by KJ Charles
“Stephen?”
“Like this,” Stephen said, his voice a little muffled.
“I can’t kiss you like that.” There was no position on earth that would let them kiss when they fucked. Crane didn’t want to say that he wouldn’t see distress on Stephen’s face, or read his pleasure, or the lack of it, through the prickling of his hands. “Stephen, are you sure—”
“This, Lucien. Hard. I need this. Please.”
Crane opened his mouth to protest, and stopped himself. Stephen had a taste for submission, of course, but on occasion he also used his body to quiet his mind, letting intense physical sensation block out sensitivities to things Crane couldn’t see and memories Crane was glad not to share. At those times he had a craving for rough treatment that Crane found slightly alarming, mostly because he was so much larger and stronger that he feared causing real hurt, and just a little because he was manhandling someone who could kill with a thought.
But Stephen knew what he wanted. Crane was disappointed, even irrationally angry, that his lover’s needs were so unusually out of kilter with his own desires. But it was obvious that the last few days had taken their toll, Stephen had made himself clear, and mostly, Crane couldn’t make him take loving if he needed fucking.
“You want it like this?”
“Yes,” said Stephen through his teeth.
“You asked for it.”
He grabbed the smaller man, and pushed into his body, slowly but without stopping, making Stephen take his entire length in one long stroke. Stephen cried out with desperation and relief, and Crane fucked him punishingly hard, ruthlessly imposing his size and strength with every stroke till Stephen wailed aloud. He could hear the heavy gold ring Stephen wore on a chain round his neck thumping against his chest as it swung with each impact. Crane held him down throughout, gripping his narrow shoulders and pushing them into the bed, and soon enough the younger man came, in shivering spurts and with a sound like a sob, as the magpie tattoo fluttered frantically on his back.
Afterwards Stephen lay facing away. Crane curled an arm over his shoulder, brushing a finger softly over his sparse chest hair, and they lay body to body for a while in silence, as the tension drained out of Stephen and his knotted muscles relaxed.
Finally Crane said, “Will you tell me?”
A few moments passed before Stephen answered. “You asked if Rackham could get me on a watch list.”
“And you said he couldn’t. I take it that wasn’t true.”
“He doesn’t have to. I’m already on one.”
Crane’s hand stilled. “A watch list names suspected warlocks. You are suspected.”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“A few weeks. I found out two days ago.”
“Why?”
Stephen shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does! You, a warlock? I’ve never heard such bollocks. You! Are they bloody mad?”
Stephen reached for Crane’s hand. The electric prickle of his touch wrapped warmly round Crane’s slender fingers. “Thank you, Lucien. It’s nice to have a defender.”
“What about your partner? Why isn’t she defending you?”
Stephen’s fingers twitched. “Because she’s watching me.”
“The bitch!”
“It’s not her fault,” Stephen snapped. “She wasn’t even supposed to tell me. She’s had orders, she can’t ignore it.”
“Ignore what? Why would anyone think that?”
“It’s stupid,” Stephen said. “It’s mostly a misunderstanding, really. It’s you.”
“Me?”
Stephen sighed. “Lucien, every time we, you know, do anything, it leaves me flying. You, in me, the Magpie Lord, the power. I can’t hide it. People notice. I’ve got a source of external power and nobody knows what it is and…”
He tailed off. Crane waited, unsure of his meaning, and then abruptly realized what he didn’t want to say.
“Are you telling me your colleagues think you’re stripping people?” Crane had seen firsthand the effects of that practice, when warlocks used other people as sources of power and drained the life from them in the process. Stephen had told him that particular exploitation was what defined a warlock. “But for God’s sake, Stephen, you wouldn’t do that. Surely they know you wouldn’t.”
Stephen winced. “There’s nothing else obvious to explain the power. I don’t have an explanation. What are they supposed to think?”
“Can’t you just tell them the truth?” Crane thought about that for two seconds and added, “Your partner, at least. Without going into detail.”
“I could tell Esther what happens when you take me to bed, yes,” Stephen said. “I really don’t want to. Or I could simply explain that you are an immense source of power and hope she doesn’t ask how I get at it, although of course she would. But yes, either way, I could tell her you’re the source, and then she could take it back to the Council to explain why I shouldn’t be on a watch list.”
“Right. And you’re not doing this because…?”
Stephen twisted round to face him. “Have you forgotten what happened the last time practitioners knew about the power in your blood?”
“They were warlocks.”
“They were practitioners. Lucien, you’re a human source like none other. And you know how desperate we can get. You’ve seen it. The hunger for power makes the drive for money or sex look like a, a hobby, and you’re a walking fountain of it. Don’t you see? It would be like telling a pack of hungry dogs about a particularly juicy bone.” He gave a half-laugh. “For God’s sake. If word got round about what happens when we go to bed, there’d be a queue all down the street for your services. You’d have half the Council ready to bend over for you.”
“How good-looking are your Council?”
“Not.”
“Damn.”
“It’s the least of your worries,” Stephen said. “Because the other half would already be thinking of how to get their hands on your blood, without consideration of your preferences.”
“This is your Council you’re talking about. They must be reputable people, surely?”
“Oh, it would all be reputable. There would be a ‘need for study’. A ‘consideration of the Magpie Lord’s legacy’. An ‘assessment of the greater good’. But it would mean they’d get their hands on you and not let go. Maybe they might let me see you—”
“Let?”
“I do not trust my colleagues in this matter.” Stephen’s voice was thin. “That’s the size of it, Lucien. I think that too many people would want a piece of you, for what they can do through you, and I couldn’t protect you from the best of them, let alone the worst.”
Crane ran his fingers through Stephen’s hair. “But would this bloody magpie business have to get out? Couldn’t your partner explain for you without discussing the specifics?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. It would be a lot to put on her. It would be her duty to pass it on the Council, of course, but she makes her own judgements. She might cover for me if I told her everything. It’s just…” A long pause. “I don’t want to do that.”
“I thought you trusted her.”
“I do,” Stephen said. “We trust each other with our lives. Literally. If I were to tell anyone, it would be her. But she still has me on a watch list, because she has to accept that I might turn. And I still don’t want to tell her, because it’s safer if nobody knows but me.” His lips curved into something the same shape as a smile. “One can’t be sentimental about practitioners, you see. Anyone can fall.”
Crane shut his eyes against the misery in Stephen’s face. “I don’t want you sacrificing yourself to protect me. I’m not subject to your bloody Council.”
“Let’s keep it that way. And I’m not sacrificing myself. I’m not abusing my powers,
I’m not a warlock, and I won’t be caught, because I’m not doing anything wrong. This watch-list business is a stupid misunderstanding, nothing more. It’s just that it limits my options if I should run into trouble. That’s all I’m worried about.”
It clearly wasn’t all. Crane sighed. “I can’t stop you from being arrested, I suppose, but if you are, you do know that I will apply the entire resources of my wealth to dealing with it. Including the services of a firm of lawyers who are more like moray eels than human beings.”
“Yes.”
Crane frowned at the flat tone. “Stephen, I mean it. I won’t let you go to trial, let alone prison. I can prevent that and I will.”
“I know.” Stephen wasn’t looking at him.
“I’ll give my lawyers your name,” Crane went on. “They’re entirely discreet. Then you can use them at will, without going through me.”
“Though still dependent on you.”
“Welcome to life for everyone else,” Crane snapped, somewhat offended by Stephen’s unappreciative response. “At least I’ve got money. There are plenty of people with neither money nor power who have to deal with this shit, so—”
“I know. Sorry. Thank you.”
“I don’t want your thanks. Just stop trying to stand alone when you don’t have to. Accept some damned help, now and again. The rest of us do.”
Stephen smiled tiredly at him and curled up under his arm, into his chest, but he didn’t reply, and within a few moments, he was asleep.
Chapter Five
Crane woke the next morning to the sound of Merrick bringing him a cup of coffee. He opened an eye and registered that there was only one cup on the tray at the same time as he became conscious of the empty bed around him. He muttered a curse.
“Problem?” enquired his henchman.
“No. Nothing.”
“Mr. Day didn’t turn up, then?” said Merrick, homing in on his thoughts as ever.
“Been and gone.”
“Came and went?”
“Oh, shut up.” Crane sat up and sipped his coffee. God knew when Stephen had left, he hadn’t even stirred, but the little sod had ways of moving around silently. There would, he knew, be no note. There never was.
And that was perfectly reasonable, because they were both free men who could do as they pleased. He would rather have found Stephen’s small form curled under his arm, would definitely rather be having a slow, leisurely morning in bed with him, watching the laughter and the lust warm his tawny eyes to gold, but doubtless he was busy. Crane had learned not even to ask about his work, counting it only as “busy” or “not busy”.
They really had needed to talk more about bloody Rackham. That was the only problem. Otherwise Stephen could come and go—thank you, Merrick—as he pleased, and it was absurd of Crane to feel hurt, let alone this sliver of fear that this time he wouldn’t come back, that the whole damned magpie business and Rackham’s blackmail might make Stephen decide that life would be safer lived alone.
Rackham. Crane’s eyes narrowed as he watched Merrick move round the room. “Any luck yesterday?”
“Not a dicky bird.” Merrick picked up a discarded sock. “No gambling, no junk debts. Nothing nobody’s talking about. If Mr. Rackham’s got himself in trouble, I reckon it’s a shaman thing.”
“He has got himself in shaman trouble,” Crane said. “Stephen mentioned that, but he didn’t think it was enough to warrant making a run for it. So he concluded Rackham must be up to something he doesn’t know about.”
“Suspicious-minded bugger, Mr. Day. So what about Mr. Rackham, then? Am I going to break his legs?”
“Not yet, no.” Crane drained his cup. “He’s battened onto Leonora Hart.”
“The hell he has.” Merrick’s face darkened. “Why don’t I break his fucking neck and have done?”
“Give it time. We’ve till Friday, he said. And we must act in a civilised fashion in this country, you know.”
“If you say so, my lord,” muttered Merrick. “What’s Mr. Day think?”
“Says he should be fine. Says it isn’t likely to be a problem.”
“Believe him?”
“No. Come with me to the office today, I want you in Limehouse. I’m going to call in some obligations and do a bit more work on Rackham’s affairs. Buy up some debts. Revive some old grudges. See how fast I can get him to the verge of ruin.”
“Ah,” said Merrick, satisfied. “That kind of civilised.”
It was four o’clock when the summons came.
“My lord?” His clerk opened the office door with a perfunctory knock. “A message for you. Personal.”
It was a girl, and not a very striking girl, at that. She had pinched features, with a sharp nose, dirty-blonde hair in a straggly chignon, a general air of scruffiness. Her face was grubby, but the dirt was superficial, not ground in; she evidently washed regularly, and her boots were reasonably new and sturdy. She looked about fifteen, for all that meant with city youths. She was flushed from running and had a paper gripped in her hand.
“You his la-a-awdship?” she drawled.
“I’m Lord Crane.”
“Ooh.” Her eyes widened with mock awe. They were a striking light silver-blue. “Well, Lord Crane, I got a message for you.” She held out the paper.
It was a playbill, and the message was scrawled on the back in pencil.
My lord
If convenient, please accompany the bearer. Your help would be most welcome on a professional matter.
S. Day
Crane contemplated that for a second, keeping his face blank. It was beyond extraordinary that Stephen should be asking for help with his work, but it resembled what little Crane had seen of his hand, it was definitely a reference to their conversation the night before, and the salutation…
“My lord” in Stephen’s voice wasn’t a respectful address. The son of a solicitor, he had a great deal of the clerkly class’s pride and fiercely refused to use terms that implied aristocratic superiority. He had never once used it to Crane, until they became lovers, and the game began. In bed (over a desk, against a wall), “my lord” was a breathless, frantic submission, a plea to be mastered, a wholehearted surrender to Crane’s demands and desires. On the page, it made this letter as much a billet-doux as a summons, and thinking of Stephen writing the words gave Crane a jolt straight to the groin. Whatever the little sod was up to, he had known this would bring Crane running.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said. “Merrick!”
Crane knew Limehouse reasonably well, but after following the girl through alleys and back ways for ten minutes, he was lost. Not cripplingly lost—he knew which way the river was and which way Ratcliffe Highway—but lost enough that he wouldn’t have wanted to run for it. They were in the poorest parts of London now, where the faces on the street were filthy, slurred by alcohol, marked by disease, raw with hunger. There were a lot of Chinese, lascars, sailors. Every head turned to watch Crane’s progress, his height and the perfectly tailored clothing and spotless shirt marking him out as a rich man, a potential victim, a pigeon worth plucking.
He had left Merrick at the office with several other jobs to do. The deeper they went into this no man’s land, the more he had to resist fruitless regrets on that decision.
The girl turned down another dingy alley, so narrow the sun’s rays would barely penetrate it at midday, and two men fell into step behind Crane. He turned, saw they were lascars, and rapped out a string of hair-raising abuse in the language of the Shanghai docks, to discourage any attempts on his life or purse.
“What you on about?” demanded the girl. “Come on.”
“I don’t much want to be coshed or have my throat slit.” Crane glared at the two men.
“Yeah, never worry. I’ll look after you. This way.”
She swung into a dark, low d
oorway. Crane gave the two men a last, nasty look, and ducked under the lintel into close, hot, stinking darkness, following the vague shape of the girl’s skirt round a couple more passages until he came out into a larger room.
It was windowless, lit by a few candles in lanterns, dark and hot. The floor was bare, the walls sweated moisture. It smelled of cooking garlic and acrid chilli seeds and offal and sewers.
In the room were seven people. Four of them were Chinese, faces guarded, squatting against the far wall, waiting. The other three were European. One was a burly young man of medium height, with light brown hair, vivid green eyes and a square jaw. He stood against the wall with his arms folded, next to a large bundle of sackcloth. The next was a woman, aged perhaps thirty. She was plainly dressed, with dark hair twisted in a neat chignon, an olive-skinned face that was strong rather than attractive, and large, intensely brown eyes.
The last person in the room was Stephen. He was perched on the edge of a rickety table, amber eyes glowing slightly. They crinkled almost imperceptibly as he met Crane’s gaze.
“Hello, Lord Crane. Thank you very much for coming. I wonder if you can give us a hand.”
“By all means, Mr. Day.” Crane wanted an apology for Stephen’s latest disappearance, an explanation of how Rackham’s greed really threatened him; he wanted to wind his fingers in the curly russet hair and pull the shorter man’s head back for a kiss. He gave a small, polite smile instead. “In what way?”
“Well,” Stephen said, “we need to speak to a practitioner urgently. Our usual interpreter is not available, and nobody appears to grasp what we’re asking for, and these gentlemen don’t want us to go any further, but I’m afraid that’s not an option. I’d rather not force my way in, given a choice. The practitioners here are Mr. Bo and Mr. Tsang, and we need one of them now.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Crane switched to Shanghainese, and spoke to the men carefully and reasonably for a few minutes, until it was abundantly clear that they had no intention of helping. At this point he raised his voice and lowered his tone.