by K. L. Kettle
I owed you. When you got it into your head that you had to get out of the kitchens and into the House of Boys, I thought if I came too it’d be enough. But as soon as we arrived I knew I still owed you. I’ll always owe you. You changed, after the dogs. It was my fault.
By the time I applied for the House of Boys the year after, we were the only affectionate luxuries left in the Tower. Or so I thought. It’s still bothering me. All those animals were killed, used for meat, sent into the desert. But she kept one for herself, up in that garden.
The light is still an eerie red. This blackout is longer than normal. Stink’s snoring up a storm above. Every fibre of me wants to sleep, but I can’t.
You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me, you remind me. The dogs would’ve killed me, I know.
I scratch at my bruises, the ache of them returning, until my finger finds the cut on my cheek. Turning over and over the voices in my head. Why didn’t I just give up Aspiner’s name in my speech? Or Romali? Or anyone!
Coward.
When I let the dogs attack, I told myself after that I was being brave refusing to hurt them, but I was putting your life at risk, for what? Who would it have harmed if you’d let the dogs kill me? Was tonight the same? What about the night of Reserves? I thought I was being brave then, clever even. But I had another choice. When the Chancellor gave me the gun, I could’ve turned it on myself. The idea doesn’t seem new. There’s a peace to the thought, an old friend saying hello. When I told Walker I’d help him, I knew his plan wouldn’t work but I was tired of fighting the ache inside. Part of me hoped it’d get me killed too. I was always too afraid to do it myself.
Coward, it says.
But of course she didn’t even load the gun.
*
Hours pass, it feels like decades, and I don’t move. This time the Chancellor will kill you and it’ll be my fault. When I close my eyes, we’re still in that dark, stinking room, a bright white dog at the Chancellor’s side, and when she orders her to attack you I just watch.
Someone grabs my arms and I’m awake!
A half-dozen hands hold me down, forcing me into the creaking springs of my mattress.
“Get off!” I shout and kick as the gang turn me on my front and hold my arms. There’s that gym deo smell, chalk. The Roids.
A knee pushes between my shoulder blades. A sweating palm crushes my ear. The whole bunk creaks under the weight of them and me. When I kick again, I catch one in the thigh. He shouts. I know that’s Aye-Aye. I can smell Vinnie too. When he speaks, getting down close to my ear, his voice is a lot less soft than I thought it’d be. “You think she’ll buy you after we’ve lopped off your balls?”
Stink tries to get down from the bunk above, but Toll threatens him with the same torture.
“Don’t,” I shout up, but he tries again and Aye-Aye throws a swift punch. I hear his nose crunch. Stink cries out and writhes around as I squirm below.
“Get Jai, get Walker, anyone…” I protest. I keep calling out until one of the Roids pushes something between my teeth. It tastes of old cotton. I cough but he keeps pushing until the fabric scrapes my throat.
“Shouldn’t wake the House Fathers,” Vinnie says, his voice slow. “That wouldn’t be nice.”
There’s a half-digested swell coming up from my stomach. I try to swallow it down without choking on the cotton, while they tie my hands behind my back.
Can’t spit, but I can still kick. Railing and pushing and pulling as they wrestle me from my bunk.
The women say all boys are born to be killers, that we need protecting from ourselves, and I can’t stop thinking about that as we squall. I wanted the stories to be wrong but I didn’t think twice about knocking Aye-Aye out of Swims. It’s his last auction, he might not get a buyer – then what? I may as well have killed him.
I pull short breaths through my nose. My eyes hurt where they’re still bruised and swollen. It’s the struggle to breathe that makes them water. Just that.
It’s me and the muscles now: the ones in my legs, the ones in their arms as the Roids drag me up the stairs, slamming their way into the red glow of the dining room.
Toll and Aye-Aye congratulate themselves as they shove me forwards and press my head against one of the dining tables. There’s still a blackout but there’s some light flickering from the green exit signs and emergency floor lights around the walls.
Vinnie jumps up, grabs hold of the pipes above. He swings from one, does a few pull-ups. Is he showing off? He drops, landing with a thud, before climbing up to test another.
A tall, triangular-chested boy who I think is from B-dorm hands Vinnie a long, twisted sheet.
“Vin?” says Aye-Aye. “I thought we were just going to bruise him up a bit?”
“It’s our turn to show a little mercy,” Vinnie says.
The end of the sheet is looped in a noose. Inside my skin, everything goes cold. I thought they were just planning a beating too. Vinnie loops the knotted sheet over his favoured pipe, twists the sheet round a few times, knots it and tugs.
They wouldn’t? No, they can’t.
I heave and push up my body, try to get away, try to shift against the weight of Toll and Aye-Aye, but they slam me down so firmly that everything jars inside my skull. This is a joke, right? Vinnie, Aye-Aye, Toll, the lesser grunts … they’re trying to scare me. That’s all. Focus on the knot at my wrists, on tearing the fabric, anything. If I have my hands, I can fight!
Stink must’ve gone to fetch Father Jai. He’ll stop them. Maybe he’s already heading to the dining room. The Fathers have ways of watching us, they tell us, everywhere. Watching. Even in here, right? Someone has to… The blackout! The cameras are dead. Fear pulls through me. What if no one’s coming?
“Come on then,” Vinnie orders, gesturing for Aye-Aye and Toll to bring me to him.
No. Wait, I try to shout.
“Look, Vin…” Aye-Aye hesitates. “Maybe he’s scared enough?”
“What?” Vinnie snaps. “This is why I’m in charge.”
My teeth bite down at the grating sound as Vinnie drags a chair across the stone floor. Toll doesn’t stall. He isn’t afraid of what they’re planning. Fighting me to the chair, he pushes me up until Vinnie grabs me by the hair, the shoulders, whatever he can get hold of. I try to kick, knocking the chair away as I go. Aye-Aye follows orders, brings it back. Toll plants my feet firmly as Vinnie pulls the noose over my ears, my chin. He pulls it tight until I’m choking.
There’s another boy fighting them, in another world. But not this me, not here, not now.
This boy, this boy I am, is trying to breathe.
“Hang on,” says Aye-Aye. “I thought I heard something,” he whispers to Vinnie, then runs out of the dining hall so fast I hear him slip and fall.
Coward.
My head feels funny and I can’t stop my eyes blinking enough to focus. Everything is a mess of shadows. My lungs rattle.
Just breathe. Count.
One…
Breathe.
Two…
Breathe.
Three…
Toll, laughing, nudges the leg of the chair and I close my eyes. Bite down. Screw my stomach tight. The flinch before the fall. The chair shifts. The muscles in my neck stretch as I reach, try to keep steady. Want to exhale but can’t.
“Hey!” Vinnie shouts up at me.
Cold water hits my cheeks. My toes fumble to grip the chair. I cough as sparks of white light flash across my eyes.
“Not a good idea to pass out, Superstar.” I hate that nickname. I preferred Squinty. My head burns.
Vinnie clicks his fingers near my face and gestures with the glass of water as if he’s about to throw the rest. I try to turn away to keep it from going up my nose. He doesn’t throw. He laughs and pushes me in the chest with his flat palms. The cotton stretches tight.
“Idiot,” Vinnie says.
The knot of my throat rubs against the sodden, tightening cotton. Twisting my neck, I feel th
e fabric pull my skin.
They’re not going to do it. They’re not.
Why am I disappointed? There’s a sudden distant bang and I imagine the Chancellor’s gun.
“Get him down!” shouts Aye-Aye, slamming into the dining room. “Get him down NOW!”
After, there are voices. I can’t tell whose.
I should have been braver. I should have helped the Gardener. Why was I so selfish?
“What?” Someone drags over another chair.
“Police!” someone else shouts. “FOGGING LICE. I saw them! In the dorms.”
“WHAT?”
“They’re looking for him.”
The tightness around my throat loosens as one of the Roids tries to undo the knot. But he can’t. The wet noose has fused tight. The lightness fills my head as they untwist the fabric. The world is pulled out from under me. Someone, swearing, catches me as I fall, holds me up on the chair. The sound of the noose clicks in my ears as it stretches and the fabric tightens again round my throat.
“Stand up, will you?” Aye-Aye means me, I think. It’s him holding me up. His voice is quick, quiet. “You want to die?”
Behind me, Vinnie is working at the knot at my hairline. He shouts back, “TOLL! Will you at least help?”
You want to die?
Vinnie tears at the cotton they pushed in my mouth and I throw it up. I want to smack my lips together but my jaw won’t work, neither will my tongue.
So tired.
You want to die?
“He’s not breathing in!” Aye-Aye yells, still pulling at the noose. It won’t come free. “I told you this was a stupid idea!”
“The note said to put him in the infirmary.”
“Yeah, not kill him, though,” Aye-Aye mutters. A note from the Chancellor? Because I didn’t do what she wanted? Or just from one of the Fathers, trying to get me out of the auction?
Perhaps Romali’s Hysterics have come to take me away, to hold me and calm my fears. The boys run, scattering, thudding steps between shouts, squeaks, the sound of kicks, thumps.
You want her to see you like this? says your voice.
Blood is pumping in my ears.
Pathetic.
I smell flowers. It makes my eyes water.
Weak.
Everything is so green and the air is a wind, and I can smell gunpowder and blood and dust. And rain.
You don’t deserve her, you say.
“OUT.” A voice. “OUT!”
Her voice. Romali Vor.
No, I’m dreaming. I’m on my own. Hoping. Dreaming. Lying to myself as always. I can hear the Gardener dying. Or maybe that’s me. My head, packed tight with fog and pounding blood, is burst by the sound of a gunshot. Freedom. That’s all I wanted once. Maybe there’s another way.
My name is Jude Grant and I am alive, I said. Alive, like I should be proud of it. As if it’s an achievement, but it’s the only thing in the whole world that I can control, that I have any power over. My life. The idea settles, that old friend, and it feels good. Air filling me up. I’ll never give the Chancellor a name. Fighting this world can’t save you. I’m sorry.
I kick the chair behind me and pray for a snap.
“Is it really that bad?” you asked.
It was your twelfth birthday. The cooks celebrated it by making you clean the bathroom drains. I heard you didn’t argue. You used to argue.
I’d not seen you for weeks. I had to. To get out of duties I dropped all the pans while carrying them to the head cook, took the smacks round my ear, was sent to the bathrooms as punishment.
Seeing you, the first time since the dogs, was hard. I nearly fell over when I saw your face, the mess of stitches and swollen skin that once gave you the best chance out of any of us to get into the House of Boys.
“No, no,” I lied, stumbling over my story that the cooks had sent me to help, skipping the part about me making it happen.
“Liar.”
You’d been working hard since they explained the merit system, doubly hard, trying to be a good boy, the best. Compensating, the cooks called it. They called you a steamer, since you started shovelling the steaming waste at the House of Death; thought it was funny, fixing your face themselves rather than paying to put you in the infirmary. All you had was that face, they said, better you look like where you came from.
“I heard you can spend against your debt to get in,” I say, trying to get you to talk. You loved to tell us all about the rules to get into the House of Boys.
“Only new earnings. Besides, you think I’ve earned enough to make up for this?” you said, pointing at your face. “I still have to audition.” Were you joking? You didn’t laugh any more like you used to. “Maybe I should escape into the desert. Fight monsters. Survive on my wits.”
I laughed but I liked the idea. It took root.
“You still going to try for it?”
You shrugged.
The auditions would be next month and it was the first year we could put our names forward. There were criteria to get in, not just merits: the way we looked, how well we could lay a table, sew, perform, smile, things like that. There were rumours that Mr Walker, who managed the House of Boys, had a new set of criteria this year; everyone was trying to find out what.
“What about you?” you asked. “You got enough?”
“I don’t keep a record. No point.” I didn’t think for a second I could be in the House of Boys, no matter how good I was.
“Breaktime. Let’s see those sins,” you said and stuck your toothbrush, which they told you to clean with, behind your ear. Taking a wad of paper from the side, you soaked it, tore it up and started to mash the pieces into a shape.
With one eye on the door, I rolled up my trouser cuff and showed you the number. It was tattooed on my ankle like every other boy. Never shown anyone before. My debt was stupid-big: 942,621 demerits.
“Impressive,” you said, sticking out your scarred lip, nodding with respect. The paper man you were making was taking shape.
“Airman Jude Grant. They say he dropped a bomb. Two million killed.”
The first Chancellor took the names of the men they say led the Last War, gave the first of us their names, and their debt. Each demerit a sin. In five hundred years, every merit the Judes before me earned had hardly eroded our sins.
You started to make another figure with the paper, four-legged.
“Viktor Perrault,” you said, and showed me the number on your own ankle. “He was a spy. But my forefathers have been doing a good job earning it off so it’s come down a bit.”
One million exactly.
“Wow,” I said. I’d never met anyone with a bigger debt than me.
I started to imagine both us high-debts, Jude Grant and Viktor Perrault, together, winning the hearts of the top-floor ladies. We’d earn so many merits we’d give the boys they named after us a debt so small they’d be sure to be free men in a generation.
Later I snuck back to the bathrooms, found the little dried paper man and kept it. I’d put my name in for the auditions too. The next Jude, the next Vik, they’d pick new names. The next Jude Grant would pick the name Vik. And the next Viktor Perrault would pick the name Jude, because we’d been more than friends. We’d been brothers.
Air explodes in my lungs. Then again. A burst of heat. Salty lips on mine. Pounding on my chest, pushing me into the ground over and over and over and over. My stomach spasms. Pushing all my insides up, up, up, until they’re a stone against the ache in my throat. It can’t get the air out through my mouth. Don’t you dare die. Your voice or hers? The spasm from the depths of me. I roll over. Fear and air and liquid come out in a gush until I’m empty.
Roll back.
The cold concrete against my shoulders.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Soft pillows swallow my head whole. Pressing my hand to my throat makes me flinch. The skin is swollen. Alive with heat.
Alive.
I bury my face in fabric folds, fresh, washed, white. When I search for the familiar sounds of the dorms, I can’t find them. Twisting the heel of my palm against my dry eyes, I blink myself awake. The room is lined with paintings of long-dead places, ancient photos of perfect men. It smells medical, overly clean. There’s something strange about the light. Rolling over, I clutch my bruised ribs. The pain passes fast when I see it.
A real window.
I must be dead. I’m out of the bed before I know it, one hand holding my broken body, the other reaching to touch glass, cold and thick. Spots of water on the other side of the window blur the light, red and blue and golden. My whole head might collapse at the sight of it, or my heart, and all the parts inside until I’m made of light and I can float through the glass.
A real view. Saints, real light.
The world Outside is an endless room.
Looking down, the sides of the building sheer away. I must be on the top floors somewhere. There’s nothing below but a looming, mucky green cloud clawing up the walls of High House with soupy fingers. Is that the fog?
“We changed your shirt,” says a voice behind me. Everything tenses as I turn.
Romali leans against the open door. No mask. Her braided red hair bright, green eyes smiling.
“You coughed up half your stomach before you passed out,” she adds. “It suits you, the shirt.” She points. I clutch the fabric against my chest as a shield. I check to see if I’m still wearing my dorm trousers. I am, so I peer under the waistband. Still wearing my shorts too.
“Yeesh! You think a lot of yourself, man.”
I try to answer. I don’t have the protection of the Appointment Steward, or Father Jai, anyone. She changed my clothes! They’re not meant to touch, not without paying the house.
“I mean … you were unconscious,” she says, raising both eyebrows.
My cheeks burn hot. How could I let this happen? She saw me naked… I’m meant to stay pure. Doesn’t she know what her mother’s Lice do to impure boys, the things they take?