Chapter 12: Election Night — The Key of Oslov

Volume 1: A Serviceable Boy

Chapter 12 Election Night

Chapter Notes

This is the chapter with on-page gang rape, so please be forewarned. It’s a dark one, but things will get better shortly (and then worse again, and then a lot better, because we are headed for a happy ending, or as happy as it’s ever going to get in this world).

Chapter Notes

Election Day was a long one; Upstarts had a full twelve hours to vote. No one in the Sector was doing much work. Admins and Councillors clustered in the marble hallways, gesturing intensely at readouts of the preliminary results on their handhelds.Gersha took refuge in his office, but the gossip and murmurs outside made it difficult to focus on his coding. He chose a Tangle-era book from his extensive library and opened it at random, hoping to find a few new idioms his research assistants had missed.It was a seductively strange world, the Tangle. Such disorder and uncertainty. This book was a pre-industrial one about a handsome young peasant who improved his status in a monarchical society by sleeping with various noblewomen and memorizing an entire book considered sacred by his culture.Skimming, Gersha found himself imagining the young peasant with Tilrey’s face. But then—oh. The hero committed a foolish crime of passion and had his head cut off.That was why, he supposed, Whyberg and the Founding Council had decided that Laborers shouldn’t vote for their Council representatives. Hot heads. Too many passions.Passions like the one that devoured him now. Perhaps his uncle was right—for all his studiously cultivated coding skills, Gersha resembled his mother. A weak-willed little social climber, not a true person of intellect and merit. His coldness, his prudishness, his celibacy might all be masks, ones he’d used to fool even himself.But . . . when she wasn’t drowning herself in sap, his mother loved him. Gersha had memories of her bending over him, crooning songs from feudal sagas; when he was older, she told him the accompanying blood-soaked stories, and he listened in fascination. Her touch could be clinging and unwelcome when she was sapped, but for his first ten years, her smile was the most beautiful thing he knew.A cry went up in the hallway, whoops of joy echoing off the cold gray marble. Gersha closed his book. Outside, snow continued to batter the dark city with brutal indifference.A message appeared on his handheld: We’ve done it. All three seats! Time to fête our new colleagues. Get the boy dressed and bring him to my quarters in an hour.Gersha’s heart sank, and he covered his ears to shut out the sounds of the Island’s triumph.At home, Tilrey was waiting for him, wearing a midnight-blue tunic with yellow piping. Gersha had never seen this outfit before, and the yellow was so almost subversively bright that he found himself nudging Tilrey against the wall so he could run his hands over the fabric and feel how tightly it cleaved to the boy’s narrow waist.“Did you have a nip of sap in the Sector, Fir?” Tilrey asked, playfully tolerating this.“No.” Though everybody else had been partaking. “You know where we’re going, right? Bosh told you? I wish we could just stay here.”“So do I, Fir.” Tilrey caught Gersha’s hand, raised it to his lips. “Have you ever been to a post-election party?”“No.” The last election was the one where he’d been seated. Verán had invited him over to celebrate, but Gersha had begged off and stayed home, nursing a cold and already regretting running in the first place.“It can get a little decadent, Fir.”“Decadent.” It was the word Whyberg used for the chaotic cultures of the Tangle, and for the feudal chieftans after that. Gersha looked for signs of joking in Tilrey’s eyes, found none. “What does that mean?”“Just . . . wild. You may see things you don’t like.”“I’ll brace myself, then,” Gersha said, trying his best to make it into a joke.“As shall I, Fir.” Tilrey pressed his hand, palm to palm. “Just remember, whatever happens won’t mean anything the next day.”“I don’t understand.” The boy’s touch intoxicated Gersha, as always, but now a chill moved through him, chasing out the drunken sensation. “What might happen?”Tilrey’s hand cupped Gersha’s cheek. Gersha closed his eyes, back in that rapturous space of being alone together, as the boy’s lips met his.“The kinds of things you’d expect, Fir, when your colleagues indulge. Just, please, promise me you won’t make a scene.”Anger flushed Gersha’s cheeks, and he nearly pulled away. Then teeth closed on his bottom lip, nipping gently.“For both our sakes,” Tilrey whispered into his mouth, “do control yourself, Fir. I adore you when you’re righteously angry, but there are right and wrong times for it.”Of course I can control myself. What does he mean, he adores me when I’m angry? Is he patronizing me?But the kiss was deepening, and when Tilrey pulled back to tuck a curl behind Gersha’s ear, Gersha murmured, “I promise.”For most of the year, Councillors of the Republic weren’t particularly known for their wild parties, but things could get indecorous in the wake of a victorious election.From his position on the couch, lolling more or less on Verán’s lap with his bare feet resting between Besha’s thighs, Tilrey had a good view. About fourteen Islanders had jammed themselves into Verán’s apartment, including the three newly elected Councillors.Most of the remaining guests were men, several women having taken their leave early. Some clustered around Verán’s couch, eager to win his favor. Others formed smaller groups, talking and laughing with a raucous boisterousness never heard in the Lounge.Someone had brought a few bottles of black market liquor, the kind of rotgut soldiers and drivers drank. You weren’t supposed to mix it with sap, so everyone did. The women who remained were drinking hard; one of them stared at Tilrey across the room with an expression of voyeuristic pity, fascination, or both. He stared back until she dropped her eyes.And Gersha? He’d vanished nearly an hour ago, into Verán’s study or bathroom, clearly taking refuge from the scene in here. His disappearance had roughly coincided with Tilrey’s licking a half-vial of sap from Verán’s palm.The hefty dose had numbed Tilrey, was still numbing him, and he told himself he didn’t care. Didn’t care that Verán’s hand was burrowing under his tunic, or that Besha was possessively massaging his foot and ankle. Didn’t care that Gersha was off sulking somewhere.Trust Besha to remind him of the latter, though.“Gersha’s deserted us,” the little Councillor said, slurring. “He’s mad with jealousy. Did you see him, Visha?”Verán snickered absently. “I’m starting to think you’re projecting, Besha. It’d be fun to get a rise out of him, but Gersha’s cold as a cod, always has been.” He pinched Tilrey’s waist beneath the tunic, the other hand sneaking between his thighs. “Or is Gádden in love with you, child?”“Love is a strong word, Fir,” Tilrey said. The word Verán had used, ináthera, also meant breathlessness.He glanced across the room to where Bror lounged on a couch beside his own aged patron. His friend’s presence was reassuring; as much as they could, they’d look out for each other.Verán gave Tilrey’s balls a brisk squeeze through his trousers, clearly beyond the point of caring who noticed. “Don’t correct my vocabulary. Is Gádden infatuated with you, then?”“I don’t know, Fir.”“How can you not know?” Verán tightened his grip, making Tilrey tense against the pain. “You’ve spent, what, five, six nights with him?”“Gersha doesn’t appreciate what he has,” said Besha. “What I’d do for five nights with Nettsha.”“All you’d have to do to have him tonight is win a seat away from the Mainland.” Verán withdrew his hand and smacked Tilrey’s thigh. “Up. Time for the next stage of this foolishness.”The next stage, unsurprisingly, took place in the bedroom.Tilrey let his mind go blank, the way he always did when things started to veer out of his control. (Control yourself, he’d told Gersha. Easier said than done.)He sat on Verán’s bed and pulled his feet up without being told, hearing the murmurs and rustles of the other guests as they followed in Verán’s wake. He kept his gaze on the blinding bleached whiteness of the duvet so he wouldn’t have to count them or meet their eyes. Didn’t look up when Bror settled beside him.Bror’s hand poked itself into his peripheral vision, a dark pool of sap in the palm. His breath was warm on Tilrey’s hair as he bent to whisper, “They want us together. This is for you.”It was too much sap, over his usual limit, but Tilrey drank it all, grateful for an extension of the numbness. “You take me,” he said. “Easier.”Someone had pulled an armchair to the head of the bed, and Verán settled himself there with the aid of his cane and Besha’s arm. “Whom do we want to see on top?” he barked, silencing the group.The clustered Councillors offered no opinion. Tilrey could feel them becoming a touch abashed, but also intensely watchful.Besha, leaning on the back of Verán’s chair, said, “Nettsha should take Bror. That’d be different.”“Opinions pro and con?” Verán asked with gravity, as if he were on the Council floor.“Con: Nettsha’s good at being on the bottom,” objected a younger voice, perhaps Akeina.“Pro: he’s got a big cock,” said someone else.Bror cleared his throat, slipping his arm around Tilrey. “With all due respect, Fira, we’d be happy to perform for you either way, but Nettsha is, I think, tired—”“Meaning he’s sapped to his eyeballs,” a woman said derisively.A man chuckled. “What a hard life, lounging around all day at the Republic’s expense.”“Enough! We don’t want to argue all night.” Verán jabbed an imperious finger at Bror. “Fine, lad. Put him on his back and make it slow. Do it like a lover.”“With pleasure, Fir.” Bror raised Tilrey’s chin and kissed him, long and wet, then tugged him tenderly into a supine position.Tilrey tensed at first. He hated how fulsome and flattering Bror got around Upstarts. Submitting was one thing; pretending to like it was another.But his mouth opened reflexively to Bror’s tongue, and when Bror got tired of that and transferred his attentions to Tilrey’s neck, and then to a nipple, the steady suckling relaxed him. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine they were alone in their usual room in the unoccupied apartment, amusing themselves on a long gray afternoon.It was just sex, something they were both good at. Warm skin on warm skin, comfort and camaraderie with no expectations.Bror unclasped the neck of Tilrey’s tunic and pulled off the tight garment, stage-whispering, “Ah, you’re so beautiful.”Hands reached under his shirt and peeled it up; a warm tongue lapped at his other nipple. Tilrey arched his back—trained reflex, or genuine reaction? He had no idea anymore.Someone gasped, and he remembered the crowd around the bed—breathing, watching.

It’ll be over soon. Let it happen.

Bror was easing off Tilrey’s shirt and trousers, his thigh rubbing knowingly against Tilrey’s cock, and of course Tilrey was hard, but he was outside his body, feeling the belly fire of arousal from a distance. “Ready?” Bror whispered and rolled him back and spread him out, and the humiliation left him numb again, deep inside himself, trying to focus on his breathing.When Bror crooked a finger inside him, slyly stimulating his prostate, he sucked in his breath and reared up before the numbness rushed in again. Let them see what they want to see.“I told you he was capable of enthusiasm,” Besha said, close to his head.Verán snorted gently. “Well, of course. Bror could make the dead stand at attention.”He didn’t feel at attention. He was floating somewhere between the bed and the perfectly white draperies, like a man fallen and hallucinating in the snow. Drowning.

Someday I’ll jump from that parapet or another parapet, and no one will be able to stop me.

“Open your eyes, Nettsha,” Verán said sharply. “And keep them that way.”Tilrey obeyed before he had time to think. His bleary gaze took in the peering audience of Councillors, white robes and mostly white faces, before fixing on the only face that mattered.Gersha. He stood behind the others, halfway out of the room, but it was clear he could see what was happening on the bed. His face was livid, his eyes wide and glistening in the way Tilrey usually liked to see, but these weren’t tears of bliss.Tilrey looked away again. Though he remained pliant in Bror’s arms, something within him went dead still.Gersha had promised. He would control himself, just as Tilrey was, and let this happen. But would it really mean nothing tomorrow?He kept his gaze trained upward and stared at the canopy while Bror fucked him—gasping theatrically and hissing obscene compliments for the watchers’ benefit, while Tilrey made no noise at all.He counted. Bror was clearly holding back a little, varying his rhythm, trying to give the Councillors a good show. Perhaps he hoped that would make things easier for his friend afterward. It took him seven minutes and forty-nine seconds to spatter Tilrey’s stomach and chest with come and collapse heavily, burying his face in Tilrey’s neck.Only after Bror had whispered, “You doing okay?” and gotten up again, and the Councillors had begun to get bored and wander back into the other room—only then did Tilrey allow himself to glance where Gersha had been.His young Councillor was gone.The late-night tram was oddly peaceful, an oasis of glaring fluorescents wending its way between the snow-encrusted behemoths. Gersha remembered how much he used to enjoy taking the near-empty tram home late at night from the Sector, before he had a car and driver. How anonymous he used to feel under his heavy coat.He didn’t enjoy this ride. He’d removed his robe of office and sat with his feet up on the seat, his face hidden behind his knees, grateful that no one—not even Bosh—would see the look on his face.He’d left Bosh and the car behind at Verán’s, with calm instructions to wait and bring Tilrey home when he was done performing his function at the party. Bland, formal phrases to hide the inflammation that burned in him: the shock, the misery, the shame.That was it: shame. It was one thing to hand Tilrey off at the Lounge and know he was going to another man’s bed. It was another thing to watch it happen.Not with an Upstart, at least. But he would never forget the sight of Tilrey giving himself so easily, so seemingly willingly, to that kettle boy with the thick neck and the stupid, amiable expression. Gersha wasn’t even sure of the other boy’s name—Bror something?Sleeping in each other’s arms, he and Tilrey had been so close that sometimes Gersha wasn’t sure where one of them ended and the other began. Whose freckle was that? Whose scar? Whose breath? Now, in the tram, he felt Bror’s hands on him, Bror’s tongue in his mouth. Bror was all over him, inside him, while the entire party watched.And Besha—Gersha closed his eyes, trying to obliterate the memory of Besha’s furrowed brow and his hungry eyes, watching the whole thing.He already knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight in the bed he and Tilrey had shared. Everything would assault him with unwelcome memories—the pillows, the duvet, the book on the bedside table. The room’s very outlines would be crisp and hostile in the new light of his solitude.Because he could never have Tilrey again.Not if the penalty for their love-making was this bone-deep ache, this disgust with everything that met his eye. Not if the memories of their time together had to be polluted by Verán’s sarcasm and Besha’s lust and the glassy-eyed fascination of the other Councillors. No—if Gersha so much as touched the boy now, all their faces would swim before his mental vision, mocking him.Little green-eyed whore. You look just like her.Was he being fastidious? Cruel? Maybe a little, but then, it wasn’t like the boy would really care if he stopped going to Gersha’s bed. Such things didn’t affect him the way they apparently did Gersha.Verán was right to call Gersha “infatuated,” and maybe even that other, much worse term, in love. He had no boundaries, no restraint.Gersha rose and got off at his stop, proud of how dry his eyes had remained. He was old enough to know a whore can’t be a lover, and that celibacy is not a commitment one tosses lightly aside.But then, as the cold buffeted him, he heard Tilrey’s voice say, “Whatever happens won’t mean anything the next day.” And he strode to the parapet and gazed down at the city and wept, his tears freezing before they fell.They melted when the cold drove him back into the apartment. The thought of his bedroom was still unbearable.He paused before Tilrey’s door, then eased it open—stealthily, as if he expected to be caught. As if he didn’t have a perfect right to enter any room in his own home.The bed in its alcove was neatly made, the closet shut, nothing on the bedside table. It was hard to believe anyone lived here. Gersha fell to his knees and pressed his face against the spread, the pillow—and yes, there was the faint musk he knew so well from his own bedclothes.He meant to leave, but something took hold of him, and he groaned and sprawled out full length, clutching the pillow to his chest.He lay there, breathing the scent in, until his eyes closed.The first man was middle-aged, with a puffy face and sparse, carrot-colored hair. He had won the drawing of lots, but he looked more weary and duty-bound than happy as he plunked himself on the bed.“Congratulations on your election, Fir,” Tilrey said, after the Councillor-elect had stared at him for what felt like a full minute, either shy or loath to make a move.Well, perhaps it wasn’t a sufficiently appetizing prospect. Tilrey had been allowed to wash Bror’s spunk off his chest, but not to dress, and he was far too aware of his bee-stung lips and the love bites purpling his neck. He twitched the duvet down, exposing the rest of his body, and was relieved when the Upstart took the bait and crawled forward to roll him over.Best to get it over with fast.“I’m not hurting you, am I?” the man asked somewhat later, moving monotonously on top of Tilrey.Tilrey shook his head and resumed biting his knuckle to blunt the sensation. “A little raw, Fir,” he added after a moment, thinking the man might want to hurt him. The problem with first-timers was that you never knew.The Councillor-elect thrust a little more gently after that. Two minutes and eighteen seconds later, he came, shuddering hard and crying a name Tilrey couldn’t make out.The second man must have been waiting behind the door. Youngish for a Councillor, he had a long, dour face.“I don’t think I want to be inside you,” he said, once the first man was gone and they were alone. “No offense, but my immune system is sensitive.”“I’m tested for everything twice a month, Fir.” In another life, Tilrey might have been offended by the disgust twisting the Upstart’s face. Now he only cared that the man’s squeamishness could cause trouble. Verán wanted him to oblige all three of the new Councillors and might know if he didn’t do it properly. Men talked about these things.“But you just—well, you and that other piece . . .” The man gestured helplessly at the spot where Bror and Tilrey had been. “And then my colleague. I don’t relish the thought of going third, that’s all.”Believe me, I relish the thought of you doing it even less. But he didn’t roll his eyes. “Maybe there’s something else you’d like?”“Maybe,” the Councillor-elect allowed.Tilrey crept to him on his knees, the way he had that first night with Gersha, and unbuttoned the man’s trousers. The sensitive Upstart turned out to be highly amenable to the ministrations of his mouth.“You won’t belong to our Island until you’ve sampled its exclusive fruits,” Verán had proclaimed grandly to the Councillors-elect an hour earlier, after Bror had gone to clean himself up. To make sure everyone understood the metaphor, he’d leaned over the bed and patted Tilrey’s ass. “Still gloriously fresh and ripe, believe me.”Tilrey didn’t feel particularly fresh, but now he distracted himself thinking about fruits, where they grew in Harbour, and how they might look before they were dried and shipped thousands of miles north for Oslov consumption.Linnett had given him a fresh apple once, something he’d never eaten before or since. In Harbour, you can pluck an apple off a tree and take a bite, the Magistrate had said. You can bathe in rivers and lakes, if you find one that’s sewage free. You would not believe the sensation of cool running water on your skin, Rishka—it feels alive.Sometimes he cursed Linnett for teaching him so much about a world he’d never see. Was Linnett living out his exile happily in some Harbourer fiefdom right now, strolling in the grass and eating apples and peaches off trees?The second man came with an animal grunt, a warm gush in Tilrey’s throat, and lay back on the pillows looking unpleased with himself. On the way out of the room, he tried to give Tilrey a vial of sap, but Tilrey shook his head.“You’re Verán’s guest, Fir.” And I’m not a cheap brothel whore.The third man didn’t say a thing, just lunged. That was something of a relief, because Tilrey’s throat was raw. He let the loose-bellied, white-haired Councillor-elect push his legs over his head and braced himself, knowing this one wouldn’t tenderly prep him as Bror had.(This was nothing, he reminded himself, closing his eyes and clenching a fist. He’d had worse nights.)The man panted and grunted, his incoherent vocalizations occasionally solidifying into a “slut” or “whore,” and took an eternity to finish. Then he collapsed on top of Tilrey and began to snore.Tilrey tried to sleep as well, but everything itched or was sore, and the man’s head was weighing hard on his collarbone. And now he couldn’t repress stray thoughts of Gersha.The look on the young Councillor’s fine-boned face as he’d stood there. The horror.Tilrey was relieved when the door clicked open, and Verán called, “Finleifer! I’m hoping you’re done in there. I’m an old man, and I’m particular about sleeping in my own bed.”With a series of grunts, the third Councillor-elect hauled himself upright and went in search of his clothes. Tilrey lay still until he was gone, then stretched each martyred limb and tugged the duvet up to cover himself.He hadn’t rested long when Verán yanked it back down again.“Well, then, lad.” The majority leader traced new, fingertip-sized bruises on Tilrey’s shoulder. “How do you like our new blood?”Tilrey rolled obediently toward the old man, knowing he wasn’t required to answer. The sap Bror had given him was wearing off, and he ached like hell, but he could endure one more, and probably more than that. Strapping boy. “Maybe I could shower first, Fir?”Verán made a repulsed sound. “I don’t want your ass tonight, thanks. Lie back and give me your mouth.”Letting Verán’s cock choke him wasn’t pleasant, but it was comparatively easy. Tilrey closed his eyes, focused on breathing with the man’s scrotum dangling in his face, and let his thoughts drift to Gersha.He’d been doing that a lot recently. He didn’t imagine the sex, just gazing down on the man’s sleeping form.The golden freckles, the unruly curls, the delicate incipient crow’s-feet. The knob of the shoulder, the slim hips; the coarse, dark chest hair.My little Strutter, he thought, imagining tracing the graceful line of the Councillor’s hip with a finger. What would it be like to fuck this man? My passionate prude. I know how to make you squirm and cry for mercy.Tilrey kept Gersha in his mind as he swallowed down Verán’s load, trying not to wince at the dry itch in his abused throat. He thought of Gersha as he curled into himself and turned his back on the majority leader, not giving two fucks whether he was being disrespectful. He thought of Gersha as he slipped toward sleep.His last thought woke him with a jerk.

Of course it’ll mean something tomorrow. He’ll never want me again.

Gersha took refuge in his office, but the gossip and murmurs outside made it difficult to focus on his coding. He chose a Tangle-era book from his extensive library and opened it at random, hoping to find a few new idioms his research assistants had missed.

It was a seductively strange world, the Tangle. Such disorder and uncertainty. This book was a pre-industrial one about a handsome young peasant who improved his status in a monarchical society by sleeping with various noblewomen and memorizing an entire book considered sacred by his culture.

Skimming, Gersha found himself imagining the young peasant with Tilrey’s face. But then—oh. The hero committed a foolish crime of passion and had his head cut off.

That was why, he supposed, Whyberg and the Founding Council had decided that Laborers shouldn’t vote for their Council representatives. Hot heads. Too many passions.

Passions like the one that devoured him now. Perhaps his uncle was right—for all his studiously cultivated coding skills, Gersha resembled his mother. A weak-willed little social climber, not a true person of intellect and merit. His coldness, his prudishness, his celibacy might all be masks, ones he’d used to fool even himself.

But . . . when she wasn’t drowning herself in sap, his mother loved him. Gersha had memories of her bending over him, crooning songs from feudal sagas; when he was older, she told him the accompanying blood-soaked stories, and he listened in fascination. Her touch could be clinging and unwelcome when she was sapped, but for his first ten years, her smile was the most beautiful thing he knew.

A cry went up in the hallway, whoops of joy echoing off the cold gray marble. Gersha closed his book. Outside, snow continued to batter the dark city with brutal indifference.

A message appeared on his handheld: We’ve done it. All three seats! Time to fête our new colleagues. Get the boy dressed and bring him to my quarters in an hour.

Gersha’s heart sank, and he covered his ears to shut out the sounds of the Island’s triumph.

At home, Tilrey was waiting for him, wearing a midnight-blue tunic with yellow piping. Gersha had never seen this outfit before, and the yellow was so almost subversively bright that he found himself nudging Tilrey against the wall so he could run his hands over the fabric and feel how tightly it cleaved to the boy’s narrow waist.

“Did you have a nip of sap in the Sector, Fir?” Tilrey asked, playfully tolerating this.

“No.” Though everybody else had been partaking. “You know where we’re going, right? Bosh told you? I wish we could just stay here.”

“So do I, Fir.” Tilrey caught Gersha’s hand, raised it to his lips. “Have you ever been to a post-election party?”

“No.” The last election was the one where he’d been seated. Verán had invited him over to celebrate, but Gersha had begged off and stayed home, nursing a cold and already regretting running in the first place.

“It can get a little decadent, Fir.”

“Decadent.” It was the word Whyberg used for the chaotic cultures of the Tangle, and for the feudal chieftans after that. Gersha looked for signs of joking in Tilrey’s eyes, found none. “What does that mean?”

“Just . . . wild. You may see things you don’t like.”

“I’ll brace myself, then,” Gersha said, trying his best to make it into a joke.

“As shall I, Fir.” Tilrey pressed his hand, palm to palm. “Just remember, whatever happens won’t mean anything the next day.”

“I don’t understand.” The boy’s touch intoxicated Gersha, as always, but now a chill moved through him, chasing out the drunken sensation. “What might happen?”

Tilrey’s hand cupped Gersha’s cheek. Gersha closed his eyes, back in that rapturous space of being alone together, as the boy’s lips met his.

“The kinds of things you’d expect, Fir, when your colleagues indulge. Just, please, promise me you won’t make a scene.”

Anger flushed Gersha’s cheeks, and he nearly pulled away. Then teeth closed on his bottom lip, nipping gently.

“For both our sakes,” Tilrey whispered into his mouth, “do control yourself, Fir. I adore you when you’re righteously angry, but there are right and wrong times for it.”

Of course I can control myself. What does he mean, he adores me when I’m angry? Is he patronizing me?

But the kiss was deepening, and when Tilrey pulled back to tuck a curl behind Gersha’s ear, Gersha murmured, “I promise.”

For most of the year, Councillors of the Republic weren’t particularly known for their wild parties, but things could get indecorous in the wake of a victorious election.

From his position on the couch, lolling more or less on Verán’s lap with his bare feet resting between Besha’s thighs, Tilrey had a good view. About fourteen Islanders had jammed themselves into Verán’s apartment, including the three newly elected Councillors.

Most of the remaining guests were men, several women having taken their leave early. Some clustered around Verán’s couch, eager to win his favor. Others formed smaller groups, talking and laughing with a raucous boisterousness never heard in the Lounge.

Someone had brought a few bottles of black market liquor, the kind of rotgut soldiers and drivers drank. You weren’t supposed to mix it with sap, so everyone did. The women who remained were drinking hard; one of them stared at Tilrey across the room with an expression of voyeuristic pity, fascination, or both. He stared back until she dropped her eyes.

And Gersha? He’d vanished nearly an hour ago, into Verán’s study or bathroom, clearly taking refuge from the scene in here. His disappearance had roughly coincided with Tilrey’s licking a half-vial of sap from Verán’s palm.

The hefty dose had numbed Tilrey, was still numbing him, and he told himself he didn’t care. Didn’t care that Verán’s hand was burrowing under his tunic, or that Besha was possessively massaging his foot and ankle. Didn’t care that Gersha was off sulking somewhere.

Trust Besha to remind him of the latter, though.

“Gersha’s deserted us,” the little Councillor said, slurring. “He’s mad with jealousy. Did you see him, Visha?”

Verán snickered absently. “I’m starting to think you’re projecting, Besha. It’d be fun to get a rise out of him, but Gersha’s cold as a cod, always has been.” He pinched Tilrey’s waist beneath the tunic, the other hand sneaking between his thighs. “Or is Gádden in love with you, child?”

“Love is a strong word, Fir,” Tilrey said. The word Verán had used, ináthera, also meant breathlessness.

He glanced across the room to where Bror lounged on a couch beside his own aged patron. His friend’s presence was reassuring; as much as they could, they’d look out for each other.

Verán gave Tilrey’s balls a brisk squeeze through his trousers, clearly beyond the point of caring who noticed. “Don’t correct my vocabulary. Is Gádden infatuated with you, then?”

“I don’t know, Fir.”

“How can you not know?” Verán tightened his grip, making Tilrey tense against the pain. “You’ve spent, what, five, six nights with him?”

“Gersha doesn’t appreciate what he has,” said Besha. “What I’d do for five nights with Nettsha.”

“All you’d have to do to have him tonight is win a seat away from the Mainland.” Verán withdrew his hand and smacked Tilrey’s thigh. “Up. Time for the next stage of this foolishness.”

The next stage, unsurprisingly, took place in the bedroom.

Tilrey let his mind go blank, the way he always did when things started to veer out of his control. (Control yourself, he’d told Gersha. Easier said than done.)

He sat on Verán’s bed and pulled his feet up without being told, hearing the murmurs and rustles of the other guests as they followed in Verán’s wake. He kept his gaze on the blinding bleached whiteness of the duvet so he wouldn’t have to count them or meet their eyes. Didn’t look up when Bror settled beside him.

Bror’s hand poked itself into his peripheral vision, a dark pool of sap in the palm. His breath was warm on Tilrey’s hair as he bent to whisper, “They want us together. This is for you.”

It was too much sap, over his usual limit, but Tilrey drank it all, grateful for an extension of the numbness. “You take me,” he said. “Easier.”

Someone had pulled an armchair to the head of the bed, and Verán settled himself there with the aid of his cane and Besha’s arm. “Whom do we want to see on top?” he barked, silencing the group.

The clustered Councillors offered no opinion. Tilrey could feel them becoming a touch abashed, but also intensely watchful.

Besha, leaning on the back of Verán’s chair, said, “Nettsha should take Bror. That’d be different.”

“Opinions pro and con?” Verán asked with gravity, as if he were on the Council floor.

“Con: Nettsha’s good at being on the bottom,” objected a younger voice, perhaps Akeina.

“Pro: he’s got a big cock,” said someone else.

Bror cleared his throat, slipping his arm around Tilrey. “With all due respect, Fira, we’d be happy to perform for you either way, but Nettsha is, I think, tired—”

“Meaning he’s sapped to his eyeballs,” a woman said derisively.

A man chuckled. “What a hard life, lounging around all day at the Republic’s expense.”

“Enough! We don’t want to argue all night.” Verán jabbed an imperious finger at Bror. “Fine, lad. Put him on his back and make it slow. Do it like a lover.”

“With pleasure, Fir.” Bror raised Tilrey’s chin and kissed him, long and wet, then tugged him tenderly into a supine position.

Tilrey tensed at first. He hated how fulsome and flattering Bror got around Upstarts. Submitting was one thing; pretending to like it was another.

But his mouth opened reflexively to Bror’s tongue, and when Bror got tired of that and transferred his attentions to Tilrey’s neck, and then to a nipple, the steady suckling relaxed him. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine they were alone in their usual room in the unoccupied apartment, amusing themselves on a long gray afternoon.

It was just sex, something they were both good at. Warm skin on warm skin, comfort and camaraderie with no expectations.

Bror unclasped the neck of Tilrey’s tunic and pulled off the tight garment, stage-whispering, “Ah, you’re so beautiful.”

Hands reached under his shirt and peeled it up; a warm tongue lapped at his other nipple. Tilrey arched his back—trained reflex, or genuine reaction? He had no idea anymore.

Someone gasped, and he remembered the crowd around the bed—breathing, watching.

It’ll be over soon. Let it happen.

When Bror crooked a finger inside him, slyly stimulating his prostate, he sucked in his breath and reared up before the numbness rushed in again. Let them see what they want to see.

“I told you he was capable of enthusiasm,” Besha said, close to his head.

Verán snorted gently. “Well, of course. Bror could make the dead stand at attention.”

He didn’t feel at attention. He was floating somewhere between the bed and the perfectly white draperies, like a man fallen and hallucinating in the snow. Drowning.

Someday I’ll jump from that parapet or another parapet, and no one will be able to stop me.

“Open your eyes, Nettsha,” Verán said sharply. “And keep them that way.”

Tilrey obeyed before he had time to think. His bleary gaze took in the peering audience of Councillors, white robes and mostly white faces, before fixing on the only face that mattered.

Gersha. He stood behind the others, halfway out of the room, but it was clear he could see what was happening on the bed. His face was livid, his eyes wide and glistening in the way Tilrey usually liked to see, but these weren’t tears of bliss.

Tilrey looked away again. Though he remained pliant in Bror’s arms, something within him went dead still.

Gersha had promised. He would control himself, just as Tilrey was, and let this happen. But would it really mean nothing tomorrow?

He kept his gaze trained upward and stared at the canopy while Bror fucked him—gasping theatrically and hissing obscene compliments for the watchers’ benefit, while Tilrey made no noise at all.

He counted. Bror was clearly holding back a little, varying his rhythm, trying to give the Councillors a good show. Perhaps he hoped that would make things easier for his friend afterward. It took him seven minutes and forty-nine seconds to spatter Tilrey’s stomach and chest with come and collapse heavily, burying his face in Tilrey’s neck.

Only after Bror had whispered, “You doing okay?” and gotten up again, and the Councillors had begun to get bored and wander back into the other room—only then did Tilrey allow himself to glance where Gersha had been.

His young Councillor was gone.

The late-night tram was oddly peaceful, an oasis of glaring fluorescents wending its way between the snow-encrusted behemoths. Gersha remembered how much he used to enjoy taking the near-empty tram home late at night from the Sector, before he had a car and driver. How anonymous he used to feel under his heavy coat.

He didn’t enjoy this ride. He’d removed his robe of office and sat with his feet up on the seat, his face hidden behind his knees, grateful that no one—not even Bosh—would see the look on his face.

He’d left Bosh and the car behind at Verán’s, with calm instructions to wait and bring Tilrey home when he was done performing his function at the party. Bland, formal phrases to hide the inflammation that burned in him: the shock, the misery, the shame.

That was it: shame. It was one thing to hand Tilrey off at the Lounge and know he was going to another man’s bed. It was another thing to watch it happen.

Not with an Upstart, at least. But he would never forget the sight of Tilrey giving himself so easily, so seemingly willingly, to that kettle boy with the thick neck and the stupid, amiable expression. Gersha wasn’t even sure of the other boy’s name—Bror something?

Sleeping in each other’s arms, he and Tilrey had been so close that sometimes Gersha wasn’t sure where one of them ended and the other began. Whose freckle was that? Whose scar? Whose breath? Now, in the tram, he felt Bror’s hands on him, Bror’s tongue in his mouth. Bror was all over him, inside him, while the entire party watched.

And Besha—Gersha closed his eyes, trying to obliterate the memory of Besha’s furrowed brow and his hungry eyes, watching the whole thing.

He already knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight in the bed he and Tilrey had shared. Everything would assault him with unwelcome memories—the pillows, the duvet, the book on the bedside table. The room’s very outlines would be crisp and hostile in the new light of his solitude.

Because he could never have Tilrey again.

Not if the penalty for their love-making was this bone-deep ache, this disgust with everything that met his eye. Not if the memories of their time together had to be polluted by Verán’s sarcasm and Besha’s lust and the glassy-eyed fascination of the other Councillors. No—if Gersha so much as touched the boy now, all their faces would swim before his mental vision, mocking him.

Little green-eyed whore. You look just like her.

Was he being fastidious? Cruel? Maybe a little, but then, it wasn’t like the boy would really care if he stopped going to Gersha’s bed. Such things didn’t affect him the way they apparently did Gersha.

Verán was right to call Gersha “infatuated,” and maybe even that other, much worse term, in love. He had no boundaries, no restraint.

Gersha rose and got off at his stop, proud of how dry his eyes had remained. He was old enough to know a whore can’t be a lover, and that celibacy is not a commitment one tosses lightly aside.

But then, as the cold buffeted him, he heard Tilrey’s voice say, “Whatever happens won’t mean anything the next day.” And he strode to the parapet and gazed down at the city and wept, his tears freezing before they fell.

They melted when the cold drove him back into the apartment. The thought of his bedroom was still unbearable.

He paused before Tilrey’s door, then eased it open—stealthily, as if he expected to be caught. As if he didn’t have a perfect right to enter any room in his own home.

The bed in its alcove was neatly made, the closet shut, nothing on the bedside table. It was hard to believe anyone lived here. Gersha fell to his knees and pressed his face against the spread, the pillow—and yes, there was the faint musk he knew so well from his own bedclothes.

He meant to leave, but something took hold of him, and he groaned and sprawled out full length, clutching the pillow to his chest.

He lay there, breathing the scent in, until his eyes closed.

The first man was middle-aged, with a puffy face and sparse, carrot-colored hair. He had won the drawing of lots, but he looked more weary and duty-bound than happy as he plunked himself on the bed.

“Congratulations on your election, Fir,” Tilrey said, after the Councillor-elect had stared at him for what felt like a full minute, either shy or loath to make a move.

Well, perhaps it wasn’t a sufficiently appetizing prospect. Tilrey had been allowed to wash Bror’s spunk off his chest, but not to dress, and he was far too aware of his bee-stung lips and the love bites purpling his neck. He twitched the duvet down, exposing the rest of his body, and was relieved when the Upstart took the bait and crawled forward to roll him over.

Best to get it over with fast.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” the man asked somewhat later, moving monotonously on top of Tilrey.

Tilrey shook his head and resumed biting his knuckle to blunt the sensation. “A little raw, Fir,” he added after a moment, thinking the man might want to hurt him. The problem with first-timers was that you never knew.

The Councillor-elect thrust a little more gently after that. Two minutes and eighteen seconds later, he came, shuddering hard and crying a name Tilrey couldn’t make out.

The second man must have been waiting behind the door. Youngish for a Councillor, he had a long, dour face.

“I don’t think I want to be inside you,” he said, once the first man was gone and they were alone. “No offense, but my immune system is sensitive.”

“I’m tested for everything twice a month, Fir.” In another life, Tilrey might have been offended by the disgust twisting the Upstart’s face. Now he only cared that the man’s squeamishness could cause trouble. Verán wanted him to oblige all three of the new Councillors and might know if he didn’t do it properly. Men talked about these things.

“But you just—well, you and that other piece . . .” The man gestured helplessly at the spot where Bror and Tilrey had been. “And then my colleague. I don’t relish the thought of going third, that’s all.”

Believe me, I relish the thought of you doing it even less. But he didn’t roll his eyes. “Maybe there’s something else you’d like?”

“Maybe,” the Councillor-elect allowed.

Tilrey crept to him on his knees, the way he had that first night with Gersha, and unbuttoned the man’s trousers. The sensitive Upstart turned out to be highly amenable to the ministrations of his mouth.

“You won’t belong to our Island until you’ve sampled its exclusive fruits,” Verán had proclaimed grandly to the Councillors-elect an hour earlier, after Bror had gone to clean himself up. To make sure everyone understood the metaphor, he’d leaned over the bed and patted Tilrey’s ass. “Still gloriously fresh and ripe, believe me.”

Tilrey didn’t feel particularly fresh, but now he distracted himself thinking about fruits, where they grew in Harbour, and how they might look before they were dried and shipped thousands of miles north for Oslov consumption.

Linnett had given him a fresh apple once, something he’d never eaten before or since. In Harbour, you can pluck an apple off a tree and take a bite, the Magistrate had said. You can bathe in rivers and lakes, if you find one that’s sewage free. You would not believe the sensation of cool running water on your skin, Rishka—it feels alive.

Sometimes he cursed Linnett for teaching him so much about a world he’d never see. Was Linnett living out his exile happily in some Harbourer fiefdom right now, strolling in the grass and eating apples and peaches off trees?

The second man came with an animal grunt, a warm gush in Tilrey’s throat, and lay back on the pillows looking unpleased with himself. On the way out of the room, he tried to give Tilrey a vial of sap, but Tilrey shook his head.

“You’re Verán’s guest, Fir.” And I’m not a cheap brothel whore.

The third man didn’t say a thing, just lunged. That was something of a relief, because Tilrey’s throat was raw. He let the loose-bellied, white-haired Councillor-elect push his legs over his head and braced himself, knowing this one wouldn’t tenderly prep him as Bror had.

(This was nothing, he reminded himself, closing his eyes and clenching a fist. He’d had worse nights.)

The man panted and grunted, his incoherent vocalizations occasionally solidifying into a “slut” or “whore,” and took an eternity to finish. Then he collapsed on top of Tilrey and began to snore.

Tilrey tried to sleep as well, but everything itched or was sore, and the man’s head was weighing hard on his collarbone. And now he couldn’t repress stray thoughts of Gersha.

The look on the young Councillor’s fine-boned face as he’d stood there. The horror.

Tilrey was relieved when the door clicked open, and Verán called, “Finleifer! I’m hoping you’re done in there. I’m an old man, and I’m particular about sleeping in my own bed.”

With a series of grunts, the third Councillor-elect hauled himself upright and went in search of his clothes. Tilrey lay still until he was gone, then stretched each martyred limb and tugged the duvet up to cover himself.

He hadn’t rested long when Verán yanked it back down again.

“Well, then, lad.” The majority leader traced new, fingertip-sized bruises on Tilrey’s shoulder. “How do you like our new blood?”

Tilrey rolled obediently toward the old man, knowing he wasn’t required to answer. The sap Bror had given him was wearing off, and he ached like hell, but he could endure one more, and probably more than that. Strapping boy. “Maybe I could shower first, Fir?”

Verán made a repulsed sound. “I don’t want your ass tonight, thanks. Lie back and give me your mouth.”

Letting Verán’s cock choke him wasn’t pleasant, but it was comparatively easy. Tilrey closed his eyes, focused on breathing with the man’s scrotum dangling in his face, and let his thoughts drift to Gersha.

He’d been doing that a lot recently. He didn’t imagine the sex, just gazing down on the man’s sleeping form.

The golden freckles, the unruly curls, the delicate incipient crow’s-feet. The knob of the shoulder, the slim hips; the coarse, dark chest hair.

My little Strutter, he thought, imagining tracing the graceful line of the Councillor’s hip with a finger. What would it be like to fuck this man? My passionate prude. I know how to make you squirm and cry for mercy.

Tilrey kept Gersha in his mind as he swallowed down Verán’s load, trying not to wince at the dry itch in his abused throat. He thought of Gersha as he curled into himself and turned his back on the majority leader, not giving two fucks whether he was being disrespectful. He thought of Gersha as he slipped toward sleep.

His last thought woke him with a jerk.

Of course it’ll mean something tomorrow. He’ll never want me again.