Chapter 3: Battle of Wills — The Key of Oslov

Volume 13: Tales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part I: The Painted Boy

Chapter 3 Battle of Wills

Chapter Notes

Don’t know if I can continue posting twice a week, but for now I’m into this story, and I wanted to get this long chapter up. Thanks for reading!

Chapter Notes

Don’t know if I can continue posting twice a week, but for now I’m into this story, and I wanted to get this long chapter up. Thanks for reading!

The Painted Boy hurt.He’d been in withdrawal before, but never for so long. He told himself the symptoms were all in his head, but he couldn’t untense, even in a warm bath. When he managed to fall asleep, he woke with his fists clenched and his jaw sore from grinding. When he tried to eat, his throat closed, stomach acid flooding his mouth.He kept getting a weird sensation that people were stalking him, flitting nearer in the corner of his eye. In the gym, he came close to clocking a boy who stepped too abruptly into his space.If he hung on a little longer, maybe he’d get through the worst of it. He knew from talking to some of his older colleagues that even a heavy sap habit could be broken. But he didn’t want to get through the worst of it. He wanted his numbness back. He liked his life the way it was.

Wouldn’t you like to do something besides slowly kill yourself, Kai?

The gall of the Outer bitch asking him that. Upstart blood flowed in his veins. He’d had his whole life in front of him—marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Vreni, a Programming post in the Bureau of Labor like his mom and dad, kids and grandkids. He was good at sports and games, attractive to everybody, popular. Then the Notification board decided to make an example of him. Every year, a few children of Upstart parents ended up Drudges just to prove the system was fair, and that year Kai was the designated victim. Not his fault. Bors got lucky, and he got unlucky, and that was that.Vreni didn’t wait even a year after the Notification to dump Kai. He didn’t blame her any more than he blamed himself for ending up in this shithole. At least here he was of use, and he could fill the gaping hole inside him without stealing or begging or inconveniencing anyone.Until now, anyway. Not that the director could totally cut him off; he could still beg little nips off patrons to make the work more bearable. But it was never as deep a cushion as he needed for the hard knocks, and he didn’t dare push his luck by asking for a whole V to drink at one go. The patrons didn’t know what kind of tolerance he had.And so, as his cushion of sap dissolved, the Painted Boy lost the placid, resigned composure that made him so sought after. At his session with Fir Councillor Ekorin, he squirmed and swore under his breath while he was being fucked. With Fir Councillor Lindahl, he yelped during a flogging until he had to be gagged. When Fir Gelmedyn proudly touched the fresh tattoo on his calf, he flinched and cussed. Even simply being restrained made him itchy and resistant.“What’s gotten into you, sweetheart?” the professor asked sadly. The Painted Boy turned his face to the wall. He didn’t dare admit that his voracious appetite for pain was mostly a myth; without it, he had no unique selling point.They all still tipped him in sap, of course—two or three V per session, sometimes even four. But there was a new routine now. Lars or Svant tailed the Painted Boy back to his room and frisked him, relieving him of his sweet relief. When he demanded to see the director about this treatment, he came up against a wall. The director was busy, he was told. He could see Einara if he liked.Who the fuck had made that girl the queen of all whoredom? When she first got here, she was so shy she couldn’t even open her mouth to say, “Pass the rice.” She was still pretty in the soft, pale, yielding way she’d been then, but she held up her head like Hulda now, and her eyes were ice cold. She would show him no mercy.The Painted Boy didn’t want to tattle. Playing your patrons against the Brothel keeper was always a bad idea. But after three days and nights of deprivation, he reached his limit.Gourmanian liked to shackle the Painted Boy’s wrists to the head of the bed and hook his knees over a steel bar, splaying him out. Sometimes he had the Brothel staff arrange the Painted Boy this way an hour or so before his arrival, then train a cam on him. The Painted Boy waited in this position, hips rolled up and thighs spread, while Gourmanian was in his office or drinking tea with his family or whatever he did. Inked body on display, hole greased and open, and the whole thing beamed as a live feed to Gourmanian’s handheld, because the Councillor got off on just knowing he was ready.With a full vial of sap inside him, this ritual was just bearable. Now? Not even close.On this day, when Gourmanian finally arrived, the Painted Boy was whimpering. His thighs were killing him; he would have slid his knees off the bar if they hadn’t been strapped to it.Gourmanian barely seemed to notice anything different. “Ready for me, are you?”The Painted Boy managed to nod. The sooner they got started, the sooner he would be out of this hellish position. But when the Councillor tugged off his belt and snapped it in the air, he cried out in alarm: “Oh fuck, Fir. No!”“No?” The Councillor stared at him, confused, because the Painted Boy never said no to anything. “What’s wrong, love? Don’t you want it?”The Painted Boy closed his eyes and felt a pulse pounding in his temples. Back in school, he’d known Gourmanian’s niece—a wispy little thing with a massive crush on him. They’d hooked up at a party, on the dingy lino of a storeroom. In those days, no one would ever have tried something with him that he didn’t want. Now he had to plead.“I’m dry, Fir. No, not that way.” Green hells, he could barely even move. “I need a dip. Please. It hurts.”Gourmanian sighed gustily and drew out a vial, “What’s the problem? I thought we gave you more than enough to keep you happy.”After he’d lapped the half-V out of Gourmanian’s hand, the Painted Boy spilled most of the story. How his Fir’s generous gifts of sap had been confiscated, night after night. How he was being forced into a cruel and pointless sobriety.He knew better than to mention Bors Dartán; some secrets had to be kept inside the Brothel. He had no idea to whom Hulda wanted to sell Bors’s intel, but it might be someone well placed in the Sector. Councillors were always spying on each other. With Hulda’s connections, reporting her for corruption could only backfire on him.Gourmanian’s heavy brows beetled with concern, but not as much concern as the Painted Boy had hoped for. “I do worry sometimes about how deep you drown yourself, love,” he said. “What’s your usual daily dosage, anyway?”“Two, Fir.” Two and a half, sometimes three.Again the concerned look. “Don’t you think you should cut down a little? For your own sake?”The Painted Boy wanted to snap these straps and shackles like kitchen string and go wring the Councillor’s neck. These were the sorts of urges his two and a half daily vials usually saved him from.“Of course,” he said, forcibly converting his grimace of pain into a concerned expression to match Gourmanian’s. “But, you know, a little. A gradual cutdown. Would you mind, Fir, just, just—just getting me out of these fucking restraints? And talking to the director for me? Because if this goes on another second, I’m gonna scream, and not in the way you like.”“Well, he’s made his move,” Hulda said over tea in her quarters the following afternoon. “Councillor Gourmanian came to see me last night on his way out, very concerned about his favorite.”Einara’s throat tightened. “What did you do?” She’d never dealt directly with a disgruntled Councillor, unless you counted her occasional patron Besha Linbeck. He’d been miffed when he learned she’d passed his stray confessions about Tilrey Bronn to the True Hearth, and for nearly a year he’d shunned her. When he returned, he was colder, and he never discussed the fact that they were all on the same side now.Hulda looked more amused than worried. “I told the Councillor I’ve been monitoring Kai Meirthal’s sap intake for several months now, and it is, frankly, alarming.” She folded her hands, the picture of patronizing rectitude. “Any other employer would have sent the boy to moral rehab by now. If he keeps on the way he has, he’ll drown himself so deep he never comes back up.”Einara could imagine how this speech had landed with the Councillor. “Did you ask him to stop giving the boy sap?”“Oh no, no. Nothing like that.” A sly smile. “Never ask for anything directly. But it’s easy to arouse guilt in these men; they’ve all been taught to feel responsible for the fate of the world. I just set out the facts and lamented poor Kai’s likely fate if he was allowed to continue. I gave Fir Councillor a report signed by our staff medic, to make it official, and then I sat back and waited.”Einara could imagine how it had all played out. Hulda’s hazel eyes were still bright in her withered face; when she wanted to, she could be animated and persuasive. The Councillor didn’t stand a chance.Hulda jabbed a finger at her. “There! You’re smiling. No, no, don’t hide it. You’re allowed to be a human being.”Einara’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. Smiling was something she did to please patrons, and occasionally Hulda. She didn’t like how it looked on her—contorted. Vulnerable. “What did the Councillor say to that?” she asked, forcing her face back into attentive neutrality.“He was shocked, shocked, to hear the situation was so dire. He hadn’t had the slightest idea the boy was sapping so heavily, or even that a human being could survive doses in excess of two V a day.” Hulda didn’t hide her own delight. “He vowed to stop enabling the boy’s addiction, and he promised to make sure all his friends did the same.”They had Kai cornered, then. But Einara suspected the hard part was still to come. “He’ll break,” she said, picking up her tea tumbler. “But what about after? Kai says it’s useless to approach your nephew for intel, even dangerous. I don’t think he’s lying about that.”“He’s not lying about how he sees the situation.” Hulda spread her hands. “But I know my nephew, and Kai has more power than he realizes. It’s your job to show him how to use it. Give him reasons to join the living again. Time to step up, my girl.”Even Einara, for all her strength of purpose, sometimes had trouble getting out of bed to face another day in this place. What reason was she supposed to give Kai to “join the living”? But she kept her chin up as she nodded.“Show me my mark,” Enrik Lindahl said. His voice had that breathless quality it always got when he was het up and hard, finished with the punishment and ready to start the fucking part of the evening.“I—give me a minute, Fir.” The Painted Boy’s ass and thighs were on fire from the new stripes Lindahl had laid there. If he rolled over on his back to show the Fir the sunflower tattoo on his nipple, he wouldn’t be able to keep quiet. He’d managed to avoid the gag this time, but only by sinking his teeth into the meat of his arm with each stroke.He clenched his fists and just breathed, using every technique he knew to keep the pain at a safe remove. Could a whipping really hurt this much without drawing blood, each individual stroke searing as if it flayed? Maybe Councillor Lindahl had overstepped the rules again. Or maybe the Painted Boy just wasn’t used to taking it sober.Everybody thought he liked this—and he did, sometimes, with a high enough dose to mellow the experience. He didn’t mind offering himself, didn’t mind being disciplined and humiliated—he deserved that treatment, especially from Strutters. He was unworthy. He was nothing. But this pain. There was nowhere to hide from it. It made his vision blur and his voice go ragged.“Please—I just need a little nip, Fir.” Lindahl usually refused to give him sap during their sessions, saying, I want you present. But too fucking bad. “Just to soften it. Take the edge off.”Fingertips stroked his flank just below one of the welts, more impatient than tender. “Is it really so bad?”The Painted Boy drew in a hissing breath. “Please, Fir.”“I’m afraid not,” Lindahl said in his prim way. “We aren’t doing ‘little nips’ anymore, or anything else. Well, I suppose I can have you like this.” He reached over the Painted Boy for the lube on the nightstand. “I’ll be careful, but perhaps you should have been.”Words weren’t making any sense, jarring and clashing in the Painted Boy’s head. It was one thing to be told no, but not anymore? Nothing ever changed in the identical rooms where he worked. He was what he was. They were what they were.“Whaddyou mean?” It came out like a single word. He swallowed hard. “Don’ understand, Fir.”The Councillor’s voice above him was cold and brittle. “You’re hurting yourself, Kai. When I gave you a vial or two after our sessions, I had no idea you were abusing my generosity. Gourmanian and I are both very concerned about you, and the director—”“The fucking director?” Before he quite knew what was happening, the Painted Boy was rearing up, bracing himself and rising to his knees to face the Councillor. Pain hit him like a lash, over and over with each breath. “She’s a liar! I’m not abusing anything! I don’t sap any more than you do.”Lindahl’s eyes hazed over with worry—for his own safety or for the Painted Boy’s, it was hard to say. “Oh? Three vials a day?” he asked, a furrow forming between his handsome brows. “I didn’t know a person could drink that much.”“I don’t!” So Hulda had shared the results of her private tox screenings, breaking the unspoken rules of this place. The Painted Boy didn’t have the energy to hate her. He crawled toward the Councillor, wincing. “I never have that much, I swear, she’s lying, and I need it! I fucking need it! You can’t do that to me and just, just—”Lindahl edged away. He was young for a Councillor, and in decent shape, but no fighter. “I can get you an oral painkiller that will be safe,” he said, the furrow deepening. “Or topical cream—there’s some in the bathroom, I think.”The Painted Boy was familiar with the full array of products in the bathroom and what they could and couldn’t do. “I don’t want that,” he gritted out, ready to spit with rage—probably the most effective attack he was capable of right now. “You know what I need, and you owe it to me. I’ve been so good for you, Fir, night after night. Is there anybody who’s better at playing the slow pupil in your sadistic schoolmaster fantasies? I beg for it. I never complain, even when you make me bleed.”“I don’t—”“Oh, have you forgotten that ‘one time,’ Fir? Or was it two times? Fuck Gourmanian, and fuck the director and her moralizing. She’s always got her own agenda. You need to take care of me.”“The director cares about your health, as do I.” On his feet now, Lindahl looked ready to bolt, as if he expected the Painted Boy to lurch out of bed and come after him. “I know this is hard, love. But sometimes doing the right thing is hard. Have you seen a counselor yet? They help with this sort of thing.”The condescension hurt almost as much as the stripes on his thighs. As if Lindahl didn’t regularly drown himself in sap, just like all the Councillors. As if the very notion of addiction was foreign and distasteful, something that only happened to dirty whores. The Painted Boy might as well be a schoolboy again for real, coming home late on a free-night stinking of rotgut and getting a lecture from his dad on the virtues of self-discipline.Fuck it. He hadn’t tossed away his future and his self-respect for that.He grabbed the only object in reach—the cordless clock on the nightstand—and hurled it at the Councillor. Long ago, in school sports, he’d had a good arm.Lindahl dodged, but the clock nicked his temple, drawing a bark of surprise. He backed away from the bed, eyes wide with fright. “I’m calling security. You need to be restrained.”“Yeah, you’ll like that, won’t you?” The Painted Boy stayed where he was, hand raised as if he might throw something else. Watching Lindahl skitter out of the room was almost, almost satisfying.When the Councillor was gone, he collapsed on his belly and sucked in a deep breath. The surge of adrenaline had drowned out the pain. Now it was back, sinking long, pointed nails into him.“I’m sorry, Fir,” the Painted Boy called out to the empty room. The hole inside him kept getting deeper, no bottom to hit. If he asked often enough, if he asked the right way, they had to say yes. “Come back and fuck me. I’ve always been good for you. Come back. Please.”The Brothel’s monthly inspection never had a scheduled date or time, but usually Hulda received a quiet advance warning. So Einara wasn’t surprised to find herself standing in the doorway of her room at an ungodly morning hour, watching the two inspectors make their way swiftly and efficiently down the line.Normally, days didn’t begin in the Brothel till nearly noon. It was half-past nine now. Every doorway in Einara’s corridor held a yawning boy in pajamas or a robe, scowling or woozy with sleep.The inspectors were different people every time, low-level employees of the Bureau of Diversions. They had access to common and private areas of the Brothel alike. They looked over your body—clothed—for obvious signs of illness and addiction, and they sometimes took your temperature or blood pressure and asked you questions. If they saw anything they didn’t like, off you went to the infirmary for a more invasive exam.When Einara first arrived, she’d found these inspections mortifying—worse than seeing patrons, even, because the inspectors never looked you in the eye. Their voices were toneless, the same for every whore, as if they saw not people lined up in the corridor but machines.When she told Hulda this, the woman laughed. “Would you rather die of a curable disease, then?”Now Einara knew that Brothel staffers’ bodies were an important benchmark of public health, in a sense public property. The constant scrutiny set the Sanctioned apart from the illicit brothels where disease flourished. It was a guarantee that important citizens could come here for stress relief that wouldn’t risk their wellbeing.And maybe, too, it was just another way to degrade the staff, to remind them they’d made poor life choices.Since becoming Hulda’s assistant, Einara had moved into the cul-de-sac where the Jewels had their rooms, far from the booming dormitories of lower-level staff. Here, everybody had a nickname and a specialty. In the doorway opposite hers slumped Baby, a nineteen-year-old who could pass for sixteen. He leaned over to whisper something to Matthias the Throat, who had supposedly delivered the best fellatio in the city for the past fifteen years. Matthias glanced at Einara, looking naked without his usual eyeliner. He smirked.She didn’t have an official nickname, but she knew her unsmiling demeanor had gotten her a reputation. When she arrived, they’d called her “the barbarian” to her face. More recently, she’d heard a few of the boys calling her “Nettle Cunt”—in stealthy whispers, because they knew she was Hulda’s favorite.Vulgar insult or not, she rather liked it. Nettles kept intruders away.To her left lived Opal, who was dark complexioned; and Topaz, blond with strange amber eyes; and Ruby, the redhead; and Diamond, a hard-eyed, secretly sweet-tempered lad who was expert at dominating patrons. To her right were Flint, another dominant; and Flax, a gorgeous, soft-eyed boy who played the submissive role to perfection. He lacked the Painted Boy’s tolerance for pain, though.And where was the Painted Boy? Einara’s eyes swept over Kai’s closed door, her heart thudding against her ribs. No one ever missed inspection.She couldn’t go check; the inspector was just a few doors down. She craned over and caught Opal’s eye, angling her head toward the closed door.Opal responded with a series of nonverbal signals that were too fast for her to interpret. Finally he leaned way over, keeping one eye on the inspector, and hissed, “Went mental on a Councillor last night. Infirmary.”Shit. As they both straightened again, pretending to be good little whores, Einara swallowed down bile. Kai hadn’t reacted well to their new gambit. And Hulda, who must know about his acting out, hadn’t told her, which meant the director was standing by to see how Einara would react. Letting her take control of an increasingly perilous situation.Kai was too valuable a Jewel for the Brothel to lose. And if his former friend in Int/Sec really was incorruptible, they might find they’d broken him for nothing.Einara calmed her breathing and forced her nervous system back under control. She’d survived worse situations. (Burying Irin’s body in the snow, all that blood.) As soon as the inspection was over, she’d go to the infirmary and find some way to take advantage of the boy at his weakest point.She felt no pity for him. She would shape him into an instrument to serve Hulda’s will—and someday her own.The Painted Boy hadn’t slept all night.He lay prone on the narrow infirmary bed, a light robe covering his nakedness, padded leather straps holding his wrists to the side rail. They were kinder than the restraints he was used to, but the lack of mobility was agonizing.When he was admitted, the on-duty nurse had fed him a painkiller and applied a topical spray to his welts, but the effects of both had worn off several hours ago. Chills wracked him, despite the tropical heat that pervaded the Brothel. Every movement sent ripples of itching pain through his ass and thighs. The welts felt like they were festering, and he had to keep reminding himself that sap deprivation was playing with his head. Have you seen a counselor yet?Lindahl. Fuck. The moralizing Councillor was exactly the type to hold a grudge. He might even try to get the Painted Boy sent to moral rehab, where the possibility of ever sucking down another V would disappear. He’d been such an idiot to yield to an impulse of rage, no matter how good throwing that clock had felt.Maybe Gourmanian could talk Lindahl down. Maybe Hulda could. The Painted Boy cleared his throat and said loudly and clearly, “I wanna talk to the director.” He’d been doing that periodically all night, because everyone knew Hulda had hidden mics around the Brothel. No one had answered him yet, but it was worth a try.This time, though, he heard the hiss of a door opening. Light footsteps. And then a woman’s voice, close to him: “You’ll have to settle for me instead.”The Painted Boy reared up against his restraints, fighting down a surge of surprising shame at being seen this way by Hulda’s favorite. Outer bitch. Nettle Cunt. No, he wouldn’t call her that. He wanted to know what time it was. He wanted out of this bed. He wanted a fucking V.“Why won’t Hulda see me?” he asked in a smaller voice. It was time to pull the humility card. Beg, offer anything, until he got Gourmanian alone and could set things straight with him (assuming he could).Instead of answering, the young woman bent over him. Her hair and skin smelled like his—same soap and shampoo, standard issue—but her hands were slender and soft. It took him a moment to realize she was unbuckling his restraints. He went still to make it easier.When she’d freed both his hands, he exhaled a huge breath and curled into himself, hugging his knees. Green hells, that felt better, but his back. If only he could roll over, or on his side. Look her in the eye, at least. Distract her from the mess under the robe.Fingertips touched him through the fabric, gentle. “We have an ointment that’s good for abrasions like this, better than the spray. Applying it might hurt a bit, though.”“Fuck, yes. Please.” The words just slipped out. “Anything.”She stepped out and returned, her weight depressing the mattress beside him. “I’ll try not to hurt you. It’ll sting at first, though, so lie still.”She peeled the robe away, and the Painted Boy shivered as the welts met the air. The pressure of her hand on his thigh, light as it was, made him clench his fists and suck in his breath.But the ointment she smoothed onto him was cool. “Keep going,” he whispered between his teeth, feeling a blissful numbness spread under her hands.She knew how to use those hands, massaging the ointment into his inflamed flesh with the lightest of touches. He closed his eyes and let his outrage slip gradually away, relaxing into the soothing powers of the ointment and her touch.“Better?”“Yes.” She was working on his ass now, fingers moving in small circles. He was dimly aware of being naked and powerless in an enemy’s hands, but he was numb again, and nothing else mattered. “You’re so good at that.”“Yes. So I’m told.” No pride, as if she didn’t give a shit what patrons said about her. She hovered above him, practically straddling his hips, and he shuddered at the tickle of her braid on the small of his back, but it was a pleasant shudder. God, the numbness. It was opening a space in his head where there’d been only buzzing chaos for what felt like months.At last, she lowered the robe back over him. “Try rolling on your side.”The Painted Boy did. The pain still made him squeeze his eyes shut, but it faded quickly, and his aching joints thanked him for the change of position.“I see now why you drink so much sap,” she said. “It must make all this easier.”“No fucking kidding.” The Painted Boy laughed weakly. “Are you naïve, or just obtuse because you’re from the Wastes?”“Where I come from, we wouldn’t let this happen. A fine, strong man like you—it’s a waste.”“Oh, it’s a waste, is it? So sad.” The Painted Boy was so done with false pity and expressions of concern. “Tell that to your mistress, the one who started this. It was a dirty trick freaking out Gourmanian that way. He’s my patron to handle.”“You complained to him.” Her voice hardened. “Fir’n Director had to tell him something. And by the way, she’s not my ‘mistress.’”“Might as well be. She says jump, you ask how high. Anyway, she didn’t have to tell Gourmanian that.”“Nothing she said was a lie.”“I never in my life drank three V a day—that would be nuts.” Well, he didn’t drink three V most days, but that wasn’t the point. She didn’t really care how deep he drowned himself, and they both knew it.“I can’t do it,” he said, shaking his head against the sweat-damp pillow. “Told you already, there’s no way to turn Bors Dartán into a traitor. No way he gives up his precious integrity for sap or sex or anything else. Nothing you can offer.”“No?” She was still close beside him, her hip a warm weight against his back. It might have been a turn-on if anything turned him on anymore. “Hulda says the spy’s lonely.”“Well, of course he’s lonely. A Raised Laborer? He’s never gonna fit in. That’s just how it works.” The Painted Boy knew from bitter experience that it went the other way, too. Before he came here, his Drudge coworkers had treated him with stiff respect, but none of them wanted to be friends. Fallen from above, he was a freak in their eyes.“Not just lonely in general.” Her voice dropped lower, more intimate. “Lonely for you.”Previous encounters with Bors flashed through the Painted Boy’s head. Always apologizing, the little spy had to be coaxed to take what he came to the Brothel for. He refused to let Kai—who wasn’t yet painted in those days—call him “Fir.” He was obsessed with the possibility of saving Kai from this place, always suggesting other postings. He tipped Kai with sap, but he didn’t understand the first thing about addiction. It was sweet, really.“He likes me, yeah. He might—he might at least listen.” Then the Painted Boy remembered everything that had changed in the past two-plus years. “My body, though. When he sees the ink, he’ll freak. He’s delicate like that. He’s a good little Oslov, not a Decadent bone in his body.”A small huff. “What does that even mean, a ‘good Oslov’? Are you not a good Oslov?”Oh, she was naïve, all right, or maybe just strange—it must be an Outer thing. He didn’t even try to summon sarcasm; it took too much effort. “No, sweetheart. I’m Decadence incarnate. Or at least that’s what Bors will think.”“Didn’t you say he wanted to save you, last time we talked? That’s exactly why you need to show him your markings.”“He did want to save me. After this, I don’t know.” The Painted Boy couldn’t imagine anyone being stupid enough to think he was redeemable. But Bors did have certain obtuse tendencies, just like this Outer girl.Unless she was playing dumb to catch him off guard. Hulda didn’t choose stupid protégées.“It’s worth a try,” he said, already hating the idea of showing his former schoolmate why he was called the Painted Boy. “But first, some conditions. Hulda has to get me back on my old dosage. She needs to tell Gourmanian she overreacted.”“So you’re laying down conditions already.” The girl sighed, the breath warm on his shoulder where his robe had slipped down. “Do you want to live to see thirty-five, Kai Meirthal?”Don’t call me that. But he had to focus; they were finally getting somewhere. “Not particularly, and I doubt the director will give a fuck what happens to me when I stop being pretty. How about two and a half a day?”She snorted. “One and a half.”“Two and a quarter.”“Two.”Not enough, but he would make it work. “And I start getting it right now.”“You start getting it after you talk to Bors Dartán.” She stroked his shoulder; he felt the outline of each fingertip through the thin material. “You need to have your wits about you. You’ll leave the Brothel and show up at the spy’s apartment. That should get his attention.”“Leave the Brothel?” Though he did have leave privileges, he never used them. Anywhere he went, he might meet people he’d known in his old life. “I don’t even know where Bors lives.”“We do. Svant will drive you.”“I can’t . . . I need a dose, okay? Just to tide me over.” But the Painted Boy was starting to feel drowsy, the urgency of his need fading. Maybe he could hold out a day or so longer.“You seem to have survived this long.”She sounded so far above him, almost icy. Maybe she had indeed been playing dumb, knocking him off his guard—with some success.“You’re the boss, Fir’n Einara,” he mumbled. “Follow your instructions to the letter. But if I can’t work a miracle, I still get it, okay? My allowance?”“You still get your dose.” Was it his imagination, or did she sound disappointed? “For now.”

The Painted Boy hurt.

He’d been in withdrawal before, but never for so long. He told himself the symptoms were all in his head, but he couldn’t untense, even in a warm bath. When he managed to fall asleep, he woke with his fists clenched and his jaw sore from grinding. When he tried to eat, his throat closed, stomach acid flooding his mouth.

He kept getting a weird sensation that people were stalking him, flitting nearer in the corner of his eye. In the gym, he came close to clocking a boy who stepped too abruptly into his space.

If he hung on a little longer, maybe he’d get through the worst of it. He knew from talking to some of his older colleagues that even a heavy sap habit could be broken. But he didn’t want to get through the worst of it. He wanted his numbness back. He liked his life the way it was.

Wouldn’t you like to do something besides slowly kill yourself, Kai?

Vreni didn’t wait even a year after the Notification to dump Kai. He didn’t blame her any more than he blamed himself for ending up in this shithole. At least here he was of use, and he could fill the gaping hole inside him without stealing or begging or inconveniencing anyone.

Until now, anyway. Not that the director could totally cut him off; he could still beg little nips off patrons to make the work more bearable. But it was never as deep a cushion as he needed for the hard knocks, and he didn’t dare push his luck by asking for a whole V to drink at one go. The patrons didn’t know what kind of tolerance he had.

And so, as his cushion of sap dissolved, the Painted Boy lost the placid, resigned composure that made him so sought after. At his session with Fir Councillor Ekorin, he squirmed and swore under his breath while he was being fucked. With Fir Councillor Lindahl, he yelped during a flogging until he had to be gagged. When Fir Gelmedyn proudly touched the fresh tattoo on his calf, he flinched and cussed. Even simply being restrained made him itchy and resistant.

“What’s gotten into you, sweetheart?” the professor asked sadly. The Painted Boy turned his face to the wall. He didn’t dare admit that his voracious appetite for pain was mostly a myth; without it, he had no unique selling point.

They all still tipped him in sap, of course—two or three V per session, sometimes even four. But there was a new routine now. Lars or Svant tailed the Painted Boy back to his room and frisked him, relieving him of his sweet relief. When he demanded to see the director about this treatment, he came up against a wall. The director was busy, he was told. He could see Einara if he liked.

Who the fuck had made that girl the queen of all whoredom? When she first got here, she was so shy she couldn’t even open her mouth to say, “Pass the rice.” She was still pretty in the soft, pale, yielding way she’d been then, but she held up her head like Hulda now, and her eyes were ice cold. She would show him no mercy.

The Painted Boy didn’t want to tattle. Playing your patrons against the Brothel keeper was always a bad idea. But after three days and nights of deprivation, he reached his limit.

Gourmanian liked to shackle the Painted Boy’s wrists to the head of the bed and hook his knees over a steel bar, splaying him out. Sometimes he had the Brothel staff arrange the Painted Boy this way an hour or so before his arrival, then train a cam on him. The Painted Boy waited in this position, hips rolled up and thighs spread, while Gourmanian was in his office or drinking tea with his family or whatever he did. Inked body on display, hole greased and open, and the whole thing beamed as a live feed to Gourmanian’s handheld, because the Councillor got off on just knowing he was ready.

With a full vial of sap inside him, this ritual was just bearable. Now? Not even close.

On this day, when Gourmanian finally arrived, the Painted Boy was whimpering. His thighs were killing him; he would have slid his knees off the bar if they hadn’t been strapped to it.

Gourmanian barely seemed to notice anything different. “Ready for me, are you?”

The Painted Boy managed to nod. The sooner they got started, the sooner he would be out of this hellish position. But when the Councillor tugged off his belt and snapped it in the air, he cried out in alarm: “Oh fuck, Fir. No!”

“No?” The Councillor stared at him, confused, because the Painted Boy never said no to anything. “What’s wrong, love? Don’t you want it?”

The Painted Boy closed his eyes and felt a pulse pounding in his temples. Back in school, he’d known Gourmanian’s niece—a wispy little thing with a massive crush on him. They’d hooked up at a party, on the dingy lino of a storeroom. In those days, no one would ever have tried something with him that he didn’t want. Now he had to plead.

“I’m dry, Fir. No, not that way.” Green hells, he could barely even move. “I need a dip. Please. It hurts.”

Gourmanian sighed gustily and drew out a vial, “What’s the problem? I thought we gave you more than enough to keep you happy.”

After he’d lapped the half-V out of Gourmanian’s hand, the Painted Boy spilled most of the story. How his Fir’s generous gifts of sap had been confiscated, night after night. How he was being forced into a cruel and pointless sobriety.

He knew better than to mention Bors Dartán; some secrets had to be kept inside the Brothel. He had no idea to whom Hulda wanted to sell Bors’s intel, but it might be someone well placed in the Sector. Councillors were always spying on each other. With Hulda’s connections, reporting her for corruption could only backfire on him.

Gourmanian’s heavy brows beetled with concern, but not as much concern as the Painted Boy had hoped for. “I do worry sometimes about how deep you drown yourself, love,” he said. “What’s your usual daily dosage, anyway?”

“Two, Fir.” Two and a half, sometimes three.

Again the concerned look. “Don’t you think you should cut down a little? For your own sake?”

The Painted Boy wanted to snap these straps and shackles like kitchen string and go wring the Councillor’s neck. These were the sorts of urges his two and a half daily vials usually saved him from.

“Of course,” he said, forcibly converting his grimace of pain into a concerned expression to match Gourmanian’s. “But, you know, a little. A gradual cutdown. Would you mind, Fir, just, just—just getting me out of these fucking restraints? And talking to the director for me? Because if this goes on another second, I’m gonna scream, and not in the way you like.”

“Well, he’s made his move,” Hulda said over tea in her quarters the following afternoon. “Councillor Gourmanian came to see me last night on his way out, very concerned about his favorite.”

Einara’s throat tightened. “What did you do?” She’d never dealt directly with a disgruntled Councillor, unless you counted her occasional patron Besha Linbeck. He’d been miffed when he learned she’d passed his stray confessions about Tilrey Bronn to the True Hearth, and for nearly a year he’d shunned her. When he returned, he was colder, and he never discussed the fact that they were all on the same side now.

Hulda looked more amused than worried. “I told the Councillor I’ve been monitoring Kai Meirthal’s sap intake for several months now, and it is, frankly, alarming.” She folded her hands, the picture of patronizing rectitude. “Any other employer would have sent the boy to moral rehab by now. If he keeps on the way he has, he’ll drown himself so deep he never comes back up.”

Einara could imagine how this speech had landed with the Councillor. “Did you ask him to stop giving the boy sap?”

“Oh no, no. Nothing like that.” A sly smile. “Never ask for anything directly. But it’s easy to arouse guilt in these men; they’ve all been taught to feel responsible for the fate of the world. I just set out the facts and lamented poor Kai’s likely fate if he was allowed to continue. I gave Fir Councillor a report signed by our staff medic, to make it official, and then I sat back and waited.”

Einara could imagine how it had all played out. Hulda’s hazel eyes were still bright in her withered face; when she wanted to, she could be animated and persuasive. The Councillor didn’t stand a chance.

Hulda jabbed a finger at her. “There! You’re smiling. No, no, don’t hide it. You’re allowed to be a human being.”

Einara’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. Smiling was something she did to please patrons, and occasionally Hulda. She didn’t like how it looked on her—contorted. Vulnerable. “What did the Councillor say to that?” she asked, forcing her face back into attentive neutrality.

“He was shocked, shocked, to hear the situation was so dire. He hadn’t had the slightest idea the boy was sapping so heavily, or even that a human being could survive doses in excess of two V a day.” Hulda didn’t hide her own delight. “He vowed to stop enabling the boy’s addiction, and he promised to make sure all his friends did the same.”

They had Kai cornered, then. But Einara suspected the hard part was still to come. “He’ll break,” she said, picking up her tea tumbler. “But what about after? Kai says it’s useless to approach your nephew for intel, even dangerous. I don’t think he’s lying about that.”

“He’s not lying about how he sees the situation.” Hulda spread her hands. “But I know my nephew, and Kai has more power than he realizes. It’s your job to show him how to use it. Give him reasons to join the living again. Time to step up, my girl.”

Even Einara, for all her strength of purpose, sometimes had trouble getting out of bed to face another day in this place. What reason was she supposed to give Kai to “join the living”? But she kept her chin up as she nodded.

“Show me my mark,” Enrik Lindahl said. His voice had that breathless quality it always got when he was het up and hard, finished with the punishment and ready to start the fucking part of the evening.

“I—give me a minute, Fir.” The Painted Boy’s ass and thighs were on fire from the new stripes Lindahl had laid there. If he rolled over on his back to show the Fir the sunflower tattoo on his nipple, he wouldn’t be able to keep quiet. He’d managed to avoid the gag this time, but only by sinking his teeth into the meat of his arm with each stroke.

He clenched his fists and just breathed, using every technique he knew to keep the pain at a safe remove. Could a whipping really hurt this much without drawing blood, each individual stroke searing as if it flayed? Maybe Councillor Lindahl had overstepped the rules again. Or maybe the Painted Boy just wasn’t used to taking it sober.

Everybody thought he liked this—and he did, sometimes, with a high enough dose to mellow the experience. He didn’t mind offering himself, didn’t mind being disciplined and humiliated—he deserved that treatment, especially from Strutters. He was unworthy. He was nothing. But this pain. There was nowhere to hide from it. It made his vision blur and his voice go ragged.

“Please—I just need a little nip, Fir.” Lindahl usually refused to give him sap during their sessions, saying, I want you present. But too fucking bad. “Just to soften it. Take the edge off.”

Fingertips stroked his flank just below one of the welts, more impatient than tender. “Is it really so bad?”

The Painted Boy drew in a hissing breath. “Please, Fir.”

“I’m afraid not,” Lindahl said in his prim way. “We aren’t doing ‘little nips’ anymore, or anything else. Well, I suppose I can have you like this.” He reached over the Painted Boy for the lube on the nightstand. “I’ll be careful, but perhaps you should have been.”

Words weren’t making any sense, jarring and clashing in the Painted Boy’s head. It was one thing to be told no, but not anymore? Nothing ever changed in the identical rooms where he worked. He was what he was. They were what they were.

“Whaddyou mean?” It came out like a single word. He swallowed hard. “Don’ understand, Fir.”

The Councillor’s voice above him was cold and brittle. “You’re hurting yourself, Kai. When I gave you a vial or two after our sessions, I had no idea you were abusing my generosity. Gourmanian and I are both very concerned about you, and the director—”

“The fucking director?” Before he quite knew what was happening, the Painted Boy was rearing up, bracing himself and rising to his knees to face the Councillor. Pain hit him like a lash, over and over with each breath. “She’s a liar! I’m not abusing anything! I don’t sap any more than you do.”

Lindahl’s eyes hazed over with worry—for his own safety or for the Painted Boy’s, it was hard to say. “Oh? Three vials a day?” he asked, a furrow forming between his handsome brows. “I didn’t know a person could drink that much.”

“I don’t!” So Hulda had shared the results of her private tox screenings, breaking the unspoken rules of this place. The Painted Boy didn’t have the energy to hate her. He crawled toward the Councillor, wincing. “I never have that much, I swear, she’s lying, and I need it! I fucking need it! You can’t do that to me and just, just—”

Lindahl edged away. He was young for a Councillor, and in decent shape, but no fighter. “I can get you an oral painkiller that will be safe,” he said, the furrow deepening. “Or topical cream—there’s some in the bathroom, I think.”

The Painted Boy was familiar with the full array of products in the bathroom and what they could and couldn’t do. “I don’t want that,” he gritted out, ready to spit with rage—probably the most effective attack he was capable of right now. “You know what I need, and you owe it to me. I’ve been so good for you, Fir, night after night. Is there anybody who’s better at playing the slow pupil in your sadistic schoolmaster fantasies? I beg for it. I never complain, even when you make me bleed.”

“I don’t—”

“Oh, have you forgotten that ‘one time,’ Fir? Or was it two times? Fuck Gourmanian, and fuck the director and her moralizing. She’s always got her own agenda. You need to take care of me.”

“The director cares about your health, as do I.” On his feet now, Lindahl looked ready to bolt, as if he expected the Painted Boy to lurch out of bed and come after him. “I know this is hard, love. But sometimes doing the right thing is hard. Have you seen a counselor yet? They help with this sort of thing.”

The condescension hurt almost as much as the stripes on his thighs. As if Lindahl didn’t regularly drown himself in sap, just like all the Councillors. As if the very notion of addiction was foreign and distasteful, something that only happened to dirty whores. The Painted Boy might as well be a schoolboy again for real, coming home late on a free-night stinking of rotgut and getting a lecture from his dad on the virtues of self-discipline.

Fuck it. He hadn’t tossed away his future and his self-respect for that.

He grabbed the only object in reach—the cordless clock on the nightstand—and hurled it at the Councillor. Long ago, in school sports, he’d had a good arm.

Lindahl dodged, but the clock nicked his temple, drawing a bark of surprise. He backed away from the bed, eyes wide with fright. “I’m calling security. You need to be restrained.”

“Yeah, you’ll like that, won’t you?” The Painted Boy stayed where he was, hand raised as if he might throw something else. Watching Lindahl skitter out of the room was almost, almost satisfying.

When the Councillor was gone, he collapsed on his belly and sucked in a deep breath. The surge of adrenaline had drowned out the pain. Now it was back, sinking long, pointed nails into him.

“I’m sorry, Fir,” the Painted Boy called out to the empty room. The hole inside him kept getting deeper, no bottom to hit. If he asked often enough, if he asked the right way, they had to say yes. “Come back and fuck me. I’ve always been good for you. Come back. Please.”

The Brothel’s monthly inspection never had a scheduled date or time, but usually Hulda received a quiet advance warning. So Einara wasn’t surprised to find herself standing in the doorway of her room at an ungodly morning hour, watching the two inspectors make their way swiftly and efficiently down the line.

Normally, days didn’t begin in the Brothel till nearly noon. It was half-past nine now. Every doorway in Einara’s corridor held a yawning boy in pajamas or a robe, scowling or woozy with sleep.

The inspectors were different people every time, low-level employees of the Bureau of Diversions. They had access to common and private areas of the Brothel alike. They looked over your body—clothed—for obvious signs of illness and addiction, and they sometimes took your temperature or blood pressure and asked you questions. If they saw anything they didn’t like, off you went to the infirmary for a more invasive exam.

When Einara first arrived, she’d found these inspections mortifying—worse than seeing patrons, even, because the inspectors never looked you in the eye. Their voices were toneless, the same for every whore, as if they saw not people lined up in the corridor but machines.

When she told Hulda this, the woman laughed. “Would you rather die of a curable disease, then?”

Now Einara knew that Brothel staffers’ bodies were an important benchmark of public health, in a sense public property. The constant scrutiny set the Sanctioned apart from the illicit brothels where disease flourished. It was a guarantee that important citizens could come here for stress relief that wouldn’t risk their wellbeing.

And maybe, too, it was just another way to degrade the staff, to remind them they’d made poor life choices.

Since becoming Hulda’s assistant, Einara had moved into the cul-de-sac where the Jewels had their rooms, far from the booming dormitories of lower-level staff. Here, everybody had a nickname and a specialty. In the doorway opposite hers slumped Baby, a nineteen-year-old who could pass for sixteen. He leaned over to whisper something to Matthias the Throat, who had supposedly delivered the best fellatio in the city for the past fifteen years. Matthias glanced at Einara, looking naked without his usual eyeliner. He smirked.

She didn’t have an official nickname, but she knew her unsmiling demeanor had gotten her a reputation. When she arrived, they’d called her “the barbarian” to her face. More recently, she’d heard a few of the boys calling her “Nettle Cunt”—in stealthy whispers, because they knew she was Hulda’s favorite.

Vulgar insult or not, she rather liked it. Nettles kept intruders away.

To her left lived Opal, who was dark complexioned; and Topaz, blond with strange amber eyes; and Ruby, the redhead; and Diamond, a hard-eyed, secretly sweet-tempered lad who was expert at dominating patrons. To her right were Flint, another dominant; and Flax, a gorgeous, soft-eyed boy who played the submissive role to perfection. He lacked the Painted Boy’s tolerance for pain, though.

And where was the Painted Boy? Einara’s eyes swept over Kai’s closed door, her heart thudding against her ribs. No one ever missed inspection.

She couldn’t go check; the inspector was just a few doors down. She craned over and caught Opal’s eye, angling her head toward the closed door.

Opal responded with a series of nonverbal signals that were too fast for her to interpret. Finally he leaned way over, keeping one eye on the inspector, and hissed, “Went mental on a Councillor last night. Infirmary.”

Shit. As they both straightened again, pretending to be good little whores, Einara swallowed down bile. Kai hadn’t reacted well to their new gambit. And Hulda, who must know about his acting out, hadn’t told her, which meant the director was standing by to see how Einara would react. Letting her take control of an increasingly perilous situation.

Kai was too valuable a Jewel for the Brothel to lose. And if his former friend in Int/Sec really was incorruptible, they might find they’d broken him for nothing.

Einara calmed her breathing and forced her nervous system back under control. She’d survived worse situations. (Burying Irin’s body in the snow, all that blood.) As soon as the inspection was over, she’d go to the infirmary and find some way to take advantage of the boy at his weakest point.

She felt no pity for him. She would shape him into an instrument to serve Hulda’s will—and someday her own.

The Painted Boy hadn’t slept all night.

He lay prone on the narrow infirmary bed, a light robe covering his nakedness, padded leather straps holding his wrists to the side rail. They were kinder than the restraints he was used to, but the lack of mobility was agonizing.

When he was admitted, the on-duty nurse had fed him a painkiller and applied a topical spray to his welts, but the effects of both had worn off several hours ago. Chills wracked him, despite the tropical heat that pervaded the Brothel. Every movement sent ripples of itching pain through his ass and thighs. The welts felt like they were festering, and he had to keep reminding himself that sap deprivation was playing with his head. Have you seen a counselor yet?

Lindahl. Fuck. The moralizing Councillor was exactly the type to hold a grudge. He might even try to get the Painted Boy sent to moral rehab, where the possibility of ever sucking down another V would disappear. He’d been such an idiot to yield to an impulse of rage, no matter how good throwing that clock had felt.

Maybe Gourmanian could talk Lindahl down. Maybe Hulda could. The Painted Boy cleared his throat and said loudly and clearly, “I wanna talk to the director.” He’d been doing that periodically all night, because everyone knew Hulda had hidden mics around the Brothel. No one had answered him yet, but it was worth a try.

This time, though, he heard the hiss of a door opening. Light footsteps. And then a woman’s voice, close to him: “You’ll have to settle for me instead.”

The Painted Boy reared up against his restraints, fighting down a surge of surprising shame at being seen this way by Hulda’s favorite. Outer bitch. Nettle Cunt. No, he wouldn’t call her that. He wanted to know what time it was. He wanted out of this bed. He wanted a fucking V.

“Why won’t Hulda see me?” he asked in a smaller voice. It was time to pull the humility card. Beg, offer anything, until he got Gourmanian alone and could set things straight with him (assuming he could).

Instead of answering, the young woman bent over him. Her hair and skin smelled like his—same soap and shampoo, standard issue—but her hands were slender and soft. It took him a moment to realize she was unbuckling his restraints. He went still to make it easier.

When she’d freed both his hands, he exhaled a huge breath and curled into himself, hugging his knees. Green hells, that felt better, but his back. If only he could roll over, or on his side. Look her in the eye, at least. Distract her from the mess under the robe.

Fingertips touched him through the fabric, gentle. “We have an ointment that’s good for abrasions like this, better than the spray. Applying it might hurt a bit, though.”

“Fuck, yes. Please.” The words just slipped out. “Anything.”

She stepped out and returned, her weight depressing the mattress beside him. “I’ll try not to hurt you. It’ll sting at first, though, so lie still.”

She peeled the robe away, and the Painted Boy shivered as the welts met the air. The pressure of her hand on his thigh, light as it was, made him clench his fists and suck in his breath.

But the ointment she smoothed onto him was cool. “Keep going,” he whispered between his teeth, feeling a blissful numbness spread under her hands.

She knew how to use those hands, massaging the ointment into his inflamed flesh with the lightest of touches. He closed his eyes and let his outrage slip gradually away, relaxing into the soothing powers of the ointment and her touch.

“Better?”

“Yes.” She was working on his ass now, fingers moving in small circles. He was dimly aware of being naked and powerless in an enemy’s hands, but he was numb again, and nothing else mattered. “You’re so good at that.”

“Yes. So I’m told.” No pride, as if she didn’t give a shit what patrons said about her. She hovered above him, practically straddling his hips, and he shuddered at the tickle of her braid on the small of his back, but it was a pleasant shudder. God, the numbness. It was opening a space in his head where there’d been only buzzing chaos for what felt like months.

At last, she lowered the robe back over him. “Try rolling on your side.”

The Painted Boy did. The pain still made him squeeze his eyes shut, but it faded quickly, and his aching joints thanked him for the change of position.

“I see now why you drink so much sap,” she said. “It must make all this easier.”

“No fucking kidding.” The Painted Boy laughed weakly. “Are you naïve, or just obtuse because you’re from the Wastes?”

“Where I come from, we wouldn’t let this happen. A fine, strong man like you—it’s a waste.”

“Oh, it’s a waste, is it? So sad.” The Painted Boy was so done with false pity and expressions of concern. “Tell that to your mistress, the one who started this. It was a dirty trick freaking out Gourmanian that way. He’s my patron to handle.”

“You complained to him.” Her voice hardened. “Fir’n Director had to tell him something. And by the way, she’s not my ‘mistress.’”

“Might as well be. She says jump, you ask how high. Anyway, she didn’t have to tell Gourmanian that.”

“Nothing she said was a lie.”

“I never in my life drank three V a day—that would be nuts.” Well, he didn’t drink three V most days, but that wasn’t the point. She didn’t really care how deep he drowned himself, and they both knew it.

“I can’t do it,” he said, shaking his head against the sweat-damp pillow. “Told you already, there’s no way to turn Bors Dartán into a traitor. No way he gives up his precious integrity for sap or sex or anything else. Nothing you can offer.”

“No?” She was still close beside him, her hip a warm weight against his back. It might have been a turn-on if anything turned him on anymore. “Hulda says the spy’s lonely.”

“Well, of course he’s lonely. A Raised Laborer? He’s never gonna fit in. That’s just how it works.” The Painted Boy knew from bitter experience that it went the other way, too. Before he came here, his Drudge coworkers had treated him with stiff respect, but none of them wanted to be friends. Fallen from above, he was a freak in their eyes.

“Not just lonely in general.” Her voice dropped lower, more intimate. “Lonely for you.”

Previous encounters with Bors flashed through the Painted Boy’s head. Always apologizing, the little spy had to be coaxed to take what he came to the Brothel for. He refused to let Kai—who wasn’t yet painted in those days—call him “Fir.” He was obsessed with the possibility of saving Kai from this place, always suggesting other postings. He tipped Kai with sap, but he didn’t understand the first thing about addiction. It was sweet, really.

“He likes me, yeah. He might—he might at least listen.” Then the Painted Boy remembered everything that had changed in the past two-plus years. “My body, though. When he sees the ink, he’ll freak. He’s delicate like that. He’s a good little Oslov, not a Decadent bone in his body.”

A small huff. “What does that even mean, a ‘good Oslov’? Are you not a good Oslov?”

Oh, she was naïve, all right, or maybe just strange—it must be an Outer thing. He didn’t even try to summon sarcasm; it took too much effort. “No, sweetheart. I’m Decadence incarnate. Or at least that’s what Bors will think.”

“Didn’t you say he wanted to save you, last time we talked? That’s exactly why you need to show him your markings.”

“He did want to save me. After this, I don’t know.” The Painted Boy couldn’t imagine anyone being stupid enough to think he was redeemable. But Bors did have certain obtuse tendencies, just like this Outer girl.

Unless she was playing dumb to catch him off guard. Hulda didn’t choose stupid protégées.

“It’s worth a try,” he said, already hating the idea of showing his former schoolmate why he was called the Painted Boy. “But first, some conditions. Hulda has to get me back on my old dosage. She needs to tell Gourmanian she overreacted.”

“So you’re laying down conditions already.” The girl sighed, the breath warm on his shoulder where his robe had slipped down. “Do you want to live to see thirty-five, Kai Meirthal?”

Don’t call me that. But he had to focus; they were finally getting somewhere. “Not particularly, and I doubt the director will give a fuck what happens to me when I stop being pretty. How about two and a half a day?”

She snorted. “One and a half.”

“Two and a quarter.”

“Two.”

Not enough, but he would make it work. “And I start getting it right now.”

“You start getting it after you talk to Bors Dartán.” She stroked his shoulder; he felt the outline of each fingertip through the thin material. “You need to have your wits about you. You’ll leave the Brothel and show up at the spy’s apartment. That should get his attention.”

“Leave the Brothel?” Though he did have leave privileges, he never used them. Anywhere he went, he might meet people he’d known in his old life. “I don’t even know where Bors lives.”

“We do. Svant will drive you.”

“I can’t . . . I need a dose, okay? Just to tide me over.” But the Painted Boy was starting to feel drowsy, the urgency of his need fading. Maybe he could hold out a day or so longer.

“You seem to have survived this long.”

She sounded so far above him, almost icy. Maybe she had indeed been playing dumb, knocking him off his guard—with some success.

“You’re the boss, Fir’n Einara,” he mumbled. “Follow your instructions to the letter. But if I can’t work a miracle, I still get it, okay? My allowance?”

“You still get your dose.” Was it his imagination, or did she sound disappointed? “For now.”