Under the Rushes

by Amy Lane

  “Not going to start doing math,” Taern announced grandly. “It makes me fall asleep. That would be bad form.”

  Dorjan shot him a droll look. “I must correct myself. Your father kept an outstanding schoolroom and probably had the patience of a saint to deal with you. But let me continue.”

  Taern stuck out his tongue, vastly relieved that Dorjan could still speak lightly.

  “Anyway, Septra lied.” Dorjan inclined his head. “A fact you very kindly tipped us off to. But when the news of the battle got back to the Forum and the Triari, Septra had a month to start bribing men who had formerly not been bribable. I was, at the time—”

  “Recovering from your wounds,” Taern said quietly. “The whole city knows the story, Dorjan. I’m no different.”

  Dorjan inclined his head. “Yes, well, by the time we sprang Areau from the asylum, Septra had enough people in his pocket to have my father assassinated and have the Forum turn a blind eye. And in the meantime, he continued the fiction that the other provinces were a danger to us. It’s a hideous cycle, you see. We squander all of our resources on the war, and so Septra says we need to wage more war. In the meantime, we have barely enough resources to feed our population, so Septra reduces the population by squandering them in the war too. It’s an elegant solution, really, and it means that no one dares gainsay a madman, because everyone is terrified that if they’re wrong and Septra is right, their argument has just condemned our province to death.”

  Taern shuddered, suddenly cold. “Squandered the population,” he quoted. “Just say it like it really is. You’re talking people and soldiers and—”

  “And lives,” Dorjan said, his voice shaking. “Yes. Exactly. Your father raised a smart son.”

  “But why?” Taern asked, shaking his head. “What does he stand to gain from all of it?”

  Dorjan looked thoughtful. “I think,” he said after a moment, “that in recent years, the power has become its own end. But that’s not how it started.”

  “No?”

  “No. Originally he simply wanted more lumium. More of everything, really, but the lumium that powers our steam conveyances—that was his special desire.”

  Taern’s gaze darted to Dorjan’s face, but Dorjan wasn’t meeting his eyes again.

  “Isn’t the lumium taken from Biemansland?” he asked, not following the logic.

  Dorjan nodded. “More specifically, it’s mined from the asteroids in my father’s keep. See, that was the one resource that the other provinces couldn’t manufacture or mine on their own, and do you know why?”

  Taern shook his head. “No—that wasn’t covered in our schoolroom.”

  Dorjan nodded again, his eyes still off in space. “See, the asteroids were initially harvested by criminals, and it was dangerous, dirty work with few survivors. Harnessing something that big to the earth? Feeding it oxygen through an umbilical tube? It’s insanity. Or it would be without the niskets.”

  Taern sort of grimaced. “Yes,” he said, feeling embarrassed. “We’re taught that those are old wives’ tales. We talk about them a lot, but no one’s ever seen them.”

  Dorjan did meet his eyes and smile then, and at the same time, he brought his hand up to the pendant around his neck. He stroked it gently and closed his eyes and then cupped it in his palm.

  The thing opened right before Taern’s eyes and started glowing, rain gray and sky blue, whirling in Dorjan’s cupped palm.

  “Hullo, my pet,” Dorjan murmured. “Meet Taern. Taern, meet….” Dorjan looked at the tiny glowing creature and grimaced. “Have we changed our name again? Really?” An extremely self-satisfied humming emitted from the thing. “Flox,” Dorjan said, rolling his eyes just a bit. “Today she’s Flox. Anyway, feel free to meet.”

  With that, the tiny flower-shaped metal-textured thing took off in a spinning, dizzying flight across the room, bumping into the chandelier and making it jiggle and then bumping into Taern’s glass of wine. Taern barely saved the wine, and then he held his cupped hand imperiously over it.

  “Here,” he said sternly. “You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep dancing around like that.”

  It settled then, primly on the palm of his hand, and Taern studied it, trying to find some sort of human equivalent for eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and wings. In the end he realized that two of the petals with highly distinctive markings were really eyes and the little thorn at the bottom that kept poking him was really a proboscis, and it was….

  “Eww.” Taern grimaced at Dorjan. “It’s drinking my….”

  Dorjan nodded. “Your blood. Be honored. It means she thinks you’re worthy.”

  “Worthy of what?”

  Dorjan shrugged. “Worthy of whatever. The niskets are great believers in shared endeavors. And they adore mining the asteroids or digging tunnels or a thousand other things that the original colonists set their lawbreakers to do. But since the asteroids were only harvested in one province—”

  “The niskets only stayed in one province,” Taern deduced. “Which explains why the rest of us only think of them as fairy tales.”

  Dorjan nodded. “You see, the niskets and the asteroids are the key to supply. Septra doesn’t know about the niskets, but he did want the supply. He kept asking my father to mine faster.”

  Taern pursed his lips. “Well, the man is a git—I can see why your father wouldn’t want to—”

  “Start another earthquake like the one that leveled Karanos and reduced your entire province to rubble, marshland, and those horrible lizard creatures?”

  Taern gasped, and Flox the nisket flew off his hand and pressed herself flat against Dorjan’s. Dorjan opened the necklace at his throat and Flox fit right in, looking like a hammered piece of metal and making the entire man’s locket a novelty item and nothing more. “That was caused by—”

  Dorjan nodded. “It was the one time my father acceded to the Triari’s request for more, and within two days….” Dorjan shook his head. “I was… no older than you were, when my province destroyed your life. I remember my father hearing of the earthquake, then facing down with Septra. We were here in the city, and that day, my father packed my mother, my sister, Areau, and his family—all in one go, we were sent back home. I’ll never forget that. Bimuit! The fights we got into—Areau more than I, because he liked to protect me back then. But word of the battle on the Forum floor trickled down, and Areau and I were called traitors and….” He shook his head. “Child’s play—but it had an impact. When I found that the young nobility was being pressed into service for fear of aggression from another province, I was the first to sign up, and Areau—he was right on my heels.”

  “And your father?” Taern asked, and Dorjan shrugged.

  “Septra was clever about that, you know. His sources were always from other keeps. He always presented their information without any semblance of collusion. My father bought the line. He thought that perhaps we had brought the action on ourselves, but never did he doubt that there was an action until….”

  “Until you were almost killed.” Taern’s stomach clenched as he said the words, and for a moment, he regretted eating all of everything, even his dessert. Oh, Karanos, he’d come so very, very close to never eating dinner with this man, never seeing him move, never tasting his skin. It would have been a crime, he thought now in sudden fright, a true tragedy, if Dorjan had not survived that dreadful night. There were so many terrible losses from that time as it was!

  Dorjan nodded. “I was lucky,” he said, his voice ringing with sincerity. “My father believed me and believed that Areau needed to be rescued.” Dorjan looked down. “My father was not so lucky. He believed and knew just enough to be killed.”

  They were both quiet for a long moment, and then Taern spoke up and tried to bring the conversation to the present. “So today….” He inclined his head, waiting for Dorjan to proceed.

  “So, today,” Dorjan sighed heavily. “Today there was a military contingent that was still around from that day ten years
ago. They have been bringing back reports of confused populace and betrayed citizenry and a general puzzled demeanor from the other provinces for why our province would simply go mad. Military men are taught to follow orders, but they’re also, heavens willing, taught to have honor, and the courage to make honor a true thing. This particular branch of the army had stopped raiding keeps unless their own intel backed up that the keep was empty—and very often, it didn’t. This particular branch of the army had a very brave, very smart stratego, a friend of mine, actually, who ran the keep closest to my father’s keep. The keep where your sisters are housed, actually.”

  “My sisters?” Taern sat up suddenly, and Dorjan reassured him with an open palm.

  “Are fine. I sent word to the keep this afternoon.” Dorjan grimaced, his look growing bleaker. “Anyway, this contingent was not… obedient. And three days ago, as a cost for their lack of obedience, they sank into a swamp filled with napalm and were eliminated to the last man.”

  Taern groaned. “Eight thousand,” he murmured, because that had been what Dorjan had been screaming as he’d worked out. That had been the loss he’d been mourning. “It is no small thing.”

  Dorjan raised his eyebrows and nodded. “My old battalion went down,” he said quietly. “My first and only command. And you know what the best part is?”

  Taern had no idea what could possibly be more awful.

  “None of the other provinces manufacture napalm. It was a trap sprung by Septra’s allies to get rid of the last moral fiber in the military. It worked.”

  Taern had no words. He simply looked at Dorjan, sorrow in his heart for what neither of them could fix. After a moment he reached across the table and clasped Dorjan’s shoulder, and then slid his hand down Dorjan’s arm to clasp the back of his hand over the bandages on the knuckles. To his immense relief, Dorjan turned his hand palm up and accepted the comfort. It was all Taern had to give.

  They sat like that, without speaking, until Areau’s piteous screams penetrated the walls of the great mansion and echoed down into the dining room.

  Dorjan startled and almost jerked out of his chair, but Taern kept their handclasp and shook his head. “Sometimes,” he said, feeling like a horrible person, “sometimes, things have to get much worse before they get better.”

  Dorjan’s whole body was on high alert, and his gaze darted frantically overhead to where Areau’s cries were coming from. “But Areau—”

  “This is the worse, Dorjan. Have some faith in Krissa. She just wants to make it better.”

  Dorjan nodded—but he also jerked his hand from Taern’s and stalked away. Since he wasn’t heading for the stairs, Taern didn’t follow for the moment. He needed to gather his own inner resources before he could comfort Dorjan with any competency whatsoever.

  TAERN found him outside in the courtyard in the fading twilight. For a moment he almost missed his silhouette because it was crouched on top of one of the rope-climbing structures. Taern noticed that all the ropes connecting the two structures had been taken down and that the only way to get up to where Nyx—and he was very much Nyx at the moment—was standing was to climb the pole, splinters and all.

  Taern narrowed his eyes. The pole across from Nyx was metal, he thought, considering. The only way to get to him without an armload of splinters was to climb the metal pole and use the ropes—the ones Nyx was in control of. Well, Nyx had better give up some of that control. Taern was damned if he would let Nyx isolate himself now, not after so much effort getting him to open up.

  “I will be down soon enough.” Dorjan’s voice floated down to him, and Taern looked up, realizing he couldn’t even make out the lantern jaw or the faintly almond shape of his brown eyes because the twilight was so thick.

  “I worry,” Taern said shortly.

  “I’m tired of talking,” Dorjan said mildly. “Can you respect that?”

  Taern nodded, but that didn’t stop him from shimmying up the metal pole in his last set of decent clothes and standing atop the T-bar at the apex of the pole. Once there, he hauled up one of the ropes and swung it forward, back, forward, back, and then forward, releasing it at the height of the throw and allowing it to sail to where Dorjan crouched on the crossbar between the two wooden posts that made up his structure.

  Dorjan watched him impassively, and for a moment, Taern feared he’d be making a foolish gesture without Dorjan’s help. But when the rope came Dorjan’s way, he reached out and grabbed it and secured one end around a hook on the crossbar, apparently made just for that purpose.

  “There are gloves hanging from the end of the T-bar,” Dorjan called, and his voice was reluctant. “The rope is harsh on your hands.”

  Taern grinned even though Dorjan couldn’t see it in the near darkness, and tested the rope with his foot. When he had the slack figured out, he ran lightly over it, not looking down, grateful for what Krissa had pointed out to be the natural advantage of growing up with fractured gravity.

  In a moment he was crouching next to Dorjan, who cast him a slanted look and murmured, “Show-off,” but there was affection in his voice, Taern was almost sure.

  They squatted there for long moments until the sky was completely black and the stars were diamond peaks in the velvet. Taern looked up and searched out the Nisket Flower, thinking that now he knew for certain there was such a thing, the constellation felt close enough to touch.

  The city was quiet from here, and Areau’s calls for pain and pleasure couldn’t be heard. Taern could see, down by the laundry room, Mrs. Wrinkle sitting in the rapidly cooling night and shivering, and he bumped Dorjan’s elbow. Dorjan looked and sighed, then ran across the rope and shimmied down the metal pole.

  Taern listened and heard Dorjan offer to escort her to a nearby house for the evening. He heard her say no, thank you, she would be fine. Her bedroom was in the farthest corner from their part of the house anyway, but thank you. Dorjan was returning to the structure when Taern decided they had hidden enough and ran across the rope on his own, then slid down the pole, almost into Dorjan’s arms.

  He recovered his balance and grinned, and Dorjan smiled like an automaton in response.

  “I need to ask something,” Dorjan said, and he didn’t back away, didn’t try to widen the distance between them, as awkward as it was.

  Taern turned and leaned against the pole, spreading his thighs a little suggestively and pulling Dorjan’s hips toward him so they could stand together, groins touching, as intimate as two men could be when fully clothed.

  “I’m right here,” Taern said, half a cocky grin on his face.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why? Why… why the alley? Why not go see your sisters? Why… if you were going to come here and… and do what I do, why do you have to slee….” He swallowed, and Taern knew he was having trouble finishing the sentence.

  “Why do I have to sleep with you? Touch you? Be with you?”

  Dorjan nodded, and with no conscious thought of what he was doing, Taern cupped his cheek. “See, Dorjan, if you’d ever had a real relationship—even one that lasted but a night—you wouldn’t have to ask that. Our relationship has lasted three days. It’s the longest one I’ve had and the only one where what we’re going to do tonight when we climb into bed is not a foregone conclusion. But that doesn’t make it any less real. It doesn’t make me want you any less.”

  “I’m… I will find a reason for you to want to leave.”

  It sounded enough like a vow for Taern to pat his cheek with a little bit of force. “If you can’t simply tell me to go away because you don’t want me, any reason you find will be a lie. You’re not a liar, Dorjan.”

  “No. I’m just a rap—”

  Taern kissed him so he wouldn’t say the word. Dorjan kept his mouth sullenly closed, but he didn’t finish what he was about to say. “I said you weren’t a liar, Nyx. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

  Dorjan closed his eyes and nodded. Then he stepped away and adjusted himself
in his tight breeches and turned to walk back to the house.

  “Oi!” Taern called, drawing abreast and deciding they’d had enough of the deep quiet. “I’ve got a question.”

  “I’m deeply shocked,” Dorjan replied dryly, and Taern grinned at him.

  “Yes, I can tell. Anyway, I’ve got silver. I’m running out of clothes, and next to you I look like I’m ready for the circus anyway. What can I do to order more clothes from the git who makes your kit?”

  He saw a smile flirt with the corners of Dorjan’s mouth. “You ask Mrs. Wrinkle. She’ll have Gustal come and fit you for as many suits as you like.”

  Taern glared at him. “Are you deaf, Dorjan? I said I had silver—I’m not to take your clothes like your kept man!”

  Dorjan emitted an actual muted chuckle. “You allow me to buy your contract on false pretenses, sneak into my bed naked not once but twice, steal my knife, and force yourself into my personal life and space with the tenacity of a bog leech burrowing through a man’s foot, and you don’t want to take my generosity?” Dorjan snorted. “Too. Damned. Bad.”

  Taern opened his mouth to protest—he did. But they were at the back door by then, and as Dorjan opened it, they could hear Areau’s piteous sobs quite clearly.

  “Please, Mistress! I only want one blow! Just one! Grab my cock, spank me… just touch me with some fucking pain!”

  Dorjan turned to him seriously. “My conveyance has furs and a fold-out bed seat,” he said quietly. “If I were to fetch some pillows and some blankets, how would you like to spend the night in the stables?”

  Taern couldn’t even summon a cocky smile. “I think that’s the most romantic offer I’ve ever had,” he said, and he meant it, heartily, with every fiber of his soul.

  Wind Changes

  THE rabbit was actually a very snug place to sleep. Once the cushions were pulled out and arranged, the bed was more than big enough to sleep the two of them, and although the autumn night was chill, the furs and the blankets more than made up for the lack of a furnace. Dorjan brought paperwork from his satchel out to work on and brought Taern a book—one of the ones he’d read as a young man, full of action and adventure, a story of spacefarers in faraway stars—in case Taern wanted to read. He also brought robes and smallclothes for both of them so they would have something to wear into the house when Mrs. Wrinkle came to fetch them in the morning.