by Dan Ackerman
“What are you wearing?”
“Cathie didn’t want it anymore.”
“It’s…interesting.”
Arden opened his door. “Did you want to come in?”
“I wanted to talk.”
Arden wrinkled his nose. He laid down on the couch and draped an arm over his face. “Go for it.”
Rhys sat on the floor in front of the couch. “I hurt your feelings.”
“Not really.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Arden let out a puff of air in the hopes it would get the faux fur away from his mouth but had no luck. He brought his arm up to pillow his head. He had things he wanted to say but they all got stuck in his throat. He rolled over to face Rhys. “Just. Sometimes I feel like you don’t like me very much.”
“I like you.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
Rhys shifted. He sighed, then reached up to take Arden’s hand. He kissed his knuckles. “I…As a person, as Arden, I trust you in personal matters. I don’t think you’d ever do anything to hurt me, at least not on purpose. But as an employer, well…I’m sorry. I want to make sure I get what I need.”
“I’ll give you whatever you need.”
Rhys shook his head. “Not like that. Not between people. Between employer and employee. It’s different.”
“I guess,” Arden admitted unhappily.
Rhys kissed his hand again. “I know that’s hard to understand.”
He sighed.
Rhys ran his fingers through the shimmery fur of the jacket. “Cathie just gave this up? You didn’t have to fight her for it?”
“Shut up. I like it.”
“You would.” Rhys wrapped a lock of Arden’s hair around his finger. “I bet if you cut all this off you could make a jacket out of it.”
“Ew!”
“Yeah, but you’d wear it, though.”
“Rhys, don’t make fun of me.”
Rhys kissed him. “You can’t sulk. You have three appointments coming up.”
Arden groaned. “Fine, but I’m wearing the coat.”
“They’ll think you’ve gone mad.”
“They already think I’ve gone mad, thanks to your influence.”
“You’re very trendy with workers, and there’s more of us,” Rhys pointed out.
“Jettison the peers into space, then I’ll finally be popular.”
Rhys kissed him. “Now you’re talking. Say it again.”
Arden snorted.
“Oh, come on, Arden, say it for me. Eat the rich. You know I like it when you get subversive.” Rhys pressed his lips to Arden’s throat.
Arden laughed and pushed him away. “I thought I had appointments.”
“Just say it just once,” Rhys wheedled.
“Eat the rich?”
Rhys kissed him with a grin, not exactly romantic, but definitely playful. “Alright, now say—”
“No, stop it, we’re not doing this!”
“Not into roleplay?”
“Not when it involves killing my friends and family.”
Rhys blew a raspberry.
Arden pushed himself up. “Who are my appointments with?”
“Lazlo Frakes—”
“Fuuuuuck,” Arden groaned. “Ugh. I take it back. Let’s roleplay a violent revolution. I think I have a really fuck-off big dildo in the guestroom somewhere. You can take out all your latent anger on me.”
Rhys squinted. “Should I ask?”
Arden stood, rummaged through the various unused gifts in the guestroom closet, then came back with an overlarge glass dildo. He turned it so Rhys could read the inscription.
“The biggest dick I could find for the biggest dick I know.” Rhys frowned at it.
“What? You never just irresponsibly bought awful presents for your friends with your parents’ money?” Arden guessed.
“No.”
“One year I got Cathie this ancient taxidermy, uh, like a big ugly fish with this horrible sharp beak.”
Arden turned the dildo over. “I don’t think this is even functional. I think it’s for drugs…” He couldn’t think of any other reason it would be hollow and have holes in it. Someone on his handball team had gotten it delivered to his hospital room after one of his surgeries. He tossed it on the couch. “It was really funny when we were fifteen.” Maybe being looped on painkillers had made it funnier.
“Can you please put that away so the people who clean your room don’t think you’re using it on me?”
Arden raised his eyebrow.
A little embarrassed, Rhys said, “Everyone in the Quarters already thinks I’m your pet, I’d rather not have rumors getting around that you use a cock the size of an arm on me.”
Arden could imagine how those rumors might upset someone like Rhys and returned it to the guestroom closet. Instead of getting ready to see Frakes, he sat beside Rhys. “You really don’t like people knowing we’re together.”
Rhys’s eyes crinkled ever so slightly. He licked his lips. Then that look was gone, replaced with sadness instead of discomfort. “I don’t like people thinking that I’m being used.”
“Oh.”
“And I don’t…” He gave a small smile. “I don’t like people thinking that I’m doing this to get things from you.”
“Aren’t you?” Arden almost asked, but he didn’t. He smiled and a funny kind of hope filled him up. He took Rhys’s hand and kissed it, then said, “I guess let’s go see Frakes.”
Frakes hadn’t improved much since the last time Arden had seen him. As soon as Rhys walked in beside Arden, Frakes frowned.
“I’d hoped we could speak in private, Your Eminence.”
Arden made a small gesture with his hand to indicate that Rhys should go, which the other man did, though not without a quick flash of displeasure showing on his face. Arden seated himself without waiting for an invitation. “I hope you’re not wasting my time.”
“Oh, Your Eminence, I don’t want you to feel obligated to meet with me—”
“Just get to it,” Arden growled.
Frakes took out his tablet and cast a few documents to a large screen on the wall. “This is my proposition for the new programs for the next quarter.” He pointed to one image of a large, happy thrall family. “This one is for a drama about—”
Arden sighed loudly. “Come back to that one.”
He disliked Frakes as a person, but he also disliked having to put thought into what bits of entertainment the government would use to influence people. His mother had made it seem so necessary, a polite way of informing people of what they needed instead of what they thought they wanted.
Frakes made it feel so slimy.
Once, Arden had gotten bored and said, “Do whatever you want,” which had been the wrong thing to tell the Entertainment Minister. The resulting songs, movies, and shows that Frakes’s crew had created that quarter had bordered on directly accusing thralls of being lazy.
Since then, Arden had kept an eye on Frakes and looked for someone to replace him. No one Arden had approached had wanted the job and those who had approached him had lacked the talent and resources to do the job.
So Frakes had stayed.
Arden eyed the image of the family again.
“Birthrates are lagging for thralls,” Frakes reminded gently. “If we want more thralls, we have to convince them that they want children.”
“What if they don’t want children for a reason?”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t want children if I lived in the Quarters. Especially not if I was the one carrying them.”
“Oh, well…That’s why we need to convince them—”
Arden shook his head. “Things are a little different now.”
“Meaning what, Your Eminence?”
“Scrap it. I want…uh. I want you to put on something fun. Something light and sweet, something that will make people, anyone who sees it, just smile for a little while.”
“Sorry?”
�
��Make it seem like things are okay. I don’t want people to worry. We’ve been making them worry, I think.”
Frakes frowned.
“We’ve been making me worry anyway. Let’s lighten things up, hmm?”
“So, you want me to redo everything?”
Arden shrugged. “Is that a problem?”
“Of course not, Your Eminence.”
“I want to do something about, uh, getting more screens down in the Quarters, too. If we want people to watch things, we’ve got to give them somewhere to watch them. No one likes to be crowded into a room like that.”
“That’s very smart, Your Eminence.”
Arden forced a smile. “So you’ll see to it? Set up a new meeting when you have some new ideas.”
“Of course.”
“And try to make, uh, make conserving resources seem cool. Think of something for the peers.”
Frakes frowned. “Are things going poorly with the changes to work crews?”
“No. But it doesn’t help to be more mindful of what we waste.” Arden let himself out.
Rhys had waited for him right by the door. He had his hands folded over his abdomen and dropped into step behind Arden when they started walking.
Arden fell back and linked arms with him. “Don’t take it personally. Frakes thinks if thralls find out that movies are propaganda then Eden will fall apart.”
Rhys widened his eyes. “You mean the four movies they showed about settling down and having kids last quarter were trying to trick us into having kids?”
Arden chuckled.
“And those dirty movies they show afterhours about how sexy it is to get a lot of women pregnant, are those propaganda too?”
Arden blushed. “Sounds like it.”
“And the little cute cartoons they play for kids, the ones about being a hard worker and doing your share—”
“Alright, fine.” Arden tightened his grip on Rhys’s arm. “I didn’t say he was smart or good at it, but I haven’t been able to replace him either.”
“Try harder.”
Arden rolled his eyes.
“I know some really good cartoons that can teach you how to do your share to help out,” Rhys teased.
He walked away from Rhys.
At least, he pretended to. He only went a few feet before he glanced back to check on him. “So who’s next?”
“Supervisor Corbin.”
“Maintenance?”
Rhys nodded.
“Corbin’s pretty with it. Did she say what she wanted?”
Rhys shook his head.
It turned out that Corbin wanted to take leave to stay home with her child who needed surgery, which Arden granted.
She seemed surprised and he tried not to take offense.
After another quick and painless appointment, he and Rhys sat down to hammer out the details of Rhys’s work contract over dinner. Arden had dug up the last few contracts between his mother and her Chamberlains.
Rhys poured over them for most of their meal.
Arden shredded his food into little bits while he waited. Every so often, he said, “So, what do you think?”
Rhys said, “I’m still reading,” the first few times.
The fourth time Arden asked, Rhys set down the tablet. “Do you need something?”
“No, just, they’re not that long.”
“Checking for fine print.”
Arden stuck out his tongue.
Rhys said, “I assume there’s changes you want to make.”
“Sure. The salary’s got to change, for one.”
Rhys nodded.
“I mean, the most recent one is over a decade out of date, so we’ve got to adjust for that. And the expected duties need to change.”
“Say that again.”
“The duties need to change. Those are more secretarial than advisory.”
“About the money.”
“Oh. Well. I figured we’d have to change it. So you’re fairly compensated.”
Rhys stood up from the small table Arden had acquired a few months ago. They ate together often enough that he’d thought it warranted having a table with chairs, instead of always sitting on the ground around the coffee table or eating in bed.
He paced over to the viewing window.
Arden watched. When he stayed there for a few minutes, he called over, “What?”
Rhys didn’t answer.
Arden gave him a few more minutes, then went over to him. He leaned against the window. “What?”
“Money doesn’t really mean anything at all to you.”
Arden shrugged. “I understand what it does for me and my position. I understand what it lets me do.”
“But that much, Arden.”
“It’s not that much at all. It’s not more than what a starting supervisor would make.”
“It’s at least ten times what anyone I know has ever made.”
“Do you want me to not pay you more?”
“You’re missing the fucking point.”
“Explain it to me.”
“I can’t…I don’t even know where to start. And I don’t want to. I don’t always want to explain things to you, you know!”
“Then don’t explain it. Just sign whatever contract we come up with and stop asking me why I don’t care about a bucketful of sand when I’ve got a whole beach.” Arden smiled at him and tried to take his hand.
“I think I need to go.”
Arden straightened up. “Why?”
“Because this is too much.”
“Oh. Well. Can I walk you home?” He didn’t want Rhys to leave but knew he couldn’t order him to stay.
“Is that a fucking joke?”
Arden shrugged. “I’ve never seen where you live.”
“You’ve never been to the Quarters.”
“No reason to.”
Rhys studied him, then shook his head. “Maybe some other time.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I’ll come by in the morning.”
Arden nodded.
Rhys looked like he wanted to say something else. He touched Arden’s arm, then left without saying anything.
Arden tried to find something else to do, but nothing he tried got rid of the tight feeling in his chest or the ugly thoughts swirling in his head. He called for a shot of Nine and slept like a rock, dreamless and cold, until someone tried to wake him.
His eyes couldn’t quite open and he tried to rub them.
“Ardi, hey.”
He rolled over. “Nother minute.”
“Arden,” a voice insisted.
Not Rhys.
Whose voice was that?
A harder shake, then a disgusted scoff.
He fell back asleep.
How much later he didn’t know, but someone opened his mouth and poured something down his throat.
Uncomfortable alertness made his heart patter and his fingers twitch within minutes. His eyes popped open when he realized what had happened.
Six would do that.
Cole and Cathie hovered over his bed.
He pushed himself up and dragged his covers around him, disoriented and displeased. “What?”
Cole began, “We were out at Crystal and, uh, there was this group of kids, like right out of school, and they were shit-wasted, and they started picking on the thralls who were serving drinks.”
Arden groaned. “And?”
“The safety officers broke things up but—”
“They actually fought?”
“One of the bartenders threw a punch.”
“They’re all in lock up. But people are freaking out. I don’t think a thrall’s ever hit a peer before,” Cathie said.
Arden hadn’t heard of it happening in years, not since before Mama had died. He didn’t remember it, but he’d read the reports and knew the justice the last Autarch had doled out for the offending thrall.
He dragged himself out of bed and pulled a robe on over his pajamas. He shoved his feet into sh
oes. “Go down to the Safety Office, tell them to double patrols, send out a message for everyone to be cautious. Tell all the thralls who aren’t working essential positions to go home.”
“All that just for this?” Cathie asked.
“I don’t need anyone doing anything stupid.”
“Where are you going?”
“Lockup.”
He didn’t want to go, but a glance at a clock made it apparent that he should deal with it now so the morning could be productive and mostly normal.
A safety officer followed him to lockup, which he appreciated because the people he passed seemed nervous, angry, or both. Mostly younger people out enjoying the night, so probably drunk or on formulas, or some combination of that and likely a few pills throw in for good measure.
In lockup, he found a crowd of young peers and three thralls.
The thralls looked much worse for wear, but one particularly puffed up and irate looking peer girl had a bloody lip.
Arden addressed the safety officer watching the lot and asked, “What happened?”
“Fighting over a boy or something.”
“She was bothering my friend, Your Eminence,” the bloodied peer informed him. She shot a vicious look towards the youngest thrall, a blonde girl with beige skin. Arden guessed her to be in her early twenties.
Arden looked at the peer who’d addressed him. “And then?”
“I told her to get away from her and she didn’t listen.”
Arden didn’t exactly follow. He couldn’t focus well at the moment, too busy taking in the minute details of everything in lockup.
Six did that.
“Who was the worker bothering?”
“She wasn’t bothering me,” a peer piped up from the back. Short-haired and tomboyish, but a girl from what Arden could tell. “We were just talking.”
“Talking about stupid shit, Ridea,” the bloodied peer snapped.
“Is anyone pressing charges?” Arden asked the officer.
“I am!”
“What’s your name?”
“Paget, Your Eminence.”
To one of the safety officers, Arden requested, “Will you take Paget and get her report?”
The officer nodded, took the girl, and walked her to another room.
Arden approached the thralls, who looked like shit. They’d been outnumbered, clearly. “What about you lot?”
“I want to press charges,” the blonde said.
Arden smiled. “Great.” He glanced at the other two, who shook their heads.