Chapter 3: First Night — The Key of Oslov

Volume 6: The Trip to Thurskein

Chapter 3 First Night

Chapter Notes

This chapter turned out long! Language note: A Skeinsha is someone who lives in Thurskein, plural Skeinshaka.I’m opening up comments, but moderating just for spam and such. Thanks for your patience while I figure this stuff out, and thanks for reading! <3

Chapter Notes

This chapter turned out long! Language note: A Skeinsha is someone who lives in Thurskein, plural Skeinshaka.

I’m opening up comments, but moderating just for spam and such. Thanks for your patience while I figure this stuff out, and thanks for reading! <3

The flight took less than two hours, like a vacation jaunt to the Southern Range. It was a blink, so why had this journey always felt so impossible?As the plane skimmed toward the landing strip, inside the security wall, Tilrey watched the enormous dirty-white hulk of Thurskein blot out the horizon. Roughly circular, the city complex consisted of a tall inner ring of housing—nine separate sectors, each with about 10,000 residents—surrounded by a boxy sprawl of factories and greenhouses.Tilrey had no memories to compare with this arrival. Eight years ago, taking the trip in the other direction, he hadn’t watched the take-off. Handcuffed and jammed into a private plane beside the first Upstart he’d ever met, he’d been woozy with sap and dread.What was that Upstart admin’s name? Tilrey couldn’t remember, but he could still see the shiny bald head and the delighted leer that spread over the man’s face as he said, “You’re exactly Linnett’s type, sweetheart. Do you know how lucky you are? An hour ago you were in detention. Now, if all goes well, you’re going to belong to the most powerful man in Oslov.”Tilrey hadn’t felt lucky. Ripped from everything he knew, he had no concept of where he was headed except that it wasn’t a prison cell. That flight to Redda was his first flight, his first time being sapped. After a bout of nausea, he passed out, then snapped awake as they descended into Redda to find himself drooling on the leering admin’s shoulder.So yeah, not much to compare.He watched the runway approach and felt the landing’s impact shudder all the way to his bones. The plane taxied, and then he joined the quiet, orderly line of passengers filing through the hatch.Most were Reddan Laborers like him. The flow was one-way: Reddans could come here, but Skeinshaka weren’t permitted to visit their relatives in the capital, barring extraordinary circumstances. Which meant a good number of these drably dressed teachers and nurses and clinic aides were upwardly mobile. Born in Thurskein, where their families still lived, they’d fought tooth and nail for precious postings in Redda.Growing up, Tilrey had a few high-achieving friends who aspired to Redda postings, but the idea never attracted him. Why would he want to leave his mom, Dal, his world? Sure, you could live a little better in Redda, or so people said, but it was too cold there for skiing. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone in ’Skein was starving.Once in Redda, he’d never let himself think hard about whether his new life was a net gain or loss.Off the plane, he followed the other passengers through a series of corridors lit by windows in the hangar’s outer shell. Natural light was precious here and yellower than in Redda, bringing out the dirt and aging and wear in the ubiquitous white surfaces.That seasonal light brought involuntary memories, too. Someone else’s coat thrown over his shoulders. A soldier’s hand guiding him up a ramp. Tilrey drew himself up and reminded himself he was a Sector worker wearing an R5 jerkin now, not a scared boy being dragged in an Upstart’s wake.Soon enough the sunlight was gone, though, the corridors diving underground as they reached a checkpoint. Everyone had to state the reason for their visit, though they’d already done so back in Redda. A couple of Upstart passengers on government or scientific business simply scanned their hand-chips and were waved through.The clerk who examined Tilrey’s ID cocked a brow at him, as if to say, You work in the Sector? At your age? Then she droned, “Name of head of family in whose home you’ll be residing during your stay?”“Lindtmerán, Angelika.”She rifled through papers on a clipboard and made a checkmark. He tensed, waiting for her to ask him to step aside for a search, but she only said, “Go along, Fir Bronn.”In Thurskein, every adult male was a Fir, every adult female a Fir’n, the honorific reclaiming its original meaning of “free citizen.” He’d have to get used to that again.By the time he stepped into the arrival lounge, Tilrey was already feeling a little smothered by the windowless spaces. He’d have to get used to that, too, since Thurskein had absorbed him into its bowels and wouldn’t release him any time soon. With any luck, his mother still had her spacious apartment in the outer shell with a picture window in the living room—one of the perks of the lieutenant supervisor posting.He turned, and there she was—slender, almost boyish, with close-cropped reddish hair, a freckled oval face, and an intense gaze. In her way, he realized now, she was a striking woman. Though there was nothing obviously imposing about her, people stepped out of her way.When she saw him, her upper lip twitched, but she didn’t move. He had to go to her, drop his bag, and hold out his hand, not sure how she’d respond to anything more intimate.“Mom.”“Rishka.”Then he was in her arms, her grip squeezing the air from his lungs. Seconds ticked by while he stood as still as he could, breathing in her familiar smell, trying to imagine he was still the small boy who’d felt steadied and reassured by her rare, fierce embraces.

I’m not who you think I am. I’m sorry.

When they parted, she held him at arm’s length, looking him up and down. “You’re so big. It’s like seeing a ghost. You were always his double, but now you’re grown. . . ”Her face was bloodless and blank, as if she really were seeing a specter—his dead father, that stranger he’d never know.Tilrey flashed the radiant grin he used when he needed someone to like him. “You always used to say that.”Instead of smiling back, she gave a little start. “Your teeth are so white, Rishka.”He’d forgotten how his nickname sounded in his mother’s voice and accent, with that burring, brushing softness. Only she used to use it, a pet name between them; his friends knew better than to call him anything but Tilrey. In Redda, all that had changed.“I had them bleached a few times.” His sinuses throbbed, and he smoothed his face into blankness. “It’s . . . something Upstarts do. Not for a while, though.”His mother looked bemused. “What a strange notion!”“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t my idea.” And there he stopped, because he knew better than to talk about his life as a kettle boy.Not that his mother didn’t know what he’d been doing in Redda. There were boys and girls using their bodies as currency in Thurskein, too.Once when Tilrey was about twelve, waiting for his mother in the Supervisor’s foyer, three long-limbed youths came in and threw themselves down indolently on the couch. He stared at them—so big and strong and sure of themselves—until they offered to deal him into their card game. They joshed with him like older brothers, and he basked in the attention.Then his mother returned. She grabbed Tilrey and steered him out into the hall, not dignifying his new friends with a glance. There she knelt and hissed in his ear, “Don’t ever talk to the lads you see in Fernei’s office. They’re not like you and your friends. They’re unfortunates who earn their keep on their backs in bed.”When he objected that she wasn’t being fair, she said, “I don’t dislike those lads. I pity them. But you can’t get into the habit of socializing with people who don’t use their brains to advance in the world.”Tilrey would do his duty on this visit; he would honor his mother. And he would rely on her pride to keep her from acknowledging that the past eight years of his life were a deep, personal affront to her.They didn’t speak much as they took a lift up several stories to a middle tier of the city, then veered off into a labyrinth of corridors that echoed emptily. It was a district of factory sub-foremen and petty admins, everyone still hard at work.His mother must be taking him on a detour to another lift; they’d always had their quarters on the top tier. He was about to ask her when they’d head upward again when she stopped beside an ordinary door and punched in a code. “Here we are.”Tilrey swallowed his surprise; he had practice taking things in stride. The apartment inside was cramped and windowless—a living room, sleeping alcove, and kitchenette, little better than his dorm room in Redda.His mother explained, “There’s no bedroom for you here, I’m afraid; I’ve reserved you one down the hall. You can take your meals with me; the communal bathroom’s just past the north bend.”As if it hurt her to stop moving, she flitted into the kitchenette, opened a wall fridge, and pulled out a lush bunch of red-veined greenhouse chard. “Are you hungry, Rishka? How long since you had greens that didn’t come frozen?”Tilrey had had an excellent preparation of braised chard and rice just recently at the Restaurant. He sat down at the rickety table, grateful to her for supplying a safe topic. “I’ve dreamed of your greens. What do you do to them? A touch of vinegar?”“Cider vinegar, yes.” She paused, her sharp eyes on him, and he knew she was registering his Reddan accent, letting it sink in. But she said nothing.He waited till they were both seated and eating—the greens came with rice and a very small nugget of steamed cod—to ask, “Are you still in the lieutenant supervisor posting, Mother? You didn’t say you weren’t, so I thought—”“You’re wondering about my diminished circumstances.”Green hells, she sounded as icily proud as a high Upstart. “A little,” Tilrey said. “If you’re still the lieutenant supe, how can you be at—what is this level, R2?”His mother stiffened. “R2.4.” Her blue eyes caught his, then darted to the dead streaming cylinder in the corner. “After you . . . left, I told Supervisor Fernei I had no further interest in working under him. He persuaded me the sector needed my leadership. I had to concede his point. However, I requested that he lower me to a ration level where I would no longer have to socialize with him outside work hours.”Tilrey drew in his breath. Had she really put herself in this dump for his sake? “But in your letter, you said Fernei—well, you made it sound like you were still on good terms with him. You said he was proud of me.”His mother rose, cleared the serving platter, and went into the kitchen. When she was irritated, she moved like a bird, awkward and self-contained at once.“I wrote that because I knew your Fir Councillor would read my letter,” she said. “I supposed he’d be more apt to release you for a visit if you had powerful friends here.”“You didn’t need to do that, you know.” Remembering Gersha’s reaction to her letter, Tilrey felt guilty all over again for not telling her more about “his Councillor.” He hadn’t lied, but he’d been vague, fostering a forbidding impression to keep her at a distance. “My Councillor isn’t a tyrant, and he doesn’t need that kind of persuasion. He understands why I’d want to come home.”Then why didn’t you do it earlier? She didn’t need to say the words aloud. Did you not want to?But Tilrey had no answers to those questions. After a moment, his mother picked up her train of thought as if he hadn’t intervened. “I speak with Fernei as little as I can get away with. He’s invited us both to dinner tomorrow night, but I won’t accept the invitation. You can on your own account, of course, if you like,” she added, those sharp eyes capturing his again. “I won’t be offended. But I don’t intend to dine with the man who—”She broke off, letting the missing words resonate in the air again. The man who sold my only child to Upstarts and sent him away from me forever.“I’m sorry,” Tilrey said.“What’s to be sorry for?” She spoke a little too loudly.“I didn’t know any of that, Mom.” He heard his consonants and vowels beginning to slide toward softer Skeinsha sounds. “I assumed things here were . . . well, pretty much the same.”His mother had taken today and the next day off to spend with him, and Tilrey was already wondering how he’d endure any more of these freighted silences.All afternoon, she insisted on showing him around, giving him tours of the refurbished greenhouse, the expanded library, the rec area. He admired everything politely, pretending it didn’t look small and drab to him, and she didn’t ask him a single question about his life in Redda.Not that he minded! The objective was to get through the visit with as few mentions of Upstarts, Redda, and particularly Gersha as possible. Yet he had to admit it was awkward having nothing to say to his own mother.Now dinner was over, and she’d brought him to an upper observation deck to view the sunset. And that, too, was awkward, because he knew that, for her and the other people pressing their faces against the floor-length windows, watching a sunset wasn’t something you could do any damn evening. It was a reward you saved your work-hours for, a special outing.Tilrey stared diligently at the horizon, but he was relieved when the last glowing coral strip disappeared and his mother turned away. “I thought we might take tea in the caf now,” she said. “Your friend Magdalena—Dal—wants to see you.”“Dal? Is she here?” Tilrey’s heart leaped, an old conditioned response to the sound of Dal’s name.“But,” he pointed out as she led him downstairs again, “you never liked Dal. Have you really been spending time with her, like you said in the letter, or was that another lie?”“There were no lies in my letter.” His mother stopped before twin frosted-plastic doors, which hissed open to reveal a depopulated cafeteria. “Fernei has actually told me he’s proud of you—I just don’t care what he thinks. And yes, I’ve been seeing Dal. Why wouldn’t I? She’s your best friend.”Was. “But you always said her family was ‘disreputable.’”“Shh! She’s—”Tilrey turned just in time to register an approaching blur of black hair and gray coverall. Then Dal barreled into him and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him even tighter than his mother had. Her face barely reached his chest—had she always been so short?—but she made up for it in strength and solidity.“Green hells, you’re a giant! How’d that happen?” She leaned back to gaze up at him, arching her expressive dark brows.Dal wasn’t pretty or delicate—her face was all bold strokes like a slab of granite—but she’d always seemed more present than anyone else Tilrey knew. Coming from his quiet, rule-bound home, he’d been mesmerized by her resonant contralto voice, her quarrelsome family, her theatrical gestures.He couldn’t see her now the way he used to; the intoxication of teenage hormones was long gone. But Dal’s brown eyes showed none of his mother’s reservations, and he let himself linger in her embrace.“You look like a stream star. Doesn’t he?” Dal turned to a companion Tilrey didn’t recognize, a plump young woman with a cloud of tight bronze curls and a wide, pleasant smile.“Oh, I’m sorry.” Dal broke free of him to nudge her friend forward. “This is Lourisa Beishoft, my—well, we’re partners.” She and Lourisa exchanged an unreadable glance. “She’s married to Kai Furnell—remember him?—but we two live together.”Lourisa Beishoft. A chill ran over Tilrey as he clasped the pleasant-looking young woman’s hand. As the intended recipient of Dartán’s message, she must be a Dissident, which meant Dal—Shit. Dal being involved with shirkers was no great surprise; she’d always been an avid breaker of rules great and small. But he’d hoped she’d have the sense to steer clear after seeing what had happened to him. They’d need to talk.“Pleased to meet you.” He gave Lourisa one of his most glowing smiles. “You look like a level-headed sort. Has Dal convinced you to go off-trail and cross a frozen creek yet? Or to steal feast-day dumplings from the caf?”Dal grimaced hammily, making Lourisa laugh. “You’re not supposed to tell her things like that, Tilrey! She doesn’t know about my wild past.”“I’ve blown your cover, then?”Lourisa giggled. “Dal told me you were shy with new people, so I’d have to be very sweet to you. But you don’t seem shy.”“Maybe I’ve changed since Dal saw me last.”Dal seized Tilrey’s hands, those big dark eyes scrutinizing his again. “Lisha thought maybe you’d be mad about us, or just weirded out. She wasn’t sure I should tell you I’m with someone. But it’s okay, isn’t it?”Lisha—his mother’s nickname. Were she and Dal on such intimate terms? Tilrey glanced at his mother, but she was staring into her tea, no doubt mortified by Dal’s frankness.“Why would I be mad, Mom?” he asked.His mother looked up, her fine-boned face placid. “I’m not sure I phrased it that way. It was just, well—you used to talk about marriage, Rishka. The two of you.”“I was seventeen, Mother.” He returned his gaze to Dal, who was so much easier to deal with, her whole posture speaking acceptance. “Anyway, I’m with someone now, too.”“You are? You have to tell me everything!” Dal squeezed his hands, but then her face fell a little. Maybe she was trying to match what his mother must have told her—that Tilrey was under the thumb of a cruel Councillor—to what he was saying.“I will.” He glanced his mother’s way again. But not in front of her.“Anyway,” Dal said, “you look amazingly sexy in that jerkin, and I’m probably going to leave Lourisa and run away with you, whether you have someone or not.”Lourisa smiled indulgently. “If you desert me for him, I can’t entirely blame you, Dalsha.”Her eyes met Tilrey’s for an instant, and he wondered if she knew he was the bringer of the message. If he chose to deliver it. What real power did Irin Dartán have over him?“My someone might have something to say about that,” he said.“You have to tell us more,” Dal complained, several hours later. “You can’t be mysterious; it’s not fair when your life is so much more interesting than ours.”She, Tilrey, and Lourisa were perched in a nest of rafters overlooking the vast Sector Six plastics fabrication workshop. It was late now, and the monstrous assembler robots were shut down for the night, the guardlights casting everything in amber dusk. This was where they’d come as schoolkids to dream and flirt and fight and taste forbidden rotgut liquor.“My life’s not that interesting,” Tilrey said. “It’s just new to you.”“But that’s the whole point, right?” Dal looked to Lourisa for support. “New is rarer here than smoked salmon.”She was right. They’d already talked all about their postings: Lourisa was in Records (a useful place for a Dissident, Tilrey noted mentally), and Dal managed a freight plane maintenance crew. It hadn’t taken long to cover news of mutual friends: Pers was married with a kid; Vanya was running a whole greenhouse; Irina had been maimed in an assembly-line accident.“So,” Dal persisted, “what about this someone of yours? Boy, girl, neither?”“Boy.” He couldn’t be coy about it; what was the point? “He’s, uh, an Upstart, actually. The Councillor I work for—my mom’s told you about him, I imagine.”In the half-light, Tilrey could see Dal’s face shutter itself. “But he’s . . . I mean, he’s not just somebody you work for?”“No.” He made himself meet first Lourisa’s mild, nonjudgmental eyes, then Dal’s more dubious ones. With them, maybe, he could be more open. “His name is Gersha, and I’m not just fucking him for work. That’s how it started, but that’s not how it is anymore.”How or what was it, though? Aside from “lover” or “protector” or maybe “partner,” there were no good words for what he and Gersha were to each other.“So he doesn’t act like other Strutters?” Dal asked. “I mean, I’ve never actually met one up close, but they order you around, right? Do they treat you like your foreperson or Supervisor, only worse, because you can’t mouth off to them?”Tilrey laughed; it hurt a little. “You’d mouth off to anybody, Dal. But yeah, that’s basically it. You’re supposed to show deference.”“So do you do that with your Gersha?”He hesitated; the proper answer was yes, but this was Dal. “Not really. I mean, in public, sure, but in private—well, he likes to act like we’re equal.” Though of course we’re technically not.“So he doesn’t believe in Levels?” It was the first time Lourisa’s voice had sounded tart.“He does, but he doesn’t like all the formalities, the way some Strutters abuse their power.” The words sounded so dry and false, so unlike the Gersha he knew better than anyone.Dal snorted. “One of those ‘enlightened’ ones. I read a novel about this Upstart who was so in love with a factory girl that he married her, even though it meant Lowering himself. Then his family shunned him, and his wife’s family thought he was crazy, and he died miserable and alone.” She swung her foot in midair. “Is that what your Strutter boyfriend’s going to do—give up everything for you?”“Dalsha,” Lourisa said. “Don’t be rude.”Tilrey’s throat had tightened. “I’d never let him do anything stupid for me.”“It was only a joke. What—”She went still, listening; someone was crawling noisily through the same hatch from which they’d come. Together they watched as a boy’s bulky head emerged into the rafters, hair copper in the light.“Hey, Pers!” Dal called, and then to Tilrey, “I asked him to come if he could. Hope you don’t mind.”“Tilrey!” Pers scrabbled perilously across the crossbeams, catching himself a few times, and clasped Tilrey’s hand. “I can’t fucking believe you’re back. You look amazing.”“You, too.” Pers had gained weight in the face, chest, and around the middle, which suited him, Tilrey thought.Through primary school and into their teens, he, Dal, and Pers had been an inseparable unit. Dal was the reckless one, Pers the reasonable one, Tilrey the shy, studious one whom they both protected—and sometimes, when they were in the mood, teased.Then, one day when they were all fifteen, Dal had come to Tilrey and said, “Persha and I both like you—that way. You have to choose between us.” When he stared at her, stunned, she added in her blunt way, “Now, don’t get all full of yourself, but you’re gorgeous. Everybody thinks so.”Tilrey chose Dal, or the adolescent hormones did, and once they were a couple, Pers faded into the background. Now, though, the choice didn’t seem so obvious. Pers was a nice-looking heavy-set, auburn-haired boy, his dark eyes gleaming with intelligence. And he was the one acting shy tonight, following each glance at Tilrey with a fetching duck of his head.“Pers’s posting is much fancier than ours,” Dal said, passing Tilrey the bottle of booze they’d been sharing. “He’s the deputy head of the constabulary.”Meaning Pers probably reported to Supervisor Fernei on Dissident activity. Tilrey filed away the information. “You’ll be Supervisor one day, Persha.”Pers did that head duck again. “Tilrey’s not impressed by our podunk Supervisors, Dal. He works with Councillors.”“I don’t think he’s impressed by Councillors, either.” Dal winked at Tilrey. “They’re still just men, aren’t they?”Ignoring the barb, Tilrey addressed Pers. “I can’t say I’m too impressed with Supervisor Fernei. The last time I saw him, he was lying to me.”An awkward silence ensued. Dal said, “Fernei’s no better than a feudal tyrant. I always thought so.”“He lets my mother live like a menial, and he had the nerve to invite me to dinner.” Tilrey turned to Lourisa. “You must work with him in Records. Tell me, have you seen him doing any shady business?”Lourisa glanced at Pers, then said timidly, “Fernei does run quite a trade in . . . well, the usual stuff. Hosts Strutters on their way to the Southern Range, introduces them to pretty boys and girls, that kind of thing.”“Every sector Supervisor does that,” Pers said.“But he is what you’d call corrupt, then?” Tilrey liked the idea of having a focus for the white noise of anger he’d been hearing in his head ever since he hugged his mother, every time he closed his eyes. Fernei was the one who’d sold him, and a corrupt Supervisor could perhaps be removed, assuming someone who significantly outranked him had a good incentive to get rid of him.Pers looked less and less comfortable with the conversation. “I barely work with Fernei’s office; everything we do is by the book. Your mom’s the one to ask about him.”“Oh, I brought him up.” Tilrey used the studiously breezy tone he’d heard Besha deploy to get fellow Councillors to open up. “But my mother—well, you know what a proud woman she is. She doesn’t want to talk about anything except the glorious amenities of Sector Six.”The others exchanged glances, and then Pers handed Tilrey the bottle. “Fernei shouldn’t have lowered her ration level. That was a shit thing to do.”Tilrey drank, but not much; the stuff tasted like paint thinner. He passed it to Lourisa. “Even if she asked him to?”“Tilrey.” Dal leaned toward him across the drop, her eyes bright with liquor. “I know how your mom is, which means she probably hasn’t made this clear, but she adores you. I mean, seriously, you’re her whole world. When she heard you’d been arrested, she went to Fernei and begged him on her knees to release you. And when he said you were gone, and then made excuses—well, she resigned. She worked the factory floor for a whole year, until he pretty much ordered her to come back and keep his office in order.”Tilrey shivered at the thought of his mother on the factory floor, not surprised she hadn’t told him the whole story. But where was Dal going with this? He knew his mother adored him—or had adored him.“And after that, she kept petitioning for your re-posting back here, not that it ever mattered. That first year you were gone, she was so miserable she came to me. This woman who always hated my guts, who thought I wasn’t good enough for you—she came and asked me to talk about all the little things I knew about you. And then she cried.” Dal looked like she still didn’t quite believe it. “It got to be a regular thing with us, every week or so, the talking and the crying.”Grieving together—as if I were dead. Tilrey remembered all the letters from his mother he hadn’t answered. “Forgetting me would have made more sense,” he said, more bitterly than he meant to.Dal stared at him in her dramatic way, but her voice was quiet. “Tilrey, you’re her only son.”Yes, and like his mother, he was proud.He held Dal’s gaze until Pers nudged him with an elbow and handed him the bottle. “Here you are, lad. Looks like you could use it.”*Pers was the one who ended up trashed. Tilrey had to guide him back through the hatch so he didn’t fall forty feet to the concrete floor.By that time, Dal and Lourisa were both tipsy enough to start giving each other meaningful glances and touching each other and giggling. Tilrey got a steadying arm around Pers and said, “You two go along. I’ll get him home.”“Are you sure?” Dal snagged the hood of Lourisa’s coverall and wrapped an arm around her waist.He nodded. “You go. Have fun.”Once they’d separated, back in a residential corridor, Tilrey stopped at a water station and made Pers drink. “Where do you live? Up, I’m guessing?”Pers leaned on Tilrey, not ready to walk solo. “Nah, I can’ go home yet. Lina hates when I drink. We got a kid, you know? She’s almost two. You got a place?”“Not a nice one.”Pers hiccuped. “Don’ care.”So Tilrey brought his friend to the cubby of a room his mother had secured for him. Most of the space was occupied by the bed, on which Pers collapsed with a happy sigh. “You got sap or anything?”“Not legal to bring that here.”“I know, but you’ve got plenty of sap in Redda, right? More’n you want, probably.” Pers toed off his shoes and drew up his feet. “You don’ even talk like us anymore. Sound like a Strutter.”Tilrey leaned against the wall. “You’re drunk, Persha.”“And you’re not. Used to be such a fucking lightweight.” Pers seized Tilrey’s hand and rubbed it against his own cheek. “It’s like you’re a different person.”The contact was oddly sensual, but Tilrey gave no sign it affected him. After a moment, Pers released the hand and scrubbed his own over his eyes. “Shouldn’t’ve done that, sorry. Know you don’t want me, never did.”Maybe it was just a side effect of his sordid history, but Tilrey found something way too attractive about men who apologized for their advances, who didn’t push themselves on him. He swallowed, remembering Gersha in their early days when he’d been deliciously skittish. “Maybe I’ve changed.”Pers sat up, swaying a little, so they were face-to-face. “You jus’ saying that?”Tilrey captured Pers’s hand and brought it to his own cheek. The contact with sweaty, trembling flesh sent a shiver of arousal down his spine. “I’ve got somebody at home, so it wouldn’t be, you know, serious. But it might be fun.”He pushed away the thoughts of Gersha for now. Sex was just sex, and maybe Pers’s warm body would make him feel better about being in a cold, dingy room down a cold, dingy corridor from a mother who was still mourning a dead version of him.He ventured a hand onto his friend’s thigh, just resting it there, and was rewarded with a needy groan.“Green hells, I get hard just looking at you. But Tilrey, I haven’t—” Pers gasped sharply as Tilrey took hold of his cock, which was hard as promised.“Haven’t what, sweetheart?” This was good. This felt good. Tilrey himself was only moderately aroused, but as he palmed Pers through his trousers, he felt fully in control of his life again.“I haven’t—oh god, don’t stop that! Or maybe you should stop that.” Pers went crimson. “See, the thing is, I haven’t ever fucked a man. Or been fucked.”Tilrey halted, amused now. “Really? Does your wife disapprove?”“She says she doesn’t mind, but I feel guilty. Because she doesn’t want to fuck anybody but me.” Pers looked up at Tilrey, his dark eyes damp. “And I do love her, like I’m supposed to, but I go to the lower levels sometimes to find a boy who’s willing to suck me off, because I need it. Do you know what that’s like?”Feeling decades older than his friend, and way too jaded, Tilrey closed his fingers around Pers’s cock again. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a good, meaningless fuck, Pers. And I’m happy to give it to you, but only if you’re sure.”Pers groaned again. “You’d really—you’d do that? For me?”Tilrey answered the question by moving into Pers’s space, threading fingers in his hair, and kissing him. Pers froze, then kissed back with almost comical abandon, pushing his tongue between Tilrey’s lips. When they opened to him, he sighed in wonder, his arms sneaking around Tilrey’s shoulders. “You’re so beautiful.”They fooled around some more. Tilrey undressed Pers, teasing his cock with a knowing hand. Pers responded with mumbles of stunned gratitude, too off-kilter to try to reciprocate.That was good, too; Tilrey would stay in control. When Pers began rutting up into his hand, he asked in his friend’s ear, one knee nudging between his legs, “Want to be on top, or shall I?”Pers gasped as if the words alone might suffice to make him come. “I’ve always wanted—well, I’d love to be inside you. I guess that’s how I imagined it. But it’s your choice, and I don’t actually know how to—”“No worries. I do.” Tilrey fumbled in his bag for the lube he’d packed for their last trip to the Southern Range. He was already anticipating Pers’s first awkward, eager thrusts.Maybe he had a thing for sexual novices; Gersha had been painfully attractive at this stage, too. “I think you’re going to like this,” he said.Pers clearly did like it, very much, though his alcohol-sodden body was somewhat lacking in stamina. Once he’d figured things out, he fucked for a minute or so like his life depended on it, then came and collapsed on top of Tilrey, wafting hot breath in his ear. “That was fucking amazing. Fucking. Amazing.”The next sound he made was a wheezing snore, and Tilrey resigned himself to bearing his friend’s weight. When his arm went to sleep, he eased Pers off him and stretched out on his back, pulling the auburn head down on his shoulder.Pers woke up. “Mmm. That was fucking amazing.”“You said that.” Tilrey stroked his friend’s coarse hair, feeling oddly moored by the sensation of skin on skin. This might not be home anymore, but anywhere he went, he knew how to make people like him, knew how to make them want him to stay.They spent the rest of the night alternating between sleep and further experiments, all of which made Pers moan and beg and praise Tilrey in gratifying ways. Toward dawn, after he’d shown Pers how it felt to have your cock sucked by someone who actually knew how, they rested in the tangled blankets, Tilrey’s head in Pers’s lap. And Tilrey said without thinking, “I need a fucking window. I’m suffocating.”Pers’s thick fingers stroked his hair. “Lina and I don’t have a window yet. It’ll take three or four more promotions. The head constable’s got one, I think.”How can you stand it? Tilrey swallowed his pity, realizing only now how lucky he’d been to grow up with a window, how lucky he was to look out windows daily.“What does a constable even deal with here?” he asked. “Drunken brawls?”“Yeah, mostly. A fair bit of smuggling and illicit trading.” Pers ticked off on his fingers. “Disorderly conduct. Some domestic violence, the occasional rape or murder. And shirking, of course. People who lie in bed and refuse to work.”Tilrey wondered where those people ended up. Somehow as a kid he’d never thought to care. “What about the other kind of shirking—Dissidence?”“Dissidence?” Pers said the word as if each syllable might poison him. “Well, I mean, it used to be a problem, obviously.” He dropped his voice. “Back when you went and met with that group. But since the crackdown, the executions, we haven’t seen much of anything. Cut off the monster’s head, and it dies.” He drew a finger playfully across Tilrey’s throat. “Sector Six is a loyal sector.”The last part was a formula, as if Pers were reporting to an Upstart admin. As if, on some half-conscious level, Pers thought Tilrey was an Upstart. Tilrey digested that, enjoying the sensation of fingers playing with his hair.“I’m not testing you or anything, Persha,” he said. “My Councillor doesn’t have direct jurisdiction in Thurskein. I was just curious.”Pers’s finger traced his earlobe. “Well, you don’t want to mention shirking in front of Supervisor Fernei, I can tell you that. You’re not—I mean, I probably shouldn’t ask, but you don’t still have those sympathies, do you?”His tone was earnest. Whatever Lourisa and probably Dal were doing with Dartán’s group, Pers didn’t know about it.“I never had ‘those sympathies.’” Tilrey rolled off Pers’s lap and kissed him on the forehead. “Dal dared me to go to that meeting, and I did it to impress her, and I paid the price. And now . . . well.” He gazed into Pers’s eyes, knowing how innocent his own appeared. “I’m happy in Redda with my Councillor, Persha. Why would I do anything to endanger that?”

The flight took less than two hours, like a vacation jaunt to the Southern Range. It was a blink, so why had this journey always felt so impossible?

As the plane skimmed toward the landing strip, inside the security wall, Tilrey watched the enormous dirty-white hulk of Thurskein blot out the horizon. Roughly circular, the city complex consisted of a tall inner ring of housing—nine separate sectors, each with about 10,000 residents—surrounded by a boxy sprawl of factories and greenhouses.

Tilrey had no memories to compare with this arrival. Eight years ago, taking the trip in the other direction, he hadn’t watched the take-off. Handcuffed and jammed into a private plane beside the first Upstart he’d ever met, he’d been woozy with sap and dread.

What was that Upstart admin’s name? Tilrey couldn’t remember, but he could still see the shiny bald head and the delighted leer that spread over the man’s face as he said, “You’re exactly Linnett’s type, sweetheart. Do you know how lucky you are? An hour ago you were in detention. Now, if all goes well, you’re going to belong to the most powerful man in Oslov.”

Tilrey hadn’t felt lucky. Ripped from everything he knew, he had no concept of where he was headed except that it wasn’t a prison cell. That flight to Redda was his first flight, his first time being sapped. After a bout of nausea, he passed out, then snapped awake as they descended into Redda to find himself drooling on the leering admin’s shoulder.

So yeah, not much to compare.

He watched the runway approach and felt the landing’s impact shudder all the way to his bones. The plane taxied, and then he joined the quiet, orderly line of passengers filing through the hatch.

Most were Reddan Laborers like him. The flow was one-way: Reddans could come here, but Skeinshaka weren’t permitted to visit their relatives in the capital, barring extraordinary circumstances. Which meant a good number of these drably dressed teachers and nurses and clinic aides were upwardly mobile. Born in Thurskein, where their families still lived, they’d fought tooth and nail for precious postings in Redda.

Growing up, Tilrey had a few high-achieving friends who aspired to Redda postings, but the idea never attracted him. Why would he want to leave his mom, Dal, his world? Sure, you could live a little better in Redda, or so people said, but it was too cold there for skiing. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone in ’Skein was starving.

Once in Redda, he’d never let himself think hard about whether his new life was a net gain or loss.

Off the plane, he followed the other passengers through a series of corridors lit by windows in the hangar’s outer shell. Natural light was precious here and yellower than in Redda, bringing out the dirt and aging and wear in the ubiquitous white surfaces.

That seasonal light brought involuntary memories, too. Someone else’s coat thrown over his shoulders. A soldier’s hand guiding him up a ramp. Tilrey drew himself up and reminded himself he was a Sector worker wearing an R5 jerkin now, not a scared boy being dragged in an Upstart’s wake.

Soon enough the sunlight was gone, though, the corridors diving underground as they reached a checkpoint. Everyone had to state the reason for their visit, though they’d already done so back in Redda. A couple of Upstart passengers on government or scientific business simply scanned their hand-chips and were waved through.

The clerk who examined Tilrey’s ID cocked a brow at him, as if to say, You work in the Sector? At your age? Then she droned, “Name of head of family in whose home you’ll be residing during your stay?”

“Lindtmerán, Angelika.”

She rifled through papers on a clipboard and made a checkmark. He tensed, waiting for her to ask him to step aside for a search, but she only said, “Go along, Fir Bronn.”

In Thurskein, every adult male was a Fir, every adult female a Fir’n, the honorific reclaiming its original meaning of “free citizen.” He’d have to get used to that again.

By the time he stepped into the arrival lounge, Tilrey was already feeling a little smothered by the windowless spaces. He’d have to get used to that, too, since Thurskein had absorbed him into its bowels and wouldn’t release him any time soon. With any luck, his mother still had her spacious apartment in the outer shell with a picture window in the living room—one of the perks of the lieutenant supervisor posting.

He turned, and there she was—slender, almost boyish, with close-cropped reddish hair, a freckled oval face, and an intense gaze. In her way, he realized now, she was a striking woman. Though there was nothing obviously imposing about her, people stepped out of her way.

When she saw him, her upper lip twitched, but she didn’t move. He had to go to her, drop his bag, and hold out his hand, not sure how she’d respond to anything more intimate.

“Mom.”

“Rishka.”

Then he was in her arms, her grip squeezing the air from his lungs. Seconds ticked by while he stood as still as he could, breathing in her familiar smell, trying to imagine he was still the small boy who’d felt steadied and reassured by her rare, fierce embraces.

I’m not who you think I am. I’m sorry.

When they parted, she held him at arm’s length, looking him up and down. “You’re so big. It’s like seeing a ghost. You were always his double, but now you’re grown. . . ”

Her face was bloodless and blank, as if she really were seeing a specter—his dead father, that stranger he’d never know.

Tilrey flashed the radiant grin he used when he needed someone to like him. “You always used to say that.”

Instead of smiling back, she gave a little start. “Your teeth are so white, Rishka.”

He’d forgotten how his nickname sounded in his mother’s voice and accent, with that burring, brushing softness. Only she used to use it, a pet name between them; his friends knew better than to call him anything but Tilrey. In Redda, all that had changed.

“I had them bleached a few times.” His sinuses throbbed, and he smoothed his face into blankness. “It’s . . . something Upstarts do. Not for a while, though.”

His mother looked bemused. “What a strange notion!”

“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t my idea.” And there he stopped, because he knew better than to talk about his life as a kettle boy.

Not that his mother didn’t know what he’d been doing in Redda. There were boys and girls using their bodies as currency in Thurskein, too.

Once when Tilrey was about twelve, waiting for his mother in the Supervisor’s foyer, three long-limbed youths came in and threw themselves down indolently on the couch. He stared at them—so big and strong and sure of themselves—until they offered to deal him into their card game. They joshed with him like older brothers, and he basked in the attention.

Then his mother returned. She grabbed Tilrey and steered him out into the hall, not dignifying his new friends with a glance. There she knelt and hissed in his ear, “Don’t ever talk to the lads you see in Fernei’s office. They’re not like you and your friends. They’re unfortunates who earn their keep on their backs in bed.”

When he objected that she wasn’t being fair, she said, “I don’t dislike those lads. I pity them. But you can’t get into the habit of socializing with people who don’t use their brains to advance in the world.”

Tilrey would do his duty on this visit; he would honor his mother. And he would rely on her pride to keep her from acknowledging that the past eight years of his life were a deep, personal affront to her.

They didn’t speak much as they took a lift up several stories to a middle tier of the city, then veered off into a labyrinth of corridors that echoed emptily. It was a district of factory sub-foremen and petty admins, everyone still hard at work.

His mother must be taking him on a detour to another lift; they’d always had their quarters on the top tier. He was about to ask her when they’d head upward again when she stopped beside an ordinary door and punched in a code. “Here we are.”

Tilrey swallowed his surprise; he had practice taking things in stride. The apartment inside was cramped and windowless—a living room, sleeping alcove, and kitchenette, little better than his dorm room in Redda.

His mother explained, “There’s no bedroom for you here, I’m afraid; I’ve reserved you one down the hall. You can take your meals with me; the communal bathroom’s just past the north bend.”

As if it hurt her to stop moving, she flitted into the kitchenette, opened a wall fridge, and pulled out a lush bunch of red-veined greenhouse chard. “Are you hungry, Rishka? How long since you had greens that didn’t come frozen?”

Tilrey had had an excellent preparation of braised chard and rice just recently at the Restaurant. He sat down at the rickety table, grateful to her for supplying a safe topic. “I’ve dreamed of your greens. What do you do to them? A touch of vinegar?”

“Cider vinegar, yes.” She paused, her sharp eyes on him, and he knew she was registering his Reddan accent, letting it sink in. But she said nothing.

He waited till they were both seated and eating—the greens came with rice and a very small nugget of steamed cod—to ask, “Are you still in the lieutenant supervisor posting, Mother? You didn’t say you weren’t, so I thought—”

“You’re wondering about my diminished circumstances.”

Green hells, she sounded as icily proud as a high Upstart. “A little,” Tilrey said. “If you’re still the lieutenant supe, how can you be at—what is this level, R2?”

His mother stiffened. “R2.4.” Her blue eyes caught his, then darted to the dead streaming cylinder in the corner. “After you . . . left, I told Supervisor Fernei I had no further interest in working under him. He persuaded me the sector needed my leadership. I had to concede his point. However, I requested that he lower me to a ration level where I would no longer have to socialize with him outside work hours.”

Tilrey drew in his breath. Had she really put herself in this dump for his sake? “But in your letter, you said Fernei—well, you made it sound like you were still on good terms with him. You said he was proud of me.”

His mother rose, cleared the serving platter, and went into the kitchen. When she was irritated, she moved like a bird, awkward and self-contained at once.

“I wrote that because I knew your Fir Councillor would read my letter,” she said. “I supposed he’d be more apt to release you for a visit if you had powerful friends here.”

“You didn’t need to do that, you know.” Remembering Gersha’s reaction to her letter, Tilrey felt guilty all over again for not telling her more about “his Councillor.” He hadn’t lied, but he’d been vague, fostering a forbidding impression to keep her at a distance. “My Councillor isn’t a tyrant, and he doesn’t need that kind of persuasion. He understands why I’d want to come home.”

Then why didn’t you do it earlier? She didn’t need to say the words aloud. Did you not want to?

But Tilrey had no answers to those questions. After a moment, his mother picked up her train of thought as if he hadn’t intervened. “I speak with Fernei as little as I can get away with. He’s invited us both to dinner tomorrow night, but I won’t accept the invitation. You can on your own account, of course, if you like,” she added, those sharp eyes capturing his again. “I won’t be offended. But I don’t intend to dine with the man who—”

She broke off, letting the missing words resonate in the air again. The man who sold my only child to Upstarts and sent him away from me forever.

“I’m sorry,” Tilrey said.

“What’s to be sorry for?” She spoke a little too loudly.

“I didn’t know any of that, Mom.” He heard his consonants and vowels beginning to slide toward softer Skeinsha sounds. “I assumed things here were . . . well, pretty much the same.”

His mother had taken today and the next day off to spend with him, and Tilrey was already wondering how he’d endure any more of these freighted silences.

All afternoon, she insisted on showing him around, giving him tours of the refurbished greenhouse, the expanded library, the rec area. He admired everything politely, pretending it didn’t look small and drab to him, and she didn’t ask him a single question about his life in Redda.

Not that he minded! The objective was to get through the visit with as few mentions of Upstarts, Redda, and particularly Gersha as possible. Yet he had to admit it was awkward having nothing to say to his own mother.

Now dinner was over, and she’d brought him to an upper observation deck to view the sunset. And that, too, was awkward, because he knew that, for her and the other people pressing their faces against the floor-length windows, watching a sunset wasn’t something you could do any damn evening. It was a reward you saved your work-hours for, a special outing.

Tilrey stared diligently at the horizon, but he was relieved when the last glowing coral strip disappeared and his mother turned away. “I thought we might take tea in the caf now,” she said. “Your friend Magdalena—Dal—wants to see you.”

“Dal? Is she here?” Tilrey’s heart leaped, an old conditioned response to the sound of Dal’s name.

“But,” he pointed out as she led him downstairs again, “you never liked Dal. Have you really been spending time with her, like you said in the letter, or was that another lie?”

“There were no lies in my letter.” His mother stopped before twin frosted-plastic doors, which hissed open to reveal a depopulated cafeteria. “Fernei has actually told me he’s proud of you—I just don’t care what he thinks. And yes, I’ve been seeing Dal. Why wouldn’t I? She’s your best friend.”

Was. “But you always said her family was ‘disreputable.’”

“Shh! She’s—”

Tilrey turned just in time to register an approaching blur of black hair and gray coverall. Then Dal barreled into him and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him even tighter than his mother had. Her face barely reached his chest—had she always been so short?—but she made up for it in strength and solidity.

“Green hells, you’re a giant! How’d that happen?” She leaned back to gaze up at him, arching her expressive dark brows.

Dal wasn’t pretty or delicate—her face was all bold strokes like a slab of granite—but she’d always seemed more present than anyone else Tilrey knew. Coming from his quiet, rule-bound home, he’d been mesmerized by her resonant contralto voice, her quarrelsome family, her theatrical gestures.

He couldn’t see her now the way he used to; the intoxication of teenage hormones was long gone. But Dal’s brown eyes showed none of his mother’s reservations, and he let himself linger in her embrace.

“You look like a stream star. Doesn’t he?” Dal turned to a companion Tilrey didn’t recognize, a plump young woman with a cloud of tight bronze curls and a wide, pleasant smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Dal broke free of him to nudge her friend forward. “This is Lourisa Beishoft, my—well, we’re partners.” She and Lourisa exchanged an unreadable glance. “She’s married to Kai Furnell—remember him?—but we two live together.”

Lourisa Beishoft. A chill ran over Tilrey as he clasped the pleasant-looking young woman’s hand. As the intended recipient of Dartán’s message, she must be a Dissident, which meant Dal—

Shit. Dal being involved with shirkers was no great surprise; she’d always been an avid breaker of rules great and small. But he’d hoped she’d have the sense to steer clear after seeing what had happened to him. They’d need to talk.

“Pleased to meet you.” He gave Lourisa one of his most glowing smiles. “You look like a level-headed sort. Has Dal convinced you to go off-trail and cross a frozen creek yet? Or to steal feast-day dumplings from the caf?”

Dal grimaced hammily, making Lourisa laugh. “You’re not supposed to tell her things like that, Tilrey! She doesn’t know about my wild past.”

“I’ve blown your cover, then?”

Lourisa giggled. “Dal told me you were shy with new people, so I’d have to be very sweet to you. But you don’t seem shy.”

“Maybe I’ve changed since Dal saw me last.”

Dal seized Tilrey’s hands, those big dark eyes scrutinizing his again. “Lisha thought maybe you’d be mad about us, or just weirded out. She wasn’t sure I should tell you I’m with someone. But it’s okay, isn’t it?”

Lisha—his mother’s nickname. Were she and Dal on such intimate terms? Tilrey glanced at his mother, but she was staring into her tea, no doubt mortified by Dal’s frankness.

“Why would I be mad, Mom?” he asked.

His mother looked up, her fine-boned face placid. “I’m not sure I phrased it that way. It was just, well—you used to talk about marriage, Rishka. The two of you.”

“I was seventeen, Mother.” He returned his gaze to Dal, who was so much easier to deal with, her whole posture speaking acceptance. “Anyway, I’m with someone now, too.”

“You are? You have to tell me everything!” Dal squeezed his hands, but then her face fell a little. Maybe she was trying to match what his mother must have told her—that Tilrey was under the thumb of a cruel Councillor—to what he was saying.

“I will.” He glanced his mother’s way again. But not in front of her.

“Anyway,” Dal said, “you look amazingly sexy in that jerkin, and I’m probably going to leave Lourisa and run away with you, whether you have someone or not.”

Lourisa smiled indulgently. “If you desert me for him, I can’t entirely blame you, Dalsha.”

Her eyes met Tilrey’s for an instant, and he wondered if she knew he was the bringer of the message. If he chose to deliver it. What real power did Irin Dartán have over him?

“My someone might have something to say about that,” he said.

“You have to tell us more,” Dal complained, several hours later. “You can’t be mysterious; it’s not fair when your life is so much more interesting than ours.”

She, Tilrey, and Lourisa were perched in a nest of rafters overlooking the vast Sector Six plastics fabrication workshop. It was late now, and the monstrous assembler robots were shut down for the night, the guardlights casting everything in amber dusk. This was where they’d come as schoolkids to dream and flirt and fight and taste forbidden rotgut liquor.

“My life’s not that interesting,” Tilrey said. “It’s just new to you.”

“But that’s the whole point, right?” Dal looked to Lourisa for support. “New is rarer here than smoked salmon.”

She was right. They’d already talked all about their postings: Lourisa was in Records (a useful place for a Dissident, Tilrey noted mentally), and Dal managed a freight plane maintenance crew. It hadn’t taken long to cover news of mutual friends: Pers was married with a kid; Vanya was running a whole greenhouse; Irina had been maimed in an assembly-line accident.

“So,” Dal persisted, “what about this someone of yours? Boy, girl, neither?”

“Boy.” He couldn’t be coy about it; what was the point? “He’s, uh, an Upstart, actually. The Councillor I work for—my mom’s told you about him, I imagine.”

In the half-light, Tilrey could see Dal’s face shutter itself. “But he’s . . . I mean, he’s not just somebody you work for?”

“No.” He made himself meet first Lourisa’s mild, nonjudgmental eyes, then Dal’s more dubious ones. With them, maybe, he could be more open. “His name is Gersha, and I’m not just fucking him for work. That’s how it started, but that’s not how it is anymore.”

How or what was it, though? Aside from “lover” or “protector” or maybe “partner,” there were no good words for what he and Gersha were to each other.

“So he doesn’t act like other Strutters?” Dal asked. “I mean, I’ve never actually met one up close, but they order you around, right? Do they treat you like your foreperson or Supervisor, only worse, because you can’t mouth off to them?”

Tilrey laughed; it hurt a little. “You’d mouth off to anybody, Dal. But yeah, that’s basically it. You’re supposed to show deference.”

“So do you do that with your Gersha?”

He hesitated; the proper answer was yes, but this was Dal. “Not really. I mean, in public, sure, but in private—well, he likes to act like we’re equal.” Though of course we’re technically not.

“So he doesn’t believe in Levels?” It was the first time Lourisa’s voice had sounded tart.

“He does, but he doesn’t like all the formalities, the way some Strutters abuse their power.” The words sounded so dry and false, so unlike the Gersha he knew better than anyone.

Dal snorted. “One of those ‘enlightened’ ones. I read a novel about this Upstart who was so in love with a factory girl that he married her, even though it meant Lowering himself. Then his family shunned him, and his wife’s family thought he was crazy, and he died miserable and alone.” She swung her foot in midair. “Is that what your Strutter boyfriend’s going to do—give up everything for you?”

“Dalsha,” Lourisa said. “Don’t be rude.”

Tilrey’s throat had tightened. “I’d never let him do anything stupid for me.”

“It was only a joke. What—”

She went still, listening; someone was crawling noisily through the same hatch from which they’d come. Together they watched as a boy’s bulky head emerged into the rafters, hair copper in the light.

“Hey, Pers!” Dal called, and then to Tilrey, “I asked him to come if he could. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Tilrey!” Pers scrabbled perilously across the crossbeams, catching himself a few times, and clasped Tilrey’s hand. “I can’t fucking believe you’re back. You look amazing.”

“You, too.” Pers had gained weight in the face, chest, and around the middle, which suited him, Tilrey thought.

Through primary school and into their teens, he, Dal, and Pers had been an inseparable unit. Dal was the reckless one, Pers the reasonable one, Tilrey the shy, studious one whom they both protected—and sometimes, when they were in the mood, teased.

Then, one day when they were all fifteen, Dal had come to Tilrey and said, “Persha and I both like you—that way. You have to choose between us.” When he stared at her, stunned, she added in her blunt way, “Now, don’t get all full of yourself, but you’re gorgeous. Everybody thinks so.”

Tilrey chose Dal, or the adolescent hormones did, and once they were a couple, Pers faded into the background. Now, though, the choice didn’t seem so obvious. Pers was a nice-looking heavy-set, auburn-haired boy, his dark eyes gleaming with intelligence. And he was the one acting shy tonight, following each glance at Tilrey with a fetching duck of his head.

“Pers’s posting is much fancier than ours,” Dal said, passing Tilrey the bottle of booze they’d been sharing. “He’s the deputy head of the constabulary.”

Meaning Pers probably reported to Supervisor Fernei on Dissident activity. Tilrey filed away the information. “You’ll be Supervisor one day, Persha.”

Pers did that head duck again. “Tilrey’s not impressed by our podunk Supervisors, Dal. He works with Councillors.”

“I don’t think he’s impressed by Councillors, either.” Dal winked at Tilrey. “They’re still just men, aren’t they?”

Ignoring the barb, Tilrey addressed Pers. “I can’t say I’m too impressed with Supervisor Fernei. The last time I saw him, he was lying to me.”

An awkward silence ensued. Dal said, “Fernei’s no better than a feudal tyrant. I always thought so.”

“He lets my mother live like a menial, and he had the nerve to invite me to dinner.” Tilrey turned to Lourisa. “You must work with him in Records. Tell me, have you seen him doing any shady business?”

Lourisa glanced at Pers, then said timidly, “Fernei does run quite a trade in . . . well, the usual stuff. Hosts Strutters on their way to the Southern Range, introduces them to pretty boys and girls, that kind of thing.”

“Every sector Supervisor does that,” Pers said.

“But he is what you’d call corrupt, then?” Tilrey liked the idea of having a focus for the white noise of anger he’d been hearing in his head ever since he hugged his mother, every time he closed his eyes. Fernei was the one who’d sold him, and a corrupt Supervisor could perhaps be removed, assuming someone who significantly outranked him had a good incentive to get rid of him.

Pers looked less and less comfortable with the conversation. “I barely work with Fernei’s office; everything we do is by the book. Your mom’s the one to ask about him.”

“Oh, I brought him up.” Tilrey used the studiously breezy tone he’d heard Besha deploy to get fellow Councillors to open up. “But my mother—well, you know what a proud woman she is. She doesn’t want to talk about anything except the glorious amenities of Sector Six.”

The others exchanged glances, and then Pers handed Tilrey the bottle. “Fernei shouldn’t have lowered her ration level. That was a shit thing to do.”

Tilrey drank, but not much; the stuff tasted like paint thinner. He passed it to Lourisa. “Even if she asked him to?”

“Tilrey.” Dal leaned toward him across the drop, her eyes bright with liquor. “I know how your mom is, which means she probably hasn’t made this clear, but she adores you. I mean, seriously, you’re her whole world. When she heard you’d been arrested, she went to Fernei and begged him on her knees to release you. And when he said you were gone, and then made excuses—well, she resigned. She worked the factory floor for a whole year, until he pretty much ordered her to come back and keep his office in order.”

Tilrey shivered at the thought of his mother on the factory floor, not surprised she hadn’t told him the whole story. But where was Dal going with this? He knew his mother adored him—or had adored him.

“And after that, she kept petitioning for your re-posting back here, not that it ever mattered. That first year you were gone, she was so miserable she came to me. This woman who always hated my guts, who thought I wasn’t good enough for you—she came and asked me to talk about all the little things I knew about you. And then she cried.” Dal looked like she still didn’t quite believe it. “It got to be a regular thing with us, every week or so, the talking and the crying.”

Grieving together—as if I were dead. Tilrey remembered all the letters from his mother he hadn’t answered. “Forgetting me would have made more sense,” he said, more bitterly than he meant to.

Dal stared at him in her dramatic way, but her voice was quiet. “Tilrey, you’re her only son.”

Yes, and like his mother, he was proud.

He held Dal’s gaze until Pers nudged him with an elbow and handed him the bottle. “Here you are, lad. Looks like you could use it.”

Pers was the one who ended up trashed. Tilrey had to guide him back through the hatch so he didn’t fall forty feet to the concrete floor.

By that time, Dal and Lourisa were both tipsy enough to start giving each other meaningful glances and touching each other and giggling. Tilrey got a steadying arm around Pers and said, “You two go along. I’ll get him home.”

“Are you sure?” Dal snagged the hood of Lourisa’s coverall and wrapped an arm around her waist.

He nodded. “You go. Have fun.”

Once they’d separated, back in a residential corridor, Tilrey stopped at a water station and made Pers drink. “Where do you live? Up, I’m guessing?”

Pers leaned on Tilrey, not ready to walk solo. “Nah, I can’ go home yet. Lina hates when I drink. We got a kid, you know? She’s almost two. You got a place?”

“Not a nice one.”

Pers hiccuped. “Don’ care.”

So Tilrey brought his friend to the cubby of a room his mother had secured for him. Most of the space was occupied by the bed, on which Pers collapsed with a happy sigh. “You got sap or anything?”

“Not legal to bring that here.”

“I know, but you’ve got plenty of sap in Redda, right? More’n you want, probably.” Pers toed off his shoes and drew up his feet. “You don’ even talk like us anymore. Sound like a Strutter.”

Tilrey leaned against the wall. “You’re drunk, Persha.”

“And you’re not. Used to be such a fucking lightweight.” Pers seized Tilrey’s hand and rubbed it against his own cheek. “It’s like you’re a different person.”

The contact was oddly sensual, but Tilrey gave no sign it affected him. After a moment, Pers released the hand and scrubbed his own over his eyes. “Shouldn’t’ve done that, sorry. Know you don’t want me, never did.”

Maybe it was just a side effect of his sordid history, but Tilrey found something way too attractive about men who apologized for their advances, who didn’t push themselves on him. He swallowed, remembering Gersha in their early days when he’d been deliciously skittish. “Maybe I’ve changed.”

Pers sat up, swaying a little, so they were face-to-face. “You jus’ saying that?”

Tilrey captured Pers’s hand and brought it to his own cheek. The contact with sweaty, trembling flesh sent a shiver of arousal down his spine. “I’ve got somebody at home, so it wouldn’t be, you know, serious. But it might be fun.”

He pushed away the thoughts of Gersha for now. Sex was just sex, and maybe Pers’s warm body would make him feel better about being in a cold, dingy room down a cold, dingy corridor from a mother who was still mourning a dead version of him.

He ventured a hand onto his friend’s thigh, just resting it there, and was rewarded with a needy groan.

“Green hells, I get hard just looking at you. But Tilrey, I haven’t—” Pers gasped sharply as Tilrey took hold of his cock, which was hard as promised.

“Haven’t what, sweetheart?” This was good. This felt good. Tilrey himself was only moderately aroused, but as he palmed Pers through his trousers, he felt fully in control of his life again.

“I haven’t—oh god, don’t stop that! Or maybe you should stop that.” Pers went crimson. “See, the thing is, I haven’t ever fucked a man. Or been fucked.”

Tilrey halted, amused now. “Really? Does your wife disapprove?”

“She says she doesn’t mind, but I feel guilty. Because she doesn’t want to fuck anybody but me.” Pers looked up at Tilrey, his dark eyes damp. “And I do love her, like I’m supposed to, but I go to the lower levels sometimes to find a boy who’s willing to suck me off, because I need it. Do you know what that’s like?”

Feeling decades older than his friend, and way too jaded, Tilrey closed his fingers around Pers’s cock again. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a good, meaningless fuck, Pers. And I’m happy to give it to you, but only if you’re sure.”

Pers groaned again. “You’d really—you’d do that? For me?”

Tilrey answered the question by moving into Pers’s space, threading fingers in his hair, and kissing him. Pers froze, then kissed back with almost comical abandon, pushing his tongue between Tilrey’s lips. When they opened to him, he sighed in wonder, his arms sneaking around Tilrey’s shoulders. “You’re so beautiful.”

They fooled around some more. Tilrey undressed Pers, teasing his cock with a knowing hand. Pers responded with mumbles of stunned gratitude, too off-kilter to try to reciprocate.

That was good, too; Tilrey would stay in control. When Pers began rutting up into his hand, he asked in his friend’s ear, one knee nudging between his legs, “Want to be on top, or shall I?”

Pers gasped as if the words alone might suffice to make him come. “I’ve always wanted—well, I’d love to be inside you. I guess that’s how I imagined it. But it’s your choice, and I don’t actually know how to—”

“No worries. I do.” Tilrey fumbled in his bag for the lube he’d packed for their last trip to the Southern Range. He was already anticipating Pers’s first awkward, eager thrusts.

Maybe he had a thing for sexual novices; Gersha had been painfully attractive at this stage, too. “I think you’re going to like this,” he said.

Pers clearly did like it, very much, though his alcohol-sodden body was somewhat lacking in stamina. Once he’d figured things out, he fucked for a minute or so like his life depended on it, then came and collapsed on top of Tilrey, wafting hot breath in his ear. “That was fucking amazing. Fucking. Amazing.”

The next sound he made was a wheezing snore, and Tilrey resigned himself to bearing his friend’s weight. When his arm went to sleep, he eased Pers off him and stretched out on his back, pulling the auburn head down on his shoulder.

Pers woke up. “Mmm. That was fucking amazing.”

“You said that.” Tilrey stroked his friend’s coarse hair, feeling oddly moored by the sensation of skin on skin. This might not be home anymore, but anywhere he went, he knew how to make people like him, knew how to make them want him to stay.

They spent the rest of the night alternating between sleep and further experiments, all of which made Pers moan and beg and praise Tilrey in gratifying ways. Toward dawn, after he’d shown Pers how it felt to have your cock sucked by someone who actually knew how, they rested in the tangled blankets, Tilrey’s head in Pers’s lap. And Tilrey said without thinking, “I need a fucking window. I’m suffocating.”

Pers’s thick fingers stroked his hair. “Lina and I don’t have a window yet. It’ll take three or four more promotions. The head constable’s got one, I think.”

How can you stand it? Tilrey swallowed his pity, realizing only now how lucky he’d been to grow up with a window, how lucky he was to look out windows daily.

“What does a constable even deal with here?” he asked. “Drunken brawls?”

“Yeah, mostly. A fair bit of smuggling and illicit trading.” Pers ticked off on his fingers. “Disorderly conduct. Some domestic violence, the occasional rape or murder. And shirking, of course. People who lie in bed and refuse to work.”

Tilrey wondered where those people ended up. Somehow as a kid he’d never thought to care. “What about the other kind of shirking—Dissidence?”

“Dissidence?” Pers said the word as if each syllable might poison him. “Well, I mean, it used to be a problem, obviously.” He dropped his voice. “Back when you went and met with that group. But since the crackdown, the executions, we haven’t seen much of anything. Cut off the monster’s head, and it dies.” He drew a finger playfully across Tilrey’s throat. “Sector Six is a loyal sector.”

The last part was a formula, as if Pers were reporting to an Upstart admin. As if, on some half-conscious level, Pers thought Tilrey was an Upstart. Tilrey digested that, enjoying the sensation of fingers playing with his hair.

“I’m not testing you or anything, Persha,” he said. “My Councillor doesn’t have direct jurisdiction in Thurskein. I was just curious.”

Pers’s finger traced his earlobe. “Well, you don’t want to mention shirking in front of Supervisor Fernei, I can tell you that. You’re not—I mean, I probably shouldn’t ask, but you don’t still have those sympathies, do you?”

His tone was earnest. Whatever Lourisa and probably Dal were doing with Dartán’s group, Pers didn’t know about it.

“I never had ‘those sympathies.’” Tilrey rolled off Pers’s lap and kissed him on the forehead. “Dal dared me to go to that meeting, and I did it to impress her, and I paid the price. And now . . . well.” He gazed into Pers’s eyes, knowing how innocent his own appeared. “I’m happy in Redda with my Councillor, Persha. Why would I do anything to endanger that?”