by K. L. Kettle
Walker leans away from the stink of Toll’s cologne.
“This is the best day of my life,” Toll oozes. “I’ve been training hard, very hard, really hard. It’ll be an honour, a real honour, to be with any one of you.”
Bet you the Chancellor can tell I’m distracted. She’ll buy Toll, or Aye-Aye, one of the beefcakes. Whatever he promised, there’s no way Walker could make sure she’d reserve me. No way. I told him he should’ve put me on steroids too. He said he needed my mind perky, not my pecs.
Half the top-floor women in the pit raise their hands before Toll finishes speaking. There are bids from the madams in the balconies too. The reserve settles at 300 merits, to Madam Van Gelder, Chief of Entertainment. Toll winks at Aye-Aye, next in the queue, and strolls into the wings, grabbing his crotch in the dark to make his friends laugh.
The candlelight in the Chancellor’s balcony doesn’t even flicker.
Only ten left. If it wasn’t for Walker, there wouldn’t be a sound between bids. With the Lice there – not normal – everyone’s waiting for something.
Nine…
Revenge, I remind myself, not murder. There’s a difference, right? Taking her out on to her Pent House balcony, right at the top of the skyscraper towering above us, saying I’d like to look over the edge, getting scared to make her feel as if I’m vulnerable, need her help. It’s OK, she’ll say, let me show you, it’s not so scary, and she’ll look over the edge and that’s when I’ll do it. Just one push. All the way down.
Eight…
We move closer. As Walker interviews the boys near to me, I can smell the oil in his hair, feel the heat coming from his skin.
Seven…
Imagine the Chancellor up close: her skin, her bones, her breath and her blood. She’ll be real. Like Walker, like my brothers, like me. Could I push Walker?
Three…
No. Walker didn’t have my best friend murdered.
Two…
My only friend.
One…
Lot 149, who introduces himself as Paulie, gets reserved by Madam Cramp, Chief of Expression. Lucky kid – every boy says being chosen by Cramp is about as close to freedom as you can get.
My throat tightens as Walker gets to me.
We’ve practised this. Don’t look him in the eye. Focus on the balconies. Keep smiling. Don’t panic.
“And now our final gentleman this evening,” Walker announces.
I swear the Lice take a step forwards. But I can’t hear them breathing any more.
Clearing my throat, I bite my lip and peer into the crowd. My brain’s actually died. Right here. Right now.
“I… My…”
Walker gave me a speech! I have to use the exact words! What were they?
Shit.
In the pit, a scratch echoes across the floor as a chair moves. I flinch, expecting a surge of police. And yes, they’re moving but not towards me. They’re closing in on the middle of the stalls. They’re here for someone else. There’s whispering, movement, getting closer, closer. Walker peers through the glare of the lights.
“Get off,” a voice says.
A top-floor voice, brittle. She sounds familiar. The police push towards her. Other women try to pull the girl into her seat. Plates and glasses clatter. Women snap, “Sit down!” But she keeps moving. Closer. In the limelight, I can see the blood-red colour of her hair. There’s only one debutante I’ve heard of who has hair like that.
“Leaving so soon, Ms Vor?” Walker asks. The audience laughs. A drop of sweat appears on his perfect forehead. I have never, not once, not ever seen him sweat.
When she stops, the Lice stop.
Walker presses on. “Were the gentlemen on offer tonight not good enough for you?”
No one embarrasses Ms Romali Vor. We’ve all heard the stories. If you believe them. There’s one that claims one of her mothers, the one who was the Chief of Exploration, had her after meeting some Hysteric in the desert. They made a daughter so unstable that her mother would rather stay in the desert than come back to the monster she produced. And that’s not to mention that the mother who raised her is the Chief of Peace, the woman in charge of the Lice. We hear it from the ladies in our appointments. Rumours sink down to our basement dorms like heavy air.
Ms Vor’s answer is muffled behind her mask. Strong muscles in her neck tense like string pulled tight, angry. What right does she have to be angry? Shuffling in my spot, heat crawls up to my ears.
“Do you want to bid?” says Walker slowly as if each word could push her back into her seat. It never could. No lady could be told what to do by any man, even Mr Walker.
She’s right at the edge of the lime-lit stage. The Lice try to move in but she puts out her hand and again they stop. Even they’re afraid of her!
In a flash, I remember my speech, lean into the mic and let the garble begin. “My name is Jude Grant and I—” Distracted by the sight of her – she hardly seems the monster the gossip made her out to be – the last words of my speech are lost. Stop it. Pull it together! “And I?”
Swallow. Start again.
“My name is—”
Ms Vor interrupts, breathless, almost panicked. “Wait!”
Recognition hits me like a wall. I do know that voice. You don’t forget something like that when it’s all you have of someone.
“Ms Vor?” Walker prompts.
The spit in my mouth is sticky, so I swallow. That voice can’t belong to Romali Vor, can it?
Behind her bright white mask her eyes are as green as broken bottle glass. She’s staring at me.
“You heard me. Wait,” she says, firmer now.
Wild and changeable. I know that voice from my appointments. Once a week, every week this year.
Hurriedly, she reaches behind her head, pulling at the knotted ropes of her hair, hair I’ve combed into buns and plaits and twists.
It can’t be her, can it? The girl that came once a week? The girl that never paid for food, or drink, or entertainment, only my time. In my appointments, I’d know it was her because of her perfume. It made my head dance. Fresh rain, she told me, from the storms Outside. We spoke but of course I never saw her, not one inch.
Even if I don’t believe the gossip about the Chief of Exploration, Romali Vor is still the Chief of Peace’s daughter too. Madam Vor: leader of the Lice. The officers who caught you, that beat boys found out of their dorms in the dark-hours, that blind boys who break their oaths, that deliver all flavours of the Chancellor’s mercy.
“Ro—” Walker begins but cuts himself off with a shout as something comes hurtling through the dark towards me.
I swerve out of the way as it slices through the light.
The stage flats behind shake as it hits them. Bouncing back, it smashes on the stage. Shards of porcelain fly in different directions.
After the silence, I stand. Find my light. Try not to let them see me shake.
The shattered thing on the ground is a mask.
Romali Vor stares up at me as the whole audience gasps. Rain Girl talked about how much she hated the auction process, how it was a joke. Said she’d smash her mask, mock the show of it all…
Her large green eyes blink.
Given the rumours about her birth, I can’t help but stare, expecting some beast to look back.
I never knew what to imagine when I pictured a woman’s face. I thought they’d look different under those masks, but they’re not that different to us. So why hide?
Beneath her stare is a blunt nose. Dark freckles mottle her skin. Beneath that her smile. A gap between her front teeth and smile twelve: the-look-of-a-person-who-won-a-fight. Relaxed. Satisfied. A hint of pride.
I’ve broken the first law.
Hers is the only female face I’ve ever seen. I should be afraid. I should be worried about the Chancellor, about the Lice, about Walker, about being thrown in the cells, a million things. Men can’t control themselves, we’re told; to look at a woman is to lose our innocence. I don�
�t feel any different. Searching for the fear I’ve felt all year, the ratcheting ache in the pit of my stomach, it’s not there.
Walker steps between us, blocking the audience from my view. I peer round him to keep looking at her.
Are you stupid?
“Now you’ve got to arrest him,” Romali tells the Lice.
Unblinking, her wide eyes wild, she points at me, her voice shaking. She looks up to the balconies and shouts towards where Madam Vor must be. “Go on! Arrest him then!”
Anger and fear flood in a wave and I can’t move. All this time, Rain Girl was Romali Vor … and now she wants me arrested?
The swarms of Lice in the wings move closer to me. Confused, the Lice surrounding her turn and begin to climb the stage towards me too.
“No, wait, I—” I begin and bite my tongue. No need to break another law. Speak when spoken to, Jude.
Romali shouts her order over and over as Walker tries to calm the audience, talking fast. But I can’t hear because my heart is going to explode, because as the Lice turn from her they move towards me. I’m going to be dead whatever I do. Run, I’m dead. Don’t run, dead. Madam Vor’s Lice kick and crunch the broken pieces of mask. With every step, all I hear is the sounds my bones will make as they shatter beneath their black boots—
A soft voice from above sighs. The sound slices through the terror, turning my blood cold. The tap of a finger on a whistling microphone.
Even Walker goes quiet. No gasps. No coughs. No creaks in seats or shuffling of feet. The silence makes my jaw clamp tight.
The sigh swims over the speakers again. Long and round and tired.
The audience of faceless women stands as if shot through with electricity. They knock glasses and cutlery. Tables shift on the ground. The whole theatre shakes as if the ancient Tower has pulled its spine up from a slump.
A third sigh, and the women all sit with a thunderous thud. The spotlight moves fast, juddering in the rafters. The light traces the heads of the crowd up, and up, until its glow floods the Chancellor’s box.
She’s too far away to see clearly. A curving shape that shifts and curls, swimming smoke in the light.
Walker steps aside, catches my eye with his burning blue glare before snapping back into the showman the women know. By then, I’ve remembered his instructions on what to do when the Chancellor stands.
I want her to want me. I want this, I remind myself, trying not to look at Romali Vor and how she keeps staring at me.
No. Focus on the Chancellor. I bow, full charm turned up, squeezing down the fear in my gut. This is about you, Vik.
The Chancellor’s sweet, slow tones offer her reserve. “One merit,” she says.
The silence is loud enough: no one’s going to outbid her.
I think the woman I’m meant to kill may have just saved my life.
The shifting ribbon of smoke drifts away, leaving the beam from the spotlight empty.
Walker was certain the Chancellor would buy me. He knew her tastes, he said: vulnerable, expensive, nice to look at.
Can’t hear my heart now, only the applause. Wild, as if every single woman in the audience wants her hands to be heard beyond the walls, beyond the doors, up into the highest rafters of High House.
Clunk, every light goes out. Swoosh, the curtains close, separating me from the thunderous audience and the one person in the whole theatre who didn’t turn to look at the Chancellor: Romali Vor. As the Lice close in and pull me into the wings, I can still feel her eyes on me, bright cat’s globes in the limelight, burning through the curtain fabric and into me.
Walker chases after the Lice, his long legs reaching me in a few strides.
“I can take him up,” he insists.
The largest of the Lice laughs with a snort inside her mask. “You’re not allowed in the Chancellor’s rooms. You know that, old man.”
Walker had told me the Chancellor had banned him from her floor. “Paranoia,” he’d laughed. “Sometimes it’s justified.”
The officers pull me down the narrow backstage corridors, past the House Fathers retreating from the swarm of Lice. Walker pushing behind between ancient stage sets and dusty boxes, over snaking cables, round open-mouthed theatre prentice with brooms in hand to clean between the seats.
There’s a thud as the Lice push open the exit leading to the front of house. This is where I last saw you alive.
You, kicking and screaming.
You, calling my name.
You, going quiet.
Walker holding me. “He ran. There’s nothing to be done. He’s gone.”
But that was then. Now warmth and light burst into the backstage corridor.
“We’ll talk in the morning!” Walker shouts as the troops pull me through, into the atrium.
Looking back, I search Walker’s face for an it’ll-be-all-right smile. It’s not there.
Did you ever hear the story about the boy who danced? They tell it all the time in the dorms. No one ever saw him so a lot of boys don’t believe the tales.
It started down in the Surrogacy, so the stories go. Even as a baby, the boy couldn’t stay still, bopping and bouncing to the music on the radio. Boys need discipline, they said, so Madam Hyde took away all the radios. But, as he grew, he was always tapping his foot. A jiggling little thing. He could hum and spin round for hours, laughing, they say. Hard work to get him to stand still, behave, be good, be quiet. Stay there, they’d tell him. But the boy could find music anywhere.
He’d sniff it out, filtering through the pipes from the Great Theatre. He’d stalk the humming of the Nurse Fathers, skip at the squeaking feet of the cleaning prentice, tap along to the chatter and gossip of mice. And then he’d go, running and laughing, skipping and jumping off the walls, drumming on the tables, clicking his fingers, kicking his feet until they caught him.
Dum-da-da, dum-da-da.
Then the top-floor women would come; the ones that lived above clouds that were myths to us: the madams, the highly merited, their daughters. Figures from Above with different voices and strange faces he’d never see. “Dancing?” they’d tut when they heard of the boy. “The horror of it! Think. How would that passion mutate when he reached manhood? No, no, we can’t have dangerous outbursts like these.” The Surrogacy would have to make sure he wouldn’t dance again. He wouldn’t be worth anything to any of the houses as a prentice if he couldn’t do as he was told.
I can’t remember how old I was. Sometime before I turned five. But I remember the Nurse Fathers in the Surrogacy well enough; how I ran, how they’d catch me, how it was a game when they chased me. And then there were the smacks, the bruises. It was for the best, they said. The twisted wrists and ankles as they tried to beat it out of me. You need to be good, they told me. Eventually I kicked back. Harder. Harder still. The Nurse Fathers would get fewer merits for a boy only fit for the mines. I had potential, they said, just took a little disciplining.
I remember the darkness too. My eyes got used to it fast. When they couldn’t stop me kicking and biting and screaming, they’d find places to shut me away. Filthy, cramped cupboards, and boxes and chests blurred black with age. They’d let me rot in the dark unless I learned to be a good boy.
Eventually I locked that boy in a dark box myself, buried him deep. The boy they made me into would do what he was told. He’d be their good boy. But there was this pressure in my head that would burst out sometimes. It happened a few times after they sold me to the kitchens. The longer I’d hold it in, the worse it got, that ache, and I’d just start hitting, couldn’t stop. Hitting at one of the cooks, the wall, my own head, anything to get all that noise out of my bones. But I learned fast; learned to hold it in tight.
My brothers’ story says the boy who danced made it into the House of Boys. There are steps they teach there, old, traditional dances from the Saints’ days. Slow, elegant, respectful dancing. Each movement has meaning. We tell stories when we dance for the women at our appointments. The guests applaud.
; He’d never dance for the women the way he danced alone, the story says. But maybe, if you’re lying awake in the dark-hours, you can hear him dancing in the corridors. You can hear the slide of a slipper on wood or the swoosh of a body spinning in the air.
That’s how they tell it and I’m not going to spoil their fun. It’s been a long time since that boy danced without being ordered to. But there’s always the story and then there’s the truth of it, right, Vik? They aren’t always the same.
We’re alone, the Lice and I, crossing the vast atrium of front of house as the closing music from Reserves gets quieter. Past high white walls, falling green plant curtains.
Was it only a year ago that I saw the Lice arrest you?
The shuffle of my slippers on the marble floor seems to echo all the way to the top of the world and down again. High House Tower touches the moon, or so they say. Beyond the fat pillars, there are the balconies. They spiral up into a vast space, reaching into a dark point above, further than I can see.
My gaze stops at a gap in one of the balconies, and a ball of bile catches in my throat.
Below the gap, behind a trickling fountain as high as the chandeliers, there’s a roped-off area mottled with unmistakable pooled stains. The bleach the prentice use can mask the coppery tang of blood, but can’t get rid of every mark the bodies leave behind. The men that break their oaths. The atrium pourswith them.
One little push.
I close my eyes, squeeze them shut. I can almost see you at the balcony edge, your body falling, twisting in the air as they all look up, almost hear the sound as you hit the stone. Silent. Broken.
And I wonder how old the cleaning prentice were that took away your bones, that mopped up your blood.
By law, men who break their oaths are meant to be sent to the mines by the House of Peace or pay a ‘sacrifice’ depending on why they were arrested – an eye for a misplaced look, a hand for a forbidden touch, a tongue for an out-of-place word – but now even that’s not enough for the Chancellor. She needs to break us into pieces, like Romali Vor’s mask. And she calls it mercy.