Not everybody dies.
War…happens. You choose a side if you’re that way inclined, if you’re allowed the luxury. More likely your side is chosen for you by birth or by geography, by loyalty or happenstance, by edict or by luck. Good luck, ill luck. Either way.
You fight or you don’t fight, depending. On what you can get away with, if you’re wise.
Sooner or later, one side is going to lose. As often as not, it’ll be yours. You were in the wrong town at the wrong time, you listened to the wrong prince or the wrong god or the wrong recruiting sergeant. One way or another, it’s your turn to go down. Fighting or otherwise.
There will have been battles; people will have died. In the fighting, and afterwards. In the cities, in the villages, in the fields.
Eventually there’ll be an ending of sorts. A last siege, a final battle, some kind of surrender. And then more deaths to come: executions public or private, official or otherwise, in justice or punishment or revenge.
And then the hunger, because of course nobody brought the harvest in, you were all too busy fighting or being besieged, running away, dying in droves. And the sickness that follows the hunger, and the jail-fever in the prison camps, and the pox that leaps from one brothel, one harbour, one occupied city to the next; and…
And still, not everybody dies.
Some of us have to come back.
Home. for some people, it’s where they end up, where they settle.
For some of us, it’s where you start. Where you run away from. Where you leave.
For some of us, coming back would never be a choice. Only ever a thing we did because we had to.
Still, here I was. Home again.
“Djoran. Still too pretty to kill, then?”
I gave him half a shrug, half a smile. Wry would be the word. You get to be good at that. “Pretty boys don’t mean much any more.”
“They never did.” He was a man who could never have been pretty, even as a boy; but his trade was intimate with beauty. He did know.
“True enough,” I allowed. “These days, though…” The other half of the shrug, and no smile; that was all it took, to say what I knew too. That with a glut of prisoners, orphans and runaways, bandits in the hills and half the world in motion, the market was sodden with the likes of me. Boys had never been so cheap.
That mattered.
I still had to sell myself, but there was no better way to start. Beggar your own value before you begin.
I said, “Well, I’m back now. And still pretty. And I know the work.” Better than ever. “Will you—?”
“Wait. You mean you’re not just passing through?”
“No,” I said, perhaps more heavily than I meant. “I’m home now. I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“And you want your old place back, is that it? You want to put yourself under my roof, my charge?”
Want is a slippery word at the best of times, which these were not. One more time I shrugged, while I could still afford to. And said it again, “I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“That I can believe,” he said. “You left few friends behind you, when you…left.”
That little hesitation was a little reminder that I’d sneaked away without his consent, which meant without leaving profit in his purse.
“I know it,” I said. “But will you take me?” Put bluntly because I wasn’t negotiating here, I was begging. “I’ll cost you nothing this time, Largo. Only bed and board—and I’ll share beds, of course, and I know what you spread on your board. And what you pay for it. You won’t notice one more mouth, and you do know what custom I’ll bring to your door.”
“Trouble,” he said dourly, “that’s what you’ll bring.”
“Trouble pays, Largo. Trouble drinks, and is this not a tavern? Trouble eats, it keeps your kitchens busy; trouble has all kinds of appetites that we can satisfy for a price, you and I.”
“Less of the we,” he growled. “If I take you—if—there’ll be no partnership between us. You’re one more slut in my house, no more than that. And you’ll take nothing from it, except what I give you. Bed and board.”
“Of course, Largo. That’s all I ask.”
I stood meekly before him, waiting for his decision: the very image of a boy broken by a world too big for him, creeping back in search of whatever rough accommodations he could make. Not looking for kindness, any more than justice—gods, no, not that!—and almost afraid to hope, almost that. Absolutely afraid of everything else, including Largo.
Briefly, I even thought he might refuse. Maybe I’d overreached at last: come too far, asked too much. So little, and still too much. Maybe I really hadn’t learned the lessons of defeat, capitulation, loss…
In the end, though, his snort of contempt told me I was in. “Not as you were before, mind,” he said. “There’ll be no tricks, and no deceptions. You’re a servant, a dancing boy, a whore. You don’t steal so much as a pin or a mouthful of meal, you don’t cheat my customers or my people. You don’t play and you don’t wager. You’ll have nothing of your own to wager with, I’ll be sure of that; and you’ll beg no more than you borrow, which means nothing at all from anyone. Agreed?”
I nodded.
“And I’ll sell you on again, first fair offer that I hear. You’ll have no say, and no share. Agreed?”
Again, I nodded.
“And just to be sure, I’ll have Virelle put a binding on you. You bring nothing into my house when you come, and you take nothing with you when you leave. Nothing outside your own skin. That’s how far I trust you, boy.”
“Virelle?” I may perhaps have flinched. He may have been looking for exactly that. I blustered on, awkward and inevitable: “Virelle still with us, is she? I never thought that old crow would—Ow!”
His hand was no softer than it had been; he was no slower to use it.
“You speak of her with respect, Djoran, or you don’t speak at all. I could have her place a binding on your tongue. Perhaps I should. I’ve other uses for it, but a boy don’t need to speak much. Not in my house. One word out of place, one whisper that I don’t like and it’ll be my mute dancing boy that people come for. They’ll enjoy that, the slippery glib Djoran silent and helpless under their hands. I will do that. Understood?”
I nodded hesitantly. No words now, only my uttermost need on display. He’d thought he had the most of me, the best of me before; now I was his again to use again, to sell again and again night after night, until he sold me one more time for true.
It was a bad bargain, and the best that I could hope for. Boys were cheap, and I was tainted goods.
Hell, I was a legend, and nothing good at all.
“Good, then. Come, then.”
I hadn’t counted on Virelle.
Stupid of me. If tavern-keepers survive a passing war, then why not temple-keepers? Any soldier worth his kit will spend as much time at prayer as he does at table. And as much money, that too. For the priests, for the incense they burn and the blood they spill. For luck, if that’s for sale; and for whores, who certainly are.
Temple or tavern, there are always whores.
It’s how I started, as a temple boy. One of Virelle’s. Looking like the streetrat that I was, all ribs and knees in a tunic that hid neither; burning resin and striking bells, dancing in lamplight and shaking down the faithful. Smelling of smoke and sweat, my own and older men’s. Long ago, but—well. Fire and steel had swept these winding streets, more than once since I’d been gone. Not everybody dies, but even so. I really hadn’t counted on Virelle.
Here was the street called Strait, because it was like honesty: narrow and difficult and not for us. We used to laugh about that, all her skinny children. Long ago.
Here was the old stone facing of her temple, unexpected among the high houses that stood all with their backs to the street and its people; here was a step up and an open door, the way we never came. Here was a perfume that seemed soaked into the wood and stone, into the air itself, that had soaked bone-deep into us.
Here were the lamps I used to light, the boards I used to scrub and polish. There in the shadows was the boy I used to be, swaying softly to a music not yet played, half out of his skull on chewing kef, dreaming maybe of a freedom never tasted or a body known too well.
Good dreams, bad dreams. Either way.
Here was his mistress, once my own: Virelle herself, much like the crow I’d called her if crows come white and scrupulous, marked by time and temper, counting their age in accumulated scars and influence.
She looked at me and knew me from the inside, as Largo did. Her mouth twisted.
“Come crawling back, has he?”
“Aye that.”
All of that. I wasn’t going to argue.
“Well, and you’re going to take him?”
“If you’ll bind him to me. Keep him from taking anything, from me or mine.”
She could do that. I wasn’t the first that he’d had reason to mistrust. He knew where we came from and what we were. He knew that we’d steal coin from any purse and bread from any kitchen. We’d load a die and mark a pack of cards, we’d drug and cheat and lie from first to last if there was benefit. Why not? It’s a cold world and it takes no account of need or innocence, so you might as well go guilty all the way, if guilt will keep you warm and fed.
They talked it through, he paid in coin and promises; I wouldn’t have trusted either, but these two wouldn’t cheat each other, they were too closely bound.
“Strip then, you, Djoran.”
It was hardly the first time I’d taken my clothes off under her eyes, or his. I did hope it might be the last—but I’d thought that before, the day she sold me to him. I’d worked hard for it, so hard; I was on my way up, moving out, moving on. Each step higher than the last.
Now I was naked again, brought down again. Starting again, I told myself determinedly. Home was just a place to start.
Smoke and bells. A boy to swing the censer and the little bronze hammers, fetch her pots and simples at a run, watch bug-eyed from a corner when he wasn’t put to use: learning, absorbing, storing away. Wise boy. It was almost hard to believe he wasn’t me, so many times I’d stood just there and seen just this, how she used a twig of rosemary to splash bare skin with water and oils while she chanted under her breath in call of her shadowy gods. Seen it from about his height, too, and about his stage of dawning cynicism. She gave you a grand farewell to innocence, did Virelle.
She wasn’t so kind once you grew older. To me, now, not kind at all. No reason to be; when I left the temple I left some trouble behind me, and another boy was taken and hanged for it. She had always been sure that the first fault was mine, and that I’d arranged to have blame fall on my friend.
She’d always been acute.
Now she murmured her words and flecked my skin, had the boy waft smoke and musk my way; and I didn’t know now as I hadn’t known then whether her words were potent or her various preparations or neither, whether it was all her own will that drew the attention of her gods; but I felt their purpose close about me like a sheer silk wrap, like a second skin, tight and all-encompassing.
I might have shivered in that moment, I might have cried aloud.
“He’ll do,” she said abruptly, cutting off her chant and waving her boy away. “Nothing into your house, Largo, and nothing out. Only what’s inside his skin. You wouldn’t want him chucking up his breakfast on your doorstep.”
“No,” Largo agreed magnanimously. “What he’s eaten, he can keep. If he doesn’t get smart,” his big hand on my throat suddenly, “and try swallowing a patron’s pretty ring. Anyone misses a jewel, boy, and we can’t find it, you’ll go in the hole until we do.”
The hole was Largo’s sewer, a cess pit behind the house. Most of his people spent a day or two in there, for one offence or another. Most only ever went in once.
“Yes, Largo. Ow!”
“You’ll call me master now. As you did before.”
“Yes, master.” Some things aren’t worth being stubborn for.
Actually, most things aren’t worth being stubborn for. Certainly nothing that I owned just then: not the clothes I’d peeled off, nor the various bits and pieces I’d hoarded this far in pockets and pouches and hems. I left it all on the temple floor, for her boys to glean.
Actually, I didn’t have a choice. Nothing in and nothing out: I could feel that binding settle across my bare hide, as real as the bite of loose stones beneath my feet, the brush of cool air across my skin, the giggling attention of stray children as I followed obediently at Largo’s heel through the streets of a city that I hoped had forgotten me.
No such luck. People called my name, mockingly. One flung a stone, but he was a fool; he did it where I could see him, see it coming and duck, and remember his face for later. His name was long gone, just one of the many I’d abused or robbed or insulted, cheated or exploited in my hectic heedless rise to where I thought I ought to be. Now his face was fresh in my mind, someone to be hurt again if the chance arose.
Things change. Not everybody dies, but some do. For some, it can be arranged.
Here again, back at the tavern. Round to the back of the tavern, naturally: and the alley behind was half blocked by a wagon, old Per Simon delivering barrels of fresh cider as he always had, war or no war.
He sat his wagon as he always did, hunched and heedless. Largo’s people came and went, in and out of the stable yard, unloading. Kitchen boys, musicians, whores: it made no difference. If there was work to be done, they did the work.
We did.
I went to the wagon’s tailgate without a word to Largo, willing to show willing. One quick hoist, barrel onto shoulder and turn towards the gate. This was heavy work once, when I was all bone and gristle; now it was easy.
Until I took that one significant step, under the arch of brick and into Largo’s yard.
That feeling you get, when you know you’re being watched? This…was like that, except that it was like being touched too, all over and all at once. Not like the breath of the wind, or silk on the skin, or a sudden rain: this was personal, intimate, intended.
Then the barrel was punched off my shoulder, to fall back into the alley behind me. I felt it tear from my grasp, I heard it thump to ground while I was still bearing forward, suddenly too light on my feet, momentum carrying me on although my mind was reeling.
My foot came down on familiar cobbles; I almost knew each separate stone by touch. I turned around bewildered, flinching, expecting a blow and almost hoping for it, something I could understand.
Largo stood under the archway of his gate. Those quick hard hands of his were set on his hips, and he was laughing. At me.
“Old crow did you call her, boy? Well, perhaps—but she’s a crow with wisdom. Nothing in, and nothing out. Here.” He stooped to retrieve the barrel, blessedly unharmed—he wouldn’t laugh at a loss of coin, not Largo—and tossed it at me like a ball at play.
I caught it with a grunt, held it cautiously in both arms. Nothing tried to knock it free, now that I was within his bounds.
“Take that to the cellar, then get up to the kitchens. You’re no use out here, if you can’t fetch and carry through the gate. Ask Marta to find you something to scrub.”
“Yes, master.”
In a busy tavern there’s always something to scrub, but he hadn’t taken me in for a scullery-boy. Neither for a whore, though he’d have me do that too. Largo keeps his people busy, and the town was full of soldiers. Liberators, occupiers, call them what you will. Victory breeds appetite. Food and drink and sex, of course; and entertainment, of course, that too. Song and dance.
Largo had bought me and trained me and kept me as a dancing-boy. Too pretty to kiss, he used to proclaim, till I was grown enough to prove him false. Then it was too pretty to kill, which was only half a joke; he had a killing temper, and I had a thousand sins in me and no conscience at all. I danced and stole, danced and cheated, danced and sold secrets and took my beatings and danced again. He made more money than I did, but we both did well.
Until my ambitions grew larger than my purse, larger than my opportunities. I left Largo—stole myself away, naturally, paying nothing for the privilege of freedom—and trekked my way to the palace, inveigled myself into the prince’s service, rose and rose.
Rose and fell, when my foolish prince lost his war and his life too. Not everybody dies, but some must. Half his people were condemned, but who cares about a dancing-boy? I ran, and no one chased me; only there were too many thieves on every road and too many whores in every tavern, too many cheats and beggars everywhere. If I’d claimed palace skills—I danced for the court, yes, and warmed their silken beds, that too—I’d have been mocked for a liar or hanged for a prince’s man. Or both, whether they believed me or not.
So I held my tongue and went hungry, went barefoot when my boots wore out, went down and down until at last here I was, back where I’d started. Scrubbing and screwing for Largo’s purse, not even bothering to keep one of my own. Nothing in and nothing out: there was no point hoarding a single penny piece, if I couldn’t take it with me.
Scrubbing and screwing but dancing, that too. That most. I’d been good before; by local standards now, by Largo’s standards I was spectacular. I’d learned a lot in the prince’s troupe, as much as or more than I did in his bed.
Every night I danced, and word spread, and people came specifically to see me.
Some came back, and back again.
Merrick was young to be a captain, but the New Army was like that, promoting men for merit rather than age or influence or name. It was the gamble I’d taken, me and thousands like me, that experience and long-established power would win out over hotheaded rebellion. Grind it down, stamp it out, crush it utterly.
We’d gambled; we’d lost. Now I danced for Merrick.
For Merrick and his kind, officers and men, a constant succession of faces, bodies, hands. Variously drunken, sweating, reaching to touch. They weren’t all soldiers; they weren’t all men. There were administrators, traders, the idly wealthy and the busily broke. Some nights, there were more women than men.
Mostly soldiers, though—and after a while, mostly Merrick, at least in my head. I danced for him; the rest were only clutter.
He was sweet. It took him a week of watching from the shadows, until he found the nerve to step forward. He had to shoulder other men aside before he could throw a towel across my naked sweating shoulders, toss a coin to the lurking Largo and take a firm grip of my neck.
“Where can we go?”
“This way, master…”
When I slept alone, I slept with everyone; all Largo’s people bedded down together in the hay loft. For customers, I had a room. Lamplight and soft comforts, wine and perfumes, oils and toys. Whips and chains, if their tastes ran that way.
Merrick found no need to hurt me, and I gave him no reason. The occasional clout if I bit too hard: it was nothing, an occasion for a laugh and a quick apology, the brush of lips over the offended spot and move on. I learned what he liked, which was simple enough: a boy both eager and submissive, occasionally wicked, always willing. When he wanted to fuck, we fucked. When he wanted to talk, or more often listen, we could do that too. He liked to hear stories from the palace, from my old high life; he liked to be shocked, a little, by the late prince’s decadent behaviours and my own. With a cool goblet in one hand and his other resting on my thigh, with my head nestled into his shoulder and our skin sticking together, with my voice murmuring tales of a world unimagined, he felt something like a prince himself. That was all I wanted.
One morning I was scrubbing floors when I heard his voice unexpectedly, behind and above me: “Let me have Djoran for the day, Largo. How much?”
Largo named a price. Merrick dickered unconvincingly, overpaid shockingly, cuffed me lightly in embarrassment when I bounded to my feet like a whistled puppy. I rubbed my sore ear and beamed at him. “Where are we going?”
Largo snorted. “Wherever you take him, keep his hands tied and a rope on his throat or he’ll make off with anything that’s yours.”
“I will not,” I said. “Why would I? I can’t bring anything back here.”
“You’d find someone to hold it for you. I don’t want him building a store of credit outside my house, Captain. Keep him close.”
“Hands tied,” Merrick agreed, “rope on his throat. Right. I might enjoy that. Do you have a rope?”
“I have better. Djoran? Fetch.”
I fetched. A minute later, Merrick stepped out with wrist-cuffs and a chain leash dangling from his hand. I padded at his heels, naked and obedient. Nothing in, nothing out: I couldn’t even wear chains before I was across the threshold.
In the street there, he cuffed my hands behind my back and looped the leash around my neck. And grinned, and kissed me; and said, “Maybe I should keep you this way. At least I can be sure you’ll be good.”
“I’m always good,” I protested. “Master.”
“You are, I know. Except when I want you sinful.” His hand rested a moment on my hip; then he laughed shortly and gave the leash a twitch. “Come on, then.”
He didn’t make me trot at heel long. Soon enough I was settled against his side, his arm around my shoulders and his lips in my hair. He did keep the cuffs on me, though, and the leash too; he didn’t think to stop at a market stall and buy even the simplest strip of cloth to mask my nakedness.
Turned out the day was all about nakedness. He took me to the city baths, and we didn’t pass the door again till dusk, when he had to give me back to Largo. We bathed, we swam, we oiled each other’s bodies; we drowsed and sweated in the steam; we fucked slowly, languorously, slept and fucked again. We drank chilly sherbets and hot strong coffee, and sweated again, and plunged recklessly into the ice-pool and came out gasping, shuddering, desperate for rough towels and rougher hands to work them.
I’d never felt cleaner or more contented, resting my weary head against his shoulder as he cuffed my hands again, kissing the scented skin of his neck, murmuring, “You don’t need to do that.”
“No, but I want to. And Largo’ll be glad to see me being watchful. As I am. I’m not a fool, Djoran. I know your instincts. And how to overcome them.”
“Yes, master.”
That was our first day, maybe our best. There were more. Soon enough it was a rare day when he didn’t come for me. One of those, we had excitements enough to compensate. A guest was missing a jewelled brooch; she was angry with Largo; Largo was angry with me. I was halfway to the hole, still protesting, when the brooch was found—broken, missing its pin—hidden among the scant belongings of one of the kitchen girls. She was whipped, poor fool, and sent to market, sold. Not listened to. Largo paid to have the brooch repaired, even though even he thought likely it had broken and fallen of its own accord and the girl had only found it, kept it, a simpler kind of stealing.
I didn’t need to wait much longer. A day came when Merrick came, but not to me, not first. Went straight to Largo, and came out with one finger light of its ring, a piece of heavy gold he’d had from his grandser. I knew the history of all his rings, and their value too.
First fair offer that I hear, Largo had said.
“He cheated you,” I said bluntly. Boys were cheap, and rightly so.
“I know,” he said. “I don’t care. You’re mine now. Come away. I’ve a month’s leave; I’m taking you home. I might leave you there, if you settle. My people will be good to you, put some weight on your bones, take fair work out of you, teach you a new kind of life.”
His people were farmers. I knew the kind of life they offered, I’d seen it. Passing by, on my way from one city to the next.
Still, he was master. It was his decision. He left me in no doubt about that. His horse was in the stable yard; he had to lead it out himself into the alley, I couldn’t do it. Once we were out, though: then he could set his pack on my back, his new iron cuff s on my wrists. His chain around my neck, a lesson learned.
“There’s blood on your thumb,” he said, testing the cuffs as a careful master ought. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
“It’s nothing, just a splinter under the nail…”
“You should take better care. I’ll do that, I’ll take better care of you than you do.” He tipped my face up, fingers under my chin; and frowned, and said, “Tears, Djoran?”
I sniffed, shook my head, muttered, “It’s nothing,” again.
“I hope you’ll be happy with me,” he said fretfully. “I think you will. I’ll be strict, you need that; but I won’t be unkind, not ever. I’ll treat you with all the love you deserve. Love and discipline together; you’ll thrive, you’ll see.”
Largo stood in his gateway watching, approving. Content. One more ring on his finger, one less doubt on his mind. One less trouble in his house.
My new master swung himself up into the saddle, kicked his horse into a trot. His horse and me, necessarily.
It was an easy pace he set, and dancing keeps you fit. I could keep this up for hours, running at his stirrup with his pack on my back; but I wouldn’t need to. By the time we reached the city gate, I was already working the steel pin out from under my thumbnail, where I’d pushed it in a hard hour earlier.
Nothing in, and nothing out. Nothing outside my skin. So I’d thrust it deep under my nail, with only a bead of blood to show and an eye-watering pain to endure and disguise. Virelle’s watchful gods couldn’t touch me for it.
And now I had steel in my fingers, sharp and flexible. Even at a jog, even working blind behind my back with fetters on my wrists, I could pick a cuff-lock with a jewel’s broken pin. Two minutes’ work, and my hands were free. Merrick didn’t know; I held them behind my back as though they were still chained there, one clamped hard around the open cuff to stop it swinging loose.
Half an hour later the road dipped to a ford, with trees on either bank.
There was no one before us, no one behind us.
Merrick slowed to a walk, and took us into the stream. The water was calf-deep and unhurried, no more trouble to me than it was to the horse. Just as my master smiled down at me, I brought my hands out from behind my back.
One jolted his boot out of the stirrup; the other slammed that steel needle deep into the horse’s rump.
The horse screamed and reared. I heaved. Merrick fell heavily into the water.
Well-trained, he still kept hold of the reins. I’d been hoping for that.
The horse danced out of the way. Merrick was sitting up to his chin in the river, sodden, bewildered. I took a step forward, swinging my arm lustily. One iron cuff was still locked around my wrist; the other flew on the end of its chain at the end of my arm like a flail.
Dancing gives you muscles like a whip. That cuff caught him on the side of the head with a brutal thud, and I thought I might have killed him.
I snatched the reins from his slack fingers, calmed the horse before it could charge off with me still chained to the saddle, tied it to a tree and picked that neck-chain loose. Then I went back for its master.
An hour later, he was the one running sluggishly at the stirrup, cuffed and leashed and naked, with the pack on his back now. His clothes were still damp—and all too big for me—but I wore them gratefully, with stockings stuffed into the boot-toes to keep them on my feet. His rings wouldn’t stay on my fingers, so I carried them in a pouch. The horse was equable beneath me. Its former master less so, but I’d gagged him once I tired of his moaning.
Boys are cheap after war and men too, but horses not. Horses never. Between the two, they’d fetch enough to buy me passage overseas. A new land, new opportunities. Put the war behind me, put it all behind me, start again. With quick feet, a quick tongue, quicker fingers. I could rise and rise.
Merrick’s family would be expecting him. When he didn’t arrive, there would be questions asked, people sent in search. Of course they’d find their way to the tavern where he’d spent so much time in recent weeks. Of course they’d interrogate Largo; of course they’d see and recognise the ring he wore so blatantly on his finger.
He’d have nothing to offer but the truth, that Merrick had paid it fairly for a dancing-boy. But boys are cheap, and that ring meant much to him; no one would believe Largo. Not the family, not the magistrate.
A man, a captain gone, and his ring on a tavern-keeper’s finger? I thought Largo would hang, like enough.
Not everybody dies, but some, oh yes. Some do.