Under the Rushes

by Amy Lane

  “So,” Taern said as he was stripping off his “circus” clothes, shivering in the chill of the stables, “what sort of strategy meeting will you hold with Areau if he’s able?”

  Dorjan stripped off his suit coat and his cravat, then laid them carefully over the controller’s seat. He kept his eyes aimed out the front of the vehicle and resolutely did not think of Taern naked, not even when the boy (man, wasn’t he?) left his clothes in a puddle and scrambled under the blankets and furs.

  “I gave you smallclothes,” Dorjan said, risking a glance over his shoulder.

  The horrible man grinned at him. “I’m aware.”

  “I know you must have worn smallclothes to sleep sometimes, when the weather turned bitter.”

  “Oh, I did,” Taern agreed, still grinning.

  “Then why do you refuse—”

  “Because. Because the more often I sleep without smallclothes in your bed, the more likely you will roll over one night and forget all the things you shouldn’t do to me and remember all the things you want to do to me.”

  Dorjan looked away, remembering his earlier behavior and feeling a little ill. “Has it occurred to you that this thing you are talking about is irrevocable?”

  Taern looked a little surprised. “It’s just sex,” he said and then grimaced, as though it had occurred to him that maybe Dorjan couldn’t look at it that way.

  “You’d think it was,” Dorjan said quietly. “I’d like to believe it was. That it can’t scar a person for life because both parties profess to want it. But….” He shook his head. “What has happened to Areau—”

  “Is not your fault!” Taern snapped.

  “I made it worse!” Dorjan told him firmly. “I never should have given in the first time. After that….” He looked away. “It was… I didn’t know what to do. We had started something by then. That first time was right after I killed my father’s assassin. Both of us knew—right then, we knew—that we were not done, not by a scant mile. So we weren’t done, and he knew I needed him. And if I needed him, he needed….”

  Ten years. Ten years they’d been doing it, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “I know what he needed,” Taern said, his voice hostile and brittle. “He needed you to feel like hell. You have—you paid your debt. It’s time to pay in different currency, that’s all.”

  Dorjan grimaced. Taern was young. It all seemed so cut and dried, so black and white, when you were young. He turned back to the window and kept undressing, then went to pull on his gown.

  “No,” Taern said, and Dorjan arched an eyebrow and pulled it on anyway.

  “Karanos!” Taern threw himself back against the pillows in a huff. “At least take off the briefs. I’ve never seen anybody wear so much underwear!”

  Dorjan shook his head and left the briefs on, and Taern covered his eyes with his hands and let out an exaggerated growl of frustration.

  “I brought you a book,” Dorjan said, walking to the side of the bed and handing Taern the little volume. “Since I’m going to be doing paperwork, I thought you’d enjoy something as well.”

  Taern took the book from his hand and leafed through it, looking reluctantly impressed. “What every growing boy needs,” he said. “Are you going to bring me a sweet before bed and then make me brush my teeth?”

  Dorjan looked at him sideways as he set up a lap desk and the forms he needed to sign. “Do you need to be coddled?”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Taern said. “If we actually get a strategy meeting, what will you tell Areau?”

  Dorjan shrugged and dashed off his signature on the top paper as a matter of rote. He’d checked the “reject” box on the bill, even knowing that his signature would have no impact on the already decided vote, and simply cement his reputation as an imbecile more firmly with the Forum. In the past ten years he’d decided he’d rather be imbecilic and moral than corrupt and brilliant any given day.

  “I’ll tell him what I told him today. When his duties permit, please manufacture a suit of armor to meet your particular needs and give you a training regimen that will help make you ready to aid me in my endeavors.”

  Taern was moving his lips contemptuously, and when Dorjan looked closer, he realized the obnoxious brat was mimicking “aid me in my endeavors” with a curling lip and rolled eyes.

  Dorjan picked up the sheaf of papers and smacked him on top of the head and then went back to his paperwork, wishing the lights in the conveyance were a little bit brighter or that he’d get over his silly pride and have another pair of spectacles made for reading. He was not yet thirty, but already the job of Forum Master was starting to make itself felt.

  “You have a problem with that?” Dorjan asked mildly, skimming his next document, and Taern grunted.

  “Only that you make running around the streets in costume like lunatics and saving the populace from evil greedy men sound about as exciting as… whatever it is you’re doing, that’s all.”

  Dorjan allowed one of his half smiles and looked warmly at Taern. “It’s much more exciting than this,” he said, and then the half smile turned into a grin, which he probably ruined by biting his lower lip almost shyly. He looked away. “Trust me. I’ll hasten Areau along with that armor.”

  Taern groaned and threw his arm over his eyes. “Killing. Me. Dorjan. You’re killing me!” Suddenly he sat up, and Dorjan made a messy blotch on his next form when Taern grabbed his thigh through his gown, rucked the gown up and put the soft skin of his hand on the almost hairless, tender part of Dorjan’s upper thigh, and then curled his fingers in.

  “Is it more exciting than this?” Taern asked, putting his lips next to Dorjan’s ear and whispering.

  Dorjan’s whole body broke into a cold sweat, and he almost threw Taern’s hand off his thigh. “I used to come home from a job and find Areau manacled to the stable wall, naked,” he said harshly, and he knew that if Taern’s manhood had been feeling adventuresome, it had certainly shriveled now. “If I ever take you in the stables, Taern, I’ll take my life shortly thereafter.”

  The words were precision clean, and Taern’s next touch at the small of his back was not sexual at all.

  “Please don’t say things like that,” he said, subdued. “I’ll behave out here if you just don’t think like that, yes? There’s not much I wouldn’t forgive you for already, Dorjan. Please, be prepared to forgive yourself for the same things?”

  Dorjan didn’t even look at him. “I forgive myself nothing,” he said coldly. “I forgive myself less if it should result in you getting hurt.”

  Taern didn’t move his hand from the small of Dorjan’s back. In fact, he leaned his cheek against Dorjan’s shoulder and moved his other hand—holding the book—in front of him, and after a moment, Dorjan could move on to his other duties.

  Eventually he packed up his paperwork and made it ready in its case for the next day. He looked to his side and saw that Taern had fallen asleep with the book over his face, and he laughed a little as he took the book and a spare scrap of parchment to mark it, then placed it on top of Dorjan’s soft leather satchel. He reached up and turned off the electric lamp in its sconce and lay down on his side. When he was in this position, he could watch the rise and fall of Taern’s chest. That was enough to send him to a peaceful sleep.

  THREE mornings later they were still sleeping in the rabbit because Areau’s cries could still be heard ringing through the house. And that morning on the third day, Dorjan was not awakened by Mrs. Wrinkle’s tentative tap on the outside of the rabbit or by the spring-and-gear timepiece on the dashboard of the conveyance. No, he awakened to Taern clutched tight to his chest and struggling against his embrace.

  “Oh hells, Dorjan, I need to go use the necessary!”

  Dorjan blinked. “You have to piss?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, do it!” he muttered fuzzily. “What’s stopping you?”

  “You, you big lummox! You’re practically choking me you’re holdin
g on so tight!”

  Dorjan grunted and rolled to his side, squinting at the clock on the dashboard of the conveyance. He’d had no idea sleeping in a rabbit could grow so comfortable so quickly.

  It was their third morning in the damned thing, and Bimuit take it all, he hoped it would be the last. The past three days had been an exercise in careful control.

  In the morning he and Taern would awaken, dash inside to bathe and dress, grab something to eat, and then Dorjan would take Taern out to the courtyard and run through a few of the drills Areau had started him out with. Taern would accompany him on his dash to the Forum, see his routes, wave to the folks Dorjan waved to, and then promise to run back to either Madame M’s or the mansion.

  Dorjan had never asked, but Taern had always been there, at the small entrance between the great buildings, like the rot behind an apple’s beautiful skin, as Dorjan emerged. As they dashed through the city—taking another route from any of the others—Taern would tell him about his day.

  Dorjan had to give him credit. Taern did his best to make the world easier on the people around him. He talked about spelling Krissa, allowing her to go take a soak in the tub, encouraging her to go out to the courtyard and take a few turns. Apparently he had convinced Mrs. Wrinkle that it was not yet too chilly to eat outside, and they had picnicked out in the courtyard as well, watching the leaves above them turn from fuchsia to scarlet to brown, or violet to plum to black.

  Dorjan had offered to spell Krissa too, but apparently he wasn’t allowed in Areau’s quarters. When he told Krissa he’d never been allowed in Areau’s quarters, her jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed.

  “He’s no longer allowed in yours, either,” she said, and Dorjan shrugged, blushing under her stern gaze. In the past seven-day, he had accustomed himself to the idea that there was nothing childish about her, in spite of her diminutive size and apparent fragility.

  “Honestly, Lady Krissa, most of the activity you’re trying to forestall occurred in the stables. You’ve handily removed the manacles. It certainly won’t move into my bedroom without them.”

  Krissa sighed. They’d been having this conversation in the hallway, and she took the last step out of Areau’s room and closed the door. “Forum Master, may I ask about Taern?”

  Dorjan wished heartily for the days when his personal life had been just that. “Taern and I are forced to share quarters. That is all we are doing.”

  “At present,” she said, snorting as though the climactic end to the terrible tension of having that bothersome, pesky, irksome, persistent pain in the arse was both foregone and desirable.

  “I am trying to remain honorable, my lady!” Dorjan objected, his voice rising a little hysterically. It had been difficult, walking up the stairs and offering his services so that she might leave the room where Areau still sat—naked, from what Dorjan had seen—and tried to learn how to obey simple human rules of behavior.

  “Honorable, Forum Master? Taern’s nature functions on sort of an opposite pole, if I say so myself—”

  “He’s been nothing but—”

  “Sneaky, irritating, and compassionate as he has always been,” she interrupted. “But not honorable. He has no use for something that hurts as you have been hurt. He’ll have his way with you, of that I have no doubt.”

  “My lady—” Dorjan protested as she was about to go back into Areau’s room. “Is there nothing I can do?”

  Krissa thought for a moment. “Is it true you’re having Taern fit for new clothes?”

  Dorjan blinked. “Yes, my lady.”

  “Does the tailor make women’s as well?”

  Dorjan laughed a little then and felt better. “No, my lady, but the city’s finest dressmaker will be here before lunch tomorrow. I will give the woman your spending limit, but don’t worry about it unless she does.”

  At that moment Areau began calling, “My lady!” through the door, and Krissa brightened.

  “I’m thinking that tomorrow night, you may be able to sleep in your own room,” she said happily and then turned back to the room Dorjan had begun to think of as the slough of despond, and continued to clean up his mess.

  That was two days ago, and Dorjan had taken care to stop at the tailor’s to secure the commission yesterday morning. Both Gustal and his recommended female counterpart should be arriving sometime the next morning. Dorjan knew that in the past two days, the young man currently struggling out of the awkward portable bed in the rabbit had escorted Mrs. Wrinkle to the marketplace twice and had run those preliminary regimens faithfully and as often as possible, if his snores by Dorjan’s side at night were any indication.

  And not once had he trespassed against Dorjan’s request not to exceed the bounds of intimacy—as long as they were in the stables.

  Taern made his laughing exit from the rabbit now, and Dorjan passed his hand over his eyes and thought he should take this opportunity to put on his robe before Taern could come back and harass him for the extent of his propriety. And he tried not to think about…

  Stolen kisses. The night before, they’d been walking from the courtyard in the frigid twilight, panting slightly after exerting themselves on the equipment. Dorjan hadn’t yet fired the sandbags at Taern—unlike Areau, Dorjan wanted to wait until the boy had some protection before putting him through that. But not now. Now, Dorjan felt…

  Relaxed. He and Taern had set up two parallel courses and raced companionably to see who could complete the course first. Dorjan won, but it had been close, and he’d had to exert himself in the extreme. He had the feeling at the end that Taern had pulled back a little, humoring Dorjan’s older body, and that made Dorjan determined to practice more. They’d rounded the alcove to the back entrance of the mansion in the middle of banter, Taern calling him old, him calling Taern inexperienced, and suddenly Taern stopped, his back against the door, and looked at Dorjan devilishly.

  “So I’m inexperienced?” he asked, and Dorjan was suddenly tripping on his own tongue.

  “I, you know that’s not what I—”

  “Because I’ve been very patient, my virgin prince, but I think you need a reminder of which one of us here knows which end is up!” And with that, Taern seized Dorjan by the front of his knit sweater and pulled him close for a hungry, laughing kiss.

  The laughter faded and the hunger remained, and when Dorjan pulled away, shaking, Taern didn’t let him get any farther than the bump of a nose or a stroke of lips along his jaw.

  “Dorjan?” he whispered in Dorjan’s ear, and Dorjan should have been ashamed of the whimper he made. In frustration, he seized Taern’s hips and pulled him forward until they were flush and tight together, both of them engorged through their knit exercise trousers.

  Taern laughed and ground back roughly. “This is what I’m talking about,” he said softly.

  Dorjan jerked back, away from his body, out into the silver-lit night, and stood there, panting, until he mastered the urge to touch the boy. “Taern,” he said softly, trying hard to find a tone of warning, but Taern shook his head.

  “Dorjan,” Taern said, his grin unbreakable, “you’re going to have to face that fact that Areau is getting better. In another day, he might be human enough to come out of his room. And then it will be you and me in the same bed, because that hasn’t changed. And it won’t,” he added to forestall the useless protest Dorjan had been about to make. “And you’re going to have to either articulate to yourself why you deserve us or articulate to me why you don’t. Make your choice—but remember, I’m almost as quick with my tongue out of bed as I am in it.”

  Dorjan startled as the image. Oh, heavens… that image. After their interlude in the gymnasium, he now knew what his tongue could do on bare skin. He could barely tolerate the idea of what Taern’s tongue could do to him.

  “It’s so unfair,” he blurted suddenly into the quiet. “You… you know everything about this. All I know is when it’s wrong.” He sounded childish, and he hated that. Nearly thirty, wasn’t he? Nearl
y thirty, and he could predict the delicate shifts and balances that could redeem or ruin his country just by seeing which politician had visited his mistress or his favorite brothel in the morning, and he couldn’t answer a single question about what it was like to have a relationship that didn’t end with abomination.

  “Scratch that,” he said irritably, taking another step back into the darkness. “Tomorrow night I need to venture out. The gang that was going to profit off of that sale we broke up slid back into the sewer, and there’s a power vacuum. There’s going to be violence tomorrow, mark my words.” Excellent, a political crisis to help him put off impending adulthood—he was thrilled.

  “Which gangs?” Taern asked. In spite of having lived in the stews, Dorjan had realized that Taern knew little about the gangs. Although some of them ran brothels near Madame M’s, there was almost a mutual accord not to pursue violence in the brothel district. Too much bloodshed was bad for business—even fools could figure that out.

  “Death Mask and The Hieters,” Dorjan said, thinking that naming one’s social group after something as unpleasant as a real hieter should have given those people the idea that this was a destructive life choice.

  Taern blew out a breath. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  Dorjan shrugged. “It’s… it’s a visceral thing,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s… it’s watching the shopkeepers let their stock in front be sold to almost nothing so it’s easier to pack it all up. It’s watching the number of children roaming the streets diminish in number. The girls in the gangs start wearing trousers and wrapping their hair tightly in cloth to make fighting easier. The young men start sporting new tattoos or rips to prove they’re able.” He shuddered. The tattoos—those could have value. Some of them could be damned beautiful, if there was an artist at the needle. But the ripping? Taking a knife to an exposed strip of skin up near the shoulder and then ripping the skin down until it broke, exposing a long, shallow wound? Dorjan wanted to scream when he saw the young men doing it. Pain! Oh, Bimuit and the powers above, why would somebody choose a life of pain?