Volume 15: Tales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part 2: The Lure
Chapter 6
A Truthful Life
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
“This is completely inaccurate!” Ceill wailed.His mother stuck her head in from the kitchen, where she was trying to replicate Grandma Lisha’s root-vegetable fritters for a free-night treat. “If that silly stream upsets you so much, just stop watching it.”“Shh! I can’t hear!” Ceill was curled up in one corner of the couch, his eyes glued to the cylinder on the wall. This was his first time seeing episode 3, and though it annoyed him so far—not enough Darius!—his mother couldn’t be allowed to ruin it.Notification Day had set golden boy Darius and his two humbler friends on radically different paths. While Darius was Lowered and given a data-entry posting in the Sector, shy, clever Markus was Raised and trained to defend the Republic by surveilling subversives. (His job was portrayed in both vague and glorious terms, which Ceill knew from his dad was because the government censors didn’t want you to know anything concrete about Int/Sec.) Meanwhile, Bronia, who remained a Laborer and a terrible goody-goody, volunteered to relocate to Thurskein and teach young people there, hoping to improve their lives.That was where the inaccuracies got unbearable, and Ceill couldn’t keep his mouth shut.“Schoolrooms in ’Skein don’t look anything like that!” he said. “They don’t have giant windows like ours!”His mother ducked in again, spatula in hand. “They probably shot those scenes in a warehouse in the Outer Ring. You need all kinds of permits and chaperones to shoot a stream in Thurskein.”“It’s not just that.” Ceill pointed at the screen, where Bronia was patiently explaining the principles of meritocracy to a benighted Skeinsha teen who had just disparaged “book learning.” “They’re making us look stupid. They’re making Skeinshaka look stupid,” he corrected himself swiftly, “like all they ever do is work factory lines and drink beer on free-nights. They’re making it look like it takes some sappy girl from Redda to teach them to use their heads, and that’s not true. Grandma Lisha is smarter than anyone on this show.”“You’re upsetting yourself for no reason.” His mother set a platter of golden fritters on the table. “I used to love streams when I was your age,” she continued, adding the tangy white dipping sauce, “but then I realized they’re all just propaganda dressed up in a pretty package.”It was so frustrating when adults had no imagination. He was tempted to tell her that Aleks Snowblind said the exact same thing.The episode had reached its ten-minute break, so Ceill muted the droning public-service announcements and knelt beside his mother at the table. “Thank you,” he reminded himself to say before stuffing two fritters in his mouth. “These are almost as good as Grandma’s.”His mom shook her head, but she was smiling as she tucked into her own serving. “Next time, you try making them. You’ve watched your grandmother enough times.”“Okay.” But all Ceill could think about were the ghostly images on the screen. “Have you heard of a café in the Outer Ring, Mom? Where streammakers hang out?”“Why?”“I’m just curious.” He tried to play innocent the way Tilrey was always so good at. “Somebody at school was talking about it.”“I remember something like that from my misspent youth, yes. My friends and I explored the Outer Ring and got up to all kinds of foolishness.” She was looking dangerously hard at him now. “But I waited to do that till I was safely at University.”“I didn’t say I was going there.” Ceill stabbed his fork into a fritter. “Though there are kids at my school who are in the Outer Ring every free-night. Drinking and stuff. So they say.”The furrow between his mother’s brows deepened. “Well, they shouldn’t be. I don’t want you wasting your time chasing trouble, Ceillsha. Your tests are in less than three months, and your Notification in four.”The words “tests” and “Notification” made Ceill’s world blink from color into grayscale. The crispy vegetables went leaden in his mouth. “I’m studying,” he said.“I know you are. You’re very diligent. And you need to keep at it.”I’m not stupid. I’m not. Ceill dipped another fritter and jammed it in his mouth, but a weight had descended on his chest. He thought of Ludo hissing whorespawn at him in the empty common room.“People are still gonna know,” he muttered.He was supposed to want to be Raised more than anything in the world. He’d spent the past seventeen years preparing for it. But what if being an Upstart only meant dealing with people like Ludo every day? What if it was exactly like being at school, or even worse?“What’s that, sweetheart?”Ceill considered pretending he’d asked her to pass the platter. But he couldn’t stay quiet about this forever, couldn’t let her act like the problem wasn’t real.“People will still know,” he said. “People will guess who my actual father is. Who I am. And they’ll tell other people.”His mother flinched like he’d struck her. Then she softened, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “Don’t worry about that. Not yet. Let your dad and Tilrey and me—”“I can’t let you worry about it when it’s my problem!” Somehow Ceill was on his feet, and he was yelling. He hadn’t decided to do either of those things. “It’s my life that people are going to make absolute hell!”“Ceillsha.” His mother’s face was white. “Sit down. You’re scaring me.”Ceill sat down. Her words had left him limp and dizzy, but he could not let this go. “Couldn’t we just stop pretending?” he asked his plate. “After I’m Notified? Couldn’t we just tell people the truth and end all the rumors once and for all?”“What rumors are you even talking about? Who’s spreading rumors?”Everyone. Ceill looked more and more like Tilrey every day; even he couldn’t ignore it. Two of his old friends in Thurskein had already asked him about the resemblance, carefully and politely, and he’d had to play dumb.Here in Redda, Ludo had noticed years ago and probably told all his friends. And old Councillor Saldegren, Dad’s ally in the Council, gave Ceill the strangest looks every time he came to dinner, as if he wanted to ask a question but didn’t dare. Didn’t his parents mind?If Ceill ended up with a Sector job, he would have to interact daily with more old people who also knew Tilrey. People who would draw the obvious conclusion.“Look,” he said, “I know we can’t be official about it. We can’t change my records.” They’d had that argument when he was fifteen, and it ended abruptly when Ceill learned that falsifying a genetic profile was a crime for which his mother could be sent to detention. “But couldn’t we just . . . stop lying?”His mother’s expression hardened. “Yours isn’t the only case like this, Ceill. When he was at school, your Uncle Valgund was best friends with Councillor Lindahl’s nephew. Everyone could see the boy looked more like his mother’s Laborer secretary than like his legal father, but the family didn’t acknowledge it, ever. Certain things can only be accepted—”“—if nobody talks about them.” Verdant hells, Ceill hated everybody sometimes. “That’s stupid,” he said. “It’s true whether or not you acknowledge it. All I want . . .”He didn’t finish, because even he wasn’t sure what he wanted. To throw Ludo’s insinuations back in his face and say, Yes, I am whorespawn, fuck you? It would probably be more satisfying to pound Ludo’s smug face in, but that would earn Ceill a record that might compromise his Notification.“You taught me not to be ashamed,” he said, staring at his half-empty plate. “You and Dad and Tilrey—you all taught me to be proud of who I am.”His mother sighed. “We did. And I hope you are. But Ceill, I feel like there’s something you haven’t considered. How is Gersha going to feel if you start telling people he’s not your ‘real’ father?”It was like she’d stuck a foot in the clear puddle of Ceill’s thoughts and scrambled them. “That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I’d say.”“Then what would you say?”“I’d say . . .” He watched dull announcements play on the cylinder screen, his mind working frantically.Of course Gersha was his real father, but in one way, while Tilrey was his real father in another way. He honestly wasn’t sure how he’d explain it to anyone who wasn’t already close enough to the family to understand. They might make the wrong assumptions—that Gersha was somehow a victim, or that Tilrey and his mother loved each other, or that he loved one father more than the other rather than loving them differently.“I just wouldn’t lie,” he said.“Ceill.” His mother kept looking at him with those eyes that were always clear and proud and full of certainty. When he was little, he’d considered her the ultimate arbiter of all moral questions—even more than Gersha, who had too many doubts.She said, “The truth is complex enough that outsiders are always only going to grasp half of it. Wouldn’t you rather it’s the half that doesn’t make your father sad?”Then, without waiting for Ceill’s answer, she reached across the table for the remote and turned up the sound. “I think your stream’s back.”They watched the rest of the episode in silence. When it was over, and his mother got up to make tea, Ceill helped her clear the table. He asked, “Could I have your handheld to call Uncle Valgund?”“What for?”She still looked worried, so Ceill made himself look blank and innocent, as if he’d forgotten their argument entirely. “I want to talk about the stream. We’ve both been watching it.”His mom and uncle had spent their “misspent youth” together. If she and her friends had ventured into the Outer Ring, Valgund had probably been with them. And he would have fewer scruples about telling Ceill where to get a glimpse of Darius.If Ceill couldn’t live a truthful life, then at least he could follow in his parents’ footsteps and use a bit of harmless trickery to get what he wanted.His mother scrutinized him a moment longer, but he must have passed muster. “Don’t take too long,” she said and handed over her device.“Thank you.” Ceill made his eyes wide. On the threshold, he asked, “What happened to Councillor Lindahl’s nephew, anyway?”His mother froze. “Don’t ask Valgund about that. It’s painful for him to remember, even after all these years.”“But what—”“Garsha Lindahl is the boy who was with your uncle on his mad attempt to traipse out of the city into the Wastes. The one who didn’t make it.” Her eyes bored into his. “I shouldn’t have told you about him. The boy was troubled for all kinds of reasons.”She was afraid for Ceill. Afraid he’d do something mad and self-destructive if he didn’t get Raised, or even if he did.Tears flooded Ceill’s eyes. He wanted to throw his arms around her and promise he’d study hard, day and night, to be the son she wanted. A son who could never be reproached for anything.But he was no longer a little boy who would do anything for his mother’s smile. “Good thing I’m not troubled,” he said coolly, and walked down the hall to his room.*Valgund shot out a hand, stopping Bors in his tracks. They were snowshoeing down a long, piney slope that ended some forty yards away in a ragged curtain of boughs.“What—” Bors started, but he went still when Valgund brought a finger to his lips. He, too, spotted movement through the trees.Over the past four hikes they’d taken together, whenever Bors was able to get time off work, he’d learned to trust this Linnett, at least when they were in the woods. Valgund had shown him how to walk silently, how to track other walkers, and how to navigate the taiga without his handheld or even a headlamp for the long arctic nights.And now Valgund was showing him a group of Free Northmen.Bors’s breathing was loud in his ears. Very quietly, he knelt and slipped the binoculars from his pack.The sun was already sinking below the horizon, leaving the forest in crepuscular light, but he made out the shapes of three men and a woman wearing Oslov cold-weather gear. Two of them had slung fox pelts around their shoulders. All had long, sloppily braided hair, and the men had scruffy beards, signaling their affiliation to any observer.They passed a map back and forth, talking in low voices—arguing about the route, Bors suspected, though he couldn’t make out the words. They were traveling one of the trails that he and Valgund had left some time ago to blaze their own path across the backcountry.Soon enough, the Northmen folded their map, shouldered their packs, and disappeared, heading west. Bors waited until Valgund gave him the all clear. Then they continued down the hill and across the trail, where Bors helped Valgund carefully rub out their tracks.As they proceeded through a ditch and into the woods again, Bors finally dared to speak. “Do you see them often?”“Often enough.” Valgund paused to pull off his hat and wipe his face with it. In full daylight—back in summer, when they’d started these hikes—his red-brown hair would have blazed, and Bors would have wondered how it might feel to touch it. He felt an odd pang of regret for those days.Valgund hadn’t invited him home again, and Bors was grateful for it. Mostly, he did his best not to think about his guide’s unfortunate connection to Tilrey Bronn.Sometimes, late at night when he couldn’t sleep, he wondered darkly if it even mattered. So what if Bronn was a subversive, as Bors had suspected all this time? Wasn’t Bors a bit of a subversive now himself?“What do you think the Northmen are doing out here?” he asked, knowing the topic was dangerous but wanting to see what Valgund would say. “What do they want?”Valgund cut him a skeptical glance. “Since you work for Int/Sec, I’m guessing you know.”“It could be any number of things.” But Valgund’s face told Bors not to lie. “They’re trying to cultivate sap-bearing trees,” he said as they set out again, all light gone but the snow’s faint glow. “Either that or to find the Sanctioned Sweetbush. They want to control the supply of sap because they believe in the old Feudal faith that its consumption is a sacred act and not a recreational one. Or they just want to stab Redda where it hurts.”Valgund led the way across a frozen brook, easily avoiding the black ice. “You don’t sound like you entirely disagree with the Northmen.”Normally Bors would have rebuked Valgund for even suggesting such a thing. But he’d started this conversation, and he was cold and tired. “I don’t,” he said gruffly. “Well, I mean, the religion thing, that’s subversive nonsense. I don’t pray to the Spark. But any fool can see we’re hooked on sap—us, as a society. People just don’t want to talk about addiction. They think merit entitles them to it and merit will keep them from abusing it.”“I knew some sweet-drowned people in moral rehab.” Valgund’s voice was neutral. “They felt so much shame. They’d been told it was a sign of personal weakness.”“I knew someone, too!” Bors’s voice was shaking. He had to be careful how he talked about Kai and the Brothel. “A friend. When he didn’t get the Notification he wanted, he just gave up and sapped. He wasn’t able to want to stop until he found his motivation again, and even then it took years to recover.”“Motivation.” Valgund laughed softly, picking his way up a slope littered with deadfall. “That was always one of my problems. When you’re born a Linnett and you don’t want to be a Linnett, where’s there to go but down?”“But you have motivation now, don’t you?” Bors didn’t like to think about anyone being lazy or aimless, Valgund especially.The man had a quiet independence that made Bors feel pleasantly unjudged, the opposite of how he felt around every other Upstart. But that wasn’t exactly an achievement, at least not by any measure Bors knew. By Linnett standards, Valgund was clearly a failure. “I mean, you do all this . . . outdoor stuff,” he said, wishing he could express what he meant.“Climbing trees is my motivation?”“Not what I meant.” Bors tripped and caught himself on a hoary trunk. He was still getting the knack of navigating by starlight. “I don’t understand what you do out here, cataloging lichens or whatever, but you seem to enjoy it. And you don’t engage in Hargist shenanigans anymore, which I assume you were doing because of a lack of incentives to behave properly.”Valgund’s laugh was louder this time. “Shenanigans? You sound like my scolding grandma, may her last moment be bright.”“Most Hargists need a good scolding.” Bors picked his way among the snow-covered obstacles. “Most of them come from privileged backgrounds and benefit from family connections. If they had to work a little harder, they wouldn’t have time for this silly theater of rebellion.”“So everybody just needs a little more carrot or stick?” Reaching the brow of the hill, Valgund turned to watch Bors struggle up the last few yards. “Everything’s very simple in your world, Fir Analyst. But you’re not so forthcoming about your own motivations.”Bors’s snowshoe slipped, and Valgund’s arm shot out to steady him. “Easy. We don’t want you breaking your neck.”Bors caught the Linnett’s surprisingly strong hand and let himself be pulled up, though he was furious at needing help. “I don’t know what you mean,” he gasped.Valgund didn’t release Bors until they stood securely on the summit, looking down into the valley together. “I mean your whole reason for being here,” he said. “What you’re looking for. And don’t tell me it’s classified, please, because I’m not stupid. You’re looking for something your superiors wouldn’t want you to find.”Bors wanted to protest, but he was still catching his breath. Some rebellious part of him yearned to reach for the stability of Valgund’s hand again. “I don’t owe you that information,” he said at last.Valgund didn’t seem intimidated by the sharp tone—but he never had been scared of Bors, had he, after that first day when Bors pulled the gun on him? Maybe he’d just been biding his time, planning this confrontation all along.“No, you don’t,” he said. “But sooner or later you’re going to have to tell me if you want me to show you what you’re looking for. Unless you’re hoping to stumble on it yourself, by happenstance.”When he first came out here, Bors had been foolish enough to imagine that he might indeed find the Sweetbush by blundering around the Southern Range. He knew better now. Even this small, relatively hospitable corner of the Wastes was vast.He sucked in a breath. “How can I trust you? You cohabit with my enemies.”“Tilrey and Gersha?” Valgund sounded bemused. “You’ve never explained to me what makes them your enemies, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m not going to tell them you exist, much less why you’re here.”“That’s quite a statement.” Bors made his voice a pointed instrument, as if he were questioning a suspect. “What if I’m out here to do something that endangers the Republic? Then it would be your duty to report me.”“Bors, for green’s sake.” Valgund sat himself down in the snow, snowshoes sticking out in front of him. “I’m not a spy. I’m not trying to catch you in a web. Tell me or don’t tell me, but I wish you would, because all this mystery is annoying. And maybe I could help.”Below them, far down in the valley, shone the reassuring golden lights of the villas and the resort. Soon the hike would end, and Bors would be safe indoors again.“Why would you help me?” he asked, sitting down beside Valgund.“Why wouldn’t I? Why are you so suspicious? Is this about Tilrey and Gersha again?”“It’s about you being a Linnett.” The words came out rough and bitter. “I’ve never known a high name who didn’t look down on me. Hargism, moral rehab—it doesn’t matter. I’m nothing to a person like you, and that’s your birthright.”The instant the words were out, Bors regretted them. He was whining like a child, resenting his betters like a shirker. The first rule of being Raised was Show you’re worthy.When Valgund’s hand grasped his, he gave a start. “It’s fine. I’m not numb.” And I don’t want your pity.Valgund didn’t release him. With both their hands encased in puffy gloves, Bors felt only the grip, but he gripped back.“You’re not nothing to me,” Valgund said in a matter-of-fact way. “I’m lonely, and you’re my company.”Bors made a scoffing sound. So few people had ever wanted his company. There was Ranek Egil, the traitor who had merely wanted to convert him. There was Kai, who would always put his precious Einara first.“Of course,” Valgund continued as if to himself, “once I’ve shown you whatever you’re looking for, you probably won’t need me anymore, and I’ll lose my company for good. So maybe I don’t want to know, after all. Maybe I’ll just lead you in circles.”Bors snorted, but his cheeks warmed despite the scathing cold. “You’re playing games with me.”“Maybe a little. I am bored.” Valgund sighed, but his grip on Bors’s hand didn’t loosen. “I mean it when I say I’d help you, though. If you’re looking for the same thing the Northmen are . . . well, I don’t want to get in trouble. But I’ve often thought it would be a marvelous jape to tamper with Redda’s sap supply.”Bors knew he should snatch his hand away and stand up. He knew he should keep his secret, which was also Kai’s and Einara’s. On the jagged horizon, far above the villas, a viridian curtain of aurora unfurled and began to ripple.“I’m not with the Northmen,” he said. “I don’t want to bring down the Republic, or even the Sanctioned Sweetbush. I want to save them both.”“The Sweetbush needs saving? It seems to be thriving.”Had Valgund actually seen the Sweetbush for himself? Green hells, maybe the risk of trusting him was worth it. “That’s only how it looks,” Bors said. “I heard it from the keeper herself—the trees are overworked and in danger. And the best way to save them is” —he lowered his voice, intoxicated by his own daring— “to infect them with a blight. To stop them from producing.”Valgund’s face was in darkness, but Bors had a sense of the tense, quizzical frown there. “Really? You heard this from the Sweetbush keeper herself?”“She told the whole Council. I happened to be there.” Now that he’d started spilling, it was surprisingly easy. “And later, when she and I were alone, she told me exactly what a person would do if they happened to want to blight the trees to save them . . .”
“This is completely inaccurate!” Ceill wailed.
His mother stuck her head in from the kitchen, where she was trying to replicate Grandma Lisha’s root-vegetable fritters for a free-night treat. “If that silly stream upsets you so much, just stop watching it.”
“Shh! I can’t hear!” Ceill was curled up in one corner of the couch, his eyes glued to the cylinder on the wall. This was his first time seeing episode 3, and though it annoyed him so far—not enough Darius!—his mother couldn’t be allowed to ruin it.
Notification Day had set golden boy Darius and his two humbler friends on radically different paths. While Darius was Lowered and given a data-entry posting in the Sector, shy, clever Markus was Raised and trained to defend the Republic by surveilling subversives. (His job was portrayed in both vague and glorious terms, which Ceill knew from his dad was because the government censors didn’t want you to know anything concrete about Int/Sec.) Meanwhile, Bronia, who remained a Laborer and a terrible goody-goody, volunteered to relocate to Thurskein and teach young people there, hoping to improve their lives.
That was where the inaccuracies got unbearable, and Ceill couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“Schoolrooms in ’Skein don’t look anything like that!” he said. “They don’t have giant windows like ours!”
His mother ducked in again, spatula in hand. “They probably shot those scenes in a warehouse in the Outer Ring. You need all kinds of permits and chaperones to shoot a stream in Thurskein.”
“It’s not just that.” Ceill pointed at the screen, where Bronia was patiently explaining the principles of meritocracy to a benighted Skeinsha teen who had just disparaged “book learning.” “They’re making us look stupid. They’re making Skeinshaka look stupid,” he corrected himself swiftly, “like all they ever do is work factory lines and drink beer on free-nights. They’re making it look like it takes some sappy girl from Redda to teach them to use their heads, and that’s not true. Grandma Lisha is smarter than anyone on this show.”
“You’re upsetting yourself for no reason.” His mother set a platter of golden fritters on the table. “I used to love streams when I was your age,” she continued, adding the tangy white dipping sauce, “but then I realized they’re all just propaganda dressed up in a pretty package.”
It was so frustrating when adults had no imagination. He was tempted to tell her that Aleks Snowblind said the exact same thing.
The episode had reached its ten-minute break, so Ceill muted the droning public-service announcements and knelt beside his mother at the table. “Thank you,” he reminded himself to say before stuffing two fritters in his mouth. “These are almost as good as Grandma’s.”
His mom shook her head, but she was smiling as she tucked into her own serving. “Next time, you try making them. You’ve watched your grandmother enough times.”
“Okay.” But all Ceill could think about were the ghostly images on the screen. “Have you heard of a café in the Outer Ring, Mom? Where streammakers hang out?”
“Why?”
“I’m just curious.” He tried to play innocent the way Tilrey was always so good at. “Somebody at school was talking about it.”
“I remember something like that from my misspent youth, yes. My friends and I explored the Outer Ring and got up to all kinds of foolishness.” She was looking dangerously hard at him now. “But I waited to do that till I was safely at University.”
“I didn’t say I was going there.” Ceill stabbed his fork into a fritter. “Though there are kids at my school who are in the Outer Ring every free-night. Drinking and stuff. So they say.”
The furrow between his mother’s brows deepened. “Well, they shouldn’t be. I don’t want you wasting your time chasing trouble, Ceillsha. Your tests are in less than three months, and your Notification in four.”
The words “tests” and “Notification” made Ceill’s world blink from color into grayscale. The crispy vegetables went leaden in his mouth. “I’m studying,” he said.
“I know you are. You’re very diligent. And you need to keep at it.”
I’m not stupid. I’m not. Ceill dipped another fritter and jammed it in his mouth, but a weight had descended on his chest. He thought of Ludo hissing whorespawn at him in the empty common room.
“People are still gonna know,” he muttered.
He was supposed to want to be Raised more than anything in the world. He’d spent the past seventeen years preparing for it. But what if being an Upstart only meant dealing with people like Ludo every day? What if it was exactly like being at school, or even worse?
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
Ceill considered pretending he’d asked her to pass the platter. But he couldn’t stay quiet about this forever, couldn’t let her act like the problem wasn’t real.
“People will still know,” he said. “People will guess who my actual father is. Who I am. And they’ll tell other people.”
His mother flinched like he’d struck her. Then she softened, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “Don’t worry about that. Not yet. Let your dad and Tilrey and me—”
“I can’t let you worry about it when it’s my problem!” Somehow Ceill was on his feet, and he was yelling. He hadn’t decided to do either of those things. “It’s my life that people are going to make absolute hell!”
“Ceillsha.” His mother’s face was white. “Sit down. You’re scaring me.”
Ceill sat down. Her words had left him limp and dizzy, but he could not let this go. “Couldn’t we just stop pretending?” he asked his plate. “After I’m Notified? Couldn’t we just tell people the truth and end all the rumors once and for all?”
“What rumors are you even talking about? Who’s spreading rumors?”
Everyone. Ceill looked more and more like Tilrey every day; even he couldn’t ignore it. Two of his old friends in Thurskein had already asked him about the resemblance, carefully and politely, and he’d had to play dumb.
Here in Redda, Ludo had noticed years ago and probably told all his friends. And old Councillor Saldegren, Dad’s ally in the Council, gave Ceill the strangest looks every time he came to dinner, as if he wanted to ask a question but didn’t dare. Didn’t his parents mind?
If Ceill ended up with a Sector job, he would have to interact daily with more old people who also knew Tilrey. People who would draw the obvious conclusion.
“Look,” he said, “I know we can’t be official about it. We can’t change my records.” They’d had that argument when he was fifteen, and it ended abruptly when Ceill learned that falsifying a genetic profile was a crime for which his mother could be sent to detention. “But couldn’t we just . . . stop lying?”
His mother’s expression hardened. “Yours isn’t the only case like this, Ceill. When he was at school, your Uncle Valgund was best friends with Councillor Lindahl’s nephew. Everyone could see the boy looked more like his mother’s Laborer secretary than like his legal father, but the family didn’t acknowledge it, ever. Certain things can only be accepted—”
“—if nobody talks about them.” Verdant hells, Ceill hated everybody sometimes. “That’s stupid,” he said. “It’s true whether or not you acknowledge it. All I want . . .”
He didn’t finish, because even he wasn’t sure what he wanted. To throw Ludo’s insinuations back in his face and say, Yes, I am whorespawn, fuck you? It would probably be more satisfying to pound Ludo’s smug face in, but that would earn Ceill a record that might compromise his Notification.
“You taught me not to be ashamed,” he said, staring at his half-empty plate. “You and Dad and Tilrey—you all taught me to be proud of who I am.”
His mother sighed. “We did. And I hope you are. But Ceill, I feel like there’s something you haven’t considered. How is Gersha going to feel if you start telling people he’s not your ‘real’ father?”
It was like she’d stuck a foot in the clear puddle of Ceill’s thoughts and scrambled them. “That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I’d say.”
“Then what would you say?”
“I’d say . . .” He watched dull announcements play on the cylinder screen, his mind working frantically.
Of course Gersha was his real father, but in one way, while Tilrey was his real father in another way. He honestly wasn’t sure how he’d explain it to anyone who wasn’t already close enough to the family to understand. They might make the wrong assumptions—that Gersha was somehow a victim, or that Tilrey and his mother loved each other, or that he loved one father more than the other rather than loving them differently.
“I just wouldn’t lie,” he said.
“Ceill.” His mother kept looking at him with those eyes that were always clear and proud and full of certainty. When he was little, he’d considered her the ultimate arbiter of all moral questions—even more than Gersha, who had too many doubts.
She said, “The truth is complex enough that outsiders are always only going to grasp half of it. Wouldn’t you rather it’s the half that doesn’t make your father sad?”
Then, without waiting for Ceill’s answer, she reached across the table for the remote and turned up the sound. “I think your stream’s back.”
They watched the rest of the episode in silence. When it was over, and his mother got up to make tea, Ceill helped her clear the table. He asked, “Could I have your handheld to call Uncle Valgund?”
“What for?”
She still looked worried, so Ceill made himself look blank and innocent, as if he’d forgotten their argument entirely. “I want to talk about the stream. We’ve both been watching it.”
His mom and uncle had spent their “misspent youth” together. If she and her friends had ventured into the Outer Ring, Valgund had probably been with them. And he would have fewer scruples about telling Ceill where to get a glimpse of Darius.
If Ceill couldn’t live a truthful life, then at least he could follow in his parents’ footsteps and use a bit of harmless trickery to get what he wanted.
His mother scrutinized him a moment longer, but he must have passed muster. “Don’t take too long,” she said and handed over her device.
“Thank you.” Ceill made his eyes wide. On the threshold, he asked, “What happened to Councillor Lindahl’s nephew, anyway?”
His mother froze. “Don’t ask Valgund about that. It’s painful for him to remember, even after all these years.”
“But what—”
“Garsha Lindahl is the boy who was with your uncle on his mad attempt to traipse out of the city into the Wastes. The one who didn’t make it.” Her eyes bored into his. “I shouldn’t have told you about him. The boy was troubled for all kinds of reasons.”
She was afraid for Ceill. Afraid he’d do something mad and self-destructive if he didn’t get Raised, or even if he did.
Tears flooded Ceill’s eyes. He wanted to throw his arms around her and promise he’d study hard, day and night, to be the son she wanted. A son who could never be reproached for anything.
But he was no longer a little boy who would do anything for his mother’s smile. “Good thing I’m not troubled,” he said coolly, and walked down the hall to his room.
Valgund shot out a hand, stopping Bors in his tracks. They were snowshoeing down a long, piney slope that ended some forty yards away in a ragged curtain of boughs.
“What—” Bors started, but he went still when Valgund brought a finger to his lips. He, too, spotted movement through the trees.
Over the past four hikes they’d taken together, whenever Bors was able to get time off work, he’d learned to trust this Linnett, at least when they were in the woods. Valgund had shown him how to walk silently, how to track other walkers, and how to navigate the taiga without his handheld or even a headlamp for the long arctic nights.
And now Valgund was showing him a group of Free Northmen.
Bors’s breathing was loud in his ears. Very quietly, he knelt and slipped the binoculars from his pack.
The sun was already sinking below the horizon, leaving the forest in crepuscular light, but he made out the shapes of three men and a woman wearing Oslov cold-weather gear. Two of them had slung fox pelts around their shoulders. All had long, sloppily braided hair, and the men had scruffy beards, signaling their affiliation to any observer.
They passed a map back and forth, talking in low voices—arguing about the route, Bors suspected, though he couldn’t make out the words. They were traveling one of the trails that he and Valgund had left some time ago to blaze their own path across the backcountry.
Soon enough, the Northmen folded their map, shouldered their packs, and disappeared, heading west. Bors waited until Valgund gave him the all clear. Then they continued down the hill and across the trail, where Bors helped Valgund carefully rub out their tracks.
As they proceeded through a ditch and into the woods again, Bors finally dared to speak. “Do you see them often?”
“Often enough.” Valgund paused to pull off his hat and wipe his face with it. In full daylight—back in summer, when they’d started these hikes—his red-brown hair would have blazed, and Bors would have wondered how it might feel to touch it. He felt an odd pang of regret for those days.
Valgund hadn’t invited him home again, and Bors was grateful for it. Mostly, he did his best not to think about his guide’s unfortunate connection to Tilrey Bronn.
Sometimes, late at night when he couldn’t sleep, he wondered darkly if it even mattered. So what if Bronn was a subversive, as Bors had suspected all this time? Wasn’t Bors a bit of a subversive now himself?
“What do you think the Northmen are doing out here?” he asked, knowing the topic was dangerous but wanting to see what Valgund would say. “What do they want?”
Valgund cut him a skeptical glance. “Since you work for Int/Sec, I’m guessing you know.”
“It could be any number of things.” But Valgund’s face told Bors not to lie. “They’re trying to cultivate sap-bearing trees,” he said as they set out again, all light gone but the snow’s faint glow. “Either that or to find the Sanctioned Sweetbush. They want to control the supply of sap because they believe in the old Feudal faith that its consumption is a sacred act and not a recreational one. Or they just want to stab Redda where it hurts.”
Valgund led the way across a frozen brook, easily avoiding the black ice. “You don’t sound like you entirely disagree with the Northmen.”
Normally Bors would have rebuked Valgund for even suggesting such a thing. But he’d started this conversation, and he was cold and tired. “I don’t,” he said gruffly. “Well, I mean, the religion thing, that’s subversive nonsense. I don’t pray to the Spark. But any fool can see we’re hooked on sap—us, as a society. People just don’t want to talk about addiction. They think merit entitles them to it and merit will keep them from abusing it.”
“I knew some sweet-drowned people in moral rehab.” Valgund’s voice was neutral. “They felt so much shame. They’d been told it was a sign of personal weakness.”
“I knew someone, too!” Bors’s voice was shaking. He had to be careful how he talked about Kai and the Brothel. “A friend. When he didn’t get the Notification he wanted, he just gave up and sapped. He wasn’t able to want to stop until he found his motivation again, and even then it took years to recover.”
“Motivation.” Valgund laughed softly, picking his way up a slope littered with deadfall. “That was always one of my problems. When you’re born a Linnett and you don’t want to be a Linnett, where’s there to go but down?”
“But you have motivation now, don’t you?” Bors didn’t like to think about anyone being lazy or aimless, Valgund especially.
The man had a quiet independence that made Bors feel pleasantly unjudged, the opposite of how he felt around every other Upstart. But that wasn’t exactly an achievement, at least not by any measure Bors knew. By Linnett standards, Valgund was clearly a failure. “I mean, you do all this . . . outdoor stuff,” he said, wishing he could express what he meant.
“Climbing trees is my motivation?”
“Not what I meant.” Bors tripped and caught himself on a hoary trunk. He was still getting the knack of navigating by starlight. “I don’t understand what you do out here, cataloging lichens or whatever, but you seem to enjoy it. And you don’t engage in Hargist shenanigans anymore, which I assume you were doing because of a lack of incentives to behave properly.”
Valgund’s laugh was louder this time. “Shenanigans? You sound like my scolding grandma, may her last moment be bright.”
“Most Hargists need a good scolding.” Bors picked his way among the snow-covered obstacles. “Most of them come from privileged backgrounds and benefit from family connections. If they had to work a little harder, they wouldn’t have time for this silly theater of rebellion.”
“So everybody just needs a little more carrot or stick?” Reaching the brow of the hill, Valgund turned to watch Bors struggle up the last few yards. “Everything’s very simple in your world, Fir Analyst. But you’re not so forthcoming about your own motivations.”
Bors’s snowshoe slipped, and Valgund’s arm shot out to steady him. “Easy. We don’t want you breaking your neck.”
Bors caught the Linnett’s surprisingly strong hand and let himself be pulled up, though he was furious at needing help. “I don’t know what you mean,” he gasped.
Valgund didn’t release Bors until they stood securely on the summit, looking down into the valley together. “I mean your whole reason for being here,” he said. “What you’re looking for. And don’t tell me it’s classified, please, because I’m not stupid. You’re looking for something your superiors wouldn’t want you to find.”
Bors wanted to protest, but he was still catching his breath. Some rebellious part of him yearned to reach for the stability of Valgund’s hand again. “I don’t owe you that information,” he said at last.
Valgund didn’t seem intimidated by the sharp tone—but he never had been scared of Bors, had he, after that first day when Bors pulled the gun on him? Maybe he’d just been biding his time, planning this confrontation all along.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “But sooner or later you’re going to have to tell me if you want me to show you what you’re looking for. Unless you’re hoping to stumble on it yourself, by happenstance.”
When he first came out here, Bors had been foolish enough to imagine that he might indeed find the Sweetbush by blundering around the Southern Range. He knew better now. Even this small, relatively hospitable corner of the Wastes was vast.
He sucked in a breath. “How can I trust you? You cohabit with my enemies.”
“Tilrey and Gersha?” Valgund sounded bemused. “You’ve never explained to me what makes them your enemies, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m not going to tell them you exist, much less why you’re here.”
“That’s quite a statement.” Bors made his voice a pointed instrument, as if he were questioning a suspect. “What if I’m out here to do something that endangers the Republic? Then it would be your duty to report me.”
“Bors, for green’s sake.” Valgund sat himself down in the snow, snowshoes sticking out in front of him. “I’m not a spy. I’m not trying to catch you in a web. Tell me or don’t tell me, but I wish you would, because all this mystery is annoying. And maybe I could help.”
Below them, far down in the valley, shone the reassuring golden lights of the villas and the resort. Soon the hike would end, and Bors would be safe indoors again.
“Why would you help me?” he asked, sitting down beside Valgund.
“Why wouldn’t I? Why are you so suspicious? Is this about Tilrey and Gersha again?”
“It’s about you being a Linnett.” The words came out rough and bitter. “I’ve never known a high name who didn’t look down on me. Hargism, moral rehab—it doesn’t matter. I’m nothing to a person like you, and that’s your birthright.”
The instant the words were out, Bors regretted them. He was whining like a child, resenting his betters like a shirker. The first rule of being Raised was Show you’re worthy.
When Valgund’s hand grasped his, he gave a start. “It’s fine. I’m not numb.” And I don’t want your pity.
Valgund didn’t release him. With both their hands encased in puffy gloves, Bors felt only the grip, but he gripped back.
“You’re not nothing to me,” Valgund said in a matter-of-fact way. “I’m lonely, and you’re my company.”
Bors made a scoffing sound. So few people had ever wanted his company. There was Ranek Egil, the traitor who had merely wanted to convert him. There was Kai, who would always put his precious Einara first.
“Of course,” Valgund continued as if to himself, “once I’ve shown you whatever you’re looking for, you probably won’t need me anymore, and I’ll lose my company for good. So maybe I don’t want to know, after all. Maybe I’ll just lead you in circles.”
Bors snorted, but his cheeks warmed despite the scathing cold. “You’re playing games with me.”
“Maybe a little. I am bored.” Valgund sighed, but his grip on Bors’s hand didn’t loosen. “I mean it when I say I’d help you, though. If you’re looking for the same thing the Northmen are . . . well, I don’t want to get in trouble. But I’ve often thought it would be a marvelous jape to tamper with Redda’s sap supply.”
Bors knew he should snatch his hand away and stand up. He knew he should keep his secret, which was also Kai’s and Einara’s. On the jagged horizon, far above the villas, a viridian curtain of aurora unfurled and began to ripple.
“I’m not with the Northmen,” he said. “I don’t want to bring down the Republic, or even the Sanctioned Sweetbush. I want to save them both.”
“The Sweetbush needs saving? It seems to be thriving.”
Had Valgund actually seen the Sweetbush for himself? Green hells, maybe the risk of trusting him was worth it. “That’s only how it looks,” Bors said. “I heard it from the keeper herself—the trees are overworked and in danger. And the best way to save them is” —he lowered his voice, intoxicated by his own daring— “to infect them with a blight. To stop them from producing.”
Valgund’s face was in darkness, but Bors had a sense of the tense, quizzical frown there. “Really? You heard this from the Sweetbush keeper herself?”
“She told the whole Council. I happened to be there.” Now that he’d started spilling, it was surprisingly easy. “And later, when she and I were alone, she told me exactly what a person would do if they happened to want to blight the trees to save them . . .”
Chapter End Notes
So, who’s right, Ceill or Vera?Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there! <3
Chapter End Notes
So, who’s right, Ceill or Vera?Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there! <3
So, who’s right, Ceill or Vera?
Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there! <3