SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) (32 page)

“
No.” Michael huddled on his cot and drew his knees up against his chest, though every wound protested this movement.

“
It’s just me, darling,” Varian sang out as he ducked under the beams. He froze when he saw Michael, and his shock spiked so sharply that Michael saw everything through the musician’s eyes for a long, nauseating moment.

Nobody told me I looked so bad.
There were fingerprint marks on his jaw, and bruise-like circles under his eyes. An abrasion scraped across his cheek, probably from when he’d been thrown out of the carriage into the street. His lip was split—Michael vaguely remembered being slapped but couldn’t remember what Terac’s reason for doing it had been—and that only accounted for the damage to his face. Wounds were visible even above his nightshirt’s collar and on his hands.

“
Blessed, merciful Vail.” Varian sank to the floor with a hand outstretched to balance himself as he all but collapsed. “What—? Monster—! Pol said you’d been hurt, but I didn’t think—”

“
I’ll be fine.” Michael tried to convince himself as much as Varian. “The healer said so!”

Tears streamed
down Varian’s face, and he shook his head as if denying everything. “This should
never
have happened to you! I mean...what
happened
? Who did this?”

Michael
cringed away from the young man’s blazing emotions. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the sensations of the almost-memory and the horror of seeing his own ruin.
He almost killed me. Maybe he meant to. Maybe he’ll come back and finish the job.

“
I can’t—”

“
Don’t protect this monster!” Varian shouted. “The Red Boar can bring pressure to bear—punishment! They have power, and they’ll use it for you. You pay the protection, and they
owe
you. This man should be destroyed for what he’s done to you—”

“
They can’t!” Michael insisted. He looked at Varian again, trying to make him understand. “I can’t tell them, and even if I could, they couldn’t do anything about it! He’s too powerful!” Tears stung his eyes, and he desperately tried to stop them from falling. “Varian, I made such a stupid mistake. This is all my fault!”

Varian shook his head, sitting up on his knees which, in the close confines of
Michael’s tiny room, put him right beside the cot. He froze when Michael flinched away from him, and a confused frown drew itself across his forehead.

“
You really meant it.” His handsome face flushed, making him look overheated. “I thought you were just... I’m sorry.”

Michael
drew back even farther at this, worried by what the man might mean. “What?”

“
You don’t want to be touched,” Varian said.

Michael
wiped angrily at the tears which had managed to escape his control. “Why is that so hard to believe? I’ve told you and told you I want to be left alone, but you never listen.”

“
I always thought you were playing hard-to-get.” Varian looked down, away from the boy’s pain-filled eyes.

“
No,” Michael muttered, also looking away. “But I couldn’t just tell you or anyone else to go to the Fires, either. Not when I was working.”

Varian smiled a little at that
then grew serious again. “I’m sorry.” Michael shrugged, trying to be rid of this uncomfortable conversation, but Varian persisted. “Truly,” he whispered. “I’ve been selfish. I would have seen the truth if I’d wanted to. I promise I won’t bother you anymore.”

Michael
nodded, discomfited by the musician’s new perceptiveness. He tried to catch a glimpse of sky through his narrow window to gauge the time. It had only been a few days, but as the days could be counted in clink, Michael felt the passing time more keenly.

“
I’m scared to go back.” He almost didn’t notice it was Varian and not Pol who was hearing his confession. “But I don’t have any choice.”

“
Why did you go with him? I don’t understand...did he force you?”

“
No. I wish I could say he did, but no. He wasn’t even there. He sent someone for me. He offered me...
so
much money.” Michael swallowed back the anger he felt at himself for not listening to the Voice. “More money than I’ve ever seen all at once.” He coughed a laugh. “It’ll be gone by the time I’m well enough to go back.”

Varian frowned.
“Why?”

Michael
gave him a pitying look. “It costs a lot more than you think to be a heretic. I have to pay my protection to the Red Boar, my rent here, which is higher than anyone else would have to pay because there are special taxes for renting to heretics. Food and clothes cost more, too. No one can give me anything unless I figure it as payment and pay taxes on it. And the taxes are...sickening.” He closed his eyes again. “When I think of all the men I have to nik just to make the tax money.”

“
So why did you need this man’s money?” Varian asked, still confused.

Michael
hesitated for a long moment, wanting so much to tell someone but afraid of saying anything out loud. In the end, the desire to tell won out.

“
To get away.” He shook his head at his own foolish dreams. “With what I’d saved and what he paid me, I could’ve bribed my way onto a Mirthian ship. I even have a connection—he was even in port! I could’ve paid the passage and the harbor bribes and still have had money left over to start a new life. It’s all gone, now. All gone.”

“
But, with that much money—”

“
It only would’ve worked if I’d left right after. The Auditor’s already taken this moon’s cut, and I had to declare what I earned—”

“Getting tortured,” Varian growled. He looked near tears himself, and Michael suspected he’d never really thought about what might lead someone to become a streeter.

Michael sighed and nodded agreement. “Now I’m not making anything, but I still have to pay the Red Boar and Senna MaGlen. I have to eat. I have to pay for bandages and salves... I’ll be lucky if I have enough to make it through until I can work again.”

“
You can, though, can’t you,” Varian asked, his face red. “Start again?”

Michael
let his breath out in another long sigh. “I’ll have to. What choice do I have?”

He looked at Varian again
. “You have so much power over me, now, you can’t even imagine. You could have me burned for what I’ve told you.”

Varian gasped,
apparently horrified that Michael would think him capable of such a thing. “Never! I’d never betray you. I swear it.”

“
I’ll have to hope that you mean it.” He felt oddly indifferent about the subject of Varian’s trustworthiness. Maybe he’d confessed in hopes that he would be betrayed. He wondered about that, turning the idea over in his mind, and decided he didn’t know what he’d been thinking and that he really didn’t care. It had been good to tell someone. Anyone.

Varian cleared his throat, seeming to make some sort of internal decision.
“Some great mob of out-of-town highborns descended on the Red Boar last night, and Pol’s stuck at the stables, so he sent me here to help you. I am at your command.” He added this last with a theatrical bow made ridiculous since he was still kneeling on the floor in Michael’s very tiny room.

On the list of things
Michael didn’t want, Varian’s help was somewhere near the top, but Pol must have believed the musician could be trusted if he’d sent him. Michael bit his lip, his eyes dropping to study his scarred hands. His unbroken one, white-knuckled, was clenching the blankets.

“
Pol made me promise to do just as you say,” Varian said, his voice very low and hesitant. “Only as you say. And I promised. I promise you the same thing. I don’t want to be one of
them
, to you, Michael. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

“
I was never afraid of you.”

“
Even so.”

Michael
nodded, eyes still downcast. “I hate this.” The tears he’d been trying to deny began running down his face.

“I know,” Varian whispered. “And I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t know. Sorry I wasn’t a better friend.”

Michael had never thought of Varian as a friend, but he was there and he was trying his best and wasn’t that what friendship was? Taking a huge breath, Michael sniffed back his tears once more and looked up to meet the musician’s tentative smile.

“Help me up?”

# # #

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

The healer’s initial judgment that it would take at least a moon for Michael to recover enough to go back to work had turned out to be too optimistic by half. Though in the past, Michael had healed quickly from his various injuries, this time his healing seemed to have slowed—or these new injuries were simply that much worse.

More than a moon passed before
Michael was able to bear any weight on his injured leg, and even then he could scarcely walk. Even using a crutch Pol had procured for him, it took days of practice before he could take more than a very few steps without collapsing from the pain. Pol, Varian, and sometimes even Risa and Daren visited his tiny room and worked with him, but his progress was very slow and very discouraging.

After a moon had passed, Pol
had taken him back to see the healer, certain there must be some solution they simply hadn’t yet tried. Instead, the healer told them the wound was very bad and that Michael, if he was lucky, would always walk with a limp. If he was unlucky... It didn’t bear thinking about.

Even so,
Michael hadn’t imagined that it might never stop hurting. Even his arm had eventually healed—though there was now an odd, slight kink in its line, a relic of just how bad the break had been and how difficult to set cleanly—but his leg refused to improve past a certain point, and while he waited for it to heal, his hard-earned, harder-saved money trickled away, just as he’d told Varian it would. Once he’d recovered enough to return to the Red Boar, more than two moons had passed. There was so little money left, it made him sick to think about it.

The path he traveled from his tiny room at
Senna MaGlen’s to the Red Boar seemed filled with familiar faces, and he felt as if they were all staring at him
. They want to see if I look terrible. If I’ve changed. If I’m still beautiful.

He was.
The healer had seemed almost upset by how well he’d recovered. His wounds had healed to smooth, white scars that almost disappeared against the only slightly darker-pale of his skin.

There was n
othing too shocking; certainly nothing disgusting. If it hadn’t been for his leg wound—healed well on the surface but still hurting him with every step he took—Michael would almost have been able to forget what had happened to him.
How close I came to escaping Fensgate... How close I came to dying.

I want a smoke.
Right. Now.
He’d given them up after the Midnight Star—it had just seemed silly to inhale smoke on purpose after seeing the damage it could do on a large scale. He’d wanted to take up the habit again after he’d been injured—he was sure the herbals would have helped him feel at least more relaxed—but he couldn’t afford the extra expense when it was so uncertain when he’d be able to work again.

It would
help to have something to blunt this moment.

No one seemed sure of how to react when he entered the Red Boar.
So many of his regulars were present, watching the door as if for the return of a long-lost beloved, that when he finally stepped into the room and looked out across the sea of faces, it was all he could do to keep from bursting into tears. So much wanting from them overwhelmed him, away as he’d been for so long from the toxic feel of unwelcome desire.

Pick one and get started
,
he ordered himself, and he scanned the crowd for someone who wouldn’t ask too much. His attention was caught by a new face, however. A man sat at a crowded gambling table, ignoring the hovering girls. He sat casually, sprawled in his chair, one elbow resting on the table with his hand upraised, toying with a coin.

Is it a clink?
Double?
It looked to be a respectable denomination. And it was a start. The man stared at Michael, his expression inquiring. The man was making him an offer, and the expectancy of all his regulars angered him.

Just waiting like carrion birds for me to come back and make them feel better
...don’t even care about me as long as I’m still beautiful.

He threw back his hair, left loose on purpose to show off how much it had grown, and
crossed the room to the man’s table, schooling his face to produce a slow, seductive smile. He reached out and closed one hand over the coin and decided in that split tic to do something he’d never before instigated in public.

With his free hand, he caught the man
’s face and leaned in to kiss him. The kiss silenced the room and lasted several heartbeats, leaving the man flushed and breathless when Michael ended it.

The man
’s mind passed the test.
Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear
. The man reached for him again, but Michael stepped back, shaking his head.

“
There’s more where that came from,” he rasped. “But only if there’s more where this came from.” He held up the coin and lifted an eyebrow. The man rose, his eyes glittering with desire, and offered Michael several more coins the same as the first. With a nod, Michael accepted the man’s offer, informing himself that it was a very good start to the night.

After that, his routine returned to an apparent normalcy.
Nothing could ever be normal again—he knew that if no one else did—but the pretence of it had been restored.

He lived in pain every day now.
He lived in fear, too, knowing from all he’d seen in the duke’s twisted mind that he could expect to be summoned again. He could expect to be summoned often.

Why did he have to hurt me so badly?
I could have escaped to Mirthia if only he hadn’t stabbed me and broken my arm.

And he wondered,
What will happen when I refuse to answer his summons?
He would refuse, but he didn’t expect that to do him any good. What punishment would the man mete out to him in payment for the refusal? His mind supplied a suggestion—
he’ll kill you
—and he didn’t even feel shocked by his reaction to it.
Good. I hope he does.

Dying would be better than living like this
: living a whore’s life in a miserable city where no one could be bothered to take care of someone who hadn’t been born to them. It was a terrible world; a terrible place. He hated it and everyone in it more than he could bear to think about.

Michael
felt a strange confusion as he considered his hopeless situation. He didn’t want to die, but living like this...he didn’t want to do that, either.

When at last he received the expected summons,
Michael felt as if he’d been holding his breath and could finally release it. The letter was delivered to the Red Boar’s door, but the person who brought it was not allowed in.

Still, the
carriage awaiting outside to carry Michael away was grand enough that Daren had ordered Michael fetched from where he’d been flirting with one of his less odious regulars while the man played five-card.

The
letter jolted Michael back to his new, harsh reality, and he stared at the heavy paper inscribed with his name as if it were a thing unknown to him. He didn’t want to take it from the door-guard’s hand, but he couldn’t refuse it.

He felt oddly numb.
I can’t refuse it. Some kind of spell...

Now that he had the feared summons in his hand, his brain couldn
’t even form the idea of refusing it. He felt the painful prickling of gathering power along the lines of the tattoo on his wrist and at last understood what it meant and what it was for. Terac had no intention of allowing him to decline or escape. It was as strong a shackle as the metal ones he’d been chained with that horrible night.

Magic.
No good could come of something that could force him to the will of a man like Terac Nalas. Maybe his own magic really was as evil as he’d been told.
And this is my punishment.

T
here was nothing to be done but obey. He pulled on his coat and left the inn to find the same grand, unmarked carriage awaiting him, a footman holding the door open.

I don
’t have enough money to make it through another two moons!
he thought as he was handed up into the carriage.

The Duke of Reyahl already sat inside, waiting for him.
Michael dropped onto the opposite seat like a puppet whose strings had been cut. As the footman closed the door, Michael pressed himself back into the corner, trying to get as far away from Terac as it was possible to be in such a confined space. The man didn’t say anything. His face was hidden in shadow, giving no clue to his thoughts.

Not until the carriage pulled away and had turned back toward
Fensgate Bridge did the duke speak. “I did not mean to be so hurtful.” He leaned forward, revealing an almost kindly, worried expression.

Michael
flinched at the sound of his voice, wishing he could control himself. Wishing he could run away.
But that’s become impossible in more ways than one.

“
What are you going to do to me?” He didn’t dare to look the man in the eyes. He wanted to be able to believe whatever lie Terac was about to tell him—at least for a little while.

“
I just want to talk. And it’s true, you know. I did not mean for things to get...so out of hand. The power was so much more than I expected.” He gave a little laugh. “I think I was quite drunk. You suffered because of my carelessness, and I do apologize. I think I almost killed you.”

“
I wish you had.”

“
Hush, darling!” he snapped, and Michael stiffened as if in fear of a blow. Terac hesitated, and his voice softened when he spoke again. “Just hush. Don’t even whisper such a thing. I can’t lose you now. In fact, I must make certain I won’t.

“
So this is what I’ve come to say. If you disappear or die, and I have any reason at all to believe it was by your own choice, I will kill your friend Pol. I will make sure he knows that I’m the one who hurt you, I will kill him slowly, and I will not end it until he begs me for death.”

Tears welled up and ran down
Michael’s face. If only Pol had let him die the first time, none of this would have happened. But it was far too late for if-onlies, and there was no escape from this nightmare anymore.

Michael
closed his eyes tightly and whispered, “Fine. All right. Just don’t hurt him. Please.”

“
As long as we understand one another.”

Michael
felt the man’s hand close around his too-recently healed arm, and he was pulled across the tiny distance and made to straddle the man’s lap. His injured leg sent screams of agony to his brain where he managed to stop them from going any further, but the tears wouldn’t stop. The nightmares in the man’s mind were of a more familiar variety, all focused on what Terac wanted to do to him—a negligible mercy but a mercy nonetheless.

Terac
’s hands were strong and knew what they were doing. They stroked Michael’s body as if they had never committed any violent acts, undressing him with a deftness that implied much practice. The man’s mouth burned a line of kisses from his ear down to his throat, and the flicker of tongue against skin felt like a lash.

It had been a very long time since
Michael could in all honesty claim to have been raped, but there was nothing else to call what Terac was doing to him. He had not agreed to this, and no matter what he said or did, Terac would not stop.

By the time Terac had finished with him for the night, the pain from his leg had nearly reduced him to
begging. His body ached all over, and he’d acquired a collection of love bites to rival the most careless floozy in all of Fensgate.

He stumbled upon reaching the ground, though the footman had tried to help by handing him down.
Between what Terac had done this time and the wound he had inflicted the last time, standing seemed to be close to impossible. Standing unaided?

How will I make it home?
I just want to go home!

“
Here,” the duke’s voice called, and Michael nearly whimpered at the sound. He wondered what fresh torture the man had forgotten to perform.

The footman retrieved whatever the duke wanted to pass on
, and he handed it to Michael with a look of studied blankness on his face. Michael took the proffered item automatically, then wished he’d let the thing fall.

In his hand he now held a small, blue bottle.

“It’s sevillium,” Terac’s voice called, soft but audible in the eerie silence of the very early morning. “For the pain.” Then the man added, just as the carriage began to pull away, “You’ll be hearing from me soon.”

# # #