Chapter 10: Holding Fast — The Key of Oslov

Volume 19: Oslov Unraveled

Chapter 10 Holding Fast

Chapter Notes

More torture in this chapter. I’m very sorry about all the harm done to people’s hands!As you’ve probably noticed, most of this story takes place over a single night, and events are getting very compressed as we approach the climax. I know it’s hard to read in pieces, so I’m gonna try to post faster. The good part is that I have most of it drafted.This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to write an epic story with mobs and warfare and military terminology and stuff, but it’s never easy for me, and I take responsibility for anything I didn’t bother to research. :) I think writing intense, melodramatic convos and bedroom scenes is more my wheelhouse. :) But it’s been fun to stretch, and I wanted to give the revolution story a satisfying ending, and I really appreciate your coming along for the ride. Thank you. <33

Chapter Notes

More torture in this chapter. I’m very sorry about all the harm done to people’s hands!

As you’ve probably noticed, most of this story takes place over a single night, and events are getting very compressed as we approach the climax. I know it’s hard to read in pieces, so I’m gonna try to post faster. The good part is that I have most of it drafted.

This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to write an epic story with mobs and warfare and military terminology and stuff, but it’s never easy for me, and I take responsibility for anything I didn’t bother to research. :) I think writing intense, melodramatic convos and bedroom scenes is more my wheelhouse. :) But it’s been fun to stretch, and I wanted to give the revolution story a satisfying ending, and I really appreciate your coming along for the ride. Thank you. <33

28 October, year 374, 3:20 a.m.

“So, Uncle Bror,” Ceill said as they strode briskly through snow flurries toward the Sector, “you’ve been with my dads this whole time? In the rebellion?”Cold to his bones, he couldn’t stop shuddering. Only the older man’s firm grip on his arm kept him walking straight.“Since before you were born,” Bror said. “Tilrey’s been with the True Hearth for decades, and he dragged Gersha in with him.”“Dragged him?” Even with all Ceill knew, that was unexpected. During his childhood, Gersha was always the one who critiqued the system, expressing beliefs that Davita Lindblom called “idealistic.” Meanwhile, Tilrey had scolded Ceill for stepping out of line, for doubting, for befriending the Northmen. “It was Tilrey’s idea?”Bror laughed raspily. “Tilrey converted both of us. If you ask him, he’ll say he doesn’t deserve any credit, because the True Hearth recruited him and twisted his arm. But he deserves all the credit, Ceill. Your dad’s a brave man. He always promised he’d tell you eventually. Meantime, he wanted to protect you.”Shelter me. In the past, the thought would have made Ceill quake with rage. But now, half frozen, he saw the value of shelter.By keeping Ceill away from Dissidents, Tilrey had been trying to protect him from Int/Sec, and now Ceill knew how it felt to sit in a dark cell. He could only guess at everything Tilrey himself had endured over his lifetime, in the Funnel and out of it. Could he blame his father for wanting to spare him?“He never did tell me the truth,” he admitted. “Gersha didn’t, either. I found out from Janta—do you know Janta?”“Oh, the hacker. Heard about him, never met him.” Bror stopped short as they came around a corner. “Looks like the siege of the Sector has begun.”The Sector complex formed an enormous quadrangle, a government fortress, with black granite towers piercing the sky at each corner and the lower Council Hall between them on the north face. They were opposite the hall now. The oldest part of the complex, it rose just nine stories, its sandstone turrets pale against dark, turbulent sky.A floodlight blinded Ceill. Shading his eyes, he saw it was wielded by a red-jerkined soldier, one of a triple line of armed troops who stood massed along the front of the Council Hall.Ceill could practically feel the cuffs snapping around his wrists. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said, pulling at Bror. But then he realized the soldiers were far too busy to notice him.Facing the troops across a few yards of snow was the ragged crowd of students and Laborers that Ceill had seen earlier. And its ranks had swelled. There were hundreds of people, he estimated, maybe even a thousand—covering the whole street, pulsing and murmuring like a restless sea.“What are we waiting for?” a man’s grumbling voice said, close to him. “More of us than them.”A voice blared through a loudspeaker, making Ceill tense. “Something something … unlawful assembly. Something something … disperse immediately.”It was one of the soldiers bawling into the speaker, perched atop the massive snowdrifts that nearly covered the Council Hall’s ground-floor windows. The rising wind snatched most of his words, but the crowd rustled. Angry yells rose in response.Bror tugged Ceill down the street, away from the heart of the confrontation. “Not safe for you.”Ceill went without protest. “Will they fire on the crowd?” The rebels madly firing into the air had frightened him, but now he shuddered to think how the troops might discipline such behavior.“They already did—yesterday, on Judicial Plaza.” Bror steered him toward the Hall of Records. “Regular bloodbath. And before that, in Ring Eight. You missed all of it, didn’t you?”Ceill nodded. He had never seen rebels in such large groups before, certainly never seen them facing down government forces. Even the Northmen stayed in the shadows, skulking around the Basement of Thurskein. “So it started before the lights went out? What’s making people suddenly protest? Why do some of them wear red Ds on their clothes?”Bror chuckled softly. “For Darius. The people came out to support their favorite stream character—and the actor who plays him.”“They risked their lives for a sobstream hero?” It was so surreal it was almost funny, but the laughter died in Ceill’s throat. “For Stefan?”“Some of them died for a sobstream hero, young Fir,” Bror corrected him. “And for the chance to be something more than second-class citizens. Yesterday they didn’t have weapons, though. Now they do.”As if to prove his point, a shot rang out in the crowd. A split second later, a volley of gunfire from the troops answered it.Ceill clutched at Bror, dragging him toward the shelter of the nearest building. Then he stopped, ashamed, realizing they were far from the danger. Over by the east end of the Council hall, people were screaming and running. He thought he saw someone fall.Bror stood firm, surveying the scene from the lofty vantage of his six and a half feet. “We told ’em to stand firm until they get an order to attack,” he said in a low voice, “but you’re always gonna have loose cannons. Tricky business, managing a mob.”For a tense moment, the whole crowd seemed to shiver, like a wave about to break.But no one stepped forth, no one attacked. The soldier started yelling through his loudspeaker again. This time, Ceill understood that he was ordering the people to surrender their weapons.“If they weren’t worried about being outnumbered, or about killing students with important parents, they’d mow us down right now. C’mon.” Bror wrenched Ceill around toward the Hall of Records again. “Once you’re safe, I’m back on crowd control.”“I can help!” The gunfire had flooded Ceill’s body with adrenaline, sharpening his senses and blotting out cold and fatigue. He was torn between his terror and his eagerness to stay and see what would happen.People defying armed troops, refusing to stand down? Not afraid of being dragged off to Int/Sec? Nothing like this had ever happened, even in his history books.Bror was stronger than he was, though, and Ceill was borne inexorably away from the Sector and the crowd, toward the dug-out ground-floor entrance of the Hall of Records.“There’s just one way you can help, kid,” his “uncle” said. “Get as far from the Sector and those soldiers as possible.”“Are you going to attack them? Really?” Ceill pictured all those troops bristling with guns, and another terrified/excited shudder ran down his spine.“We will take the Council—I hope in the next few hours. But we’re still waiting on weapons and reinforcements from the Ring One and Two Constabularies. Until that happens, we need you not to be captured.”“So they were going to use me as a hostage.” It was good to know Ceill had been right to run—he’d done something useful, however trivial.As they reached the doorway, he paused for a last look back at the stand-off. People in the crowd were shouting, talking back to the soldier with the loudspeaker. “What if they start shooting at us from the air?” he asked. Making himself part of the we of the rebels felt right.“We haven’t seen any copters yet, but I figure that’s next.” Bror led Ceill over the threshold, whipping a flashlight out of his parka. His tone was grim but resolute. “They can’t target so well without their nav systems, but they can probably do some damage. Lucky for us, there’s a storm coming. Don’t worry, Ceillsha. We know what we’re doing.”How can I not worry? “Where are we going?” Ceill asked, though Bror’s earlier mention of “underground” had given him some ideas.He wasn’t surprised when Bror answered, “Through the Shadow City to the Brothel. You’ll be safe with your friends there.”“Good. I want to see Einara.” Ceill followed Bror through the building’s pitch-dark, chilly atrium.He remembered Janta insisting that someone needed to control Einara, to keep a leash on her fury. But could Janta really stop her from using them all as pawns of her vengeance? Ceill trusted Bror to lead the rebels wisely, but what he’d just seen in the ruined city looked a little too much like chaos.Did Einara even care that people had died to defend Stefan? That more people soon would? Or did she care only about exacting bloody revenge on every Oslov in Redda, guilty and innocent alike?And I helped her. I introduced her to Aleks, who found a way for Janta to turn the lights off. I made this happen.“I have a few things to say to her,” he said.“Shh, my love.” Detmer had his arms around Blas, whispering in his ear. “You’re so cold. Let me warm you up.”They were in bed in a room with a white carpet and a glowing lamp. This wasn’t Blas’s apartment. It looked more like his mother’s, but that made no sense.Blas was so drowsy he longed to close his eyes again and sleep in Mersha’s arms. But something was wrong.When he blinked, he remembered darkness and chaos. He was back in the first moments of the blackout, when he couldn’t open the door of Bors Dartán’s office in the Funnel. Nothing worked anymore; nothing made sense.But here everything was light and warmth. A soft robe around him. Pillows behind him. Only his right hand felt wrong—stiff. He tried to wiggle the fingers and received a surprising jolt of pain.“Blasha, sweetheart, please.” Detmer’s hand clasped his, holding it gently still. “I didn’t know. They used me to lure you here. I’m so sorry.”“They who?” Blas looked down at their intertwined hands. The tip of his right middle finger was wound in thick gauze. As long as he didn’t move the finger, he felt nothing.Detmer stroked his arm. “Does it hurt? They left another vial of sap. I can give you a little.”Sap—that was why his head felt fuzzy. If he drank more, he would drift off again. “No. Who are you talking about, Mersha? Who used you to lure me? Are we hostages?”“We’re in the Brothel with Lindahl’s real killers. Stefan’s innocent—you were right about that.”Rigid with alarm, Blas twisted in Detmer’s arms, half expecting to see Tilrey Bronn standing beside the bed grinning at him. But there was no one there. “It’s him, isn’t it? Gersha’s secretary, my mother’s boyfriend.” He remembered the scene in the Council chamber now. “I told her, I told them all, but they didn’t believe me…”“Shhh,” Mersha crooned in his ear. “Kai promised me we won’t be harmed. Well, harmed more. I’m so sorry, Blas.”“Kai? Meirthal, the stream maker?” Detmer seemed to be on strangely friendly terms with Lindahl’s killers. After a long night of bitter disappointments, Blas was having trouble making his brain work. “What happened, anyway? Did I faint?”“Just for a moment. They gave you sap for the pain, and it put you out again.” Detmer sat up, disentangling himself carefully from Blas. “You stay here, okay? I’m going to make us some tea.”“I don’t need tea!” Blas protested. “I need to know what’s going on!” But his limbs were waterlogged, his eyelids were heavy, and he wasn’t ready to confront what was happening in the dark city beyond the Brothel’s walls. He stretched out and fell into a feverish doze.When he opened his eyes again, a tea tray was steaming on the bedside table. His bandaged finger ached with a dull, distant pain, like a person glimpsed at the far end of a corridor.Detmer coaxed him upright and tidied the pillows behind him. Blas managed to sip some tea, holding the tumbler in his good hand. The pain had crept closer, making his whole body tense up.Detmer cozied up beside Blas, cheeks pink from the steam. “Oh, that’s nice, right?” he said in a too-soothing tone. “By the time I got here, I felt like I had an ice core for a heart.”“They shouldn’t have power. Why do they have power? There’s sap in this.”Blas was shaking. Detmer took the tumbler and held it for him, raising it to his lips. “You need it, sweetheart. Just a little more.”The pain was retreating down its corridor again, a few inches at a time. “Who killed Lindahl, exactly?” Blas managed to ask between sips. “Was it Tilrey?”Detmer didn’t meet his eyes. “The Brothel director did it, I think.”Blas remembered going to the Brothel to find Detmer now, but he wasn’t ready to think about what had happened when he arrived. He needed to focus on solving the case. “But Bronn ordered the murder. At the very least, he knew about it.”A pause, and then Detmer nodded. “Lindahl was a shit. You know that.”“Don’t defend shirkers!” Blas winced as the pain darted closer and took another swallow of sap-laced tea.It was frustrating to see his boyfriend trying to give traitors their due—especially now, when the whole Republic was in peril. The plot to kill Stefan Altmering had been a shock and a disappointment, proof that even Blas’s mother couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing. But surely sticking a knife in a Councillor’s neck was worse?“Why take us hostage?” Blas asked, trying not to get sidetracked by politics. “If the Brothel whores killed Lindahl, then they’re rebels. They should be out there celebrating with the others, invading our city.”Mersha rested his head on Blas’s shoulder. “It’s their city, too. Maybe the rebels are just reclaiming it.”“Reclaiming? They hacked our city! They’re trying to slaughter us!” But Blas couldn’t sustain the anger. It racked his body with spasms, bringing the pain into focus again, and he had to sip to steady himself.“Look,” he said more quietly, “I believe in reform and justice as much as you do. I risked my life to rescue Stefan from the Funnel before my mother’s goons could kill him.”Mersha nuzzled his neck. “I hoped you would. I believe in you, Blas.”“But once I got Stefan to the Council, I found out he’s with them!” Blas’s voice quavered. He had to pause for a deep breath and another sip. “He and that Bors Dartán, they’re both part of the sabotage plot. They’re with Tilrey Bronn!”“I know.”The words came out in a sigh. It took Blas a moment to register what Mersha had just said.Then he turned sharply and peered down at his boyfriend. “How could you know that? You don’t know any more than I do.”Mersha’s long lashes fluttered. He opened his blue eyes—so innocent, like a schoolboy’s—and gazed up at Blas.“I only came to the Brothel because the rebels said Tilrey needed me.” Detmer’s pleading tone recalled the days when he was impersonating a Drudge whore—once an arousing memory for Blas, now an unbearable one. “I had no idea they’d…” His mouth twisted. “You’ll be okay. There’s a medic here. She treated you.”Blas felt another savage twitch of pain in his finger, way too close. “What do you mean, Tilrey needed me? What are you talking about?”Mersha kissed his neck. “I love you, Blasha. I’ve been wanting to say that. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But…”“But?” Rage pulsed through Blas.Only that rage could keep him sane, keep him upright. He remembered the rest now: the cleaver glinting in the air, Detmer’s frantic pleas, Einara saying they needed a “token.”They had sliced off his fingertip—these rebels, these barbarians—and they were using it as leverage.“Say it, Mersha.” The words scraped the bottom of Blas’s throat. “Spit it out. What did you do? Who are you?”Mersha sighed the way he did sometimes in bed, right before he went deliciously limp in Blas’s arms. A sigh of surrender, but with an odd hint of self-assertion in it: This is who I am. “I didn’t want you to find out this way. But I’m with Tilrey Bronn, too.”“Strip him,” Karishkov said.“No!” Gersha begged from the floor.Ignoring him, General Atteivian exchanged a look with the Councillor. “Already?”“You think we have time to waste?”Gersha was shackled now. At some point, he’d tried to lunge at the brute who was hitting Tilrey—an indistinct memory, a red blur of rage. Karishkov had held him back. When the soldiers were finished with Tilrey, dumping him on the floor, the older one had used a long, thin chain to link Gersha’s wrists to a hook high in the stone wall.So here Gersha was, crouched on chilly stone with his wrists leashed and his chin propped on his knees, watching helplessly as the two soldiers peeled off his husband’s clothes.They were fast and rough. Tilrey didn’t resist, curling in on himself as much as he could. One of his eyes had shrunk to a slit, hidden in a mass of discolored flesh. Blood still trickled from his nose. What if he had a concussion?You don’t have to watch, Tilrey had told Gersha when they were still alone. And don’t pretend to be strong or indifferent. Make as much of a fuss as you want. This is all just a distraction.He was trying to make this bearable for Gersha. Worrying about his comfort. Now, as Gersha remembered his husband’s careful efforts to prepare him, his stomach twisted into knots. He was the one who should have been easing Tilrey into readiness. But how? Who could prepare for this?No. Gersha should be in Tilrey’s place, suffering to buy time for their friends to storm the Council Hall. He should never have let things get this far. But if he told the truth now, would they believe him?Every breath hurt his constricted lungs. Dried tears had turned his face to a mask. He cleared his throat. “Niko…”Tilrey was naked, the soldiers shoving him down on his knees. Beneath the bruising, his face had a calm, remote expression. Some observers might have said he didn’t feel what was happening, but Gersha had seen that look before. It was how Tilrey dealt with pain or shame, and he’d hoped never to see it again.“Niko, listen…” He didn’t know what to say, but he had to say something. Some lie to slow them down, distract them.Days earlier, when the two of them discussed the plan to hack the city, Tilrey had said there were five bunkers, including one on the coastline, one in the Southern Range, and one up by the pole. He’d also said he was fairly sure Janta had gone to the same bunker that Aleks and the other Free Northmen were using as a refuge.Valgund had confessed he was sneaking supplies to Aleks, which meant Aleks was within hiking distance of the vacation villas. That had to be the bunker Davita needed to target—the one in the Southern Range.Gersha mustn’t lead them there.Karishkov said, “Break three fingers on his right hand.”Gersha’s mind went blank. He was instantly on his feet, straining to the limits of his chain. “No! I’m ready! I—”The soldiers moved faster, the older one holding Tilrey still again while the younger one seized his right wrist. Before the chain could even yank Gersha backward, he heard a sharp snap—followed by a muffled cry, as if through gritted teeth.“No!” His own right hand throbbed in sympathy. He pushed off the wall and lunged toward Karishkov, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach him. “I’ll talk!”A second snap of bone. This time, Tilrey screamed out loud, a sound that tore through Gersha like a knife. His knees wobbled, shudders rolling over him.And he heard Tilrey’s steady voice in his memory: If they think it’s a premature confession, they won’t believe you. We have to be past the point of reversible damage—both of us.Were they past that point yet? Or were they only beginning?“No. No!”The soldier hadn’t released Tilrey’s wrist. Before he could move again, Gersha flung himself down on his knees before Karishkov. “He’s up at the pole! The hacker! Up there! The bunker that’s farthest north!”He held his breath. Everything seemed to have gone very still. Karishkov’s head turned toward him with agonizing slowness.“Oh, is he?” Without breaking eye contact, Karishkov gestured, two fingers waggling behind him.The third snap made Gersha stop breathing, as if a heavy weight had landed on his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the scream.But this time he heard only a strangled sob.Then more sobs, low and gasping. Gersha could feel Tilrey clenching his jaw, trying to keep the sounds inside—not out of pride, but for Gersha’s sake. So Gersha would have the courage to keep on playing this unbearable game.“I’m not lying,” he whispered. “I’m telling the truth, Niko. I swear to you.”Niko’s cold eyes said Really?Gersha couldn’t fool someone with decades of experience as an interrogator. But if this continued, he would blurt out the truth, or what he believed to be the truth. And that might kill Janta.He and Tilrey had to switch places. It was the only way. Tilrey was strong enough to watch him die to save Janta and the True Hearth, and they both knew it.And Gersha? He could endure his own physical pain. Just not this.“Rishka.” He crept away from the pitiless Niko, toward his husband’s quivering shape. Tilrey’s captor had dropped him on his knees, the mangled hand clutched to his chest.“Tilrey!” Gersha pleaded, reaching out even as the chain brought him up short. Without his husband’s go-ahead, he didn’t dare say the rest aloud. He tried to put a message in his eyes.Tell them you’re in charge and I know nothing. Tell them to torture me instead.Grimacing with pain, Tilrey opened his good eye to meet Gersha’s tearful gaze.He shook his head.

28 October, year 374, 3:20 a.m.

“So, Uncle Bror,” Ceill said as they strode briskly through snow flurries toward the Sector, “you’ve been with my dads this whole time? In the rebellion?”

Cold to his bones, he couldn’t stop shuddering. Only the older man’s firm grip on his arm kept him walking straight.

“Since before you were born,” Bror said. “Tilrey’s been with the True Hearth for decades, and he dragged Gersha in with him.”

“Dragged him?” Even with all Ceill knew, that was unexpected. During his childhood, Gersha was always the one who critiqued the system, expressing beliefs that Davita Lindblom called “idealistic.” Meanwhile, Tilrey had scolded Ceill for stepping out of line, for doubting, for befriending the Northmen. “It was Tilrey’s idea?”

Bror laughed raspily. “Tilrey converted both of us. If you ask him, he’ll say he doesn’t deserve any credit, because the True Hearth recruited him and twisted his arm. But he deserves all the credit, Ceill. Your dad’s a brave man. He always promised he’d tell you eventually. Meantime, he wanted to protect you.”

Shelter me. In the past, the thought would have made Ceill quake with rage. But now, half frozen, he saw the value of shelter.

By keeping Ceill away from Dissidents, Tilrey had been trying to protect him from Int/Sec, and now Ceill knew how it felt to sit in a dark cell. He could only guess at everything Tilrey himself had endured over his lifetime, in the Funnel and out of it. Could he blame his father for wanting to spare him?

“He never did tell me the truth,” he admitted. “Gersha didn’t, either. I found out from Janta—do you know Janta?”

“Oh, the hacker. Heard about him, never met him.” Bror stopped short as they came around a corner. “Looks like the siege of the Sector has begun.”

The Sector complex formed an enormous quadrangle, a government fortress, with black granite towers piercing the sky at each corner and the lower Council Hall between them on the north face. They were opposite the hall now. The oldest part of the complex, it rose just nine stories, its sandstone turrets pale against dark, turbulent sky.

A floodlight blinded Ceill. Shading his eyes, he saw it was wielded by a red-jerkined soldier, one of a triple line of armed troops who stood massed along the front of the Council Hall.

Ceill could practically feel the cuffs snapping around his wrists. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said, pulling at Bror. But then he realized the soldiers were far too busy to notice him.

Facing the troops across a few yards of snow was the ragged crowd of students and Laborers that Ceill had seen earlier. And its ranks had swelled. There were hundreds of people, he estimated, maybe even a thousand—covering the whole street, pulsing and murmuring like a restless sea.

“What are we waiting for?” a man’s grumbling voice said, close to him. “More of us than them.”

A voice blared through a loudspeaker, making Ceill tense. “Something something … unlawful assembly. Something something … disperse immediately.”

It was one of the soldiers bawling into the speaker, perched atop the massive snowdrifts that nearly covered the Council Hall’s ground-floor windows. The rising wind snatched most of his words, but the crowd rustled. Angry yells rose in response.

Bror tugged Ceill down the street, away from the heart of the confrontation. “Not safe for you.”

Ceill went without protest. “Will they fire on the crowd?” The rebels madly firing into the air had frightened him, but now he shuddered to think how the troops might discipline such behavior.

“They already did—yesterday, on Judicial Plaza.” Bror steered him toward the Hall of Records. “Regular bloodbath. And before that, in Ring Eight. You missed all of it, didn’t you?”

Ceill nodded. He had never seen rebels in such large groups before, certainly never seen them facing down government forces. Even the Northmen stayed in the shadows, skulking around the Basement of Thurskein. “So it started before the lights went out? What’s making people suddenly protest? Why do some of them wear red Ds on their clothes?”

Bror chuckled softly. “For Darius. The people came out to support their favorite stream character—and the actor who plays him.”

“They risked their lives for a sobstream hero?” It was so surreal it was almost funny, but the laughter died in Ceill’s throat. “For Stefan?”

“Some of them died for a sobstream hero, young Fir,” Bror corrected him. “And for the chance to be something more than second-class citizens. Yesterday they didn’t have weapons, though. Now they do.”

As if to prove his point, a shot rang out in the crowd. A split second later, a volley of gunfire from the troops answered it.

Ceill clutched at Bror, dragging him toward the shelter of the nearest building. Then he stopped, ashamed, realizing they were far from the danger. Over by the east end of the Council hall, people were screaming and running. He thought he saw someone fall.

Bror stood firm, surveying the scene from the lofty vantage of his six and a half feet. “We told ’em to stand firm until they get an order to attack,” he said in a low voice, “but you’re always gonna have loose cannons. Tricky business, managing a mob.”

For a tense moment, the whole crowd seemed to shiver, like a wave about to break.

But no one stepped forth, no one attacked. The soldier started yelling through his loudspeaker again. This time, Ceill understood that he was ordering the people to surrender their weapons.

“If they weren’t worried about being outnumbered, or about killing students with important parents, they’d mow us down right now. C’mon.” Bror wrenched Ceill around toward the Hall of Records again. “Once you’re safe, I’m back on crowd control.”

“I can help!” The gunfire had flooded Ceill’s body with adrenaline, sharpening his senses and blotting out cold and fatigue. He was torn between his terror and his eagerness to stay and see what would happen.

People defying armed troops, refusing to stand down? Not afraid of being dragged off to Int/Sec? Nothing like this had ever happened, even in his history books.

Bror was stronger than he was, though, and Ceill was borne inexorably away from the Sector and the crowd, toward the dug-out ground-floor entrance of the Hall of Records.

“There’s just one way you can help, kid,” his “uncle” said. “Get as far from the Sector and those soldiers as possible.”

“Are you going to attack them? Really?” Ceill pictured all those troops bristling with guns, and another terrified/excited shudder ran down his spine.

“We will take the Council—I hope in the next few hours. But we’re still waiting on weapons and reinforcements from the Ring One and Two Constabularies. Until that happens, we need you not to be captured.”

“So they were going to use me as a hostage.” It was good to know Ceill had been right to run—he’d done something useful, however trivial.

As they reached the doorway, he paused for a last look back at the stand-off. People in the crowd were shouting, talking back to the soldier with the loudspeaker.

“What if they start shooting at us from the air?” he asked. Making himself part of the we of the rebels felt right.

“We haven’t seen any copters yet, but I figure that’s next.” Bror led Ceill over the threshold, whipping a flashlight out of his parka. His tone was grim but resolute. “They can’t target so well without their nav systems, but they can probably do some damage. Lucky for us, there’s a storm coming. Don’t worry, Ceillsha. We know what we’re doing.”

How can I not worry? “Where are we going?” Ceill asked, though Bror’s earlier mention of “underground” had given him some ideas.

He wasn’t surprised when Bror answered, “Through the Shadow City to the Brothel. You’ll be safe with your friends there.”

“Good. I want to see Einara.” Ceill followed Bror through the building’s pitch-dark, chilly atrium.

He remembered Janta insisting that someone needed to control Einara, to keep a leash on her fury. But could Janta really stop her from using them all as pawns of her vengeance? Ceill trusted Bror to lead the rebels wisely, but what he’d just seen in the ruined city looked a little too much like chaos.

Did Einara even care that people had died to defend Stefan? That more people soon would? Or did she care only about exacting bloody revenge on every Oslov in Redda, guilty and innocent alike?

And I helped her. I introduced her to Aleks, who found a way for Janta to turn the lights off. I made this happen.

“I have a few things to say to her,” he said.

“Shh, my love.” Detmer had his arms around Blas, whispering in his ear. “You’re so cold. Let me warm you up.”

They were in bed in a room with a white carpet and a glowing lamp. This wasn’t Blas’s apartment. It looked more like his mother’s, but that made no sense.

Blas was so drowsy he longed to close his eyes again and sleep in Mersha’s arms. But something was wrong.

When he blinked, he remembered darkness and chaos. He was back in the first moments of the blackout, when he couldn’t open the door of Bors Dartán’s office in the Funnel. Nothing worked anymore; nothing made sense.

But here everything was light and warmth. A soft robe around him. Pillows behind him. Only his right hand felt wrong—stiff. He tried to wiggle the fingers and received a surprising jolt of pain.

“Blasha, sweetheart, please.” Detmer’s hand clasped his, holding it gently still. “I didn’t know. They used me to lure you here. I’m so sorry.”

“They who?” Blas looked down at their intertwined hands. The tip of his right middle finger was wound in thick gauze. As long as he didn’t move the finger, he felt nothing.

Detmer stroked his arm. “Does it hurt? They left another vial of sap. I can give you a little.”

Sap—that was why his head felt fuzzy. If he drank more, he would drift off again. “No. Who are you talking about, Mersha? Who used you to lure me? Are we hostages?”

“We’re in the Brothel with Lindahl’s real killers. Stefan’s innocent—you were right about that.”

Rigid with alarm, Blas twisted in Detmer’s arms, half expecting to see Tilrey Bronn standing beside the bed grinning at him. But there was no one there. “It’s him, isn’t it? Gersha’s secretary, my mother’s boyfriend.” He remembered the scene in the Council chamber now. “I told her, I told them all, but they didn’t believe me…”

“Shhh,” Mersha crooned in his ear. “Kai promised me we won’t be harmed. Well, harmed more. I’m so sorry, Blas.”

“Kai? Meirthal, the stream maker?” Detmer seemed to be on strangely friendly terms with Lindahl’s killers. After a long night of bitter disappointments, Blas was having trouble making his brain work. “What happened, anyway? Did I faint?”

“Just for a moment. They gave you sap for the pain, and it put you out again.” Detmer sat up, disentangling himself carefully from Blas. “You stay here, okay? I’m going to make us some tea.”

“I don’t need tea!” Blas protested. “I need to know what’s going on!” But his limbs were waterlogged, his eyelids were heavy, and he wasn’t ready to confront what was happening in the dark city beyond the Brothel’s walls. He stretched out and fell into a feverish doze.

When he opened his eyes again, a tea tray was steaming on the bedside table. His bandaged finger ached with a dull, distant pain, like a person glimpsed at the far end of a corridor.

Detmer coaxed him upright and tidied the pillows behind him. Blas managed to sip some tea, holding the tumbler in his good hand. The pain had crept closer, making his whole body tense up.

Detmer cozied up beside Blas, cheeks pink from the steam. “Oh, that’s nice, right?” he said in a too-soothing tone. “By the time I got here, I felt like I had an ice core for a heart.”

“They shouldn’t have power. Why do they have power? There’s sap in this.”

Blas was shaking. Detmer took the tumbler and held it for him, raising it to his lips. “You need it, sweetheart. Just a little more.”

The pain was retreating down its corridor again, a few inches at a time. “Who killed Lindahl, exactly?” Blas managed to ask between sips. “Was it Tilrey?”

Detmer didn’t meet his eyes. “The Brothel director did it, I think.”

Blas remembered going to the Brothel to find Detmer now, but he wasn’t ready to think about what had happened when he arrived. He needed to focus on solving the case. “But Bronn ordered the murder. At the very least, he knew about it.”

A pause, and then Detmer nodded. “Lindahl was a shit. You know that.”

“Don’t defend shirkers!” Blas winced as the pain darted closer and took another swallow of sap-laced tea.

It was frustrating to see his boyfriend trying to give traitors their due—especially now, when the whole Republic was in peril. The plot to kill Stefan Altmering had been a shock and a disappointment, proof that even Blas’s mother couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing. But surely sticking a knife in a Councillor’s neck was worse?

“Why take us hostage?” Blas asked, trying not to get sidetracked by politics. “If the Brothel whores killed Lindahl, then they’re rebels. They should be out there celebrating with the others, invading our city.”

Mersha rested his head on Blas’s shoulder. “It’s their city, too. Maybe the rebels are just reclaiming it.”

“Reclaiming? They hacked our city! They’re trying to slaughter us!” But Blas couldn’t sustain the anger. It racked his body with spasms, bringing the pain into focus again, and he had to sip to steady himself.

“Look,” he said more quietly, “I believe in reform and justice as much as you do. I risked my life to rescue Stefan from the Funnel before my mother’s goons could kill him.”

Mersha nuzzled his neck. “I hoped you would. I believe in you, Blas.”

“But once I got Stefan to the Council, I found out he’s with them!” Blas’s voice quavered. He had to pause for a deep breath and another sip. “He and that Bors Dartán, they’re both part of the sabotage plot. They’re with Tilrey Bronn!”

“I know.”

The words came out in a sigh. It took Blas a moment to register what Mersha had just said.

Then he turned sharply and peered down at his boyfriend. “How could you know that? You don’t know any more than I do.”

Mersha’s long lashes fluttered. He opened his blue eyes—so innocent, like a schoolboy’s—and gazed up at Blas.

“I only came to the Brothel because the rebels said Tilrey needed me.” Detmer’s pleading tone recalled the days when he was impersonating a Drudge whore—once an arousing memory for Blas, now an unbearable one. “I had no idea they’d…” His mouth twisted. “You’ll be okay. There’s a medic here. She treated you.”

Blas felt another savage twitch of pain in his finger, way too close. “What do you mean, Tilrey needed me? What are you talking about?”

Mersha kissed his neck. “I love you, Blasha. I’ve been wanting to say that. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But…”

“But?” Rage pulsed through Blas.

Only that rage could keep him sane, keep him upright. He remembered the rest now: the cleaver glinting in the air, Detmer’s frantic pleas, Einara saying they needed a “token.”

They had sliced off his fingertip—these rebels, these barbarians—and they were using it as leverage.

“Say it, Mersha.” The words scraped the bottom of Blas’s throat. “Spit it out. What did you do? Who are you?”

Mersha sighed the way he did sometimes in bed, right before he went deliciously limp in Blas’s arms. A sigh of surrender, but with an odd hint of self-assertion in it: This is who I am. “I didn’t want you to find out this way. But I’m with Tilrey Bronn, too.”

“Strip him,” Karishkov said.

“No!” Gersha begged from the floor.

Ignoring him, General Atteivian exchanged a look with the Councillor. “Already?”

“You think we have time to waste?”

Gersha was shackled now. At some point, he’d tried to lunge at the brute who was hitting Tilrey—an indistinct memory, a red blur of rage. Karishkov had held him back. When the soldiers were finished with Tilrey, dumping him on the floor, the older one had used a long, thin chain to link Gersha’s wrists to a hook high in the stone wall.

So here Gersha was, crouched on chilly stone with his wrists leashed and his chin propped on his knees, watching helplessly as the two soldiers peeled off his husband’s clothes.

They were fast and rough. Tilrey didn’t resist, curling in on himself as much as he could. One of his eyes had shrunk to a slit, hidden in a mass of discolored flesh. Blood still trickled from his nose. What if he had a concussion?

You don’t have to watch, Tilrey had told Gersha when they were still alone. And don’t pretend to be strong or indifferent. Make as much of a fuss as you want. This is all just a distraction.

He was trying to make this bearable for Gersha. Worrying about his comfort. Now, as Gersha remembered his husband’s careful efforts to prepare him, his stomach twisted into knots. He was the one who should have been easing Tilrey into readiness. But how? Who could prepare for this?

No. Gersha should be in Tilrey’s place, suffering to buy time for their friends to storm the Council Hall. He should never have let things get this far. But if he told the truth now, would they believe him?

Every breath hurt his constricted lungs. Dried tears had turned his face to a mask. He cleared his throat. “Niko…”

Tilrey was naked, the soldiers shoving him down on his knees. Beneath the bruising, his face had a calm, remote expression. Some observers might have said he didn’t feel what was happening, but Gersha had seen that look before. It was how Tilrey dealt with pain or shame, and he’d hoped never to see it again.

“Niko, listen…” He didn’t know what to say, but he had to say something. Some lie to slow them down, distract them.

Days earlier, when the two of them discussed the plan to hack the city, Tilrey had said there were five bunkers, including one on the coastline, one in the Southern Range, and one up by the pole. He’d also said he was fairly sure Janta had gone to the same bunker that Aleks and the other Free Northmen were using as a refuge.

Valgund had confessed he was sneaking supplies to Aleks, which meant Aleks was within hiking distance of the vacation villas. That had to be the bunker Davita needed to target—the one in the Southern Range.

Gersha mustn’t lead them there.

Karishkov said, “Break three fingers on his right hand.”

Gersha’s mind went blank. He was instantly on his feet, straining to the limits of his chain. “No! I’m ready! I—”

The soldiers moved faster, the older one holding Tilrey still again while the younger one seized his right wrist. Before the chain could even yank Gersha backward, he heard a sharp snap—followed by a muffled cry, as if through gritted teeth.

“No!” His own right hand throbbed in sympathy. He pushed off the wall and lunged toward Karishkov, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach him. “I’ll talk!”

A second snap of bone. This time, Tilrey screamed out loud, a sound that tore through Gersha like a knife. His knees wobbled, shudders rolling over him.

And he heard Tilrey’s steady voice in his memory: If they think it’s a premature confession, they won’t believe you. We have to be past the point of reversible damage—both of us.

Were they past that point yet? Or were they only beginning?

“No. No!”

The soldier hadn’t released Tilrey’s wrist. Before he could move again, Gersha flung himself down on his knees before Karishkov. “He’s up at the pole! The hacker! Up there! The bunker that’s farthest north!”

He held his breath. Everything seemed to have gone very still. Karishkov’s head turned toward him with agonizing slowness.

“Oh, is he?” Without breaking eye contact, Karishkov gestured, two fingers waggling behind him.

The third snap made Gersha stop breathing, as if a heavy weight had landed on his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the scream.

But this time he heard only a strangled sob.

Then more sobs, low and gasping. Gersha could feel Tilrey clenching his jaw, trying to keep the sounds inside—not out of pride, but for Gersha’s sake. So Gersha would have the courage to keep on playing this unbearable game.

“I’m not lying,” he whispered. “I’m telling the truth, Niko. I swear to you.”

Niko’s cold eyes said Really?

Gersha couldn’t fool someone with decades of experience as an interrogator. But if this continued, he would blurt out the truth, or what he believed to be the truth. And that might kill Janta.

He and Tilrey had to switch places. It was the only way. Tilrey was strong enough to watch him die to save Janta and the True Hearth, and they both knew it.

And Gersha? He could endure his own physical pain. Just not this.

“Rishka.” He crept away from the pitiless Niko, toward his husband’s quivering shape. Tilrey’s captor had dropped him on his knees, the mangled hand clutched to his chest.

“Tilrey!” Gersha pleaded, reaching out even as the chain brought him up short. Without his husband’s go-ahead, he didn’t dare say the rest aloud. He tried to put a message in his eyes.

Tell them you’re in charge and I know nothing. Tell them to torture me instead.

Grimacing with pain, Tilrey opened his good eye to meet Gersha’s tearful gaze.

He shook his head.