Chapter 31: Caught — The Key of Oslov

Volume 16: Tales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part 3: The Chase

Chapter 31 Caught

Chapter Notes

This chapter kicked my ass. I’ve always known the story was headed here at some point—since back before I started posting these stories—but actually writing it was intimidating.Warning: This chapter gets spicy and then dark, with a fair bit of BDSM and a discussion of past rape at the end.There’s one more chapter. I hope to post it within a few days. If you’re still reading this impossibly long, twisty and twisted installment, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! <3

Chapter Notes

This chapter kicked my ass. I’ve always known the story was headed here at some point—since back before I started posting these stories—but actually writing it was intimidating.

Warning: This chapter gets spicy and then dark, with a fair bit of BDSM and a discussion of past rape at the end.

There’s one more chapter. I hope to post it within a few days. If you’re still reading this impossibly long, twisty and twisted installment, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! <3

The Brothel staff had a code they used on the intercom, and Kai and Einara had modified it for their needs. When one of them ended a summons to the other with a simple “Thanks,” it meant the visitor had come for a non-sex-related purpose. When they ended it with “Asap,” it meant “They’re here to fuck.” “Asap, perfect” meant “They’re here to fuck, and they’re under the influence; watch out.”With Tilrey, it had always been “Fir Bronn’s here for you, thanks.” But tonight it was “Fir Bronn’s here for a suite, asap.”And there was the slightest smirk in Kai’s voice. Since making his sap-for-favors deal with Fir Councillor Linbeck, he seemed to have quite a high opinion of his own political savvy.Tilrey Bronn had no legal right to command a suite or Einara’s services. Anything more than a quick blow job from a low-tier staffer was far above his ration level. Legality, however, was beside the point in his case.Einara put aside her accounts, which she’d been doing over her morning tea. (It wasn’t technically morning, but in the Brothel it might as well have been.) She put on presentable underthings and a soft robe. She went to claim a freshly made-up suite.When Tilrey entered, she was taking the kettle off the stove. She didn’t go immediately to greet him, as she’d been trained to do with patrons, but waited until the tea tray was ready.A glance told her that his business with Karishkov had turned out well. He never swaggered, but when he was satisfied, his strides were firmer, his head higher.“Sit,” she said with an airy wave at the sofa.Tilrey did not sit. He paced, hands in pockets. When she set down the tray, he said, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Niko anymore.”“How lovely.” Einara knelt to pour the tea. She spoke in the breathy tone of a sweet-drowned whore, playing the part. But there was coldness behind the words, and she knew he heard it. “He’s lifted the lockdown, then?”Tilrey took a tumbler from her and sat down. “Less than an hour ago. I heard him give the order and the captain respond to it.”“So.” Einara perched at the opposite end of the sofa with a sweep of her robe, letting it fall open. “it sounds like you have everything you want.”He stared at her, and she knew it wasn’t because of the flimsy camisole and shorts she was wearing. “Don’t you want to hear how it all worked out?”“Oh, I can imagine. You smiled at Vreni, and she gave you the testimony you wanted.” She flashed him a mocking imitation of his own radiant smile. “If convincing her took more than that—and I imagine it did—you won’t tell me the details. You never like to tell me much of anything.”Tilrey’s mouth tightened. “You’re angry at me.”“How kind of you to notice my mood.” Einara set down her cup and rose with another swirl of the robe. “I suppose you’ll be wanting sap. A little something to celebrate your victory.”Without waiting for his answer, she glided back into the kitchen area and snatched up the vial she’d left on the counter. It was only when she had to resist an impulse to toss it to the ground and grind it under her heel that she realized Tilrey was right.This tightness in her throat—it was anger. She was angry.The emotion was so foreign that she was tempted to savor it. What a luxury, to fly into a fury. She couldn’t recall ever being angry at the soldiers in the garrison or the patrons who came afterward, or even at Hulda. There was no point. She outwitted them when she could and endured them when she couldn’t.Kai had come to the Brothel angry, and that was why Hulda and the patrons and sap had broken him. No one had ever broken Einara. Unless . . . was she getting soft? Hadn’t she been genuinely angry at Karishkov, too, last time she saw him?Even with Tilrey, anger was a risk. It could lead to rash moves.She returned to the sofa and raised the vial to glitter in the lamplight, which shone from under a silky, peach-colored shade. “How shall we do it this time? You drink from my hand, or I drink from yours?”“I didn’t come here for sap.” He was frowning.“No? Really?”The problem, Einara realized all at once, was that she didn’t have a goal now that they’d defeated Karishkov together. She needed to want something from Tilrey—something obtainable. Once she had a proper focus for her energy, this frustration would dissipate.“Fine.” Tilrey took the vial from her, poured most of it into his own palm, and licked it off. His features softened, his beautiful eyes catching the light. “I admit, I didn’t expect this. I thought you’d be . . . well, happy. But I can be obtuse these days. Give me your hand.”She did. He emptied the rest of the vial into it, then set her cupped hand gently back in her lap. “This isn’t a time for games.”“No, it’s not.” The viscous stickiness in her palm made Einara shiver. She lifted the hand and licked it clean, avoiding his gaze. He’d remembered and given her the right amount.What do I want from him? Tilrey couldn’t give her what she wanted. By insisting that Malsha alone was responsible for the deaths of her mother and sister, he’d left her with no one on whom to take vengeance. As for his promise to help her kill Colonel Thibault, that was absurd. Trapped here in the Brothel, Einara knew only the Brothel. Colonel Thibault would be old by now—hardly a worthy adversary. Perhaps she was at death’s door; perhaps she’d passed through it. People died younger in Resurgence than they did here.No. The only way Einara would have her revenge was to attack Oslov itself. Aleks Snowblind had been her hope, but he was gone. Bors Dartán was supposed to find the terminals, but the only useful thing he’d done in years was help her entrap Karishkov. And that was useful to Tilrey, not her.Her plans were in ruins. Without Tilrey’s patronage, she would be just another Brothel director—and that was what made her the angriest. To need him. To be at his beck and call.Maybe she should tell him about the terminals while withholding the Verses. He might have more luck finding the hidden installations than Bors had. But then the ultimate power to use the terminals would still be his.She needed to be less angry. She needed to find his weak point.“I like you better when you’re being brutally honest,” she said, looking at him again, “and right now you’re not. Vreni didn’t just give you what you wanted because you asked nicely. From everything I’ve heard about her, she’s not a pushover.”Tilrey eased himself back and put his feet up on the sofa, his toes resting an inch from her thigh. The sap seemed to be relaxing him. “I never said it was easy to get Vreni’s cooperation. You said that. What do you want from me, Einara? A full accounting?”“We’re allies, aren’t we?”“If I haven’t told you everything, it’s because I want to protect you.”“I don’t want to be protected.” Again came the flicker of rage, but she tamped it down. “I spent night after night with Niko Karishkov. I let him into my body again and again. And something worse: I let him cry in my arms.”He shuddered. “I don’t envy you.”“I spent much longer in his troubled brain than I wanted to. I learned his darkest secret. I even found someone to corroborate it.”“Yes, about that,” Tilrey said, “you haven’t been very forthcoming about how you found Gurya Keikorannen.”He was trying to sidetrack her—he was so good at that. If she wasn’t careful, he’d end up knowing all about Bors.“You don’t need to know,” she said airily. “Brothel business. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve put work into this. I deserve to know the fucking end of the story.”There it was. What she wanted, right here in this moment. Funny how she hadn’t been able to name it herself until the words tumbled out of her mouth.Tilrey picked up his tumbler and took a swallow. His toe nudged her thigh. “What the hell. I told Karishkov; I might as well tell you.”Something hitched in Einara’s chest. Her instinct was right; this was important. “What did you tell Karishkov?”“That his son is alive. That’s how I got Vreni to talk—by bringing her a message from Aleks.”One moment Einara was sitting on the sofa, and the next she seemed to be hovering in midair. Her head spun dizzily. Tilrey shrank to a speck in the distance.Aleks wasn’t dead. He was out there somewhere. And, after all he’d been through, he might want the same thing she wanted: to see Oslov over and done with.Perhaps she could be more than Tilrey’s lackey, after all.“You’ve known the whole time.” Her own voice seemed to come from afar, so bizarrely calm. “You were stringing me along, making me send people to search for Aleks, when you knew he was alive.”Tilrey shook his head. “I found out days ago, Einara. I still don’t even know his exact location.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “But I’ll find out soon enough; don’t worry about that.”Einara was sinking back into her body, the blissful lightheadedness fading. When Tilrey did find out where Aleks was, she knew, he wouldn’t tell her. If she asked, he’d feed her the line about keeping her ignorant for her own protection.And she needed to know.“How on earth did you find out?” she asked, doing her best to keep the tone light. Bors had sworn up and down he couldn’t find Aleks. She would have some choice words for him at their next meeting.A sudden thought quickened her breathing. Maybe Bors hadn’t just been dragging his feet. Maybe he’d lied about looking for Aleks, or about not finding him. And in that case, what else might he be lying about?Tilrey’s face had gone blank again in the infuriating way he’d probably learned in the Sector. “Things are still developing. There are things I don’t feel comfortable telling you—”“For my own protection.” Einara rolled her eyes. She’d had about enough of his condescension.She grabbed his ankles and hauled his long legs off the sofa. He was so annoyingly hard to budge. “Stop lolling around like one of my whores. That’s not what you are. You came here for a victory fuck, didn’t you?”His eyes widened. “I never said—”“Oh, stop being such a politician, too. You don’t need an entire suite just to have a conversation with me.”She stood up and rolled her shoulders, trying to flex the anger out of her joints. She couldn’t afford that now. She needed to get inside his head.When she sat down again, she positioned herself practically in his lap, her side pressed against his. He inched away, but she closed the distance.“What did you really come for, Tilrey Bronn? How does victory make you feel? Do you need to put all that pent-up energy inside someone else?”She reached between his legs for his cock. He didn’t budge this time, but she snatched her hand back when she found her quarry—still soft. What had he come for? Or was she losing her touch?“No, that’s not what you need.” She remembered Kai’s theory about Tilrey. Their conversation on the night of her ill-fated attempt to give him a blow job. “You’re not a simple man like Karishkov. A warm, receptive hole isn’t enough for you. You want something a little less expected.”He shuddered, the strong body quaking against hers.She reached up and tugged her hair free of its loose knot. Then she bent and whispered in his ear: “Get up and take off all your clothes. Show yourself to me.”So close to him, she could feel Tilrey’s breath hitch, then speed up. A second shudder ran from his body to hers. He opened his mouth to object.Then he closed it again. He rose from the sofa in one fluid motion. He took a few steps into the center of the room and turned to face her. “This is what you want?”No. It’s what you want. But she knew the right answer. “Didn’t I just say so? Get on with it.” Inspired, she added, “Before we engage new staffers, we always get a good look at them. And you do want to be engaged here, don’t you?”This time, she saw his full-body shudder rather than felt it. This was what he wanted, then. To be treated like one of her whores.His head drooping a little, his gaze fixed on the floor, he undid the side clasp of the jerkin and tugged it over his head. The shirt came next, followed by the soft indoor boots. He kicked them aside.An easy, practiced routine. He’d done this countless times before, and he knew what a watcher wanted to see. A little roll and flex of his shoulders to show off the lean, muscular chest, before he unfastened the heavy trousers and slipped them down over his hips. Restrained movements that hinted at restless strength barely held in check.He stepped out of the trousers, shook them out, and folded them neatly. Set them on the floor. Straightened and did that little stretch and shoulder roll again, this time to give her a good look at the muscle-ridged abdomen and the line of reddish hair that pointed straight to the ripe bulge in his briefs.Yes, he wanted this.He wasn’t actually doing the performance for her, of course. He had some other watcher in mind—whoever had taught him to perform this way, long ago. Whenever Einara undressed for a patron, she heard Hulda’s voice in her head: Slowly, slowly. Arch your back. No, don’t scowl! You’re in a trance of readiness.She’d learned well enough to fake what people wanted, but she knew she wasn’t even close to being as convincing as Tilrey was. No wonder he’d been so prized as a kettle boy.“My, this is taking a while,” she said sharply, the way Hulda would have. “And the rest, please.”Tilrey didn’t hesitate—that tone of command must be familiar to him. His hips jutted forward, toward her, as he peeled off the briefs.She assessed him through Hulda’s eyes. Though he clearly worked hard to maintain that body, it had sharper angles and less flexible joints than it must have had in his youth. His skin was flawless, but it lacked the rosy glow she remembered from the infamous photos. His face was more angular, too, the lips narrower, the hair just a little sparser.“Do you dye that?” she asked. “The hair? To cover the gray?”“No.” Tilrey folded the briefs and dropped them on top of the trousers. As he straightened, he clasped his hands behind his back, giving her an unobstructed view of the organ that rose half hard between his legs, the scrotum a velvety shadow behind it.“I will dye it in the end, I suppose,” he added in a subdued voice, still looking at the floor, as if he really were speaking to a prospective boss. “Every time I check, there’s a little more gray among the blond.”Einara knew he wanted to feel eyes on him, so she stared directly at his cock, pretending to see it for the first time. It was big, as she already knew, but no man’s cock particularly impressed her.“You’re well past your prime, of course,” she said in Hulda’s brisk way. “But I imagine there’s some use left in you. Go to the bed. Stand holding the frame.”Tilrey must have heard similar orders before. He showed no confusion, as a neophyte might have done, but strode over and took hold of the canopy frame, facing the interior of the bed.He was so tall that he didn’t need to stand on tiptoe. But the posture still stretched his arms fetchingly over his head, putting the rest of his body on display.Einara had played the dominatrix many times. She felt indifferent to most of the ritual, but she did like this part of it: rendering a strong man helpless.“Well, you certainly know your paces,” she said, rising and walking unhurriedly over to the bed. “Long practice, I expect. But I’m still going to make sure you can’t break that pretty posture.”The toy drawer was built discreetly into the foot of the bed. It slid open without a sound, and she examined the contents. The whip, the oak paddle, or the broad leather belt?With a new patron, Einara would always ask, then explain precisely what she planned to do with each implement. But this was no novice, and she knew instinctively that he wanted her to choose. That was part of it—not knowing until the instrument made contact with his flesh. Not being able to control any aspect of the process.He was so very good at controlling people and moving them around like game pieces—Councillor Lindblom and the rest of his party, Karishkov, Vreni, Janta, even Einara herself. It must be exhausting.She chose the heavy belt and a black leather phallus to match, with a long strap dangling from the handle. It wasn’t massive, but he would feel it.She slipped the dildo into her robe pocket and looped the belt over her arm, then fished out a pair of black leather restraints to complete the ensemble. “Hold still.”He didn’t move a muscle as she brought over a footstool and stood on it to cuff his wrists to the frame. His whole body was shivering just perceptibly, and sweat glinted between the broad shoulders.When she’d stepped down, he gave a quick, subtle yank to the restraints. They held, and she heard his breath catch again. With trepidation? With arousal?“You certainly are a little old for our stable.” She took the belt and wound it once around his waist, then used it to tug him away from the bed so that his ass jutted toward her.Again that quick intake of breath. He liked the leather on his skin.“Too bad this doesn’t have inches marked on it,” she said, pulling the loop tighter so that the edges of the belt cut into his hips and belly. “We do take all of our staffers’ measurements, you know, every six months. There are spreadsheets.”His Adam’s apple bobbed. His cock was fully erect now.Einara slid the belt free of his waist and bent to loop it around his left thigh, the upper edge grazing the swell of his ass. Again she pulled it tight. “That way, if we need to dismiss someone for not staying in proper physical form, we can cite evidence.”“How thorough.” The words emerged in a gulp. She sensed the effort he was putting into not straining toward her, not rutting his hips in desperate search of contact.“Yes. We are.” She loosened the belt again and did the same thing to his right thigh.This time, she touched his ass, tracing the swell with her palm as if it were a ripe black-market fruit. “Tell me, sweetheart, how do you feel about marks on this blank canvas? I won’t break the skin, of course. But are a few welts and bruises okay?”Again his throat worked convulsively. His cock rose helplessly from its soft nest of reddish hair. “Yes. Please.”“Oh, an eager one. You may change your tune once I get started.” She slipped the belt from his thigh, doubled it, and gave it a good hard snap, making the air sing around them.He winced, his hips jerking away from her. Then he caught himself and returned to the posture in which she’d put him.His Councillor—his “husband”—must not mind seeing the marks of his extracurricular activities. Perhaps they had an understanding. Einara was curious, but she knew that any question about his home life would bring the scene to an abrupt halt. He’d made that clear the last time she brought up Councillor Gádden. And he was still the patron here.She wanted something, too, though—to get under his skin. To see the world through his eyes. To know him well enough to best him.“Stand absolutely still,” she commanded, reaching around with her left hand to grasp his cock at last.He moaned, his hips bucking into her palm. She released him and, quick as a flash, stepped back and struck him hard with the loop of leather, catching his right buttock and thigh. “What did I say? Don’t move.”A gasp of pain—but he recovered quickly, bringing his hips back into alignment. His head drooped between his bent elbows, hair in his flushed face. “Please,” he said.With two fingertips, Einara traced the faint welt she’d made. “If you’re going to wiggle, I’m not sure what the point is.”Tilrey shivered, but she could feel him planting his feet hard. Digging his nails into the stiff leather of the cuffs above his head. “I’ll stay still. You surprised me, that’s all.”“Mmm.” She peered over his shoulder at his cock, achingly stiff and angry red. “I think we’ll need to get through a few more strokes before we can touch that again. Discipline is important here. Five, say. No, how about seven. Count for me.”She drew back her arm and lashed him again, this time on the other cheek. You always tried to spread the damage around.“One.”“I can’t quite hear you, love.”“One.” His voice was firm, almost defiant. Maybe this would be fun.The teasing was almost as much fun as watching someone start out strong and end up weak. The actual belting was just exercise, and Einara was out of practice.She gave it her best effort, though, making the doubled leather sing in the air and come down with a crisp snap. This time, he flinched hard as it made contact, but his voice was still strong on “Two.”“Three.” A hitch in his voice.“Four.” That was almost a yelp. Einara paused to light one of the bedside lamps so she could examine the angry red welts forming on either side. “My, but you have sensitive skin.”“So I’ve been told,” he whispered.“You’ve had your share of compliments, haven’t you? You’ll have to put aside that vanity if you want to work here.” She raised her arm. “We don’t let anyone play the prima donna—and certainly not a whore as old and well used as you are.”This time, when the belt struck, a raspy whimper tore itself from his throat. His breath came in gasps. “Five.”Einara took a step away from him. “Had enough?” she asked conversationally.Tilrey pressed his face tight against the pinioned arms. Shook his head. Mumbled something.“What’s that?” She drew her arm back and struck him again.“Six.” It was a moan. His arms jerked, his shackled hands clutching the frame. “I said . . . I said, I deserve more.”“You do, don’t you? I mean, look at all the trouble you’ve caused in the Sector. What you did to Niko today, what you’ve done to him for years—he’s a sad shell of a man, thanks to you. Between you and Vreni, his high-named pride is in tatters.” She hit him, putting all her disgust with Niko Karishkov into the blow.This time, Tilrey yelped. It took him a few seconds to get his breathing under control. “Seven,” he hissed through his teeth.“Oh. Time for a reward, then.” She took another glance at his cock—standing at full attention. “But you know, I think you aren’t quite ready for that. Tell me, did Niko ever fuck you? Do you know how his cock feels inside you?”His hips bucked rebelliously. But he answered: “He doesn’t like men. I never got further than trying to suck him off.”“Oh, that’s a pity.” She wrapped the belt around his waist again. This time, she buckled it tightly enough to be uncomfortable, ignoring his grunt of protest.Then she snagged a bottle of lube from the nightstand and squeezed some onto her fingertips. “Thanks to you and your scheming, I know Niko’s cock intimately. How he fucks when he’s angry, when he’s sad, when he’s tender.”She returned to the shivering, shackled body and took the leather phallus from her pocket. “I wish I could share all those sensations with you. After all, I did it all for you. At your command. But this might be close enough.” She ran the toy along his ass crack, just letting him feel the tip. “It’s about Niko’s size. Would you like to feel it?”Another bout of shivers seized him, as if he wanted it but was also repelled. “That’s up . . . to you.”“Of course it’s up to me. But I’d like to hear you say it.” She pressed her lubed fingers into his crack and teased around the puckered rim of his hole. “When we try out new staffers here, we always ask them about their past experience. Their degree of . . . use.”Again came those shivers, running from the broad shoulders down his back to the more intimate area she was exploring. With each intake of breath, she heard the ghost of a whimper in his throat.“And we can’t just take their word for it,” she continued, pretending to be oblivious, “so we might have another staffer try them out. Spread your legs, please.”He did so without the slightest hesitation. She probed deeper, opening him with two deft fingers. “Or, if a prospective whore is being sassy, we might have him drop his trousers and bend over a table so we can feel for ourselves just how loose or tight he is. You . . .”She found his prostate. He moaned and bucked, and she let her fingers slide out. “Well, you’re certainly no virgin. Our top patrons wouldn’t want anything to do with you.”She nestled the head of the dildo right at the opening of the prepared passage. He keened softly through his teeth.“You’ve been well used, the way a good tool is. Well loved, too, I suppose. But that’s not what’s important here.”The phallus slid easily into him, and his hips rose to meet it like a good whore’s. “Imagine this is Niko. Imagine things have turned out a little differently. He’s bested you after all. He’s ruined you, and you’ve been forced to seek shelter here. With us.”He snarled, “Not likely.”“Oh, isn’t it?” She worked the toy back and forth. Deeper. “Well, I’m telling this story. Here you are. And Niko comes and asks for you. He isn’t attracted to you, never has been, but he wants to be sure he’s put you back in your proper place. And, after all, a hole is a hole.”The phallus was buried to the root in him, his body opening effortlessly to accommodate it. His smothered whimpers were louder now. Closer to sobs.“And you roll over for him and spread your legs. Like you’ve always done. You can’t stop yourself—it’s instinctive.” She ran her free hand down his back, feeling the continuous tremors. “Niko complains a little because you’re not younger, tighter. But he makes the best of it. He comes.”She stepped back, leaving the dildo snug inside him with its leather handle strap dangling down his thigh. “After that, he comes back and asks for you again. At first every ten-day. Then every month. Most of the patrons you serve are lower-Level now, so you find yourself looking forward to Niko’s visits.”Tilrey laughed—just a hiss between clenched teeth, but Einara caught it. “Also not likely.”She drew her arm back and gave him a hard slap on the rump, on top of the welts. He cried out. The dildo’s strap bobbed gaily as his hips heaved.The cry trailed off into a moan. “You’re right,” he whispered.“Oh?” For a moment, she’d lost track of her own scenario.But he hadn’t. “Yes. When Niko’s gone, I . . . miss him.”“And then one day Niko goes away, and it’s the last time. You don’t even know it.” Einara stroked the reddened flesh that she had martyred. For the first time, she felt something like true tenderness for him. “But as the months go by, you realize that he’s never coming back. And now your life is an endless round of being used by rough, impatient men.”She gave the dildo’s handle a slight tug, just enough to remind him it was there. His response—a sharp gasp—came with gratifying speed.“They don’t see your value. They have no idea how beautiful, how precious, how prized you used to be. Now you’re just two holes, and one of those holes is getting looser as it’s more and more used. Your stock here is going down.”She stood on tiptoe to stroke the nape of his drooping neck. She ran her fingers through his damp hair. He shivered—so close to the edge—but didn’t pull away.“And soon,” she whispered in his ear, “not even the lowest patrons will want to fuck you. Your ass isn’t interesting, except to the ones who want to whip it. So you become what we call a Mouth. Day after day, you wait in a tiny room for men to come in and use you. You get on your knees, and you suck them and swallow their leavings, and you thank them for it.”She flicked his earlobe with her tongue, then licked a line down his neck. He tasted of sweat and dread.“And this is how you end,” she said, squeezing one ass-cheek gently enough that he tensed but didn’t cry out. “As a cum bucket for bottom-tier Strutters, and maybe even higher Laborers. Poor old used-up Tilrey.”She flicked the strap on the dildo, and she could almost feel herself how it tickled his aching skin. As if they had one body between them.“And here’s the thing.” She inched her fingertips around his waist, lips close to his ear again. “You don’t want to leave. You like it. You understand now, finally, that this is where you belong—down here with us in the sewer. This is where you’ll die when you’re no longer useful, when you can’t take one more cock down your throat. Maybe you’ll die choking on a cock. And even then you’ll die happy.”She reached across his belly and grabbed hold of his cock at last. It was iron hard and so hot she nearly winced.“Because this is you, the real you. Because you’ve been useful.” She shut her eyes, bracing herself against his trembling back, and closed her fist around the wide shaft—up and down, up and down. “A pretty mouth. A pair of holes. A tool. A thing. A thing. A thing. Come for me now.”He came, spurting all over her hand and striping his own chest with the hot semen. She kept hold and rode him through the last spasms—pressed tight against him, feeling the dildo’s handle nudge her belly.“And what a beautiful, troublesome thing you are,” she sighed, releasing his organ at last. There was a good chance he didn’t hear.The first thing Tilrey was aware of was a familiar stinging ache all over his ass. Then the Brothel’s soupy warmth. Then the bulk of the toy still inside him, filling him—itchy and unpleasant and pleasant. Then the leather belt cinching his ribs and belly, supporting and crushing at once. Then a shooting pain from his pinioned arms—and that made him open his eyes.The bedside lamp had been switched off, leaving just the one by the sofa. He twisted around, looking for Einara, only to draw in his breath with a hiss. The damned strap dangling from the toy had grazed his welts.She couldn’t have just left him this way. “Hey! Think you could undo these cuffs?”To his relief, a soft laugh came from the kitchen area. Footsteps approached, and then her silky robe ghosted across his back. “I was just putting away the tea things. So. Are you ready to behave?”Wasn’t the game over yet? He writhed in his restraints, still weak from the climax that had lifted him as an ocean wave lifts flotsam, so high that he seemed to look down on the whole world, and then tossed him roughly up on shore. “Sure. I’m ready.”“You don’t sound very ready.”Fingertips moved lightly over his right buttock, and he tensed and suppressed a whimper. Seven strokes was nothing. But she was stronger than Davita, or maybe just more ruthless. “We’re done playing,” he said.“Oh, are we? Just because you’ve come?” A finger slid itself between his back and the belt, tightening the fit across his belly. Another finger teased up his chest and tweaked a nipple. “So you’re just another patron, then? Here to use me and then run away?”“I told you an important secret that I didn’t want to tell you,” Tilrey pointed out. He wanted the dildo out of him and the belt and shackles off him—not just because of the discomfort, but because his current position—trussed, filled, displayed—was pushing him subtly back toward arousal.He knew himself well enough to know that this post-orgasm lucidity would pass. He had been trained to enjoy his own degradation, and as long as she kept this up, he would respond eventually, even against his will.“Oh, an important secret,” Einara said mockingly. “How kind of you to entrust your humble subordinate with such a thing.”She patted his rump—ow—and stepped back to contemplate him. “I don’t know. You make a pretty picture right now, especially with that flush in your cheeks. Maybe I should fetch Kai and let him take a look, too.”That did it. The rush of hot blood to Tilrey’s groin was so sudden and intense that he groaned, feeling his cock lurch upright again.Behind him, her laugh was genuinely surprised and delighted. “Really? You like that idea? I was trying to scare you.”He squeezed his eyes tight shut. “Fuck you.”“Now, that sounds like a plan. Is it the thought of having both of us together that gets you going? Or do you just want Kai to see you this way? Or do you want him to use the belt on you? He’s much stronger than me.”Before Tilrey could answer that he wanted none of those things (probably, surely), her fingers were on his wrists, undoing the shackles. “Careful,” she said, chafing his wrists and then easing his arms into a more natural position. “Be sure to stretch so you don’t get a cramp.”“I know that.” He reached back to pluck out the dildo, but the motion threw his tormented body off balance. His vision darkened, his knees buckling under him.“I said careful.”Soft, strong arms supported his weight. Silky fabric brushed his bare skin. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his side in bed, and deft fingers were tugging the toy from him at last.He groaned, grateful for his release from bondage yet still ridiculously, agonizingly hard. “I don’t want your lout of a husband doing anything to me.”“Are you sure?” She gave his cock a playful squeeze (green hells) and then unbuckled the belt, allowing him to take his first proper deep breath in forever. “You might like Kai in bed. He’s more tender-hearted and generous than I am.”“We’re not going to talk about Kai.” Now that he had his hands back, he wouldn’t tolerate any more of her ruthless teasing.She reached for him again, but he grabbed her first and rolled her onto her back. She didn’t struggle as he brought his body down on top of hers, pinning her wrists above her head as he sometimes did with Davita. “You’re the one who wanted to keep playing. I’ve had my turn. Now, what do you like?”She had gone still, almost limp—so limp that he suddenly felt very uncomfortable pressing his erection into the softness of her groin. It was a form of submission he was all too familiar with: Go ahead, take me; I won’t struggle, but I won’t pretend to enjoy it, either.He inched away, opening some space between them, but didn’t release her. Not yet. She had just explored his dark places, shining an all-too-knowing light into them; now he intended to get a bit of honesty in return. “Do you really not like it, then? Sex?”Her loose hair pooled around her head, catching the light. Her expression was distant. “Do you want me to like it?”“I want you to . . . be here.” Was she really so impenetrable? He released her and scooted back toward the foot of the bed, still feeling the throb of that inconvenient arousal. “Don’t treat me like a patron. You know that’s not what I am.”“No, you’re not.” Einara sat up and let the robe fall from her shoulders. A slight smile curved her lips, and her eyes had life in them again. “You want me to be here for you. Inside my body. You know the trick of leaving your body, then?”“Dissociating? Of course.” From what he knew of her history, she was probably even more damaged than he was, first by Colonel Thibault’s brainwashing and then by the residents of the garrison in the Wastes from which she’d been brought—trafficked—here.He’d endured one night of being the plaything of a group of drunken soldiers. If she had experienced years of similar treatment, it was no wonder she had an inhuman fixation on revenge. It was no wonder she was . . . what she was.But he couldn’t show even a hint of pity for her. She would slam the door of her inner sanctum in his face.“I was very skilled at leaving my body,” he said, smiling back at her. “One of the Councillors who kept me used to say I was a beautiful block of wood. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t responsive when I’d been trained to be responsive. It never occurred to him that he simply needed to make a token effort to arouse me. He was too selfish even for that.”Einara’s smile widened. There was something new about it—timid. Curious. Real.Then her eyes hooded again, and she said, “You’re trying to bond with me. That’s clever of you.”“Green hells, would you stop?”Before he knew what he was doing, he was lunging forward again. Pushing her down. He lowered his face until they were a fraction of an inch apart and gazed directly into her eyes. “I want what’s in your head—the passwords. I’ve never made any secret of that.”This time, she squirmed under him—but she wasn’t struggling. She was raising her hips to meet his. “You think I know these mythical passwords. I’ve told you—”“I know you know them.” He was sick of maneuvering and subterfuge, too. “But you won’t tell me, because they’re the last card you have to play.”He pressed his stiff, aching cock against her, and this time there was an answering pressure as she rutted against him. He brushed the tangled hair from her face and gripped her skull with both hands. “Sometimes I wish I could just . . . break you open.”“Do you?” She heaved against him, and now her breath was coming short and uneven. Her eyes glittered; her tongue flicked out and licked her lips. “Would you like to try to break me open? Right now?”Her shorts were flimsy. He seized the waistband and ripped the garment in two with a satisfying shriek of fabric, then peeled it off. “I think I will.”She laughed up into his face. “Go ahead and try.”He didn’t break her, of course. Many men had tried, but none would ever succeed.It was good, though—so good that, for an interval, her whole body came alive, and she went a little mad the way she sometimes did with Kai. She hooked her knees high around his hips, calves crossing to cinch him the way the cruel belt had. He pinned her wrists to the bedding.At first he simply drove his cock against her groin, making the friction and heat build in her belly until she writhed and said, “Put it in, already.” And he did.She knew how big he was, and she was used to big, but the fit was unbearably tight at first, each inch he progressed making her squirm like a fish on a hook. And then the pain turned to a delicious spreading heat as she opened to him, and he released her wrists and propped himself up on his elbows and began to thrust.“Beautiful block of wood,” she whispered when he paused to catch his breath. “Used-up whore.”His eyes flashed, more with amusement than anger. “I could hurt you.”“I dare you.”“I might call your bluff.” He braced himself and thrust home—until she could feel the plump weight of his balls against her most sensitive flesh, making her gasp and strain toward him again.The first time she came, the climax was something wrenched from her—a purely reflexive spasm, with no shock waves of pleasure spreading outward. But he kept right on going, and when she came the second time, there were four spasms in a row, like flashes of lightning in a summer sky. Each one made her snap her hips to take him deeper, and when it was over, she collapsed backward into a haze of bliss, falling and falling and finding no bottom.But the friction of the thrusts continued, and the tension mounted again. There was a third time, a little less sugar-sweet than the second. A fourth time—just one spasm now. And then she gasped, “Now you,” and it was his turn to spasm against her, the climax tearing a cry from his throat as the warm seed gushed inside her.The second it was over, she regretted it.The whole point of this was to get inside his head, not to let him inside hers. She could easily have faked her responses while keeping a careful eye on his.But one little lapse wasn’t the end of the world. Anyway, it felt good to rest in his arms, both of them sheened in sweat, as the rhythm of their breathing slowly returned to normal.For a while, they simply floated. Einara’s eyelids grew heavy. Then Tilrey raised his head and nuzzled her neck. “Well, now I know the secret of a really good fuck. Put two professionals together.”Moving was too much of an effort, so she relaxed into the sensation. “I already knew that.”“You and Kai. Of course. But he’s not like us, is he?” A wary note in his voice. “He was older when he started.”She nodded.“I thought so.” He lifted a lock of her hair and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. “Your first time, was it your choice?”Einara knew what he meant. If he’d asked the question at any other time, she would have found an arch way to tell him it was none of his business. But now it seemed pointless to keep secrets, or at least this particular secret.“No,” she said. “I thought I’d chosen it. It had to happen, after all—my mission involved being a whore. And I knew how to kill a man, so I didn’t think fucking would be a problem. But when that first man pushed me down, when he . . . I still wasn’t prepared. I guess no one is.”His breath caught. “I’m sorry.”“Please. You’re way past being shocked.” She pressed her cheek to his chest and flattened a palm against it. His question was telling her something. He wanted to confess something—perhaps to offer a belated explanation of the scene they’d played earlier. “Now you,” she said. “First time?”“It was with my best friend. A girl.” He tangled his fingers in her hair, palm tender against her skull. “We were kids. I thought I was in love. So yes, it was my choice.”“But then,” she said. “Your first man.”“That was different.”“How different?”“I was out cold.” He began winding a strand of her hair around and around a finger, creating a slight, painful pressure at the roots. “He gave me sap—maybe he didn’t know I’d react so strongly. No tolerance. I woke up, and I couldn’t remember a damn thing. I hurt, though, and that was how I knew he’d been inside me. I didn’t want to believe it. I had to keep reminding myself.”So that was what he’d wanted to confess. “You weren’t ready for it,” Einara said. “Being used. You weren’t prepared.”He shook his head, and his grip on her hair loosened. “I got used to it pretty quick. But the first few times, the world turned upside down. I was so convinced that I was a real person, with goals and boundaries, and suddenly I was a . . . receptacle. For them.”Einara knew that feeling. She knew it well.“But you paid them all back, didn’t you?” she asked, rolling over to gaze up at him. “What you did to Karishkov today was exactly what he deserved.”His eyes were troubled. “I’m not like you. I don’t believe in revenge. That first man who raped me—he’s my son’s grandfather.”Einara hadn’t known that. She was impressed. “You seduced and impregnated your rapist’s daughter? You made her love you enough to keep your child? And you’re telling me that’s not revenge?”“No!” He nudged her off him and propped himself up on an elbow. “None of it was intentional. Well, I did choose to sleep with her. But not for that. Ceill is a person. If I tried to make him embody my revenge, I’d be a monster.”Einara knew very well that Ceill was a person—one with motives that often didn’t match his father’s. “It doesn’t matter what you want,” she said. “His existence is your revenge, whether he knows it or not. The fact that he’s an Upstart—that’s even better. When he marries and has his own children, your revenge will roll on into future generations.”He scoffed. “You’re a Harbourer. Oslovs don’t think that way.”“No? I’ve read some of your Feudal sagas. They’re full of bloody revenge.” She wondered why he was protesting so hard. “There’s something about the whole concept of retribution that bothers you, isn’t there? That’s why you won’t tell me the names of Malsha’s accomplices in bombing my family.”“I don’t know of any accomplices! I told you! It’s not something I have any way of knowing.” He sat up, leaning against the headboard. “If I don’t believe in revenge, it’s because I used to want it too much. Once, long ago, I had an Upstart at my mercy, and I humiliated him. Gratuitously.” His lips twisted.“Not Niko?”“No! A low Upstart, a Raised. Someone I could hurt safely, or so I thought, because his aunt was a Brothel keeper. I was wrong.”Hulda’s nephew. “Are you talking about Bors Dartán?” Einara asked, keeping her tone neutral.He sighed. “I thought you might know him. That man dogs my steps.”So that was why Bors despised Tilrey. Einara could only imagine the sort of humiliation Tilrey might be capable of dealing out to someone as secretly sensitive as her little friend the spy.“We see him here from time to time,” she said. “As a patron. Why do you say he dogs your steps?”“He thinks I’m a shirker. It’s complicated.” Tilrey lowered his eyes. “I thought I was long done with him, and then he popped up again just days ago, at my fucking home. I nearly had a heart attack. But there was an upside. He was of some use, finally.”“What kind of use?”He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “That’s also complicated. But apparently Bors Dartán has been consorting with a friend of mine. Winning him over. And the two of them know every inch of the Southern Range.”Everything snapped into place in Einara’s head. She was going to kill Bors.No. Killing him wasn’t an option. She was going to use him, and he was going to let himself be used.“Bors led you to Aleks Snowblind,” she said. “Didn’t he?”He looked at her then, sharply. “Why should you care?”“I told you. I deserve to know the end of the fucking story.” But she already knew this wasn’t the end of the story at all.

With Tilrey, it had always been “Fir Bronn’s here for you, thanks.” But tonight it was “Fir Bronn’s here for a suite, asap.”

And there was the slightest smirk in Kai’s voice. Since making his sap-for-favors deal with Fir Councillor Linbeck, he seemed to have quite a high opinion of his own political savvy.

Tilrey Bronn had no legal right to command a suite or Einara’s services. Anything more than a quick blow job from a low-tier staffer was far above his ration level. Legality, however, was beside the point in his case.

Einara put aside her accounts, which she’d been doing over her morning tea. (It wasn’t technically morning, but in the Brothel it might as well have been.) She put on presentable underthings and a soft robe. She went to claim a freshly made-up suite.

When Tilrey entered, she was taking the kettle off the stove. She didn’t go immediately to greet him, as she’d been trained to do with patrons, but waited until the tea tray was ready.

A glance told her that his business with Karishkov had turned out well. He never swaggered, but when he was satisfied, his strides were firmer, his head higher.

“Sit,” she said with an airy wave at the sofa.

Tilrey did not sit. He paced, hands in pockets. When she set down the tray, he said, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Niko anymore.”

“How lovely.” Einara knelt to pour the tea. She spoke in the breathy tone of a sweet-drowned whore, playing the part. But there was coldness behind the words, and she knew he heard it. “He’s lifted the lockdown, then?”

Tilrey took a tumbler from her and sat down. “Less than an hour ago. I heard him give the order and the captain respond to it.”

“So.” Einara perched at the opposite end of the sofa with a sweep of her robe, letting it fall open. “it sounds like you have everything you want.”

He stared at her, and she knew it wasn’t because of the flimsy camisole and shorts she was wearing. “Don’t you want to hear how it all worked out?”

“Oh, I can imagine. You smiled at Vreni, and she gave you the testimony you wanted.” She flashed him a mocking imitation of his own radiant smile. “If convincing her took more than that—and I imagine it did—you won’t tell me the details. You never like to tell me much of anything.”

Tilrey’s mouth tightened. “You’re angry at me.”

“How kind of you to notice my mood.” Einara set down her cup and rose with another swirl of the robe. “I suppose you’ll be wanting sap. A little something to celebrate your victory.”

Without waiting for his answer, she glided back into the kitchen area and snatched up the vial she’d left on the counter. It was only when she had to resist an impulse to toss it to the ground and grind it under her heel that she realized Tilrey was right.

This tightness in her throat—it was anger. She was angry.

The emotion was so foreign that she was tempted to savor it. What a luxury, to fly into a fury. She couldn’t recall ever being angry at the soldiers in the garrison or the patrons who came afterward, or even at Hulda. There was no point. She outwitted them when she could and endured them when she couldn’t.

Kai had come to the Brothel angry, and that was why Hulda and the patrons and sap had broken him. No one had ever broken Einara. Unless . . . was she getting soft? Hadn’t she been genuinely angry at Karishkov, too, last time she saw him?

Even with Tilrey, anger was a risk. It could lead to rash moves.

She returned to the sofa and raised the vial to glitter in the lamplight, which shone from under a silky, peach-colored shade. “How shall we do it this time? You drink from my hand, or I drink from yours?”

“I didn’t come here for sap.” He was frowning.

“No? Really?”

The problem, Einara realized all at once, was that she didn’t have a goal now that they’d defeated Karishkov together. She needed to want something from Tilrey—something obtainable. Once she had a proper focus for her energy, this frustration would dissipate.

“Fine.” Tilrey took the vial from her, poured most of it into his own palm, and licked it off. His features softened, his beautiful eyes catching the light. “I admit, I didn’t expect this. I thought you’d be . . . well, happy. But I can be obtuse these days. Give me your hand.”

She did. He emptied the rest of the vial into it, then set her cupped hand gently back in her lap. “This isn’t a time for games.”

“No, it’s not.” The viscous stickiness in her palm made Einara shiver. She lifted the hand and licked it clean, avoiding his gaze. He’d remembered and given her the right amount.

What do I want from him? Tilrey couldn’t give her what she wanted. By insisting that Malsha alone was responsible for the deaths of her mother and sister, he’d left her with no one on whom to take vengeance. As for his promise to help her kill Colonel Thibault, that was absurd. Trapped here in the Brothel, Einara knew only the Brothel. Colonel Thibault would be old by now—hardly a worthy adversary. Perhaps she was at death’s door; perhaps she’d passed through it. People died younger in Resurgence than they did here.

No. The only way Einara would have her revenge was to attack Oslov itself. Aleks Snowblind had been her hope, but he was gone. Bors Dartán was supposed to find the terminals, but the only useful thing he’d done in years was help her entrap Karishkov. And that was useful to Tilrey, not her.

Her plans were in ruins. Without Tilrey’s patronage, she would be just another Brothel director—and that was what made her the angriest. To need him. To be at his beck and call.

Maybe she should tell him about the terminals while withholding the Verses. He might have more luck finding the hidden installations than Bors had. But then the ultimate power to use the terminals would still be his.

She needed to be less angry. She needed to find his weak point.

“I like you better when you’re being brutally honest,” she said, looking at him again, “and right now you’re not. Vreni didn’t just give you what you wanted because you asked nicely. From everything I’ve heard about her, she’s not a pushover.”

Tilrey eased himself back and put his feet up on the sofa, his toes resting an inch from her thigh. The sap seemed to be relaxing him. “I never said it was easy to get Vreni’s cooperation. You said that. What do you want from me, Einara? A full accounting?”

“We’re allies, aren’t we?”

“If I haven’t told you everything, it’s because I want to protect you.”

“I don’t want to be protected.” Again came the flicker of rage, but she tamped it down. “I spent night after night with Niko Karishkov. I let him into my body again and again. And something worse: I let him cry in my arms.”

He shuddered. “I don’t envy you.”

“I spent much longer in his troubled brain than I wanted to. I learned his darkest secret. I even found someone to corroborate it.”

“Yes, about that,” Tilrey said, “you haven’t been very forthcoming about how you found Gurya Keikorannen.”

He was trying to sidetrack her—he was so good at that. If she wasn’t careful, he’d end up knowing all about Bors.

“You don’t need to know,” she said airily. “Brothel business. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve put work into this. I deserve to know the fucking end of the story.”

There it was. What she wanted, right here in this moment. Funny how she hadn’t been able to name it herself until the words tumbled out of her mouth.

Tilrey picked up his tumbler and took a swallow. His toe nudged her thigh. “What the hell. I told Karishkov; I might as well tell you.”

Something hitched in Einara’s chest. Her instinct was right; this was important. “What did you tell Karishkov?”

“That his son is alive. That’s how I got Vreni to talk—by bringing her a message from Aleks.”

One moment Einara was sitting on the sofa, and the next she seemed to be hovering in midair. Her head spun dizzily. Tilrey shrank to a speck in the distance.

Aleks wasn’t dead. He was out there somewhere. And, after all he’d been through, he might want the same thing she wanted: to see Oslov over and done with.

Perhaps she could be more than Tilrey’s lackey, after all.

“You’ve known the whole time.” Her own voice seemed to come from afar, so bizarrely calm. “You were stringing me along, making me send people to search for Aleks, when you knew he was alive.”

Tilrey shook his head. “I found out days ago, Einara. I still don’t even know his exact location.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “But I’ll find out soon enough; don’t worry about that.”

Einara was sinking back into her body, the blissful lightheadedness fading. When Tilrey did find out where Aleks was, she knew, he wouldn’t tell her. If she asked, he’d feed her the line about keeping her ignorant for her own protection.

And she needed to know.

“How on earth did you find out?” she asked, doing her best to keep the tone light. Bors had sworn up and down he couldn’t find Aleks. She would have some choice words for him at their next meeting.

A sudden thought quickened her breathing. Maybe Bors hadn’t just been dragging his feet. Maybe he’d lied about looking for Aleks, or about not finding him. And in that case, what else might he be lying about?

Tilrey’s face had gone blank again in the infuriating way he’d probably learned in the Sector. “Things are still developing. There are things I don’t feel comfortable telling you—”

“For my own protection.” Einara rolled her eyes. She’d had about enough of his condescension.

She grabbed his ankles and hauled his long legs off the sofa. He was so annoyingly hard to budge. “Stop lolling around like one of my whores. That’s not what you are. You came here for a victory fuck, didn’t you?”

His eyes widened. “I never said—”

“Oh, stop being such a politician, too. You don’t need an entire suite just to have a conversation with me.”

She stood up and rolled her shoulders, trying to flex the anger out of her joints. She couldn’t afford that now. She needed to get inside his head.

When she sat down again, she positioned herself practically in his lap, her side pressed against his. He inched away, but she closed the distance.

“What did you really come for, Tilrey Bronn? How does victory make you feel? Do you need to put all that pent-up energy inside someone else?”

She reached between his legs for his cock. He didn’t budge this time, but she snatched her hand back when she found her quarry—still soft. What had he come for? Or was she losing her touch?

“No, that’s not what you need.” She remembered Kai’s theory about Tilrey. Their conversation on the night of her ill-fated attempt to give him a blow job. “You’re not a simple man like Karishkov. A warm, receptive hole isn’t enough for you. You want something a little less expected.”

He shuddered, the strong body quaking against hers.

She reached up and tugged her hair free of its loose knot. Then she bent and whispered in his ear: “Get up and take off all your clothes. Show yourself to me.”

So close to him, she could feel Tilrey’s breath hitch, then speed up. A second shudder ran from his body to hers. He opened his mouth to object.

Then he closed it again. He rose from the sofa in one fluid motion. He took a few steps into the center of the room and turned to face her. “This is what you want?”

No. It’s what you want. But she knew the right answer. “Didn’t I just say so? Get on with it.” Inspired, she added, “Before we engage new staffers, we always get a good look at them. And you do want to be engaged here, don’t you?”

This time, she saw his full-body shudder rather than felt it. This was what he wanted, then. To be treated like one of her whores.

His head drooping a little, his gaze fixed on the floor, he undid the side clasp of the jerkin and tugged it over his head. The shirt came next, followed by the soft indoor boots. He kicked them aside.

An easy, practiced routine. He’d done this countless times before, and he knew what a watcher wanted to see. A little roll and flex of his shoulders to show off the lean, muscular chest, before he unfastened the heavy trousers and slipped them down over his hips. Restrained movements that hinted at restless strength barely held in check.

He stepped out of the trousers, shook them out, and folded them neatly. Set them on the floor. Straightened and did that little stretch and shoulder roll again, this time to give her a good look at the muscle-ridged abdomen and the line of reddish hair that pointed straight to the ripe bulge in his briefs.

Yes, he wanted this.

He wasn’t actually doing the performance for her, of course. He had some other watcher in mind—whoever had taught him to perform this way, long ago. Whenever Einara undressed for a patron, she heard Hulda’s voice in her head: Slowly, slowly. Arch your back. No, don’t scowl! You’re in a trance of readiness.

She’d learned well enough to fake what people wanted, but she knew she wasn’t even close to being as convincing as Tilrey was. No wonder he’d been so prized as a kettle boy.

“My, this is taking a while,” she said sharply, the way Hulda would have. “And the rest, please.”

Tilrey didn’t hesitate—that tone of command must be familiar to him. His hips jutted forward, toward her, as he peeled off the briefs.

She assessed him through Hulda’s eyes. Though he clearly worked hard to maintain that body, it had sharper angles and less flexible joints than it must have had in his youth. His skin was flawless, but it lacked the rosy glow she remembered from the infamous photos. His face was more angular, too, the lips narrower, the hair just a little sparser.

“Do you dye that?” she asked. “The hair? To cover the gray?”

“No.” Tilrey folded the briefs and dropped them on top of the trousers. As he straightened, he clasped his hands behind his back, giving her an unobstructed view of the organ that rose half hard between his legs, the scrotum a velvety shadow behind it.

“I will dye it in the end, I suppose,” he added in a subdued voice, still looking at the floor, as if he really were speaking to a prospective boss. “Every time I check, there’s a little more gray among the blond.”

Einara knew he wanted to feel eyes on him, so she stared directly at his cock, pretending to see it for the first time. It was big, as she already knew, but no man’s cock particularly impressed her.

“You’re well past your prime, of course,” she said in Hulda’s brisk way. “But I imagine there’s some use left in you. Go to the bed. Stand holding the frame.”

Tilrey must have heard similar orders before. He showed no confusion, as a neophyte might have done, but strode over and took hold of the canopy frame, facing the interior of the bed.

He was so tall that he didn’t need to stand on tiptoe. But the posture still stretched his arms fetchingly over his head, putting the rest of his body on display.

Einara had played the dominatrix many times. She felt indifferent to most of the ritual, but she did like this part of it: rendering a strong man helpless.

“Well, you certainly know your paces,” she said, rising and walking unhurriedly over to the bed. “Long practice, I expect. But I’m still going to make sure you can’t break that pretty posture.”

The toy drawer was built discreetly into the foot of the bed. It slid open without a sound, and she examined the contents. The whip, the oak paddle, or the broad leather belt?

With a new patron, Einara would always ask, then explain precisely what she planned to do with each implement. But this was no novice, and she knew instinctively that he wanted her to choose. That was part of it—not knowing until the instrument made contact with his flesh. Not being able to control any aspect of the process.

He was so very good at controlling people and moving them around like game pieces—Councillor Lindblom and the rest of his party, Karishkov, Vreni, Janta, even Einara herself. It must be exhausting.

She chose the heavy belt and a black leather phallus to match, with a long strap dangling from the handle. It wasn’t massive, but he would feel it.

She slipped the dildo into her robe pocket and looped the belt over her arm, then fished out a pair of black leather restraints to complete the ensemble. “Hold still.”

He didn’t move a muscle as she brought over a footstool and stood on it to cuff his wrists to the frame. His whole body was shivering just perceptibly, and sweat glinted between the broad shoulders.

When she’d stepped down, he gave a quick, subtle yank to the restraints. They held, and she heard his breath catch again. With trepidation? With arousal?

“You certainly are a little old for our stable.” She took the belt and wound it once around his waist, then used it to tug him away from the bed so that his ass jutted toward her.

Again that quick intake of breath. He liked the leather on his skin.

“Too bad this doesn’t have inches marked on it,” she said, pulling the loop tighter so that the edges of the belt cut into his hips and belly. “We do take all of our staffers’ measurements, you know, every six months. There are spreadsheets.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. His cock was fully erect now.

Einara slid the belt free of his waist and bent to loop it around his left thigh, the upper edge grazing the swell of his ass. Again she pulled it tight. “That way, if we need to dismiss someone for not staying in proper physical form, we can cite evidence.”

“How thorough.” The words emerged in a gulp. She sensed the effort he was putting into not straining toward her, not rutting his hips in desperate search of contact.

“Yes. We are.” She loosened the belt again and did the same thing to his right thigh.

This time, she touched his ass, tracing the swell with her palm as if it were a ripe black-market fruit. “Tell me, sweetheart, how do you feel about marks on this blank canvas? I won’t break the skin, of course. But are a few welts and bruises okay?”

Again his throat worked convulsively. His cock rose helplessly from its soft nest of reddish hair. “Yes. Please.”

“Oh, an eager one. You may change your tune once I get started.” She slipped the belt from his thigh, doubled it, and gave it a good hard snap, making the air sing around them.

He winced, his hips jerking away from her. Then he caught himself and returned to the posture in which she’d put him.

His Councillor—his “husband”—must not mind seeing the marks of his extracurricular activities. Perhaps they had an understanding. Einara was curious, but she knew that any question about his home life would bring the scene to an abrupt halt. He’d made that clear the last time she brought up Councillor Gádden. And he was still the patron here.

She wanted something, too, though—to get under his skin. To see the world through his eyes. To know him well enough to best him.

“Stand absolutely still,” she commanded, reaching around with her left hand to grasp his cock at last.

He moaned, his hips bucking into her palm. She released him and, quick as a flash, stepped back and struck him hard with the loop of leather, catching his right buttock and thigh. “What did I say? Don’t move.”

A gasp of pain—but he recovered quickly, bringing his hips back into alignment. His head drooped between his bent elbows, hair in his flushed face. “Please,” he said.

With two fingertips, Einara traced the faint welt she’d made. “If you’re going to wiggle, I’m not sure what the point is.”

Tilrey shivered, but she could feel him planting his feet hard. Digging his nails into the stiff leather of the cuffs above his head. “I’ll stay still. You surprised me, that’s all.”

“Mmm.” She peered over his shoulder at his cock, achingly stiff and angry red. “I think we’ll need to get through a few more strokes before we can touch that again. Discipline is important here. Five, say. No, how about seven. Count for me.”

She drew back her arm and lashed him again, this time on the other cheek. You always tried to spread the damage around.

“One.”

“I can’t quite hear you, love.”

“One.” His voice was firm, almost defiant. Maybe this would be fun.

The teasing was almost as much fun as watching someone start out strong and end up weak. The actual belting was just exercise, and Einara was out of practice.

She gave it her best effort, though, making the doubled leather sing in the air and come down with a crisp snap. This time, he flinched hard as it made contact, but his voice was still strong on “Two.”

“Three.” A hitch in his voice.

“Four.” That was almost a yelp. Einara paused to light one of the bedside lamps so she could examine the angry red welts forming on either side. “My, but you have sensitive skin.”

“So I’ve been told,” he whispered.

“You’ve had your share of compliments, haven’t you? You’ll have to put aside that vanity if you want to work here.” She raised her arm. “We don’t let anyone play the prima donna—and certainly not a whore as old and well used as you are.”

This time, when the belt struck, a raspy whimper tore itself from his throat. His breath came in gasps. “Five.”

Einara took a step away from him. “Had enough?” she asked conversationally.

Tilrey pressed his face tight against the pinioned arms. Shook his head. Mumbled something.

“What’s that?” She drew her arm back and struck him again.

“Six.” It was a moan. His arms jerked, his shackled hands clutching the frame. “I said . . . I said, I deserve more.”

“You do, don’t you? I mean, look at all the trouble you’ve caused in the Sector. What you did to Niko today, what you’ve done to him for years—he’s a sad shell of a man, thanks to you. Between you and Vreni, his high-named pride is in tatters.” She hit him, putting all her disgust with Niko Karishkov into the blow.

This time, Tilrey yelped. It took him a few seconds to get his breathing under control. “Seven,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Oh. Time for a reward, then.” She took another glance at his cock—standing at full attention. “But you know, I think you aren’t quite ready for that. Tell me, did Niko ever fuck you? Do you know how his cock feels inside you?”

His hips bucked rebelliously. But he answered: “He doesn’t like men. I never got further than trying to suck him off.”

“Oh, that’s a pity.” She wrapped the belt around his waist again. This time, she buckled it tightly enough to be uncomfortable, ignoring his grunt of protest.

Then she snagged a bottle of lube from the nightstand and squeezed some onto her fingertips. “Thanks to you and your scheming, I know Niko’s cock intimately. How he fucks when he’s angry, when he’s sad, when he’s tender.”

She returned to the shivering, shackled body and took the leather phallus from her pocket. “I wish I could share all those sensations with you. After all, I did it all for you. At your command. But this might be close enough.” She ran the toy along his ass crack, just letting him feel the tip. “It’s about Niko’s size. Would you like to feel it?”

Another bout of shivers seized him, as if he wanted it but was also repelled. “That’s up . . . to you.”

“Of course it’s up to me. But I’d like to hear you say it.” She pressed her lubed fingers into his crack and teased around the puckered rim of his hole. “When we try out new staffers here, we always ask them about their past experience. Their degree of . . . use.”

Again came those shivers, running from the broad shoulders down his back to the more intimate area she was exploring. With each intake of breath, she heard the ghost of a whimper in his throat.

“And we can’t just take their word for it,” she continued, pretending to be oblivious, “so we might have another staffer try them out. Spread your legs, please.”

He did so without the slightest hesitation. She probed deeper, opening him with two deft fingers. “Or, if a prospective whore is being sassy, we might have him drop his trousers and bend over a table so we can feel for ourselves just how loose or tight he is. You . . .”

She found his prostate. He moaned and bucked, and she let her fingers slide out. “Well, you’re certainly no virgin. Our top patrons wouldn’t want anything to do with you.”

She nestled the head of the dildo right at the opening of the prepared passage. He keened softly through his teeth.

“You’ve been well used, the way a good tool is. Well loved, too, I suppose. But that’s not what’s important here.”

The phallus slid easily into him, and his hips rose to meet it like a good whore’s. “Imagine this is Niko. Imagine things have turned out a little differently. He’s bested you after all. He’s ruined you, and you’ve been forced to seek shelter here. With us.”

He snarled, “Not likely.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” She worked the toy back and forth. Deeper. “Well, I’m telling this story. Here you are. And Niko comes and asks for you. He isn’t attracted to you, never has been, but he wants to be sure he’s put you back in your proper place. And, after all, a hole is a hole.”

The phallus was buried to the root in him, his body opening effortlessly to accommodate it. His smothered whimpers were louder now. Closer to sobs.

“And you roll over for him and spread your legs. Like you’ve always done. You can’t stop yourself—it’s instinctive.” She ran her free hand down his back, feeling the continuous tremors. “Niko complains a little because you’re not younger, tighter. But he makes the best of it. He comes.”

She stepped back, leaving the dildo snug inside him with its leather handle strap dangling down his thigh. “After that, he comes back and asks for you again. At first every ten-day. Then every month. Most of the patrons you serve are lower-Level now, so you find yourself looking forward to Niko’s visits.”

Tilrey laughed—just a hiss between clenched teeth, but Einara caught it. “Also not likely.”

She drew her arm back and gave him a hard slap on the rump, on top of the welts. He cried out. The dildo’s strap bobbed gaily as his hips heaved.

The cry trailed off into a moan. “You’re right,” he whispered.

“Oh?” For a moment, she’d lost track of her own scenario.

But he hadn’t. “Yes. When Niko’s gone, I . . . miss him.”

“And then one day Niko goes away, and it’s the last time. You don’t even know it.” Einara stroked the reddened flesh that she had martyred. For the first time, she felt something like true tenderness for him. “But as the months go by, you realize that he’s never coming back. And now your life is an endless round of being used by rough, impatient men.”

She gave the dildo’s handle a slight tug, just enough to remind him it was there. His response—a sharp gasp—came with gratifying speed.

“They don’t see your value. They have no idea how beautiful, how precious, how prized you used to be. Now you’re just two holes, and one of those holes is getting looser as it’s more and more used. Your stock here is going down.”

She stood on tiptoe to stroke the nape of his drooping neck. She ran her fingers through his damp hair. He shivered—so close to the edge—but didn’t pull away.

“And soon,” she whispered in his ear, “not even the lowest patrons will want to fuck you. Your ass isn’t interesting, except to the ones who want to whip it. So you become what we call a Mouth. Day after day, you wait in a tiny room for men to come in and use you. You get on your knees, and you suck them and swallow their leavings, and you thank them for it.”

She flicked his earlobe with her tongue, then licked a line down his neck. He tasted of sweat and dread.

“And this is how you end,” she said, squeezing one ass-cheek gently enough that he tensed but didn’t cry out. “As a cum bucket for bottom-tier Strutters, and maybe even higher Laborers. Poor old used-up Tilrey.”

She flicked the strap on the dildo, and she could almost feel herself how it tickled his aching skin. As if they had one body between them.

“And here’s the thing.” She inched her fingertips around his waist, lips close to his ear again. “You don’t want to leave. You like it. You understand now, finally, that this is where you belong—down here with us in the sewer. This is where you’ll die when you’re no longer useful, when you can’t take one more cock down your throat. Maybe you’ll die choking on a cock. And even then you’ll die happy.”

She reached across his belly and grabbed hold of his cock at last. It was iron hard and so hot she nearly winced.

“Because this is you, the real you. Because you’ve been useful.” She shut her eyes, bracing herself against his trembling back, and closed her fist around the wide shaft—up and down, up and down. “A pretty mouth. A pair of holes. A tool. A thing. A thing. A thing. Come for me now.”

He came, spurting all over her hand and striping his own chest with the hot semen. She kept hold and rode him through the last spasms—pressed tight against him, feeling the dildo’s handle nudge her belly.

“And what a beautiful, troublesome thing you are,” she sighed, releasing his organ at last. There was a good chance he didn’t hear.

The first thing Tilrey was aware of was a familiar stinging ache all over his ass. Then the Brothel’s soupy warmth. Then the bulk of the toy still inside him, filling him—itchy and unpleasant and pleasant. Then the leather belt cinching his ribs and belly, supporting and crushing at once. Then a shooting pain from his pinioned arms—and that made him open his eyes.

The bedside lamp had been switched off, leaving just the one by the sofa. He twisted around, looking for Einara, only to draw in his breath with a hiss. The damned strap dangling from the toy had grazed his welts.

She couldn’t have just left him this way. “Hey! Think you could undo these cuffs?”

To his relief, a soft laugh came from the kitchen area. Footsteps approached, and then her silky robe ghosted across his back. “I was just putting away the tea things. So. Are you ready to behave?”

Wasn’t the game over yet? He writhed in his restraints, still weak from the climax that had lifted him as an ocean wave lifts flotsam, so high that he seemed to look down on the whole world, and then tossed him roughly up on shore. “Sure. I’m ready.”

“You don’t sound very ready.”

Fingertips moved lightly over his right buttock, and he tensed and suppressed a whimper. Seven strokes was nothing. But she was stronger than Davita, or maybe just more ruthless. “We’re done playing,” he said.

“Oh, are we? Just because you’ve come?” A finger slid itself between his back and the belt, tightening the fit across his belly. Another finger teased up his chest and tweaked a nipple. “So you’re just another patron, then? Here to use me and then run away?”

“I told you an important secret that I didn’t want to tell you,” Tilrey pointed out. He wanted the dildo out of him and the belt and shackles off him—not just because of the discomfort, but because his current position—trussed, filled, displayed—was pushing him subtly back toward arousal.

He knew himself well enough to know that this post-orgasm lucidity would pass. He had been trained to enjoy his own degradation, and as long as she kept this up, he would respond eventually, even against his will.

“Oh, an important secret,” Einara said mockingly. “How kind of you to entrust your humble subordinate with such a thing.”

She patted his rump—ow—and stepped back to contemplate him. “I don’t know. You make a pretty picture right now, especially with that flush in your cheeks. Maybe I should fetch Kai and let him take a look, too.”

That did it. The rush of hot blood to Tilrey’s groin was so sudden and intense that he groaned, feeling his cock lurch upright again.

Behind him, her laugh was genuinely surprised and delighted. “Really? You like that idea? I was trying to scare you.”

He squeezed his eyes tight shut. “Fuck you.”

“Now, that sounds like a plan. Is it the thought of having both of us together that gets you going? Or do you just want Kai to see you this way? Or do you want him to use the belt on you? He’s much stronger than me.”

Before Tilrey could answer that he wanted none of those things (probably, surely), her fingers were on his wrists, undoing the shackles. “Careful,” she said, chafing his wrists and then easing his arms into a more natural position. “Be sure to stretch so you don’t get a cramp.”

“I know that.” He reached back to pluck out the dildo, but the motion threw his tormented body off balance. His vision darkened, his knees buckling under him.

“I said careful.”

Soft, strong arms supported his weight. Silky fabric brushed his bare skin. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his side in bed, and deft fingers were tugging the toy from him at last.

He groaned, grateful for his release from bondage yet still ridiculously, agonizingly hard. “I don’t want your lout of a husband doing anything to me.”

“Are you sure?” She gave his cock a playful squeeze (green hells) and then unbuckled the belt, allowing him to take his first proper deep breath in forever. “You might like Kai in bed. He’s more tender-hearted and generous than I am.”

“We’re not going to talk about Kai.” Now that he had his hands back, he wouldn’t tolerate any more of her ruthless teasing.

She reached for him again, but he grabbed her first and rolled her onto her back. She didn’t struggle as he brought his body down on top of hers, pinning her wrists above her head as he sometimes did with Davita. “You’re the one who wanted to keep playing. I’ve had my turn. Now, what do you like?”

She had gone still, almost limp—so limp that he suddenly felt very uncomfortable pressing his erection into the softness of her groin. It was a form of submission he was all too familiar with: Go ahead, take me; I won’t struggle, but I won’t pretend to enjoy it, either.

He inched away, opening some space between them, but didn’t release her. Not yet. She had just explored his dark places, shining an all-too-knowing light into them; now he intended to get a bit of honesty in return. “Do you really not like it, then? Sex?”

Her loose hair pooled around her head, catching the light. Her expression was distant. “Do you want me to like it?”

“I want you to . . . be here.” Was she really so impenetrable? He released her and scooted back toward the foot of the bed, still feeling the throb of that inconvenient arousal. “Don’t treat me like a patron. You know that’s not what I am.”

“No, you’re not.” Einara sat up and let the robe fall from her shoulders. A slight smile curved her lips, and her eyes had life in them again. “You want me to be here for you. Inside my body. You know the trick of leaving your body, then?”

“Dissociating? Of course.” From what he knew of her history, she was probably even more damaged than he was, first by Colonel Thibault’s brainwashing and then by the residents of the garrison in the Wastes from which she’d been brought—trafficked—here.

He’d endured one night of being the plaything of a group of drunken soldiers. If she had experienced years of similar treatment, it was no wonder she had an inhuman fixation on revenge. It was no wonder she was . . . what she was.

But he couldn’t show even a hint of pity for her. She would slam the door of her inner sanctum in his face.

“I was very skilled at leaving my body,” he said, smiling back at her. “One of the Councillors who kept me used to say I was a beautiful block of wood. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t responsive when I’d been trained to be responsive. It never occurred to him that he simply needed to make a token effort to arouse me. He was too selfish even for that.”

Einara’s smile widened. There was something new about it—timid. Curious. Real.

Then her eyes hooded again, and she said, “You’re trying to bond with me. That’s clever of you.”

“Green hells, would you stop?”

Before he knew what he was doing, he was lunging forward again. Pushing her down. He lowered his face until they were a fraction of an inch apart and gazed directly into her eyes. “I want what’s in your head—the passwords. I’ve never made any secret of that.”

This time, she squirmed under him—but she wasn’t struggling. She was raising her hips to meet his. “You think I know these mythical passwords. I’ve told you—”

“I know you know them.” He was sick of maneuvering and subterfuge, too. “But you won’t tell me, because they’re the last card you have to play.”

He pressed his stiff, aching cock against her, and this time there was an answering pressure as she rutted against him. He brushed the tangled hair from her face and gripped her skull with both hands. “Sometimes I wish I could just . . . break you open.”

“Do you?” She heaved against him, and now her breath was coming short and uneven. Her eyes glittered; her tongue flicked out and licked her lips. “Would you like to try to break me open? Right now?”

Her shorts were flimsy. He seized the waistband and ripped the garment in two with a satisfying shriek of fabric, then peeled it off. “I think I will.”

She laughed up into his face. “Go ahead and try.”

He didn’t break her, of course. Many men had tried, but none would ever succeed.

It was good, though—so good that, for an interval, her whole body came alive, and she went a little mad the way she sometimes did with Kai. She hooked her knees high around his hips, calves crossing to cinch him the way the cruel belt had. He pinned her wrists to the bedding.

At first he simply drove his cock against her groin, making the friction and heat build in her belly until she writhed and said, “Put it in, already.” And he did.

She knew how big he was, and she was used to big, but the fit was unbearably tight at first, each inch he progressed making her squirm like a fish on a hook. And then the pain turned to a delicious spreading heat as she opened to him, and he released her wrists and propped himself up on his elbows and began to thrust.

“Beautiful block of wood,” she whispered when he paused to catch his breath. “Used-up whore.”

His eyes flashed, more with amusement than anger. “I could hurt you.”

“I dare you.”

“I might call your bluff.” He braced himself and thrust home—until she could feel the plump weight of his balls against her most sensitive flesh, making her gasp and strain toward him again.

The first time she came, the climax was something wrenched from her—a purely reflexive spasm, with no shock waves of pleasure spreading outward. But he kept right on going, and when she came the second time, there were four spasms in a row, like flashes of lightning in a summer sky. Each one made her snap her hips to take him deeper, and when it was over, she collapsed backward into a haze of bliss, falling and falling and finding no bottom.

But the friction of the thrusts continued, and the tension mounted again. There was a third time, a little less sugar-sweet than the second. A fourth time—just one spasm now. And then she gasped, “Now you,” and it was his turn to spasm against her, the climax tearing a cry from his throat as the warm seed gushed inside her.

The second it was over, she regretted it.

The whole point of this was to get inside his head, not to let him inside hers. She could easily have faked her responses while keeping a careful eye on his.

But one little lapse wasn’t the end of the world. Anyway, it felt good to rest in his arms, both of them sheened in sweat, as the rhythm of their breathing slowly returned to normal.

For a while, they simply floated. Einara’s eyelids grew heavy. Then Tilrey raised his head and nuzzled her neck. “Well, now I know the secret of a really good fuck. Put two professionals together.”

Moving was too much of an effort, so she relaxed into the sensation. “I already knew that.”

“You and Kai. Of course. But he’s not like us, is he?” A wary note in his voice. “He was older when he started.”

She nodded.

“I thought so.” He lifted a lock of her hair and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. “Your first time, was it your choice?”

Einara knew what he meant. If he’d asked the question at any other time, she would have found an arch way to tell him it was none of his business. But now it seemed pointless to keep secrets, or at least this particular secret.

“No,” she said. “I thought I’d chosen it. It had to happen, after all—my mission involved being a whore. And I knew how to kill a man, so I didn’t think fucking would be a problem. But when that first man pushed me down, when he . . . I still wasn’t prepared. I guess no one is.”

His breath caught. “I’m sorry.”

“Please. You’re way past being shocked.” She pressed her cheek to his chest and flattened a palm against it. His question was telling her something. He wanted to confess something—perhaps to offer a belated explanation of the scene they’d played earlier. “Now you,” she said. “First time?”

“It was with my best friend. A girl.” He tangled his fingers in her hair, palm tender against her skull. “We were kids. I thought I was in love. So yes, it was my choice.”

“But then,” she said. “Your first man.”

“That was different.”

“How different?”

“I was out cold.” He began winding a strand of her hair around and around a finger, creating a slight, painful pressure at the roots. “He gave me sap—maybe he didn’t know I’d react so strongly. No tolerance. I woke up, and I couldn’t remember a damn thing. I hurt, though, and that was how I knew he’d been inside me. I didn’t want to believe it. I had to keep reminding myself.”

So that was what he’d wanted to confess. “You weren’t ready for it,” Einara said. “Being used. You weren’t prepared.”

He shook his head, and his grip on her hair loosened. “I got used to it pretty quick. But the first few times, the world turned upside down. I was so convinced that I was a real person, with goals and boundaries, and suddenly I was a . . . receptacle. For them.”

Einara knew that feeling. She knew it well.

“But you paid them all back, didn’t you?” she asked, rolling over to gaze up at him. “What you did to Karishkov today was exactly what he deserved.”

His eyes were troubled. “I’m not like you. I don’t believe in revenge. That first man who raped me—he’s my son’s grandfather.”

Einara hadn’t known that. She was impressed. “You seduced and impregnated your rapist’s daughter? You made her love you enough to keep your child? And you’re telling me that’s not revenge?”

“No!” He nudged her off him and propped himself up on an elbow. “None of it was intentional. Well, I did choose to sleep with her. But not for that. Ceill is a person. If I tried to make him embody my revenge, I’d be a monster.”

Einara knew very well that Ceill was a person—one with motives that often didn’t match his father’s. “It doesn’t matter what you want,” she said. “His existence is your revenge, whether he knows it or not. The fact that he’s an Upstart—that’s even better. When he marries and has his own children, your revenge will roll on into future generations.”

He scoffed. “You’re a Harbourer. Oslovs don’t think that way.”

“No? I’ve read some of your Feudal sagas. They’re full of bloody revenge.” She wondered why he was protesting so hard. “There’s something about the whole concept of retribution that bothers you, isn’t there? That’s why you won’t tell me the names of Malsha’s accomplices in bombing my family.”

“I don’t know of any accomplices! I told you! It’s not something I have any way of knowing.” He sat up, leaning against the headboard. “If I don’t believe in revenge, it’s because I used to want it too much. Once, long ago, I had an Upstart at my mercy, and I humiliated him. Gratuitously.” His lips twisted.

“Not Niko?”

“No! A low Upstart, a Raised. Someone I could hurt safely, or so I thought, because his aunt was a Brothel keeper. I was wrong.”

Hulda’s nephew. “Are you talking about Bors Dartán?” Einara asked, keeping her tone neutral.

He sighed. “I thought you might know him. That man dogs my steps.”

So that was why Bors despised Tilrey. Einara could only imagine the sort of humiliation Tilrey might be capable of dealing out to someone as secretly sensitive as her little friend the spy.

“We see him here from time to time,” she said. “As a patron. Why do you say he dogs your steps?”

“He thinks I’m a shirker. It’s complicated.” Tilrey lowered his eyes. “I thought I was long done with him, and then he popped up again just days ago, at my fucking home. I nearly had a heart attack. But there was an upside. He was of some use, finally.”

“What kind of use?”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “That’s also complicated. But apparently Bors Dartán has been consorting with a friend of mine. Winning him over. And the two of them know every inch of the Southern Range.”

Everything snapped into place in Einara’s head. She was going to kill Bors.

No. Killing him wasn’t an option. She was going to use him, and he was going to let himself be used.

“Bors led you to Aleks Snowblind,” she said. “Didn’t he?”

He looked at her then, sharply. “Why should you care?”

“I told you. I deserve to know the end of the fucking story.” But she already knew this wasn’t the end of the story at all.