Four #2
“You can walk to your own bed,” the other man said as he pulled on his tunic. “I don’t run a hostel.”
The harshness in his voice pulled Campar back from more jokes.
It was true. They’d made rules, and he was breaking them.
The temptation to treat Ghati like his boyfriend was real, but it was a vice.
The boundaries they set between each other were one of the few things they could control, and Campar was being rude to test them.
“Even if you did, I have no currency to pay for a room,” he said with a smile that was an apology. “I’ll take my indigent bones elsewhere.”
Ghati made a small sound in the back of his throat that would have translated as Damn right , but there was a smile behind it.
He watched Campar get up and pick up the clothes he’d left scattered around the room.
There was affection in his eyes, but not the raw hunger that had been there when the clothes were being pulled off.
Campar risked leaning across the bed for a quick kiss.
Ghati kissed him back. “Let’s do this again, soon,” he said.
“Knock on my door any time,” Campar replied. “Shower?”
Ghati waved his hand at the tiny water closet in his cell. Help yourself.
Still wet from the shower and pleasantly sore from the activities that had preceded it, Campar wandered down the corridor to the common room.
There was no place else to go, really. No bars, no cafés, no libraries, no sunlit plazas.
Just better-appointed prisons or worse. In one corner of the common room, Danna, Dervan, and Emmin were locked in intense conversation.
They had known each other in the ancient times before the Carryx, and worked in defense and security.
The three of them had developed a cycle of petty social drama complete with shifting loyalties, minor betrayals, and near-constant heartfelt interventions that ended with protestations of affection and loyalty.
Campar didn’t think the three were aware of the way they had made their lives into a performance for each other.
It was probably harder to see from inside the dynamic.
He found them pleasant when he could pry them apart, but tiresome when they were together.
Across the room, Rickar sat on the floor, hunching over a bowl of food and brooding. The lesser evil being what it was, Campar went to sit beside him.
“Good morning,” Rickar said, and then shrugged. “I mean, assuming it’s morning.”
“I’m sure it’s morning somewhere,” Campar said.
Rickar hadn’t been one of Campar’s close friends in their old lives.
Campar had admired the man’s sense of style.
Rickar had been a bit of an understated clothes horse.
His lightly rumpled linen suits had always been tailored.
His socks had always matched each other and never clashed with the color of his shirt.
It was more effort than Campar put into his own appearance, but as someone alert to the nuances of masculine beauty, Campar appreciated the work the man had done to create and curate the persona of Rickar Daumatin.
The Rickar sitting with him now was a very different animal.
His clothes were the same tunic and trousers that all the humans wore, provided by their captors.
His hair had grown longer and shaggy. He still shaved, but a few errant whiskers low on his neck and by his ear had escaped the scythe.
His cheeks had grown gaunt, and there was a permanent darkness in the skin under his eyes.
And also, Campar had come to care about him.
“How are you holding up?” Campar asked, trying to keep his tone casual. He knew the truth, but he didn’t know how Rickar would answer.
The other man shifted his shoulder. “You were with Ghati?”
“I was,” Campar said lightly. “Jealous?”
“How does that even work? He’s half your size.”
“I assure you he’s got hidden depths of vigor.”
“Be careful,” Rickar said, and he wasn’t talking about the difference in their size anymore. “Don’t let yourself get hurt.”
“We aren’t picking out furniture,” Campar said, a little surprised by his own defensiveness. “It’s a few moments of pleasure in an environment that doesn’t have much. That’s all.”
“I tried it too. And when we lost Dennia… We knew, me and her, that things were dangerous. Everyone knew that. But it still fucks you up, losing them.”
“That’s not exactly new, though. For all their many sins, the Carryx didn’t invent mortality.”
“They accelerated the hell out of it,” Rickar said. “Whatever they’re using us for, there’s going to be violence. And they don’t care if we live.”
“I can’t plan for that,” Campar said, and gestured at the common room with its halls and doorways. “This is what there is for us. Refusing the few little scraps of life in it? I don’t see the advantage in acting like I’m dead before it actually happens.”
“I just don’t want to see you hurt.”
“I know,” Campar said. “And I appreciate it, I do. But we are going to get hurt.”
He shouldn’t have said that. He regretted it as soon as he saw Rickar flinch at the words.
He put a hand on Rickar’s shoulder, letting the weight of it say what he wasn’t artful enough to find words for.
Rickar suffered the contact for a moment, then reached out for his water packet as an excuse to shrug it away.
One of the doorways to the common room opened, and a spike of fear ran through Campar’s gut.
The Sinen who trundled into the room wasn’t alone.
The Rak-hund that scuttled beside it stood somewhere between a large dog and a small pony with what seemed like dozens of pale knifelike legs.
To Campar, the beast was less a living thing and more a weapon.
Its sharp feet ticked against the deck, and it was the sound of murders Campar had seen and smelled and cleaned the bodies up after.
If the Sinen had pressed a gun to his head, he would have felt less threatened.
The Sinen grumbled to itself, and then turned, making its way to the Budon of Luus.
The pair of Soft Lothark guards ambled toward them as well.
Campar found he was holding himself perfectly still, as if by freezing, he could not be part of whatever was about to happen.
Rickar’s breath was low and ragged. The Sinen made a series of damp sounds that the half-mind converted into something that sounded like music made by ripping paper.
The Budon shifted, looking at each other with no particular emotion that Campar could fathom.
Two of them made the odd ripping sound again.
The little Sinen blinked its wide goatlike eyes.
Campar took a slow deep breath and tried to exhale out the panic.
“Fuck,” Rickar said, and shook his head like he’d been asked a question and the answer was no . “You want the rest of this? I don’t think I can eat.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Campar said, pulling the bowl over toward himself.
Rickar stood, patted at his breast like he was checking a jacket pocket he no longer had for a pouch of cigarettes they couldn’t get, and walked back toward his cell.
Campar took another breath. Across the common room, Emmin and Dervan were talking over each other in an upward spiral, each voice goading the other one into tighter, higher tones.
Danna was crying. Campar wasn’t sure they’d even noticed the Sinen and its walking carpet of knives arriving.
And the final insult, the greatest indignity in their lives of captivity and servitude, was that the food was terrible.
It was cold, and had a deep, nutty taste he associated with health diets and calorie restriction.
He wondered whether Dafyd and Tonner had made progress with the hydroponic gardens back at home, and then noticed that he’d called the Carryx world-palace home .
The Sinen burbled and slapped out a speech to the room and left, his knife-legged weapon trailing behind. A moment later, the half-minds translated for everyone in the room.
Campar heard, “We have entered conflict space. Prepare for the possibility of violence.”
Campar considered what he might do to prepare for this possibility beyond making his soul right with the gods. He couldn’t think of anything. A moment later Ghati drifted in and headed for the food dispenser. Seeing Campar on the floor, he smiled and asked, “What did I miss?”
Campar started laughing and discovered that it was hard—harder than it should have been—to stop.