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Tilrey counted the days. It seemed to help.Every afternoon he went straight from work to his dorm and found an empty shower stall. He turned the hot water on full blast and stood under the spray and closed his eyes. He stopped thinking.After that, when there were meetings and assignations that couldn’t wait, he dressed and went out again. When there weren’t, he repaired to his small, windowless assigned room and pulled the covers over his head and slept till the alarm woke him in the morning. He seemed to have an endless appetite for hot water and sleep.He dreamed a couple of times of the private lounge where he’d gone with Bors Dartán, but Dartán wasn’t there. Tilrey stood in the blue-green radiance that flooded through the glass wall, hugging himself tight, feeling like he’d lost something but without the slightest idea where to start looking for it.Then he woke, and the bed was narrow, and he was alone.The cafeteria served a few hundred people at peak hours. Sound ricocheted under the high ceiling and drowned out his thoughts. Bror and Mirella ate there, too, but Tilrey did his best to avoid them. Strangers were easier, and since he’d spent almost no time in his dorm over the past five years, almost everyone was a stranger. He brought his paperwork and read it between bites of porridge and gulps of tea.Sometimes he paused to listen to fragments of conversations about streams, free-night plans, flirtations, marriages, kids. The ski races currently happening in Thurskein and streaming on the cylinder were a hot topic, with several illicit betting pools going on.It reminded Tilrey of Thurskein, only he had no sense of kinship or belonging with Reddan Laborers, having spent his twelve years in the city socializing almost exclusively with Upstarts. Who were these people? What mattered to them? Sometimes he wanted to laugh at the idea that he could improve their lives, as Irin Dartán insisted. They seemed perfectly content the way they were.Sometimes he noticed people staring at him, usually young women or men in the prime of life. Several times at breakfast, a man in his midforties, with a burly build and chiseled jaw, gazed intently at Tilrey from hooded eyes, but he never approached.On the fifth day after, Besha cornered Tilrey in the dark, narrow corridor that ran around the back of the Council chamber and offered a short-cut to the committee rooms. “What’s going on?” he hissed in Tilrey’s ear, pulling him into an aperture.Tilrey shrugged. The booming of footsteps on the back stairs made the walls around them shudder.“Don’t play dumb with me. I have eyes. You and Gersha are barely talking all of a sudden.”“Of course we’re talking. We work together.”Gersha had a way of treating you when he wasn’t happy with you—like he didn’t see you. No pointed comments, no glaring, just a stiffness of the neck that ensured his eyes wouldn’t meet yours. It made you feel like you didn’t exist, even when you spoke to him about Council matters and he answered, and you were both perfectly civil. Even then.“You know what I mean.” Besha’s hand was on Tilrey’s arm, and it was too dark to tell, but his face might have expressed actual sympathy. “Just tell me. I won’t make fun of you.”Tilrey only sighed, and Besha said, “I get it, you don’t want to talk, but other people will notice if it goes on long enough, and I need something to tell them. You’re my allies.”He was right, and Tilrey had already thought up an explanation for precisely this situation. He had a vague memory of running it by Gersha to make sure they told the same story, and Gersha saying, “Fine.” But now, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to say.“Gersha despises me.” He meant the words to be light and mocking, but they came out in a grunt that was dangerously close to a sob.“That damn prig. Is it about somebody else you fucked?” Besha patted his arm. “I mean, I like Gersha, but he is a prig sometimes. And the way he acts when he decides you’re beneath his notice—oh, I know all about that. Want me to talk to him for you?”Tilrey shook his head too quickly. “It’ll pass. We’ll be fine.”“Well, if you ever want to talk . . .” And then, as if concerned about maintaining his roguish reputation, Besha squeezed Tilrey’s hand and gave him a naughty wink. “Or do other things, just as a distraction. You know. I’m here.”***Tilrey never considered accepting the invitation. “Doing things” with Besha would only remind him of the things he’d done with Besha and Gersha, and that was nothing he needed right now.Thank everything green for the Harbourer trip. It would mean more closeness with Gersha, which he dreaded now, but at least preparing for it was a distraction. Sometimes, instead of dreaming that Gersha was beside him in bed, he dreamed he was walking in an endless field full of blooming green things. The sky was dead white, and the horizon was blank, but the air felt alive.On the sixth day after, coming out of his long shower, he saw the man with the chiseled jaw who’d been watching him earlier. The man stood facing a row of mirrors, unself-consciously naked, toweling his hair. His ass rose in twin ridges of muscle, and his back and arms were shapely, too, despite his slight gut.Tilrey liked watching him, so he kept watching, his own towel knotted around his waist. He had no plan in mind when the man turned around, scowling, and said, “I know you?”“I’ve seen you in the caf.” He kept his own voice flat, his eyes running up and down the man’s body. “Watching me. You want me?”The man stared back, scowl fading, though he didn’t smile. After a moment he said, “My room or yours?”“Mine.”Ten minutes later, Tilrey’s world had narrowed to the stranger’s weight on top of him. The mouth sucking fiercely at his throat, the hands grabbing fistfuls of his ass, the blunt, rock-hard cock prodding his thigh. He threw his head back and opened his mouth for the stranger’s tongue, wanting all that urgency inside him, wanting it to split him open and leave no room for anything else.The stranger reached for Tilrey’s cock, trying to bring it to full hardness. Tilrey slapped his hand away, sat up, and rolled over. He didn’t want to explain his little problem, and he wanted even less the moment of fearful clarity brought on by an orgasm with the wrong person. “Lube’s on the nightstand. Do it now. And hard. Make it hurt.”“Don’ want to hurt you, sweetheart. You’re beautiful.” The man was already opening him with well-practiced fingers. “Green hells. I could come just looking at you.”“I hope you have more stamina than that.” The process was taking too long; he spread his legs wider. “Get on with it. I didn’t bring you here to fucking admire me, or does your cock even work?”The taunt worked as intended. The stranger slammed Tilrey down on the bedspread and thrust into him, bracing himself on his shoulders, setting a savage rhythm. When he felt the plump tickle of balls against his ass, Tilrey gasped and began rutting up onto the invading cock. The man’s hand found his own organ, and, forgetting his scruples, he squirmed almost as helplessly as Bors Dartán had with him in the private lounge.What a mistake it had been to toy with the spy that way. When he made his own decisions, he always fucked things up. Better to put someone else in control.The stranger paused to catch his breath, panting hard, fingers knotted in Tilrey’s hair. “You okay there, lad?”“Keep going.” His voice sounded to his ears like a poisonous hiss. “Or if you need a break, talk. Call me a worthless little slut.”Without another word, the man got down to business, his breath coming in harsh whimpers. With his face smashed against the pillow, Tilrey was breathless, too, but he braced himself on his knees and lifted his hips, pain turning to pleasure turning to pain again, over and over, until the man finally came and collapsed on top of him with a soggy sigh.For perhaps two minutes, the familiar warm wetness and the soft breath on the back of his neck felt better than anything in the world. Then he pushed himself up on his knees and shoved the man off him. “Out,” he said, only to realize his partner was snoring.Tilrey went and cleaned himself up. Back in bed, he waited, examining the stranger’s profile dispassionately, till the man grunted, opened his eyes, and rolled onto his back.“C’mere,” the man murmured, his finger gently tracing the curve of Tilrey’s shoulder. “Come to me, sweetheart. Didn’t even come, did you? Need to fix that.”“I’m fine.” But Tilrey allowed himself to be pulled into the shelter of the broad chest and powerful arms. It was a while since he’d been with someone who could physically overpower him; the man’s combination of strength and tenderness reminded him of Bror.How long since he and Bror had been together? Probably not since Bror had married Mirella and gotten sucked into the True Hearth, which seemed to ruin everything.The man stroked the side of Tilrey’s face, kissed his hair, casual and unhurried now. Safe.“Name’s Angar Plintik,” he said. “Garsha will do. You?”“We don’t need names.” And Garsha was way too close to Gersha. But if Angar asked around, people were sure to know Tilrey by sight and reputation.So he sighed, burrowing his face into the man’s chest, and said, “Fine, I’m Rishka. And I’ll call you by your full name, if you don’t mind.”***Gersha was giving a speech.He stood on the podium behind the long Council table, his posture perfect and his eyes steady on the auditorium. He was wearing the snow-white tunic that matched his robe of office, accenting the slight flush on his cheeks and making him look young and ravishing.“Whyberg said that every child in Oslov should have an equal opportunity to excel, be their parents the lowest or the highest. However, no one can excel without the proper tools to do so.”His tenor voice was even and melodious, with only the occasional falter. He glanced at his notes so rarely that only someone who knew the effort he’d put into the speech, someone such as Tilrey, could guess they existed.You’re doing so well, love. Tilrey felt his chest swell with involuntary pride.Ordinarily, he would have been sitting in the back of the amphitheater where he could be sure Gersha would see him. His eyes would have been steady on his Councillor the entire time: You can do this. Just like we practiced. But today he lurked in the entrance to the back passage, half out of sight, craning to see Gersha over the heads of two functionaries who were muttering and tapping on their handhelds.Did Gersha guess he was here? Probably. But if the Councillor actually caught sight of Tilrey, he might stumble and lose faith in his own arguments, in their arguments.Gersha was advocating for an amendment to the annual budget that would give a strong boost to the funding for Laborer primary education. Tilrey had spent a month in Records gathering data to underpin the budget item, and then they’d hammered out the argument together.It had been a pleasure to collaborate, competing to see who could come up with the most persuasive phrasing. Gersha wielded the Whyberg quotes and bureaucratic formulae like a master, while Tilrey energized them with strategic bits of colloquial language. And when they’d practiced the speech dozens of times in Gersha’s living room, they’d tested it on Besha and Davita, neither of whom had been sparing in critique.“And for that reason, it behooves us to share the wealth of our surplus, not out of condescension toward our inferiors, but out of a pure and principled sense of justice toward those who may not always be our inferiors . . .”The speech was polished to a sheen. Tilrey hoped Gersha knew it. He hoped Gersha wasn’t wondering if the arguments that had seemed so reasonable to him earlier were actually a Trojan horse for an ideology of chaos. (“For mobility is our watchword,” Gersha was saying now.) He was unspeakably proud of Gersha for going through with the speech as planned, but his pride seemed to insist on expressing itself as a heavy heat in his sinuses, like coming tears.Despite the faint buzzing of the functionaries around Tilrey, the audience in the amphitheater was silent. When Gersha finished—“And thus I invoke the Founder’s name in favor of this measure, so modest yet so overdue”—the silence stretched for an instant longer before becoming thunderous applause.Tilrey didn’t dare clap. He watched, tears pooling in his eyes, and did not blink.Gersha nodded in recognition of the applause, stiff and self-conscious now, and sank into a chair at the Council table, as if stunned by the effect of his own words.A young Islander named Grë climbed the podium to deliver the counterargument. That was all right, Tilrey knew, because Besha had helped Grë prepare, acting as a double agent, and had warned Gersha exactly what to expect.He withdrew into the passage, where Grë’s voice was only a distant, watery murmur, to recover his composure. Instead of wiping his tears, he sat down on a bench and let them flow freely.He was still there some twenty minutes later, pretending to consult the papers in his lap, when the Council recessed and Besha came by.After a quick glance to make sure none of his colleagues were around, Besha seized Tilrey’s hands and pulled him to his feet. “You see that?” he said jubilantly. “When you put reformism in his mouth, with his fancy diction, they don’t even recognize it for what it is. We’ve created a beautiful monster!”Then he saw Tilrey’s face. “You weren’t even in the amphitheater, were you? What the fuck is going on with you two?”Tilrey shook his head. He couldn’t let Besha think anything was jeopardizing their plans—not yet, anyway, when Gersha might still cooperate. They were in talks with swing voters and on track to form an official splinter party in the next three or four years, with Gersha and Davita as its public faces and him and Besha doing the work behind the scenes.For an instant he wondered how Besha might react to the real reason he and Gersha were estranged. Himself a traitor to the Republic in large and small ways, Besha probably wouldn’t be shocked to the core by Tilrey’s Dissidence, unless he chose to apply a double standard. He might simply crow and laugh. But he wasn’t someone Tilrey wanted to trust with the lives and welfare of scores of people in Thurskein and elsewhere.“Gersha thinks I’m in love with Vera Linnett,” he said, seizing the first thing that came to mind.Besha stared. “Isn’t she pregnant?”“We were together for a bit months ago. She had a crush, and I wanted her and her husband on our side.” He took the opportunity to plow on, remembering now the explanation that he and Gersha had agreed on: “But if anyone asks you, could you tell them the problem is you? I mean, say I’ve started to spend more time with you, and Gersha’s jealous of our . . . relationship. That should sound plausible.”Besha’s look of confusion turned to a wicked glee. “Not as plausible as I wish it were! Fine—I’m all too happy to play the spoiler.”His face sobered when Tilrey didn’t return the grin. “Verdant hells, you’re feeling wretched, aren’t you? If it helps, I’ll crow over my conquest of you to whoever will listen. Can’t say I mind.” He gave Tilrey’s hand a friendly press. “Want me to talk to Gersha, though? He’s being a fool. That soppy Linnett girl couldn’t keep your attention for more than a quarter-hour—right? I mean, you’re not actually in love with her?”Tilrey did manage to smile then. “No. That’s long over. Gersha’s just feeling a bit . . . neglected. Don’t pester him about it, Besha. He needs to sort out his own feelings.”As he went on down the corridor, he wondered if that might be true, or if Gersha’s feelings were fixed for all time.It wasn’t the first time his treacherous brain had fed him a whisper of hope. Gersha had opened his mind so much already. Could he find the courage to take this last step into the unknown?
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When Gersha returned to the office on the afternoon of his speech, his cheeks were pink, no doubt from his colleagues’ praise, and his eyes glittered. As they met Tilrey’s, though, a shutter seemed to fall over his face. His tone was dull as he asked, “Any visitors, then? Has Akeina come by?”Tilrey stood at attention as an ordinary secretary would do, hands clasped behind his back. “Not him, Fir, but Fir István came by to say you’ve secured his vote.”This was something of a coup; István was a notorious swing voter, but he was also old as the glaciers and just as hidebound. Normally Gersha would have beamed, perhaps even launched himself into Tilrey’s arms. Now he simply nodded, with a slight twitch of the lips, and said, “Glad to hear it. Thank you. I’ll be available to visitors of R10 and above for the next three hours.”As Gersha turned to disappear into the inner office, something broke inside Tilrey. “You did so well,” he said. “Better than I ever imagined. People are used to conflating reform with Dissent, with discontentment, but when it comes from you . . . well, one gets the sense the Founder would have approved.”Gersha turned halfway back, his gaze floating somewhere over Tilrey’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “Without your assistance, there is so much I would not have been able to accomplish.”The tone was respectful, but the words had a distinct bite, a suggestion of disappointment or reproach that only someone who knew Gersha intimately could discern. As the Councillor went out, Tilrey swallowed to clear his mouth of bitterness. Not ready to meet me halfway, then. Maybe not ever. Or was he simply asking too much?***The belt sang through the air and came down with a stinging snap. The skin it found was raw, and when Tilrey cried out, his throat was raw, too. He struggled involuntarily, tightening the dressing-gown cord that tethered his wrists to the head of the bed. The pain made his hips writhe and ground his half-hard cock into the pillow that Davita Lindblom had used to position him for her discipline.For a few seconds, the pain was unbearable, its outlines sharp-edged in his mind. Then it merged with the dim ache of the other welts, the sharpness melting into a ripeness like late-afternoon light. All his senses thrummed to the rhythm of that ache, his vision blurring, and he whispered, “More.”He braced himself for the next stroke, but it didn’t come. Instead, a weight settled itself beside him on the bed. Fingers toyed with his hair, then stroked his nape where it met his scalp.He groaned and repeated, “More.”“I’m afraid I’ve drawn blood, darling.” Davita crawled onto the bed and worked his hands free. “It would be a real shame to scar a pretty toy like you, so let’s have a rest, shall we? You’ve done so well—so much lovely crying and writhing. I love it when you don’t hold back.”“Stop fucking patronizing me.” He knew she called him things like “pretty toy” because he wanted her to—the same reason she made him beg for the belt and kiss it and all their other absurd little rituals. At this point, neither of them had any illusions of true superiority or inferiority in bed; they’d been so honest about their respective desires that they stood on equal footing.But now he wanted more, and she was holding back. “I’m not afraid of a scar. I already have a few, in case you haven’t noticed. And if you’re worried about what Fir Councillor Gersha Gádden is going to think—well, don’t worry.”Davita tsked, stroking his shoulderblade in small circles. “What a very cross boy you are today. You didn’t even give me a kiss before throwing off your clothes and demanding punishment. Are you and Gersha quarreling?”Tilrey’s arms were cramped; he folded them to his chest and rolled on his side with a groan. His ass still throbbed with an intensity that translated to a pleasant light-headness, but soon the sensations would drain away, leaving him with that cold weight on his sternum again. You did this. Your decisions. Dirty shirker. You.“I won’t tell you,” he said peevishly, “unless you want to make me.” And even then, not the truth.Understanding the silent request, Davita transferred her hand to his rump and ran her finger along a welt. He tensed and hissed wordlessly through his teeth, though the touch was light and careful.“I haven’t been quite honest, sweetheart,” she said. “Besha told me Gersha’s unhappy because he thinks you’re spending too much time with him—with Besha, that is. But I haven’t seen any evidence of that. My husband’s usually insufferably smug when he’s getting frequent doses of you.”“And Gersha’s insecure and takes alarm at shadows.” He sighed—what would she believe? Something with a hearty dose of truth in it. “The real problem is, I’ve been damnably insolent to Gersha. I get so bored sometimes of how nice he is, how reasonable. I want him to lash out at me, so I mock him, but . . .”Davita’s fingers danced over another welt, sending stinging impulses of pain and pleasure up his spine. “But he doesn’t know how to discipline you the way I do. So you keep pushing him, hoping for a nice slap or something, and he just sulks.”Tilrey’s hips strained toward her, craving more of the touch. His words came easily now; after all, that had been the biggest problem between him and Gersha before Bors Dartán came and wrecked everything.Or had Bors simply hastened the inevitable?“That’s exactly it. Gersha doesn’t like to hurt me, even in play. He doesn’t understand that it can be play. Sometimes he asks me to be rough with him, to call him rude names, so he ought to understand what I want. But he’s seen me . . . hurt in the past, really hurt.”“And seeing you bound or struggling or crying reminds him of that.” Davita’s voice had a new pleasant huskiness, as if she thought she understood him, or him and Gersha, in a new way. “Whereas I—” she molded her palm to his left buttock, drawing an almost-moan from him— “have no scruples about using you exactly as you’re meant to be used.”Yes. Tilrey rubbed against her, the friction bringing tears to his eyes. Was he really meant to be used like an object? Did all his misery stem from attempting to be more? If he’d devoted every ounce of his being to pleasing Gersha, like a good little subordinate, wouldn’t they both be happier now?No, love, whispered Malsha Linnett in his head. It’s never that simple. If you were humble by nature, I wouldn’t have so enjoyed breaking you.Yes. He’d hated being hurt when it wasn’t on his own terms. With Linnett, with Verán and the rest of them, he’d always craved some kind of control. He’d derived so much pleasure from manipulating Upstarts, making them squirm on his hook, never believing they deserved the power they wielded. What he needed here, now, had nothing to do with the power he hoped to wield himself someday. Or perhaps it did, but in a way he didn’t understand.“I don’t even really want Gersha to hurt me,” he murmured. “That wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be Gersha. It’s not what he needs. I just want him to stand up to me, to snap back at me more often.” And then, once we’ve had it out, to face the possibility of true change and not be afraid. To trust me. “I want him to be less afraid.”Davita patted him on the flank. “Want, want, want. You are a bossy little tart, aren’t you?”Yes. His cock stiffened at her tone. “I want you to fuck me hard with something, Fir’n. Please. Then roll me over and use my cock any way you like.”“There we go with the demands again.” She gave him a very gentle smack. “I’ve got a different idea, since you’re too raw for me to roll you over tonight. You get on top and fuck me, and I’ll pretend to be Albertine Linnett. You’ve been meeting with her a lot lately, haven’t you? It gets me hot when I imagine her giving you all sorts of commands.”“Councillor Linnett is my mother’s age, Fir’n.” But Tilrey understood what she meant. Albertine Linnett treated him with brisk impartiality, never pulling rank and certainly not ogling him, and that very distance made him wonder how she’d be in bed. Perhaps Davita had wondered, too.“Fine,” he said, using a knee to lever himself upright and trying not to wince. “But you’d better be good at imitating her.”“Oh, I’m an expert, my love.” Davita straightened her spine and assumed a remote, neutral expression. “Let’s see here, Fir Bronn,” she said crisply, pretending to consult a handheld. “It’s very important that we test your stamina before a sojourn in Harbour. Forgive me for being so indelicate, but I’ve heard that you are willing and highly competent when it comes to giving women pleas—”She broke off, head tilted. Tilrey heard the faint whistle of a tea kettle from the other room.“What’s my silly Besha doing here? He knows it’s our night. Wait here.” Davita tightened her robe and slipped out of the bedroom.She didn’t come back immediately, so Tilrey rose—ow, it smarted—and unhooked a second dressing gown from her closet door. Like the one Davita wore, this was of Harbourer make, dark red with a softness that settled pleasantly over his shoulders.He listened at the door long enough to confirm the intruder was Besha, unaccompanied, then limped through the hallway into the living room.The husband and wife faced each other from separate couches, Davita with her feet tucked under her and her long dark hair loose on her shoulders, and Besha hunched over with a slightly embattled expression.“Oh hey, Rishka,” he said, clearly unsurprised to see Tilrey. “Maybe you can take my side. These horrid little girls are bullying our Gunde at school, and Davita says I should just let them do it instead of giving her dorm supervisors a good talking to and throwing my weight around. You look delicious in that robe, by the way. Why don’t you give it to him, Davita?”“Because it’s mine, and I look more delicious in it, and you’ve interrupted a private moment, darling.” Davita didn’t glance at Tilrey—she often reverted to her haughty manners when Besha was around. But she did pat her knee, a small and subtle gesture. Taking that as the permission it was, Tilrey lowered himself onto the couch and stretched full-length with his head in her lap.“So he’s not going to take my side?” Besha complained.Davita’s fingers found their way into Tilrey’s hair again, moving soothingly over his scalp. “I don’t think Rishka’s in the mood for our squabbles tonight. Give him some space.”“Is Gersha still being thick-headed, then? Poor man doesn’t know how lucky he is.”“Do I detect a note of envy?” Davita asked.Their familiar voices—Besha’s excitable, Davita’s mellow and reproving— registered dimly on Tilrey. He’d heard them bicker so many times the sound was almost comforting. For all Davita’s high-handedness and Besha’s grousing, they never seemed in any real danger of splitting up.What if Davita knew Besha’s greatest secret—the treason he’d performed for Linnett? Everything would change then, no doubt.Tilrey closed his eyes, letting the rhythm of Davita’s stroking hand lull his senses. “What are these horrid little girls doing to your poor Gunde?” he asked. “Beating her within an inch of her life?”“No, they’re just calling her names,” Besha said. “But terrible names. Snot-nose and crybaby—things like that.”“I know she’s your favorite, and I know you were bullied at school, but you need to back off, darling.” The purr of Davita’s voice vibrated into Tilrey’s skin. “Our daughter needs to learn to stand up for herself and stare down those little dim-wits. Throwing your weight around will only make them nastier.”“That’s easy for you to say,” Besha objected. “You were probably the queen of every dorm you were in. The other girls lived in terror of you.”“I held my own, yes,” Davita said with such queenly modesty that Tilrey chuckled before he could stop himself.Besha joined in. “You’re so positively full of shit sometimes, darling. No one’s ever pulled rank on you in your entire life. What about you, Tilrey? I suppose you didn’t have trouble at school, a big strong boy like you?”“I was very shy, actually.” Davita had begun caressing Tilrey’s shoulders, and he realized in a distant way that he might just fall asleep in her lap. Why not? Neither of them would mind.“I had a brave friend named Dal, though,” he murmured. “She fought the bullies for me.”“How could she not, with you being so lovely?” Davita ran her fingers over his scalp again, and Tilrey sighed, releasing long-held tension.“Besha’s right about one thing, sweetheart,” she went on. “Gersha’s luckier than he knows.”“That’s not true, he . . .” But no, Tilrey was half-asleep; he couldn’t start talking about Gersha again or he might blurt out something he’d regret. “You’re both lovely,” he mumbled, making Besha titter like a schoolboy.Davita only kept stroking him. “That’s right, my sweet boy. You need to rest, don’t you?”***By the ninth day after, Tilrey could sit down without wincing. But he still chose to pace back and forth in the vacant apartment, arms crossed, while Mirella Tunstadt peppered him with questions about his classified mission in Harbour.“I told you, Fir’n Linnett wants me to seduce the Duke of Bettevy.” It was a lie, but a plausible lie. Wasn’t seduction still his primary skill? And he could speak Harbourer quite well enough to facilitate one, thanks to the recordings Gersha had shared with him.“We’re trying to convince the Duke to allow us to garrison our soldiers in his city, right across the lake from Resurgence,” he went on. “But he’s hedging and refusing to give a straight answer. He’s afraid to say no to us, but he’s also afraid an Oslov military presence will be taken by Colonel Thibault and her Resurgent forces as a declaration of war.”Bror looked pained. “And you’re supposed to soften him up? I thought you were done with that, Rishka.”Tilrey shrugged. “I don’t mind sucking off the Duke if it gets me close to him.”Mirella grimaced at her husband’s scruples. “You close to him is exactly what we want. Irin says the Duke’s trying to keep everyone confused about his loyalties until he optimizes his bargaining position. There’s a chance he might help our Harbourer colony, even give our refugees a homeland on his side of the border. But he needs to know there’s something in it for him—namely, the tech we’re smuggling over. You’ll need to reveal your real allegiance very, very carefully.”Tilrey paced back to the window. Given that his actual mission had nothing to do with the Duke, he needed an out. “I’ll gauge his attitude, but you know I can’t take any risks that might jeopardize my position with Gersha.”
Look at me, Gersha. I lie to you, and then I turn right around and lie to the True Hearth. Not so much their puppet, am I?
Not a puppet, no, but perhaps Tilrey was weaving himself an overly tangled web again. He’d considered being open with Dartán and the others about the nature of his mission, then decided to preserve his own freedom of action by waiting to see how it panned out. Answering to Albertine Linnett was bad enough; he didn’t want to juggle the demands of two bosses.Mirella raised her chin in a peremptory way that reminded him of Davita. “Of course. Safeguarding your access to the Council comes first.” She raised her hand palm-up in the gesture that signified Keep the hearth burning. “But you’ll keep your eyes and ears open the whole trip, yes?”“When have I ever not?”“No one’s saying that. But you’re a soldier now, and you have responsibilities. You do understand that?”“Of course, Mirella.” Tilrey turned his tone humble, giving her the show of deference he could produce in his sleep. Reddan Laborers had an annoying habit of aping high Upstarts even in rebellion from them, and he hadn’t signed on to be ordered around.But when he thought of his mother and Dal and their comrades in Thurskein, he swallowed his pride. “I’ll be sure to report everything I observe.”They staggered their departures from the meeting place, Mirella going first. Alone with Tilrey, Bror pulled out a vial, took a nip from his pinky, and offered it. “What’s wrong, Rishka?”“Nothing.” Tilrey waved the sap away and paused to stare at the bleary apricot sunset. “Why?”“You’ve spent more time in the dorm in the past ten-day than you did for the whole five years before that. And my friend Klas said he saw you headed to your room with an engineer named Plintik. You and Gersha on the outs?”Tilrey knew which story he was supposed to tell—the one about Besha. Or wait, wasn’t there another lie? And another? He couldn’t keep track. “Guess you could say that.”“Help to talk about it?” Bror asked.Hearing the gravelly note of concern in his friend’s voice, Tilrey didn’t want to lie at all. Just for once, he wanted to trust someone. “You won’t tell Mirella? Swear?”Bror put his hand to his heart. “Tilrey, does Gersha know about . . . this?”The tension went out of Tilrey with a single exhale. He collapsed on the windowseat like a bale of goods, feeling a little lightheaded. “Can’t get anything past you, can I?”The bigger man shook his head solemnly. “I know you, that’s all. And I won’t tell Mirella.”“Thank you.” Tilrey knew Bror meant it, but he could only guess what the promise cost him. “Sorry to lay this on you.”“’S all right. Spark help me, I love Mirella, and I don’t want to lie to her, but she thinks that little schemer Irin Dartán is the savior of us all. Me, I’m skeptical, but I don’t want any of us in his bad books.”“I promise we’re in no danger from Gersha.” Tilrey rubbed his hands over his face as if to wipe the nervous flush away. “He doesn’t know much, only that I used to meet with Egil. He won’t say a word.”Bror nodded. “Course he won’t.”Tilrey had expected more consternation, more resistance; he almost wanted Bror to question him angrily about how Gersha had discovered his double life. But Bror trusted him.“I’ll understand if you want to tell the others,” he said. “If you think I’m too compromised.”Bror shook his head, his massive shoulders slouched against the wall. “Nah. I know you, and I know you and Gersha. He loves you too fucking much to hurt you, even for his precious Republic.”Tilrey knew that, but hearing someone else say it brought tears to his eyes. He turned to hide them from Bror. “That hasn’t stopped him from tossing me out of his home and his bed.”He’d spoken as roughly as he could, implying he didn’t care, but the pretense didn’t seem to register on Bror, who only said, “He’ll come around. I know it.”How can you have such faith when I don’t? But Tilrey couldn’t say that or anything else, because the fucking tears were trying to choke him, and though Bror had seen him at some very bad moments, he wasn’t ready to turn into a sobbing mess in front of his friend just yet. He returned Bror’s gaze as steadily as he could and nodded.***On the tenth day after, Tilrey saw Angar again, and this time he didn’t try to toss the man out of bed as soon as they were done. Angar’s big, rough hands were surprisingly deft. He insisted on giving Tilrey a massage, palms digging into his shoulders to work out the kinks.“You’re good at that,” Tilrey muttered into the pillow. He could have given Angar a lesson, having been thoroughly trained in massage himself, but right now he didn’t even feel like offering to reciprocate. He just wanted to lie here.“Mmm.” The man’s warm mouth sucked at his neck. “Wanna blow you next. Good at that, too.”“I’m sure you are. Maybe in a minute.”He closed his eyes and listened to Angar talk. The man spoke in a soothing, even voice about his job in a machine shop—hence the deft fingers—and the wife he didn’t get on with and the teenage son who was about to be Notified. Normally Tilrey might have been bored or impatient. But Angar Plintik talked about his own life while asking Tilrey no questions about his, as if he knew they would come amiss, and the silent tactfulness felt like another kind of caress.“I’m going on a mission to Harbour, you know,” Tilrey mumbled, right before drifting off to sleep. “In just six days now. Maybe I’ll bring you a souvenir.”***“Gersha,” Tilrey said, standing in the doorway to the inner office.Gersha looked up with a start. He still had the hunched fourth-straight-hour-of-coding posture that Tilrey usually reprimanded him for, ordering him to get up and take a stroll up and down the hallway.But there wasn’t much point in reprimanding someone who chose not to see him. He went on, “I’ve been standing here looking at you for at least a minute . . . Fir.”Gersha’s eyes rested on Tilrey briefly. “Sorry,” he said in the tone he might have used for any respected subordinate. “I was wrapped up in something. Did you need . . .?”Tilrey closed the door and leaned against it. “People are noticing.”His tone made Gersha look at him again, the vagueness sliding off the Councillor’s face to reveal a subtle pinching of the mouth and eyes. “That’s bound to happen,” he said. “I thought we . . .”“Yes. But I had to give Besha a different story. And he’s no fool, Gersha.”“Well, you can’t very well tell him—” Gersha stopped short, his eyes sweeping the room as if he expected to find cameras jutting from the walls and ceiling. “Tell him something, anything,” he said finally. “You’re a clever storyteller, as you pointed out yourself.”The word he’d almost used—liar—hung in the air between them. The cold weight descended on Tilrey’s chest again, and he dropped his eyes, unable to bear Gersha’s any longer. Liar. Traitor. Shirker. He couldn’t pretend the words were unmerited when he’d kept his secret from Gersha for a full seven years.“There’d be no harm in us pretending a little,” he said, each word heavy. “We’re going to be in close quarters in Harbour, and more people will notice. Fir’n Linnett . . .”“Of all people, I think Albertine cares the least about my personal entanglements.” Gersha rolled his chair backward and stood up. His gait had a distinct grace as he walked toward Tilrey; his old stiff dignity had, over their years together, become something more fluid. “But if you like, I’m sure we can put up a decent front.”Tilrey stepped aside, thinking Gersha wanted to leave the office. Instead, the Councillor took firm hold of his biceps and drew him down for a kiss.It was such a familiar sequence of actions that Tilrey yielded automatically, bending into the embrace. Gersha’s fingers grazed his cheek, caressing and guiding his head until their lips touched.First came a fleeting, virginal peck. Then Gersha caught Tilrey’s bottom lip between both his own, nipped hard, and slipped his tongue inside. Tilrey opened his mouth reflexively, and Gersha withdrew to return from a new angle, a soft moan rising from his throat.Tilrey heard himself echo the moan as his own tongue explored Gersha’s warmth. He dimly felt Gersha’s hand in his hair and his arm sliding around Gersha’s slender waist, drawing him closer. Gersha’s breath was hot and quick on his cheek. And part of him was glad, so glad, there were no secrets between them now.“Verdant hells,” he whispered, “I miss you.”Gersha pulled himself free.It happened so quickly Tilrey’s head spun. He could still taste Gersha, still feel Gersha’s fingers on his scalp. But now they were standing a meter apart, and Gersha was regarding him as if he were a ghost or a demon, a distinct look of dread in his sea-green eyes, and Gersha was saying, “You feel like a stranger.”Tilrey blinked away the tears that had risen too quickly. He managed to say, “I’m the same person I’ve always been” before his throat closed.Gersha looked straight at him. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”***“Gersha,” Besha said on the way out of the Int/Sec Committee meeting, “hold this.”Gersha could see no particular reason why his colleague wanted to drink three cups of tea at a time, or why he hadn’t availed himself of the simple expedient of a tray. Still, he took the third cup obediently, as well as a plate of rice crackers, and followed Besha to his office.Once inside, he hoped Besha’s secretary would take over the serving duties, but it soon became clear that the tea had been only a pretext. Besha deposited two cups unceremoniously on the secretary’s desk and ushered Gersha into the inner office. “Come on, then. We need to debrief after that scintillating meeting, don’t we?”Gersha followed, though each step felt like walking through thigh-deep snow. Besha had been watching him too much lately for this to mean anything good. And Tilrey had warned him.He should never have kissed Tilrey yesterday. He’d meant to test his own resolve, to prove to them both that he could “pretend” they were still together without feeling anything. But the result had been a miserable night full of dreams of Tilrey’s lips and Tilrey’s taste and Tilrey’s voice saying, I miss you.“What do you really want?” he asked too sharply, once the door had closed behind them.Besha sat down and spun in his chair like a child. “What are you doing to our poor Rishka?”“Our? I wasn’t aware he was yours.”Just admit it, whispered a cold voice in Gersha’s mind. You can’t do without him; you can’t sleep alone. And if that meant admitting he’d always been in love with a traitor and a shirker—but how could he admit something that went against everything he was supposed to be?“Don’t try to distract me.” Besha’s eyes glittered the way they always did when he went on the attack. “When I saw him in the corridor yesterday, he was practically weeping.”“You’re exaggerating,” Gersha said, trying to forget he’d seen those blue eyes full of tears, too.Tilrey’d warned him, but he didn’t want to talk about this, didn’t want to think about it. The loneliness was bad enough. Every time he looked at his fellow Councillors, he knew by rights he should tell them, should have told them long ago. By harboring a traitor, he was compromising not just himself, but the entire Republic.Besha was just getting warmed up. “Am I exaggerating? I could cite you several proofs of just how unhappy your boyfriend is right now—and I would, if I weren’t worried about offending your delicate sensibilities.”Gersha flinched. Tilrey had looked a little wretched even before that ill-advised kiss, he supposed, but what right did he have to be wretched? He wasn’t alone; he probably had a whole cadre of Dissident allies to answer to. For all Gersha knew, they’d told him to play on Gersha’s sympathies—Besha’s nasal voice broke into his ugly imaginings. “Stop being a baby, Gersha. I know you want him all to yourself. But that Linnett girl isn’t your rival. She’s busy having a family with Tollsha Linden, and it’s not as if they could run off and get married even if he were madly in love with her, which he’s not.”Vera Linnett? Oh, right, they’d agreed to blame the poor love-sick girl for their rupture. But Gersha had never felt a scrap of jealousy where she was concerned.“It’s not really that,” he admitted. “It’s . . . a matter of temperaments. Look at you and Davita: you come from similar backgrounds, yet you’re constantly at each other’s throats. Imagine how much harder it is for Rishka and me. He’ll always resent me, whatever else he feels; he can’t help it. Verán sent him to me as a gift, for green’s sake. He had no choice in the matter. He had to fuck me, to seduce me, to turn me into his ally. I’d be resentful, too, in his place.”I might even be so resentful I joined a movement to bring down the system. But was he just making up excuses for Tilrey now?Besha shook his head impatiently. “And I married Davita to get myself out of a godawful posting in the Wastes. It was a mercenary arrangement, and we both knew it, but we grew on each other. No matter how much I want to kill her sometimes, I wouldn’t dream of giving her the cold shoulder for days on end.”Gersha felt a grim smile shape his lips. “The two of you have kids; you can’t very well avoid each other forever. But you do live apart, and so do Tilrey and I, now. How is that even different?”“Because it just is. Because he’s fucking wretched, like I said, and you’re obviously wretched, too, because you can barely sleep a night without him.” Besha arched a brow at the angry consternation on Gersha’s face. “No, he didn’t tell me that; he didn’t need to. I’ve spent nights with the two of you; I’ve seen how you sleep in his arms. You need him.”Gersha was trembling now. He clenched his fists and turned to address the door, almost afraid Besha would read the truth in his face. “What I ‘need’ is perhaps my business, in which you are currently meddling.”He expected the coldness to trigger Besha’s quick temper, giving him an excuse to flee. But his colleague’s answer was calm: “Look, I’ve said my piece. Just think about it, okay? Davita and I have our issues, but we’re bonded for good. So are you, and that’s not a guess.”Gersha studied the paneling of the venerable door, trying to focus on finding uneven sections of white paint. A question seemed to rise in his throat of its own accord: “And what if Davita knew about . . . you know? The meeting. The scarf. What you did.” For Linnett, the traitor. “Would she still feel bonded to you then?”It was the first time he’d even come close to mentioning Besha’s secret in the Sector. He wasn’t surprised when his colleague replied in a bone-cold voice, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.”“No, I didn’t think so.” Gersha reached for the doorknob, relieved at having found his exit strategy at last. “I’d best be going along. Always more prep for the trip to take care of.”He did his best to pretend he didn’t hear the last words Besha spoke, his voice reedy with nerves, as the door swung open: “What an odd thing to bring up, Gersha. I wonder why it occurred to you.”