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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
They say we're dangerous. But we're not that different.Jude is running out of time. Once a year, lucky young men in the House of Boys are auctioned to the female elite. But if Jude fails to be selected before he turns seventeen, a future deep underground in the mines awaits.Yet ever since the death of his best friend at the hands of the all-powerful Chancellor, Jude has been desperate to escape the path set out for him. Finding himself entangled in a plot to assassinate the Chancellor, he finally has a chance to avenge his friend and win his freedom. But at what price?A speculative YA thriller, tackling themes of traditional gender roles and power dynamics, for fans of Malorie Blackman, Louise O'Neill and THE POWER.
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For Maud - K. L.
The Boy I Am contains content some readers may find triggering, including sexual aggression, trafficking, murder and surgical procedures.
Contents
The House of Boys
1
My name is Jude Grant and I am alive.
Centre stage, I face the deafening crowd.
And I smile.
“Tonight’s final lot!” Mr Walker, Head of the House of Boys, introduces me over the theatre’s loudspeakers. “Number one hundred and fifty.”
Pinned in the spotlight, I squint. I shade my eyes with one hand and wave with the other. Cheers from the audience smack into my chest hard, skewering skin through to stomach, stomach through to spine, spine through to sparkling scenery behind me. Can’t tell if it’s the floor or my knees that are shaking more.
Smile number one we call gracious-without-being-smarmy. That’s what I’m aiming for, to hide my locked jaw. Sweat crawls from my hairline. As I adjust my collar, cold dread snakes down my neck.
Pose. Wave.
Offstage, Walker reads out my stats. “Age sixteen,” his disembodied voice hums.
Too old, drones the voice in my head. These days it always sounds like your voice, Vik. Are you trying to make me laugh? 9
You’ve lasted longer than I did.
“Five foot nine,” Walker says.
Too short. Your voice. I was taller.
“One hundred and forty pounds.”
Too fat.
Shut up, I want to say and I laugh like the ghost of you is right there, thinking you’re so funny, and proud you got me to react even if it was in my head. My performance slips; for a second, I’m not in the mouth of the Great Theatre, being sold for the dark-hours to the highest bidder, reserved for purchase at the auction. For a second, it was the two of us, back in the kitchens below ground, laughing. For a second, you were alive.
Smile one makes my face hurt but it’s easy to hide behind.
Squinting into the darkness, I look for her – the Chancellor. Remembering the vast layout of the underground theatre, how it’s not so scary with the house lights up. The endless rows of frayed red chairs, ancient, worn carpet, dusty chandeliers and her balcony, now in the dark, in the centre of the dress circle. Dead ahead. Above it all. Is she there yet?
A woman in the audience drops a glass and the theatre goes awkwardly quiet. My silk-slippered toes curl, squeaking against the rubbery stage floor.
Walker coughs. “Yes, so, lot one fifty is a fourth year at the House of Boys. Last year available for auction.”
After I turn seventeen, they’ll pack me off to the mines. There aren’t many boys who survive even a year working down there – the heat, the hate, gangs scraping for minerals, fighting over 10food, water. That’s a few weeks from now.
Walker keeps going. “No previous reserves on the books so I’m pleased to announce the House of Merit can offer a discount on request.”
“Oooooooooooooo,” goes the audience.
“A much-improved lot on his previous years, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
The audience laughs and the spotlight moves forwards, a cue for me to follow. There are bugs that thrive in the dorms below. They fizz and pop in the blue lights they chase.
In the glow of the limelight, low-lit tables in front of the stage swim into focus as I step forwards and bow. The women lean closer. Hungry shadows. Their faces completely hidden behind blank white masks. There must be hundreds of them in the stalls, thousands in the surrounding seats. Rumours are that the richest of them, the ones that live on the top floors of the Tower, get the front tables. They pay the most merits for a spot to judge us best.
Time to deploy smile two. A-little-bit-defiant.
Bad choice. The masks retreat, disappointed, into the darkness.
Another drop of sweat slides between my eyebrows, along the inside of my eye socket. It’s salty. Stings like needles.
Pull it together, says the part of me that sounds like you, Vik. And it’s strong like you were, brave like you were. It’s the voice of the boy I want to be. You owe me, it says. You’re still alive.
Wiping my eye, before I turn to find my place among my brothers upstage, I make sure the women see the kind of smile you said would make them all reach for their merit books. 11Number twenty-nine. You called it the I-just-need-you-to-fix-me smile.
“Awwwwwwwwwwww,” goes the audience.
See, you can do this.
I know.
All I have to do is kill the Chancellor.
2
Upstage is stacked high with glittering platforms. The band plays me to my mark: the furthest platform, back row. There’s that familiar push and pressure behind my head. I’m holding my breath, my teeth locked. I’m doing this for you, Vik, for freedom I remind myself. If I count the beats in the music, focus on that, there’s some relief. Tapping my thumb against my index finger, hoping they don’t see.
My place is last in the line-up behind 149 other boys displayed, choir-like, on sparkling stage terraces, in matching grey suits. Our outfits were designed by students at the House of Expression again and I swear this year the theme must be discomfort. Whoever made them has never worn a suit. With high-necked collars, jackets with boning in the back, every one of my brothers seems taller they’re standing so straight. It makes for a strong jawline, the House Fathers said, complementing the look.
It’s hard to be graceful while weaving between my brothers. But that’s the second I get to turn my back, to slip a finger between my neck and the stiff collar, stretch my jaw and try to loosen the knots in my stomach. That second is everything. 13
Walker’s deep voice continues. “Ladies, when Chancellor Hyde asked me to host this year’s auction, I did what any sane gentleman would do…”
Walker is normally onstage but usually one of the madams actually hosts the auction events – choosing the theme, the showcase event, stuff like that. It was meant to be the Gardener – Madam Dunn – hosting again this year. Did that change last minute?
A man, even Walker, hosting alone – it’s not normal. Something’s wrong.
Clunk! Up go the stage lights, full beam, swinging, sweeping over the boys surrounding me, all grinning, waving and cheering like their lives depended on it.
“I said to myself: one hundred and fifty handsome young men?”
Slicing my own smile into place, I wave too. I should come up with my own numbers and names for the smiles now you’ve gone.
“I picked out my outfit and I said yes please!”
All you have to do is…
Swoosh! Spotlights move from us and into the crowd.
You ran, they said. You attacked the Chancellor and then you ran. You gave in to your urges, your base animal instincts. More likely you were scared. There’s no air in my lungs. I wonder if they’ll say the same about me?
There, ahead, the distant silver fabric drapes of the Chancellor’s balcony gleam. All I have to do… 14
Walker was the Chancellor’s only ward last year, when she reserved you. No one ever believed she’d take another ward but she took pity on you they say.
Who says?
Everyone. But you were a bad one, corrupt. You must’ve just broken, the ladies say. They hear that can happen and it’s been happening too much, they say. It’s our hormones; we just can’t help ourselves.
Bitter bile jumps in my throat. Before I can even try to swallow, snap, the view is gone. Spotlights creak, flooding the stage as the silhouette of Walker sashays between us and the audience. They all coo at the sight of him. That’s Walker: perfect smile. Perfect poise. Perfect man. In the light, his sleek silver pinstripe gleams. The Chancellor’s man.
Next to me, lot 149 leans close. “Is it true you know him?”
“No,” I lie.
Walker leads the applause. “Let’s give a big hand for this year’s boys.” His painted nails shine black but his hands are starting to look old. If I’ve noticed, so have the women. Two in the front row whisper to each other, giggle. The Chancellor bought him to be her ward when they were both my age. Reserving another ward may have surprised the ladies last year, but not the House Fathers who care for us. Perfect as he may be, they say she’s been looking for a younger model to replace Walker for years. She’s never settled on one, though.
Until now, you say.
I can’t do anything stuck onstage. I have to get the Chancellor 15on her own. She has to bid on me. I lose my grip on smile three: patient-not-too-bored. It’s not going to work. I’m the final lot, like you were. But there are cuter, hotter, taller, thinner, more muscled boys with better skin, squarer jaws.
I’ve a powerful need to scratch my neck but I’m meant to stay still so I clench my fists. She’s never going to bid, not after last year. This is a stupid idea. Could I run?
I ran.
Walker’s still going, of course. “So, ladies, you know the drill: tonight you get one evening with your personal favourite.” The women whoop and whistle at his classic this-one’s-for-the-girl-at-the-back wink. “Generous bids, please. Your merits tonight set our gentlemen’s opening dowries at auction.”
Walker jokes. “I have to say, the rumours are true: the Gardener and the House of Life keep breeding our boys cuter. Where is she?” He looks into the audience as the light searches the seats for the head of the scientists who made us all.
“Oh well, I’m sure she’s busy planting up a new batch. Let’s hear it for the House of Life, our ladies of floor one ten.” He stops. The audience cheers and whoops as the spotlights catch something else in the dark aisles.
They’re the shadows that the shadows hide.
“Why…” Walker pauses. Is he trying to be dramatic? “They’ll be giving yours truly … a run for his … merits soon enough.” He has a habit of odd pauses but he never, ever fluffs his lines.
There are Lice in the dark. That’s what you called the police. You said they made you itch. 16
The audience laughs, but not as much as before, as Walker draws the light round the stage, tidying the corners of his slender moustache as he goes. He does that when he’s thinking.
“A show of hands – how many debutantes do we have here tonight?” he asks.
The house lights go up. Hands lift above a sea of bright dresses, smart suits, identical masked faces, but I don’t count. Surrounding the hundreds of women in the stalls, the circle, the gods, there are swarms of Lice. They’re at every exit. Wrapped in black fabric and strapped into scales of armour. The fog mask air filters they never take off hang like stretched snouts.
Walker coughs. “Well, aren’t you just gorgeous?” he says as the house lights go down. Clank.
“So what are we waiting for?” Walker coughs again, stalling because of the Lice. My fingers pick and scratch at my nails. There’s a metallic ache in my throat. If I run, they’ll catch me, like they caught you.
No way out, you say.
There are Lice in the wings too, watching, their filtered air sucking in, pushing out.
The women aren’t cheering. They know. They see. They’re expecting something.
“Oh yes!” Walker clicks his fingers, full of confidence, as if he’s just remembered the most important thing. The masked faces of the women snap back to his razzle-dazzle as he cups his hand to his ear. “You want me to announce this year’s programme?” He side-smiles, pretending one of our potential guardians has asked 17him personally. A wink. “Well, after tonight’s Reserves, there’s your favourite talent show…”
Pause for effect. Drum roll.
“Swimwear!”
No one cheers, someone coughs, but Walker doesn’t blink. He continues full tilt.
The stage screens light up with pictures of past events and words I’ve never been taught to read. Images of a thousand boys of the past fly by, yours too. Your scarred face. The pucker in your cheek below your right eye, through your top lip, that you wore because of me.
I want to crunch my eyes closed, imagine myself fighting the Lice dead, standing on top of piles of them, triumphant. I’d bow, then run. Into the desert like we’d always planned. “Ha ha!” we’d cry and fight monsters, survive on our wits. And the Chancellor would find us in the desert and apologize and offer us anything we wanted. And we’d take all the other boys into the desert and start a new world.
But the light’s on me now and I have to smile, an it’s-OK-this-is-OK-I’m-OK smile. Call it number thirty-one.
“Next week we’ve the Unmasked Ball for those gentlemen lucky enough to get reserved tonight!” Walker lays it on thick as if any of this is a surprise, as if it’s not the same schedule every single fogging year.
Reserves, talent show, ball, auction.
Thanks to last year’s disaster, when Madam Bocharov cancelled my reserve, I’ve never made it to the talent show, let alone the 18rest of the events. Now I never will. Neither will you.
Truth is I do know Walker. Today’s the only day for months I’ve not had his company, preparing for tonight. I wanted freedom, I said. Not fake freedom being warded off to one of these faceless women. Real freedom, like you and I dreamed of, Vik, remember? Outside in the desert. Walker said he can’t give me that. No one can. But when I kill the Chancellor it’ll make that ache in my head better, that urge to kick and hit the world until the pressure behind my skull goes away. Revenge, Walker called it. It’s the only freedom on offer.
It’s still there, pounding, as the audience applauds and Walker turns towards us, tidies his suit, his silver-sided dark hair – Saints preserve him from having anything out of place. Now he catches my eye, checking I can do this.
He nods, slight and deft, cranking up his speciality smile. Number ten, his this-is-the-best-thing-ever-and-it’s-even-better-because-I’m-pure-charm-doesn’t-it-make-you-squirm? smile, before he spins back towards his audience.
If you were still here, I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt anyone, let alone the Chancellor. But she had you killed. That’s what I’ve got to hold on to. She’s a murderer.
There’s a flicker of light in the silver-swagged balcony dominating the dress circle above. Movement, I think.
She’s here.
The Chancellor. ‘Top Floor’, the Single Most Important, Most Merited, Most-Most at Everything EVER. But why should that matter? We all live; we all die. Sure, she didn’t grow up 19in the tunnels. Sure, she’s seen the sky. Sure, she’s a woman, in charge, and I’m just a boy, but … I bet she bleeds the same as us.
Despite the heat, the bones in my spine shiver.
Not knives, Walker and I decided. A fall. It’s the cleanest way. She has to fall, which means I have to push.
3
There’s a sign above the stage we can’t read but we know when it flashes there’s applause. The women clap as lot one twenty is led from the stage, some kid from B-dorm. We all shuffle forwards.
Despite the ache prickling behind my eyes, I maintain smile eleven, my best. Walker calls it my butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. He gives them names, like you did. Did he pick that up from you, or maybe it was the other way round? The reserve bidding’s almost done: boys led one by one from the stage for their ‘interviews’. We all know what that really means.
With each bid, my guts tighten. What if the Chancellor wants someone else? What if the Lice arrest me before she decides?
Walker reaches the last row in record time. Less than twenty of us left winding our way into the spotlight.
Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…
One of your old dorm gang steps up. In all his muscled glory, Toll says, “My name is Hector Dent,” as he slicks his hand through his dyed golden hair. Side-smiling and winking like a pro. Roids brush up OK for the auction events. ‘Roids’, that’s what your old friends have taken to calling themselves, on account of the pills they get slipped in their appointments by the 21women who favour them.
No one has ever given me drugs in my appointments. Every day, from lights-up to dinner, it’s the same. Hours of tuition in dance, decorum, deference. Except for when the women pay the House of Entertainment for our private services. Of course we’re not allowed to see them, so – with a lot of practice – we learn to serve tea, dance the old dances, ask them about their day and make them feel special, beautiful, interesting, all while blind to the world. Apparently, it’s a real privilege to spend time with us, costly too: only the top-floor women can afford it. A luxury. Tell that to the boys who come out of their appointments crying or bruised in places the House Fathers can hide.
Walker leans away from the stink of Toll’s cologne.
“This is the best day of my life,” Toll oozes. “I’ve been training hard, very hard, really hard. It’ll be an honour, a real honour, to be with any one of you.”
Bet you the Chancellor can tell I’m distracted. She’ll buy Toll, or Aye-Aye, one of the beefcakes. Whatever he promised, there’s no way Walker could make sure she’d reserve me. No way. I told him he should’ve put me on steroids too. He said he needed my mind perky, not my pecs.
Half the top-floor women in the pit raise their hands before Toll finishes speaking. There are bids from the madams in the balconies too. The reserve settles at 300 merits, to Madam Van Gelder, Chief of Entertainment. Toll winks at Aye-Aye, next in the queue, and strolls into the wings, grabbing his crotch in the dark to make his friends laugh. 22
The candlelight in the Chancellor’s balcony doesn’t even flicker.
Only ten left. If it wasn’t for Walker, there wouldn’t be a sound between bids. With the Lice there – not normal – everyone’s waiting for something.
Nine…
Revenge, I remind myself, not murder. There’s a difference, right? Taking her out on to her Pent House balcony, right at the top of the skyscraper towering above us, saying I’d like to look over the edge, getting scared to make her feel as if I’m vulnerable, need her help. It’s OK, she’ll say, let me show you, it’s not so scary, and she’ll look over the edge and that’s when I’ll do it. Just one push. All the way down.
Eight…
We move closer. As Walker interviews the boys near to me, I can smell the oil in his hair, feel the heat coming from his skin.
Seven…
Imagine the Chancellor up close: her skin, her bones, her breath and her blood. She’ll be real. Like Walker, like my brothers, like me. Could I push Walker?
Three…
No. Walker didn’t have my best friend murdered.
Two…
My only friend.
One…
Lot 149, who introduces himself as Paulie, gets reserved by Madam Cramp, Chief of Expression. Lucky kid – every boy says 23being chosen by Cramp is about as close to freedom as you can get.
My throat tightens as Walker gets to me.
We’ve practised this. Don’t look him in the eye. Focus on the balconies. Keep smiling. Don’t panic.
“And now our final gentleman this evening,” Walker announces.
I swear the Lice take a step forwards. But I can’t hear them breathing any more.
Clearing my throat, I bite my lip and peer into the crowd. My brain’s actually died. Right here. Right now.
“I… My…”
Walker gave me a speech! I have to use the exact words! What were they?
Shit.
In the pit, a scratch echoes across the floor as a chair moves. I flinch, expecting a surge of police. And yes, they’re moving but not towards me. They’re closing in on the middle of the stalls. They’re here for someone else. There’s whispering, movement, getting closer, closer. Walker peers through the glare of the lights.
“Get off,” a voice says.
A top-floor voice, brittle. She sounds familiar. The police push towards her. Other women try to pull the girl into her seat. Plates and glasses clatter. Women snap, “Sit down!” But she keeps moving. Closer. In the limelight, I can see the blood-red colour of her hair. There’s only one debutante I’ve heard of who has hair like that.
“Leaving so soon, Ms Vor?” Walker asks. The audience laughs. A drop of sweat appears on his perfect forehead. I have never, not 24once, not ever seen him sweat.
When she stops, the Lice stop.
Walker presses on. “Were the gentlemen on offer tonight not good enough for you?”
No one embarrasses Ms Romali Vor. We’ve all heard the stories. If you believe them. There’s one that claims one of her mothers, the one who was the Chief of Exploration, had her after meeting some Hysteric in the desert. They made a daughter so unstable that her mother would rather stay in the desert than come back to the monster she produced. And that’s not to mention that the mother who raised her is the Chief of Peace, the woman in charge of the Lice. We hear it from the ladies in our appointments. Rumours sink down to our basement dorms like heavy air.
Ms Vor’s answer is muffled behind her mask. Strong muscles in her neck tense like string pulled tight, angry. What right does she have to be angry? Shuffling in my spot, heat crawls up to my ears.
“Do you want to bid?” says Walker slowly as if each word could push her back into her seat. It never could. No lady could be told what to do by any man, even Mr Walker.
She’s right at the edge of the lime-lit stage. The Lice try to move in but she puts out her hand and again they stop. Even they’re afraid of her!
In a flash, I remember my speech, lean into the mic and let the garble begin. “My name is Jude Grant and I—” Distracted by the sight of her – she hardly seems the monster the gossip made her out to be – the last words of my speech are lost. Stop it. Pull it together! “And I?” 25
Swallow. Start again.
“My name is—”
Ms Vor interrupts, breathless, almost panicked. “Wait!”
Recognition hits me like a wall. I do know that voice. You don’t forget something like that when it’s all you have of someone.
“Ms Vor?” Walker prompts.
The spit in my mouth is sticky, so I swallow. That voice can’t belong to Romali Vor, can it?
Behind her bright white mask her eyes are as green as broken bottle glass. She’s staring at me.
“You heard me. Wait,” she says, firmer now.
Wild and changeable. I know that voice from my appointments. Once a week, every week this year.
Hurriedly, she reaches behind her head, pulling at the knotted ropes of her hair, hair I’ve combed into buns and plaits and twists.
It can’t be her, can it? The girl that came once a week? The girl that never paid for food, or drink, or entertainment, only my time. In my appointments, I’d know it was her because of her perfume. It made my head dance. Fresh rain, she told me, from the storms Outside. We spoke but of course I never saw her, not one inch.
Even if I don’t believe the gossip about the Chief of Exploration, Romali Vor is still the Chief of Peace’s daughter too. Madam Vor: leader of the Lice. The officers who caught you, that beat boys found out of their dorms in the dark-hours, that blind boys who break their oaths, that deliver all flavours of the Chancellor’s mercy.
“Ro—” Walker begins but cuts himself off with a shout as something comes hurtling through the dark towards me. 26
I swerve out of the way as it slices through the light.
The stage flats behind shake as it hits them. Bouncing back, it smashes on the stage. Shards of porcelain fly in different directions.
After the silence, I stand. Find my light. Try not to let them see me shake.
The shattered thing on the ground is a mask.
Romali Vor stares up at me as the whole audience gasps. Rain Girl talked about how much she hated the auction process, how it was a joke. Said she’d smash her mask, mock the show of it all…
Her large green eyes blink.
Given the rumours about her birth, I can’t help but stare, expecting some beast to look back.
I never knew what to imagine when I pictured a woman’s face. I thought they’d look different under those masks, but they’re not that different to us. So why hide?
Beneath her stare is a blunt nose. Dark freckles mottle her skin. Beneath that her smile. A gap between her front teeth and smile twelve: the-look-of-a-person-who-won-a-fight. Relaxed. Satisfied. A hint of pride.
I’ve broken the first law.
Hers is the only female face I’ve ever seen. I should be afraid. I should be worried about the Chancellor, about the Lice, about Walker, about being thrown in the cells, a million things. Men can’t control themselves, we’re told; to look at a woman is to lose our innocence. I don’t feel any different. Searching for the fear I’ve felt all year, the ratcheting ache in the pit of my stomach, it’s not there. 27
Walker steps between us, blocking the audience from my view. I peer round him to keep looking at her.
Are you stupid?
“Now you’ve got to arrest him,” Romali tells the Lice.
Unblinking, her wide eyes wild, she points at me, her voice shaking. She looks up to the balconies and shouts towards where Madam Vor must be. “Go on! Arrest him then!”
Anger and fear flood in a wave and I can’t move. All this time, Rain Girl was Romali Vor … and now she wants me arrested?
The swarms of Lice in the wings move closer to me. Confused, the Lice surrounding her turn and begin to climb the stage towards me too.
“No, wait, I—” I begin and bite my tongue. No need to break another law. Speak when spoken to, Jude.
Romali shouts her order over and over as Walker tries to calm the audience, talking fast. But I can’t hear because my heart is going to explode, because as the Lice turn from her they move towards me. I’m going to be dead whatever I do. Run, I’m dead. Don’t run, dead. Madam Vor’s Lice kick and crunch the broken pieces of mask. With every step, all I hear is the sounds my bones will make as they shatter beneath their black boots—
A soft voice from above sighs. The sound slices through the terror, turning my blood cold. The tap of a finger on a whistling microphone.
Even Walker goes quiet. No gasps. No coughs. No creaks in seats or shuffling of feet. The silence makes my jaw clamp tight. 28
The sigh swims over the speakers again. Long and round and tired.
The audience of faceless women stands as if shot through with electricity. They knock glasses and cutlery. Tables shift on the ground. The whole theatre shakes as if the ancient Tower has pulled its spine up from a slump.
A third sigh, and the women all sit with a thunderous thud. The spotlight moves fast, juddering in the rafters. The light traces the heads of the crowd up, and up, until its glow floods the Chancellor’s box.
She’s too far away to see clearly. A curving shape that shifts and curls, swimming smoke in the light.
Walker steps aside, catches my eye with his burning blue glare before snapping back into the showman the women know. By then, I’ve remembered his instructions on what to do when the Chancellor stands.
I want her to want me. I want this, I remind myself, trying not to look at Romali Vor and how she keeps staring at me.
No. Focus on the Chancellor. I bow, full charm turned up, squeezing down the fear in my gut. This is about you, Vik.
The Chancellor’s sweet, slow tones offer her reserve. “One merit,” she says.
The silence is loud enough: no one’s going to outbid her.
I think the woman I’m meant to kill may have just saved my life.
4
The shifting ribbon of smoke drifts away, leaving the beam from the spotlight empty.
Walker was certain the Chancellor would buy me. He knew her tastes, he said: vulnerable, expensive, nice to look at.
Can’t hear my heart now, only the applause. Wild, as if every single woman in the audience wants her hands to be heard beyond the walls, beyond the doors, up into the highest rafters of High House.
Clunk, every light goes out. Swoosh, the curtains close, separating me from the thunderous audience and the one person in the whole theatre who didn’t turn to look at the Chancellor: Romali Vor. As the Lice close in and pull me into the wings, I can still feel her eyes on me, bright cat’s globes in the limelight, burning through the curtain fabric and into me.
Walker chases after the Lice, his long legs reaching me in a few strides.
“I can take him up,” he insists.
The largest of the Lice laughs with a snort inside her mask. “You’re not allowed in the Chancellor’s rooms. You know that, old man.” 30
Walker had told me the Chancellor had banned him from her floor. “Paranoia,” he’d laughed. “Sometimes it’s justified.”
The officers pull me down the narrow backstage corridors, past the House Fathers retreating from the swarm of Lice. Walker pushing behind between ancient stage sets and dusty boxes, over snaking cables, round open-mouthed theatre prentice with brooms in hand to clean between the seats.
There’s a thud as the Lice push open the exit leading to the front of house. This is where I last saw you alive.
You, kicking and screaming.
You, calling my name.
You, going quiet.
Walker holding me. “He ran. There’s nothing to be done. He’s gone.”
But that was then. Now warmth and light burst into the backstage corridor.
“We’ll talk in the morning!” Walker shouts as the troops pull me through, into the atrium.
Looking back, I search Walker’s face for an it’ll-be-all-right smile. It’s not there.
5
Did you ever hear the story about the boy who danced? They tell it all the time in the dorms. No one ever saw him so a lot of boys don’t believe the tales.
It started down in the Surrogacy, so the stories go. Even as a baby, the boy couldn’t stay still, bopping and bouncing to the music on the radio. Boys need discipline, they said, so Madam Hyde took away all the radios. But, as he grew, he was always tapping his foot. A jiggling little thing. He could hum and spin round for hours, laughing, they say. Hard work to get him to stand still, behave, be good, be quiet. Stay there, they’d tell him. But the boy could find music anywhere.
He’d sniff it out, filtering through the pipes from the Great Theatre. He’d stalk the humming of the Nurse Fathers, skip at the squeaking feet of the cleaning prentice, tap along to the chatter and gossip of mice. And then he’d go, running and laughing, skipping and jumping off the walls, drumming on the tables, clicking his fingers, kicking his feet until they caught him.
Dum-da-da, dum-da-da.32
Then the top-floor women would come; the ones that lived above clouds that were myths to us: the madams, the highly merited, their daughters. Figures from Above with different voices and strange faces he’d never see. “Dancing?” they’d tut when they heard of the boy. “The horror of it! Think. How would that passion mutate when he reached manhood? No, no, we can’t have dangerous outbursts like these.” The Surrogacy would have to make sure he wouldn’t dance again. He wouldn’t be worth anything to any of the houses as a prentice if he couldn’t do as he was told.
I can’t remember how old I was. Sometime before I turned five. But I remember the Nurse Fathers in the Surrogacy well enough; how I ran, how they’d catch me, how it was a game when they chased me. And then there were the smacks, the bruises. It was for the best, they said. The twisted wrists and ankles as they tried to beat it out of me. You need to be good, they told me. Eventually I kicked back. Harder. Harder still. The Nurse Fathers would get fewer merits for a boy only fit for the mines. I had potential, they said, just took a little disciplining.
I remember the darkness too. My eyes got used to it fast. When they couldn’t stop me kicking and biting and screaming, they’d find places to shut me away. Filthy, cramped cupboards, and boxes and chests blurred black with age. They’d let me rot in the dark unless I learned to be a good boy.
Eventually I locked that boy in a dark box myself, buried him deep. The boy they made me into would do what he was told. He’d be their good boy. But there was this pressure in my head 33that would burst out sometimes. It happened a few times after they sold me to the kitchens. The longer I’d hold it in, the worse it got, that ache, and I’d just start hitting, couldn’t stop. Hitting at one of the cooks, the wall, my own head, anything to get all that noise out of my bones. But I learned fast; learned to hold it in tight.
My brothers’ story says the boy who danced made it into the House of Boys. There are steps they teach there, old, traditional dances from the Saints’ days. Slow, elegant, respectful dancing. Each movement has meaning. We tell stories when we dance for the women at our appointments. The guests applaud.
He’d never dance for the women the way he danced alone, the story says. But maybe, if you’re lying awake in the dark-hours, you can hear him dancing in the corridors. You can hear the slide of a slipper on wood or the swoosh of a body spinning in the air.
That’s how they tell it and I’m not going to spoil their fun. It’s been a long time since that boy danced without being ordered to. But there’s always the story and then there’s the truth of it, right, Vik? They aren’t always the same.
6
We’re alone, the Lice and I, crossing the vast atrium of front of house as the closing music from Reserves gets quieter. Past high white walls, falling green plant curtains.
Was it only a year ago that I saw the Lice arrest you?
The shuffle of my slippers on the marble floor seems to echo all the way to the top of the world and down again. High House Tower touches the moon, or so they say. Beyond the fat pillars, there are the balconies. They spiral up into a vast space, reaching into a dark point above, further than I can see.
My gaze stops at a gap in one of the balconies, and a ball of bile catches in my throat.
Below the gap, behind a trickling fountain as high as the chandeliers, there’s a roped-off area mottled with unmistakable pooled stains. The bleach the prentice use can mask the coppery tang of blood, but can’t get rid of every mark the bodies leave behind. The men that break their oaths. The atrium pourswith them.
One little push.
I close my eyes, squeeze them shut. I can almost see you at the balcony edge, your body falling, twisting in the air as they all look 35up, almost hear the sound as you hit the stone. Silent. Broken.
And I wonder how old the cleaning prentice were that took away your bones, that mopped up your blood.
By law, men who break their oaths are meant to be sent to the mines by the House of Peace or pay a ‘sacrifice’ depending on why they were arrested – an eye for a misplaced look, a hand for a forbidden touch, a tongue for an out-of-place word – but now even that’s not enough for the Chancellor. She needs to break us into pieces, like Romali Vor’s mask. And she calls it mercy.
If it was mercy, the Chancellor wouldn’t invite her ladies to watch.
It won’t be long after I’ve killed the Chancellor before I’m up on that balcony. Looking down on a new audience. Taking a last bow. Maybe there’s some sort of freedom, on the other side.
The tallest of the Lice has her hand tight on my shoulder, leading me past the stains. “Cleaning house is a full-time job now,” she grunts.
She laughs with a snort, pinches my collarbone until I squirm, then it changes to a sort of massaging that I don’t think is trying to make me feel safe. It’s like the way the cooks used to tenderize meat, her thumb circling.
Tapping my thumb and fingers together with nerves and curling my toes as we walk, the pressure behind my ears gets worse. The stink of bleach makes my eyes water.
Distracting myself as we walk on, staring at the huge murals on every available wall. The paint is so old and damp it’s run in places, bubbled and mildewed in others. We’re not allowed 36to draw on the walls in the dorms, but up here the rules are different. Here there are words and colour and painted figures as tall as twenty women. They seem to laugh and point, their eyes following us as we pass.
The tall officer sniffs inside her mask. “Anyone would think you’d never seen the Foundations before. Don’t they teach you anything?”
Of course I know the Foundations, the people who protected High House Tower during the war. The cooks told us to pray to them when we were children. Not that I can tell the officer this: we’re not meant to answer back.
“Come on.” She leads me closer to the murals, the other officers laughing behind me. “That’s the Construction.”
The House Fathers talk about history in our weekly classes, but what I know best comes from you. You’d worked in the vents as a prentice, so you’d overheard the madams at the House of Knowledge. The Foundations weren’t gods, you said, they were just people. Scientists and artists and politicians. Women, sure, but men too.
The tall officer slows her voice like I’m stupid as she points out the murals. “That’s the Arrival.”
The Saints: the people that built the Tower, that started their wars for the gods they worshipped. Oil, Gas, Money and Speed.
Don’t look back. Give her that show-her-you’re-interested number nine smile. Don’t wonder how many men the hand on my back has pushed…
“The Lockdown,” she says. “The Last War. Tunnel life…” 37
Stories in paint. Proof of the history you told me when we were kids, before the House of Boys.
“That’s the arrival of the refugees.” The painted faces are of grey men and women, small, sick, being welcomed to safety beneath the Tower.
“The ‘Many Womb’ plan,” the officer continues. To repopulate they needed more women than men, so we’re told. “The Exploration. That’s when the Foundations’ ancestors went into the world to find what was left.”
I always loved the expedition stories. Rain Girl would tell them best, talking and talking. Romali Vor’s triumphant smile slides into my mind and I try to shut it out, just as the tall officer’s hand slips from my shoulder, down my back.
Everything inside goes cold; my toes cross in my slippers as her hand keeps moving down. “They went to the edge of the earth and there was nothing,” she says. “We’re alone.”
Alone.
Don’t react. My chaperone’s cold hand edges down, down.
“Your lot – you men – you destroyed it all,” she says as her fingers reach my waistband. They don’t stop. I try not to react as her gloved hand gropes my behind.
It’s not like it doesn’t happen to every boy. A grab here. A grope there. Small belittling moments we’re meant to endure, because it’s girls being girls. Shouldn’t we be grateful? Flattered? And when they don’t even know they did anything wrong, what? We’re meant to apologize?
Someone behind us coughs. She snatches her hand away to 38grip my arm tight enough to snap it off.
“Sorry, Spinny. We … um … need elevator six E,” one of the smaller officers squeaks. She points to a bank of gleaming copper doors. “You’re the only one with a clearance card for the fast one to the Pent House. Rest aren’t working again anyway.”
“This fogging place,” my guide swears. “It’s falling apart.” She groans behind her mask and pulls me back towards her swarm of Lice. “Did anyone call Maintenance?”
The squeaking officer won’t look at me as we move towards a pair of dirty golden doors.
I’ve never taken an elevator. Never even seen inside one. They say that the fastest can take you to the top of the Tower in a minute. Spinny swears again, swipes a card at the wall, pushes the button and we wait.
Each time Spinny moves her fingers, my heart jumps back into my throat. I flinch – don’t mean to. The Lice respond to weakness. Don’t show them you’re nervous. Think about something else…
Above, one of the biggest murals is being painted over. I think it once showed the birth of the Foundation’s First Daughter, Pallai Dunn, but not any more. Now there’s the faceless, unfinished painting of a glowing silver-clad woman as tall as the tenth storey. It’s half finished. Around her feet, hundreds of small, smiling women look up at her. Everything in that world is warm. And welcoming. And bright. There isn’t one man in it at all.
“Our glorious Chancellor,” Spinny says, leaning the snout of 39her mask close to my ear. Drumming her fingers on my upper arm as the silver figure’s unfinished, empty eyes stare down at me.
“Your date.”
In one great clunk, the elevator begins to whir behind the doors, a deafening monster of a noise.
Doors shudder open, exposing a small room made of metal. Inside, the lights buzz. My instincts pin me to the ground, but Spinny’s pull is strong and soon the grilled floor beneath my slippered toes cuts cold into the pads of my feet.
The Lice fill the space behind me with a wall of black backs, boxing me in behind the stink of well-worn clothes, sweat, dust and grease. As the elevator doors screech closed, my heart thuds. Any one of them could kill me right here, right now, if they knew what I’d been sent to do. Maybe they don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. But Romali Vor knew. She had to, right? Why else would she want me arrested? Did she tell her Lice friends, or want to arrest me herself? Her chance for glory in the Chancellor’s eyes.
The elevator lurches and groans, knocking me off balance, and we begin to climb.
Spinny hasn’t stopped watching me. Her head tilts as she looks me up and down. Taking stock. The circle lenses of her goggles reflect me in their glaze. I try to grin through it, everything’s-fine-nothing-to-worry-about.
She lifts the glass of her goggles up to get a good look at me. I can only see her eyes. Dark brown, cruel. Maybe she’ll stop the machine just high enough to give me a long fall, a quick death. 40
“Come on!” one of the officers grunts, hitting the old walls to speed up the elevator.
It jolts up so fast my bones rattle like the world is trying to drag me into the floor. Sounds suck into silence and the inside of my head feels as if it might burst.
I’m going to be sick, so I clamp my hands over my ears because my brain is going to leak out if I don’t.
Spinny snorts. “It’s the air pressure,” she says, sharp. “Hold your nose and blow.”
For some reason, the whole swarm of Lice find this hilarious.
Outside the elevator the world is rattling, rattling, rattling as we climb ten floors at a time. The world is falling away below us and we’re flying.
My ears pop so I crack my jaw until—Ping.
We stop, the earth letting me go so fast it’s like I might hit the ceiling. But instead the doors open and the Lice shove me into the dark. It feels like for ever before the floor catches me.
Pent House, says the elevator’s voice behind me.
Spinny waves her armoured fingers. “See you soon.” As the doors close, they’re all laughing, leaving me in the darkness.
7
There are stories about how high the Tower is. As my feet cling to the warm stone floor of the Chancellor’s apartment, the air tightens in my throat. It feels like there’s a million floors below, maybe more.
Top floor, my friend. Top floor! you say.
“That doesn’t help,” I respond but no one answers.
My eyesight’s good in the dark, my senses sharp to sounds, but my ears still feel funny after the elevator. Hands shaking, moving through the pitch-black corridors feels awkward. Can’t believe I’m actually up here. How many boys have been in the Pent House? I bet even only a handful of the women have visited.
Rounding the corner, the lights start to blink on as I nearly crash into a man in front of me. Every nerve in my body jumps, but this sentry isn’t real. He’s made from bones and bleached animal skulls, all twisted up with wires and mirrors, jewels and flowers. He’s wearing the same outfit the House of Expression made for us last year: white, collarless, with leaves embroidered on it. The Gardener hosted last year’s Reserves, so the theme was hers.
I must be mad because the longer I stare at the figure the more it seems to look like you. I guess this is what they call art but it 42makes my skin crawl. It even has a pair of shoes, not that we get them.
When you ran, in the atrium, where did you get your shoes from? Replaying the moment in my mind. Slowing it down. Speeding it up. When we were prentice in the kitchens, we only had ugly, slop-covered rags to wear. Nothing to protect aching toes from being stood on, but at least the clothes were ours. The dream was to have a pair of shoes. Something sturdy. Heavy soles. Silk slippers are the best us boys can hope for. Soft skin, sweet-smelling feet, that’s the mark of care, Father Jai says. Of course boys without shoes don’t run either.
Where did you get a pair of shoes?
The Chancellor’s white walls glint with mirrors, opening up into a high space with dark windows stretching all around. You could fit every boy I know in this place, up the stairs to the open-sided floors above. Trying to twist open the top button of my collar, to get some air to my throat, I shuffle over the stone floor, keeping my elbows in so as not to break anything, past animal-skin rugs, and ancient paintings of gowned women reaching down to muscular, naked men. Push my nose up against the glass of the windows to try and see the world in the darkness beyond. But all I can make out is my own reflection and the room behind me.
There’s a protocol for Reserves. Shower. Get dressed again. Wait. The reserve cost covers from the time the woman arrives to mid-dark, when our House Father is meant to come and collect us. I should find a bathroom and get ready. It’ll be hours until the Chancellor arrives. She’ll be at the after-party. I’ll have time 43to calm down, prepare myself.
You sure you can do this?
Yes.
Just one little push?
Upstairs, looking for her bathroom, the walls, floor tiles, cushions and tables twinkle with small, mirrored scales. The whole place winks at me with my own face, my own eyes. On the side table near a large bed, three times bigger than anything I’ve ever slept in, there are small flowers made of folded paper. Did she make them?
You used to hoard paper. You’d put it in your mouth to sneak it away from the cooks. You’d make little men out of the mashed pulp.
Before my heart has slowed, the double doors behind me open and my whole body jumps.
