#I like the layers and I like the short hair | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

johannestevans · 3 days ago

Text

A Man's Indentures

Fantasy/romance short. A man indentured is dispatched to an island to be a bailiff’s bodyguard.

13.5k, M/M, rated M. A man indentured for his parents’ debts is dispatched to a magic-poor island to serve as bodyguard to the local bailiff — an imperfectly beautiful man who has indentures of his own.

Adapted from a TweetFic. CWs for economic violence and the violence of poverty as a cudgel throughout, non-consensual body modification, debts, sexual violence, etc.

Read on Medium. / / Read on Patreon.

---

His name is Josep Garnet, and he’s the most beautiful man on the island, perhaps even in the world.

It’s the commonly held opinion on the boat over. He overhears a man telling another traveller – not an indenture like Denari, but a tourist, a student of architecture and history intent on sketching the results of non-magical building techniques – how pretty he is, how even the straightest of men wants to fuck his arse or make use of his mouth, and two of the crew laugh and nod their heads and murmur their agreement.

He assumes it’s the same as it ever is – one man gushing about a favourite whore.

Garnet is pretty, true enough, when Denari lays eyes on him.

He’s tall with exaggerated features – high cheekbones, a narrow waist, a plump arse and thighs, delicate hands, pretty lips. His hair is the colour of lilacs, and but for his eyebrows, there’s no hair on his face at all.

His irises are the colour of pearls.

The white should be unnatural, should barely be distinguishable from the whites of his eyes, but there’s a dark ring around his irises showing the separation, and the effect is strangely hypnotising.

He’s guarded when he meets Denari, looking down at him with a cold expression. He dresses in fine clothes, neatly tailored and covering him from the top of his throat down to his toes, and he wears gloves as well. It’s a fine day, a little too fine to be wearing such a high-necked shirt and so many layers, but it’s not as though he’ll be the first man Denari’s ever met more concerned with modesty than sense.

They were meeting outside of a modest office at the portside, a set of noticeboards displaying documents of varying descriptions – bounties on debtors who had fled to the mainland, a few calls for particular objects of value, stolen or simply rare, a few open job postings and vacancies.

“You’re indentured?” Garnet asks.

“Uh huh,” Denari says. “Since I was a lad. I’m to stay in lodgings at the debtors’ house?”

“That’s correct,” Garnet says, gracefully inclining his head. “You’ll have a bed, three square meals, a little money to play with. It’s hardly an extensive allowance, particularly with the economy here on the island, but it’s something. How much longer have you?”

“Thirty years.”

Garnet’s pretty eyebrows rise – they’re delicate things, carefully plucked like a woman’s, thin. His eyelashes are fine things too.

“You racked up high debts,” he remarks dryly. His tongue is pierced, Garnet sees, a silver barbel shining inside his mouth when he speaks.

“My da did,” Denari says, and shrugs his shoulders. “What else was a son for, he said, but to pay off a man’s debts?”

Garnets says nothing to this, but his nostrils flare – he’s got damn near no hair at all in them, and his nose is a prettily carved thing too. Denari sees all these details, sees that he’s pretty, but there’s something artificial in it, something constructed, that sets his teeth on edge.

“Come,” Garnet says, shouldering a bag and taking up a box of papers, gesturing for Denari to take up a cart outside the office, which Denari does. “I’ll lead you to the central square, and then to the debtors’ lodge.”

“Yessir,” says Denari, and Garnet blinks, frowning slightly, but he makes no comment as they walk side by side through the city streets. The island is quite hilly in places, a mountain in the distance, but Denari is relieved to find that although the road Garnet leads him down weaves somewhat through the various buildings, public gardens, statues, and monuments, he does not lead him uphill, and the road beneath them has much more evenly laid stone than he might have guessed for a magical island like this one.

Lesh is a large island with a few scattered, smaller islands in the seas around it, although they’re even more treacherous to journey to than the mainland and back, and starved of significant magic as it is, it’s impossible to build with active magic. It’s full to the brim with examples of fine art or novel forms of architecture, building, and garden design – the lack of magic and magical technology forces students of the craft to be innovative if they can’t be rich, and even the very richest are still beholden to the limitations of physical labour.

There’s a reason so many indentures are dispatched here to the island from all across the continent.

“You been a bailiff long?” he asks.

“Twelve years,” Garnet answers.

“You like it?”

“No.”

Denari sniggers, and they walk in silence for most of the rest of the way, which is no hardship. Denari looks at the different houses and public buildings around them – museums, shops, different storefronts, and all the public art, as well. Now and then, Garnet will gesture to one building or another, saying who lives there, or saying what that business sells.

The lodging house is uphill from the central square, but it’s not too painful of a walk, and although it’s a little steeper than he’d like, the bricks are well-textured and the wheels on the cart have been given additional grip to help them keep their purchase, not to mention a complex system of braking mechanisms to ensure a safe stop even if they were on a steep incline.

“I live not far from here,” Garnet says once Denari parks the cart outside of the central office.

“You indentured yourself?”

“In a way,” is the cool answer. “The evening is your own – I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Aye, sir,” Denari says.

Garnet gives him a queer look this time, as though Denari’s said something very odd or unusual, but he makes no comment as he disappears into the office with his papers.

Inside that night, Denari listens to the other boys laugh as they talk about him, about Garnet’s pretty arse, talk about tugging on his pale purple hair, talk about the magic in his voice and the spit on his lips, about how every word he says drips with lust – and not just that, but a woman’s lust, a whore’s lust, the lust of a bitch desperate to be bred, and doesn’t even care who by.

Denari, swinging in his hammock, takes this in with vague interest and distant disbelief, and wonders what exactly fucking piece he’s missing here.

“He’s a born slut,” says the fella in the next hammock over. “Craves a man as most crave bread and water.”

They’re laughing, the other men, but it’s not the mocking laughter of sarcastic comments – it’s laughter more of agreement, horny agreement, and Denari shifts his leg, making his hammock swing a little wider from one side to the other. They all seem to believe it, what they’re saying.

He thinks of Josep Garnet, cool and a bit haughty, but with a careful blankness to his face and his tone, covered in layers of fabric, and tries to imagine him injecting lust into anything he’d said today.

Hmm.

* * *

“Master Fayt, you are six weeks overdue on your repayment,” Garnet says, sounding almost board as he looks up from his clipboard. “Good faith has been extended to you, but it is swiftly evaporating. If you cannot pay us an instalment today—”

“D’you get off on this?” Fayt growls.

He’s a big man, bearing, and Denari gets ready to beat him back if he lunges for Garnet, but as soon as he’s within six feet of the man, his angry demeanour changes, a ripple passing over his face, and his snarl becomes more of a sneer.

“You do, don’t you?” he asks lowly.

Men might lie with men in all kinds of ways, fuck them all manner of ways too, but Denari’s never seen a man look at another the way that Fayt is looking at Garnet now – maybe, he’s seen a man look at a male whore this way, but even then, he doesn’t think so.

There’s a derision in his face usually reserved for women as he looks Garnet up and down, and Denari can see Garnet isn’t surprised. He sets his jaw, presses his lips together, leans his head slightly back, as Fayt asks, “You do, don’t you? Fuck yourself to the thought of it? Finger yourself raw thinking of the men you humiliated, casting them out of their homes, their businesses?”

Garnet’s tone is even, his voice measured and slow, as he says, “Master Fayt, even a small instalment paid today—”

“Why? The fuck good is the gold to a whore like you – going to stuff it up that greedy cunt of yours?” There’s a snarl on his lips as he spreads his thighs and grips at his crotch through his trousers, making an obscene gesture. “I’ve something better for you, you little bitch, come here and—”

“Denari,” says Garnet, sounding almost bored as he turns away and rolls his eyes, and that’s all the invitation he needs to break the fucker’s nose.

Fayt hits the floor hard, clutching at his face instead of his cock now, and Denari can see something dazed in his eyes as he looks up at Garnet for a second as though he’s never seen him before.

“Go in, boys,” Garnet barks out, and the other men get ready to move as Denari grabs Fayt by the shoulder and hauls him up and away, taking him out front and out of the way of Garnet and his work. “Start with the booze, then the crystal.”

* * *

All week, it’s the same – a lot of the men seem straight as you please, men who’d never so much as glance at a boy even if he was paid for and trussed up ready for them, but once they’re close enough to Garnet physically, once they’re within the sphere of whatever influence he has, it’s like they forget it all.

“Ask, if you want to ask,” says Garnet over dinner one evening, the two of them at a table together. Garnet is a free man, for all he implies he’s half-indentured, and he invites Denari out twice, this one the second time. “I can see the question on your tongue.”

“Spell, is it?”

“Spell?”

“What makes men act the way they do around you,” Denari says.

“Men act as they act,” Garnet says lowly, taking a little sip of his drink.

He’s fussy about his drinks – whenever they come into a bar or a pub or a café, he keeps an eagle eye on whoever is making his drink no matter where he is, often requests or specifies a specific worker on shift, usually a woman. Even now, the two of them sitting in a booth separate from the rest of the pub with Garnet nestled against the wall, he keeps laying his palm over the open vessel of his drink as though to shield it from interference.

Two men tonight have tried to send over drinks for him tonight, and he’s refused each one: Denari’s drunk each of them, each time with Garnet wrinkling his nose at him and looking faintly disapproving.

“There’s an aura around you,” Denari clarifies. “Something that makes men lose themselves.”

“Not all men,” Garnet points out in a very quiet, nigh venomous tone – he’s almost smiling, though not quite. It’s a curiously angry expression, a hardness in his pearl-white eyes.

“They treat you the way they’d treat a woman,” Denari says. “Not just a woman, either – a whore, a cheap one.”

“Yes,” Garnet says. “You don’t, though, do you?”

Denari shrugs his shoulders. “Suppose not. Turn it off for me, do you?”

“Turn it off?” Garnet repeats, and he laughs – there’s genuine humour in it, caught by surprise, no matter that there’s an obvious bit of gallows in there. It makes the uncomfortable perfection in his face yield somewhat – the faint ghost of dimples, very nearly smoothed away, show around his mouth, and when he laughs, one eye closes more than the other.

Denari feels himself smile at the comforting softening of what feels like a polished mask, at the soothing appearance of those tiny little flaws.

“I’m not able to turn it off,” Garnet murmurs. “Would that I could.”

“Another drink for you,” says the woman from the bar, holding a tall glass of honeyed cider. “From that fella over there, this time. Surgeon from the tall ship out of Ila.”

“Take it if you want it,” Garnet says when Denari looks across at him for permission. “Sari wouldn’t let him put anything in it.”

“I might if he paid me enough,” argued Sari, and Garnet’s answering laugh was dry as Denari took the glass and tasted it, letting out a satisfied smack of his lips afterward.

“Free drinks taste good,” Denari said.

“You’re stupid,” Sari said, folding the tray under her arm – she was smiling at him flirtatiously, and Denari beamed right back at her as she said to Garnet, “I like him. You should keep this one.”

“We’ll see,” said Garnet, and looked back to his meal.

* * *

It doesn’t affect women, not in the same way. Some of them look Garnet’s way, true, look at the fine thing he is admiringly, desirously, but not in the conquering way the men do, even when they’re very close to him – some women smirk or mutter, give him foul or disgusted looks, laugh amongst themselves.

Most of them silently ignore it, or very occasionally give Garnet a look of sympathy, although Garnet never meets their gazes, never shares the sort of knowing look some women do with one another. They look his way, and he doesn’t look back.

The work is easy enough, though, and not particularly difficult. Here on Lesh, most of the work orders they have, for reclamations or evictions or whatever else, are for the very rich fucks who can afford to live on the island.

There are a handful of poorer free residents, but they live out on the island outskirts or on the smaller islands nearby, on the shittier and harder-to-work bits of land, where foundations can’t be built as deeply. Gods know, the work isn’t as hard on the soul when most of their responses are for businesses rather than individuals, and most of the individual debtor on the list are richer and have posh family to fall back on if they leave the island for the mainland.

“Come,” Garnet orders him one early afternoon, and Denari follows good-naturedly, his hands in his pockets. He’s been on the island a few months and he knows most of the streets okay by now, but they haven’t been down this one, and it’s a little too out of the way to use as a shortcut.

They’re up one of the steeper pathways, some of the oldest houses on the island built high around them and stretching up toward the sky. They’re made of carefully sculpted grey brick, every fifth brick sculpted of a shining silver that catches the light, and they all have silver edging around their windows, their doorframes, or silver filigree painted on their straits and beams and supporting columns.

Garnet leads Denari up the steps off the street and through a silver-arched doorway. All these houses are built flush together in a multi-levelled terrace as the street climbs higher up the slope, many of them with different coloured rooves and matched – this one’s roof tiles are dark green, and as well as the silver edging around the green-painted door, there’s a silver door-knocker as well.

Garnet doesn’t knock on it, just pushes the door open and heads right in, and Denari hesitates as he stands on the welcome mat.

“This place on the docket?” he asks, looking in bafflement at the fine hallway mirrors and the various expensive coats hung up on the rack.

“No, we’re breaking for lunch,” Garnet informs him, sweeping off his coat and hanging it up, and Denari obediently does the same.

All the harassment, the men’s eyes on him, the catcalls in the street, it never seems to interrupt Garnet’s natural sense of authority – he gives crisp orders as easy as breathing, and he’ll let any of their men call him any name, make any overture they feel like or curse in his face, but as soon as they disobey, he calls for the whip.

He always watches, too, stone-faced over the indentured men’s lodgings as the foreman brings the whip out, calls for a different braid or set of tails if he doesn’t feel the man is feeling it enough. He has a good eye for that sort of thing, even though he never delivers the beating himself – they always break under the punishment, make their apologies even though they never fucking mean them.

“One of them could rape you,” Denari had told him last night after one such beating. “They’re bigger men than you to a man – you not worried about making a show of punishing them like that, making them angry?”

“I ask for one thing and one thing only,” Garnet had replied. “That my enforcers do as they’re bid.”

“What, so long as they try to rape you off-duty, you’ve no quarrel about it?”

“I haven’t the time to spend worrying about such things.”

Denari doesn’t know if that’s true, but Garnet never does seem worried about it, never seems to show any anxiety. Maybe it’s a brave face, a refusal to show weakness in response to threats, but he doesn’t seem worried in their relaxed moments, either. He doesn’t seem worried now, the two of them in this painfully fine house, the door closing behind them.

“You live here?” Denari asks.

“Not anymore, no,” Garnet murmurs, and then smiles as a woman comes down the hall toward them. She’s a very finely dressed woman in a dark green dress, white pearls around her neck and hanging from her earlobes, and she reaches for Garnet’s cheeks, touching her thumbs against them as his hands go – seemingly automatically – for her waist. “Hello, Irin,” he says richly.

“Hello, Josep,” says Irin brightly, pecking Garnet on the lips before she draws away from him. “Who’s this?”

“Denari,” Garnet answers for him.

“Denari,” she repeats, and she sweeps around him, looking him up and down critically, appraisingly, her skirts shifting as she moves. He bows his head to her, saying nothing at first. “Well,” she hums. “Where did you come from, Denari?”

“Darjan, ma’am.”

“You miss the bustle of the city?”

“The island bustles plenty.”

“Does it?”

She shares a look Denari doesn’t understand the full meaning of with Garnet, and then leads them through to a warm and well-lit dining room, quickly setting another place for Denari at the table. A servant brings through plates for each of them, and Denari sits beside Garnet and begins to eat.

Little attention is paid to Denari as the two of them – Irin and Garnet – make idle and easy conversation with one another, plainly well familiar with each other. Not anymore, he’d said – what, they were married before? They’re too familiar with each other, physically, to be siblings.

Denari hopes.

“Work good?”

“It’s infuriating, as ever,” Garnet says. “And how’s your leisure, my dear?”

“The opposite of infuriating,” Irin says. “It’s quite perfect. I’ve just redecorated the salon.”

“I saw when we came down the corridor,” Garnet says. “I know you were worried about that wallpaper being overpowering when you ordered it in and you saw it on the bale, but now you’ve got it up it looks lovely.”

“As a feature wall only,” Irin says dismissively, waving her hand. “I was going to have it on all four, and that would have been a bit too much, I think.”

“What are you going to do with the rest of the bale?”

“Oh, I gave it to Kel Frenkel on the south side of the island.”

“On credit, presumably?”

“Credit’s long gone, now,” Irin says in satisfaction, smiling. “Two lovely new dresses, that wallpaper bought me.”

The food is fucking great, and it’s not like Denari knows anything about interior decorating beyond what’s easiest to lug into the back of the bailiffs’ wagon, so he doesn’t mind not being included in the conversation as he eats from his plate – fresh, perfectly salted ham peppered with flakes of crystal pepper that sizzles and pops on his tongue, root vegetables that have been pickled and fried to a gorgeous crunch, and a fresh and spicy side salad that refreshes the palate in between bites of the rest.

“Your hair is turning a lovely colour,” Irin says. “This soft lilac, it’s pretty – not quite grey, hm?”

They talk on with one another, the conversation idle and easy – it’s evident that they know a good deal about one another’s lives, and as much as Garnet seems very familiar with the house and the ins and outs of Irin’s wardrobe, Irin is very familiar with Garnet’s work and its rhythms, knows a lot more about debt collection than Denari would have expected of a posh and fancy woman like her.

He still isn’t quite sure if they’re siblings or lovers until Garnet helpfully makes it a bit clearer by turning the conversation and asking, “How’s the newest beau?”

“Dull,” Irin sighs. “Worse in bed than you were – he’s interested in art, vaguely, but he hasn’t any taste.” Than you were – ex-lovers, then.

“No?”

“We went to the mainland this week past, went to a museum in Lix.”

“Oh, at the Spire?”

“Oh, no,” Irin says witheringly, wrinkling her nose – it’s almost as pretty as Garnet’s. “A new built hall near the university, far too much natural light, more like a chapel than a museum. Aims to be historical, I think, but…” She trails off, shaking her head, then goes on, “I believe the exhibition’s intention was to showcase art and sculpture from different temple schools, but I assume there were budgetary limitations. Or academic ones.”

Garnet snorts. “You can hardly blame him for that,” he says diplomatically. “You held your tongue as to your criticism, I assume?”

“I was waiting for him to make some comment,” Irin says. “Walking down this agonisingly bright hall, seeming some sub bar pieces on display from the Solstice School, some oils that were never properly cured in between these shitty little clay sculptures, a piece of dryad’s topiary, no… No cohesion. No intention. Good curation is a lost art these days, I swear to the gods.”

“We can always agree on that,” Garnet says. “And him, um… Perry?”

“Petty.”

“Petty. He was too shy to make criticism, was he? What, sound carried too well in this awful hall, too worried about being overheard?”

“I don’t think it was anxiety – he’s a bit too stupid to know good from bad in this area, I think. The way he led us in there, I think he must have asked about as to what I might like and picked the first thing someone mentioned that had “art” in the sentence. We mostly walked in silence, him smiling like a dunce with a head injury. He kept asking, “Do you, erm, do you like this one?” whilst pointing at some plinth or other, and nonsense like that.”

“That’s a shame,” Garnet says, and then, in the casual tone one might ask after the weather in, “Going to marry him?”

“Maybe,” Irin muses. “It would be something to do with my summer.”

“One needs something to fill the days. And perhaps marriage would encourage him to buck up his ambitions.”

“Maybe,” Irin says, looking doubtful. “Like as not, though. He has money and his face is handsome enough – there are other men for the rest of it.”

“Tut tut,” Garnet says, and she laughs.

Denari’s almost finished with his plate, and now, having reached the natural lull in their conversation, they both look toward him.

“Do you wish to marry, Denari?” Irin asks.

“I don’t know anything about art either, ma’am,” he tells her, and her laugh is even more handsome as she laughs this time, her chin resting on her hand. Her teeth are a bit too perfect, too similar to the pearls she’s wearing in their whiteness and their smoothness, but it’s only her teeth that have been overworked like that – the rest of her face has a more natural, organic beauty to it, isn’t overpoweringly artificial in the way Garnet’s is.

“You’re a funny one,” Irin says, and Denari glances at Garnet, who leans back in his seat to watch the both of them speaking to one another, sipping at his wine. Denari’s never seen him look so at ease with a drink in his hands – in the whole time they’ve been in the house, he’s never covered his glass once. “Josep doesn’t usually socialise with his bodyguards much, let alone bring them here – most are stupid as mutton and smell almost as bad.”

Denari doesn’t know what to say to that, so he suffices himself to say, “He’s a good boss.”

“I bet,” Irin says.

“Was he a good husband?” Denari asks, his tone experimental, and he seems to have judged it rightly.

“Gods no, terrible,” Irin says, and her gaze flickers to Garnet’s unmoving face. “But he fucked well, and he was interesting. Made life quite exciting.”

When they make to depart, Irin kisses Garnet on the mouth, and Denari observes the want in her body, the way she presses her breast up against Garnet’s, tugs his hands to once more rest on her waist. He lets her kiss him, holds her as directed, but he makes no reciprocation, is cold as marble.

“Such a shame,” she murmurs when she pulls away. “You miss it, don’t you, Josep?”

“More than you do,” Garnet says with a bitter smile, and Irin’s laugh is airy, but has some scorn or schadenfreude in it, some slight cloud in her expression.

“Perhaps,” she allows. “But it’s a close thing.”

* * *

It’s an unpleasant afternoon. They evict two families in a row, each with young children and babes in arms – if it troubles Garnet at all, it doesn’t show in his face.

“Where am I to go!?” the second mother demands of him. The first had been the weepy, quiet sort, agonising to hear, to see, but at least passive – this one is a lot angrier. “Three children,” she hisses. “I tried to pay your instalments, but the interest kept going up – I’ve three children to shelter, to feed, to clothe. What am I to do?”

“Indenture the eldest,” Garnet suggests flatly, gesturing to the boy who has his arms around his sobbing siblings. He’s stout for his age, but round-faced – he can’t be older than twelve, and is probably younger. “Pay the others’ way with the price of him, if you can’t find work for him or yourself.”

The smack across Garnet’s face rings through the courtyard.

As they walk back to the lodgings in the evening, Garnet says without rancour, “You’re meant to guard me from harm, Denari.”

“It was one slap, she didn’t harm you,” Denari replies. “And you had it coming.”

“She shouldn’t breed so many mouths to feed if she can’t feed them.”

“If she doesn’t let her husband fuck her when he’s back from sea, she’ll not even have the pittance of his pay. And you know how unreliable contraceptives are on this island – better than me, I bet.”

“You’d win that bet,” Garnet murmurs.

Most contraceptives don’t work on the island for the same reason all the architecture is creative and non-magical, for the same reason there aren’t any mages around unless they’re obscenely powerful – Lesh and the surrounding islands are surrounded by heavy deposits of lassium, a heavy, dark ore that absorbs and interrupts magical flow. Magical contraceptives and charms, even herbs, are often sapped of their effect out here.

Lassium absorbs magic the same way that gold and other magic-conductive magics can channel it, and a lot of people can’t handle it directly without making themselves ill – the more magic that you naturally channel and carry through your body, the more damage it will do you.

Some assassins carry it – they have to be raised on islands like this, away from magic, to make sure they can handle their lassium-forged blades without the stress of it killing their bodies, and it’s a life-long commitment. They build up heavy magical resistance in their bodies, able to wield those blades, resist magical spells, but they can never be healed with magic either.

“Did she divorce you? Your wife?”

“Our marriage was dissolved.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

Denari shrugs. “Maybe not,” he says. “But I have my answer.”

Garnet disappears into the office to work through the last of the paperwork of the day, and it’s dark when he comes outside again. Denari’s shift is long-ended and he’s not on duty, but he’s sitting outside Garnet’s office just in case, and it turns out he’s right to.

Two of the bigger lads, Yett and Pul, see Garnet as he steps out of the office – they don’t see Denari, hidden in shadow where he’s leaned up against the wall, the hanging sign between him and the lantern’s light.

“Oh, here’s the pretty gem now,” says Pul, and Yett whistles.

“Look how tight he’s wearing those trousers.”

“Look at the cinch of his little waist.”

“Only seems little compared to that fat arse of his.” Yett raises his voice to ask, “You got pretty tits under that woman’s blouse too, boss?”

Garnet ignores the both of them, sweeping past – Yett’s features darken, and he gets to his feet.

Behind them, so does Denari.

Garnet grunts as his shoulders hit the stone of the modest bathhouse’s wall, one of Yett’s hands open over his breast.

“Hey, boss,” Pul scolds him, voice husky as he adjusts his trousers. “We were talking to you. Ain’t good manners to ignore a man saying hello.”

Garnet lets out a bitten out noise as Yett grips him between his legs, pressing his fingers up and between them – he’s stiff as a board and there’s a red blush on his cheeks, making his hair seem a darker purple under the dim lantern light.

He looks at Denari over the men’s shoulders, his expression unchanging, as Denari silently approaches from behind, grips Pul and Yett by each of their heads of hair, and knocks their heads together as hard as he can. He feels the hard clunk of bone on bone as much as he hears it, and they both yell then stumble, Yett dropping to his knees and Pul landing on his arse – with no further word at all, Garnet swiftly walks away from both of them and leaves the compound campus.

Denari goes inside for dinner.

* * *

“Thank you,” Garnet says tersely the next morning. “For last night.”

“You shouldn’t walk around here alone after dark,” Denari tells him. “You don’t see the laundry girls or secretaries doing that.”

“No,” Garnet mutters. “I just forget at times, that’s all.”

“Don’t see how you can forget.”

“I was thinking about work, not men roving about, wanting to swing their cocks as weapons to hit something with,” Garnet says quietly.

“You can’t afford to be distracted like that,” Denari advises him.

“Can’t I, indeed?” Garnet’s gaze is as scalding as his tone, and Denari breaks it automatically.

It’s raining as they go about their business that day, although they’re just in one warehouse, thankfully, reclaiming stock from a foreclosed carpet and furniture business.

Garnet doesn’t seem uncomfortable with the warehouse’s geography or how it’s laid out, seems to know it almost automatically – he’s as comfortable as he is in people’s homes, as he is in closed business, as he is anywhere.

A lot of bailiffs Denari’s worked alongside have been brisker, angrier men. It’s the sort of attitude you need in this line of work to stay on task over the grief and the fury and the mess of it all, something to distance you from everything, from everybody.

Garnet’s haughty distance is in many ways more frightening than a regular bailiff’s obvious and open anger and rage – it’s more off-putting, seems less human, somehow, and yet that control serves him frighteningly well.

Whether they’re taking the safes and staplers out of a closed-down bank storefront or turfing out an aged widow from her reclaimed family home and taking her heirloom porcelain away to pay off her husband’s debts, it’s all stock to Garnet, just listed numbers in blue and red columns.

What’s really frightening, sometimes, is how fair he is.

He has no patience for someone trying to barter with him, trying to assure him that certain items are worth more than they really are against their accounts, trying to blag a foreign currency off as if he doesn’t know every damn rate of exchange by rote – checks them twice a day.

But at the same time, more than once, he’s been in some family home with people in tears in front of him and barked, “Stop!” at the collectors as he points to a specific piece – furniture or a curio or a piece of clothing or jewellery.

“This cabinet,” he’d said a few weeks back, “is a Vex original. It will be worth two thousand crowns on the mainland with only minimal restorative work.”

“That? But it’s just an old cupboard, my grandma brought it with her when they came on the boat!”

“It will pay off the bulk of your loan and its dues, leaving approximately 8% of the account outstanding. With your permission, we will reclaim this cabinet only, and you can work out a payment plan for the remainder. Is this acceptable?”

It puts some people off, Denari knows. When somebody’s in desperate tears, trying to reckon with a lender’s cleaving through their life, the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen talking coolly about dues and percentages is a little too much to cope with.

Denari watches him now as he trails down the numbers on the board with his pen, his expression blank as ever. He wonders if that’s what makes it look so inhumanly perfect above all else, the fact that he barely fucking moves it, wears his face like a static mask.

There are bruises beginning to bloom on his neck where the carpet seller had grabbed him before Denari could haul him off.

He’d breathed into Garnet’s face as he’d clasped him by the skinny neck, shoved one of his knees between Garnet’s thighs – he’d been about ready to shove him back over a stack of red rugs.

Guy’s in cuffs now and outside against the wall.

Garnet looks rattled by it, Denari thinks. It doesn’t show in his facial expression, no, but his white eyes are moving up and down the board a few times too many, and his breathing is just a little bit faster than usual.

“You need to do much in the office today?”

“No, why? Want a reprieve?”

“Let’s get a drink,” Denari suggests.

Denari watches the blink of Garnet’s pearly eyes, the flutter of his pretty eyelashes, before he raises his head and looks back at him. “A drink?” he repeats, tilting his head to one side.

“We haven’t gotten one in a while. Seems a nice evening for it.”

“Fine,” Garnet says impassively, and looks back to the board. His breaths remain fast, he’s still a little bit distracted, but Denari fancies his shoulders have loosened just a little bit, and the set of his lips softens just a fraction.

Denari walks away from him to help the other guys haul shit out, but he always keeps Garnet in his eyeline.

* * *

“Mr Garnet,” says a rich voice as they approach the bar, and Denari looks at the man in front of them, old and liver-spotted, wizened. He’s very tall and was likely handsome in his day – he wears very expensive-looking mage’s robes, the golden embroidery alive and moving on his belt and around the hems of his skirts, the lacing on his boots and his robe front.

Denari can feel lit, can feel the magic that pulses through him and around him – he’s no sorcerer himself, has no real sense for the stuff himself, but after these four or so months on the island, he’s barely so much as seen any magic in operation, alone been close enough to feel its pulse.

The guy must be crazy powerful in order to command this sort of casual magic even on a magic-dead island like this one, and when Denari glances back at Garnet, he sees that the man’s eyes are down on the floor.

“Doctor Keenchild,” Garnet says with an overwhelming politeness, the deference not seeming right on him at all.

“Keenchild,” Denari repeats even though he’s suddenly distantly terrified, even though he wants anything but this guy’s attention – he only realises in this moment what a relief it’s been, living here on Lesh with no threat of spellwork or enchantment. He might still be indentured here, but at least no one can reach out with their magic and puppet him around, move his limbs for him, reach into his brains and shuffle his thoughts and feelings around – reach into his body and shuffle other shit around, too.

“That make you the boss of bosses?” Denari asks, looking the mage in the eyes, which are blue but pulse with crackling energy under their surface. “Keenchild & Co.?”

“Boss of bosses, what a curious turn of phrase,” he murmurs. “You’re Mr Garnet’s new guard, hm?”

“Yessir.”

“I believe I own your indenture,” Keenchild says with infuriating nonchalance. “Lew Denari, six-and-thirty, from good breeding stock, I think. A dockworker and a baker, hm? Your parents passed their strong muscle onto you, I see – and not too ugly, either.”

Denari doesn’t flinch as the old man tucks up his chin, his knuckles warm and tingling against the underside of Denari’s jaw. The magic radiating from him shoots through him, crackles under his skin and makes all the hair on his body feel like it’s standing to attention. He’s not surprised by the touch or the casual sense of ownership, but what does make him let out a grunt of surprise is a tiny zap of energy the old man sends into the sides of his jaw, compelling his mouth to open so that the old man can examine his teeth.

As Keenchild grips him by his face, peering at his teeth the way a farrier might examine those of a horse, he says in idle tones, “Very good, very good.”

Denari’s stomach churns, and he feels the awful ghost of Keenchild’s touch on his face even as he retracts his hand.

“That seems a nasty mark on your neck, Garnet. Caught in bed with someone’s wife again, hm?”

“A debtor, sir.”

“Of course.”

Keenchild’s hand withdraws very slowly, and even as it draws farther and farther away, Denari can feel the static weight of his magic lingering against him, the stubble on his face tingling, the hairs inside his nose, his ears.

“Best keep him out of trouble, don’t you?” he says to Denari, making a nod of his head toward Garnet. It should make his big stupid traditional wizard’s hat shift on his head, but he must keep it in place with magical pins. “Used to be no punishment could deter this young man from sowing his wild oats… We found a solution though, didn’t we? And aren’t you all the prettier for it?”

As he steps away from the bar, he leans in to murmur in Garnet’s ear, and Garnet stands very still to let him, then gives a brisk, short nod. Denari doesn’t think he imagines, based on the abrupt lurch of Garnet’s posture, the way he suddenly straightens by an extra half-inch, that the old man gives his arse a squeeze as he departs.

Denari and Garnet sit down at a booth separate from most of the bar – their usual spot in this place, a shadowed booth that keeps men from noticing Garnet as they walk past, keeps them from wanting to touch him – and there’s no space for them to sit at the table.

“Keenchild,” Denari says after they sit in silence for a few minutes, their drinks untouched on the table. “He did this to you. The, uh… That.”

“He did.”

“’Cause you were sowing your wild oats.”

“I think it was less the sowing itself and more the fields in which I ploughed,” murmurs Garnet, stirring his drink with a cocktail umbrella Denari’s pretty sure was intended as some kind of humiliation.

“Fuck does that mean?”

“Well, I fucked Keenchild’s youngest daughter,” Garnet says. “And the eldest. One of the sons, no idea which, don’t really recall. I’d previously lain with his first wife once while she was visiting the island – the third came to live here and we carried on an affair together for some time.”

Denari looks at him, wondering for a second if Garnet is joking, but it’s not like humour is ordinarily his strong suit. “How long?”

“Oh,” Garnet murmurs, scratching the nape of his neck and looking thoughtful. “Four years, thereabouts.”

“You were a shit husband to Irin.”

“But always an excellent lover.”

“And so, what, he took your cock away and put in a cunt instead?”

“Somewhere in between,” Garnet says. Maybe this frankness would be surprising from somebody else, but it’s not, not from Garnet. “What he did to me went a little… A little wrong, I think, because of the way magic is distorted, its flow blocked, here on the island. He wasn’t satisfied with his first attempt, so…” Garnet is still and silent for a few moments, and then he slowly brings his drink to his mouth and takes a sip. “The first was an attempt at emasculation – to replace the features I had with something more to his liking, that he might plunder me as I had plundered what was his. He wanted more, though, to add further punishment – a curse, then. For men to not only desire me, but desire me as men do women, to see me as a prize to take, to pillage. And to the nth degree, at that.”

“Men hate women on this island,” Denari says. “I’ve lived in a few kingdoms, different places – it’s the worst here I’ve ever seen. The rape, the abuse. All of it.”

“Mm, yes, so I’ve learned,” Garnet says dispassionately. “Magic is in many ways an equaliser, and all forms of violence here are exaggerated, those of class, caste, and economy included.”

“You been raped?”

“That was rather my point, yes.”

Denari nods his head.

“You don’t,” Garnet says.

“Rape, me? Fuck no.”

“You don’t desire me, either,” Garnet says. “You’re inverted in that way, are you? You like men only?”

“You’re a man still, aren’t you?” Denari asks, and Garnet looks faintly ill, but doesn’t answer. “I do like men,” Denari says. “Men mostly, I’d say – not only, but nearly wholly. Didn’t you say you’d fucked one of Keenchild’s sons?”

“Only from behind – he was pretty.”

Denari faintly laughs, because it just doesn’t match up with the man before him now, the way he speaks on his past. His entitlement, his haughtiness, that matches up, but… Well. As perverse as it is, he guesses that was Keenchild’s intention.

“I probably don’t desire anybody like I would have,” Denari adds.

“Like you would have?” Garnet repeats blankly.

“Were I not gelded,” Denari says. When Garnet seems uncomprehending still – he would have thought it was noted in his indenture papers, but maybe Garnet missed that bit, or just didn’t recognise the symbol – he adds, “They cut me when I was twelve. I was already indentured, and too unruly before I fully entered my puberty. They cut out the problem at the root, so to speak.”

Garnet has turned a few shades paler. “The whole thing? Rod and tackle?”

“Just my bollocks,” Denari says. “I’ve a cock, but it’s not developed in the way it should be, a little small. Still get hard, though, can still have sex after a fashion, I just don’t lust like a lot of people do. They did it slow, like you do with sheep.”

“I’m not familiar with sheep, or at least, not this element of their care. Is castrating a sheep so different to castrating a man?”

“It’s normally a quick cut, a little surgery. They still wanted me to grow, though, to toughen, put on muscle. They cut off the blood flow with a magic band, let my bollocks shrivel and die so they just fell off. No direct cutting, and they used some kind of magic to juice them of their essence, so I would still grow tall and hairy, but lose my wilful spirit.” He laughs darkly.

Garnet only looks more ill now, his skin tinged green.

“I could,” Denari says, and then, “I do.”

Garnet’s chalk-pale face shifts, his pretty brows furrowing, his head tilting marginally to one side. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I rather lost our conversational thread somewhere about the point your bollocks fell off.”

“Desire you.”

That puts a little colour back into the other man’s face – two pinpricks of pink initially show at the tops of his cheeks, and then the colour bleeds downwards and reddens his face. It’s a nice colour, healthy. His lips look a bit pinker too.

“Are you indentured or not?” Denari asks. He’d assumed before that Garnet was a free man, but he has his doubts now. It’s one thing to do this sort of modification on a slave or indenture, but on a free man? “In a way, you said before.”

“Not in the literal sense,” Garnet says. “Used to be I was saving to leave.”

“Used to be?”

Garnet nods his head, sliding his palm over his lips. “Irin and I – Irin’s from a wealthy family as you could see from the house, me, my family were fishermen, mostly. Her money’s tied up here on the island, so the plan was for us to retire in Nez. Warm, cultured, lots of magical conveniences – outside of Alexia, maybe.”

“Strict laws about indentures in Nez,” Denari says. “Slavery outlawed, no indentures, can’t even make prisoners labour.”

“Yes,” Garnet says. “What with the popularity of magical constructs there, in the libraries, the museums, the way constructs have been able to develop complex personalities and demand the rights that go with them, Nez is quite committed to all forms of liberty.”

“Don’t want that anymore?”

“When Keenchild caught me… Well. It’s a deformation, enough to dissolve a marriage, and my desire for women, for sex, really, evaporated. The intimacy is nice, but I lost the drive I once had, the hunger, the need, the craving. There used to be such triumph in it, too, but no longer. And now I can’t leave the island.”

“Why, Keenchild won’t let you?”

“It’s not a matter of let,” Garnet murmurs. “Retiring to the mainland with Irin was quite the thought once upon a time, but now? You think this curse is powerful here on Lesh, with all its interruptions and dampening of magical flow – on the mainland, I’d be torn to shreds in short order if I was lucky.”

Denari wrinkles his nose. It’s his turn to feel sick now, knows he probably looks pretty green – under the table, Garnet’s foot brushes against Denari’s, and their ankles touch against one another. His skin is warm, but not in the unnatural way that Keenchild’s had been. It’s nice.

“He fuck you?” Denari asks.

Garnet’s foot immediately withdraws, but he feigns ignorance as he asks, “Who?”

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Denari says. “Just the, um, the way he touched you, the way he looked at you, Keenchild. You owe him a debt?”

“No. I’ve always been very careful about debts and loans,” Garnet says. “But he owns most of an island I cannot leave, controls the only protections I might reach for, so he has my leash in hand either way.”

“You ever want another line of work?”

“I can’t cope with offices,” Garnet murmurs. “I don’t like desks.”

“You don’t like desks?” Denari repeats with a short laugh. “What?”

“Sitting at them, the static expectation, the chairs. The paperwork. I hate it.”

“You do mountains of paperwork in a day,” Denari points out.

“Yes, but most of it is outside or somewhere different, with a clipboard. Offices, they’re stifling. I may not be a fisherman, but I retain my family’s natural inclination to free movement.”

“Bizarre,” Denari murmurs, though not without fondness.

“You must have a dream or two,” Garnet says. “What you’ll do when free of your indentures.”

“A few decades left to go.”

“You never think on it?”

“I try not to.”

“But when you do?”

Denari exhales. “Not this,” he says. “I hate moneylenders, hate enforcement. The violence of it. I’ve considered retirement to Nez myself.”

“You’re a very good fighter for disliking violence.”

“A fight can never be as violent as the process of a place like this,” Denari murmurs. “Homes held ransom, families made homeless. Children bought and sold as commodities – indenture, slavery, interest and due demands. Money itself seems to be a hangman’s noose.”

“Not so much as a lack of money is,” Garnet says, though he seems far from offended, “but I take your point. What for you, then, on retirement? Baking? Making candlesticks? Keeping bees?”

“Dunno. What does Irin do?”

“Enjoys herself.”

“I could give that a try.”

Garnet’s smile is a bright flash, and as warm as sunlight.

* * *

It’s an hour later that sees them in Garnet’s modest lodgings outside of the city centre, the windows double-barred, four sets of locks on the door, lights over every entrance.

Garnet’s pretty lips are well-practised at kissing, and his hands aren’t shy on Denari’s body.

Denari pushes Garnet back from him in the bedroom and falls on top of him on the bed, beginning to layer kisses on the side of his neck before Garnet can draw him into a kiss again. The other man sighs and arches his back as Denari eases him out of his clothes and drops them aside.

The bruises on his throat, beginning to darken now, look agonisingly obvious against the skin, the purple in them bringing out the colour in Garnet’s hair. He has some softness to his breast, and when Denari tongues over one pink nipple, Garnet lets out a keen.

His skin is sensitive, and Denari takes pleasure in mouthing over his body, tonguing over his nipples, tracing over his navel, and finally breathing hot air over his cock.

It’s on the smaller side, struggles to harden. He can see where the magic hasn’t taken full effect – he has bollocks only half-descended, soft and small, and in the midst of the sac flush to his body is the tiniest, shallowest cunt he’s ever seen. It’s wet, but scarcely deeper than Denari’s thumb.

Garnet howls when Denari licks his finger and strokes about the rim of it, and squirms desperately as Denari sucks Garnet’s cock into his mouth at the same time.

He comes easily, sweat a golden sheen on his body, and in the aftermath he looks up at Denari awed and exhausted.

“Your turn,” he says dazedly, reaching with a clumsy hand for Denari’s waistband.

“I don’t really spend,” Denari says. “I get hard, after a bit of work – but it’s more for the intimacy. It doesn’t satisfy me like I think it does you.”

Garnet’s expression is unreadable, his pearly eyes wide. “You’re sure?” he asks. His voice has urgency, solicitous and genuinely earnest, as he asks, “What can I do for you?”

“Let me hold you,” says Denari.

Garnet’s expression crumples, such vulnerability showing in his usually perfect marble features as Denari’s ever seen, and Denari cups one of his cheeks, kissing the opposite side. Garnet curls into him, moulds their bodies against one another, and Denari marvels at how soft and silky Garnet’s hair is under his fingers, at the warmth of his body.

“Keenchild,” Denari says after half an hour of this, dozing in the dark together.

Garnet, sounding half-asleep, grunts against Denari’s breast, one arm banded over the roundness of his belly. “What about him?”

“He going to fuck you? That what he said in your ear?”

“Mm.”

“You have to go?”

“Not tonight.”

“But you can’t… not?”

“No.”

“Sorry.”

“Jealous?”

“Sad. Angry for you.”

“I’ve not much space in me for anger any longer,” Garnet murmurs, his thumb stroking up and down Denari’s sternum. “That’s one more thing that’s been robbed of me – another modification to suit me to Keenchild’s preferences.”

“It’s the most fucked up thing about it, being enslaved or indentured or ensorcelled, even,” Denari says. “That you should be customised and tailored like a bespoke suit, your body owned by somebody else and changed out from underneath you.”

“Oh, yes, quite, a horror, all of it,” Garnet agrees dismissively, and curls all the closer. “But here, respite.”

“Respite,” Denari repeats, and closes his eyes as he holds Garnet tighter.

* * *

Denari sees Irin a week later while he’s picking up dockets from one of the lenders on the west of the island – Garnet had made the journey to Keenchild’s home, and said he was unlikely to return for a few days, if not a week. Four nights they’d shared a bed, and every night since, Denari thinks about it, about where Garnet is, about what Keenchild is doing to him.

“Hello, Denari,” says Irin when she sees him, moving directly through the market toward him, several bags over one of her arms.

“Call me Lew,” he says. “If it suits you.”

“You know,” she says, her eyes sparkling as she puts her arm confidently in his and draws him with her, “it does.”

He takes her bags and walks with no great rush, watching as Irin peruses the different market stalls, picking out this thing and that – a silk scarf, some hand-made earrings, a basket of apples.

“You don’t have to, Lew,” she says, her naturally mischievous features becoming more serious when he takes the third box from a trader and carries them under his other arm. “I can have all this delivered.”

“I don’t have to,” Denari agrees. “I’m free in this moment to do as I please.”

Her expression is a mask of distant discomfort, and he smiles at her hesitation. “You don’t live far, and I’m a strong man,” he says. “I’ve carried greater loads than this for farther distances, and with no choice in the matter at all.”

“Yes,” she mutters. “You have.”

After dwelling on this emotional dissonance, she finds a middle ground that seems to satisfy her – for every item she picks out for herself, she picks one out for Denari.

“Oh, new boots, these will be splendid for you.”

“What a handsome shirt, the same shade as your eyes!”

“Do you like to fish, Lew?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Irin, Irin, please. Would you like to start? I’m sure Josep would take you.”

“Does he fish?”

“No, but he likes to get himself wet and splash about. I’m sure you’d work it out together.”

An hour or so later, Denari stands in the hall, watching Irin remove her gloves and hat, laying them down on the hall table as a servant takes away the things Irin has bought for herself – the servant is a free woman, Denari sees.

“It’s how my family made their money,” Irin says when Denari watches after her leaving. Denari is packing the ridiculous number of gifts Irin had bought for him into a crate that had been brought out for him. “Centuries back, my great great whatevers were sorcerers of renown – they didn’t lend money or take debts, but they enchanted collars and made charms.”

“Slavery?” Denari asks.

“Mm,” Irin hums. “Not of men or elves, at first – they started out making saddles and bridles, began enchanting them for use on magical beasts, you know, magical elk and deer, great fae horses.” Her tone is quieter as she leads him through to the salon, pouring him tea before she pours her own. “They captured a centaur and wanted to modify a saddle, to “tame” him as punishment, and then when the war with the orcs started in the Bright Kingdoms, the same enchantments were modified for them, and soon enough…” She makes a sweeping gesture. “Moving to indentures over slavery was the moral choice, apparently.”

“Most places these days don’t allow for it,” Denari says. “Or they limit the duration – me, I was taken as a boy, and the time on me was most of a lifetime.”

“Your parents were taken in by a bad loan?” she asks with sympathy. “Or gambling?”

“Legal action,” he says. “My father worked on the docks, and there was a bad accident one day, a beam on a ship broke and landed into a flour store. The enchantments weren’t up to code – huge boom. The ship had been written off and abandoned a decade before, the company long-since dissolved, so they went for the dockers.”

“Fucking Hells,” she hisses, and it makes him laugh, how easily she swears with her posh islanders accent. “I’m so sorry.”

“It is what it is. You out of that trade now, I guess?”

“My mother divested us when my father died – not sooner, mind you. Only when it became unpopular.”

“What do you think of Garnet?”

“What do you mean?”

Denari sips at the tea she’s poured for him, shrugging his shoulders. “He’s not exactly opposed to the practice, is he? Heard him suggest it to a family the other day.”

“He wasn’t always as he is now,” Irin says, pulling her legs up underneath her on the sofa and tugging a blanket over his lap. “He used to be angrier, used to be…” She stops, sighs.

“He told me about it,” Denari says. “That his personality was different, before, um… He’s at Keenchild’s at the moment.”

“I heard he was on the island. He pushed his luck too far with it – I used to tell him so, the way he used to be, so spirited, so… Well, so stupid. Keen with numbers, sharp, with this edge of justice to him, but rebellious.”

“Rebellious?”

“Oh, yes,” Irin says. “It wasn’t just the sex he was wild about, fucking people all around – that never bothered me anyway. No, he used to come home and would talk about what he’d done that day. How he’d fiddled the numbers here or there, helped a man out, made sure a child escaped indenture. That sort of thing. Now… It’s not that he doesn’t care. He does, still, it’s… It’s all distant for him compared to how it used to be. What that spell did to him, it didn’t just soften his features, make him pretty, it separated him from his heart, a little. From the passion he used to have.”

Denari’s nausea is a distant thing, but he’s very aware of it, of the bubble in the base of his stomach. “Broke his spirit,” he supplies, and Irin nods her head.

“Yes,” she says. “Exactly.”

“He can’t reverse it?”

“Keenchild’s the most powerful sorcerer from here to Nez, I expect,” Irin murmurs. “To leave the island would be difficult – to find a witch not just powerful enough, but willing to do the work, and not affected by the magic themselves… I’ve sent letters. Tried to invite people, even, but most of them wouldn’t risk the journey to Lesh, and without a way to guarantee Josep’s safety on the mainland.” She strokes a hand over the blanket in her lap. “No, no, he’s stuck that way, I think. It might die with the old man – or dissipate after his death, at least, it might take a few days. The physical changes, those are permanent.”

“You still love him,” Denari says, and Irin looks slightly surprised.

“Well, of course,” she says simply. “Why would I not?”

“He’s different. In personality, in body, in everything.”

“Not by choice,” she says. “We’re no longer man and wife, but of course, I love him.”

“He loves you,” Denari says confidently, and Irin smiles, her eyes shining.

“He does – quite adores me, really,” she says. “He fucked insatiably when we were married, women, mostly, but pretty boys too. Brought some home for us to share, at times – he’d bring gifts, mostly. Cakes, jewellery. He was so… You see him now, and he’s so reserved, so subtle in everything. He used to serenade me in the street, used to fall to his knees and sing.”

“That sounds awful,” Denari says honestly, and Irin laughs, and it’s a beautiful laugh, bright, easy.

“Oh, it was – his voice isn’t awful, but he’s no bard. He’d drop to his knees on the cobbles, kiss my skirts, grip me about the waist, sing me love songs or quote me poetry.”

“Other women too?”

“Not the serenades, I don’t think – I was married to him, after all, I had to put up with more than most.” She was smiling faintly. “But yes, he was effusive. With compliments, about his skills as a lover, about the beauty of the world. He was a very bright flame once.”

Denari nods, slowly. The past few nights, he has been surprised by Garnet’s passion on some things – it’s not effusive or loud or exaggerated, but it has been potent. He’s quoted poetry against Denari’s chest, talked philosophy, complimented him.

He wonders what he might have been like, had they gelded him later, or had he not been gelded at all – would he have been as bright as all that, laughing, singing in the street? Angrier, more wilful, a revolutionary?

“He likes you very much,” Irin says quietly. “He seems to feel very safe with you – it’s good to see. I’ve not seen him so relaxed since before Keenchild bound him up, seen him loving something. Someone.”

“He soothes me too,” Denari says. “I feel at liberty with him, I guess.”

Irin squeezes his hand. “Good,” she murmurs. “That’s good.”

“Will he interfere? Keenchild? He mentioned having my indenture papers.”

“I doubt it,” Irin says. “He already has what he wants from Josep, and takes it as he pleases.

The next sip of Denari’s tea is bitter on his tongue.

* * *

Denari returns to the lodge to find that his bunk has been tripped of its sheets, his meagre possessions – his boots, his towel, a few books, his clothes – have been packed into his travelling trunk and await him in the hallway.

“The fuck?” he demands.

“You don’t look pleased,” says the lodging warden – he’s a grumpy old sod most of the time, but now he’s got a faint smile on his face.

“Why would I be pleased? My rank as Garnet’s guard, my seniority, I deserve that bunk, I—”

The warden looks at him, laughs, and says, “Boy, you’ve no need of that fucking bunk. Your friend, Garnet, bought out your indenture – you’re a free man.”

The next argument dries into dust on his tongue, his indignation evaporating, and he stands still, frozen.

“Wh…” He looks about himself, uncomprehending – there are tousles for rank and territory from time to time, shuffles of power and struggles between indentures, and it had been natural for him to assume this was more of the same, someone taking the fucking piss.

More believable.

He muses it over in his head, what he’s going to do next, staying the night at one of the public lodgehouses, the ones for free men. When Garnet comes through, Denari is sitting on his trunk outside the bathhouse with Irin’s box of gifts beside him on the floor.

“I have your papers here,” Garnet says, almost shyly. “Officiation of our debt paid in full – ordinarily, upon completion of your repayment, you would receive a stipend of a fractional wage per year served, but—”

“How the fuck did you afford it?” Denari asks, looking up at him.

Garnet, clipboard in hand, shrugs his delicate shoulders. “Since my punishment, I’ve lived very modestly – I paid a third. Irin has a fund to pay off indentures as well, a reparations fund.”

“She paid the other two thirds?”

“Not her, no, but her charity. I took out a loan with them against my salary – at a very reasonable rate of return, I might add. My credit is more well-regarded than most, what with my profession.”

Denari stares at him, his mouth ajar, as he thinks of Garnet telling him he’s never been in debt before. As he stands over Denari now, he slowly crumples, his shoulders tightening, his perfect mouth twisting.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes out. “I should have asked your permission, I acted on impulse, I—”

Garnet lets out a startled noise as his shoulders hit the wall. The clipboard and the officiation of Denari’s freedom flutter to the courtyard floor with a pouch of coin, and Denari focuses on the pleasant heat of Garnet’s cheeks under his palms as he cups the other man’s face.

“You’ve freed me, and you apologise,” he murmurs. “You are mad, Josep Garnet.”

Garnet’s lips part, and Denari delicately traces his lower lip with his thumb before he leans in and kisses him, brushes their lips against one another. It’s rather tender, lacking in urgency on either of their sides – it’s nice.

“I don’t own you,” Garnet bafflingly feels the need to assure him. “I don’t, you owe me no doubt, there is no obligation, and I was already working to pay off your debt, you must understand, it wasn’t only because we became intimate with one another, it’s—”

Denari’s never heard him speak so much in so short a time. “Yes, I know,” he says. “I see my papers there – I know how you are. You did a very kind thing, and you acted with all the fairness due the situation.”

He can feel Garnet’s pulse under his fingers. “Yes,” he says.

“You know, all of a sudden, I find myself with no place to stay at the fault of some stranger,” says Denari. “Without meaning to indebt myself to you, Mister Garnet, might I trouble you for a place to stay?”

Garnet stares at him, his lips thinning. It’s a perfectly severe look. “Are you making fun of me?” he asks, and Denari laughs, patting his cheek.

“Yes, Josep, I am.”

The simmering anger becomes something sweeter – irritation, with fondness mixed in. “You will not soften me by use of my forename, Lew.”

“Won’t I?” Denari retorts, and grabs his case.

* * *

“Suppose this means I’ve lost my job?” Denari asks.

“I’ve budget to pay you a modest salary,” Garnet says. He’s naked and laying on his belly, and Denari, lying beside him, traces his thumb up and down the line of his spine, down to the small of his back. “I thought you might not like to go on working with me. The work being what it is.”

“What do you do on your days off?” Denari asks, and Garnet glances at him.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “You know.”

“If I’m not here – before me. What did you do then?”

“Well, I might meet Irin for lunch at hers, or she might come here.”

“You like fishing, she said. Or, not fishing, but splashing in the water.”

“Too much risk in that, these days,” Garnet murmurs.

“Do you go anywhere? Alone? Or, with people, trustworthy people?”

Garnet looks slightly lost before he says, “Where should I go where there are no other men, but where men are welcome?”

Denari squeezes his hip, and changes the subject.

* * *

He used to swim as a boy before the debtors had come, living on the coast as they did. His father had insisted, said he’d seen too many boys drown for lacking the skill, had trained into him the strength and stamina to swim against decent currents.

He’s never had a real day off before, never truly and really and genuinely been at actual liberty and at his own command – natural, he supposes, that he should return to that which brought him pleasure before he lost his freedom.

He’s always swum when the option was available to him, and it’s natural enough for him to swim now, to dive. He searches the mussel beds with faint interest, looking at the shells.

Lassium is the colour of obsidian, but lacks its shine, its glassy shimmer.

It absorbs the magic that flows near it, about it, and thus has a strange effect on light as well – when he picks up a shard loose on the seabed, it makes his hand feel immediately cold, makes his body throb, shock with it. He’s never used magic himself, never even been taught enchantment – he knows that for some in richly magical places or for magical species like dryads or elves, even to brush their fingers against a shard like this would be such a shock as to kill them.

He's no magic user, and on the island, he’s had a good length of time to adjust.

He expects it’s the same for any change in environment – he’s heard men talk of dizziness when moving to a far higher elevation from sea level than they’d lived before, heard people talk of the shock not only of changing heat but humidity when travelling.

Denari surfaces still holding the shard in his hand – it’s no great dagger of a piece, small and sharp, threatening to crumble. It’s a hard stone, but it’s evidently been weathered by the currents, the sea, only a little bit bigger than a marble.

Doctor Keenchild is standing on the docks, his thumbs curled through the heavy belt that cinches in his robes, from which hang various magical accoutrements – golden instruments, a scope, a pouch of ingredients, maybe.

In his youth, he probably was a handsome man. His hair now is thick and shaggy, a few faint streaks of gold showing through the grey mane; he has a hard chin, a strong nose, and only light stubble on his aged cheeks.

“Hullo, free man,” he says. “Much luck to you on this auspicious day, hm?”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Denari says, swimming toward the dock and stowing the lassium stone in his pocket before he grips at one of the posts and hoists himself up to sit on the edge. “I thought you’d be pissed.”

“Why should I be?” Keenchild asks, tilting his head. “Young man, I take no pleasure in holding contracts of indenture – they are an unfortunate means to an end, the recoup of debts that might not otherwise be repaid.”

“Is that all indentures are to you” Denari asks. “Collateral that happens to be a little more active in balancing the debts incurred?”

“I don’t claim to think it pleasant,” Keenchild says. “On the contrary, it strikes me as rather tragic, parents selling their children and whatnot.” He clucks his tongue and slowly shakes his head, his great lion’s mane shifting in the breeze. “But there’s many a parent, young man, who would rather sell their child than offer their own labour, husbands offering their wives as chattel in order that they might pay for more drink or put money betting on cockfights or whatever else. The poor demand high loans, then cannibalise each other in their repayment.”

“And what would the poor do, if they didn’t take those loans? Starve? Lose their homes?”

Keenchild laughs. “I envy your expectations of your kinsmen, young man. Alas, I see more gambling debts and money wasted whoring or drinking than I do on such noble endeavours.”

“You’re leaving?” Denari asks, gesturing to the boat on the next dock over, which is loading up a ship via the gangplank. He recognises some of the stuff onboard – merchandise reclaimed from debts the past few weeks.

“Mmm, I visit a few times a year, when I can – my wife, she has a sensitivity to magic.”

That would be wife number three, Denari supposes, the one Garnet had carried on an affair with. Had she been there at Keenchild’s manse, whilst Garnet was there this week? How much of doing what he’d done to Garnet had been to punish him, and how much had been done to punish his wife?

“She has to stay here on the island, or she gets sick?”

“Here or elsewhere with high lassium deposits,” Keenchild says, gesturing with a heavily ringed hand. “Too much exposure to magic saps much of her energy, I’m afraid, makes her hair fall out. Quite awful.”

Denari is silent for a second, looking up at the older man, feeling the magic radiate out from him in faint pulses. They’re not touching, though within touching distance, and Denari can feel the heat and crackle of it on the air between them, a contrast to the heavy, cold weight of the lassium in his pocket.

He can’t stop himself from asking, even though he suspects the answer, even though the horror begins to churn within him even before the words take shape, “What does it do to her, as powerful as you are? When you touch her?”

For just a moment pure triumph shows in the old man’s expression, sly and dark and utterly sadistic. His eyes glitter, his lips twisted in a nasty leer that shows off his too-white, magically bleached teeth, even more artificial than Irin’s, and Denari feels the magic bubble off him.

All at once, the face is exchanged for a mask of theatrical disapproval, Keenchild’s eyes wide, his lips an O. “Young man!” he scolds, faux scandalised, and laughs as though Denari is an incorrigible child. “Such a forward question to ask of a man and his wife.”

“You like to hurt people,” Denari says quietly as he gets to his feet. “Makes sense – indentures, debts, they’re a way of trapping people, keeping them in their place. And even if you can’t indenture people, your wife, Garnet, they’re trapped here. Fish in a barrel.”

“Now now,” Keenchild says in a tone of warning, his rich voice cut through now with a note of steel. “Mr Garnet behaved badly, for which I gave him a well-earned punishment, bringing him to heel – he’s no prisoner, though. He can go wherever he pleases.”

“He doesn’t even leave the house when he’s not working,” Denari says. “Do you know that? He can’t go anywhere without someone trying to jump him, just goes between his house and his ex-wife’s.”

“A reversal of the previous state of affairs,” Keenchild says unerringly, with a quiet laugh. “He was such a tomcat before, wouldn’t leave the house without pouncing on some pretty girl, from in front or behind, so long as he could take his pleasure from her and corrupt her virtue, devalue her, besmirch her.”

“What you do, that isn’t corruption?” Denari asks. “Were any of those girls ever scared of Garnet the way that everyone you fuck is terrified of you?”

The old man takes a step closer, his eyes hardening.

Denari guesses, by the unnatural way he stiffens, the way his reflexes just don’t seem calibrated for it, that he’s just not used to being punched, that he’s not used to physical attacks at all. He lets out an indignant, wordless roar as Denari grabs him by the cheeks and forces his mouth open.

Before so much as a word can pass the old man’s lips, even a syllable of an incantation, Denari is forcing the lassium stone from his pocket past the cage of his teeth and onto his tongue. The wave of magic that had been ready to burst off of the old man, to burn or evaporate or throw him back, fizzles out.

It feels suddenly sapped out of the air, feels the rippling weight of burgeoning magic abruptly disappear the way that darkness flees a room when the lanterns are lit.

Keenchild stumbles back and Denari follows him, pushing his chin up. He holds the old man’s mouth closed – he’s obviously very magically powerful, but with age, he’s lost most of his muscle, any of the physical power his body might have had in youth. Denari pinches shut the old cunt’s nostrils and he snorts, coughs, his eyes wide and watering as he heaves in a choking, struggling gasp of no air at all—

Then swallows.

Denari watches the hard lump of stone slide visibly down his throat.

Keenchild’s blue eyes bulge outwards, white froth beginning to bubble up around his mouth as he tries and fails to heave in a breath. His knees buckle, and Denari catches him under the aged arm.

The same numbness he’d felt from the stone is now mirrored in the old man’s skin.

He’s trying to talk – trying to yell, probably – and can’t make any noise at all but breathy, whistled chokes.

Denari yells up the docks, “Hey! Help! It’s Doctor Keenchild, he’s having some kind of fit!”

He makes sure the old man sees his smile as he helps him down to the floor.

He filters through the crowd as some other mage rushes to help the old man, hears someone ask, “Filton, were you in the water?”, ducks under the shouts and the gathering crowd.

Josep Garnet is standing in the middle of town at the central crossroads.

He’s standing in place, his hands at his sides, his shoulders to a lamp post. People are walking past him with nary a glance in his direction – men are walking past. One brushes his shoulder, grunts a short, “’Scuse me, mate,” and keeps on walking.

His pretty face has a dazed expression on it.

He looks somewhere up in the clouds, but his eyes refocus as Denari approaches: his gaze fixes on Denari’s face, and the smile that draws across his pretty lips is slow and perfect and seems to come very, very easily to him.

“Don’t tell me I’ve paid off your indentures just so you can face a noose,” he murmurs, hand reaching forward. Denari cups the back of it, drawing it up against his cheek, kissing the palm.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Denari says, shrugging. “I don’t think he’ll be able to talk before he dies.”

“Should we be getting on a boat and fleeing town?” Garnet asks, raising his eyebrows as he adjusts Denari’s shirt collar – a gift from Irin and slightly too large for him but very comfortable, and a flattering colour.

“Nah, if they catch me, they catch me,” Denari says. “Let’s go invite your ex-wife out to dinner. Let’s go to a restaurant.”

Garnet sighs, pressing his lips together. “Lew, I can’t very well go out to a…” He stops. Blinks. Laughs. “Oh.”

“Yeah, we’re both free men, each of us at liberty,” Denari says. “Irin too, except for the man part. Let’s go out, have a meal. When’s the last time you got drunk?”

“A decade go.”

“You want to?”

“Yes,” Garnet says, winding his arms around Denari’s neck. “Yes.”

“And uh… His wife, Keenchild’s.”

“Miletta.”

“She’ll be okay, right?”

“I’ll go to her tomorrow,” Garnet says, and Denari kisses his cheek, wraps his arm around Garnet’s waist, and they walk along with almost no one looking their way at all.

Irin’s fiancé opens the door – he is a bit plain – and doesn’t recognise either of them.

“Irin, darling, we’ve come to take you out for dinner!” Garnet calls right past him as if he’s nothing, as if he doesn’t matter at all – Irin’s servant, who Denari had seen before, he greets with a pleasant, “Hello, Yuna.”

“Hullo, Mr Garnet.” She says, laughing.

“Won’t you join us? Just us girls.”

“I’ll stay home, but thanks, Mr Garnet. Congrats, I guess?”

“Thank you, dear.”

“What the fuck is happening?” asks the fiancé – he’s swiftly eclipsed by Irin, who stands next to her beau, looks at him to Garnet back to the beau, back to Garnet… then leaps into Denari’s arms.

“Oof, why me, woman!?” Denari demands, wheezing through his next laugh, but he shifts his hand under Irin’s arse and sweeps her over his shoulder, picking her coat off the rack and tossing it over top of her.

Yuna disappears down the corridor as Garnet picks out a set of gloves and shoes to complement Irin’s coat, and the three of them descend the steps into the street again.

“Irin, what the—” the beau starts, barely audible over Irin’s squeals of triumph and delight, her feet kicking.

“Oh, for Gods’ sake, Eric, come if you’re coming, we’ll explain on the way!” she says impatiently – over Denari’s back, she reaches to cup Garnet’s cheeks and kiss him on his forehead. “Close the door behind you!”

“Pass me her shoes, would you?” Denari asks as Irin starts to explain the whole thing to Eric the fiancé, and Garnet walks beside him as the two of them put Irin’s shoes on for her before setting her down on the floor.

“You’re a funny man, Lew,” Garnet murmurs in his ear.

“You’re a funny one yourself, Josep,” replies Denari, and kisses him on the corner before Irin impatiently grabs the both of them by their forearms and groans at them to hurry up.

FIN.

#musings #original fiction #original characters #gay fiction

68 notes · View notes