one person. He couldn’t do nothing. Not again.
“Very well, then. I’m a generous king. I’ll give you what you require … in return for your service, that is.”
“My service?”
“Why, yes. I’m generous, I’m not a charity. You’ll get your medicine, but you’ll work for it.”
Darragh drew a breath. “For how long?”
The king raised his eyebrows. “Impertinent, aren’t you? Don’t worry, you’ll be home before winter.”
Darragh didn’t want to push his luck, but he had to ask. “What would I have to do?”
The king narrowed his eyes. His face twisted. “What you would have to do, culchie, is whatever the fuck I tell you to do.” His voice rose, echoing in the vaulted alcove. “You can go home before winter, or not go home at all! After all, you were trespassing on the king’s property with intention to steal from the king.”
A frisson of fear chased up Darragh’s spine.
Then, as quickly as the king’s anger had appeared, it was gone. He relaxed back onto the cushion. “A big brute like you, you’ll put the fear of God into your king’s enemies, won’t you?”
“I will,” Darragh said. There was no other answer he could give.
“Good man. I knew you’d come around.” The king extended a hand. “Boy! My knife!”
Darragh stiffened, fists clenching at the word. Knife. But no, the king wanted his aid, and he’d agreed. No reason to kill him now.
He twisted his head as movement drew his gaze.
A shadow in one of the dark, oak alcoves set into the king’s wall had solidified into the childlike shape of a young man. He must have been there the whole time, waiting to be summoned for whatever the hell this was. He was lean, but pampered looking, shirtless and glittering with gold. Gold armbands around his small biceps, gold cuffs around his wrists, a gold torc at the hollow of his throat. None of it, though, quite compared to the gold of his hair. Even inside this grim, shadowed room, it seemed to gleam. In the sunlight, Darragh thought, it would burn.
The boy approached the king silently, balancing a knife in his raised, uplifted palms. He knelt at the king’s side with it. The king’s pet? A lover? Well, Darragh supposed, a king could do what he liked. And who he liked. It wasn’t any of Darragh’s concern.
The knife certainly was.
“Kneel on the stair, culchie, and take off your shirt.”
Darragh glanced anxiously at the king’s men, but their shuttered faces didn’t give him any comfort. He raised his fingers to the mismatched buttons on his shirt and fumbled with them for a while. Then he shrugged the shirt off, screwed his courage, and went down onto his knees.
The king leered and sat forwards. “What do you think of him, Boy?”
Boy’s face was as shuttered as the others’. “Very big, Your Majesty.”
Darragh grimaced. They kept saying that, but it wasn’t like he was a freak. His father had been this size, and so had most of his uncles. On both sides. He had the body of a man shaped by hard work. Maybe they just bred them small and rat-like in Dublin. That was another thing he’d probably be better off not saying aloud.
The king took the knife from Boy’s hands and twirled it thoughtfully in the air. “State your name, culchie, and swear loyalty to the king.”
“Darragh Fearghal Anluan, of Cork. I swear loyalty to the king of Dublin,” Darragh recited, held in a trance by the glint of the knife as it twisted and caught the firelight.
He hissed as the blade made contact with his skin, and one of the king’s men grabbed his shoulders to hold him still. Darragh was bleeding before he even realised the blade had cut him. The pain was sudden, sharp, and then it was over; the blade had sliced a thin, shallow path down his chest, no more than a handsbreadth long, above his heart. The man holding his shoulders released him, and Darragh pressed his hand to the wound, staring wide-eyed at the king.
“A blood oath,” the king said. “Sworn and witnessed. Welcome to the ranks of the king’s men.”
> “Thank you,” Darragh said, because the king looked like he was waiting for a response. He climbed slowly to his feet again, holding his shirt in his right hand. His left was slick with blood. He’d have to wait for the bleeding to stop before putting his shirt on again; it was one of only three that he owned, and he wasn’t so sure washing it in the Liffey would work out well for him. Maybe the king, a man with such luxuries as petrol, palaces, and a boy swimming in gold, would have a laundry tub and soap as well. But now, in the middle of this weird, unasked-for ceremony, probably wasn’t the time to ask. He figured his status as a dumb culchie would only grant him so much leeway with the king’s strange temper.
One of the men clapped him on the back.
The king waved. “Go and get him settled in.” He dropped his hand to Boy’s head, teasing strands of gold between his fingers. “Show him the ropes.”
“Will do, boss.”
The king curled his hand into a fist in Boy’s hair and tugged gently.
Darragh watched as Boy turned, wetting his lips with his tongue, and bent towards the king’s lap. Boy lifted his hands to the king’s fly, and Darragh’s breath caught in his throat.
“Come on, culchie,” one of the men laughed. “Let’s get you sorted.”
Darragh, his face burning, turned away quickly and followed the king’s men—his fellows, now—from the room.
Ciaran sat in the darkness of the narrow storeroom and waited for the morning. He was tired and his head ached. The daylight might make it worse, but it could also be from dehydration. In the morning, if Boru remembered where he’d left him, he’d at least be able to get out and fetch a drink of water to see if that made it any better. Until then, he was stuck here in this damp, dark, makeshift cell at His Majesty’s pleasure.
He grimaced.
At His Majesty’s pleasure. A phrase “King” Boru liked to throw around. It could mean anything, depending on his temper at the time. Sometimes it meant Ciaran was treated like a pampered pet, and sometimes it didn’t. It was currently at His Majesty’s pleasure that Ciaran get a faceful of cum and then be locked away as punishment for not being grateful enough. The headache was the least of his problems really, but one that he had some power to fix. So he held on to that.
Ciaran stretched his arms up to try to ease his aching shoulders. He clasped his fingers together and arched his spine. The movement didn’t help. Rather, it ignited a fresh flare of pain in his right shoulder. Rotator cuff? Nothing too serious, or he wouldn’t be moving it at all, he supposed, but the pain was enough to make him drop his arms again.
He fiddled with the wide gold cuffs around his wrists. He’d become used to their tightness, but the sharp edges still sometimes irritated his skin. When Boru had first put them on him, he’d joked they must have come from a child. Or a woman. That small insult no longer stung.
Ciaran closed his eyes for a moment, wishing he were tired enough to sleep.
His stomach growled, and he tried to remember the last time he’d eaten. There was no point in dwelling on his hunger. Like his aches and pains, it became acute when he fixated on it. Better to ignore it.
How many months had it been since he’d taken food for granted? Since hunger had been nothing more than an academic question? He and his father had argued about it over dinner, of all things.
“Because they’re hungry!” Ciaran had said a hundred times. “Why can you not see that?”
He’d wanted so much to help. He’d spent a few months working in the refugee camp at Crossmaglen. “Camp” was a misnomer because it wasn’t temporary and the people weren’t moving on to anything better. A ghetto, maybe. Most of the residents had been there since the collapse of society after the pandemic. Many had been born there. A few people still trickled across the border—if they could afford to bribe the guards—looking for a better life in the North, but they didn’t find it. Whatever hopes had drawn them across the border—food, shelter, jobs, a society that wasn’t as entirely ruined as the one they had left—were shattered in Crossmaglen. Even in the North, a country as ravaged by the pandemic as anywhere else, a country full of empty houses, there was no room for the refugees. A drain, Ciaran’s father called them, on already overstretched resources. Like they weren’t his people at all but only numbers on a page.
Danny had shown Ciaran Crossmaglen. Danny had been a passionate advocate for the refugees. He had introduced Ciaran to Richard and Sarah, who wanted to start an aid mission across the border, inside Ireland itself. Helping people on the ground before they became refugees because, like Danny said, that was where the battle had to be fought and won.
Danny had been full of rhetoric and ideals. Ciaran had worshipped him.
He hadn’t thought twice about crossing the border to help set up the aid station.
He should have.
Ciaran opened his eyes again and blinked in the gloom.
Boru, the king of Dublin. They hadn’t even heard whispers about this self-styled king who’d risen from the rubble of the disaster. But evidently Boru had heard whispers of a bunch of stupid kids sitting on a stockpile of supplies with no protection.
So much for rhetoric and ideals.
Ciaran fought back against the familiar ache in his throat that warned of tears. Fixating on what had happened was as stupid as fixating on his hunger. There were a hundred things he could have done differently, but he hadn’t. So that was that.
He thought he heard movement outside and held his breath to listen. Footsteps, possibly, but they passed. Maybe one of Boru’s men on his rounds, or maybe Boru himself.
Ciaran wondered what the new man made of it. The big, blue-eyed country boy. And he wondered if there were still pockets of people who, even if they hadn’t escaped the effects of the pandemic, had at least escaped the violence and the ruin of the major cities. Maybe there were more people out there like Darragh Fearghal Anluan of Cork, who had thus far escaped Boru’s influence. Until the big, dumb culchie had blundered right into it, of course.
In the darkness it was safe to smile at the memory of what the idiot had said: “No king in my home.”
Lucky for him, Boru had been in one of his better moods. A statement such as that, and made so plainly, without being couched in apologies or pandering praise, was liable to set the man off in deadly ways. Ciaran had certainly been on the sharp end of that temper, and had the deep yellowing bruises to prove it. All he could hope now was that Boru’s good mood would extend until morning. No telling, though.
Ciaran closed his eyes again, and wished his headache away. But the more his headache lessened, the more the hunger gnawed at him. He hated this. Hated how these hours locked away without food or company or light made him crave Boru’s company as relief.
He tried to picture the culchie’s company, instead. After all, as bewildered as his expression had been, it hadn’t been cruel, either. Maybe life wherever he’d come from, in Cork without a king, hadn’t hardened him the way the men of Dublin—the king’s men—had been hardened. Maybe, possibly, Darragh Fearghal Anluan was kind.
Or maybe Ciaran was just grasping at straws.
Even so, he couldn’t help picturing himself in Darragh’s bed (wherever that was) instead of Boru’s. Because he was big, his body hard but his blue eyes gentle, and in Ciaran’s fantasy he was kind, and once upon a time Ciaran had taken men to bed for pleasure, not because it was the only thing keeping him alive. Once upon a time, he might have walked up to a man like Darragh and taken him by the hand or touched his lower back. Once upon a time, Ciaran might have chosen him.
So he would allow himself the fantasy, to distract himself from the bruises, and the hunger, and the pain in his shoulder that seemed to have settled into a dull, throbbing ache, because he’d earned the fantasy, hadn’t he? Boru didn’t own all of him.
He settled back against the wall, rolling his shoulders and closing his eyes.
The fantasy was safe enough. With a mouth like his, the culchie wouldn’t last long in Boru’s court
anyway.
Speaking of that mouth, Ciaran pictured it wrapped around his cock, gently suckling him, not to torture but to pleasure and tease. How long since Ciaran had had pleasure without a price, without shame? Without fear?
He rubbed his temples.
And dwelling on that was exactly as pointless as dwelling on his growling stomach.
He tried again to summon up the image of the culchie sucking him, but it just wouldn’t solidify. Rather than the gentle teasing flicks of tongue, all he could imagine were those big hands with a crushing grip on the base of his cock and newly cruel eyes commanding him not to come. And then the fantasy wasn’t of Darragh at all; it was Boru, his eyes black as a shark’s and just as bloodthirsty. Ciaran pulled his knees to his chest and tried to breathe through the burning in his throat.
That was how Boru found him. Even though the king’s chamber was dark, Ciaran’s closet was darker still because the light from the abruptly opened door seared his eyes.
“What are you doing in here, Boy?”
You put me in here, you spanner. But Ciaran couldn’t say that, of course, so he just gave Boru a pathetic, watery-eyed look, like a scolded dog, and said nothing at all.
“I thought I made it clear. At the end of the day I expect you in my fucking bed. What part of ‘bed slave’ is so fucking difficult for you, you stupid boy? Or did you think that by hiding in here you could avoid your duties?”
Lower your eyes. Don’t provoke him.
Ciaran unfolded himself from his seated position and shifted so that he was kneeling, instead. Eyes down. Hands behind his back. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. I wasn’t hiding. I’ll come to bed now. Right away, Your Highness.”
“That’s better.”
Ciaran tried not to hunch under the king’s intense gaze. It was so hard, sometimes, not to cringe. All these months, and he still hadn’t quite mastered the art of not squirming when he was stared at.
He expected Boru to lead him out into the bedroom, but instead he just … stood there. Looming over Ciaran, waiting.
