Chapter Text
“I’m ready, okay?” Tilrey told Artur. “You didn’t have to come check on me.”
“I know, but I wanted to. He’ll be here in a minute or so.” The Magistrate’s secretary looked him carefully up and down. “You can put the kettle on.”
“The leaves are in the pot. The biscuits are on the tray.” Tilrey was showered, combed, impeccably dressed. “Look, I’m fine. I know how to do this. You’ve seen that for yourself.”
“I know.” Artur gazed hard at him. “I’m mainly here to remind you . . . well, that I’m always here. I’ll be over tomorrow after the Council session closes. We can go to the gym and swim some laps. You won’t be alone.”
“I know!” Tilrey was feeling uneasy in the pit of his stomach. “Look, is there something you haven’t told me? About tonight?” If the Magistrate had any specific disturbing proclivities besides his fondness for mind games, Artur hadn’t mentioned them.
“Nothing like you’re thinking. It’s just—remember what I told you. Don’t open up, and don’t let him get under your skin.”
And with that, Artur patted Tilrey awkwardly on the shoulder and slipped out again.
Tilrey heard the hiss of the sliding door while he was in the kitchen. He poured the slightly cooled water into the pot, set it on the tray with the tumblers, butter, and biscuits, and rearranged everything a couple of times, chiding himself. Who cares if it’s perfect? Get it over with.
The Magistrate had settled himself on the living room couch and was tapping on his handheld. Tilrey knelt to place the tray on the low table, trying to ignore his heart banging against his ribs. This was only an old man.
The Magistrate didn’t look up, but he patted the couch beside him. “Forgive me. Always so many loose ends to clear up at the end of the day.”
Tilrey sat, not quite as close as Malsha had indicated. He clasped his hands in his lap and stared at them, feeling like a clumsily posed doll, until the Fir set down his darkened handheld and said, “I think it’s time to pour now.”
“Right. Sorry, Fir.” Tilrey rose (Not too fast; all your movements should look relaxed, Artur would say) and poured the steaming brew into two tumblers. He felt the man’s eyes on him as he added the butter and set a tumbler in front of Malsha (Absolutely don’t slosh it.).
Then he returned to his seat and watched from the corner of his eye as Malsha raised the cup, inhaled the brew, and took a sip. “Very nice,” the Magistrate said. His whole demeanor was content and serene. He flicked a finger at Tilrey. “Drink your own, lad. Don’t let it get cold.”
Tilrey swallowed some tea; his throat was so tight it tasted like nothing.
“Artur’s instruction is excellent,” the Magistrate said, setting his tumbler down again. He pulled a vial from his tunic, gave it a shake, and unstoppered it. “He tells me you’re a quick study,” he added, pouring some into his cupped hand.
Then Tilrey was gazing down at a palmful of sap, black and sticky and full of potential oblivion. He stared at it, remembering how desperately he’d wanted this ten, nine, eight days ago. He recalled Artur’s story about Malsha drugging him.
“It’s a moderate dose. Nothing that could incapacitate you,” the Magistrate assured him. And then, with gentle amusement, “Are you going to drink it, or shall I?”
Get it over with. Artur had made it clear that not accepting sap from a Councillor’s hand was a grave insult. Tilrey lowered his head, took hold of the Magistrate’s wrist, and lapped up the dark pool. It seemed to take forever, and his cheeks flamed as Malsha said, “Clean it a bit with your tongue, would you? I don’t like a sticky palm.”
When Tilrey straightened up again, his face was on fire and there were tears in his eyes. He stared over Malsha’s shoulder, unblinking, waiting for the pleasant buzz to take over and drown his feelings the way it had last time.
For a moment or so, the Magistrate simply drank his tea and gazed at Tilrey, as if drinking him in, too. “Krisha showed me your library list,” he said at last. “It’s a fine selection. I’ve asked him to fetch some twelfth-year review manuals as well, so you can prepare for your E-Squareds.”
The mention of the dreaded terminal school test was so incongruous that Tilrey looked straight at the Magistrate for the first time. “Why?”
“So you can take the test, of course.” Malsha reached for a biscuit. “Weren’t you preparing for it at home?”
“Yes, Fir.” The E-Squareds were almost all that he, Dal, and Pers had talked about for the past year—especially since Dal and Tilrey had become a couple, making conversation about other things awkward. “But I don’t need to take them anymore, do I?”
Malsha dipped the biscuit in his tea. “Why on earth not? You can’t pour my tea all your life.” He slid a little closer to Tilrey, eyes locked on him. “No. When you’ve served your purpose here, I intend to find Artur a good Admin position and make you my secretary. For that, you’ll need all your tests.”
“But.” The sap was finally making Tilrey lightheaded, and conversation was a little easier. “What about . . . the criminal charge? I mean, even if it’s not on my record anymore, how can I work in the Sector?”
“The shirking charge?” Malsha said it so distinctly that Tilrey winced and dropped his eyes again. “Well, that’s a good question. I’ve been meaning to ask you, lad, how you came to be at a Dissident meeting, translating a message from Oslov’s enemy. I’ve read the official report, of course. But only you can fill in the details for me.”
Tilrey was intensely grateful for the sap in his system; it kept him from trembling. “It’s all in the report,” he said in a low voice. “I mean, what I told the Constable and the Supervisor—I didn’t lie. I went to the meeting on a dare. I swear that’s the truth, Fir.”
“I didn’t accuse you of lying.” Fir Magistrate’s voice had a slight edge now. “Tell me anyway, Tilrey—the whole story. Who dared you?”
Tilrey’s insides clenched up. He shook his head. “I can’t give a name. I won’t.”
“This isn’t an interrogation.” Malsha’s hand rested very lightly on his knee. “Just tell me how it happened, no names. This person who dared you, was it a girl or boy you liked? Someone you wanted to impress?”
Tilrey wanted to keep the story to himself. But if he did, he’d look guiltier—and perhaps the details did exonerate him, just a little. He nodded. “A girl. She heard about the meeting, learned the password, and wanted to go. I told her that was treason. Then she started accusing me of being a goody-goody and a coward, and, well . . . it seemed like the only way I could keep her from going was to go myself. She already had minor offenses on her record; mine was clean. I promised to tell her everything that happened.”
The meeting, three months ago, was still fresh in his memory. They’d gathered in a cavernous basement storeroom amid towers of crates, coughing in the dusty air. There were fourteen or fifteen people, most of them factory workers and at least a decade older than Tilrey. They all seemed to recognize him as the Lieutenant Supervisor’s upstanding son, even though he’d covered up his school uniform with an adult’s borrowed jacket.
After some harmless talk about work conditions and the food in the caf, a woman looked right at Tilrey and said, “Here to report back to your ma, are you?”
Tilrey shook his head, feeling very naïve. “I came because I’m interested.” They were looking daggers at him, so he told them the name of their associate who’d tipped off Dal. “My friend thought I should come because, uh, I’m very good at languages.” Weren’t Dissidents always trying to open up channels to Harbour? “Anything that’s written in Harbourer, I can translate.”
“Can you, lad?” The shirkers exchanged glances. “Why would we need that?”
“Because . . .” Tilrey remembered the way Dal was always spouting off in the caf. “I’m not my mother. I think it’s unfair how Redda keeps us locked up in this city and exploits our labor and tries to keep us ignorant. We’re prisoners. Slaves.”
As he talked, Tilrey began to believe what he was saying. True, he’d always felt reasonably happy—not like a prisoner or a slave at all—but that was because he and his mom had a nice apartment on the top level. He wouldn’t spend his life working on a factory line. But the people here did, and how did they feel?
The adults around him nodded encouragingly; some voiced similar sentiments. They talked of past strike efforts that had failed; they groused about Supervisor Fernei; they weighed the possibilities of protests and sabotage.
Finally, a shifty-eyed young man who worked in the communications office told a tale of a hacked radio and an intercepted transmission from the south. He passed Tilrey a sheet of paper. “There’s a little Oslov mixed in, but mostly it’s Harbourer. If you can really translate, show us.”
Tilrey read the message easily. It was from someone called “the Colonel of the Glorious Resurgence,” and it was exhorting all Oslov Laborers to rise up and revolt.
“If you bring down the tyrants in Redda and break their stranglehold on the stolen technological legacy that belongs rightfully to all human beings, you shall have a home and eternal gratitude in the South.” As he read the words, the shirkers exchanged meaningful glances and nodded. This was what they’d hoped to hear. Someone out there, far beyond Oslov, might actually support their struggle. Tilrey felt proud of himself.
But now, as he recited the message sitting beside the General Magistrate, his voice shook. The words were so seditious, so explosive. Maybe it was a crime even to remember them.
Malsha laughed out loud. “Translating that was your offense?”
“Yes, Fir.” He shrank back.
Still chuckling, the Magistrate took a bite of biscuit and patted Tilrey’s knee. “Pour again for us, will you?”
Tilrey got up, his head buzzing with sap, and poured. When he resettled himself, Malsha explained: “Colonel Thibault of Resurgence fancies herself far more threatening than she is. To make herself feel important, she blankets the Laborer cities of Oslov with propaganda like the message you just quoted. But, as you can hear for yourself, her message offers no information that might actually assist anyone in rebelling. It’s hot air.”
“But then . . . why were we all arrested, Fir?” Despite his terror of cells and imprisonment, Tilrey didn’t want it to be for nothing.
Fir Magistrate sipped his tea. “Chances are, the young man who gave you the ‘intercepted transmission’ was an Int/Sec plant trolling for Dissidents. He’s probably the very person who initiated the crackdown in your sector and gave your name to the soldiers doing the round-up. In fact, it’s possible that the entire meeting you attended was a sham orchestrated by undercover Int/Sec agents. Real Dissidents don’t give out their passwords to schoolchildren.”
As he spoke, he returned his hand to Tilrey’s knee and stroked it reassuringly. “Of course, that doesn’t make the charge against you any less serious. Espousing shirker ideology is one thing, but to go on a dare—well, that was simply foolish, Tilrey. Reckless. Unworthy of you.”
Tilrey lowered his head and said sincerely, “I know.” The one time in his life he’d tried to be as daring as Dal, he’d been punished for it.
“I see no reason one foolish mistake should ruin your life, however.” The Magistrate rubbed Tilrey’s knee in small circles, his voice dropping to a lulling drone. “I imagine Turshka’s told you that when people serve me well, I reward them.”
“Yes, Fir.” The hand was creeping up his thigh. Tilrey inched away as far as he dared.
“So you will take the E-Squareds, and you will become my secretary.” The man was even closer somehow; Tilrey could feel warm breath on his cheek. “Perhaps in a few years, if you prove valuable to me, I’ll even bring you along when I visit our Embassy in Harbour.”
“There’s an Oslov embassy in Harbour, Fir?” In school, modern Harbour was always described as barbaric, hostile territory.
“Of course.” A soft laugh. “We trade with some of them. Would you like that?”
“Yes—I mean, I’d like to see Harbour, Fir.” A fitful pulse was beating in Tilrey’s temple. The old man’s hand was back between his legs, stroking upward, and he was too sapped to bother to edge away. What was the point? Malsha had made it clear at their last encounter that the price of refusal would be a return to the officers’ club.
Nonetheless, Tilrey needed to be honest about something. Before the Magistrate kissed him and fondled his hair, before he wound an arm around Tilrey’s waist and led him to bed, the man needed to be reminded what he was really doing here. He needed to know what Tilrey’s lack of resistance really meant.
Tilrey raised his eyes and did his best to look steadily at the face above him. “I went with Admin Makari because he said I’d go to prison otherwise. But I don’t want this, Fir.”
“‘This’?” Malsha stroked a gentle line from Tilrey’s chin to his cheekbone. “You don’t want to be my kettle boy?”
He couldn’t, shouldn’t say it. After all his training, Artur would be appalled. But it was the truth, so he nodded just barely, dropping his eyes again.
Malsha laughed.
Tilrey looked up again, cheeks hot, into the old man’s abruptly merry face. He blinked away tears as Malsha said, “Verdant hells, my sweet love, I know that. It’s in every move you make, every flash of those exquisite eyes of yours, that you don’t want to be here. That’s precisely why I want you.”
As he continued, he snaked his arm around Tilrey’s waist, drawing him in. “There’s no shortage of boys who’d kill to be in your place, as I imagine Fir Jena told you. Krisha tells me you’ve met young Bror, István’s boy—a pretty lad, very skilled, and very eager to belong to me. But he doesn’t hold a hundredth of the interest for me that you do.”
He pulled Tilrey into a kiss. Tilrey stiffened, but the sap was making everything fuzzy. The old man’s arms held him fast; teeth nipped at his bottom lip. He wants this. He wants it, Tilrey’s brain kept repeating, trying to make sense of it. Why would anyone want someone who was unwilling?
“I don’t understand,” he murmured.
“No, I imagine you don’t. Be glad of that.”
Those lips were on his neck now, sucking hard; they’d leave a mark. Tilrey flinched, and Malsha said soothingly, “Never fear. I’ll be very gentle with you; you’re worth it.” He whispered in Tilrey’s ear, “It seems to me I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time.”
***
After all that, the rest was predictable, almost routine.
Tilrey didn’t cry. He lay still in the Fir’s bed and submitted the way he’d learned to do over the past sixteen days, obeying instructions when they were given. And really, it was completely bearable, even though the sap was wearing off. The Magistrate wasn’t particularly large, and he was as gentle as he’d promised—certainly not rough like the soldiers, not even at the end. It wasn’t much different from that one night with Artur.
When the man’s weight lifted off him, Tilrey rolled on his side and pressed his face to the bedspread, proud of himself for barely reacting. It had been stupid of him, he saw now, to admit what they both already knew; it only made the experience better for Malsha. Never open up to him, Artur had said, and Tilrey had done exactly that. But if this was as bad as it got, he’d survive.
The Magistrate returned from the bathroom with a warm, damp towel, told him to roll over, and cleaned him with something like tenderness. “You’re all right, lad?”
Tilrey nodded.
“Would you like a nip more sap?”
He prudently shook his head. “I’m fine, Fir.”
“You’re trembling a little. Perhaps a tisane would be nice.”
Thinking it was an order, Tilrey struggled up, ready to head for the kitchen. Malsha waved him back down with an expression of concern. “No, no, sweetheart. Now it’s my turn to wait on you.”
So Tilrey lay in bed while the kettle whistled afar off. A few minutes later, Malsha brought in a fresh tray. He sat down beside Tilrey, adjusted the pillows to give him better back support, and urged him to try a rosehip tisane imported from Harbour. “These are little berries that grow on rosebushes. Roses are flowers that hold a great deal of symbolic significance in Harbourer culture. I find them rather unimpressive, myself. The peony—now, there’s a decadent flower.”
Tilrey only half listened, but the words were soothing. He felt like a pampered invalid as the Magistrate tidied up, again refusing offers of help. Finished in the kitchen, he tucked them both into bed and turned off the light.
“That was a lovely first night for us,” he whispered in Tilrey’s ear, pulling him close. “You are a gift, my sweet, smart boy. I feel unimaginably lucky to have you.”
At this point, a part of Tilrey that had been slumbering woke and recoiled in horror. What the fuck is wrong with him? And with me?
He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away from the parody of tenderness, because it was way too late to listen to internal warnings he couldn’t act on. He even let his head be tugged onto the Magistrate’s shoulder. If he could just go to sleep, it would all be over.
He dozed off with merciful speed, only to wake and sit bolt upright.
He’d dreamed someone was chasing him down the longest, darkest corridor on the lowest subterranean level of Sector Six, where he and Dal and Pers used to sneak in and play tag. Only it wasn’t Dal or Pers chasing him, but a faceless, formless person with long arms reaching out, grasping toward him.
He’d woken just as he reached a dead end, his heartbeat echoing in the tiny space. It still thudded against his ribs, and the aftertaste of sap was bitter in his mouth.
What time was it? All he knew was that it was still dark, the General Magistrate of the Republic of Oslov was snoring softly beside him, and he needed to get the fuck out of here, right now.
Had he really drifted off with his head on the man’s shoulder? Don’t think about it. He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and looked back at the slumbering Magistrate. I should kill him. I could kill him. The kitchen had no sharp knives—Artur had hidden them the way he’d hidden the razors and nail file—but he could use his bare hands. He was young, strong and getting stronger, as Bror kept insisting during their weight-room sessions. Strangling an old man was no challenge.
But even if Tilrey could do it—and he was far from sure he had what it took to snuff out a life in cold blood—what would be the point? He was locked in. He would wait all night beside a corpse until Krisha came in and hauled him off to the Constabulary. And then, exile.
No, murder was a fantasy. But at least he could sleep in his own bed. He rose and tiptoed to the open door.
“Sweetheart? Where are you going?”
Tilrey froze, his heart battering his ribs again. He’d been so quiet. Did the Magistrate have some kind of extrasensory perception?
He didn’t even consider telling the truth, or asking for permission; he knew what the answer would be. “To the john, Fir.”
When he returned to bed, Malsha was holding the duvet back for him. Tilrey slipped in. He rolled over, turning his back to the Magistrate, and hugged himself tight.
An arm eased itself around him. A voice murmured in his ear, “Just for future reference, love, when you’re with me for the night, you’re with me for the night. Understood?”
Tilrey nodded, remembering everything Artur had said. This was the most powerful person in Oslov, perhaps in the world. If you gave him what he wanted, you would be rewarded—eventually. If you resisted, you would be crushed.
I don’t even want the fucking reward. But he didn’t want to be crushed, either. Pride wasn’t worth that.
“Good.” And the Magistrate rolled him over and tugged him close again.
The fight left Tilrey as abruptly as it had come. He let his head rest where it was apparently supposed to be, on Malsha’s chest, and wept without a sound.