Chapter Five: Harper Lodge, Ross Mountains, West Country

Lord Harper’s manager met them at the station.

Here in the Ross Mountains, just as down in Durbin, the architecture was early settlement. In those days, available technology had been basic or scarce (well, technology still was bizarrely basic on Julian, as it was on most Republic colony worlds), so the station had been built mainly of rock. This was the style of architecture being revived now, which was why Martin’s contract had always sold high, that and his pretty eyes. Martin, busy looking at the station’s construction, what rocks had been used, how they were laid together, the mix and joins, didn’t hear the boss’s greeting. He did show him which baggage was Deja’s, and help haul it to the transport.

A sculpture stood in front of the railway station, a cast-bronze dog staring intently down the railway line toward the valley. It was a famous holder story about this dog, how he used to come to the station every End when his holder was due home from the university. But then, one week, the holder didn’t show – he had died that week, hard at work. Still the dog came and waited every End until well after dark, for the holder’s return. The contract who kept the station tea shop, the Lieutenant who ran Security, holders getting off the train, his holder’s own children, all of them told the dog to go home, no one was coming. Dog kept waiting. One evening, just as the train pulled in, dog stood up, wagging his tail, as if he saw someone arriving. Then he died too. This statue was a monument to his loyalty.

Martin, helping load baggage into the chunky gray transport out front, kept his comments to himself. Holders loved these tales – horses that crossed mountains to find masters that had abandoned them, kittens that saved their owners from fires, cots that leapt into raging flood waters to pull their holders’ children from death, dying themselves, gasping, on the banks moments later. Where, Martin wondered, were the stories about dogs who, when the gates got left open, said, ‘about time, son,’ and tailed it for the hills? Why ain’t anyone put up monuments to those dogs?

Lord Harper’s boss was asking Deja about the journey, assuring him it wasn’t far to the house, and wondering whether Martin would ride up front. He asked Deja this, not Martin.

“He’ll ride with me,” Deja said.

Martin sat beside Deja in the silence of the curved back seat. It was leather and dark glass, with a kit between the seats, ice and five different sorts of liquor in crystal bottles. Martin wouldn’t have minded a drink, but Deja just scowled out at the forest slipping past: blackwood, ancient growth, maybe uncut from settlement times. The trees looked big enough. The sunlight of early fall slid through them in brilliant shafts. Martin, slouched in the seat, braced his boots against the back of divider until Deja made him stop. He straightened, trying not to sulk. He didn’t want to be along on this trip, which he had said straight out to Deja, twice. He would have said it again, but Deja had told him after the second time that he didn’t want another word on it.

An End party, this was, for Lord Holders, lecturers at the University. Which Deja wasn’t even a lecturer, he was a scholar, and you’d think that might make him wary, even if it hadn’t been Harper who was the host. Which it was. Which it was. If Deja couldn’t see when he was being fucked with, Martin could. Decline the invitation, that’s what Deja ought to have done. And if he ain’t have the sense to do that, Martin thought, glowering sullenly through the window on his side of the transport, then at least he should have had the sense to leave Martin in Durbin. Fucking holder lackwit.

They pulled up to the house at the end of a rocky valley. For a Lord Holder concern, it was relatively small; three floors at the near end, four at the far, no more than fifty or sixty rooms. The boss, as he supervised the contract unloading the baggage, told Deja that Lord Harper was serving afternoon tea in the summerhouse.

Martin went with the baggage, up to their suite. The contract’s name was Laif. He showed Martin the desk, how to work climate control, and the door to the service stairs. Though friendly enough, he was disinclined to gossip, and soon disappeared. Martin had a look around the guest suite – a bedroom and a sitting room, along with a balcony over the back garden – and started unpacking.

He had everything stowed, and was at the worktable by the balcony, sorting the posts in Deja’s dropbox, when Deja came in. It was near sunset. The breeze coming from the balcony had begun to turn chill.

Deja kissed the crown of his head. “Come dress for dinner.”

Martin got up obediently. “Why? I’m not at table, am I?”

“I want you serving.”

Martin made a face. “Harper ain’t have cots can do that?”

Deja, in the dressing room where Martin had hung his clothing, looked over his shoulder. Martin corrected himself, hastily, “He does, though. Is it? Why do you want me to do it?”

“Are you arguing?”

Martin lowered his head. “No. But.”

“But?”

“I’m not.”

“Get dressed,” Deja ordered.

Martin got Deja’s fancy dress out, and his own. Holder fancy-dress was worse than their usual clothing: woolen vests over linen shirts over cotton shirts with lace collars; their trousers of heavy silk and linen, with dark slender bits of ribbon worked through the cloth, and lacing that went even higher up the calves than usual. Slim shoes, loop ties or line ties for men; for women, jewels and glittery bits like bug nets. Also, nothing could just be clothing, it had to be clothing mixed with other clothing: pins, ribbons, line braids, lace, embroidery. Maybe that’s why they’re such tools, Martin thought, lacing the back of Deja’s linen shirt – holders’ fancy shirts buttoned up the front and laced in the back, which was a bit bent, if anyone had ever asked Martin’s opinion – shitting clothes they have to wear, enough to drive anyone distracted.

“You’ve got that crooked,” Deja bitched. Martin took a breath and started over.

Dinner was held in a long hall with deep windows overlooking the valley. Impossible to heat, winters, Martin reckoned, and chill tonight despite the fires heaped high on the five hearths that ran along the interior wall. He stood against a mullion behind Deja’s chair, halfway down the table, his hands behind his back, waiting for Deja or any of the nine Lord Holders at table to need anything. Lord Harper did have kitchen girls working, running platters in and out. Any of them could have done the fetching. Martin didn’t need to be here. Deja wanted him here. Who knew why.

Martin watched the painting above the central mantelpiece, a boy with his pony on an outcrop cliff, listened to the conversation shift between holders, and tried not to think how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten since the train. The holders were on their second soup course, something dark and clear with a savory smell. Meat in it. Holders loved meat. Martin leaned his head against the wall and shut his eyes, wondering would he ever get fed. The holders were talking politics. He scratched the small of his back, surreptitiously. The cord down the back of his shirt itched. The knitted lace around his collar itched. The woolen pattern that was embroidered around the wrists of his jacket itched. Also he was really hungry.

“Your claim is that it’s a genetic failing,” one Lord Holder said.

“I don’t see why you find that difficult. It only takes a few generations to breed lop-ears into rabbits. How many generations have we been breeding contracts?”

“That might be true,” said a third, “if contract labor were rabbits, and we some separate species. Birds, for instance. Fish.”

“Foxes,” said the first holder, and laughed, as if this were funny. Martin tried to remember what a fox was. A kind of dog, he thought. He remembered some elusive story, though, about a fox eating grapes, so maybe not. Dogs ate meat. He thought of the look in the bronze dog’s eyes as he gazed down the railway line.

“Precisely.” This third holder, fair, ropy with muscle, Martin knew, from years back, when he had been with his second holder. What Joseph Lord Ragner, East Country, was doing at an End party for university lecturers in the West Country, that was an interesting question. “However, contracts and holders aren’t separate species.” Lord Ragner leaned back in his chair, his pale eyes fixed on the holder he was arguing with, one Martin didn’t know: thick-bellied, short, though taller than Martin. Nearly every holder was taller than Martin. “Not even on Julian, where we do our best to make it seem that way. A great deal of cross-breeding takes place. Additions to the gene pool. Both gene pools,” he added, his tone deliberate.

The shorter holder had gone red. He was dark, which most holders were not. Ragner was insulting him – suggesting that maybe his mother had crossed the yard. Martin, though he was behind this holder, well out of his sight, schooled his expression into blankness.

It didn’t actually mean anything, the holder being dark. Plenty of holders were dark. Sudi was dark, for instance.

“That would tend to negate your claim,” Ragner said, lightly, into the silence, “as anyone who breeds stock would tell you. Mix wild stock into your purebred strain, you can’t predict what will happen. No such thing as purebred humanity, cots or Lord Holder. In which case, I don’t see that we can make claims about what either type will do.”

“Tendency,” the dark holder grated. “I was speaking of a tendency.

“Actually, you’re speaking superstition. Will lop-eared rabbits dig burrows more effectively? Build me a study which proves it. Replicate some results. That’s science. Spouting deeply held belief-systems about breeding contracts for the fifteen hundred years since we’ve left Earth, just because we’ve held half of our population under contract for all that time, well, that’s not science. That’s slogans. Very pretty. But not evidence.”

“The fifteen hundred years since Earth,” Deja said, “and, essentially, all of civilized history prior to the Diaspora, if you look into the matter.”

Ragner gave him a short look. “Which doesn’t change my objection. Does it?”

“If they’re not bred to be contracts,” Deja asked reasonably, “why have they been contracts for twelve thousand years?”

The first Lord Holder interrupted: “You could land in the contract labor system tomorrow. Would that mean you were suited for it?”

Deja smiled. “That I have not landed in the system means, obviously, that I am not suited for it. People don’t end up in contract labor unless they belong in contract labor.”

Martin found he was holding his teeth shut. He didn’t move otherwise.

“Perhaps,” Ragner said, “they have been contracts for so long because the system benefits us.”

Deja moved his hand slightly: a given, his gesture asserted. “It benefits them more.”

The first holder snorted. “You believe that?”

“Contract laborers, as any historian knows, benefit from the system. Have a look at what social systems were like in the few places that tried doing without such a system, if you doubt it. Starvation, abortion, poverty, mistreatment of children, misuse of resources, crime rates that would make you ill—” He shook his head.

“Martin,” Lord Ragner said. Martin twitched. “That’s your name, is it?” Ragner asked.

“Sir,” Martin said.

Deja had turned in his chair. So had all the holders on this side of the table.

“Are you better off in the contract labor system?” Ragner asked.

Martin clenched his fists behind his back.

Deja was frowning. “Answer Lord Ragner, Martin.”

Martin wet his lips. “Sir.”

The room was silent. “Answer him,” Deja ordered.

Martin said nothing.

“Really,” someone at the table said. “This is hardly…”

“We’re speaking for contracts,” Ragner said. “We have a contract here. Why not let him speak? Speak up, Martin. Or are you too afraid?”

Martin lifted his head. Of course he was afraid. What idiot question was that? He stared into Ragner’s smug, ice-pale eyes. Abruptly, the room seemed to settle. Martin found, abruptly, more anger than fear in him. He filled his lungs. “No.”

“No? Not afraid?”

“Not better off,” he corrected, the words grating harshly in his throat. From the edge of his eye, he saw Deja’s muscles harden. He pretended not to. Ragner smiled, having won. But he would have won, no matter what: whether Martin had been too afraid to speak, or if Martin had spoken as the holder’s bit, saying he was happy under the stick – even then he could have claimed Martin was just too ignorant to know when he was being used. No way for Ragner to lose this game.

“You belong in the system?” Ragner asked. “You earned your contract?”

Martin clenched his fists harder behind his back. Tension burned in the muscles of his shoulders. “I was on a ship that got boarded by the Republic Navy when I was fourteen. Other than that, I ain’t do a thing.”

“And have you benefited from the system?” Ragner encouraged.

“That’s enough,” Deja interrupted. “You might as well as ask my nine year old whether she benefits from being made to do her lessons. He’s been fed. He’s been educated, he gets medical, he’s been taught to speak decently – when he remembers to.” Deja shot Martin a furious look. “None of that would have happened if he had been left a filthy thug on a pirate ship.”

Martin opened his mouth to protest.

“That’s enough,” Deja ordered him. “Go wait in the room.”

He closed his mouth and left, seeing, from the side of his eye, Lord Harper, in his carved wooden chair at the head of the table, sipping wine and watching them all.

***

In the room, he stripped off his fancy suit, wanting to rip it off, fling it, tear away the buttons, and having, instead, to treat it with care, straightening sleeves and collars, getting everything properly racked. If he fucked up his clothing, Deja would really give it to him.

When he had the suit stowed, and he was in an undershirt and regular trousers, he went to fix himself a rum and limon. He drank it down, standing staring through the balcony doors at the sky above the tree-line. The big moon was up, fat and clear in the cold mountain sky. Deja had said wait in the room. That, clearly, meant he was to stay in the room. On the other hand, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. His temper simmered. After a moment, he put the glass down on the worktable, and went through the dressing room to the service stairs.

The kitchen was busy, though not as chaotic as the kitchen at Strauss Estate got during dinner parties. The air was steamy, rich with the scent of roasting meat, glazed pastry, and grilling vegetables. It doubled Martin’s hunger, made him nearly savage with desire for food. He stood watching the work from the lowest step until the cook caught sight of him. She finished what she was doing, rolling asparagus tips in some sort of oil, wiped her hands, directed an order at one of the kitchen girls, and came over to Martin. He retreated up a step before he could stop himself.

“I hear you sparked’m fancy,” she said, moving her head toward the dining hall.

Martin blinked. “That ain’t me. It was that fucking Ragner.”

He remembered too late how most cooks didn’t let field language in their kitchens. The cook shook her head, grinning wryly. One of her side teeth was missing. “What did you want, son?”

“…dinner?”

She kept smiling. “That holder of yours, he made a special trip right into this kitchen to warn me about you. ‘No matter what that cot says,’ he tells me, ‘he ain’t have a single scrap I don’t say he gets. Now you mind what I say,’ he tells me.”

Martin gave his prettiest smile, hopefully.

She shook her head. “Don’t waste that on me, son. I ain’t plan to listen to him anyway.”

She cut him a wedge of yellow cheese, and brought him that and hard biscuits and a dish of apple pudding drizzled with syrup. While the clatter of the kitchen danced around him, he sat on the steps and ate it all, barely pausing to chew. “I never saw you,” the cook said, coming for the plate.

“Wasn’t here,” he agreed, and went back up the stairs two at a jump.

Up in the room, he cleaned his teeth, twice, and then had more rum. He still felt edgy. But not hungry. He went to sit on the balcony, bracing his feet against its balustrade, wishing Deja would just come get it done.

The mountain air was sharp against his skin. He watched the stars, remembering what Deja had said: a filthy thug. Mongrel in a gutter. Better off in the system. He tried to think what Deja would have thought of the Ladybird, its corridors, its cabins, the galley. He thought of Deja meeting his father and shut his eyes. Heat ran loose under his skin. After a moment, he got up, went inside, and poured himself a third glass of rum.

***

He was in the bedroom, on his back on the bed, when Deja finally returned. It was deep in the pit of the morning by then: the little moons were high above the mountains, laying their green light against the windows. Though he had put away a deal of rum, he was still scared. When the door shut, out in the sitting room, he felt his muscles jump.

“Where are you?” Deja snapped.

Martin got up and went out there. Deja glared at him. Martin lowered his head.

“You’re not happy being my contract?” Deja demanded.

He slipped his hands behind his back. “That’s not what I meant.”

Deja came at him. He retreated, but Deja just shoved past him, going into the dressing room, stripping off the fancy suit as he went. Martin began gathering it up behind him.

“Do you have any idea how much I let you get away with?” Deja glared at Martin in the mirror. “Look at me!”

His stomach gone hollow, Martin did.

“Any time you think you’re better off without me? You just say that to my face.”

“That’s not…I didn’t mean that.” Martin heard how the words broke in his mouth. He knew he sounded like a coward. He couldn’t help it.

“Decide what you do mean.” Deja yanked his shaver out. “Decide what it is you want before you start using that mouth. Because I just might decide to give it to you.”

Martin, his arms full of Deja’s clothing, moved further into the room. “I was only…”

“What?” Deja demanded. Martin shook his head. He was staring at the floor. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you think you can do without me?”

“I don’t think that,” Martin said. His voice was weak, barely a sound in the room. Deja stared at him in the mirror, so he said it louder, “I don’t.”

“Do you know where you would be now without me?”

Martin nodded.

“You think you won’t be there again, if I sell your contract?” Deja glared at him in the mirror. Martin kept his head down, kept as still as he could. After a moment, Deja started the shaver going again. “Go wait in the bedroom. Now.”

***

The next morning, the holders rode out on a hunt – it was nothing on Julian, Martin knew, actually big enough to be hunted from horseback, but that was what holders called it, because that was what it had been called on Earth. Martin got up to help Deja dress for it.

Deja was contrite. He didn’t apologize for how rough the sex had gotten last night, or for taking out his anger on Martin that way; but he was gentle in how he asked for things, and when Martin asked if he might take part of the afternoon for a walk in the valley, Deja hardly hesitated before giving his permission. “I want you here when I return.”

“All right.”

“I mean that. I’m not going to be pleased if you’re late.”

“I won’t be.”

Deja lifted Martin’s chin and kissed his forehead. “See you tonight. Don’t try wheedling extra food out of Harper’s cook. I mean that, too.”

Martin smiled. “Never.”

Deja kissed him again and left. Martin went down to wheedle the cook right away. The cook, serving breakfast to the kitchen girls, shook her head. “He wants you eating boiled eggs. Why’s he got you slimming, son? You ain’t nothing but bone as it is.”

The cook sat him down in the scullery and fed him heaps. It was contract food: rice porridge with drippings, biscuit and syrup, sweet milky tea. Around him, the kitchen girls giggled and slipped him glances. The cook finally clipped one of them across the ear, which only made the rest giggle harder. “You’re a bit famous at the moment,” she explained to Martin.

He looked around the table. “Over what?”

“That last night. Either speak to him proper or hush,” the cook told the kitchen girls. “You act like a pack of lackwits.”

“You talked back to the holders?” one of the girls said.

Martin shook his head. “I just answered their questions.”

“I hear they were on at each other half the night,” another said.

“That ain’t me,” Martin said. “I said maybe two things. That was that shitting Ragner. Um,” he said, as the girls giggled. He eyed the cook. “Sorry.”

“We do try to keep field language out of the house.”

“Sorry,” he said, again.

“Did you get it bad?” another asked. Their eyes were wide with pity.

“Eh, he’s all talk, that Strauss.” Deja, Martin knew from the mirror, hadn’t left marks, not anywhere anyone could see. He looked at his empty plate, decided against a seventh biscuit, and got to his feet. “Thanks,” he told the cook.

“Come back for lunch. We’ll give you clear soup and steamed vegetables then.”

He grinned and left out, walking carefully. He’d eaten too much. Better have his walk up the mountain now, instead of in the afternoon. If he went back to the suite, he’d spend the morning sleeping. He went through the service corridor out onto the veranda, and stretched gingerly. His belly ached. Studying the hillside, he considered which path to take into the trees.

“Cat’s away?”

Martin jumped, and saw Lord Harper, in the shade of the veranda, a desk open on the table before him. He retreated a step. “Sir?”

“Strauss is away, so you’ll steal some time while his back is turned?”

Martin put his hands behind his back. “Lord Strauss said I could have a walk.”

Harper sent him a glance. “Get over here while I’m speaking to you.”

Martin hesitated, and then went closer, five or six steps. Harper pointed at the veranda floor, near the table; Martin, repressing his grimace, went to stand there. The veranda deck was a nice red sandstone, probably from the Barton Mountains.

“A walk where?” Harper asked, his attention returned to the desk screen.

His hands behind his back like a good contract, Martin watched Harper from under his lashes, trying to think what he might want. “Up the hills a bit, sir.”

“My hills.”

In shit was this? Harper’s face was unreadable. Martin said, carefully, “If you object, sir, I won’t go, of course.”

“Why would I object?” Harper did something on the desk and sat back, looking Martin over. Martin knew the bruises and bites Deja had left on him were hidden by his clothing; he smothered the conviction that Harper’s narrow yellow eyes could see every hot welt, every mark and scar. After a thorough examination, Harper said, “Your Strauss tells me he can’t let me have your contract.”

Martin’s muscles tightened, trying to make him back away. He kept himself motionless through sheer force of will.

“It would make you too unhappy, apparently,” Harper said, the words flattening with irony in his North Country accent. He reached to thump his thumbnail against Martin’s jacket front – a light silk and wool blend today, lined with patterned silk. “He dresses you fancy. Lets you out on walks. Frets over your moods. Does…other favors, I have very little doubt. You think you’ve got a good deal?”

Martin said nothing.

“You think you’re on the right path? I’ve read your files. I know there’s a mind in that thick skull. If you don’t use it, what do you think happens to you?”

His heart hammering in his chest, Martin didn’t move. Out across the lawn, by the summerhouse, two kitchen girls, crossing back from the greenhouse with their arms full of baskets of vegetables, suddenly let out peals of laughter. He twitched at the noise, and made himself still again.

Harper snorted. “Go have your walk. Go,” he said, louder, when Martin didn’t move.

Martin backed away and left, down to the lawn and across it, into the hills. Once he was safely into the trees, he leaned against one, bracing himself, waiting, sweat icy on his skin, and then vomited up his breakfast and what felt like half his dinner as well. He thought it would never stop. When it finally did he rested on the tree awhile longer, swearing at Harper under his breath, at Harper and at Deja, at every holder on this evil planet.

Then he climbed on slowly, moving through the chill, thin mountain air, sweat drying on his skin, until he reached a stream, where he washed his face, rinsed out his mouth, and rested, his face against his arms. What would happen to him? As if he had anything to say about that.

Under his boots, the riprap shifted. He moved his boot heel, making the stones grate, and reached to pick up a piece of sandstone. He dug with his heel again, found a bigger piece, heavily grained, used it to dig about among the other stones, got up finally and moved upstream to scuff in among some small cobbles dumped by the current.

The air was cool, the sun warm on his shoulders and neck. Insects sang and darted around him, and he got bit often, redbacks mostly, though also sticklegs and once a woolly beetle, but the rocks under his hands calmed him steadily; eventually he felt nearly happy. He sorted rocks, digging through spills and sluices, finding not much of interest beyond one nice fossil, but enjoying the rocks. He thought about the holders around that table, wrangling half the night over whether contracts should stay contracts. Like that was an actual question. Like that was something any one of them was planning to change. And Harper, in his great chair, watching.

He turned back sooner than he wanted to. Deja had left him work to do, and he knew he better get some of it done. Harper, still on the veranda, watched him pass without a word, all the way into the house.

In the suite, he put the rocks he had collected in one of the sinks to soak off their grime, and got in the shower. He swore at Harper while he washed, wincing when he hit bruises. Where Deja had bitten him, the soap stung. He had known it was a bad idea for him to be here. He had told Deja that.

He spent the afternoon doing the work Deja had left him, keeping at it doggedly. It was rotten dull. He interrupted himself once, to scrub up the rocks and lay them out on a handkerchief to dry. He had found one good specimen, a fossil of a lacewing in a wide split of shale. Nearly whole, its wings spread wide, down to all eight legs and the trailing stinger, it lay delineated clearly in the gray stone. A tip of one wing was missing, that was all.

He was interrupted a second time by a bootboy tapping at the service door. He was carrying a strap of firewood. “For your box.” He nodded past Martin at the bedroom fireplace.

“Oh.” Martin stepped back, to let him in.

The bootboy took it over and knelt to stack the wood in the wood box. Martin waited by the door, his mind still on the hardcopy he had been reading, a diary kept by a woman who had run one of the early orphanages. She had been writing about a local university proposing an experimental program, to try educating the orphans, to see if that had an effect on their outcomes. The woman had been annoyed at this ignorance. Anyone who knew anything, she wrote, knew that experiment had already been tried, over and over, during Earth history. Everyone who knew anything about Earth history, she wrote, knew education had no effect on a person’s life. Determination. Hard work. Being allowed the freedom to succeed. Those were what mattered, not how many books you read.

If Martin had been paying attention, he might have wondered why the bootboy was filling a woodbox already nearly full. But he was too busy thinking about Deja’s claim the night before, how contracts were better off because they got educated, as they wouldn’t have if they were left outside the system.

It was true that Martin had been taught stonecutting; and that Deja, over these last years, had given him manners, taught him to speak the West Country University dialect, to write posts according to University form, to do research. Also, he had had to learn a deal about history and law in order to be able to evaluate what he was researching; and certainly he had picked up plenty of geology, reading on his own in what spare time Deja gave him. So Martin reckoned it could be argued he had gotten something like an education, in the years in the system.

But Martin was the exception. Most were like those downstairs, and like this bootboy here, who had, most likely, been raised in a contract labor orphanage, just like those orphans the woman had been raising seven hundred years before. Most contract orphans didn’t even get taught to read. Most got taught to say yes, sir, and do as they were told, and when they turned twelve and got sold, got taught whatever trade they were sold to: planting rice, running a tip, mining coal, building roads. You didn’t need an education to sweep a warehouse. No one needed reading to chop weeds. Why waste funds on a contract that will spend his life – what little there would be of it – doing that?

The bootboy stood up and smiled at Martin. “Your holder. Gone until dinner, is it?”

Martin focused, abruptly.

The bootboy was taller than Martin, though not by much. Orphanage children got underfed, and they didn’t have nanotropes to help them along: this one’s bones were reedy, his muscles stringy. Even so, he was cute enough, with big dark eyes and a sweet smile. He came toward Martin, tucking the firewood strap into the pocket of the canvas work trousers he wore. Martin stepped backwards. The bootboy grinned, reaching past him to shut the service door. “Ain’t no one know.”

Martin’s mouth had gone dry. He could feel how the kid’s body would fit against his. He could feel his hands. “I can’t.”

The bootboy stopped. “What, you only do holders?”

Martin shook his head. “I can’t.”

The kid stared at him. “Holder’s bit?” he said, not loudly.

Martin said nothing. The bootboy shrugged, and slipped from the room. Martin stood where he was, feeling ill. After a long moment, he wandered over to lie on the bed.

***

He was drowsing when Deja got in from the hunt. He woke at once, and went out to help him with his gear. “What have you been doing?” Deja demanded.

Martin circled him, wary, and picked up his riding jacket. “I got through those letters. And the diaries from the Rice Islands.”

“What about the account books?”

“Not yet.”

Deja glowered. “How long did you spend on that walk? Get me a drink. Start a bath.”

Martin went to do that. Deja followed him into the scrub, yanking his shaver from its case. His face was ugly with temper. “What’s this trash?” he demanded, of the rocks Martin had left beside the sink.

“Sorry.” Martin went to clear them away.

“Pick up after yourself,” Deja said. “This isn’t a dorm you’re living in.” He turned on the shaver and set to work. Martin collected the rest of his discarded clothing and got them sorted. His stomach hurt. Deja shouted. He took a breath and went back into the scrub.

“What did you eat?” Deja demanded.

“Sir?”

“Don’t give me that face. What did you get that cook to feed you? And don’t lie to me.”

Martin stared at him. Panic made his head swim a moment. “Egg this morning. Soup and some carrots and sh– uh, carrots and that for lunch. Kitchen girl brought it up.”

“What else?”

“Tea. Nothing else. Why?”

Deja slammed down the shaver and came at him. Martin flinched back. “Nothing else,” he insisted. “Deja!”

Deja smacked him. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare.”

“I ain’t! That’s what it was!”

Deja hit him, hit him again, seized him by the collar, and smacked him hard. “What did you eat?”

“Nothing! What she gave me! Stop!”

Deja shoved him away and stood breathing heavily. “You think I don’t know when you’re lying to me? You think I’m that stupid?”

Martin stood trembling, his head down. “I didn’t,” he said, after a moment. “I’m not.”

Deja slapped his ear. “Get out of my sight. Go do the account books.”

Martin left. He didn’t work, though. He sat at the desk, with the hardcopy before him, as though he were working, in case Deja checked, but focusing was impossible. Every muscle was unsteady and he couldn’t even get his eyes to see the print on the desk screen. When he heard Deja get into the bath, he got up, carefully, to mix himself a rum and water. He put some ice in a napkin, too, and held it against the side of his face.

***

Deja didn’t stay long at dinner that night. His mood was still evil when he returned. Martin kept his teeth together while he helped him undress, not that he reckoned it would make much difference. “Pack tonight,” Deja said, while Martin was unlacing the back of his shirt. “We’ll be leaving early tomorrow.”

“Sir.”

Deja let him pull the shirt off and sighed. Martin got the fancy case out, instead of the rack, and opened it on the bed to pack the shirt away inside it. He buckled Deja’s jacket in there also, and his trousers after Deja had them off. “Martin.”

Martin tried not to flinch. “Sir.”

“Come here.”

Martin finished fastening the net that held the trousers in place, steeling himself, and then went over to Deja, standing by the big armoire. Deja put a hand on Martin’s face, his long fingers gentle. Martin kept himself still.

Deja turned Martin’s face, to look at the bruises. “I love you so much. Why do you make me hurt you?”

Martin said nothing.

Deja’s hand tightened. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”

Martin wanted to answer him. He had plenty he wanted to say. For instance, he wanted to ask Deja what he was thinking, coming to this house. He wanted to ask him what had been said to him, out on that hunt, and who had said it. He wanted to ask Deja why he reckoned Lord Harper hadn’t gone along on the ride – did Deja think it was just because he preferred sitting in the shade? He wanted to ask Deja what, exactly, the invitation to this End Party had said. Specifically, had Harper asked for Martin to be fetched along? And, while they were on it, whose idea had it been for Martin to serve at that fucking dinner?

Deja lifted Martin’s chin, making Martin look at him. The bruises on Martin’s face stung. “Do you even care what I feel? Does that matter to you?”

Martin looked straight at him. “Deja. Of course it does.”

Deja stared back, his light eyes searching Martin’s.

“I love you.” Martin moved closer, moved his body into Deja’s, reading Deja’s reactions with every nerve he had. “You know I love you. What I said ain’t have anything to do with you.”

“Watch that mouth.”

Martin put his hands on Deja’s ass, rubbing it through his silky undershorts. He moved in closer. He could feel Deja’s cock, swelling against him. “All right,” he said. “I can watch it do this. If you want.” He bent his head and nipped at Deja’s nipple through his undershirt.

“Hey.”

“If you want.” He moved his mouth over Deja’s chest, opened it on his throat. Deja caught his breath. His cock thrust against Martin, who squeezed his ass.

“Or,” Martin said, talking into Deja’s throat, “I could go finish packing. I mean, we do want to leave early.”

“Shut up,” Deja said, and pulled his shirt off.

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