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Whipster 1

THE NEW BOY

Dusk Peterson

Whipster. 1589. 1. A vague term of reproach, contempt, or the like. a. A lively, smart, reckless, violent, or mischievous person. b. A wanton or licentious person, a debauchee. c. A slight, insignificant, or contemptible person. 2. One who wields a whip: a. a driver of horses; b. one addicted to whipping or flogging.

—From The Oxford Universal Dictionary (Third Edition)
 
 

PROLOGUE

"Now, remember," said Outram, "if the gentleman gives no other indication of what he wants, it is best to fall to your knees and take him in your mouth."

"But I don't want to!" The new boy tilted his head to look up at Outram. He was small and fragile – Outram had been glad of that – but the boy was proving to be surprisingly difficult to handle.

Outram gave him a cuff on the head, to teach him for making stupid remarks. "What you want doesn't matter, boy! It's what the patron wants that matters."

The new boy put his hand to his head, but apparently lacked the wisdom to be cautious, for he asked, "What if the patron wants to kneel to me?"

This time, Outram gave the boy a shove that sent him flying into the corner, raking his arm on a desk's edge on the way. Outram regretted that. He could put the boy in long sleeves, but he disliked disguising damaged goods.

The new boy gave something that might have been a sob, and then was silent, much to Outram's satisfaction. New boys were always hard to break in, and this one . . . Outram wasn't sure whether he'd ever had such a difficult boy working under him in all his years. He'd have been tempted to throw the boy onto the streets if the stubbornness had not come in such a deliciously wrapped package.

There was a cough behind Outram. He turned to see that Cyril Carleton stood across the desk from him, drumming his fingers. "My usual," the man said shortly.

"I'm so sorry, sir." Outram's voice, which had been sharp a moment before, oozed into obsequiousness. "That boy is no longer with us. You know how quickly boys grow." He smiled at Carleton, hoping this would help.

It did not.

"I've paid through to the end of the year," Carleton noted, his fingers tightening into a fist.

"Your generosity is not forgotten," Outram said hastily, "and I'm sure that we can find a replacement for you. Perhaps—" He was unexpectedly touched by inspiration. "Perhaps an innocent, untouched virgin."

He saw the flicker of movement against the wall as the boy stiffened. Carleton said, "A virgin," in an unbelieving tone.

"Just arrived," Outram said, leaning over the desk to explain in a low voice, as though fearing that the boy would be snatched up by one of the other men in the foyer who were examining the goods he had on display. "Fresh from his parents' home, where he was much loved and sheltered."

"Indeed." Carleton's voice was as dry as before. "And why, then, did these much loving parents part with him?"

"The usual reasons, sir. Too many brothers and sisters to feed; he was the eldest, and of an age to make his start as an apprentice . . ."

"And you provided them with a finder's fee for giving you the boy." The man's nose wrinkled in distaste, which annoyed Outram. What right had Carleton, standing in this place, to judge him?

Outram was careful to keep all annoyance out of his voice, though, as he said, "Of course, sir. All those starving brothers and sisters . . . It made my heart ache to think of it. I am very fond of young ones, you know." He reached out to pat the new boy solicitously on his head, but the boy was still crouched against the wall where Outram had flung him.

Carleton glanced for the first time at the wide-eyed boy, who was clutching his bleeding arm. "Untouched, you say." His voice was saturated with sarcasm this time.

"In all the places that matter." Outram's smile began to turn stiff. Couldn't the blasted man see what a good fortune he was being presented with? "I've even kept him isolated from the other boys so that there would be no chance of him losing his purity. Look at him – he is like a delicate flower, just beginning to open." He turned his head, taking the opportunity to glare at the boy, willing him to look delicate and flower-like.

"Hmm." Carleton looked at the new boy for a long moment, then said, "Very well, I'll take him. I'll expect a lower price, though, since I'll need to break him in."

Hell-damn the man. Didn't he understand that virgins were a high-priced commodity? Outram was inclined to turn Carleton's eye toward one of the cheaper goods, but he had seen the new boy grow yet more rigid at the word "break." The temptation was too good to pass up.

"Of course, sir. You understand that virgins are usually priced very high indeed, but we are always willing to accommodate a long-standing patron such as you. Tell me, will you need three whips today or four?"

The new boy was now as still as a corpse. Carleton looked neither at him nor at the men nearby, who were beginning to listen with amusement to this exchange. "I said, 'My usual,'" he responded in a bored voice. "Now, hurry it up. I don't pay to be made to wait forever."

"Naturally not," murmured Outram, "but I wish to ensure that all the proper equipment is transferred to the boy's cell. Manacles, throat restraint . . ."

He ticked off several other items, each worse than the last, as the new boy's eyes grew wider and Carleton drummed his fingers loudly.

"Yes, yes," he said impatiently, cutting off the end of the recital. "You know my needs. Now, get on with it, or I'll find myself a whoremaster who understands my need for efficiency."

"Of course, sir," Outram murmured. Beckoning the new boy out of the corner, he also took the precaution of waving to one of the guards to come forward and escort the pair to the boy's cell. The boy looked as if he was quite capable of bolting out the door at any moment. Once he was in the cell, Carleton would have him in hand, and all would be well.

All would be very well indeed. Outram's smile broadened again as he said, "Your usual time? Four hours?"

"Three. I'm in a hurry today, as you've failed to notice."

"Three." Outram carefully made a note of this on the portion of his ledger-book showing the new boy's schedule. "I'll be sure to lower your fee accordingly."

"If you need to say that to me, you're lacking in business sense." Carleton turned toward the guard, who had pulled the new boy to his feet and had his hand firmly wrapped around the boy's delicate arm. Then the patron, guard, and boy disappeared through the archway leading to the cells.

Outram sighed, though he was careful to disguise the sigh from the men now returning to stroking the bodies of the boys and women who were serving them refreshments in the foyer. Carleton was forever an irritation, always demanding that his boy's schedule be set up to suit his own needs, at the expense of other patrons. Outram had often been tempted to throw the man out and let him see how much he was charged for equipment at other houses in the city.

But not today. Today was a bright day in Outram's otherwise hectic and dreary life. Today he would see all the stubbornness broken from the new boy, all his remaining resistance vanquished.

It was an enticing vision, and Outram found that he did not have the self-restraint to wait until the session was over. After two hours had passed, he decided that all would now be at its peak. He envisioned the boy lying bound to the bed, his limbs stretched tight, his chest and thighs crisscrossed with whip-marks and worse, and his voice lifted in screams and pleas for more punishment. Outram had never been able to figure out what skill Carleton used to elicit the last, but there was no doubt that, however much the boy who served Carleton hated him, the boy always ended up pleading for further pain.

He hesitated at the doorway to the cell, at the very moment that a high, hoarse scream resounded through the door, so loud that the guard at the end of the corridor winced. It was irresistible. Outram did not usually interrupt long-standing patrons during their sessions, but surely it was only kindness to check to see whether the new boy was working properly. He pushed the door open.

The sight before his eyes was just as he had imagined it: the figure lay bound to the bed, his limbs stretched tight, his chest and thighs crisscrossed with whip-marks and worse. He was saying, in a desperate voice, "Don't stop! For the King's love, don't stop!"

Outram turned to look at the other figure in the cell, his arm raised in midstroke. "What are you doing?" Outram cried.

"Giving the patron what he wants," the new boy replied calmly, and brought the whip down once more.
 
 

Part One
The New Boy

The year 448, the eighth month.
 

You can scarcely walk a block without your attention being drawn to one or more of the class called street boys. . . . Some of the larger boys spend a considerable portion of their earnings for tobacco and drink, and they patronize all the theatres. . . . [Such a boy eventually] becomes a vagrant and perhaps worse.

—C. S. Clark: Of Toronto the Good (1898)

CHAPTER ONE

"Well?" The young man gestured toward the house before them.

The second young man peered up at it, his mouth parting and then going slack. From the peeling gold flakes on the lintels and the chipped carvings on the cornerposts, it was apparent that the immense building had once been a place of beauty and richness. No doubt this district had once been a place of beauty and richness. Now the house had diminished as much as the district: the stone was crumbling, the windows were broken, and the surrounding gardens were filled with weeds and trash. The building looked like an ancient whore still wearing her paint from brighter days.

"You must be jesting," said the second young man. "Michael, this place is falling to pieces!"

"It will need a bit of work," the first young man agreed, running an assessing eye over the exterior.

"Michael, this is no place to run a business! The house must be worth pennies—"

"Janus, how much do we have saved?"

The second young man was silent a moment before saying, "Pennies. But Michael, you said that you wanted to attract rich clientele. No rich man is going to walk in the door of such a place, much less visit this district—" His gesture embraced the refuse-filled cobblestones of the street, the dry fountains, and the stinking river beyond the house.

"On the contrary," responded Michael. "This is precisely the kind of district where rich men will come."

Janus finally managed to close his gaping mouth. "You're mad," he said flatly.

Michael gave a light laugh and swirled around to gaze upon the trash-strewn streets. "Now," he said, "all that we need are employees."

"And how do you expect to find those?" Janus muttered, gazing upon the deserted road before them. "Snatch them off the streets?"

Michael let his eyes dance then, in a manner that always caused passing women to look back at him lingeringly. "Do you think I should? —Ah!"

He raised his hand, and after a moment Janus heard what Michael had: a dull, rhythmic pounding, accompanied by a whistle.

"Just what we need," Michael said, and strode forward.

"Michael," said Janus, struggling to keep up with his long-legged friend. "Michael, come back; I wasn't serious . . . "

But Michael, as so often was the case, ignored his protests and continued forward, rounding a corner where two dogs were fighting for the remains of an expired rat. Janus, racing to catch up, tripped over the dogs and nearly crashed into Michael, who had paused to stare at the figure before him.

It was a boy, dressed tidily in a brown school uniform that helped to disguise the essential dinginess of his appearance: the smudged, hollow-cheeked face, the hands with cracked skin and filthy fingernails, the boots with broken laces. He was sitting at the entrance to an alley, on an abandoned barrel, idly bouncing a small rubber ball against the graffiti-coated wall opposite him. His whistle broke away abruptly as the ball bounced off a broken brick in the wall and skipped into the street.

Michael, running lightly forward, scooped up the ball neatly. He turned toward Janus, who had hurried forward to stay beside him, and murmured, "This brings back memories." Then he walked toward the boy, throwing the ball up and catching it with one hand in a graceful, nonchalant manner.

The boy, seeing the two men, immediately took on the wary look of a hunted animal: his eyes narrowed, his body tensed, and he rose hastily to his feet. But he was seemingly reluctant to abandon his possession, for he remained where he was, saying in a taut voice, "Will you give my ball back, please?"

"It depends on whether you're willing to give me what I want in exchange," Michael replied. He had stopped well out of reach of the boy and was catching the ball over and over in his hand, his gaze fixed upon the boy.

"Michael!" hissed Janus.

The boy, though, seemed puzzled. "I don't have any money," he said finally.

"I don't want money; I want information. Who owns that house around the corner, the one with the carved fruit upon it?"

"That house?" The boy seemed startled. "No one owns that house. It's falling to pieces."

Janus lifted his eyebrows at Michael, who refused to take notice but instead said, "Good. That will make the transfer of ownership yet easier. Thank you." He tossed the ball to the boy.

The boy caught the ball and took a step back, and then hesitated, saying, "You're moving here?"

Michael nodded. "We're starting a business."

"What sort of business?"

"A business of quality services. We'll be hiring the finest craftsfolk in the city, giving them hours of training to perfect their much-demanded skills and allow them to perform their tasks to the peak of their mastery – and the peak of the satisfaction of those who buy our goods."

The boy seemed suitably impressed. "We don't have any businesses like that here. Only breweries and butchers – we don't even have a proper theater."

"Indeed? Well, this is the sort of place my business partner and I have been searching for: a place that's secluded, not overcrowded like the businesses in the theater district."

The boy looked around the empty streets, as though confirming for himself that Michael had chosen the right place. "Are you hiring?" he asked eagerly. "I'm of apprentice age."

Janus drove his elbow into Michael's side, but it appeared to have no effect. Michael asked calmly, "Would your parents let you leave school and be apprenticed?"

The boy's shoulders slumped. "No," he muttered.

"Well, that's all right. I can hire you for a single day's work."

"Michael!" Janus said, heedless as to whether the boy would hear.

The boy paid no mind to Janus's cry; he was busy catching the coin Michael flipped to him. "What do you want me to do?" he asked breathlessly.

"Spread the word that we're hiring. Tell everyone you know – boys especially, because they're the ones who spread news the best. Tell the boys at your school, and tell any boys you know outside school who are of apprentice or journeyman age. If they're interested in the work, tell them to come to the house around the corner and ask for Michael."

"Michael who?"

"Just Michael." The young man's voice was cool. "I have something of a reputation in this city; everyone in my business has heard of me."

The boy stared down at the coin, fingering it. "I'm not sure I really understand what you're selling . . ."

"Just describe it the way I did. Use my exact words." And on that abrupt note, Michael turned on his heel and walked away.

Janus lingered a moment to give the boy a reassuring smile, and then rushed to catch up with his friend. "'Finest craftsfolk'?" he said softly as they reached the corner. "'Much-demanded skills'? 'Peak of their mastery'?"

"Those in the trade will understand what I mean." Michael paused a moment to look back at the boy, who was now flipping the coin up and down in his hand in a satisfied manner. "A shame," he said quietly. "He has some of the qualities we're looking for."

"Michael, be serious." Janus felt his temper, usually kept well in reserve, rising toward the surface. "That boy can't be more than thirteen—"

"That makes him older than I was when I started work." Michael's voice turned cool again.

"Surely you're not planning to hire anyone that young. A boy like that deserves to spend his days playing ball—"

Michael sighed as he rounded the corner. His gaze rose again toward the house on the corner. "Janus, if you want to found a home for boys and make yourself Father over it, I'll support you in any way I can. I'll give you my extra earnings, I'll tell everyone I meet about your orphanage. But as for myself—" He took a step toward the door. "I'm starting a whorehouse." And he walked through the doorway into the ruined beauty of the building.

The cobwebs were the first to go; then came the bat droppings and the curled corpses of dead insects and twenty years' worth of accumulated dust. That left only the floors to wash, the walls and ceiling to paint, the door to repair, and furnishings to bring in.

And then the third of sixty-three rooms would be ready.

Pausing to lean on his mop, Janus glanced wistfully toward the window. The rooms on this side of the house had the best view, pointing toward an open square: from where Janus stood he could see cool water pouring down from the public fountain. He sighed and brushed away the sweat from his brow, leaving a streak of dirt there. He wished that Michael's mother had chosen to give birth to him during the winter rather than the summer, so that his coming of age would have occurred in that season. That way, Michael could have bought his license for a house of prostitution during a cooler season to do work.

But then, if Janus had been able to remake the world the way he wanted it, there would be no houses of prostitution. He moved closer to the window. At an angle, he could witness the conversation taking place on the porch, though he could not hear the words being spoken.

The boy was seventeen or eighteen, well dressed for this part of the city. He was listening with grave attention to the tall man who was speaking to him. Michael, as always, shone like a new-risen moon. He had worn white for as long as Janus had known him, which provided a startling contrast to his dark hair and complexion. The first time that Janus had seen him, he had decided Michael looked like one of the good graces that people of old thought were messengers from the gods, bringing fortune to those who met them.

It was odd that this image had never left his mind, even after he had learned what Michael was. Frowning, Janus rested his chin on the mop handle, watching the negotiations take place; then, with a lifting of his spirits, he saw the boy shake his head and say something. Michael nodded, apparently in agreement. He spoke briefly, and then he and the boy shook each other's arms in farewell, and Michael disappeared into the house.

A moment later, Michael arrived at his doorway. In one hand he was holding a long, cloth-wrapped package, in the other a glass of water. Gratefully, Janus took the latter from him and drained it before saying, "I saw the boy. You didn't hire him, I trust?"

"Unfortunately, no. He's the best candidate we've had so far – seventeen, so we wouldn't need his parents' permission – but after I explained to him the terms of his contract, he decided he'd try for other types of work."

"Thank the graces!" Janus exploded.

Michael lifted an eyebrow. "He's of journeyman age."

"He's still too young. Michael, I thought that you were only going to take boys who were close to full manhood, ones who were just a little younger than us. . . ."

"Janus, try to be less innocent for once. How many patrons would we get if men walked in here and saw we were stocked only with nineteen- and twenty-year-olds? We'll need a few of the older boys to provide the leaven of experience, but the younger boys are what will attract the patrons."

Janus found he could not speak. It happened this way sometimes: he would go for days thinking of Michael as someone like himself, a civilized, compassionate person. And then a hardness would enter into Michael's voice, and in an instant he would become everything that Janus's parents had warned him against: an enemy stranger, a corrupt, vulgar person whom all of civilized society ought to shun.

Michael was kneeling now on the portion of the floor that had been cleaned, examining the contents of his package in such a way that Janus could not see the objects. Janus forced himself to ask, "What is that?"

Michael said, without looking up, "Necessary expenditures. Expensive ones, alas, but I can't afford to acquire shoddy equipment."

"Let me see." Janus knelt down beside him and pulled the cloth back.

He could not recognize most of the items before him, which he instinctively knew was a bad sign. He finally let his hand fall on an item he recognized – a hunting crop – and held it up toward the light. It was stiff, in the manner of whips used by carriage-drivers; the leather upon it was soft.

Michael took the crop from his hand, rose to his feet, and swished the whip through the air for a moment before bringing it down, hard and accurate, upon a cockroach crawling up the wall. The crushed victim fell lifeless from the wall. Satisfied, Michael sat down cross-legged and began to clean the remains of the insect off the crop with the cloth.

Looking over at him, Janus said, "You almost make me believe the story about you."

"Which story?"

"The famous one."

"Oh, that one. Yes, it's true." There was no change in Michael's expression. He continued to wipe the crop clean, like a craftsman polishing his work.

Janus felt his stomach tighten. Once, early in their acquaintance, he had asked Michael tentatively what his work was like. Michael had responded in a flat voice, "I'm the one who controls what happens," and had left the matter at that, much to Janus's relief.

It was better not to know; Janus had instinctively realized that. Why was he committing such folly as to question Michael now? Yet even as he thought this, he heard himself say, "I don't understand how you could do that. To tie someone up . . . to hurt him . . ."

"They liked it."

Janus heard the change to plural and winced. "How can you be sure of that? Just because their bodies reacted . . ."

Michael sighed, placing the crop back with the other equipment. "Janus, a whore has a very great advantage over any other person in the world. Let us say you're a married man and you ask your wife whether she enjoyed her time in bed with you. If she says yes, you have no way of knowing whether she is telling the truth."

"So how does a prostitute know what the truth is?" Janus asked in a tight voice.

"By a simple test. He waits to see whether the man he has just beaten comes back and pays money to be beaten again." Michael rose to his feet and gestured to Janus, saying, "The furniture was delivered while you were in the servants' wing, clearing the kitchen. Come see what it looks like."

Janus could not help but notice that Michael had picked up the crop again, seemingly without conscious thought.

Janus followed Michael out of the room and into the central covered courtyard. He paused a moment, as he always did, to look upwards. All of his doubts over whether to buy this building had vanished the moment he first saw the courtyard. His change of mind had nothing to do with their business plans; it was simply that he had to own a building that looked like this.

The interior courtyard was built in the iron-and-glass style of the previous century: the square courtyard was bounded on all sides by iron columns, fashioned like broad tree trunks, which rose the full three storeys of the building.

At the second and third levels of the building, the rise of the columns was broken by balconies, which served as corridors to the rooms that ringed the courtyard on all four sides. The iron balcony railings were shaped into leaves, so that the courtyard looked as though it was surrounded by three storeys of forests.

At the top, above the third level of foliage, the columns grew suddenly slender and turned into a maze of branches that interwove with one another in the skylight above. The great skylight curved over the courtyard like the dome of the sky. It looked very much like a temple dome, and it allowed light to fall upon the courtyard, transforming the interior of the building into a sparkling pool of brightness that even the rotting wooden walls beyond the balconies could not diminish.

Janus became aware that he had stopped walking, and he hurried to catch up with Michael, who was curving his way around the pit in the center of the courtyard. This had once been an ornamental fountain, but its leaping dolphin-boys had lost limbs to vandals. Michael was standing near the doorway to the narrow entrance hall for the main door of the house, and he was surrounded on all sides by furniture.

Janus slowed his pace to run his hand appreciatively over the plain but finely crafted wood. The furniture – the two dozen beds, the tables and chairs and nightstands and trunks and chamber-pot cupboards – were the fruits of his ten years' labor, first as a part-time page in the King's palace during his apprentice years, and then as a part-time clerk in the office of the King's Secretary during his journeyman years. Nearly all of the money he had saved from his earnings had been spent on the furniture needed for this place. At the moment, keeping his mind carefully turned away from the uses this furniture would find, Janus could feel only the pride of a man who has furnished his first house.

Michael was standing next to a wooden object Janus did not recognize: it was chest-high and slimly rectangular, like a speaker's stand such as was used in classrooms or in narrated plays. As he came closer, Janus decided that it must indeed be a speaker's stand, for atop it was a level ledge for pen and lamp and speaker's glass, while the remainder of the top slanted away in the manner of a clerk's desk. A tiny ledge at the bottom of the slanted portion held any documents in place.

Michael had already set a ledger-book upon the stand. He was looking down upon the podium with an expression of intensity that Janus recognized as Michael's equivalent of a look of love. "What is it?" Janus asked. "We didn't order this."

"I had it custom-made," Michael replied. Then, catching Janus's look, he added, "Don't worry, I paid for it. Or rather, the patrons who gave me all those tips paid for it. This is going to be the most important possession we own, aside from the boys."

Janus decided to ignore the implications of that remark. "Is it for my record-keeping?" he asked dubiously, trying to imagine himself spending hours totting up figures while standing.

Michael shook his head. "It's for my records. Now, suppose you're a patron—" He took Janus by the arm and guided him to a position in front of the stand. "I'm the whoremaster." He stood behind the stand. "Can you see what I'm writing?" He waved an imaginary pen to free it of excess ink on the nib before scrawling something onto his ledger.

Janus shook his head. "Very well," said Michael. "An emergency arises with one of the boys – I must leave you abruptly, and curiosity tempts you. You wish to know what I have written about you and the other patrons. Come see."

He gestured, and Janus came forward to join him. The slanted writing surface of the stand, which a moment before had held a ledger-book, was now empty. Janus looked at Michael, who spun round to show that the ledger was not on his body. Then Michael pointed at the stand.

Janus knelt down to look. Hidden under the ledge was a narrow slot, the size of a ledger-book's spine. The front part of the stand, Janus now saw, consisted of a door that led to the interior of the stand. Even in the shining light of the courtyard, he could barely see the edges of the door, and there was no handle. He tried prying the door open with his fingers, but it would not give way.

"It's locked," Michael said, pulling the key from his pocket and turning it in the lock. The door opened to reveal the ledger sitting quietly on a shelf, awaiting its owner. "We'll keep valuables in here," Michael said. "Away from where burglars would think to look. Most of all, we'll keep here my records of the patrons. Outram once left his ledger-book lying about on a busy day; one of the patrons got hold of it, was enraged to learn what Outram's private opinion was of him, and proceeded to spread word of the ledger's remaining contents to all of the patrons in the foyer. Outram lost half his patrons that year." Michael returned the ledger to its hiding place.

Janus looked about the vast courtyard. "Where will you put the stand? Out here?"

"No, in my office." Michael beckoned him again. Janus followed him into the narrow confines of the entrance hall, and then through a doorway on the right.

Janus blinked as the transition from light to darkness to light startled his eyes. This room was as brightly lit as the courtyard, since it had windows on two sides. Facing the porch were plain windows, now half broken, while facing the courtyard was colored glass. By Mercy's grace, the colored glass had escaped the ministrations of the local vandals, but only because it had been boarded up all these years. It showed a naked boy standing upon a stage – the predilection of the house's founder was clear from the building's decorations. The boy was as dark as Michael, and the combined effect of him and the background stage blurred the images in the courtyard. Janus had the eerie sensation of being inside the courtyard and yet hidden from it as well, as though the interior wall were a screen that divided a room in two.

This room had puzzled him when he first saw it. Its placement near the main door suggested that it was a front parlor, but this house had been built during the previous century, when cellars were used to store food rather than servants. This beautiful room was in fact the servants' common room, placed next to the door so that the house's chief manservant could sight visitors arriving and be ready to open the main door when they knocked.

At the far end of the room lay two more doors. The right-hand door led to a staircase and to the maze of kitchen and scullery and pantries and storehouses that made up the lower portion of the servants' wing. The left-hand door – Janus had been much relieved to learn – led to a water closet. This house had plumbing, if they could only figure out how to bring the plumbing back into use.

Janus's eye lingered a moment upon the dozens of tiny bells at the top of the far wall, each with its own chain. Janus's home had also possessed bells to fetch servants to individual rooms, but he had never seen so many summoning bells in his life. He turned his attention back to Michael, who was speaking again.

"The patrons will arrive at the front door," he said. "If they wish, they may go immediately to the courtyard, escorted by our doorkeeper—"

"We don't have a doorkeeper," said Janus.

Michael pushed aside this reminder with an impatient wave of the hand. "In the courtyard, they will find whichever boys are not presently occupied with other patrons or being kept aside for special use. The patrons may sit with the boys and decide which one they want – but they will do so in a respectable manner." He shot a look at Janus, who had begun to open his mouth. "The courtyard will be a place for refined conversation and music – yes, I know we have no musicians either. The courtyard will not be a place for orgies. Our patrons will know from the start that we are a civilized establishment and that we do not allow our boys to be mauled in public."

"Only in private," Janus muttered.

Michael ignored him, saying, "Once the patrons have made their choice, they will come to this office to make the arrangements. If, on the other hand, they wish their visit to be more discreet, they may come directly to this office, and I will choose a boy for them, based on their expressed needs. They may then take the back staircase up to the old servants' rooms on the second floor—" Michael pointed to the right-hand door at the end of the office. "They will thus avoid being seen by any of the other patrons. You will note," he added dryly, "that all patrons must pass through this office or through the entrance hall next to it in order to exit the house. They will be asked to comment on whether the service has been satisfactory, which will encourage them to remember that they may receive service here again in the future."

Janus tried to ignore a growing sickness in his stomach. "Michael," he said. "All this talk of discretion . . . That's a hidden blade, you know. The patrons are out of sight of other patrons, but they're also out of sight of us – all of the patrons are, even the ones who take the boys into the rooms that can be reached from the courtyard. How do we know that the patrons aren't . . ." He paused, trying to think of an appropriate word to describe his fear.

Something close to a smile appeared in Michael's eyes. "Well, now," he said. "That's one of the reasons I chose this building. Come."

Janus followed him back through the courtyard, and then over to the opposite wall. Michael opened one of the doors facing the courtyard and gestured Janus in.

The room beyond the door faced the river, but at this level, the smell was not so bad. The river looked almost beautiful with the afternoon light shining golden upon it; Janus did his best to ignore the dark pockets of sludge floating along the surface, which might carry the river plague. The city would clean up the river this year. So the municipal guild had been promising every year for as long as Janus could remember.

Michael closed the door, and as he did so, there was a rumble in the air, and then a shaking upon the floor, so that for a moment Janus wondered wildly whether the house would collapse. A bottle of cleaning liquid tipped over on the floor, spilling its contents.

Then a deep whistle blasted nearby, and Janus realized the source of the sound. "Michael," he said with a sigh, "the patrons will never tolerate having the railway so close by. Think of what it would be like for them if a train went by right when they were about to-– Well."

Michael gave a soft snort. "I was thinking of having a mural painted in the courtyard, showing a train about to enter a tunnel. That would place them in the proper mood, I think." He gestured toward the corner of the room.

So far this was the only room that had been fully cleaned and decorated. The bed was Janus's own, though he had acceded to Michael's decision that such a beautiful bed should be put to more useful purposes than Janus's bed-rest. Michael had done wonders in making this room appear like a royal residence. Dried flowers lay upon the hearth-mantel; inexpensive but beautiful scarves decorated the corners, hiding the smoke stains that no amount of scrubbing had been able to remove; a carpet hid the most worn portion of the floor; and a white cloth had been placed over the nightstand, which held a silver tray containing various small items.

Janus looked at the items on the tray, and for a moment he thought that his stomach would finally give way. He turned his head quickly, just as Michael stepped toward the bed, placing his crop on the nightstand.

"Now, " said Michael, "I am a whore." He paused, like an actor waiting to be applauded for his line; then he lay down on the bed, spreading his arms and legs so that they touched the four corners of the bed. "I am with a patron, and he has just bound me to the bed. Using, naturally, the official binding bracelets of Michael's House for Boys, available in a variety of colors and materials, for no extra cost."

Janus said nothing; he was busy trying to swallow back the sickness in this throat.

"This much the patron has paid for," Michael continued. "But he has not paid to gag me, for the simple reason that the whoremaster of this house will not allow such a procedure to take place. The patron has taken me by surprise, though; now I am gagged, and I know that, if I let the patron succeed with this, worse will follow. I am gagged; I am bound; what do I do?"

Janus, swallowing and swallowing again, said nothing. Then he noticed that Michael's right hand, its wrist caught in an invisible bond, was groping for something behind the scarves in the corner of the room, which was within reach. Janus walked over and was just in time to see Michael tug at a bell-rope hidden under the scarves; the rope had been strung to run the full length of headboard. A bell rang faintly outside the room, back in Michael's office.

"And in one minute's time," Michael concluded, rising from the bed, "the patron will be confronted by two very angry men, who will escort him from the premises, confiscate his damages deposit, and make clear to him that he is no longer welcome at this establishment."

Janus looked again at the lifeline to safety. "It's going to take a lot of money to buy enough scarves to hide all those bell-ropes," he said. "I don't know whether we'll have enough money left over to decorate the courtyard."

"Let the courtyard wait," Michael responded tersely. "Outram has the most beautiful foyer of any house in the city: gilded statues, soft cushions on imported chairs . . . The room I lived in was a hovel, not fit for a rat's residence. That's the way it is in all of the houses of pleasure in this city: the money is spent on the patrons' areas, and the boys must shiver in dank, unheated cells. Well, not here. Here the boys come first, and the patrons will have to learn to accept that, or they can take their business elsewhere."

Janus stood silent a moment, his sickness forgotten. In the afternoon light, Michael's white outfit had turned golden.

"Michael," Janus said quietly, "there are times when I wonder what mindlessness caused me to choose you as my friend. Then you say something like that, and I remember."

Michael did not smile. He never smiled. But he looked at Janus with intensity for a long moment; then he guided Janus out of the room with a hand on his shoulder.

The other hand clutched his crop.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Rain rang like chimes at the bottom of barrels scattered throughout the courtyard. The rain could not be seen in the night-black courtyard, any more than Michael and Janus had seen the holes in the skylight that allowed the rain to pour down into their new home. The rain could only be known through the sound of steady chimes, just as the gods could only be known through their effects on the world of men and women.

Janus hurried through the courtyard, avoiding the barrels by the sound of the rain pouring into them, as he wiped soot onto the workman's apron he wore. He had spent the evening alternating between emptying water-filled barrels into the fountain and trying to make the antique wood-stove in the kitchen accept the foreign presence of coal. He thought longingly of the gas stove he had left behind in his family's kitchen.

"It's no good," he announced. "We're going to have to fuel the stove with wood – as well as every blasted hearth in this house. Why we bought a house without modern heating—"

He stopped. Michael, dressed in his white jacket against the evening cool, was sitting in the only pool of light in the courtyard. Since they had not yet been able to afford to install gas-pipes, they were still using the old-fashioned oil-lamps that hung from the columns in the courtyard. Using them sparingly – oil cost money.

Michael leaned forward to pick up what looked like a small money-pouch such as some of the older men still hung from their belts. As Janus watched, Michael filled the pouch with objects from the three piles in front of him: a handkerchief, a small glass bottle containing a thick liquid, and what appeared to be the cut-off thumb of a large glove.

Janus knelt down to feel the glove-thumb; it was made of some sort of thin material, barely as wide as a hair's width, and it had ribbons to tie it shut. "Michael," he said, "What is—?"

He looked up to see Michael's eyes dancing in the oil-light. After a moment without comprehension, Janus hastily dropped the sheath back into the pile. Putting aside a filled pouch, Michael reached for an empty one at his side and said, "Complimentary gifts for the patrons. They'll have to come under the heading of daily expenses, I'm afraid. They're unavoidable— Well, no, actually they're avoidable. Outram prided himself on owning one of the few establishments to provide such luxuries, which is why I have grown to adulthood without having my spine cave in or my face eaten away." Michael put another pouch aside and said, "The handkerchief is my little touch. I grew tired of always having my bed-sheets sticky afterwards."

Janus took another look at the pouches, calculated numbers in his mind, and sighed. "How are we going to pay for all this? We barely have enough money in our budget to feed and clothe the boys. I don't know where we're going to find the money for fuel. And now this. . . ."

"The boys will bring in the money," Michael said in a cool voice. "That's what they're here for."

"What boys? We don't have a single boy working here yet."

Michael raised his face. In the darkness of the courtyard, his brown eyes were as sable as dead coals. "Don't remind me of that," he said softly, "or I'll remind you of why we don't have any boys. If you're worried about our lack of staff, you can easily cure that by raising some of the restrictions you've placed upon me."

Janus said nothing, and after a moment Michael turned his attention back to the pouches. Outside the house, beyond the endless trickle of rain, came the sound of singing and crashes and squeals and, every so often, screams. Not even the rain had subdued the usual cacophony that Janus had come to realize was a nightly ritual in the Riverbend district. Having come from a neighborhood that was busy during the daytime and fell silent at night, Janus could not accustom himself to a place where the nighttime rang with sound, but the daytime was dangerously quiet.

Michael paused to stretch his legs, pushing aside the hunting crop on the ground beside him. He had carried it with him since it arrived, like a child clinging to his favorite toy. Perhaps he had always done so, when he was at his work. Janus felt again the bewildered anger of a man who thinks that he knows his friend, only to discover that he has befriended a stranger.

Michael squinted at a bottle he was holding up to the light. Evidently satisfied by his inspection, he placed it in the pouch, saying, "We'll find the money somewhere."

There was a slight shuffle behind Janus, and suddenly Michael was on his feet, his hand hard on the handle of his crop, which twitched like a living beast. Janus, after a stunned moment, stumbled to his feet and turned round.

A figure stood in the half-light just beyond the lamp. As the figure stepped forward, Janus saw with relief that it was a bare-footed boy. He looked to be a year or two younger than the boy that Michael had interviewed upon the porch, though it was hard to tell, for his wet jacket and knickers were plastered tight against his skin, giving him an odd appearance in the lamplight.

Michael's eyes travelled over the boy. "You've come for a job?"

The boy nodded. Like most of the people in the Riverbend district, he looked to have foreign blood in him – perhaps from one of the countries to the east, judging from the paleness of his complexion. His hair, though, was native brown, and the broadness of his facial features suggested that at least one of his parents hailed from the rural reaches of the south.

"You Michael?" he asked.

Michael nodded and gestured toward Janus. "This is Mr. Janus Roe. Nephew to Lord Roe," he added.

Janus winced, but the boy seemed suitably impressed to be introduced to the nephew of the prime minister. "I caught tale you were hiring," he said to Michael. "I figured I might be able to help you. I guess you're having a hard time finding the right kind of boys."

"Mm." Michael's gaze skimmed the skin-tight clothes again, and Janus made an effort to try to see what Michael was seeing. He supposed the boy was good-looking – he had the hard muscles of a youth who was just entering the final years before manhood, and the combination of the high cheekbones and broad nose gave him an uncommon appearance. He was very handsome, Janus decided after a moment's consideration, and from his relaxed air he had confidence as well.

"You're in the trade?" Michael asked.

The boy shrugged. "Not official-like. I've not been trussed to a house, but I've made some private arrangements. Real private," he added, as if expecting that Michael would ask for references. "Lords and the like. I don't have mind Lord Roe was among them." He gave Janus a quick grin.

Michael nodded, as though satisfied. "Very well," he said. "Take your clothes off."

Janus's breath hissed in. His thoughts were arrested, though, by the look of alarm on the boy's face. "Hoi," the boy said, "I've not come here for that sort of squat. I told you, I'm here for a job."

"You said you're in the trade," Michael responded flatly. "You should be used to taking your clothes off. How am I supposed to tell whether you'd be suitable to work here if I can't see what you'd look like under working conditions?"

The boy shot a glance at Janus, who bit down on the words he had been about to whisper to Michael. After hesitating a second more, the boy shrugged and began peeling off his clothes. Janus, resisting an impulse to look away, spent another minute on difficult thought before deciding that the boy was as handsome without clothes as with clothes. He could have worked as a model in the art schools.

Clothes off, the boy stood stiffly at attention like a schoolboy having his uniform inspected by his schoolmaster. Michael, tapping his crop contemplatively against his thigh, circled around him, his eyes travelling slowly over the youthful perfection. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned away, and the boy relaxed.

And at that moment, with his eyes still turned away from the boy, Michael's hand shot out. Janus was too taken aback to move, but the boy made a high-pitched sound and jerked his groin back, his hands flying belatedly to protect himself.

Michael did not turn round. "Get clothed," he said in a voice as cold as winter rain. "And get out."

For a moment, the boy stared; then his expression darkened. "Why?" he asked. "'Cause I wouldn't let you grope my baubles?"

"Because you lied to me. If you were in the trade, a simple touch wouldn't make you squeal like a virgin. Get out of my house; I have no jobs here for liars."

Slowly the boy put on his wet clothes, his eye upon Michael, who had gone over to the lamp and had opened the glass to inspect the flame there. The boy took a step back, then looked over at Janus.

Forcing himself out of his paralysis, Janus jerked his head toward Michael and gave the boy an encouraging expression. The boy's face cleared. He took a deep breath and then said in a sulky voice, "All right, I lied."

Michael turned round, but he did not say anything; he simply looked down at the boy like a disapproving schoolmaster. The boy shrank into himself at the gaze, and his eyes travelled down to the crop, which Michael was still beating lightly against his thigh.

The boy sounded considerably less sulky when he spoke next. "Regrets to you. I was figuring you wouldn't take me 'less I had experience. I shouldn't have gone and lied."

"Never lie to me," Michael replied in the same cold voice as before. "There are houses where a whore must lie to his master to keep alive, but this isn't one of them. I treat my boys fairly, and I expect honesty in return."

The boy nodded, shifting from one foot to another, as though silence was not his normal mode of response. Michael said, "You're a virgin?"

The boy flinched, as though Michael had accused him of a death crime. "Of a sorts," he said, his voice threatening to turn sulky once more. "I've been with girls. Just not that much. I didn't want to make a baby and have to marry them."

"Good." Michael's voice suddenly lost its frigidity. "Common sense is vital in this trade."

The boy's face brightened. "Then you'll take me?"

Michael ignored the question. "What's your name?"

"Wyll. Wyll Hicks."

"You're sixteen?"

The boy seemed chagrined to have his age guessed so easily; he nodded.

"Then I assume you have a note from your parents."

The boy fished into his jacket and pulled out a packet wrapped in brown paper that was only half soaked.

Janus came over to stand beside Michael as he untied the string binding the package. Michael glanced at the letter inside, and then burst out laughing.

Janus took the letter from him, marvelling as he did so at Michael's ability to laugh without smiling. He looked down at the paper. It had a certifier's seal at the bottom of the page, swearing that the message above came from Eb Hicks, father of Wyll Hicks.

The message itself was quite short: "For Mercys saek, yes, maek him a hore. Anything to keap him out of troubl."

Janus looked over at Wyll and saw that he was grinning sheepishly. Michael, reaching the end of his laughter, said, "It sounds as if your father is eager to be rid of you."

Wyll shrugged. "Not really. He just thinks that, since I've left school, I ought to be apprenticed. He said I could choose which trade to work in. So I snagged this one."

Michael folded up the letter and pocketed it. "Why this one?"

"Making a bunch of old men spurt their whammers?" Tossing his head, Wyll snorted. "I could do that in my sleep. . . . The girls were liking what I did to them."

"That is recommendation indeed," Michael said dryly, and a tinge of pink appeared in the boy's face. Michael added, "Very well, so you want to be a whore. Let me tell you what your duties will entail. You will be on-duty each day from three of the afternoon until three of the morning – till dawn on the days when a patron pays extra to have you overnight."

His gaze narrowed upon the boy, but Wyll simply shrugged again. "My dad has worse hours."

Michael nodded. "Twelve to fifteen hours a day, but only part of the time will be spent with patrons. As you may have surmised, we are short of staff at the moment. Until we can afford to hire help, the boys of this house will do all the necessary chores: carrying fuel, taking turns helping Mr. Roe in the kitchen, and anything else that I tell you to do."

This brought nothing but another shrug from Wyll. Janus, who was struggling to hide from his face how appalling he found Michael's recital, thought ruefully to himself that his own father, who often spoke of the laziness of the common class, ought to be witnessing Wyll's matter-of-fact acceptance of these duties.

Michael paused, and then added, as though reaching the climax of his speech, "And three hours of school-lessons each day."

Wyll's mouth dropped open. "Now, hold back," he said when he had retrieved his breath. "I don't need any of that mind-grind. I got my certificate last year for early school-leaving."

"This is a high-quality house, Master Wyll," Michael said firmly. "We offer high-quality boys to our patrons: boys who are versed in culture, who know the arts and sciences, who can make intelligent conversation. Not boys who disdain the benefits of an education."

A battle took place upon Wyll's face; Janus could fairly see the war balloons being raised into position. Then the side of truthfulness won, and Wyll said, in a voice that grudged the victory, "I'm not sure my old school will take me back. When I left, I . . . Well, I gave tale to the schoolmasters what I had mind of them."

Janus quickly bit back a laugh that threatened to explode from him. Michael, better controlled, did not so much as twitch a lip as he said, "Your lessons will be with Mr. Roe and will be scattered throughout the day, in conformity with your schedule with the patrons. Mr. Roe will create a lesson plan that is in keeping with your particular skills and takes into account your interests."

Wyll nodded slowly as Janus tried to think of where he could obtain copies of the ancient erotic plays for the boy to translate. "Right," said the boy. "That's what I'm doing. What do I draw back?"

He spoke belligerently, as if expecting to be attacked, but Michael merely said, "Room and board. Uniforms each year – you won't have any need for civilian clothes. Two hours of leisure each day—" Wyll's eyes widened. "Two days off each month to visit your family. Half days on feast days, to allow you to visit temple and to attend this house's festivities, should you wish. Oh, and you keep ten percent of your earnings," Michael added, as though remembering a less important item.

Wyll's eyes went in an instant from orbs to slits. "I never caught tale of any house paying its boys."

"We are different from other houses," Michael said flatly. "Now, as to your contract . . . You're still of apprentice age, so the initial contract will only last until your seventeenth birthday. At that point, you can decide whether you wish to enter into journeyman work here or whether you wish to take up a new trade. If you decide to stay, your second contract will bind you to work here until you are twenty-one. At that time, you will receive certification from me that you have completed your journeyman's work as a whore." Michael's voice turned dry again. "Given that such work only qualifies you to become a whoremaster, you would be wise to save most of your earnings. If you're frugal, you'll save enough to go into partnership with someone in another trade. Mr. Roe will also provide certification that you have not only finished your upper-school education but have also received private tutoring during your university years. I trust that you realize how much it would cost you to pay for such tutoring."

The boy did not seem impressed by this aspect of the matter. "What about a finder's fee?" he replied. "My dad said to ask about that."

"No finder's fee." Michael's tone held no room for negotiation. "I don't buy boys. If you wish, you can save some of your earnings and give the money to your family. That would be well above any finder's fee your family would receive from another house. . . . Well? Do you wish to work here, or should I give you the addresses of the other pleasure houses in the city?"

The boy chewed on his lip a while as water dripped from his hair, trailing its way down his face. Then he shrugged. "Sounds fair. When do I start the first act?"

"When I decide whether you are suitable for this job," Michael replied. "Oh, and one more thing, Master Wyll. This is more important than any other information I will give you. Mr. Roe."

Wyll glanced at Janus, who smiled at him. "Aye?" said the boy.

"He is my conscience. If you should ever believe that I have mistreated you in any way, go to Mr. Roe, and he will attend to the matter. I underline that, Master Wyll. I will endeavor to meet the terms of your contract, but I am not a good man, and only Mr. Roe has the ability to force me to act as though I were." His crop tapped against his thigh, harder than before.

Wyll looked from the crop to Michael's expressionless face, then back down at the crop. He swallowed. "Right. I'll mind that. So what do I got to do to get hired?"

"I will need to test you," Michael said. "Go into that room, please." He pointed to the door immediately behind him. "Wait in there for me. And take off your clothes," he added.

The boy opened his mouth, closed it, and shot a glance at Janus. Janus was not sure what expression his face held, but evidently the boy was reassured by it, for he walked past Michael with a bit of a swagger, as if he had already been approved for the position of whore.

Janus waited until the door was closed before he asked in an urgent whisper, "Michael, do you know what you're doing?"

"Of course I know what I'm doing." As he spoke, Michael took off his jacket, hung it from a lamp hook on a nearby column, and then picked up the crop he had laid aside momentarily. Turning toward the door, he said, "I'm going to make the boy kneel down and take me in his mouth."

Then he was gone.

Michael slipped out of the room, closed the door behind him, took his handkerchief from the left pocket of his trousers, wiped his hunting crop clean, and placed his crop under his arm before reaching down to buckle his belt.

"What are you doing?" hissed Janus.

He had spent the past two hours pacing up and down in the courtyard, trying to ignore the occasional cracking sounds he heard emerging from behind the shut door, and swearing to himself that if the boy started screaming, he'd interfere. And hating himself for not having interfered yet.

Michael looked up. In the moon-glow pouring through the skylight, his face was as white as a foreigner's, and his dark eyes had turned silver. "I'm letting him sleep here overnight," he replied. "He passed the test."

For a moment Janus was speechless; then he banged his fist down on the crumbling dolphin-boy he stood beside. Chips of loose stone scattered into the empty fountain. "Michael, this is not what I came for! I came here to give you a chance to help boys, not rape them!"

Michael took his crop out from under his arm, inspected it in the moonlight again, and then rubbed his finger over a remaining spot. "Janus," he said, his voice mild, "the boy wants to be a whore. Sooner or later he's going to have to kneel down to a man. Would you rather that his first time be with a patron who has no thought but for his own pleasure, or with someone who can teach him how to do it as safely and painlessly as possible?"

Janus was still a moment. With the rain gone and the night far spent, the Riverbend district had settled down to as much silence as could be found here after dark. Other than a faint singing in the distance and an occasional cry of pain or joy, no sound could be heard that was louder than the water dripping from the trees outside.

"Is that why you did it?" Janus asked. "To train him?"

"Among other reasons." Finally satisfied with his crop, Michael let his palm curl around the handle as he walked forward, the crop tapping lightly against his thigh once more. "I needed to determine whether, beyond all his boasts, he was capable of carrying through with the act, and if so, where his tastes lay, so that I could assign the right sorts of patrons to him."

Janus suspected that he would regret asking the question, but he said, "What are his tastes?"

"He likes to be in charge." Michael pulled down his jacket from the hook where he had left it. "As I'd already guessed. So I taught him a new way to be in charge." Laying his crop aside on one of the tables, he began to put his jacket back on.

Watching him do so, Janus said, "Michael . . . you didn't . . . "

"Well, how else was I to train him?" The jacket brushed over the front of Michael's jersey, and he winced. "The boy needs to work on his aim," he added.

Janus watched as Michael picked up his crop from the table, tapped it upon the wood as though in absence of mind, then cast a blow onto the table with such force that the wood shivered. Janus shivered too. Michael glanced over at him and said, "My apologies. Old habits die hard."

"Is something the matter?" Janus asked. "You've been quiet all day, ever since you returned from fighting with the local merchants."

"A lost battle from the start," replied Michael. "No respectable Riverbend merchant would deliver to a pleasure house, and the unrespectable ones charge too much." He let the crop's tail trail over where he had struck before, then reached out to run his finger firmly through the mark he had made. Janus could almost see the wood shudder again.

"The city's newsie-boys are proclaiming a knifing, a stabbing, and the abduction of three young women, presumably by whoremasters who will keep the women for their own private pleasure for a week or two before offering them up to the market," Michael said. "Or so the newsie-boys claimed; I didn't read the articles myself. I was too busy absorbing more important bits of news. One is that the city has rejected our application to be a municipal whorehouse. That means we'll have to pay the patrol soldiers' protection fees out of our own pockets."

Janus groaned as he sat down on one of the few parts of the fountain basin's lip that could support a man's weight. "And the other news?"

"Outram and the other whoremasters have discovered our plans. They've put out the word: no boy who offers his services to us will ever work in the trade again. So if our business fails, our boys will be forced to peddle their bodies in the alleyways. That's threat enough to keep any experienced whore from seeking a job here." He ground his knuckles into the mark on the table before slowly drawing his fingernails along the line. Without looking up, he added, "I vow to you, Janus, when I saw that boy standing before us, I thought he'd been sent by Mercy herself."

Janus watched Michael place the point of the crop against the wood and begin to twist it slowly and methodically into the mark. He was thinking of the care Michael had taken to warn Wyll of the heaviness of his duties, and of how Michael had been prepared to send Wyll away rather than hire an unrepentant liar.

"Michael, I'm sorry," he said finally, awkwardly. "I didn't understand."

Michael drew away from the mark, examined with narrowed eyes the manner in which he had increased the gouge in the wood, and then came over to stand beside Janus. His right hand still gripped the crop; his left hand he rested upon Janus's shoulder. "Janus," he said, "I know how high your dreams are. You want to rid the world of whoring – to ensure that no man ever takes another being to bed, unless it be his properly contracted wife. You want all the boys to be in school, wearing uniforms and thinking pure thoughts." He stared down at Janus with intensity for a moment as Janus felt his face grow warm with embarrassment at his friend's gaze. Michael added softly, "That's why I've always wanted you as my friend – because you dream high. As for myself . . . Hasan once told Thaw that my dreams were no higher than the earth below my feet."

"Hasan? Thaw?"

"Boys at Outram's. I think I've mentioned them before."

Janus nodded. Every now and then Michael had let drop the names of his fellow prostitutes – empty names, with no stories behind them. "Those were unkind words," Janus said.

"They're accurate words. My dreams are ground-level, practical. I don't believe I can change the world. Some men will always want to bed boys, and some boys will always want to be bedded by men – or will have been forcibly bedded and have lost the opportunity for a pure life. The best I can do is see that the boys who are bedded are treated with as much care and respect as is possible under the circumstances. I may not be able to rid the world of whorehouses" – Michael's voice turned grim – "but I can rid the world of places like Outram's, by offering better competition."

"Hasan is right," said Janus. "Your dreams are too low."

He thought Michael might have smiled, if he were the sort who smiled. "Maybe so," said the practical whoremaster, "but until you can show me a world where jaded ex-whores live happily in orphanages and boy-drawn men avoid their beds, I'll stick with my ground-level plan."

Janus sighed and rose to his feet, feeling the weariness of the day descend upon him. "So we have our first boy," he said. "What do we do now?"

Michael's gaze travelled up to where the moon was beginning to pass beyond the skylight. "Now," he said, "we advertise."

Theater Avenue was located immediately adjacent to the Parkside district – no coincidence, for back in the golden age of stage, theaters had been built as extensions of temples, so that respectable Parkside residents, after visiting the temples, would proceed directly to a sacred performance.

Now the temples had moved to other parts of the city, and the theaters had fallen upon hard times: their avenue, which had once shone with gilded doorways and shop windows displaying jewelled reproductions of stages, was now littered with ale-stands and whorehouses.

Yet the Parkside residents continued to flock to Theater Avenue each evening. Not for the theaters, but for the whorehouses.

In Outram's House of Women and Boys, a large crowd had gathered in the garden foyer that made up the lower floor of the house. Men lounged on wicker chairs, usually with a glass of champagne in one hand and a scantily dressed woman or boy on their lap. In some cases, the whore had made it as far as the floor, between the patron's knees. A string sextet played in the background, marking this as an establishment for men of refined tastes.

At the desk of the proprietor, though, a scene was developing that looked as stormy as an ale-stand brawl.

"What do you mean, I can't state my business to you in private?" shouted a patron. "This is a disgrace!"

Several of the men in the courtyard turned their heads in idle curiosity. The gentleman speaking – judging from the quality of his clothes, there could be no question that he was a gentleman – had hair sleeked down with oil and a mustache whose ends had been carefully oiled and curled upwards. He was holding his gloves and top-hat in one hand and his gold-handled walking stick in another.

Outram, casting an uneasy glance at his audience, said in a low voice, "I regret, sir, that I have no private office in which to receive you. However, if you would like to make a special appointment, I can arrange—"

"Outrageous!" roared the gentleman, apparently oblivious to the fact that his performance was failing to win him the privacy he desired. "No business worth its name should require a gentleman to take special steps in order to secure discreet service. Why, I would never have to go through all this rigamarole at Michael's House."

Several of the men who had been ignoring the commotion turned their heads abruptly. Outram quickly stood and said in a low voice, "Quite right, sir; I well deserve your chastisement. If you will just come this way, I will—"

"Showed me straight into his private office, Michael did," the gentleman announced in a loud voice. "Not a single person saw me enter or leave. And as for the boy—"

"Sir, this really isn't the proper place to discuss—"

"Discretion itself!" roared the gentleman. "All of Michael's boys are trained that way! Michael would cut their throats if they gossiped about their patrons. I tell you, man, you offer shabby service in comparison with Michael – shabby! I've a good mind to take my business to Michael from now on." He spun on his heel, and with a refined click of the walking stick on the floor, made his way to the door, his face filled with indignation.

Outram seemed inclined at first to follow, but evidently decided that this would only prolong the public discussion. He cast an apologetic glance at the patrons in the foyer, who had become rapt to a man at the performance. Then he emitted a light groan as the gentleman, apparently fearing that his message had not been fully received, turned in the doorway and shouted in a voice that carried to the top floors of the establishment: "And Michael's boys are clean!"

Then he left, slamming the door behind him, as the men in the foyer began to lean toward each other and murmur together. Outram slid down into his seat, his hands shaking.

Outside, the indignant gentleman showed no inclination to return to the scene of his performance. Pausing only long enough to pull on his hat and gloves, he turned round the corner. As he did so, he narrowly missed being punctured by the point of a parasol that was about to be opened by a lady who had just emerged with her escort and chaperone from one of the few remaining respectable theaters on the avenue. The gentleman tipped his hat to the lady, and then stepped off the sidewalk, curved his path round a trolley car humming its way down the street, and crossed to the small park on the other side of the road.

This was filled, for the most part, with female whores plying their trade and, incongruously, rich couples strolling under the newly lit gas-lamps as though the neighborhood was still what it had been a century before. A band was busy packing up its equipment; the gazebo now lay deserted but for a single figure, standing in the shadows with his back to the avenue.

The gentleman made his way past the departing band members, who obligingly cleared the path for one of their betters. Then he walked up the steps, leaning heavily on the walking stick as he did so. The redness in his face had not yet receded.

The figure in the shadows turned. "Well?"

Janus covered his face with his free hand, feeling the warmth of his embarrassment radiate through his calfskin gloves onto his palms. "Michael, that was the most humiliating act I've ever undertaken."

"Nonsense," said Michael in a cheerful voice. "Acting is a sacred art – didn't you know that?"

"If one of my parents' friends saw me there and thought I was trying to buy a boy—"

"Then your parents' friend would probably ask your advice as to which boy he should hire for the night. Besides, would you rather the patrons knew that you're part owner to a whorehouse?"

Janus groaned into his hand. He could feel sweat tickling the skin under his mustache, and his other hand was growing slick upon the gold-tipped walking stick that his father had given him upon his twenty-first birthday the previous spring. His parents, being of too old a lineage to take notice of passing fashions, still attended the theater after temple each week-break. If they had seen him leave Outram's . . .

"So how did your play perform? . . . Ah, it seems to have performed well."

Janus removed his hand from his face in time to see Michael turn his back swiftly, step over to the edge of the gazebo, and begin inspecting the roses that twined their way up to the roof. Janus looked round and saw that a middle-aged gentleman, walking stick in hand, was puffing his way across the park, in evident pursuit. Janus quickly took a step down from the gazebo, so that it would not be so clear that he was associated with the man behind him, oddly garbed in white.

"Sir!" said the new gentleman between heavy breaths. "Sir, forgive me for impinging on your privacy, but I could not help but overhear what you said in . . ahem . . the establishment you just left. Am I to understand from your words that Michael – the famous Michael – has opened a house?"

Janus felt an evil delight enter into him. Such a delight rarely came to him, but he could not resist surrendering to it on this occasion. "Certainly," he said, taking several steps backwards onto the gazebo. "And here is the proprietor himself. You may ask him any questions you like."

He pulled Michael round to face the gentleman. Michael gave Janus one of his expressionless looks, which usually meant that trouble would follow. Then he turned his attention to the staring gentleman.

"Good evening, sir," he said, tipping his hat, which was white but was otherwise a conventional commoners' cap. "I was just returning from the theater when I met Mr. Roe here, who told me that he has been recommending my establishment to others. Indeed, Mr. Roe is so impressed with my house that he has expressed interest in entering into partnership with me. Naturally, I am flattered that he was so pleased by my boys' service."

The gentleman was still gaping. "Michael? Michael the Whore?" He took several steps forward and, without warning, grasped Michael's arms.

Janus looked quickly at Michael, expecting him to attempt to free himself or at least to grow rigid. But Michael did not flinch in any way; it was as if he was used to being unexpectedly grabbed by strangers.

At that thought, Janus felt his stomach churn.

After a moment, Michael quietly extracted himself and held out his arm, as though the gentleman had offered the more conventional greeting. At this, the gentleman's expression turned to delight.

"By the gods, it is you!" he exclaimed, ignoring the proffered arm. "How you've grown! Surely you remember me, Michael?"

"Certainly," said Michael smoothly, as he unobtrusively stepped back so that he would be out of reach of the gentleman. "But some of the gentleman I have met over the years prefer that I not acknowledge our previous acquaintance, should we meet in public."

The gentleman chuckled, tapping his stick upon the wooden floor of the gazebo as if applauding Michael's performance. "Ah, you were always a boy for discretion. No matter how much I cajoled you, you'd never tell who your other patrons were or what you'd done for them. And now you've made that famous discretion into a business asset, eh? Tell me, where is your house located?"

"At Riverbend Hill, sir, in the old Skylight Mansion."

The gentleman frowned, swatting away a mosquito that was hovering near him. "The Riverbend district? Why there, for Mercy's sake? It's a hellish place, boy, a hellish place."

Janus winced at the intimacy of the man's address, but Michael simply replied, "It is part of the service offered to the patrons of Michael's House for Boys. Look about you, sir. See all the people who gather on this avenue. Why, your own wife's mother might see you entering a house of pleasure, and if she did, what then?"

"Knowing my wife's mother, she'd probably ask me which boys were best, so that she could sample them herself." The gentleman chuckled at his own wit. "Well, well, I can see that some men might consider the location worth the inconvenience. Michael's House for Boys, eh? Sounds like an orphanage to me. Don't you have any women at your establishment?"

"I'm afraid not, sir." Michael was standing utterly motionless, his face blank in the manner it often was when he spoke to strangers. He was ignoring the mosquito nibbling at a vein in his neck. "I decided to specialize, believing that I could offer my patrons the best quality service that way."

"Tsk, tsk, a pity. My tastes run to women these days. Still, I have friends who might be interested in your place – if they should happen to find themselves in that part of the city." His tone implied the unlikelihood of this. "I'll mention it to them, should the subject come up. Good day, sir." He tipped his hat to Janus, who returned the gesture; then he stepped forward and slapped Michael on the thigh, saying, "Good to see you taking on a man's responsibilities, Michael! I was sorry to hear that you'd retired but . . . Ah, well, the joys of youth don't last forever, do they? Sooner or later you have to give up such sweets."

"To my bitter regret, sir." Michael's voice was toneless, and his expression remained empty as he watched the gentleman depart from the park, stopping on the sidewalk to talk to one of the half-dressed young women.

Janus decided that this was a proper occasion to borrow one of Michael's curses. He did so, eliciting a mirthless chuckle from Michael.

"That, dear Janus, is what we call in the trade 'a better-class patron.' He's the sort whose business we will be encouraging." Seeing Janus's horrified look, Michael added, "He doesn't deliberately bruise boys, he doesn't batter their faces, and he tips well."

"And he's interested in women these days."

Michael shrugged. "There will be others. We'll find them at the other twenty whorehouses you visit tonight. I think at the next house you should emphasize the beauty of the view from Riverbend Hill. The spread of the landscape, the sparkling water . . ."

"Twenty more houses!" Janus's eyes widened with renewed horror.

Michael took hold of Janus's arm and steered him out of the gazebo. "That's all we'll have time for tonight. Be at peace, Mr. Roe – acting is a sacred art. Or so I've always told myself when a patron touched me."

His voice went toneless again. Janus, glancing at him, shut his mouth upon all further protests at his own duties.
 

CHAPTER THREE

"Rack me for eternity, Michael – I didn't snag here to be a delivery boy!" Wyll placed his arms across his chest, which was puffed out like a soldier's.

"You signed up to do what I tell you," Michael replied, with no sign of anger or any other emotion. "If I tell you to fetch groceries, you fetch groceries; if I tell you to lick a patron's whammer, you lick his whammer; and if I tell you to prepare yourself for the Deep Dive, you trot up to your bed to do so. Would you prefer that I give the latter order?"

Wyll's chest sunk; his hands fell to his sides. Feeling uneasy, even though he had no idea what threat had just been made, Janus said quickly, "The grocer's shop is on Theater Avenue."

Wyll brightened. Michael said firmly, "Don't linger there. Here is a list of the supplies we need." He handed Wyll the note. "And close your cloak, Master Wyll. That's what it's there for."

Wyll looked down at the scarlet cloak, and at the skin-tight scarlet suit beneath it. "Why? I had mind these clothes were to show me off." He jutted out his chest again, then experimented with jutting out the lower half of his body.

"Only to those who are willing to pay for you." Michael reached over and pulled the cloak closed. "Now listen to me: Take the King's Road to the bridge, and don't make any detours. Don't let anyone approach you whom you don't know well, and even if you know them well, stay an arm's length from them. There are soldiers' outposts every two hundred yards on the King's Road – we pay the soldiers for their protection, so don't hesitate to call for help if you need it."

Wyll looked considerably less eager than before. He pulled his cloak tight as he disappeared out the kitchen door to the alley that led to the main road through the capital.

Watching him hurry along the junk-filled path, Janus asked, "Do you really think he'll encounter trouble?"

"Most likely. If we had more than one boy, I'd send them out in pairs." Michael closed the door, gave a disgusted look at the stove that was defying all their efforts to bring it back to life, and led the way back to the courtyard.

Once they had reached their destination, Janus leaned wearily against a table. The ground below him was wet: they had finally figured out how to make the fountain work that afternoon, only to discover that its drain was clogged and that the dolphin-boys, once they started spurting from artfully hidden crevices, did not know how to stop.

"Like Wyll," Michael had commented, earning himself a black look from Janus.

Now Michael laid down his crop and sat on the fountain edge, stretching out his long legs and saying, "Nobody warned me that scolding was so great a part of whoremastering."

"It's part of being a teacher," replied Janus.

"You would know. Speaking of which, what is this?" Michael plucked a piece of paper out of his pocket and held it up for inspection. The gold seal upon it glittered in the late afternoon light.

Janus pulled himself upright, staring with disbelief at the paper. "Michael, have you been searching my room?"

"I've been searching all the rooms, to be sure we sealed up every mouse-hole. You should have picked a less obvious place to hide this than under your bed."

"It's nothing."

Michael glanced at the letter. "'Royal tutor.' 'By request of His Majesty, at the recommendation of your uncle.' It certainly sounds like something."

"It's a bribe."

"Of course it's a bribe. It's a handsome bribe. Why aren't you taking it?"

Janus sighed, reached over to pull the letter from Michael's hand, and tore the note into pieces. "Why aren't you still selling yourself, Michael? Even at your age, I'd bargain that men like that patron we met earlier this week would gladly pay for your services."

Michael raised his eyebrows. "That's not the same."

"Of course it's the same. My father, having failed through all other methods to break me away from highly unsuitable company, is offering me the biggest bribe he can produce. The letter doesn't actually say, 'If you take this job, you will never see Michael again,' but you know how unlikely it is that His Majesty and my uncle the prime minister would allow the royal tutor to spend his free evenings visiting the proprietor of a house of prostitution." Janus tossed the letter fragments into the fountain, saying, "I know what riches I value most, Michael, and I'm not prepared to give them up for a royal job."

Michael's eyes danced in the light. "You'll clog the drain again."

"You'll have to clear it. I'll be in the back, trying to get our stove to work."

He turned, but at that moment he noticed a figure standing in the doorway to the entrance hall. A small figure. For a second his heart thumped.

Then he realized that the figure was much too small. He let out his breath with relief. The boy was dressed in shabby but sober-colored clothes; he was looking uncertainly at the courtyard, bewildered innocence written upon his face. The grocer's delivery boy, no doubt. Janus decided that Michael had done too good a job at convincing the Theater Avenue grocer that the Riverbend district was so safe that an innocent virgin could walk there unescorted.

The boy's eyes fell upon Michael and Janus, and he took a step backwards. His eyes were wide in his face, which was so white as to look sickly. His hair was equally pale in color. "Mr. Michael?" he said.

Something seemed odd about his speech, but he had spoken so softly that Janus could not identify the oddity. Michael, without moving from his place, said, "I am Michael. What may I do for you?"

For a moment more, the boy stood motionless in the doorway, as though inspecting Michael's face for the truth of his statement. Then, without pause, he walked forward and kissed Michael on the mouth.

Michael accepted the kiss without resistance, then swiftly pulled the boy onto his lap. He gave Janus his blank look of warning, and Janus shut his mouth against the protest that had jumped into his throat.

Michael looked down at the boy. "You live on the streets?"

The boy nodded. His gaze was fixed upon Michael's face, as if he were reading a script.

"With the help of patrons?"

The boy's forehead creased with puzzlement, and Michael clarified: "Men who give you money if you do service for them."

The boy's gaze suddenly slid away. He stared down at his boots, which were held intact through twine. Janus realized then that the boy was wearing the tattered remnants of a school uniform.

"Just food," the boy said softly. "I don't ask for money."

And as he spoke in his odd manner, everything became clear to Janus.

Lann had no memory of Yclau. His parents had emigrated to Vovim when he was two, seeking work in Yclau's newly industrialized western neighbor. The family would have been best off settling in one of the manufactory towns of east Vovim, where Yclau enclaves were numerous. Instead, they made their home in the Riverbend district of Vovim's capital.

Their neighborhood was made up mainly of fellow immigrants, but none of the neighbors were Yclau, and they were rough-mannered enough to alarm Lann's mother. She escorted Lann each day to and from school and encouraged him to play with his younger brother and sister rather than be sucked into one of the neighborhood street gangs. She and Lann's father led a quiet life that was centered, in the Yclau manner, upon their work.

Then, one summer day when Lann was eleven, he arrived home from school to find his house boarded up, with soldiers guarding the door. The river plague, which was decimating the Riverbend district that year, had appeared with frightening suddenness in Lann's family. His father had arrived home early from work, feeling ill, and when the healer was called, he promptly alerted the authorities, who quarantined the whole family.

This Lann learned from overhearing the gossip passed by neighbors standing in front of the house. One of Lann's schoolmates, seeing him, warned him not to tell the soldiers who he was, lest he be quarantined too and die of the plague alongside his family. To Lann, shivering with concern for his parents and siblings, this did not seem so terrible a fate, but when he sneaked to the back of the house and called softly to his family through the boarded window there, his mother told him that his father was already dead. She begged him to stay away from the house.

He followed his mother's wishes. The schoolmate's father gave him a corner of their tenement to sleep in, though it was clear that this could only be a temporary arrangement: the tenement, like most Riverbend residences, was perilously overcrowded, and the family dwelled close to starvation. During the nights, Lann slept amidst the screams and curses in the tenement house; during the daytime he attended classes as usual. And on the fifth morning he visited his house, as he did every day, and saw that the boards had been removed from the windows and door. The soldiers were gone.

Lann's family was gone too. He never saw them again.

After a tearful day spent ascertaining that his mother and sister and brother were indeed dead, Lann asked the Riverbend district's municipal guild representative what he should do. The official was too harassed by concerns of the plague to worry about the fate of a single boy; he curtly advised Lann to contact his school for assistance.

Lann did so, and the school took due note that his parents would no longer be able to pay the minimal fees and that he therefore no longer qualified for their education. He was advised to go to a home for boys.

He tried a dozen orphanages during the following three days. In each case, the home for boys questioned him closely to determine that he was of respectable background and would not cause trouble among the other children. Then they told him they would place him on the waiting list. Thanks to the plague, the city's orphanages were overflowing and close to financial ruin. The few children they were still accepting were those who had sponsors, men and women who could not raise the children themselves but were willing to pay for the children's expenses.

Lann could no longer stay at his schoolmate's home: his schoolmate's mother had taken it into her head that Lann carried the plague and would kill all her children. He did not know any of his other neighbors well, and he had no idea what to do next.

As he was gazing around, with the bewilderment of a boy who has reached the limits of his knowledge, he noticed a man lounging by a nearby ale-stand, with mug in hand. The man seemed to have a kind face, so Lann went over to him, explained his dilemma, and asked whether he might stay with the man until he had found an orphanage that would accept him.

The man swallowed a long draft of ale before answering. "Perhaps," he said. "For one or two nights. I'd need payment, though."

And that was how Lann became a prostitute. Oddly enough, it was a relief to him to know that he could pay something in return for the hospitality he was given. He had been raised with the Yclau ethic that a person must work for life's goods, and he instinctively felt that he must do whatever labor he could to survive.

He knew enough to realize that he had thereby sent himself down to a lower order. He had become one of the class of people his parents had warned him against; even if he had possessed the money to do so, he could not have returned to school, having taken up such a trade. He ceased to search for orphanages – homes for respectable children – and instead depended on what he received from the men he approached. He chose them carefully, seeking the ones who had the kindest faces, and he found that his instinct rarely led him wrong. One man even kept him throughout the harsh winter that followed upon the plague summer. Lann began to hope that the man would care for him permanently, but when spring came, Lann was escorted to the door. He learned not to mistake interest in his services for interest in himself.

Gradually, he became aware of the presence of other boys who had taken the same path as himself, though he kept far away from them, guessing that they would dislike a competitor. Once one of the men who took him home informed him that there were houses specially designed for boys like him. His heart sprung upwards at the news – he was growing tired of sleeping half his nights in the open air, and winter was coming on again. But when he went to the house that the man had described, the scene in the foyer frightened him, and the man sitting behind the desk had a tight, mean face. So Lann went away and spent that winter trying to hold back death as he slept amidst the snowdrifts.

Then, on a day during the following summer, he overheard two fellow prostitutes talking about a new house of boys that had opened nearby. The whoremaster, they said, had been a famous whore himself and seemed determined to treat his boys better than whores were usually treated.

Lann decided to give the house a try. He would know whether it was the right place when he saw the whoremaster's face.

"Tell me about the men," said Michael.

Nothing had moved in the scene before Janus, other than the sun, which was now so low in the sky that shadows had gathered in the courtyard. Janus had lit a lamp quietly, apparently unnoticed by the boy, who was absorbed in his tale. Lann still sat on Michael's lap, and Michael had his arm loosely curled around his waist.

Lann looked at his boots again, wiggling his big toe through the hole in one of them. "What about them?" he asked softly.

"Tell me about your last patron. Where did you meet him?"

"At a fountain. You know the one near the rags manufactory?" As Michael nodded, Lann added, "It was hot, and I'd stopped to bathe myself. I only took off my shirt," he added hastily, as though fearing he had spoken of a shameless act. "I was just pouring the cup over my head when I saw that there was a man sitting nearby, on a tree stump. He was watching me. So I went over and kissed him. I told him I was hungry, and I asked him whether he'd take care of me."

"The direct approach," Michael murmured. "It often works. And then?"

"I don't think he liked me coming up to him like that. His eyes darted all round, like he was looking to see who was watching. After a moment he muttered, 'Not here,' and he got up and walked away. I guessed that he wanted me to follow him, so I did. I stayed at a distance, so that he wouldn't be embarrassed by having me near him in public."

He looked up at Michael, evidently seeking approval, and Michael nodded. Lann took a deep breath and said, "He lives in a nice house. He went inside, and the door wasn't locked, so I followed him. I looked for him in the parlor, but he wasn't there, and he wasn't in the dining room or kitchen either. So I went to the bedroom, and he was there, waiting for me. . . . He didn't say anything, and I didn't know what he wanted me to do, so I took off my clothes and lay down on his bed." A flush suddenly spread across the boy's cheeks, and he dipped his eyes, but Michael made no comment. Lann added, more softly, "He sat down on the bed beside me, but he didn't say anything – he just looked at me for a long time. Then he put his hand over mine and told me he loved me."

"I don't suppose," Janus said, "that his idea of love extended to feeding you."

Lann looked over at Janus with so startled an expression that it was clear he had forgotten Janus was there. After a moment he said, "I hoped he would afterwards. But he said his family was coming home, and I must leave. I said he could tell them I was an orphan boy he'd brought home to feed, but he just pushed me out the door."

Michael asked, "When did you last eat?"

Lann looked back at Michael. "The morning before last. The butcher on the King's Road had put out bits of meat that he carved off."

Michael's gaze travelled beyond Lann to Janus. Without a word, Janus spun on his heel and started into the entrance hall. Behind him, he heard Michael say, "I want you to tell me what the man had you do for him when you were in his bed."

It took longer than Janus had expected to prepare the food; he had forgotten that the only food in the house was not yet delivered. Yet he did not return to the courtyard in the meantime, for he had no wish to hear the rest of the boy's memories. He lingered in the kitchen, staring out the doorway at the befouled alley-path, so very different from the world he had lived in all his life.

When he finally returned to the courtyard, an hour later, the boy was still talking. Janus hesitated beside a column as he heard Michael say, "All right. I have some suggestions for you – would you like to hear them?"

Lann nodded. His face was thoroughly red by this time, and his hands were knotted together so tightly that his knuckles were moon-white. He was now sitting on the fountain edge rather than on Michael's lap, but Michael still had his arm around the boy.

"The last thing your patron did," Michael said. "You shouldn't have let him do that. Never let a patron do that to you unless you've agreed to it beforehand and he has paid extra for the privilege."

"They don't pay me." Lann's voice was barely above a whisper.

"That's your other mistake. They should always pay you, and you should get the money from them before they start. You work in a trade, and successful tradesmen don't work for barter."

Lann bowed his head, scuffing the thin soles of his boots upon the marble floor. "I don't think I could make them do that."

"Well," said Michael in a matter-of-fact manner, "it sounds as though you need someone to take care of the negotiations for you. Would you like me to do that?"

Lann looked up at Michael, nodded, and then swallowed. He whispered, "I'll lie with you whenever you want."

"That won't be necessary." Michael's voice remained matter-of-fact. "I may have to teach you some things you don't already know, but afterwards . . . Well, this is like a home for boys, and I'm its Father. Fathers don't bed their sons."

For a moment Lann simply looked at Michael, his eyes scanning the whoremaster's face. Then he flung himself suddenly upon the man, nearly pushing Michael into the fountain as he did so. His arms clenched Michael's waist tightly, and his head was buried against Michael's chest. Michael patted his back in an absent-minded manner.

Janus said, "The food's ready."

Lann, still hugging Michael, raised his head; his face shone with tears. He stared at Janus, then stared enquiringly at Michael.

"This is Mr. Roe, my business partner," Michael explained, gently extracting himself from Lann's grip. "He helps me to take care of the boys in this house."

Lann pulled himself up and walked toward Janus slowly, his eyes fixed upon Janus's face. Evidently an assessment was made, for when he reached Janus he put out his arm and said, in a proper schoolboy manner, "I'm pleased to meet you, sir."

Janus shook his arm; then he pointed to the door leading to Michael's office. "If you'll go through there and take the door to the right, that passage will lead you to the kitchen. A boy named Wyll is there; he'll help you get what you need."

Lann nodded, then looked back at Michael. A smile touched the edge of his face but swiftly disappeared, as though this had been an unwonted impertinence. He touched his hand to a cap that had once been on his head, then turned and scurried through the door of the office.

Watching him go, Michael said, "We're going to have to find enough money to bring a healer in. We can't afford to wait for the city's quarterly inspection; I'll be surprised if that boy isn't carrying a dozen diseases by now."

Janus had come forward. He slapped his hand onto the dolphin half of one of the dolphin-boys, saying, "What do you care of his welfare? 'Fathers don't bed their sons' – since when do fathers whoremaster their sons?"

Michael turned his eyes up toward Janus. There was no expression in them, and Janus felt his hands form into fists. This could always put him in a rage, the way Michael would make his face blank during their arguments. It was as if he were deliberately baiting Janus.

When he spoke, Michael's voice was equally impassive. "We have an agreement, Janus. I hire boys only if they want to be whores or are already whores. Self-taught though he is, Lann has spent two years as a street-whore. I need his experience to balance Wyll's inexperience."

"Gods alive and dead, Michael, it's plain as plainness itself that the boy shouldn't be a prostitute! A boy like that should be spending his days bouncing balls against walls, not letting men rape him in order to earn money for you!"

Michael stood up slowly, his limbs stretching like that of a cat after a long nap. His voice, when it spoke, was no longer blank; there was a touch of fury to it. "Janus, as of three days ago, this house was officially opened. We have one whore – one. If two men happen to walk through that door at the same time, what am I to tell them? That all of my whores are otherwise occupied? That excuse won't hold for long. I must have more boys here, or this business won't last to the end of the summer."

"Don't do this, Michael." Janus found it hard to speak; his throat had gone tight. "Don't do this, I warn you."

Michael's right hand – empty, for once, of its crop – tapped against his thigh. "Warn me?" he said softly.

Janus cleared his throat in an attempt to break through the barrier there. "I won't work in any house where that boy is forced to endure men's abuse. I can't."

Michael's expression went blank, all in an instant. For a long moment, he looked at Janus. Then he turned and walked over to the fountain edge. He stared down at his crop lying there.

After a while, he said, "I met Thaw a couple of days ago."

"Thaw?"

"One of the boys at Outram's. I think I've mentioned him to you. He came of age last year, and he was interested to hear about my new house. He offered to go into partnership with me."

Janus said nothing. He was watching as Michael leaned over and slowly stroked the crop with his finger, from tip to tail.

"Of course I told him I already had a partner. But if you should want to leave . . . You needn't feel that you were abandoning me." He picked up the crop, slid his palm over it, and then held it lightly in his hand. His eyes turned toward Janus.

Janus said finally, "I don't want to abandon you, Michael. But . . . Well, I admit that I hadn't anticipated that we'd be fighting this much. It's not how our relationship should be. If us being partners means we'll hurt our friendship . . ."

Michael nodded. His gaze drifted toward the fountain. Reached out with his crop, he nudged one of the pieces of paper that had plastered itself against the edge of the basin. "I'll tell Thaw. You're better off at the palace in any case."

The piece of paper, suddenly soaked by Michael's nudge, plunged under the surface and drifted to the bottom of the fountain, where it was sucked into the drain. Janus said, "I'll still come to see you on week-breaks, of course."

"I doubt your uncle would approve of that." Michael did not look up from the water he was stirring with the tip of his crop.

Janus took a step forward. "Michael, don't be like this."

Michael tossed the crop down and emitted a sigh. It rattled out of his throat, as though the very act of sighing was painful. "Listen to me," he said, turning toward Janus. "You and I met when we were both young. It was a miracle of Mercy, a Parkside boy befriending a Theater Avenue whore. That our friendship has lasted as long as it has is another miracle. But we're both men now, of different backgrounds and with different destinies. If we try to cling to the past, it will only destroy us. Let's acknowledge the good we've received from each other throughout our youth, be grateful for those times, and move on, before we begin to hate each other."

Janus's throat had closed entirely; he could not pull out the words he wished to say. He opened his mouth, but at that moment he heard a cough from behind him.

He spun round. Standing in the doorway leading to the entrance hall was a slight-bodied youth a year or two younger than himself. The boy was garbed in a bright yellow cloak, and his eyelids were painted to match. He looked from Janus to Michael, smiling.

"Hasan." There was no tone in Michael's voice to indicate whether he was surprised, upset, or pleased. "What are you doing here?"

"Word in the trade is that you're hiring." Hasan's smile did not waver. His gaze turned to Janus, and he stepped forward, his arm outstretched. "You must be Janus Roe – Michael gives tale about you all the time. I figured that, once he left Outram's, you two would be as hard to part as twins in a womb."

Janus slowly took the boy's arm. Neither he nor Michael looked at one another.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

The sun was still too low in the sky to produce anything other than a grey light through the iron tree branches in the windows above the courtyard. The only strong light came from the hall leading to the main door, which was already flung open. This light slid across the marble floor, slithered over the fountain with its singing waters, and finally landed on the columns and balconies of the opposite wall, where Michael was setting up a stepladder and a longer, storey-high ladder.

Voices could be heard on the porch. A moment later, Lann came trotting in, bearing a flat box in his arms. Michael was on the point of starting up the long ladder, but he came forward to take the box from Lann. He glanced down at its label before he placed it on the floor and beckoned for Lann to kneel opposite him. Opening the box with a flourish, Michael revealed bright purple cloth. He pointed to it and then to Lann, saying something.

Janus, sitting on the balcony over the doorway to the entrance hall, thought to himself that, if Michael had searched for a year, he could not have found clothing more unsuitably colored for Lann. The boy seemed excited, though: he asked something in his usual soft voice, and then, when Michael replied in an equally low voice, he leaned forward and kissed Michael on the mouth.

Then he drew back, blushing. Michael simply handed him the package. Smiling amidst his blush, Lann disappeared into the entrance hall, his gaze now fixed upon the purple uniform.

Janus caught a flicker of movement and turned his head to see that Hasan, like Janus, had sat down upon the balcony with his legs hanging through the railings. The boy said, in a voice that did not carry across the vast courtyard, "Michael gives tale you're leaving."

Janus nodded. He was watching Michael scoop from the floor a length of white bunting. "My new job starts after the week-break, and Michael's new partner is arriving tomorrow."

Hasan sighed. "Oh, well, that's how it ever is in the trade – you begin to like someone, and then he goes and leaves. I'm glad I had a chance to meet you, though. Michael was always on about you." Then, noting Janus's look, he added hastily, "I don't mean he gossiped about you. I have mind I was the only person at Outram's he gave tale to, in truth."

"Oh?" Janus felt nothing more than a detached curiosity as he watched Michael gather up hooks and nails and hammer. "Michael never talked much about Outram's."

"I'm not figuring he would," said Hasan. "He wasn't much on about it with me either. Not from the first night."

Hasan's initial meeting with Michael – Janus now learned – had come not long after the younger boy began to be sold to men at Outram's.

Hasan had spent the dawn hours as he often did, crying into his pillow. Gradually, he became aware of a sound in the cell next to his – a steady, softened thump. He would have thought nothing of it, but for the fact that he knew that the new boy, who had been placed next door, hadn't been assigned any patrons yet; he had only just finished his week-long training. Curious, Hasan had left his cell – it was locked after hours, but he had learned the trick to picking the lock. He picked the lock of the new boy's cell; then he opened the door.

There, standing beside his bed, was the new boy. He was holding in his hand what Hasan realized was a wooden strut, wrenched from the bedframe, and he was bringing the strut down onto the mattress – coldly, methodically, and with great force. He was cursing Outram as he did so.

He turned his head as Hasan opened the door. Hasan had been about to slip back to his cell, feeling uneasy at this scene, but he was arrested by the look on the new boy's face. Or rather, the lack of look. The new boy, cursing and beating his invisible enemy, wore no expression.

"So I stayed," concluded Hasan. "Michael didn't give tale as to what took between him and Outram – he never did. But I'd give tale to him about the hurts I got from my patrons, and he'd be on about anything besides our house – in later years, 'twas mostly about you. He never came to my cell, but I came to his, 'specially on the nights after he'd gone and been with Outram."

Janus, who had been watching Michael step up the ladder with all of his burdens in hand, turned startled eyes toward Hasan. "Outram took him to his bed?"

"Oh, aye, more than any of the rest of us. Outram hated Michael, see – he was mad as a frothing dog at how Michael had figured out how to turn the turtle over so that the usual patron/whore relationship was reversed. I have mind he was determined to make Michael be knowing what his true position was. . . . 'Twas stupid, from a business point of view. Michael could never work for a day or three after he'd been with Outram, and that lost Outram sacks of money."

Lann returned to the courtyard. He was wearing the purple clothing, but the uniform was not, as Janus had expected, the equivalent of the skin-tight red and yellow suits that Wyll and Hasan wore. Instead it was a ridiculously effeminate assemblage of velvet and lace, with a frilly cravat where the tie should have been. Lann looked very pleased. He called up to Michael, who paused as he was about to hammer a nail and hook into the wall to hold the bunting. Michael nodded approvingly.

"I never had knowing of how you and Michael met," Hasan said. "That would be a strange meeting."

Janus did not speak for a moment. He was watching as Lann pointed to the stepladder. Michael shook his head, but after a pleading look from Lann, he acquiesced with a nod. Lann eagerly scrambled up the first six rungs of the stepladder and took the box of nails from Michael's outstretched hand.

Watching the scene, Janus had no desire to trace back to the day that had brought him to this point. But it seemed churlish to refuse to answer when Hasan had opened up his own memories so wide. Besides, there was something about Hasan's matter-of-fact gaze that inspired confidences.

"I met him when I was playing ball," said Janus.

His family had just moved from their country estate to a house in the Parkside district – an ancestral home that had belonged to Janus's great-grandfather before his death. It was located near Theater Avenue, which Janus's parents considered a bonus, as they wanted to be close to a temple with a theater.

The move had removed Janus from his friends. It would not take him long to locate more, but on this particular evening he was playing alone in the front garden, bouncing a ball against the garden wall.

The ball hit a jagged stone, bounced askew, and skipped over the garden gate. Opening the gate, Janus saw that the ball had rolled into the street and was about to be trampled by a passing cab. At that moment, though, a boy ran forward and scooped the ball out from under the hooves of the cab-horse. He straightened up and looked down at the ball, apparently oblivious to the traffic racing by on both sides of him. He was dressed in the strangest costume Janus had ever seen: even though the summer heat had caused Janus to remove his own collar and tie, the boy was wearing a cloak. A white cloak that covered his body down to his ankles. He wore no head-covering, and Janus could not tell whether he was a commoner or of a better class.

The boy looked up at Janus, standing by the gate, and there was an intensity about his gaze that frightened Janus. He was tempted to close the gate; then he wondered whether the boy would simply drop the ball and walk on.

Instead, the boy threw the ball to him. Janus caught the ball and then, on impulse, he threw the ball back.

They played that way for the next half hour, tossing the ball to each other on the sidewalk, for the boy would not enter the garden. At the end of that time, Janus could hear the clatter of plates in the servants' wing of his house, and he knew that dinnertime must be approaching. Somewhat awkwardly, he asked the boy whether he would like to come to Janus's twelfth birth-feast, which his parents were hosting in a fortnight.

The boy said nothing for a while. Then, in a cultured voice that reassured Janus, he said, "I think you'd better come to my house first."

"Must be 'twas a shock to you when Michael took you to a whorehouse," Hasan commented. He was leaning his head against the railing, with his face turned toward Janus. His family evidently originated from one of the western provinces, for his skin was a warm brown halfway between the earth darkness of Michael and the olive-gold of Janus. Janus, scrutinizing him for even longer than he had spent studying Wyll, had decided that Hasan was not handsome – that he was, in fact, quite plain in appearance. Yet the boy seemed to have a gift for listening, and for asking the questions that would prod Janus on in his story.

Janus nodded. "The scene in the foyer terrified me. And when he took me up to his cell—" He stopped.

"Michael had me knowing about that," Hasan said. "He was on about how he was willing to yield you his service, and how you halted him when he started the first act of taking off his clothes. . . . I don't figure he would have beaten you, you know. I have mind he didn't know in truth how else to act toward any folk who wasn't a fellow whore."

Janus turned his attention back to the scene before them. Lann was handing nails up to Michael, standing on his tiptoes to reach the man. Janus felt breathless watching them. He was still trying to decide whether he should go downstairs and yank Lann to safety when Hasan asked, "Did he go to your birth-feast?"

It took Janus a moment to retrace the conversation. "No, he wouldn't come. It took me weeks to persuade him to come to dinner, and then . . ." He paused, trying to think of a way to phrase his words that would show due respect for his parents. "My mother and father . . . They have high reverence for the gods' laws, and they believe that it's wrong to associate with anyone who doesn't abide by those laws. When they saw Michael's cloak and realized that my new friend was a prostitute, they made him leave the house."

Hasan nodded, as though he were a pressman confirming a fact. "Michael gives tale that your parents ordered you not to see him again, but you paid them no mind." He turned his attention back to Michael and Lann. "'Tis good luck for Michael that you don't sit in judgment, like as your parents do."

Janus was still trying to think of what to reply when he heard Hasan's breath catch. He turned his head and saw that Lann, striving to serve Michael better, had climbed up to the top step of the ladder and was now wobbling off-balance. Cursing himself inwardly, Janus rose swiftly to his feet, but at that moment Michael, seeing the crisis, jumped from his ladder.

He fell the full height of a storey and landed with a crack so loud that Janus was convinced he had broken both his legs. If he had, Michael took no notice of that mishap; he turned in time to catch Lann and set him gently to his feet.

Lann looked shaken. Michael said something soft to him; then he guided the boy from the courtyard to the entrance hall. They disappeared below Janus's feet.

Janus heard Hasan's voice hiss out. "Idiot," the boy murmured. "He's ever going and doing rash things like that. I was onto him once that, if 'twasn't for you being so steady, he'd have gone and gotten himself killed before he turned journeyman."

Janus looked over at Hasan's plain face and thought to himself that Hasan must be very good at his work indeed. For hadn't Janus's father always said that the defining mark of someone who sold his body was his ability to manipulate others?

Oddly enough, Janus felt no anger, just an emptiness, as if the words had no meaning. Hasan, still pretending that he was making only idle conversation, yawned into his palm. He caught Janus's eye on him and smiled. "Regrets," he said. "I'm most times asleep by this hour of the day. But I had mind that I'd abide awake and help Michael out."

Janus noticed how non-specific he was in describing what help he was giving Michael. "I think you should go to bed," Janus said in his sternest tutor's voice.

He expected Hasan to bristle, but the boy – apparently used to taking orders – nodded and rose to his feet. "I'm figuring you're right. I don't crave to fall asleep when those hordes of patrons arrive tonight." He grinned at Janus, then said, "I'll see you later, Mr. Roe?"

Janus made a noncommittal sound. Hasan sighed. He held out his arm, and Janus shook it; then the boy started round the balcony toward the opposite side, where his room lay.

Janus made his way slowly toward the balcony stairway in the servants' wing. The Riverbend district had fallen into its dangerous daytime silence, but he thought he could hear the faint sound of boys shouting at one another in the distance. Boys on their way to school, he guessed, though in this district it might well be street-boys comparing their night's work. As he reached the stairway, he heard a clattering of metal in the kitchen that told him Wyll was following Michael's orders to clean the dishes and pans from the pre-dawn meal. Janus thought to himself that he ought to go to the kitchen to try again to light the fire, but remembered in time that this was no longer his responsibility.

He met Michael on the stairway, walking down from the third floor. The stairwell was dark, so Janus could not see his expression. "I was putting Lann to bed," Michael said. "He'll have to learn to sleep during the daytime from now on."

"I told Hasan to go to bed." When Michael made no reply, Janus added, "I suppose that was silly of me. I'm only a year and a half older than he is . . ."

"You've always had a habit of telling people what to do," Michael said.

Janus could not discern from the tone of his voice whether this was meant as praise or condemnation. Michael went by him on the stairway, not looking back to see whether Janus followed. Janus caught up with him in the office, where Michael was standing next to the speaker's stand, staring down at the blank pages of his ledger-book. The closed, white curtains Janus had hung three days before let in the morning light, which outlined Michael's bright clothes.

"Michael," Janus said, "there's something I'd like you to do for me before I leave."

"Certainly, if it's within my power." Michael sounded as neutral and distantly polite as though he were addressing a patron in his bed.

"I'd like you to take off your clothes."

Michael's head rose slowly. In the dim light of the curtained room, all that Janus could see was that there was nothing to see: Michael's face was as blank as his voice. For a moment the whoremaster simply looked at Janus. Then his hands went to his jacket.

Janus had a hard time figuring out where to look as Michael stripped. Janus had never been attuned to male beauty – indeed, had always regarded male bodies as something of an embarrassment, his own included. They had none of the soft beauty of the curving lines of women, which Janus saw shifting below clothing, and which he knew he would one day see in their unadorned splendor.

It was this lack of vision that had made it so hard for Janus to tell whether Wyll and Hasan would seem attractive to patrons – indeed, he could not guess at all whether Lann had good looks. But now, as Michael pulled off the last of his clothes and straightened up, Janus knew that he was seeing something extraordinary.

He had thought that Michael's body, like his own, would be paler beneath the clothes than outside, but the rich earth shade remained unfaded and unmarred from head to foot. The torso and legs and arms had the same proportions that Janus remembered seeing in casts of ancient statues that his university art class had examined, and the skin was as hairless as the statues, but for tufts in the expected places. Nothing hid the hard curve of ribs, or the smooth plain that was the stomach, or the harmony of hip and thighbone. Michael's puissance, cradled quiet amidst the hair, might have come from a statue of the god of hell himself.

Janus, searching with fervor for flaws, finally found them: a few raised lines upon the torso, faint enough that it was obvious they would be gone within days. One of them ran across Michael's nipple. Janus, reaching out involuntarily to touch Wyll's whip-mark, felt Michael's body tense, but the other man did not flinch from the touch. He had too much training for that.

Janus stepped back hastily. He could feel Michael's eyes upon him, but the face was blank, waiting.

Janus cleared his throat. "He didn't mark you."

He thought that Michael would pretend not to understand, but Michael, after another moment of expressionless watchfulness, nodded. "He didn't mark me," he agreed. "I was too valuable for that."

Raising his gaze to meet Michael's blank face, which never smiled, Janus thought to himself that Michael had only given him half the truth. Outram had not marked the boy he owned in any outward way, but the nights the boy spent enduring the whoremaster's revenge had placed their mark upon Michael's soul.

His voice shaking with a mixture of pain and anger, Janus cried, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Michael, reaching down to scoop up his clothes, waited until he was dressed again before saying, "I wanted to forget it when I was with you. You helped me to forget."

He had spoken, Janus noticed, in the past tense. Feeling uncertain, Janus leaned back against the closed door to the entrance hall as Michael picked up his crop and ran a finger along it.

Michael said, "You know that story about me?"

"Which one?"

"The famous one."

"Oh. Yes."

"I've heard that story dozens of times over the years from patrons who were intrigued enough to buy a night with me after hearing the tale." Michael let the crop trail across the top edge of the speaker stand. "It never fails to impress. The odd thing is that, over all these years, no one has ever thought to ask why, if I was so innocent a virgin, I knew what to do to that patron."

Janus wet his lips before replying. "Outram trained you?"

"Trained me." Michael gave a humorless chuckle. "Yes, I suppose that's how he would have put it. He trained me to know what it's like to be helpless in unending pain. He trained me to beg for my pain. When he gave me over to my first patron, and I realized that my 'training' was about to start again, I knew I could not endure that. And so I reversed my training, and turned the pain on others."

He let the crop snap straight with a crack that vibrated through Janus. Then he placed it carefully on the stand, saying, "The worst part about it is that I remember what it was like before. Oh, not my family or any of that life. . . . Do you know why I never give my family name? It's because I can't remember it. Outram wiped all that away from me. But I can remember, just at the edge of my memory, what it was like to be vulnerable, and to feel pain. I remember that I was an ordinary boy once, like that boy we met in the street last week, bouncing his ball. . . . When I came to Outram's, I brought with me my most precious toy, a rubber ball. The first thing Outram did after my parents left was throw the ball out the window."

His expression had not changed – it was featureless, as was his voice. Janus, tracing the thought of precious things lost to abandoned boys, said, "Hasan told me something that disturbed me a great deal. He said that, as soon as he met someone he liked, that person left."

Michael was still staring at his crop; he did not look up. "He's used to it."

"But the other boys . . ."

"They'll get used to it too." Michael's voice was flat.

Janus took a deep breath. "Michael, I don't want to abandon anyone. But Lann—"

He stopped, alerted as much by the flick of Michael's gaze as by the sound of the soft step behind him. Turning, Janus saw that Lann was standing in the doorway to the servants' wing.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," Michael said.

The boy seemed surprised at the scolding. "You said I should watch the door. So I've been watching it from my window. A man just walked in."

Michael's eyes met Janus's. Then, as one, the two men turned toward the door to the entrance hall.

Michael reached it first, flinging the door open and striding down the hall. Janus, hurrying to catch up with him, nearly crashed into his back as Michael suddenly halted at the doorway to the courtyard.

A man was standing next to the fountain, gazing at the broken dolphin-boys. He wore a bowler hat and carried an umbrella rather than a walking stick, his clothes were of a good but not outstanding cut, and the only item of value on him seemed to be the gold watch-chain that hung from pocket to pocket in his waistcoat.

He raised his head to look at the half-hung bunting and the crumbling walls. As he did so, Janus saw, in the light still shining from the doors, that the visitor had a tight, fussy mustache and eyes that were blinking rapidly. His expression held doubtfulness.

"Good morning, sir." No doubt could be heard in Michael's voice as he stepped forward; he sounded neutrally polite. "I see that you are admiring the design of our house. Our decoratif-man has done a splendid job in the restoration, has he not?"

The man, spinning round, gaped at Michael for a moment. "Restoration?"

"Yes, you ought to have seen this building when we first bought it – a gilded fountain, ornate wallpaper, bright paint upon the railings." Michael dismissed this description with a derisive wave of the hand. "I, having no decorative sense, was prepared to keep the house in the condition in which I had bought it, but the decoratif-man illuminated my thoughts on such matters. He persuaded me that it would be a crime not to take advantage of the house's surroundings and decorate the house in such a way that would fit the atmosphere of the neighborhood. And here you see the results before you: a design that evokes past eras of the Riverbend district. Imagine, if you can, the days when men met boys in alleyways and unceremoniously thrust them against the wall, pausing only long enough to drag their knickers down their lean, hard thighs . . ."

From the expression on the man's face, Janus thought that the visitor was able to imagine this quite well. "But of course," Michael added smoothly, "we combine this invocation of the district's rough past with our own refined services, in which our boys are treated with the gentle courtesy that is deserved by the highest artists of our day."

The man cleared his throat, and then cleared it again. "Of course."

His voice was as tight as his mustache, and he glanced around the courtyard, as if wondering who was watching. Michael said, "If you would care to step into my office, sir, we can speak privately about your needs. As I am sure you will understand," he added as the man obediently followed the gesture of his hand, "most of our boys are still with their patrons of last night, but I may be able to find one or two who are free." He raised his voice to be heard above the continued clatter of pans in the kitchen. As the office door shut behind the three of them, Michael said, "I am Michael, sir, the proprietor of this house. How may I help you?"

The man cast a quick glance at Janus, and Michael took the opportunity to slip something into the slot of the speaker's stand, so quickly that Janus did not have time to see what it was. The ledger remained where it had been, waiting.

Michael looked over at Janus, a gesture that spoke of his uncertainty about whether to make an introduction. Janus, swallowing, said to the man, "I am Janus Roe, Michael's business partner." It was true for now, at least.

The man, mercifully, showed no inclination to quiz Janus about his lineage. Michael looked pointedly at the man, who coughed and said, "My name is Smith. John Smith."

"I am pleased to meet you, sir." Michael took up his pen from the inkwell and solemnly wrote down the fictitious name. "You may speak freely in front of Mr. Roe, sir. We have both heard all manner of requests in our day."

Janus decided that Michael possessed an advantage in this situation – since he never smiled, he was not plagued by the hearty inclination to do so now. The man who called himself Mr. Smith took another nervous glance at Janus, fiddled with his watch-chain for a moment, and then leaned forward and said in a hoarse whisper, "I want one of them to do it to me."

"Certainly, sir." Michael scribbled something onto the ledger in response to this mysterious request. "And if I may say so, that is an excellent choice. In our day of long hours of soul-breaking duties, many men find it pleasant during their leisure hours to allow others to do the hard work. You are married?"

Mr. Smith, who had begun to relax, stiffened. "What makes you think so?"

Michael did not flick so much as a glance at the patron's wedding watch. "You have the air, sir, of a contented man, one who is prepared to make sacrifices for his wife. I have known many men in your position, who wish to understand more fully their wives' duties so that they may learn to be more loving and considerate husbands."

"Yes," said Mr. Smith, clearly relieved at this interpretation of the events. "I'm doing this for my wife."

"I could tell, sir, that you were an altruistic man from the moment you walked through the door." Michael spent a minute flipping through the pages of the ledger. From where Janus stood, he could see that the pages were blank.

"Well, sir," Michael said, frowning, "you have made a difficult request. All of our boys, you understand, are trained to give pleasure, but only a few of them are also trained to receive pleasure, which is a far harder task. " He paused a moment, apparently to ascertain that the patron understood the value he was receiving, before adding, "But I think I have the boy that's right for you. He has experience in such matters and will be able to be the recipient of your generous ministrations."

"Michael," Janus breathed.

Michael ignored him. Raising his voice, he called, "Lann!"

Mr. Smith turned expectantly toward the door leading to the entrance hall. There was a momentary pause, and then Lann popped his head round the doorway to the servants' wing. From the jam on his mouth, it appeared that he had been in the kitchen with Wyll. He looked up at Michael, awaiting his order.

Janus moved without knowing that he was going to do so. Within half a dozen strides he had reached the doorway, unnoticed by the patron, who was now gripping his umbrella as he anxiously awaited the arrival of the boy through the opposite door. Janus turned toward Michael, screening the boy with his body.

He felt Lann's hand on his waist as the boy peered round him. Michael had turned his attention back to the ledger; without looking up, he said, "Master Lann, please go to Master Hasan's room and see whether he is free to take a patron."

"Yes, Michael." Lann slipped out from behind Janus just as the startled patron whirled round. Casting a quick look of curiosity at Janus, who was still blocking the doorway to the servants' wing, Lann started past the speaker's stand, only to have his wrist caught by Michael. Janus felt his breath stop, as though he had been punched.

Lann halted immediately, looking up at Michael. The whoremaster said, "Now, remember – do not enter unless you are certain that Master Hasan is finished with his previous patron."

For a moment, the boy's brow creased with puzzlement; then comprehension entered his face, and he nodded. Michael released him, and the boy made his way quickly out of the office as Mr. Smith drew back to give him room to leave.

The patron's eyes seemed inclined to linger on the departing figure, but they snapped back to Michael as the latter said, "Now, sir, there is the matter of compensation."

The patron cleared his throat. "Of course."

"Let me just calculate a moment . . . " Michael picked up his pen. Janus, coming cautiously forward to stand by him, saw that he was not writing numbers at all. He had pulled a piece of scrap paper out from the back of the ledger and was writing a note on it.
 

Reverse oral. Has paid for reverse anal too but may lack the courage to carry it through. Married, wants to be faithful to wife. If handled gently but firmly, is likely to become a long-standing patron.

The patron's eyes widened as he read the number. Janus felt sympathy for him. He had seen his father tip a waiter that much once, but his father was a rich man. For a man of the mid-class, such as Mr. Smith was, the bill must seem like an elaborate form of picking the pocket.

Michael gave the patron a few seconds to absorb the bad news, and then said, "Of course, the fee takes into account your special needs. If you would prefer to receive our basic service . . ."

The patron murmured something unintelligible. Michael waited a moment more before adding, "A quarter of that money is for the damages deposit, which will be restored to you if the boy is returned without harm after he has served you."

The patron's face brightened at this news that he was receiving a bargain. He slowly pulled his billfold from his breast pocket, saying, "Is cash all right? I'm afraid I don't have my bank drafts with me. . . ."

"Of course, sir. We are quite used to alternatives to bank drafts. Gentlemen of the older stock, such as yourself, are rightfully contemptuous of such modern innovations."

This final bit of flattery seemed to overcome all lingering doubts. Clearly pleased at being mistaken for his betters, the mid-class patron handed forth his money. Michael, not deigning to count it, gave it to Janus, who surreptitiously leafed through the bills to check that all were there.

Lann appeared at the doorway. "He said he is ready to be of service, Michael."

"Good. No, come here." He beckoned Lann forward, and the boy walked up to stand beside him.

"Listen," said Michael solemnly, "I want you to escort this gentleman to Master Hasan's room. Before you let him in, be sure that Master Hasan is ready."

As he spoke, Michael slipped into Lann's hand the note he had written. This time, the boy did not betray through his expression that any unusual event had occurred. "Yes, Michael," he said.

Michael gave him a nudge on the shoulder-blades to send him on his way. As the patron turned toward the door, Michael gestured vigorously to Janus.

Janus, looking round frantically to discover what the gesture meant, caught sight of a barrel standing in the corner. He dived toward it, and a second later emerged from its bowels holding a pouch, which he tossed to Michael in a long-remembered gesture. Michael caught it neatly, then made his way swiftly to the door. "Mr. Smith!" he called.

The patron, entering the courtyard, did not pause. Michael coughed. "Sir?"

The patron belatedly returned to the entrance hall. "Yes?"

Michael handed him the pouch. The patron stared down at it without comprehension. "For your safety and comfort, sir," murmured Michael.

A flush entered the patron's face. "Ah. Yes. Yes, I . . . Thank you." Still blushing, he turned back to Lann.

Janus followed Michael silently into the courtyard to watch them go. There, climbing the stairs to the second floor, was the man and his escort. There was Lann, knocking at Hasan's door and then disappearing briefly into the room. There was Lann, re-emerging with both hands empty and gesturing for the patron to enter. Now the man was entering the room; now the door was closing.

Now a man was having sex with a boy. With Janus's help.

Janus lost his battle with his stomach then. Turning, he darted back into the entrance hall, dashed through the office, and fell to his knees in front of the toilet in the water closet.

After a while, he became aware that his forehead was being supported by a cool hand. He shifted his weight to sit back on his heels and accepted the handkerchief that Michael offered. Wiping his mouth, he said in a shaking voice, "Michael, I'll never be able to accept that what we've done here is right."

"I know." Michael's voice was soft. "You'd have been better off, I think, if I'd dropped your ball in the street and walked on."

"Don't you say that!" Anger blazed without warning from Janus. "Don't you ever say that! If it weren't for you, I'd have ended up like my parents – narrow, judgmental. You saved me from that."

Michael said nothing; he simply took back the filthy handkerchief from Janus and helped him to his feet. Janus followed Michael back into the office.

Morning light was now pouring through the window from the street, brightening the lime-washed room and gilding the wooden speaker's stand. Michael glowed like white embers. He reached the stand, pulled out his key, and ducked down to open the hidden door.

"Look," Janus's voice was rough with awkwardness. "I want to help. But Lann . . ."

Michael straightened up; his eyes danced in the light. "You know," he said, "I don't think I've ever seen anything I admired so much as you standing in front of Lann, barring my way like a mother cougar protecting her cub."

Janus found he could not continue. At that moment, Lann appeared at the doorway. He looked up expectantly at Michael, who said, "Make sure your face is clean next time."

The boy's expression fell, and he hastily wiped the jam off his mouth with the back of his hand. He came forward hesitantly when Michael beckoned, apparently fearing the consequences of his mistake. But Michael simply slipped something from his pocket into Lann's hand, saying, "Here. Take this and guard the door till you're ready to sleep. I'll be in the kitchen fixing the stove, if anyone comes."

Lann nodded and quickly left the room. Michael watched him go and then turned back to Janus. "I interrupted you."

Janus let out a deep breath. He felt much as he had on the day when he had realized that he was expected to worship both Mercy and the High Master of hell, who tortured men's souls. It was a paradox he had never been able to reconcile with his mind. Now, faced with a similarly insoluble paradox, he gave way, trusting that somehow an answer could be found beyond reason.

"I was wondering about Lann's clothes," he said. "Why do you have him dressed like a palace page?"

"It's his uniform." Michael opened the ledger and wrote something upon it. With his gaze fixed on the book, he added, "He's our doorkeeper. I thought it would impress the patrons if they learned we were so rich an establishment that we could afford to employ a boy solely for the task of greeting visitors."

Janus was utterly still for a moment; then he walked forward. He tried to see what Michael was writing, but the slant of the stand prevented him from doing so. "You know, you lied," he said to Michael. "You told Wyll that you weren't a good man. That was a lie."

"Only because of you." Michael drew a curved line with a snap of the wrist, as though he were wielding a whip. "If it weren't for you, I'd have become like Outram. You saved me from that." His gaze rose.

For a moment, he looked at Janus with that intense gaze which meant more to Janus than a thousand smiles. Then he held up the ledger for Janus to see. Underneath the stark facts of the patron's visit – the man's name, the money paid, the acts requested, the boy bought – was a sketch of a man kneeling down to kiss a woman's hand while he reached back to grope the privates of a boy.

The sketch was cruel, containing a decade's worth of accumulated contempt. Janus stared down at it, not knowing whether to laugh or to turn aside in anguish. Finally he said, "I don't want to cause problems between you and Thaw. Perhaps he'd be interested in a three-way partnership. . . ."

Michael snapped the ledger shut, tossed it into the drawer within the stand, locked the door, and straightened up with something in his hand. "Janus," he said, "did I ever tell you the best way to get rid of a patron who has stayed too long?"

Janus shook his head. Michael emerged from behind the stand, holding his crop. He said blandly, "The best way to send a patron away is to pretend that another patron is about to arrive."

Janus stared for a moment; then laughter overcame him. His eyes dancing again, Michael put his hand upon Janus's shoulder and guided him toward the door to the kitchen; that room had finally fallen silent as Wyll finished his work. "I don't think either of us is going to persuade the stove to come back to life," Michael said. "We'll have to buy a new one. Where do you suppose we'll get the money?"

"The gods know. And we'll need new uniforms for the boys too – I want them dressed in brown."

"Brown?" Michael sounded amused rather than angry. "Janus, whores don't wear brown. They'd look like schoolboys."

"Exactly. Look, Michael, you say you want the boys treated with respect. If they're wearing the clothing of respectable boys, it will force the patrons to remember that the boys are civilized beings who deserve . . . "

Their voices faded as they entered the servants' wing. Back at the main door to Michael's House, Lann gazed a moment at the stool that had been placed there for him, then propped his body against the frame of the broad doorway, staring down at the rubber ball in his hand. He looked at it for a long time, as though examining a foreign object. Then, ever so tentatively, he threw the ball at the other side of the doorframe.

It bounced back. He smiled, and before long the new boy was wholly absorbed with the bouncing ball as the sun rose upon the Riverbend district, and the streets continued their long silence.

¶ Next Story

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