Chapter 14: In a Maze — The Key of Oslov

Volume 11: Crosscurrents and Consequences

Chapter 14 In a Maze

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

“And then, well, the two of us were married,” Gersha said. “Not in the eyes of the law, of course, but in our own.”Artur stopped dead, his shovel in midair. They were in the shed, out of Tilrey’s earshot, preparing a load of fuel for the stoves indoors. “You had a ceremony?”“Yes. Privately,” Gersha added, being deliberately vague about where the ceremony had taken place.In telling Artur the history of his relationship with Tilrey, he’d been as thorough as he dared—even including parts that still made him cringe, such as the time he’d sent Tilrey to Ranek Egil for interrogation. But he’d been careful to omit any mention of the Southern Hearth. Artur might still have ties to Colonel Thibault, who could pose almost as much of a threat to the Dissident outpost as Oslov could.Artur thrust his shovel back into the bin of dried caribou dung, looking a little stunned by everything he’d heard. After a moment, though, his expression turned thoughtful. “That must have been fun—play-acting at marriage.”Gersha pulled a damp wood chip out of his own bin and tossed it in the discards pile. “It wasn’t play-acting any more than your marriage is. He’s my husband. I’m with him for life.”“Are you, Fir?”The more Gersha saw of Artur and Moneta’s daily routine, the more impressed he was with their survival out here. He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter what this exile thought of him or Tilrey or their relationship. But from the moment last night when he heard Artur call Tilrey “Rishka” in that familiar, almost elder-brotherly way, it had mattered. Artur had tried to protect Tilrey back when he needed it most. He deserved to know that Tilrey was happy now, not being hurt or used again; Gersha needed him to believe it.But Artur showed no signs of believing it. Half the time he treated Gersha with icy deference, and the other half he bordered on nasty. “You seem to think you know us better than we know ourselves,” Gersha said now, sadly.Artur emptied a stinky shovelful of dung into the crate they were filling. “You’re an unusual case. But I’ve known other Upstarts who claimed to be attached for life to their Drudge lovers, and it never ended well—for the Drudge, anyway.”He’ll see what I was, Tilrey had said about Artur back at the base. More and more, Gersha understood what he’d meant. “You’re protective of Tilrey. So am I.”“So you keep telling me, Fir.”Don’t get angry. Stay reasonable. “But I’m not what you think. I’m not using him. I won’t snap out of it and . . . turn against him. I’m in way too deep.”Artur snorted, bending to fill the shovel again. “Exactly how are you in too deep? Forgive my skepticism, but how have you compromised yourself, Fir? Is there physical evidence against you? Have you met with Dissident leaders? Could anyone testify against you besides Tilrey?”“Yes!” Gersha thought of the Duke, of Besha, of Sergeant Aurinthal. They all had reasons to keep quiet, but with the right incentives, they knew enough to ruin him.A wood chip slipped from his trembling fingers to the floor. As he bent to pick it up, his mind filled with pictures of the possibilities he’d been studiously repressing: being arrested, shackled, locked up between white walls or in the dark. Shamed. Tortured into giving evidence against his husband. Exiled.He held tight to the bin with both hands, finding his gravity again. “Yes, I’m compromised. Forgive me if I don’t want to give you any specifics, and if I—I—well, I’m new to this. Leading this double life. It’s not always easy.”He raised his eyes to find Artur looking straight at him. The bearded man hid his feelings well, but his eyes were doubtful.Gersha returned the gaze. “And sometimes I’m scared,” he finished.A subtle something relaxed in Artur’s face as he bent to his task again. “Good. You should be.”Gersha swallowed what he wanted to say (Who are you to tell me what to do?). He plunged his hand into the bin, looking for the wet chips.Artur kept talking: “You’re not the first Strutter I’ve seen turn against the power structure that put you where you are. Every year young high-named Upstarts leave University vowing to root out corruption in the system. But almost none of them stay the course, because they’re more comfortable with ideals than realities. The ones who actually Dissent, let alone rebel, tend to be fools who get caught. Are you a fool, Gersha?”“No.” Gersha remembered poor young Fredrich Akeina, who’d been exiled after Celinda recruited him to the True Hearth and then turned on him. “But you’re right about me, or at least about who I used to be. I wasn’t comfortable with certain realities, either. I was so disgusted by the dirty work of politics that I could barely fulfill the duties of my office. But Tilrey changed that.”“Did he?”Make your case. No anger. “He showed me my ideals were meaningless within a corrupt system. He taught me to use the dirty work of politics to reform that system. And then I stepped across the threshold and realized these patchy little reforms aren’t enough. We need a radical overhaul—yes, a revolution.” His heart thudded against his ribcage as he spoke the word, one he didn’t think he’d ever used with Tilrey.Artur stuck the shovel in the ground and rested his elbows on the handle. “That’s a nice speech. And I’m sure Rishka taught you well. He’s certainly learned a lot about politics since I knew him.”“That’s an understatement.” Examples of Tilrey’s political acumen crowded into Gersha’s brain. He was opening his mouth to list them when Artur continued as if he hadn’t spoken:“But personally, I care about people, not politics.” A gesture back toward the house. “My wife, my kids, the young people who come to me for training. They’re my compass points. What about you?”“What do you mean?” Gersha picked up a wood chip and stared at it, trying to remember what he was supposed to be examining it for.“Let’s get real, Fir. This man you call your husband, your teacher—you kept him as your kettle boy for two years.” Artur’s hands were in his pockets now, his eyes narrowed on Gersha. “And I happen to know that Tilrey wasn’t a normal kettle boy. He didn’t choose the life; he was forced into it. So: You sent him off to get fucked by other men. You let your peers use and degrade him and pretended you didn’t care. You even sent him to Int/Sec to be tortured and grilled about his loyalties—yes, I listened carefully to your story, Fir Councillor.”Gersha realized his lip was caught between his teeth. When he released it, he tasted blood. “I did do those things. I regret them, more than I can say. But—”“You were a different person then. Right. But why did it take you seven years to become whoever you are now, Fir? You saw Tilrey being hurt, over and over. That didn’t bother you? You had to wait till a revolution made ideological sense to you?”A few moments ago, the drafty shed had felt chilly to Gersha. Now tears made hot tracks down his cheeks, and his skin was warm and tight with shame. “You went along with it, too,” he said, turning the accusation back on Artur even as he knew he was just making himself look worse. “He said you ‘trained’ him. What does that mean? Nothing good, I’m guessing.”“You’re right.” Artur sank into a sitting position, sprawled against the bin of dung. “I know how Redda works,” he said quietly, as if the fight had left him. “You’re scared to rock the boat, so you go along with things. Even when they make you queasy. You tell yourself it’s all for the best. ‘He’ll be better off in the Magistrate’s bed. Serving Councillors is an honor. He’ll have a better future this way.’ I used those reasons on myself, even, back when Malsha twisted my arm to make me into his kettle boy.”“You were his kettle boy?” Gersha didn’t recall Tilrey mentioning that.“Yeah. Only for a year before he made me his secretary, and I made damn sure the old bastard paid me with more than vague promises. Malsha got my sister Raised.”Gersha could believe Malsha had had that much power. “Tilrey didn’t get ‘paid,’ though. Not that way.”“No.” Artur grimaced. “He didn’t have leverage like I did. He was nobody, and he had shirking on his record. Malsha told me to calm him down, train him, be his friend, reconcile him to his new life. I did my best. Wish I hadn’t.”The grim set of the man’s mouth hinted at memories too ugly to voice. “Tilrey doesn’t blame you,” Gersha said almost gently. “You are his friend, or that’s how he sees you.”“I know that, and sometimes it makes it worse. But let’s talk about you, Gersha. I’m sure you had your own rationalizations. Maybe Tilrey told you he was ‘fine,’ he ‘wasn’t breakable.’ And you chose to believe him.”Gersha scrubbed his face; the hand came away wet. I’m not breakable. Tilrey had told him that over and over; apparently Artur had heard some version of it, too.He forced himself to speak past the constriction in his throat. “I chose to believe him. I wanted to believe him.”“Even in bed?” Artur’s voice faltered, and Gersha realized he, too, was blinking back tears. “Even when you were intimate with him, night after night? Even when he made you come? Even when he had nightmares? How could you keep telling yourself those lies, Gersha? How could you keep believing the lies he told you?”A great shudder passed over Gersha as he remembered those early nights with Tilrey, so full of excitement and terror for him. Tilrey had insisted he could handle anything his life dished out. And he was tough in ways that Gersha wasn’t, thick-skinned and resilient and adaptable. Wasn’t he?“You know about the nightmares?” Gersha asked in a small voice.“Are you asking whether I ever spent the night with him? Not the way you think. But his life was a fucking nightmare at that point, if you want to know the truth.”Gersha’s first impulse was to express shock, but he knew how Artur would react to that. And rightly, because Gersha had always known there was a time when the nightmares that made Tilrey thrash and cry out had been his waking reality, hadn’t he? Worse—he’d witnessed part of that nightmare.“The first time we met,” he said, feeling the words yanked out of him. “Before Malsha went into exile. Twelve years ago, almost. Malsha invited me to dinner. He wanted to coax me to have, uh, a threesome with them. The way he talked, the way he offered the boy . . . and Tilrey was so young. So scared. So I ran away. Tried to forget it happened. I was so ashamed.”He’d done his best to bury the memory of that frightened eighteen-year-old boy at Malsha’s side, to forget the boy was Tilrey, and until now he’d mostly succeeded.“So you know what it was like for him, then,” Artur said, his voice less harsh. “That never bothered you later?”Gersha squeezed his eyes tight shut. “I couldn’t think about it. I knew, but I—I couldn’t let it in.”It all washed over him again: how dirty and guilty and hideous he’d felt going home after that encounter with Malsha and his kettle boy. He could still feel Malsha’s eyes traveling over his own body, sizing him up, and he didn’t just feel bad because he couldn’t help Tilrey. He felt bad because he had a sinking intuition that Malsha saw him and Tilrey as essentially the same—objects of lust. Pretty toys to play with. “Whores” like Gersha’s mother.To prove he wasn’t any of that, to prove he was a true Gádden, Gersha had walked away. For selfish reasons. Because he could.“I couldn’t put myself in his place,” he said, tears blinding him. “I mean, I knew how, but I wasn’t strong enough. I was afraid.”A red sea of shame boiled, and he let it pull him under. Let it drown him. So I let myself believe nothing could hurt him. I let him keep getting hurt.A touch on his arm brought him back, and he opened his eyes and found Artur standing before him, the lean face tight with pain. “The first step is to admit it, Fir.”“Gersha.” He choked back something that was almost a sob. “Please.”The hand withdrew. “Say it every day, Gersha. You were afraid. You are afraid. If you want a revolution, you damn well should be afraid. Stop being such a stupid proud Oslov and admit it.”Gersha blinked hard to expel a stray tear. “And if I do admit I’m afraid, what happens?”Artur’s mouth quirked. “Search me. I’m still finding out. But in your case . . . well, maybe it strengthens that marriage bond of yours. Maybe the play-acting gets real.”*Vera knocked again at her mother’s door, but there was no answer. The windowless, gray-carpeted hallway was clad in shadows.Perhaps Albertine had gone to dinner without her; it was well into the evening. Vera had spent the day huddled on the couch watching great gauzy curtains of snow batter the windows. Daylight had faded soon after noon; the darkness seemed to have lasted for centuries.She’d barely moved since her mother left her after their conversation; hadn’t even made herself tea. The most exertion she’d managed was to use her handheld to ask Lisha to reserve a spot for her on the same transport to the Southern Range that Albertine would take tomorrow morning. Her thoughts kept whirling like the storm, round and round in fruitless circles, holding her body in agonizing stillness.

I can’t tell Tollsha. I must tell Tollsha. This is the least I can do.

Over and over the same scenes replayed in her mind: those three series of encounters with Tilrey that she’d held so close to her heart. When they were both eighteen, in the spare room of her family’s vacation house. A year or so later, in her student room in Redda. And those meetings in her apartment nearly nine months ago.Each time, she’d taken the initiative. She’d broken into the room where he was locked up. She’d spotted him in the Library and started a conversation and invited him home with her. She’d asked him to help her with her little marital problem. He never said no. He always seemed friendly, if occasionally edgy or hesitant.She pretended they were equals, and Tilrey went along with it—or seemed to. When she allowed herself to think about his real status in life at all, she imagined that she was Válya, the clan chief’s daughter, and he was Vodion, enslaved by her father. If she strengthened him with her love, maybe he’d win his freedom with boldness and trickery.And he had won his freedom, but if there was any truth behind the legend, it had disappeared into the snow-mists of time. Perhaps the real Vodion never loved Válya, only used her. Perhaps she only loved him because he was in chains, at her mercy.Tilrey hadn’t been in chains when they conceived their child. He’d chosen those encounters. But he had a political motive that he took great pains to spell out so there could be no ambiguity.“Are you looking for the elder Fir’n Linnett?”Startled out of her bitter thoughts, Vera turned to find Mal. “Yes. Did my mother go to dinner?”There was an unwonted jauntiness to Mal’s manner, as if he’d been drinking. “Not yet, Fir’n. Dinner’s late on festival days. Your Fir’n mother wanted to see our greenhouses, so Lisha’s taking her on a tour. Meanwhile, she—Lisha—said I should bring you outdoors to see the maze.”The maze. It felt like months ago that Vera had spotted the colored lights from Lisha’s window, but suddenly she wanted very badly to go outdoors and see whatever they’d set up out there. Maybe in the storm, with the snow stinging her cheeks, these hateful thoughts would loosen their hold on her brain.“I’d like that,” she said. Then, as Mal led the way toward the lift, “But won’t the storm carry us away?”“Oh, the storm’s let up, Fir’n. It’s just a quiet little snowfall now.”Vera saw nothing “quiet” about the flakes that buffeted her as she stepped outside a quarter-hour later, snug in her hooded parka and high boots. The wind was no longer a gale, and its chill was tolerable, but the snow still limited visibility in every direction. A latticework of tiny colored lights stretched above her, marking out a sort of plaza. She couldn’t see where they ended, only that the plaza was full of people, dancing and roughhousing and throwing snowballs.The throb of a bass guitar tugged at her, joined by a drumbeat, a gong, and the unearthly keen of a theremin. A girl stood on a podium whisper-singing into a microphone, supported by three bandmates: “Don’t let me drown in the long winter’s night; / My sweet love, keep me alight. / Burn me with your fire, freeze me with your grace, / Spin and spin till we leave no trace.”Vera couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard music, recorded or live—back in university? Music was for lovesick teenagers and Drudges. But everybody knew this song—green hells, this song. Her hips swayed without her conscious consent, mirroring the movements of the dancers—some entwining sinuously in twos and threes, others floundering gracelessly through the snow.“Would you like to dance, Fir’n?”Mal was grinning a bit too wide—she must look ridiculous. Yet he held out his hand like he meant it. “You’re catching the beat.”What did it matter? She was leaving tomorrow. Without a word, Vera took the gloved hand and let Mal lead her out among the dancers.At first, they stayed at arm’s length. But as the singer launched into the second chorus, he caught her around the waist and spun her, making her gasp. Mal backed off again, respecting her space, and Vera allowed herself to breathe. It was just a song, just a dance, just festival play. She found herself closing the distance between them, relaxing into the guidance of his strong arms.Everybody around them laughed a little too hard and lurched a little too often. Vera hadn’t sampled the punch, of course, but she felt drunk, too, the cold making her thick-skinned and light-headed. When they collided with a slow-moving flotilla of five dancers, she laughed in wild abandon. Spin and spin till we leave no trace.The song was the highlight of a musical retelling of the Vodion/Válya legend that Vera had watched and rewatched on the cylinder as a child. On the podium, a boy had joined his voice to the girl’s: “Bright eyes in the blizzard, warm breath in the storm; / Freezing together, we’re far from harm.”The last chord sounded, jarring and yearning and resigned at once. She wanted to keep spinning, but Mal jerked them to a halt. “Not too cold yet, Fir’n?”Vera shook her head. She wasn’t cold at all. She yelled to be heard above the raucous crowd: “What about the maze?”The entrance to the maze loomed just beyond the dance floor: Two pillars of sculpted snow rose above their heads, each topped with a flame-pink LED. They stepped through and found themselves in a corridor with smooth walls of packed snow on either side. The top was open to the air, but Vera could barely see over it, even when she stood on tiptoe and craned her neck. Here they were isolated from the rest of the festival.“Lead the way, Fir’n,” Mal said.Lights outlined the top of each pathway—the glittering trail she’d seen from Lisha’s window—but they were less visible down here. The walls of snow glowed softly with reflected radiance, dimming the farther they ventured from the entrance.Reaching a fork, Vera turned right; if she kept this up, she wouldn’t get lost. She expected to step out into the wind again any minute, but the passages twisted and turned and doubled back. The falling snow, spectrally backlit by the LEDs—pink, white, orange, amethyst—didn’t improve her sense of direction. Here and there, the sculptors had placed icy benches for revelers to rest, but every bench and intersection looked the same.Music sounded again in the distance. The snow walls warped the pitch as if they were underwater, and Vera couldn’t place the song. She took another right and came up against a dead end.“This is silly,” she said, bending to scoop up a handful of snow. She shaped it into a ball and used it to mark the intersection, setting it atop the closest wall. “We need to treat this systematically. Make a trail. Unless you have a better idea?”She turned to see what Mal thought and found only a shadowy corridor.“Mal?” Vera backtracked, her gloved hand feeling along the icy wall. He couldn’t be far. He wouldn’t have abandoned her. When had she last seen him, though? At the next turning, she went left, retracing her steps toward the entrance. Yes, this was familiar. Hadn’t she passed through this wash of sapphire light?Her toes were starting to tingle. She could hear the laughter and shouts of the revelers frustratingly close by. If he was playing a prank, it wasn’t funny. “Mal!” she called, louder.Left. Another bench. Left again. She should be so close now. The cold stiffened her joints, slowing her progress, and she remembered how she and Tilrey had imagined living in an ice palace like the Frozen Princess. I’d have to be magic with ice running through my veins.Sometimes Tilrey did seem to have ice running through his veins; sometimes he was so cruel to her. No, not cruel exactly—it wasn’t his fault. It was her fault, or rather it was her father’s fault but also her fault, or everyone’s fault, or rather—well, never mind. The point was, she couldn’t live in this palace. She couldn’t survive here much longer; their child needed warmth.Vera staggered around a corner, ready to run the last few meters out of the maze—and collided with a wall.This shouldn’t be here. She punched the snow in frustration. Grainy shards of ice gave way, but the wall stood firm, and Vera turned to backtrack, a whimper rising in her throat. What was wrong with Mal? How could he—“Fir’n?”The figure forming from the darkness wasn’t Mal, only a sturdily built young woman, but relief washed over Vera. “Here. Please!”“Mal got a buzz from the Supervisor and had to run,” the woman said calmly, reaching her. “He asked me to make sure you got out safely.”“Thank everything green.” Vera grabbed the woman’s sleeve before she could stop herself. “Why did they make it so devilishly twisty? You’re not going to leave me, too, are you?”“Of course not.” Apparently unfazed by her panicked grip, her new guide turned and headed for the next intersection.Vera forced herself to release the woman’s parka and followed, teeth chattering. This was mortifying, but she would worry about that once they were safe indoors. “What’s your name?” she asked, eager to strengthen her connection to her rescuer.“Arno, Magdalena. People call me Dal.”Dal. Why did that sound familiar? The woman had dark braids, a broad face, expressive brows. Striking features, but not pretty ones. “Do you know Tilrey?”They came to a jerky pause, halfway to a fork. “Tilrey Bronn? Do you know him, Fir’n?”Something in the stranger’s tone, almost possessive, jarred Vera’s brain back into a semblance of logic. “You’re his Dal,” she said, remembering her very first meeting with Tilrey. “He told me you used to tease him about studying too much.”Moving again, Dal made a sound that could have been annoyed or amused. “He told you about me, Fir’n?”The honorific landed like an accusation, but Vera couldn’t be bothered by that now. Dal had taken a left turn, and the entrance was in sight, its dark maw looming ahead between the faintly glowing pillars. At last. Vera sped toward safety with as much dignity as she could muster, though her small toes and fingertips had gone numb and her sinuses throbbed.When she reached the opening, someone stood in the way. Shorter than Vera, Dal had planted herself across the corridor. “Is that why you’re here, Fir’n?” she asked. “Something to do with Tilrey?”“Of course not.” Vera drew herself up to her full height.“Because Lisha says you’re here to learn about our factories. If you know her son so well that he told you all about his old friends, it’s odd you didn’t mention that to his mother.”The woman’s voice was dark with suspicion. Maybe she, like Mal, thought this all had something to do with Int/Sec; maybe Mal had sent her here specifically to find out. Maybe they’d trapped Vera in the maze on purpose.“I did tell Lisha! I said—” But, as Vera started to repeat what she’d told Lisha, all the while outraged at herself for explaining to someone who didn’t need or deserve an explanation, something shifted deep inside her like a clenched fist opening. She tried to ignore it, stepping around Dal—just get inside.Before she could take another step, warm liquid slid down her thighs. Whatever she’d been going to say evaporated. She slumped back against the pillar as a sharp pain grabbed her round the abdomen and cut her in two. “Inside! Think I’m going into labor.”Time fragmented into distinct parcels. One moment she was having trouble holding herself upright, the lights swaying around her, and Dal’s solid shoulder was wedging itself under her arm. “We’ll get there, Fir’n. Just a few steps.” Then they were stumbling under the lattice of lights, the snow lashing their faces as Dal called out in her strong voice, “Get me emergency services!”Then they were inside. Dal and someone else were helping her out of her coat and boots. “I’m all right,” Vera protested. But another contraction seized her, twisting her in knots of agony, and she let someone’s arms lower her into a waiting wheelchair.Then she and Dal were in a lift, the floors flashing upward. Dal was saying something about a team being ready upstairs, and how far apart were the contractions?Vera needed to count. She needed to breathe. She knew this. But just for a moment, one thing was more important. “Lisha,” she said, no longer caring whom she was talking to or what anyone here thought of her. “My mother, too. But Lisha. Please, I want her there. Tell her. This is her grandson.”

“And then, well, the two of us were married,” Gersha said. “Not in the eyes of the law, of course, but in our own.”

Artur stopped dead, his shovel in midair. They were in the shed, out of Tilrey’s earshot, preparing a load of fuel for the stoves indoors. “You had a ceremony?”

“Yes. Privately,” Gersha added, being deliberately vague about where the ceremony had taken place.

In telling Artur the history of his relationship with Tilrey, he’d been as thorough as he dared—even including parts that still made him cringe, such as the time he’d sent Tilrey to Ranek Egil for interrogation. But he’d been careful to omit any mention of the Southern Hearth. Artur might still have ties to Colonel Thibault, who could pose almost as much of a threat to the Dissident outpost as Oslov could.

Artur thrust his shovel back into the bin of dried caribou dung, looking a little stunned by everything he’d heard. After a moment, though, his expression turned thoughtful. “That must have been fun—play-acting at marriage.”

Gersha pulled a damp wood chip out of his own bin and tossed it in the discards pile. “It wasn’t play-acting any more than your marriage is. He’s my husband. I’m with him for life.”

“Are you, Fir?”

The more Gersha saw of Artur and Moneta’s daily routine, the more impressed he was with their survival out here. He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter what this exile thought of him or Tilrey or their relationship. But from the moment last night when he heard Artur call Tilrey “Rishka” in that familiar, almost elder-brotherly way, it had mattered. Artur had tried to protect Tilrey back when he needed it most. He deserved to know that Tilrey was happy now, not being hurt or used again; Gersha needed him to believe it.

But Artur showed no signs of believing it. Half the time he treated Gersha with icy deference, and the other half he bordered on nasty. “You seem to think you know us better than we know ourselves,” Gersha said now, sadly.

Artur emptied a stinky shovelful of dung into the crate they were filling. “You’re an unusual case. But I’ve known other Upstarts who claimed to be attached for life to their Drudge lovers, and it never ended well—for the Drudge, anyway.”

He’ll see what I was, Tilrey had said about Artur back at the base. More and more, Gersha understood what he’d meant. “You’re protective of Tilrey. So am I.”

“So you keep telling me, Fir.”

Don’t get angry. Stay reasonable. “But I’m not what you think. I’m not using him. I won’t snap out of it and . . . turn against him. I’m in way too deep.”

Artur snorted, bending to fill the shovel again. “Exactly how are you in too deep? Forgive my skepticism, but how have you compromised yourself, Fir? Is there physical evidence against you? Have you met with Dissident leaders? Could anyone testify against you besides Tilrey?”

“Yes!” Gersha thought of the Duke, of Besha, of Sergeant Aurinthal. They all had reasons to keep quiet, but with the right incentives, they knew enough to ruin him.

A wood chip slipped from his trembling fingers to the floor. As he bent to pick it up, his mind filled with pictures of the possibilities he’d been studiously repressing: being arrested, shackled, locked up between white walls or in the dark. Shamed. Tortured into giving evidence against his husband. Exiled.

He held tight to the bin with both hands, finding his gravity again. “Yes, I’m compromised. Forgive me if I don’t want to give you any specifics, and if I—I—well, I’m new to this. Leading this double life. It’s not always easy.”

He raised his eyes to find Artur looking straight at him. The bearded man hid his feelings well, but his eyes were doubtful.

Gersha returned the gaze. “And sometimes I’m scared,” he finished.

A subtle something relaxed in Artur’s face as he bent to his task again. “Good. You should be.”

Gersha swallowed what he wanted to say (Who are you to tell me what to do?). He plunged his hand into the bin, looking for the wet chips.

Artur kept talking: “You’re not the first Strutter I’ve seen turn against the power structure that put you where you are. Every year young high-named Upstarts leave University vowing to root out corruption in the system. But almost none of them stay the course, because they’re more comfortable with ideals than realities. The ones who actually Dissent, let alone rebel, tend to be fools who get caught. Are you a fool, Gersha?”

“No.” Gersha remembered poor young Fredrich Akeina, who’d been exiled after Celinda recruited him to the True Hearth and then turned on him. “But you’re right about me, or at least about who I used to be. I wasn’t comfortable with certain realities, either. I was so disgusted by the dirty work of politics that I could barely fulfill the duties of my office. But Tilrey changed that.”

“Did he?”

Make your case. No anger. “He showed me my ideals were meaningless within a corrupt system. He taught me to use the dirty work of politics to reform that system. And then I stepped across the threshold and realized these patchy little reforms aren’t enough. We need a radical overhaul—yes, a revolution.” His heart thudded against his ribcage as he spoke the word, one he didn’t think he’d ever used with Tilrey.

Artur stuck the shovel in the ground and rested his elbows on the handle. “That’s a nice speech. And I’m sure Rishka taught you well. He’s certainly learned a lot about politics since I knew him.”

“That’s an understatement.” Examples of Tilrey’s political acumen crowded into Gersha’s brain. He was opening his mouth to list them when Artur continued as if he hadn’t spoken:

“But personally, I care about people, not politics.” A gesture back toward the house. “My wife, my kids, the young people who come to me for training. They’re my compass points. What about you?”

“What do you mean?” Gersha picked up a wood chip and stared at it, trying to remember what he was supposed to be examining it for.

“Let’s get real, Fir. This man you call your husband, your teacher—you kept him as your kettle boy for two years.” Artur’s hands were in his pockets now, his eyes narrowed on Gersha. “And I happen to know that Tilrey wasn’t a normal kettle boy. He didn’t choose the life; he was forced into it. So: You sent him off to get fucked by other men. You let your peers use and degrade him and pretended you didn’t care. You even sent him to Int/Sec to be tortured and grilled about his loyalties—yes, I listened carefully to your story, Fir Councillor.”

Gersha realized his lip was caught between his teeth. When he released it, he tasted blood. “I did do those things. I regret them, more than I can say. But—”

“You were a different person then. Right. But why did it take you seven years to become whoever you are now, Fir? You saw Tilrey being hurt, over and over. That didn’t bother you? You had to wait till a revolution made ideological sense to you?”

A few moments ago, the drafty shed had felt chilly to Gersha. Now tears made hot tracks down his cheeks, and his skin was warm and tight with shame. “You went along with it, too,” he said, turning the accusation back on Artur even as he knew he was just making himself look worse. “He said you ‘trained’ him. What does that mean? Nothing good, I’m guessing.”

“You’re right.” Artur sank into a sitting position, sprawled against the bin of dung. “I know how Redda works,” he said quietly, as if the fight had left him. “You’re scared to rock the boat, so you go along with things. Even when they make you queasy. You tell yourself it’s all for the best. ‘He’ll be better off in the Magistrate’s bed. Serving Councillors is an honor. He’ll have a better future this way.’ I used those reasons on myself, even, back when Malsha twisted my arm to make me into his kettle boy.”

“You were his kettle boy?” Gersha didn’t recall Tilrey mentioning that.

“Yeah. Only for a year before he made me his secretary, and I made damn sure the old bastard paid me with more than vague promises. Malsha got my sister Raised.”

Gersha could believe Malsha had had that much power. “Tilrey didn’t get ‘paid,’ though. Not that way.”

“No.” Artur grimaced. “He didn’t have leverage like I did. He was nobody, and he had shirking on his record. Malsha told me to calm him down, train him, be his friend, reconcile him to his new life. I did my best. Wish I hadn’t.”

The grim set of the man’s mouth hinted at memories too ugly to voice. “Tilrey doesn’t blame you,” Gersha said almost gently. “You are his friend, or that’s how he sees you.”

“I know that, and sometimes it makes it worse. But let’s talk about you, Gersha. I’m sure you had your own rationalizations. Maybe Tilrey told you he was ‘fine,’ he ‘wasn’t breakable.’ And you chose to believe him.”

Gersha scrubbed his face; the hand came away wet. I’m not breakable. Tilrey had told him that over and over; apparently Artur had heard some version of it, too.

He forced himself to speak past the constriction in his throat. “I chose to believe him. I wanted to believe him.”

“Even in bed?” Artur’s voice faltered, and Gersha realized he, too, was blinking back tears. “Even when you were intimate with him, night after night? Even when he made you come? Even when he had nightmares? How could you keep telling yourself those lies, Gersha? How could you keep believing the lies he told you?”

A great shudder passed over Gersha as he remembered those early nights with Tilrey, so full of excitement and terror for him. Tilrey had insisted he could handle anything his life dished out. And he was tough in ways that Gersha wasn’t, thick-skinned and resilient and adaptable. Wasn’t he?

“You know about the nightmares?” Gersha asked in a small voice.

“Are you asking whether I ever spent the night with him? Not the way you think. But his life was a fucking nightmare at that point, if you want to know the truth.”

Gersha’s first impulse was to express shock, but he knew how Artur would react to that. And rightly, because Gersha had always known there was a time when the nightmares that made Tilrey thrash and cry out had been his waking reality, hadn’t he? Worse—he’d witnessed part of that nightmare.

“The first time we met,” he said, feeling the words yanked out of him. “Before Malsha went into exile. Twelve years ago, almost. Malsha invited me to dinner. He wanted to coax me to have, uh, a threesome with them. The way he talked, the way he offered the boy . . . and Tilrey was so young. So scared. So I ran away. Tried to forget it happened. I was so ashamed.”

He’d done his best to bury the memory of that frightened eighteen-year-old boy at Malsha’s side, to forget the boy was Tilrey, and until now he’d mostly succeeded.

“So you know what it was like for him, then,” Artur said, his voice less harsh. “That never bothered you later?”

Gersha squeezed his eyes tight shut. “I couldn’t think about it. I knew, but I—I couldn’t let it in.”

It all washed over him again: how dirty and guilty and hideous he’d felt going home after that encounter with Malsha and his kettle boy. He could still feel Malsha’s eyes traveling over his own body, sizing him up, and he didn’t just feel bad because he couldn’t help Tilrey. He felt bad because he had a sinking intuition that Malsha saw him and Tilrey as essentially the same—objects of lust. Pretty toys to play with. “Whores” like Gersha’s mother.

To prove he wasn’t any of that, to prove he was a true Gádden, Gersha had walked away. For selfish reasons. Because he could.

“I couldn’t put myself in his place,” he said, tears blinding him. “I mean, I knew how, but I wasn’t strong enough. I was afraid.”

A red sea of shame boiled, and he let it pull him under. Let it drown him. So I let myself believe nothing could hurt him. I let him keep getting hurt.

A touch on his arm brought him back, and he opened his eyes and found Artur standing before him, the lean face tight with pain. “The first step is to admit it, Fir.”

“Gersha.” He choked back something that was almost a sob. “Please.”

The hand withdrew. “Say it every day, Gersha. You were afraid. You are afraid. If you want a revolution, you damn well should be afraid. Stop being such a stupid proud Oslov and admit it.”

Gersha blinked hard to expel a stray tear. “And if I do admit I’m afraid, what happens?”

Artur’s mouth quirked. “Search me. I’m still finding out. But in your case . . . well, maybe it strengthens that marriage bond of yours. Maybe the play-acting gets real.”

Vera knocked again at her mother’s door, but there was no answer. The windowless, gray-carpeted hallway was clad in shadows.

Perhaps Albertine had gone to dinner without her; it was well into the evening. Vera had spent the day huddled on the couch watching great gauzy curtains of snow batter the windows. Daylight had faded soon after noon; the darkness seemed to have lasted for centuries.

She’d barely moved since her mother left her after their conversation; hadn’t even made herself tea. The most exertion she’d managed was to use her handheld to ask Lisha to reserve a spot for her on the same transport to the Southern Range that Albertine would take tomorrow morning. Her thoughts kept whirling like the storm, round and round in fruitless circles, holding her body in agonizing stillness.

I can’t tell Tollsha. I must tell Tollsha. This is the least I can do.

Each time, she’d taken the initiative. She’d broken into the room where he was locked up. She’d spotted him in the Library and started a conversation and invited him home with her. She’d asked him to help her with her little marital problem. He never said no. He always seemed friendly, if occasionally edgy or hesitant.

She pretended they were equals, and Tilrey went along with it—or seemed to. When she allowed herself to think about his real status in life at all, she imagined that she was Válya, the clan chief’s daughter, and he was Vodion, enslaved by her father. If she strengthened him with her love, maybe he’d win his freedom with boldness and trickery.

And he had won his freedom, but if there was any truth behind the legend, it had disappeared into the snow-mists of time. Perhaps the real Vodion never loved Válya, only used her. Perhaps she only loved him because he was in chains, at her mercy.

Tilrey hadn’t been in chains when they conceived their child. He’d chosen those encounters. But he had a political motive that he took great pains to spell out so there could be no ambiguity.

“Are you looking for the elder Fir’n Linnett?”

Startled out of her bitter thoughts, Vera turned to find Mal. “Yes. Did my mother go to dinner?”

There was an unwonted jauntiness to Mal’s manner, as if he’d been drinking. “Not yet, Fir’n. Dinner’s late on festival days. Your Fir’n mother wanted to see our greenhouses, so Lisha’s taking her on a tour. Meanwhile, she—Lisha—said I should bring you outdoors to see the maze.”

The maze. It felt like months ago that Vera had spotted the colored lights from Lisha’s window, but suddenly she wanted very badly to go outdoors and see whatever they’d set up out there. Maybe in the storm, with the snow stinging her cheeks, these hateful thoughts would loosen their hold on her brain.

“I’d like that,” she said. Then, as Mal led the way toward the lift, “But won’t the storm carry us away?”

“Oh, the storm’s let up, Fir’n. It’s just a quiet little snowfall now.”

Vera saw nothing “quiet” about the flakes that buffeted her as she stepped outside a quarter-hour later, snug in her hooded parka and high boots. The wind was no longer a gale, and its chill was tolerable, but the snow still limited visibility in every direction. A latticework of tiny colored lights stretched above her, marking out a sort of plaza. She couldn’t see where they ended, only that the plaza was full of people, dancing and roughhousing and throwing snowballs.

The throb of a bass guitar tugged at her, joined by a drumbeat, a gong, and the unearthly keen of a theremin. A girl stood on a podium whisper-singing into a microphone, supported by three bandmates: “Don’t let me drown in the long winter’s night; / My sweet love, keep me alight. / Burn me with your fire, freeze me with your grace, / Spin and spin till we leave no trace.”

Vera couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard music, recorded or live—back in university? Music was for lovesick teenagers and Drudges. But everybody knew this song—green hells, this song. Her hips swayed without her conscious consent, mirroring the movements of the dancers—some entwining sinuously in twos and threes, others floundering gracelessly through the snow.

“Would you like to dance, Fir’n?”

Mal was grinning a bit too wide—she must look ridiculous. Yet he held out his hand like he meant it. “You’re catching the beat.”

What did it matter? She was leaving tomorrow. Without a word, Vera took the gloved hand and let Mal lead her out among the dancers.

At first, they stayed at arm’s length. But as the singer launched into the second chorus, he caught her around the waist and spun her, making her gasp. Mal backed off again, respecting her space, and Vera allowed herself to breathe. It was just a song, just a dance, just festival play. She found herself closing the distance between them, relaxing into the guidance of his strong arms.

Everybody around them laughed a little too hard and lurched a little too often. Vera hadn’t sampled the punch, of course, but she felt drunk, too, the cold making her thick-skinned and light-headed. When they collided with a slow-moving flotilla of five dancers, she laughed in wild abandon. Spin and spin till we leave no trace.

The song was the highlight of a musical retelling of the Vodion/Válya legend that Vera had watched and rewatched on the cylinder as a child. On the podium, a boy had joined his voice to the girl’s: “Bright eyes in the blizzard, warm breath in the storm; / Freezing together, we’re far from harm.”

The last chord sounded, jarring and yearning and resigned at once. She wanted to keep spinning, but Mal jerked them to a halt. “Not too cold yet, Fir’n?”

Vera shook her head. She wasn’t cold at all. She yelled to be heard above the raucous crowd: “What about the maze?”

The entrance to the maze loomed just beyond the dance floor: Two pillars of sculpted snow rose above their heads, each topped with a flame-pink LED. They stepped through and found themselves in a corridor with smooth walls of packed snow on either side. The top was open to the air, but Vera could barely see over it, even when she stood on tiptoe and craned her neck. Here they were isolated from the rest of the festival.

“Lead the way, Fir’n,” Mal said.

Lights outlined the top of each pathway—the glittering trail she’d seen from Lisha’s window—but they were less visible down here. The walls of snow glowed softly with reflected radiance, dimming the farther they ventured from the entrance.

Reaching a fork, Vera turned right; if she kept this up, she wouldn’t get lost. She expected to step out into the wind again any minute, but the passages twisted and turned and doubled back. The falling snow, spectrally backlit by the LEDs—pink, white, orange, amethyst—didn’t improve her sense of direction. Here and there, the sculptors had placed icy benches for revelers to rest, but every bench and intersection looked the same.

Music sounded again in the distance. The snow walls warped the pitch as if they were underwater, and Vera couldn’t place the song. She took another right and came up against a dead end.

“This is silly,” she said, bending to scoop up a handful of snow. She shaped it into a ball and used it to mark the intersection, setting it atop the closest wall. “We need to treat this systematically. Make a trail. Unless you have a better idea?”

She turned to see what Mal thought and found only a shadowy corridor.

“Mal?” Vera backtracked, her gloved hand feeling along the icy wall. He couldn’t be far. He wouldn’t have abandoned her. When had she last seen him, though? At the next turning, she went left, retracing her steps toward the entrance. Yes, this was familiar. Hadn’t she passed through this wash of sapphire light?

Her toes were starting to tingle. She could hear the laughter and shouts of the revelers frustratingly close by. If he was playing a prank, it wasn’t funny. “Mal!” she called, louder.

Left. Another bench. Left again. She should be so close now. The cold stiffened her joints, slowing her progress, and she remembered how she and Tilrey had imagined living in an ice palace like the Frozen Princess. I’d have to be magic with ice running through my veins.

Sometimes Tilrey did seem to have ice running through his veins; sometimes he was so cruel to her. No, not cruel exactly—it wasn’t his fault. It was her fault, or rather it was her father’s fault but also her fault, or everyone’s fault, or rather—well, never mind. The point was, she couldn’t live in this palace. She couldn’t survive here much longer; their child needed warmth.

Vera staggered around a corner, ready to run the last few meters out of the maze—and collided with a wall.

This shouldn’t be here. She punched the snow in frustration. Grainy shards of ice gave way, but the wall stood firm, and Vera turned to backtrack, a whimper rising in her throat. What was wrong with Mal? How could he—

“Fir’n?”

The figure forming from the darkness wasn’t Mal, only a sturdily built young woman, but relief washed over Vera. “Here. Please!”

“Mal got a buzz from the Supervisor and had to run,” the woman said calmly, reaching her. “He asked me to make sure you got out safely.”

“Thank everything green.” Vera grabbed the woman’s sleeve before she could stop herself. “Why did they make it so devilishly twisty? You’re not going to leave me, too, are you?”

“Of course not.” Apparently unfazed by her panicked grip, her new guide turned and headed for the next intersection.

Vera forced herself to release the woman’s parka and followed, teeth chattering. This was mortifying, but she would worry about that once they were safe indoors. “What’s your name?” she asked, eager to strengthen her connection to her rescuer.

“Arno, Magdalena. People call me Dal.”

Dal. Why did that sound familiar? The woman had dark braids, a broad face, expressive brows. Striking features, but not pretty ones. “Do you know Tilrey?”

They came to a jerky pause, halfway to a fork. “Tilrey Bronn? Do you know him, Fir’n?”

Something in the stranger’s tone, almost possessive, jarred Vera’s brain back into a semblance of logic. “You’re his Dal,” she said, remembering her very first meeting with Tilrey. “He told me you used to tease him about studying too much.”

Moving again, Dal made a sound that could have been annoyed or amused. “He told you about me, Fir’n?”

The honorific landed like an accusation, but Vera couldn’t be bothered by that now. Dal had taken a left turn, and the entrance was in sight, its dark maw looming ahead between the faintly glowing pillars. At last. Vera sped toward safety with as much dignity as she could muster, though her small toes and fingertips had gone numb and her sinuses throbbed.

When she reached the opening, someone stood in the way. Shorter than Vera, Dal had planted herself across the corridor. “Is that why you’re here, Fir’n?” she asked. “Something to do with Tilrey?”

“Of course not.” Vera drew herself up to her full height.

“Because Lisha says you’re here to learn about our factories. If you know her son so well that he told you all about his old friends, it’s odd you didn’t mention that to his mother.”

The woman’s voice was dark with suspicion. Maybe she, like Mal, thought this all had something to do with Int/Sec; maybe Mal had sent her here specifically to find out. Maybe they’d trapped Vera in the maze on purpose.

“I did tell Lisha! I said—” But, as Vera started to repeat what she’d told Lisha, all the while outraged at herself for explaining to someone who didn’t need or deserve an explanation, something shifted deep inside her like a clenched fist opening. She tried to ignore it, stepping around Dal—just get inside.

Before she could take another step, warm liquid slid down her thighs. Whatever she’d been going to say evaporated. She slumped back against the pillar as a sharp pain grabbed her round the abdomen and cut her in two. “Inside! Think I’m going into labor.”

Time fragmented into distinct parcels. One moment she was having trouble holding herself upright, the lights swaying around her, and Dal’s solid shoulder was wedging itself under her arm. “We’ll get there, Fir’n. Just a few steps.” Then they were stumbling under the lattice of lights, the snow lashing their faces as Dal called out in her strong voice, “Get me emergency services!”

Then they were inside. Dal and someone else were helping her out of her coat and boots. “I’m all right,” Vera protested. But another contraction seized her, twisting her in knots of agony, and she let someone’s arms lower her into a waiting wheelchair.

Then she and Dal were in a lift, the floors flashing upward. Dal was saying something about a team being ready upstairs, and how far apart were the contractions?

Vera needed to count. She needed to breathe. She knew this. But just for a moment, one thing was more important. “Lisha,” she said, no longer caring whom she was talking to or what anyone here thought of her. “My mother, too. But Lisha. Please, I want her there. Tell her. This is her grandson.”

Chapter End Notes

First Vera was schooled about not being empathetic to Tilrey, and now it’s Gersha’s turn! Tilrey and Gersha’s first meeting is described in more detail here in the prequel, including Gersha’s reaction when he goes home afterward. Whether it excuses him or not, that reaction is very Gersha.You just knew the kid wasn’t going to be delivered anywhere but Thurskein, right? :) I’ll take any excuse for a soap-opera twist. Thank you so much for reading! :)

Chapter End Notes

You just knew the kid wasn’t going to be delivered anywhere but Thurskein, right? :) I’ll take any excuse for a soap-opera twist. Thank you so much for reading! :)