When the Villian Comes Home Read online

  “That I can believe,” he said. “You left few friends behind you, when you...left.”

  That little hesitation was a little reminder that I’d sneaked away without his consent, which meant without leaving profit in his purse.

  “I know it,” I said. “But will you take me?” Put bluntly because I wasn’t negotiating here, I was begging. “I’ll cost you nothing this time, Largo. Only bed and board—and I’ll share beds, of course, and I know what you spread on your board. And what you pay for it. You won’t notice one more mouth, and you do know what custom I’ll bring to your door.”

  “Trouble,” he said dourly, “that’s what you’ll bring.”

  “Trouble pays, Largo. Trouble drinks, and is this not a tavern? Trouble eats, it keeps your kitchens busy; trouble has all kinds of appetites that we can satisfy for a price, you and I.”

  “Less of the we,” he growled. “If I take you—if—there’ll be no partnership between us. You’re one more slut in my house, no more than that. And you’ll take nothing from it, except what I give you. Bed and board.”

  “Of course, Largo. That’s all I ask.”

  I stood meekly before him, waiting for his decision: the very image of a boy broken by a world too big for him, creeping back in search of whatever rough accommodations he could make. Not looking for kindness, any more than justice—gods, no, not that!—and almost afraid to hope, almost that. Absolutely afraid of everything else, including Largo.

  Briefly, I even thought he might refuse. Maybe I’d overreached at last: come too far, asked too much. So little, and still too much. Maybe I really hadn’t learned the lessons of defeat, capitulation, loss...

  In the end, though, his snort of contempt told me I was in. “Not as you were before, mind,” he said. “There’ll be no tricks, and no deceptions. You’re a servant, a dancing boy, a whore. You don’t steal so much as a pin or a mouthful of meal, you don’t cheat my customers or my people. You don’t play and you don’t wager. You’ll have nothing of your own to wager with, I’ll be sure of that; and you’ll beg no more than you borrow, which means nothing at all from anyone. Agreed?”

  I nodded.

  “And I’ll sell you on again, first fair offer that I hear. You’ll have no say, and no share. Agreed?”

  Again, I nodded.

  “And just to be sure, I’ll have Virelle put a binding on you. You bring nothing into my house when you come, and you take nothing with you when you leave. Nothing outside your own skin. That’s how far I trust you, boy.”

  “Virelle?” I may perhaps have flinched. He may have been looking for exactly that. I blustered on, awkward and inevitable: “Virelle still with us, is she? I never thought that old crow would—Ow!”

  His hand was no softer than it had been; he was no slower to use it.

  “You speak of her with respect, Djoran, or you don’t speak at all. I could have her place a binding on your tongue. Perhaps I should. I’ve other uses for it, but a boy don’t need to speak much. Not in my house. One word out of place, one whisper that I don’t like and it’ll be my mute dancing boy that people come for. They’ll enjoy that, the slippery glib Djoran silent and helpless under their hands. I will do that. Understood?”

  I nodded hesitantly. No words now, only my uttermost need on display. He’d thought he had the most of me, the best of me before; now I was his again to use again, to sell again and again night after night, until he sold me one more time for true.

  It was a bad bargain, and the best that I could hope for. Boys were cheap, and I was tainted goods.

  Hell, I was a legend, and nothing good at all.

  “Good, then. Come, then.”

  5

  I hadn’t counted on Virelle.

  Stupid of me. If tavern-keepers survive a passing war, then why not temple-keepers? Any soldier worth his kit will spend as much time at prayer as he does at table. And as much money, that too. For the priests, for the incense they burn and the blood they spill. For luck, if that’s for sale; and for whores, who certainly are.

  Temple or tavern, there are always whores.

  It’s how I started, as a temple boy. One of Virelle’s. Looking like the street-rat that I was, all ribs and knees in a tunic that hid neither; burning resin and striking bells, dancing in lamplight and shaking down the faithful. Smelling of smoke and sweat, my own and older men’s. Long ago, but—well. Fire and steel had swept these winding streets, more than once since I’d been gone. Not everybody dies, but even so. I really hadn’t counted on Virelle.

  Here was the street called Strait, because it was like honesty: narrow and difficult and not for us. We used to laugh about that, all her skinny children. Long ago.

  Here was the old stone facing of her temple, unexpected among the high houses that stood all with their backs to the street and its people; here was a step up and an open door, the way we never came. Here was a perfume that seemed soaked into the air itself, that had soaked bone-deep into us.

  Here were the lamps I used to light, the boards I used to scrub and polish. There in the shadows was the boy I used to be, swaying softly to a music not yet played, half out of his skull on chewing kef, dreaming maybe of a freedom never tasted or a body known too well.

  Good dreams, bad dreams. Either way.

  5

  Here was his mistress, once my own: Virelle herself, much like the crow I’d called her if crows come white and scrupulous, marked by time and temper, counting their age in accumulated scars and influence.

  She looked at me and knew me from the inside, as Largo did. Her mouth twisted.

  “Come crawling back, has he?”

  “Aye that.”

  All of that. I wasn’t going to argue.

  “Well, and you’re going to take him?”

  “If you’ll bind him to me. Keep him from taking anything, from me or mine.”

  She could do that. I wasn’t the first that he’d had reason to mistrust. He knew where we came from and what we were. He knew that we’d steal coin from any purse and bread from any kitchen. We’d load a die and mark a pack of cards, we’d drug and cheat and lie from first to last if there was benefit. Why not? It’s a cold world and it takes no account of need or innocence, so you might as well go guilty all the way, if guilt will keep you warm and fed.

  They talked it through, he paid in coin and promises; I wouldn’t have trusted either, but these two wouldn’t cheat each other, they were too closely bound.

  “Strip then, you, Djoran.”

  It was hardly the first time I’d taken my clothes off under her eyes, or his. I did hope it might be the last—but I’d thought that before, the day she sold me to him. I’d worked hard for it, so hard; I was on my way up, moving out, moving on. Each step higher than the last.

  Now I was naked again, brought down again. Starting again, I told myself determinedly. Home was just a place to start.

  Smoke and bells. A boy to swing the censer and the little bronze hammers, fetch her pots and simples at a run, watch bug-eyed from a corner when he wasn’t put to use: learning, absorbing, storing away. Wise boy. It was almost hard to believe he wasn’t me, so many times I’d stood just there and seen just this, how she used a twig of rosemary to splash bare skin with water and oils while she chanted under her breath in call of her shadowy gods. Seen it from about his height, too, and about his stage of dawning cynicism. She gave you a grand farewell to innocence, did Virelle.

  She wasn’t so kind once you grew older. To me, now, not kind at all. No reason to be; when I left the temple I left some trouble behind me, and another boy was taken and hanged for it. She had always been sure that the first fault was mine, and that I’d arranged to have blame fall on my friend.

  She’d always been acute.

  Now she murmured her words and flecked my skin, had the boy waft smoke and musk my way; and I didn’t know now as I hadn’t k
nown then whether her words were potent or her various preparations or neither, whether it was all her own will that drew the attention of her gods; but I felt their purpose close about me like a sheer silk wrap, like a second skin, tight and all-encompassing.

  I might have shivered in that moment, I might have cried aloud.

  “He’ll do,” she said abruptly, cutting off her chant and waving her boy away. “Nothing into your house, Largo, and nothing out. Only what’s inside his skin. You wouldn’t want him chucking up his breakfast on your doorstep.”

  “No,” Largo agreed magnanimously. “What he’s eaten, he can keep. If he doesn’t get smart,” his big hand on my throat suddenly, “and try swallowing a patron’s pretty ring. Anyone misses a jewel, boy, and we can’t find it, you’ll go in the hole until we do.”

  The hole was Largo’s sewer, a cess pit behind the house. Most of his people spent a day or two in there, for one offence or another. Most only ever went in once.

  “Yes, Largo. Ow!”

  “You’ll call me master now. As you did before.”

  “Yes, master.” Some things aren’t worth being stubborn for.

  Actually, most things aren’t worth being stubborn for. Certainly nothing that I owned just then: not the clothes I’d peeled off, nor the various bits and pieces I’d hoarded this far in pockets and pouches and hems. I left it all on the temple floor, for her boys to glean.

  Actually, I didn’t have a choice. Nothing in and nothing out: I could feel that binding settle across my bare hide, as real as the bite of loose stones beneath my feet, the brush of cool air across my skin, the giggling attention of stray children as I followed obediently at Largo’s heel through the streets of a city that I hoped had forgotten me.

  No such luck. People called my name, mockingly. One flung a stone, but he was a fool; he did it where I could see him, see it coming and duck, and remember his face for later. His name was long gone, just one of the many I’d abused or robbed or insulted, cheated or exploited in my hectic heedless rise to where I thought I ought to be. Now his face was fresh in my mind, someone to be hurt again if the chance arose.

  Things change. Not everybody dies, but some do. For some, it can be arranged.

  Here again, back at the tavern. Round to the back of the tavern, naturally: and the alley behind was half blocked by a wagon, old Per Simon delivering barrels of fresh cider as he always had, war or no war.

  He sat his wagon as he always did, hunched and heedless. Largo’s people came and went, in and out of the stable yard, unloading. Kitchen boys, musicians, whores: it made no difference. If there was work to be done, they did the work.

  We did.

  I went to the wagon’s tailgate without a word to Largo, willing to show willing. One quick hoist, barrel onto shoulder and turn towards the gate. This was heavy work once, when I was all bone and gristle; now it was easy.

  Until I took that one significant step, under the arch of brick and into Largo’s yard.

  That feeling you get, when you know you’re being watched? This...was like that, except that it was like being touched too, all over and all at once. Not like the breath of the wind, or silk on the skin, or a sudden rain: this was personal, intimate, intended.

  Then the barrel was punched off my shoulder, to fall back into the alley behind me. I felt it tear from my grasp, I heard it thump to ground while I was still bearing forward, suddenly too light on my feet, momentum carrying me on although my mind was reeling.

  My foot came down on familiar cobbles; I almost knew each separate stone by touch. I turned around bewildered, flinching, expecting a blow and almost hoping for it, something I could understand.

  Largo stood under the archway of his gate. Those quick hard hands of his were set on his hips, and he was laughing. At me.

  “Old crow did you call her, boy? Well, perhaps—but she’s a crow with wisdom. Nothing in, and nothing out. Here.” He stooped to retrieve the barrel, blessedly unharmed—he wouldn’t laugh at a loss of coin, not Largo—and tossed it at me like a ball at play.

  I caught it with a grunt, held it cautiously in both arms. Nothing tried to knock it free, now that I was within his bounds.

  “Take that to the cellar, then get up to the kitchens. You’re no use out here, if you can’t fetch and carry through the gate. Ask Marta to find you something to scrub.”

  “Yes, master.”

  In a busy tavern there’s always something to scrub, but he hadn’t taken me in for a scullery-boy. Neither for a whore, though he’d have me do that too. Largo keeps his people busy, and the town was full of soldiers. Liberators, occupiers, call them what you will. Victory breeds appetite. Food and drink and sex, of course; and entertainment, of course, that too. Song and dance.

  Largo had bought me and trained me and kept me as a dancing-boy. Too pretty to kiss, he used to proclaim, till I was grown enough to prove him false. Then it was too pretty to kill, which was only half a joke; he had a killing temper, and I had a thousand sins in me and no conscience at all. I danced and stole, danced and cheated, danced and sold secrets and took my beatings and danced again. He made more money than I did, but we both did well.

  Until my ambitions grew larger than my purse, larger than my opportunities. I left Largo—stole myself away, naturally, paying nothing for the privilege of freedom—and trekked my way to the palace, inveigled myself into the prince’s service, rose and rose.

  Rose and fell, when my foolish prince lost his war and his life too. Not everybody dies, but some must. Half his people were condemned, but who cares about a dancing-boy? I ran, and no one chased me; only there were too many thieves on the road and too many whores in every tavern, too many cheats and beggars everywhere. If I’d claimed palace skills—I danced for the court, yes, and warmed their silken beds, that too—I’d have been mocked for a liar or hanged for a prince’s man. Or both, whether they believed me or not.

  So I held my tongue and went hungry, went barefoot when my boots wore out, went down and down until at last here I was, back where I’d started. Scrubbing and screwing for Largo’s purse, not even bothering to keep one of my own. Nothing in and nothing out: there was no point hoarding a single penny piece, if I couldn’t take it with me.

  Scrubbing and screwing but dancing, that too. That most. I’d been good before; by local standards now, by Largo’s standards I was spectacular. I’d learned a lot in the prince’s troupe, as much as or more than I did in his bed.

  Every night I danced, and word spread, and people came specifically to see me.

  Some came back, and back again.

  Merrick was young to be a captain, but the New Army was like that, promoting men for merit rather than age or influence or name. It was the gamble I’d taken, me and thousands like me, that experience and long-established power would win out over hotheaded rebellion. Grind it down, stamp it out, crush it utterly.

  We’d gambled; we’d lost. Now I danced for Merrick.

  For Merrick and his kind, officers and men, a constant succession of faces, bodies, hands. Variously drunken, sweating, reaching to touch. They weren’t all soldiers; they weren’t all men. There were administrators, traders, the idly wealthy and the busily broke. Some nights, there were more women than men.

  Mostly soldiers, though—and after a while, mostly Merrick, at least in my head. I danced for him; the rest were only clutter.

  He was sweet. It took him a week of watching from the shadows, until he found the nerve to step forward. He had to shoulder other men aside before he could throw a towel across my naked sweating shoulders, toss a coin to the lurking Largo and take a firm grip of my neck.

  “Where can we go?”

  “This way, master...”

  When I slept alone, I slept with everyone; all Largo’s people bedded down together in the hay loft. For customers, I had a room. Lamplight and soft comforts, wine and perfumes, oils and toys. W
hips and chains, if their tastes ran that way.

  Merrick found no need to hurt me, and I gave him no reason. The occasional clout if I bit too hard: it was nothing, an occasion for a laugh and a quick apology, the brush of lips over the offended spot and move on. I learned what he liked, which was simple enough: a boy both eager and submissive, occasionally wicked, always willing. When he wanted to fuck, we fucked. When he wanted to talk, or more often listen, we could do that too. He liked to hear stories from the palace, from my old high life; he liked to be shocked, a little, by the late prince’s decadent behaviours and my own. With a cool goblet in one hand and his other resting on my thigh, with my head nestled into his shoulder and our skin sticking together, with my voice murmuring tales of a world unimagined, he felt something like a prince himself. That was all I wanted.

  One morning I was scrubbing floors when I heard his voice unexpectedly, behind and above me: “Let me have Djoran for the day, Largo. How much?”

  Largo named a price. Merrick dickered unconvincingly, overpaid shockingly, cuffed me lightly in embarrassment when I bounded to my feet like a whistled puppy. I rubbed my sore ear and beamed at him. “Where are we going?”

  Largo snorted. “Wherever you take him, keep his hands tied and a rope on his throat or he’ll make off with anything that’s yours.”

  “I will not,” I said. “Why would I? I can’t bring anything back here.”

  “You’d find someone to hold it for you. I don’t want him building a store of credit outside my house, Captain. Keep him close.”

  “Hands tied,” Merrick agreed, “rope on his throat. Right. I might enjoy that. Do you have a rope?”

  “I have better. Djoran? Fetch.”

  I fetched. A minute later, Merrick stepped out with wrist-cuffs and a chain leash dangling from his hand. I padded at his heels, naked and obedient. Nothing in, nothing out: I couldn’t even wear chains before I was across the threshold.