by Amy Lane
Taern didn’t tell people that, though. He figured in Thenis, believing that someone could visit the festering bowels of this shithole and give it a good purge, that was as close to hope as you got. Wait… oh shite, had Taern lost him?
No. No, and oh no! Taern thought he’d been heading for the burned-out school, which was a logical place for a meet and also the home of Flame and Vengeance, one of Thenis’s biggest street gangs—but that’s not where Nyx was heading.
No, Nyx was heading for what had used to be a bathhouse, back in the day when the people of Thenis could meet without fear. The pool was still there, but instead of being filled with steamy replenished water, it was filled with people—fixing people, dying people, drugged people, high on refined asteroid dust in its latest incarnation, something called comet.
Oh hells! Could Nyx’s information be bad? But as Taern ran recklessly across a deserted street, he saw three people striding with purpose into the building from the other side. No. No, Nyx’s information was probably spot on. This meeting was being held where the product would be most quickly distributed—which was one of the dumbest things a street dealer could do.
By the time a person got to the Thenis bathhouse, they weren’t able to afford their poison anymore, were they? Once a week, the dealers and street gang paid their low man on the totem pole to go in and haul out the bodies, who were then taken to the one thriving business in Thenis—Pauper’s Point, the city’s funeral plot for the poor. Lately so many poor had been dying that they’d been burning the bodies and burying the vase, with a tiny stone denoting gender and approximate age, if they didn’t have a name. Compared to Pauper’s Point, Nyx’s first stop on his night tour was a sign of hope.
But you didn’t want to have a meeting in a drug house with all that product—the folks who could still move craved beyond reason, and they would show no mercy. Someone was being set up—the man with the drugs, the man with the money—someone was planning on walking out of here with both.
And Nyx was planning on being caught in the middle, trying to fuck them all!
Taern took a deep breath against the stench of unwashed bodies and ran faster toward the bathhouse. This could go bad so many ways!
He entered the building quietly, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Even the human shambles on the outer edges of the pool house had heard the whisper of product there, of drugs, unclaimed and pure. They were stumbling, shaking, making their way back toward the changing rooms, and Taern could hear voices raised in fear and excitement.
“This was a hell of a place to ask for a meet, Uln! Does Septra want his money so badly he’s willing to get it coated in junkie blood?”
“No,” came the composed voice. “But he doesn’t mind it coated in yours!” There was a sound there—a hiss and a thud and what sounded like somebody choking on a glass of milk. Taern knew differently, though. Someone in front of him stumbled and someone shoved that person against the wall—against Taern—and Taern barely sidestepped him. Hells, there had been a needle in that man’s hand! Taern shuddered and concentrated on moving quickly and silently—and not getting noticed by any more users and not getting anywhere near their needles. Suddenly he was praying very much to gods he wasn’t sure existed. One prick—that’s what they said. One scratch and you were addicted, and it would take the movement of heaven and earth to cleanse that filth from your veins before you died from the need alone.
Two more steps and he’d be near the entrance to the changing room—oh hells. A backup of people and frantic whispers of “He killed him!” “Dust? Did he have dust?” “Who’s got dust?” instilled the desperate quiet with mumbling confusion.
Taern took one look at the group of people gathering there and dodged into a crevice where one of the pipes carrying water to the pool was anchored. The junkies, a writhing mass amalgam of something that used to be humanity, all converged into the room, and there was a shout of disgust.
“Oh hell! Who let them in?”
“Don’t look at me—you killed their dealer!”
“Bimuit! I knew this was a bad idea! But Septra, he wanted the drugs and the silver… hells….” There was another hissing thud, and another, and another, and a weak inhuman scream. “Let’s get out of here!”
Taern heard a low roar from the mumbling, driven junkies and realized that the two men who had double-crossed the dealer must have escaped out the back door. Then he heard a shout from one of them and swore at himself. Yes. Oh definitely—would have made so much more sense to wait for them from the outside entrance! Karanos, no wonder Nyx had chained him to the bed!
“What in hells—”
“He just grabbed the money—”
“And the drugs! He scaled that wall—how are we supposed to follow him?”
And the drugs? What was he going to do with the drugs?
Taern didn’t have time to worry about that because there were more shouts and screams, and the drug-addled mob seemed to have pushed its way out the door and… there were more screams. Oh. Oh hells. So much for the fate of Septra’s men.
Taern pulled himself out of the recess for the pipe and looked around. There were a few bodies left—some breathing, some not—but no sign of anyone who might be after his hide next, and he had a sudden moment of acute vulnerability.
He had to get the hell out of here!
He turned quietly and slid out of the building, thinking he’d had a close call when he was grabbed from behind.
Later, he would wonder why the stench didn’t warn him first, and he’d figure that he’d gotten used to it from his first few moments in the bathhouse.
“Hello, pretty shadow.” The voice in his ear was slurred and oddly dreamy, and the hand that pressed his chest back was grimy, the fingernails so dirty the filth flaked off the front of them and clung to the skin like scabs. “What do you have for us?”
“Get off me!” He swung his elbow back and connected with a prominent rib cage, then broke away before he could hear the oolf or the exhalation of fetid breath. Something snagged on his soft shirt, but he was too busy sprinting away to care. He dashed for the end of the street, the better to find the shadows to bring him back to Nyx’s great house, when he practically plowed into a man running in the opposite direction.
This man was not a junkie. Instead he looked like a gentleman’s assistant in his short-tailed coat in a dark color and an overelegant cravat.
“Who in the hells are you?” he snarled, and Taern didn’t bother to answer him, instead turning to resume his sprint back to safety.
Suddenly there was something sharp and broad jabbing into his side. He glanced down and cringed. Wonderful. A steam spear, and here he was without his armor.
“I said, boy, who the hells are you?”
“In the wrong place at the wrong time!” Taern gasped. For a moment he’d been terrified that the point jabbing into his shirt had been a syringe, and his relief almost let his water down. Of course, that steam spear in the side wouldn’t be any less deadly.
“Shite!” the man spat, and Taern had a moment to rethink his earlier assessment of gentleman’s assistant. He might have been somebody’s errand boy, but nothing about him screamed gentleman. “You’re wearing the same as that other one, the shadow who stole our payload. You with him?”
“No,” Taern lied. “I’m a working boy, a hustler… just taking a shortcut, that’s all.”
“You’re lying,” the man said unpleasantly, and that was the last thing he said.
Taern didn’t even see where he came from. It seemed like he came from behind them, leaping in the air and twisting at the last moment to catch the man in the face with a soft-booted foot. The man went flailing backward, releasing Taern, who took four steps to his left and turned in time to see Nyx hold his hand up and release a weapon at the man—and Taern gaped.
It was a simple thing—it looked to be a rubber ball, but a gun of some sort set into the Nyx’s armor hurled it at great force. It caught the “gentleman’s assistant”
square on the nose. There was a crunch and a splatter and the man went down, twitching, as his nose cartilage exploded into his brain tissue and he died.
Taern gasped and looked at him and then back at Nyx, and suddenly Nyx’s arms were around his shoulders and he was being pulled against the unyielding armor in a crushing hug.
Taern was speechless. The hug was intense, all encompassing, and soundless, and for a moment, he closed his eyes and melted into it, overwhelmed by gratitude—not just that Nyx saved his life but that he… he was offering his body as safety. Oh, blessed Karanos, Taern could get used to this.
Then Nyx’s hands started exploring his body, but not in a sensual way. He was, Taern realized, patting Taern down.
“I’m fine,” he said crossly, missing that hug.
“I need to see,” Nyx muttered, turning him around. “You were in the bathhouse?”
“Yes, but I’m—hey, a little personal?”
“Hells!” Nyx’s voice was gruff and unapologetic, and Taern felt something being detached from his sweater. He struggled to turn around, and his eyes grew so wide they dried out.
“I didn’t know that was there,” he muttered, looking at the half-filled syringe like it was a death sentence.
It was a death sentence, and it had missed Taern’s bare skin by the thickness of soft black underwear.
Taern had enough time to cast a green smile at Nyx and whistle lowly, and then he was thrown unceremoniously over Nyx’s shoulder as Nyx, aided by his armor, went sprinting through the city with a very specific goal in mind.
“Ouch! You’re jouncing!” Taern cried out after the first block.
In response, Nyx shuffled his body a little more firmly (to prevent the jouncing) and evened out his original half-mad gait. It was a little better, and nice to know the man cared about Taern’s comfort, but Taern was getting woozy.
“I’ll puke on your back if you don’t put me down,” he warned after another block, and Nyx grunted.
“Not—” Gasp. “—too long—” Gasp. “—to go!”
And Taern felt a little bit awful.
“Oh, hells, Nyx, put me down. I’ll run where you’re running. You’re hurting yourself, dammit!”
But they were there, apparently. Taern recognized the open wooden pavilion of the deserted train station, and Nyx bent double at the waist and dumped him on his feet. Then he held on to one of the pillars and knelt, trying to get his breath.
Taern bent at his waist and looked up into that triangular mask and tried to peer into Nyx’s eyes. Could he see Taern in the dark? Could he see the contrition, the worry on his face?
“You can’t put me on a train until tomorrow,” he said gently. “Perhaps you want to take me home and we can talk about this?”
He was unprepared for Nyx to straighten, plant one augmented hand on his shoulder, and shove Taern so hard and fast that he stumbled backward and fell on his ass.
“I don’t want to talk!” he gasped. Taern imagined he would have shouted if he’d had the breath. “I need you gone. I need you safe. Do you have any idea what almost happened to you tonight? Any?”
“Yeah,” Taern said, shuddering. “I think I need armor too!”
Nyx screamed, the sound echoing off the ceiling. “Armor? You want armor? You need to be gone! This city is not a safe place!”
Taern snorted. “Look, you’re telling me! That man would have killed me!”
The Nyx’s mask left his mouth bare, but it was compressed into such a stoic expression that Taern once again couldn’t be sure what the man was thinking, but, well, he did have the feeling he’d shocked Nyx to some extent.
What Nyx said next shocked Taern perhaps even more.
“I would have written,” he said oddly.
Taern blinked, and his jaw dropped open, and he felt like a right fool. “I’m sorry?”
“I wouldn’t have just sent you off to a stranger. I would have written, you know, to find out how you were doing. I wouldn’t have just deserted you.”
Taern stared at him blankly and shook his head. “What does this have to do with—”
“Go somewhere safe! Just because you leave this place, that doesn’t mean your life will disappear! You can get out, don’t you see? This train station, it can take you away! I worried about you for years—and when I found you, it was like… like a sign that I could do it right this time and get you to safety. You’re not stuck here, just before the cricket landed, like I was before the crash! Get away!”
Taern planted his feet as firmly as he could, because it felt like the sands of the earth were shifting under him. “You can get away too!” he said, and for a moment, he thought about what it must have been like here in this city. How many years had he been fighting in the day with people who couldn’t even see there was a war, fighting in the night with people who didn’t care what he suffered? How many years had Nyx been, from what Taern could see, fighting in his home with someone who was supposed to offer peace? As he thought about it, it felt like the ceiling had fallen on his head and was pressing him, suffocating him, crushing him against the floor.
“Get away!” Taern said now, half pleading. “Go yourself! You have a keep—you can stay there! Why don’t you go?”
It wasn’t his imagination. For a moment that black figure with the smoky-gray armor and the triangular mask swayed, but Taern couldn’t tell if the suggestion weakened him or tempted him. “I have things to do,” Nyx said after a moment, with simple dignity. Taern noticed that he had a satchel under his arm, and he wondered at the fate of the drugs and money from that amazing heist he’d just pulled off.
“Then let me help.”
Nyx bent his head and sighed. “I just wanted… you were kind to me.” Behind the mask, the voice sounded apologetic. “You were kind to me. I just wanted… I wanted to give you that kindness back. Being free, that was the best kindness I could think of. Can’t you take that, Taern? Can’t you take that kindness and let me think of you free?”
Taern approached him, realizing that for a few moments, he too had fallen under the spell of the anonymity and the darkness.
“I’m angry,” he said, surprised when the honesty escaped. “For the longest time, I was angry at you.” Nyx flinched, and so did Taern, but he went on. “You said you were going to stop it, but nobody stopped it—or so it seemed. And then the rumors started to filter down, about the two boys who wouldn’t let the people burn inside and about how they were being punished by their government, and then, you know, I had a much bigger hatred. I didn’t know what to do with it, I didn’t know where to go to make it stop, but I hated. I let it burn. And now?” Taern smiled brightly because the thought, the idea of doing what Nyx was doing, was just so delicious. He was fucking them from both ends, Taern thought savagely. He was fucking the real villain in the day on the political arena, and at night, in the covert arena of the streets.
It made Taern’s cock hard just thinking about it.
“You’re doing what I dreamed of doing. I’m not going to be free until I get some payback,” Taern said, feeling like there should be blood dripping from his smile. “I want some flesh in my teeth for all my family suffered. And you know—of anybody, you know—how I can shed ever so much blood and not much of it my own.”
Nyx seemed to shrink before his eyes. His shoulders drooped, one foot came up as though that leg were injured, and his arm went to his side, cradling his ribs as though they were in pain.
They were in pain.
“Do you,” Nyx said randomly, “have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve gotten any sleep?”
Taern sighed and moved up under his arm to take some of his weight, but Nyx shook him off. “I’ll be fine,” he said irritably.
Taern tried to insinuate himself anyway. “Sure you will be,” he said. “Once we get you back to the house to take off the armor and get you to bed.”
“Please,” Nyx begged him. “Please? All day, I had this vision, that when I finally got to bed, I could dream
of you at Dre’s keep, happy with your sisters. It was almost like you were a boy again, and I was young and didn’t know what a shithole the world was.” Something like a sigh escaped him then, and this time he didn’t acknowledge it when Taern situated his body under Nyx’s shoulder. “That was the best night’s sleep I could possibly imagine,” he said, his voice almost dreamy.
Taern wanted to hold him closer, but he wanted to wrap those ribs first. “Brother, if that’s the best night’s sleep you can imagine, you have not been finishing your nights off right!”
Nyx straightened and swore, falling back on Taern’s shoulder for help. “We’re not sleeping together,” he said crossly, and Taern laughed.
“You go on and think that,” he said, as happy as he’d ever been. “Whatever gets you home.”
HE DIDN’T accept help for long. After they cleared the train station, he seemed to straighten, gather in on himself, and in a few steps he was the Nyx again, instead of a tired man. He whispered from shadow to shadow, and Taern had difficulty keeping up with him. When they got to the house, Nyx went in through the stables and stopped. There were no horses here anymore, and just as Taern was wondering if there ever had been, that smoky-colored triangular mask turned toward him.
“Go into the kitchen and have a snack, boy,” Nyx said quietly. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
Taern took two steps toward the kitchen before he realized what this was.
“No,” he said, moving in to the armor again. He remembered where the catches were from the night before, and he had no qualms about helping Nyx off with it now. Nyx made random, frantic movements over his shoulders and tried to jerk away several times, but Taern estimated his resources were about spent—probably in that spectacular acrobatic twist and landing when Taern had been held captive. But still, it wasn’t an easy task when the catches in the armor kept moving, and he finally just turned to Nyx in impatience.
“Dammit! Don’t tell me you’ve never had help doing this! If nothing else, your friend in there with Krissa must have worked as sort of a valet. Stop being a spoiled child and let me unlatch your armor, for sweet hell’s sake!”