Volume 18: Oslov Unlocked
Chapter 14
Small Rebellions
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
26 October, year 374, 2:45 p.m.
As the Council session finally ended, Tilrey squeezed Gersha’s hand and told him, “I’m going to check in with Besha.”But when he tried to make a beeline for his friend, who’d been sitting only two rows in front of them, he lost him in the crowd. He headed to Besha’s office, hoping to intercept him. There he found only an apologetic secretary who said that the Councillor hadn’t returned after the session.Was Besha in his wife’s office? Not wanting to deal with Davita just yet, Tilrey returned to his own office—Gersha’s office, technically speaking—and found Detmer Verán waiting outside the door.“Don’t be so obvious!” Tilrey glanced up and down the corridor, then tugged Detmer inside. “Did you get inside that apartment?”A grin crept over Detmer’s face. “I had to tell Blas I used to let Lindahl fuck me. It was so embarrassing—like I would’ve ever touched that man!”Tilrey didn’t smile back. Hope and fear joined forces to drive his heart into his throat. “Look. If you’re going to be part of this, you need to learn to be secretive and efficient, like a soldier. No aimless chatter. If you found something, show me now.”“Okay, okay! I’m sorry, General!” Detmer dug in his pocket and held out his find to Tilrey.A handheld. His handheld. For an instant, he didn’t dare believe it.Detmer looked smug again. “Is this what you’re looking for?”When Bors Dartán saw who’d been knocking at his office door, he flushed with mingled anger and embarrassment. “What’s your issue now?” he hissed, shooting out an arm to pull the visitor inside. “Not only am I unbelievably busy, but we shouldn’t be seen together.”“Always nice to get a warm reception, Analyst.” Fir Councillor Linbeck—Besha—tugged free of Bors, sauntered past him, and planted himself in the desk chair. “What are you suddenly so busy with? Let me guess—naughty University students organizing protests to free their favorite sobstream star?”“It’s classified.” Bors shut the door firmly, remembering as he did so that the Councillor had a security clearance that trumped his own.No wonder the whole Republic was rotten. The corruption started at the highest level with selfish shits like Besha—who had taken the only chair in the room, leaving Bors to lean awkwardly against the filing cabinet.“You look stressed, Borsha.” The Councillor cracked his knuckles with infuriating calm. “Did you and Valgund at least get to spend last night together?”Bors gave him a glare he wished were lethal. “Would you mind explaining your presence, Fir Councillor?”He had, in fact, spent last night in the villa, relaxing from their grueling hike to deliver Janta to the terminal. Waking up in Valgund’s arms had been lovely—until he saw a dozen urgent messages calling him back to Redda and Int/Sec.Ring Eight was under martial law, and the students were using the crisis as an excuse for their own rebellious stunts. Bors had spent a frantic morning and early afternoon gathering reports from his assets on a massive demonstration that was planned for tomorrow, or perhaps the day after. The students, spoiled little Strutters that they were, couldn’t seem to agree on anything.Besha reclined in Bors’s chair as if he owned the place. “I suggest you loosen up a little, Borsha. If we can’t cooperate, this rebellion of ours is going nowhere.”Leave it to this clown to use the word rebellion inside the very Funnel. But Einara and Janta trusted Besha, so Bors supposed he had to, too.“I’m not worried about failure as long as we have Janta on our side,” he said firmly. “Now why are you here?”“See, that’s the thing.” Besha’s knee jiggled. “I have faith in that spooky kid, too. He says he might be able to control the city by tomorrow afternoon—that’s the earliest estimate. But even if he pulls it off, we need to choose the right moment. Stefan should be convicted and sentenced to exile within a day or two, because otherwise the city will burst at the seams. My wife will move fast.”“Then Einara should move fast, too.”“Of course. I’m your link to her from now on. They can’t keep me out of the Brothel.”“This whole Lindahl . . . situation wasn’t great timing. If Einara did this, I hope she had a good reason.” Bors already knew Einara was capable of murder; she’d slain his own cousin in cold blood. But a Councillor?Besha widened his eyes. “What do you mean, it wasn’t great timing? It’s perfect timing. Einara just gave the people a reason to rise. She’s a genius—and maybe a little bit mad.”“So it’s all a show,” Bors said as the situation crystallized for him. Maybe it was brilliant to inflame the people this way, but Einara was playing with fire.All his aunt Hulda’s warnings about her protégée returned to him. He hoped that Aleks would exert his good influence over Janta and keep the boy from doing anything foolish.“Now you get it! Einara wants Janta to do his thing when they bring Stefan to the airport for the flight into the Wastes. For maximum drama.”“You really think he’ll be ready by the time there’s a verdict?”“He better be.” Besha frowned. “He’s upset about his little friend Ceill, and that’s lit a fire under him. Anyway, Einara and I agree that it would be convenient if the students staged a massive protest at the airport, trying to stop the plane from leaving.”“Convenient for what?” Bors knew now why Besha had come to him, and he didn’t like it. Yes, he managed several assets who had infiltrated the student revolutionary groups. There’d already been rumblings about an action at the airport. But until now, he had kept his own revolutionary activities scrupulously separate from his Int/Sec work. Besha was asking him to cross the line.Wouldn’t he have to do that sooner or later?“Convenient for general chaos and so on,” the Councillor said breezily. “My wife can quarantine Ring Eight, but she can’t control the students so easily. They’re Upstarts, so they’ve got rights.”“Stefan will be flown out on a military plane under military guard. Students can’t do anything about it.”“They won’t need to, stupid! Janta will strike first. Anyway, I need you to use your agents to start a rumor that if the kids gather at the airport, all the Free Northmen in Redda will rise up and join them.”Bors rolled his eyes. “There are no true Free Northmen in Redda! Only foolish workers who’ve heard tales of Aleks Snowblind and imagine he’s their savior.”And maybe he is. Aleks was a person of great talents; he belonged at the Republic’s helm. But most of his fans and imitators were rabble, as far as Bors was concerned.“A little imagination can work wonders,” Besha said. “On all sides.”Bors had to admit it wasn’t a terrible plan. Stupid people might not have merit, but they could be useful. “I’ll tell my assets we’re trying to get the students in one place so we can round them up. They’ll sell your airport plan to the ringleaders. But I can’t arrange for the so-called Free Northmen to show up at the airport, too.”Besha dismissed the objection with a wave. “Not a problem. Tilrey will make sure his True Hearthers are there.”Hearing that name was like biting down on a chunk of something rancid, every time. Bors didn’t hide his distaste. “Really? I thought he was our enemy, not our ally. We stole Janta right out of his hands.”“I stole Janta, thank you very much.” The little Councillor drew himself up proudly. “Anyway, we can’t do this without the True Hearth. Or have you noticed that we don’t have an army at our disposal? A passel of whores and stream actors can’t take over the Sector.”“The True Hearth isn’t a real army, either.”And the actual army had deadly weapons, not all of which Janta could disable by hacking into the Net. Bors shoved that thought away. If he started imagining the city streets running red, he would lose his nerve. All his work would be for nothing.“No, but we do need bodies who are on our side,” Besha was saying. “If we can seize control of the Sector and take the Council hostage, we can topple this backward regime. Tilrey and I will have a civil talk with my wife and make her see that Whybergism isn’t worth dying for.”“And then who’ll be in charge? You? Or him—Tilrey Bronn?” Bors could feel his mouth twisting into an ugly expression.In his heart of hearts, he had always envisioned replacing the General Magistrate with Aleks Snowblind. Someone who was brilliant, ethically grounded, and heroic, with both Upstart and Laborer blood running through his veins. Someone with the charisma to win over the people. Someone who would welcome counsel from Bors and Valgund.But he knew Besha would laugh if he even suggested it. Aleks was nobody to this odious man. “What makes you think Bronn will help you?”“Tilrey isn’t opposed to our goals, only our tactics. He wants revolution someday; we want it now. Anyway, his son is being questioned about the murder, so he’s feeling extra pissed off.”Tilrey’s words rang in Bors’s head: When are you going to stop fighting us, Bors? When are you going to understand that your future is with us?The man had tried far too hard to persuade him. “I don’t trust him,” Bors said.Besha chuckled. “You’re a funny little man. Do you trust anyone?”Valgund. Aleks. Kai. Occasionally Einara. Definitely not you. “Bronn bugged my apartment. He played a key role in corrupting my superior, Fir Karishkov. I’ve known he was a shirker for twenty-one years and haven’t been able to do a damn thing about it, because he’s wormed his way into the affections of people like your wife.”“Right, and he made you so mad at the whole rotten system that now you’re a shirker!” Besha spun the desk chair a full revolution. “I get it—you hate Tilrey’s guts.” He arrested his motion and looked keenly at Bors. “Tell me honestly—is it because he’s hot or whatever you want to call it? Beautiful? Fuckable?”Bors had to snort. “You’re saying I’m jealous?”“Why not? I am. He has an undeniable advantage. He’s used it to manipulate me over and over. He’s better at influencing my wife than I ever was.” Besha stopped short, clearly seeing the incredulity on Bors’s face. “What?”“You were born an Upstart! How can you say any Laborer has an advantage over you?”“I’m a low Upstart. Believe me, it makes a difference.”Bors shook his head. The man was painfully clueless, or pretending to be. “How could you ever be jealous of . . . well, you know what Bronn was.”“Oh, I know. I was there!” Something shifted in Besha’s face, his expression softening to wistfulness. “Even when he was a kettle boy, he had power over all of us, he just didn’t know how to use it.”“He was probably manipulating you even then.”“Not at first,” Besha insisted, still in his nostalgic haze. “Not when he was eighteen, nineteen, twenty—so alone and frightened and so beautiful. You have no idea how lovely it was having him completely at my mercy. And I was rather merciless. I didn’t envy him in those days, believe me.”Bors remembered a younger Tilrey pouring sap on the floor and telling him to lick it up. Humiliating an Upstart, an authority figure, simply because he could. Besha’s words put that cruelty in a new light. “What did you do to him?” he asked sharply.Besha shrugged. “Oh, just games, though my games would probably make every hair on your prudish little body stand on end. There’s only one thing I regret. The night I watched him being held down on the floor, struggling, while Island Councillors took turns with his mouth.” He frowned as if the memory really did trouble him, as if perhaps he’d only just realized how much. “I would’ve taken a turn, too, if they’d let me. I was nastier in those days.”Every part of Bors cringed. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining himself in Tilrey’s place—forced to service man after man like Councillor Linbeck, choking as a cock forced its way down his throat. If he had had Tilrey’s looks, he might have ended up there, too.I was young and angry, Tilrey had told him, and you were a convenient target.“People like you are the ones who broke him.” Bors couldn’t keep the rancor out of his tone. “You turned him into a monster who only wants power and revenge.”Besha was silent for a moment, fidgeting the chair back and forth. “Power, maybe,” he said. “But Tilrey doesn’t want revenge, or he would’ve gutted me years ago. There was also that time he tried to run away.”A shadow had fallen over Besha’s face. On anyone else, Bors would have called the expression guilt. “Run away?” he prompted like an interrogator.“Yeah. That was back when he was with Malsha—a dumb, homesick kid, scared of his own shadow, with the strongest Skeinsha accent.” The Councillor chuckled affectionately to himself. “Malsha had me on a tight leash, too, in those days. He knew a few things about me that I didn’t want getting out. I saw how unhappy Tilrey was, and I laid a trap for his master. I pretended to be the boy’s friend and offered him safe harbor and help filing a complaint against the Magistrate.”“He really believed you’d help him?”“He was just eighteen! Very naïve. And I used a friend as my intermediary, someone he was more likely to trust.” Besha pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, clearly trying to divert attention from his embarrassment. “Anyway, Rishka wasn’t harmed—I just took him hostage for a few hours to get the leverage I needed. I haven’t thought of that in years. If I reminded him now, we’d laugh about it.”Bors wasn’t so sure. Perhaps Tilrey was just waiting for the right moment to gut his supposed friend. “He was only a Skeinsha, though,” he said, thinking aloud. “If he hadn’t been a Councillor’s piece, he would’ve been nothing at all. So maybe the suffering was worth it to him, in the long run.”Bors, too, would have been “nothing” without Upstart patronage. He wondered what might have happened if Niko Karishkov had ever made a pass at him, if he had made sex a condition of Raising Bors. Would Bors have said no?He hoped so. He couldn’t be sure. Maybe that was another reason he despised Karishkov—the man could have demanded that. He hadn’t, but he could have.“I tell him that all the time,” Besha was saying. “No matter how we treated poor Rishka—even when Linden was beating him—he was better off than he’d have been on a factory line. That’s what I say. But he insists he was perfectly happy in ’Skein until Strutters came along and fucked up his life.”Bors thought of Janta, living in the Basement of Thurskein. “And even if he were the lowest of the low, that wouldn’t justify the way he was treated. Would it?”“I guess not.” Besha looked uncomfortable. “Look, I take what I can get in this life. Moral hair splitting isn’t my business.”Bors made a private vow that he would allow Besha to have anything to do with drafting the laws of the new Republic of Oslov over his own dead body.Maybe Tilrey’s beauty was its own kind of curse, if it tied him intimately to people like Besha. For the first time, Bors felt something approaching empathy for the man who had humiliated him.“You’re right,” he said, lifting his chin. “Bronn should have gutted you.”Besha’s eyes popped. “When did I say that?”“Just now.” Bors left the filing cabinet and went to the door. “Personally, if everything you just said is true, I think he should at least give you a good public drubbing. I would.”“Like you’d dare lay a finger on me! Anyway, Tilrey’s sleeping with my wife.” Recognizing the invitation to leave, Besha rose with great dignity. “He’s humiliated me in ways that your prudish little brain couldn’t possibly imagine—all with my consent, because I’m way too fond of him. Isn’t that enough to even the score?”No. Bors wondered whether Tilrey was more forgiving than he was or simply more perverse. “I’ll get the students to the airport,” he said grimly. “But you aren’t going to be in control of the city when this is over, Fir Councillor. Not you and not your wife and not your stuffed-shirt son.” You’re everything we’re fighting against.He cracked the door open, hoping to everything green that Einara had a plan to defang the viper she had enlisted into her service. She was far too smart to trust Besha.“Me? In control of the city? Why would I want that? Government is tiresome, and I’m tired of it.” Besha gave Bors a crooked grin. “Like I told your friend Valgund out in the Wastes, I’ve only ever wanted a life of pleasure. And I intend to have it.”Ceill Linnett lay in the dark of the Funnel, hugging himself tight. He didn’t know how long the lights had been out in his cell. He didn’t know what time or day it was.For a while, it had helped to close his eyes and pretend he was with Janta. Instead of this cot, he was lying on the small, soft bed at home, Janta’s arm snaked around his waist and Janta’s breath wafting on his cheek.Then he fell into a doze and woke with a start. Janta was gone, and all he could see was the handsome face and skeptical brown eyes of Blas Lindblom.Was it true about a witness who’d seen Stefan in the corridor after midnight? It could be true.Maybe they were keeping him in the dark to break down his defenses and make him confess. Maybe, if he didn’t tell the truth soon, they would do worse things.Your own father was kept in a cell down here, wasn’t he? For days? Blas had said that as if Ceill ought to know.Tilrey had told Ceill about being held in a cell in Thurskein, trying to warn him against associating with Aleks Snowblind. But he hadn’t said anything about being locked up here.How could Blas know about something like that when Ceill didn’t? It seemed unfair. Thinking about all the other things Tilrey and Gersha hadn’t told him, he sat up in the pitch dark and scrubbed his hands across his scalp and then his face, reminding himself that he was solid, that he was here.Did Blas know other things—for instance, that Stefan was guilty? What if Stefan had already confessed? What if they were keeping Ceill down here not to force the truth out of him but to punish him?No. He couldn’t think that way. Even if Stefan were guilty, protecting him had been the right thing—the best thing it was in Ceill’s power to do.A memory of words echoed in his head: When social stability depends on total compliance, no act of rebellion is too small for punishment.Had Janta said those words? No, that was before Ceill knew Janta. Tilrey had said them to warn Ceill away from Aleks, to keep him safe and obedient.Now the warning rang differently in Ceill’s head. He saw his father’s eyes glinting, his jaw tightening. All that time, Tilrey and Gersha themselves had been plotting a rebellion.No act of rebellion is too small for punishment. Maybe Tilrey had been sending a second message with those words, a message Ceill only now understood.If the social order is so unyielding that even small rebellions have to be ruthlessly suppressed, then maybe it’s time for a real rebellion. One that changes everything.
26 October, year 374, 2:45 p.m.
As the Council session finally ended, Tilrey squeezed Gersha’s hand and told him, “I’m going to check in with Besha.”
But when he tried to make a beeline for his friend, who’d been sitting only two rows in front of them, he lost him in the crowd. He headed to Besha’s office, hoping to intercept him. There he found only an apologetic secretary who said that the Councillor hadn’t returned after the session.
Was Besha in his wife’s office? Not wanting to deal with Davita just yet, Tilrey returned to his own office—Gersha’s office, technically speaking—and found Detmer Verán waiting outside the door.
“Don’t be so obvious!” Tilrey glanced up and down the corridor, then tugged Detmer inside. “Did you get inside that apartment?”
A grin crept over Detmer’s face. “I had to tell Blas I used to let Lindahl fuck me. It was so embarrassing—like I would’ve ever touched that man!”
Tilrey didn’t smile back. Hope and fear joined forces to drive his heart into his throat. “Look. If you’re going to be part of this, you need to learn to be secretive and efficient, like a soldier. No aimless chatter. If you found something, show me now.”
“Okay, okay! I’m sorry, General!” Detmer dug in his pocket and held out his find to Tilrey.
A handheld. His handheld. For an instant, he didn’t dare believe it.
Detmer looked smug again. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
When Bors Dartán saw who’d been knocking at his office door, he flushed with mingled anger and embarrassment. “What’s your issue now?” he hissed, shooting out an arm to pull the visitor inside. “Not only am I unbelievably busy, but we shouldn’t be seen together.”
“Always nice to get a warm reception, Analyst.” Fir Councillor Linbeck—Besha—tugged free of Bors, sauntered past him, and planted himself in the desk chair. “What are you suddenly so busy with? Let me guess—naughty University students organizing protests to free their favorite sobstream star?”
“It’s classified.” Bors shut the door firmly, remembering as he did so that the Councillor had a security clearance that trumped his own.
No wonder the whole Republic was rotten. The corruption started at the highest level with selfish shits like Besha—who had taken the only chair in the room, leaving Bors to lean awkwardly against the filing cabinet.
“You look stressed, Borsha.” The Councillor cracked his knuckles with infuriating calm. “Did you and Valgund at least get to spend last night together?”
Bors gave him a glare he wished were lethal. “Would you mind explaining your presence, Fir Councillor?”
He had, in fact, spent last night in the villa, relaxing from their grueling hike to deliver Janta to the terminal. Waking up in Valgund’s arms had been lovely—until he saw a dozen urgent messages calling him back to Redda and Int/Sec.
Ring Eight was under martial law, and the students were using the crisis as an excuse for their own rebellious stunts. Bors had spent a frantic morning and early afternoon gathering reports from his assets on a massive demonstration that was planned for tomorrow, or perhaps the day after. The students, spoiled little Strutters that they were, couldn’t seem to agree on anything.
Besha reclined in Bors’s chair as if he owned the place. “I suggest you loosen up a little, Borsha. If we can’t cooperate, this rebellion of ours is going nowhere.”
Leave it to this clown to use the word rebellion inside the very Funnel. But Einara and Janta trusted Besha, so Bors supposed he had to, too.
“I’m not worried about failure as long as we have Janta on our side,” he said firmly. “Now why are you here?”
“See, that’s the thing.” Besha’s knee jiggled. “I have faith in that spooky kid, too. He says he might be able to control the city by tomorrow afternoon—that’s the earliest estimate. But even if he pulls it off, we need to choose the right moment. Stefan should be convicted and sentenced to exile within a day or two, because otherwise the city will burst at the seams. My wife will move fast.”
“Then Einara should move fast, too.”
“Of course. I’m your link to her from now on. They can’t keep me out of the Brothel.”
“This whole Lindahl . . . situation wasn’t great timing. If Einara did this, I hope she had a good reason.” Bors already knew Einara was capable of murder; she’d slain his own cousin in cold blood. But a Councillor?
Besha widened his eyes. “What do you mean, it wasn’t great timing? It’s perfect timing. Einara just gave the people a reason to rise. She’s a genius—and maybe a little bit mad.”
“So it’s all a show,” Bors said as the situation crystallized for him. Maybe it was brilliant to inflame the people this way, but Einara was playing with fire.
All his aunt Hulda’s warnings about her protégée returned to him. He hoped that Aleks would exert his good influence over Janta and keep the boy from doing anything foolish.
“Now you get it! Einara wants Janta to do his thing when they bring Stefan to the airport for the flight into the Wastes. For maximum drama.”
“You really think he’ll be ready by the time there’s a verdict?”
“He better be.” Besha frowned. “He’s upset about his little friend Ceill, and that’s lit a fire under him. Anyway, Einara and I agree that it would be convenient if the students staged a massive protest at the airport, trying to stop the plane from leaving.”
“Convenient for what?” Bors knew now why Besha had come to him, and he didn’t like it. Yes, he managed several assets who had infiltrated the student revolutionary groups. There’d already been rumblings about an action at the airport. But until now, he had kept his own revolutionary activities scrupulously separate from his Int/Sec work. Besha was asking him to cross the line.
Wouldn’t he have to do that sooner or later?
“Convenient for general chaos and so on,” the Councillor said breezily. “My wife can quarantine Ring Eight, but she can’t control the students so easily. They’re Upstarts, so they’ve got rights.”
“Stefan will be flown out on a military plane under military guard. Students can’t do anything about it.”
“They won’t need to, stupid! Janta will strike first. Anyway, I need you to use your agents to start a rumor that if the kids gather at the airport, all the Free Northmen in Redda will rise up and join them.”
Bors rolled his eyes. “There are no true Free Northmen in Redda! Only foolish workers who’ve heard tales of Aleks Snowblind and imagine he’s their savior.”
And maybe he is. Aleks was a person of great talents; he belonged at the Republic’s helm. But most of his fans and imitators were rabble, as far as Bors was concerned.
“A little imagination can work wonders,” Besha said. “On all sides.”
Bors had to admit it wasn’t a terrible plan. Stupid people might not have merit, but they could be useful. “I’ll tell my assets we’re trying to get the students in one place so we can round them up. They’ll sell your airport plan to the ringleaders. But I can’t arrange for the so-called Free Northmen to show up at the airport, too.”
Besha dismissed the objection with a wave. “Not a problem. Tilrey will make sure his True Hearthers are there.”
Hearing that name was like biting down on a chunk of something rancid, every time. Bors didn’t hide his distaste. “Really? I thought he was our enemy, not our ally. We stole Janta right out of his hands.”
“I stole Janta, thank you very much.” The little Councillor drew himself up proudly. “Anyway, we can’t do this without the True Hearth. Or have you noticed that we don’t have an army at our disposal? A passel of whores and stream actors can’t take over the Sector.”
“The True Hearth isn’t a real army, either.”
And the actual army had deadly weapons, not all of which Janta could disable by hacking into the Net. Bors shoved that thought away. If he started imagining the city streets running red, he would lose his nerve. All his work would be for nothing.
“No, but we do need bodies who are on our side,” Besha was saying. “If we can seize control of the Sector and take the Council hostage, we can topple this backward regime. Tilrey and I will have a civil talk with my wife and make her see that Whybergism isn’t worth dying for.”
“And then who’ll be in charge? You? Or him—Tilrey Bronn?” Bors could feel his mouth twisting into an ugly expression.
In his heart of hearts, he had always envisioned replacing the General Magistrate with Aleks Snowblind. Someone who was brilliant, ethically grounded, and heroic, with both Upstart and Laborer blood running through his veins. Someone with the charisma to win over the people. Someone who would welcome counsel from Bors and Valgund.
But he knew Besha would laugh if he even suggested it. Aleks was nobody to this odious man. “What makes you think Bronn will help you?”
“Tilrey isn’t opposed to our goals, only our tactics. He wants revolution someday; we want it now. Anyway, his son is being questioned about the murder, so he’s feeling extra pissed off.”
Tilrey’s words rang in Bors’s head: When are you going to stop fighting us, Bors? When are you going to understand that your future is with us?
The man had tried far too hard to persuade him. “I don’t trust him,” Bors said.
Besha chuckled. “You’re a funny little man. Do you trust anyone?”
Valgund. Aleks. Kai. Occasionally Einara. Definitely not you. “Bronn bugged my apartment. He played a key role in corrupting my superior, Fir Karishkov. I’ve known he was a shirker for twenty-one years and haven’t been able to do a damn thing about it, because he’s wormed his way into the affections of people like your wife.”
“Right, and he made you so mad at the whole rotten system that now you’re a shirker!” Besha spun the desk chair a full revolution. “I get it—you hate Tilrey’s guts.” He arrested his motion and looked keenly at Bors. “Tell me honestly—is it because he’s hot or whatever you want to call it? Beautiful? Fuckable?”
Bors had to snort. “You’re saying I’m jealous?”
“Why not? I am. He has an undeniable advantage. He’s used it to manipulate me over and over. He’s better at influencing my wife than I ever was.” Besha stopped short, clearly seeing the incredulity on Bors’s face. “What?”
“You were born an Upstart! How can you say any Laborer has an advantage over you?”
“I’m a low Upstart. Believe me, it makes a difference.”
Bors shook his head. The man was painfully clueless, or pretending to be. “How could you ever be jealous of . . . well, you know what Bronn was.”
“Oh, I know. I was there!” Something shifted in Besha’s face, his expression softening to wistfulness. “Even when he was a kettle boy, he had power over all of us, he just didn’t know how to use it.”
“He was probably manipulating you even then.”
“Not at first,” Besha insisted, still in his nostalgic haze. “Not when he was eighteen, nineteen, twenty—so alone and frightened and so beautiful. You have no idea how lovely it was having him completely at my mercy. And I was rather merciless. I didn’t envy him in those days, believe me.”
Bors remembered a younger Tilrey pouring sap on the floor and telling him to lick it up. Humiliating an Upstart, an authority figure, simply because he could. Besha’s words put that cruelty in a new light. “What did you do to him?” he asked sharply.
Besha shrugged. “Oh, just games, though my games would probably make every hair on your prudish little body stand on end. There’s only one thing I regret. The night I watched him being held down on the floor, struggling, while Island Councillors took turns with his mouth.” He frowned as if the memory really did trouble him, as if perhaps he’d only just realized how much. “I would’ve taken a turn, too, if they’d let me. I was nastier in those days.”
Every part of Bors cringed. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining himself in Tilrey’s place—forced to service man after man like Councillor Linbeck, choking as a cock forced its way down his throat. If he had had Tilrey’s looks, he might have ended up there, too.
I was young and angry, Tilrey had told him, and you were a convenient target.
“People like you are the ones who broke him.” Bors couldn’t keep the rancor out of his tone. “You turned him into a monster who only wants power and revenge.”
Besha was silent for a moment, fidgeting the chair back and forth. “Power, maybe,” he said. “But Tilrey doesn’t want revenge, or he would’ve gutted me years ago. There was also that time he tried to run away.”
A shadow had fallen over Besha’s face. On anyone else, Bors would have called the expression guilt. “Run away?” he prompted like an interrogator.
“Yeah. That was back when he was with Malsha—a dumb, homesick kid, scared of his own shadow, with the strongest Skeinsha accent.” The Councillor chuckled affectionately to himself. “Malsha had me on a tight leash, too, in those days. He knew a few things about me that I didn’t want getting out. I saw how unhappy Tilrey was, and I laid a trap for his master. I pretended to be the boy’s friend and offered him safe harbor and help filing a complaint against the Magistrate.”
“He really believed you’d help him?”
“He was just eighteen! Very naïve. And I used a friend as my intermediary, someone he was more likely to trust.” Besha pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, clearly trying to divert attention from his embarrassment. “Anyway, Rishka wasn’t harmed—I just took him hostage for a few hours to get the leverage I needed. I haven’t thought of that in years. If I reminded him now, we’d laugh about it.”
Bors wasn’t so sure. Perhaps Tilrey was just waiting for the right moment to gut his supposed friend. “He was only a Skeinsha, though,” he said, thinking aloud. “If he hadn’t been a Councillor’s piece, he would’ve been nothing at all. So maybe the suffering was worth it to him, in the long run.”
Bors, too, would have been “nothing” without Upstart patronage. He wondered what might have happened if Niko Karishkov had ever made a pass at him, if he had made sex a condition of Raising Bors. Would Bors have said no?
He hoped so. He couldn’t be sure. Maybe that was another reason he despised Karishkov—the man could have demanded that. He hadn’t, but he could have.
“I tell him that all the time,” Besha was saying. “No matter how we treated poor Rishka—even when Linden was beating him—he was better off than he’d have been on a factory line. That’s what I say. But he insists he was perfectly happy in ’Skein until Strutters came along and fucked up his life.”
Bors thought of Janta, living in the Basement of Thurskein. “And even if he were the lowest of the low, that wouldn’t justify the way he was treated. Would it?”
“I guess not.” Besha looked uncomfortable. “Look, I take what I can get in this life. Moral hair splitting isn’t my business.”
Bors made a private vow that he would allow Besha to have anything to do with drafting the laws of the new Republic of Oslov over his own dead body.
Maybe Tilrey’s beauty was its own kind of curse, if it tied him intimately to people like Besha. For the first time, Bors felt something approaching empathy for the man who had humiliated him.
“You’re right,” he said, lifting his chin. “Bronn should have gutted you.”
Besha’s eyes popped. “When did I say that?”
“Just now.” Bors left the filing cabinet and went to the door. “Personally, if everything you just said is true, I think he should at least give you a good public drubbing. I would.”
“Like you’d dare lay a finger on me! Anyway, Tilrey’s sleeping with my wife.” Recognizing the invitation to leave, Besha rose with great dignity. “He’s humiliated me in ways that your prudish little brain couldn’t possibly imagine—all with my consent, because I’m way too fond of him. Isn’t that enough to even the score?”
No. Bors wondered whether Tilrey was more forgiving than he was or simply more perverse. “I’ll get the students to the airport,” he said grimly. “But you aren’t going to be in control of the city when this is over, Fir Councillor. Not you and not your wife and not your stuffed-shirt son.” You’re everything we’re fighting against.
He cracked the door open, hoping to everything green that Einara had a plan to defang the viper she had enlisted into her service. She was far too smart to trust Besha.
“Me? In control of the city? Why would I want that? Government is tiresome, and I’m tired of it.” Besha gave Bors a crooked grin. “Like I told your friend Valgund out in the Wastes, I’ve only ever wanted a life of pleasure. And I intend to have it.”
Ceill Linnett lay in the dark of the Funnel, hugging himself tight. He didn’t know how long the lights had been out in his cell. He didn’t know what time or day it was.
For a while, it had helped to close his eyes and pretend he was with Janta. Instead of this cot, he was lying on the small, soft bed at home, Janta’s arm snaked around his waist and Janta’s breath wafting on his cheek.
Then he fell into a doze and woke with a start. Janta was gone, and all he could see was the handsome face and skeptical brown eyes of Blas Lindblom.
Was it true about a witness who’d seen Stefan in the corridor after midnight? It could be true.
Maybe they were keeping him in the dark to break down his defenses and make him confess. Maybe, if he didn’t tell the truth soon, they would do worse things.
Your own father was kept in a cell down here, wasn’t he? For days? Blas had said that as if Ceill ought to know.
Tilrey had told Ceill about being held in a cell in Thurskein, trying to warn him against associating with Aleks Snowblind. But he hadn’t said anything about being locked up here.
How could Blas know about something like that when Ceill didn’t? It seemed unfair. Thinking about all the other things Tilrey and Gersha hadn’t told him, he sat up in the pitch dark and scrubbed his hands across his scalp and then his face, reminding himself that he was solid, that he was here.
Did Blas know other things—for instance, that Stefan was guilty? What if Stefan had already confessed? What if they were keeping Ceill down here not to force the truth out of him but to punish him?
No. He couldn’t think that way. Even if Stefan were guilty, protecting him had been the right thing—the best thing it was in Ceill’s power to do.
A memory of words echoed in his head: When social stability depends on total compliance, no act of rebellion is too small for punishment.
Had Janta said those words? No, that was before Ceill knew Janta. Tilrey had said them to warn Ceill away from Aleks, to keep him safe and obedient.
Now the warning rang differently in Ceill’s head. He saw his father’s eyes glinting, his jaw tightening. All that time, Tilrey and Gersha themselves had been plotting a rebellion.
No act of rebellion is too small for punishment. Maybe Tilrey had been sending a second message with those words, a message Ceill only now understood.
If the social order is so unyielding that even small rebellions have to be ruthlessly suppressed, then maybe it’s time for a real rebellion. One that changes everything.
Chapter End Notes
The story of how Besha trapped the young Tilrey is told in “All Kinds of Broken,” starting in Chapter 15.I thought it was time for Bors to start letting go of his hatred of Tilrey—finally!—but I couldn’t figure out how to make such a stubborn character change. This is the solution I came up with.
Chapter End Notes
The story of how Besha trapped the young Tilrey is told in “All Kinds of Broken,” starting in Chapter 15.I thought it was time for Bors to start letting go of his hatred of Tilrey—finally!—but I couldn’t figure out how to make such a stubborn character change. This is the solution I came up with.
The story of how Besha trapped the young Tilrey is told in “All Kinds of Broken,” starting in Chapter 15.
I thought it was time for Bors to start letting go of his hatred of Tilrey—finally!—but I couldn’t figure out how to make such a stubborn character change. This is the solution I came up with.