Fantasy & Romance. A young man becomes entranced by the Lord’s personal assassin.
Part I is 10k, rated M, M/M. When Lord Axley’s assassin is out, the people of Roam flee inside and don’t even dare to look at him. Jack, a tavern boy, lays eyes on him once, and is bewitched.
Violence and captivity are themes in this one, as are sexual abuse and recovery thereof, social isolation, trauma, friendship as well as romance.
Lord Axley’s enforcer was a beautiful, deeply frightening man — tall and slim with long tresses of dark hair, uncomfortably pale eyes, he was white like stone rather than white like skin. Jack had been a little obsessed with him ever since he’d come to Roam, come to work with his Uncle Heath in the inn.
He was terrifying, yes, but there was a radiating sense of inhumanity or something like it — whenever he came by everyone rushed inside, closed their shutters, locked their doors. He didn’t typically associate with anyone in town, and he was dangerous, sure, but not so much to them, Jack didn’t think.
Thieves or murderers or anyone else within the town limits were ordinarily arrested by the city guard, but Jack had never heard of anybody within town going up against him. The lord’s enforcer took care of people before they crossed the borders into the city, before they came through the gates. He fought sorcerers, killed magical beasts, and while he killed highwaymen and thieves in the outer reaches, it wasn’t ever anybody nearby.
Jack had only lived here three years, but that distinction was pretty fucking obvious to him, and yet whenever he pointed it out, people looked at him like he was mad.
“You really think he knows the difference?” Mrs Logan had asked him once, arching her eyebrows. “He’s violence personified, he’s dangerous — you can see he’s dangerous just looking at him.”
“I thought he was too dangerous to look at,” Jack had muttered, and she’d slapped him upside the head for it, but he’d been right then, and he was right now. People used to tell their kids to avert their eyes when he was coming past, sometimes shut their windows and blew out their candles, too, ducked their heads, outright hid.
Jack did, but only a bit, only a little.
One night the enforcer was coming by and silence ran up the street and filled it to the brim like a sudden fog, everyone’s shutters and doors closing, people rushing inside and ducking their heads. Jack went into the little attic room he was lucky enough to have to himself, part of the reason he’d come to Roam in the first place — he didn’t push the shutters all the way open, just pushed them forward the littlest bit so that he could peer out, his elbows leaned on the frame but his head tipped back so he wasn’t fully in view of the street, but could see out.
Lord Axley’s enforcer walked alone down the cobbled street, the only man in sight, the only man for streets around, and his leather boots made sound on the stone that echoed in a way they wouldn’t ordinarily. Even this late at night, there’d be people in the street, open doorways — like this, everything closed, everyone gone, his bootsteps had all the more hard surfaces to echo off of.
Gaze forward, his lips loosely pursed, he looked…
He just looked sad, Jack thought, always looked like this when Jack caught glimpses of him — if it wasn’t sad, it wasn’t happy either. Eyes distance, mouth a thin line, his gait even. It was the sort of look that if Jack saw in the inn, he’d attend to with offers of extra drinks or music or something.
The enforcer must have seen the light from his window because he stopped in the street and looked up at him, and Jack wasn’t as far back as he thought, because they locked eyes. The enforcer didn’t wear the fancy clothes the nobles wore, and he wasn’t wearing armour like the city guard, either.
He was wearing breeches and a leather jerkin over his chemise, blades shining at his belt, layered pendants around his neck. They caught the light too, shimmering at his breast and reflecting light up toward his face so that his features were strangely lit from below.
Jack couldn’t breathe, staring down at him, but his fingers twitched, and then he raised his hand, the barest motion with it. He gave the smallest of waves, unable to stop himself, but also not wanting to, exactly.
The enforcer’s gaze flitted from Jack’s hand to his face again, and a furrow appeared between his brows, perplexed.
It only lasted a moment, the air thick between them, and then he turned away, kept walking, and suddenly Jack could breathe again.
* * *
It wasn’t as if —
It kind of was, but wasn’t exactly, as if he was making a habit of it.
Jack always wanted to sneak a glance when he was going by, through the window, through cracks in the doors. It was so easy to catch him when he was on his way out, almost always at night but not so late at night that everyone was put to bed just yet.
It was maybe six months after that first time they’d made eye contact that Jack was out in the middle of the night, sitting outside because it was hot and he couldn’t sleep, and the moonlight was bright that there was more than enough to see by, sitting on a bench underneath the eaves of the inn.
Suddenly the night felt so silent and so thick and so complete, and when he looked up the street he saw Lord Axley’s enforcer approaching. This wasn’t the outward journey — this was him returning home, and he was walking a bit unsteadily, his beautiful hair messy and his clothes rumpled, blood staining his hands and soaking into his sleeves.
He had a black eye blossoming on one side and a cut lip, and when he came within twelve feet or so Jack jumped to his feet. The enforcer stopped, standing there, staring at him, his face that same blank as ever.
He stepped forward, closer.
Jack didn’t move.
The enforcer stepped closer again.
Under the shadow of the inn’s eaves, Jack’s breath hitched as he inhaled because the enforcer smelled of blood but he also smelt of juniper berries and crushed heather and pine, and Jack whimpered as he fell back against the wall, the enforcer towering over him.
He managed to breathe, to keep breathing, waiting for the enforcer to touch him, but he didn’t, just stood there.
“Aren’t you going to beg me not to hurt you?” he asked softly. It wasn’t the voice Jack expected — it was silky, musical, so quiet he couldn’t believe it was so easy to hear — maybe it wouldn’t be, if it weren’t for the silence he brought with him.
“Why?” asked Jack, trying his best not to tremble and failing. Like this, the enforcer’s pale eyes were the same colour as the moonlight, grey-white with the barest yellow tint, and it made him itch under his skin. “You’ve no reason to hurt me. Why would you?”
“Perhaps because you didn’t beg.”
Jack took in the barest gasp, tasted the gin-mix fragrance that clung to the enforcer’s clothes, his hair. “You — No,” he whispered. “You won’t hurt me for no reason. I’d not insult you by assuming you would.”
The enforcer stared down at him, and there was that furrowed brow again, that show of perplexity —
And then he laughed.
His teeth were blindingly white, the whitest teeth Jack had ever seen, and his laugh was soft and had a rasp to it, like he didn’t use it very often. He tossed his head back as he let it out, laughed even as he turned away, laughed and laughed as he stumbled back into the street. Jack stared after him, uncomprehending, a little frightened, entirely overwhelmed.
The laughter trailed off, and before he turned off, the enforcer glanced back at him.
His pale eyes glittered, and there was something in the grin on his face, the way his cheeks dimpled, the shine of his lips and his perfect teeth.
Jack relaxed, however uncertainly, and smiled back.
The enforcer laughed again as he started up toward the castle keep.
* * *
It was some weeks later that he went with a friend of Heath’s to a festival a few villages over. He laboured on his farm in exchange for the lodgings, and he enjoyed the festival, the music and the dancing, the big change to the usual rhythm of life at home.
When they were returning home, they were only a few miles away from the gates, the city walls in sight, and their caravan was set upon by highwaymen.
He didn’t even have time to worry about it, to be scared, because as soon as he locked eyes with the man in black leathers who approached the back of the cart, the guy was dead.
The enforcer moved so quickly he was just a blur, and Jack pulled himself to stand and stared as the enforcer hauled the dead men aside with ease, piling them up over the signpost that pointed up to Roam or to move on to Monan.
The leader of the caravan, a merchant who traded in fabrics normally, was hurrying through his thanks and gratitude, but he was addressing the floor instead of the enforcer himself, but it didn’t really matter — the enforcer wasn’t even looking at him.
He was standing beside the cart Jack was sitting in, where he’d been sat on top of a bale of hay, and Jack stared down at him as he delicately cleaned the blood from his dagger with fastidious little motions.
“Well,” said Heath’s friend, Bird, “we should carry on.”
The enforcer’s hand whipped out and gripped the cart’s edge, fingers pressing in against the wood, and Jack swallowed, but then he smiled.
“What, you want me to stay with you?” he asked, and the enforcer gestured with his blade, now clean and shining, for him to get down from the cart.
“Hey,” said Bird, voice trembling with anxiety, “hey, now, he’s not done anything wrong.”
The enforcer arched an eyebrow.
“It’s fine,” said Jack, and he went to swing his legs down — to his surprise and to his sort of giddy delight, the enforcer put out his arm to steady him, and his arm was warm, solid, strong. “He won’t hurt me, Bird. I’ll be back… tonight?”
He looked at the enforcer’s face, and the enforcer gave a neat inclination of his head.
“No,” said Bird, looking worried, looking beyond concerned, hopping down from the front of the cart and striding forward. “He — ”
He cut himself short at the blade on his throat.
“It’s fine,” said Jack again. “It’s fine, Bird, I told you — I’ll be back by tonight. It’s alright, really.”
The enforcer didn’t look away from Bird’s face, keeping his blade flat against his throat and staying unmoving. It was Bird that drew reluctantly back, moving back to the cart.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he muttered as the caravan kept going, and the enforcer leaned back to look at him interestedly, then patted the flat of his blade against Jack’s cheek, making him jump and let out a sound of surprise.
The enforcer laughed, and Jack scowled up at him.
“It’s no wonder you have no friends if you threaten everybody with knives.”
“Who’s threatening?” he asked in his silken voice. Jack had to strain to hear him over the noise of the wheels turning and the horses in the distance. “Me, I’m playing.”
“What are we doing?” asked Jack, and the enforcer’s dagger suddenly disappeared, but there was no extra blade hanging from his belt or the holster under his arm, and he frowned in confusion, trying to figure out where he’d stashed it. It didn’t seem like there was space in his sleeves.
“Waiting,” said the enforcer, and gestured to the pile of bodies.
“What for, for them to get up again?” asked Jack as the enforcer started rummaging around in his pockets, and the enforcer shook his head, drawing two silver-wrapped parcels, neither of them bigger than a marble, from his pocket.
He threw them on the ground, and they both made loud popping sounds, one right after the other.
The sound made Jack jump back, which he was glad of, because they let up thick rings of dark purple smoke, and the enforcer didn’t flinch or give the rising rings much heed as he hooked his thumbs in his pockets, taking idle steps around with no real direction in mind. He just put one booted foot in front of the other, heel to toe, heel to toe, and glanced up the path where there were armoured bodies leaving the keep gates, trailing a cart with them.
“I don’t do the clean-up,” said the enforcer. “I just mow them down. You take an unexpected turn on your way back?”
“There was an overturned log on the path and we saw it from a mile away — one of the little girls in the caravan had climbed up a tree, and she saw it by chance. We ended up taking the outer path instead of the main one.”
“Mmm, headed off the ambush,” the enforcer mused aloud. “They thought they still had tree cover here.”
“Didn’t they? You couldn’t see to here from the castle walls,” said Jack, frowning as he looked back toward the keep. “Not with the copse ahead.”
“I wasn’t on the castle walls, I was roaming,” said the enforcer, and leaned back on his heels, then tipped forward again. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Hm.”
“How old are you?”
“How old do you guess?”
“Twelve?”
“I’m not twelve.”
“Thirteen?”
The enforcer crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at Jack with his lips shifted into a cat-like smirk. “Guess for real.”
“Twenty-two?”
“Mm-mm.”
“Twenty-five?”
The enforced reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a compact, opening it and frowning as he turned the mirror up, examining his own face.
Bemused, Jack asked, “Is now the time for vanity?”
“I’m looking for lines — you seem to think I’m ancient.”
Jack laughed, and said, “Okay, okay. Nineteen?”
The enforcer snapped the compact closed. “Mm,” he said. “Yes.”
“Are you really?”
“Why would I lie?”
“Because you’re a liar.”
“I’m no liar — I never lie to anybody.”
“Unless you’re lying now. What’s your name?”
“What do they call me?” asked the enforcer, and Jack opened his mouth, felt himself inwardly cringe, closed it. This made the enforcer laugh, and he tapped one finger against his pale, pink lips, swaying on his feet.
“As if you don’t know.”
“Perhaps I like to hear it.”
The silence hung on the air between them for a few seconds, each of them ticking past horribly slowly, painfully. “A shadow,” said Jack softly, breaking it. “A black stain. Lord’s poison.”
“Lord’s poison,” repeated the enforcer softly, tilting his head to one side and chuckling. “I haven’t heard that one yet, actually. I like it when they call me the Cat, haven’t you heard that one?”
“It’s not as… impressive? As the others?”
The Cat looked quite offended at this, and he rushed to correct himself.
“Um, less scary, I mean.”
“What about your name?”
“Jack.”
“And what do they call you?”
“… Jack.” Jack stepped closer to the pile of corpses as he answered, under which was a growing pool of thick, dark blood. It was cooling, congealing, and he could smell piss under the coppery taint. “None of them shat themselves,” he observed, and the Cat nodded his head.
“They don’t always,” he said.
Jack looked at their covered faces, all of them wearing neckerchiefs or scarves, although their hats had fallen off.
“You kill many highwaymen?”
“Not many,” said the Cat. “They don’t come close enough for me to bother with them, but I get them when I can.”
“Did you have to kill them?”
“No,” said the Cat, somewhat churlishly. “I could have let them rob you. Why, do you enjoy being robbed?”
“No.”
“You sure?” the Cat asked, and he stepped forward, grasping Jack’s jaw. His fingers were warm and soft, and Jack laughed breathlessly at the touch.
“Don’t laugh,” ordered the Cat in his silky voice. “I’m about to rob you.”
“I don’t have anything worth robbing.”
“Nothing?” the Cat asked, and the hang not holding his chin delved into Jack’s jacket pocket, making him laugh and squirm. “Aha!”
He held his prize aloft, and Jack looked at it, raising his eyebrows.
The Cat frowned, lowering his palm and examining his stolen apple critically. “It’s bruised,” he complained.
“Give it back if you don’t want it.”
“You’ve nothing else?”
“A penknife, a spool of thread, uh…” Jack rummaged in his pockets. “Two copper coins and a shiny stone.”
“How shiny?”
Jack laughed, and put out his palm with the stone in it, showing where the black and white stone had been polished clean and smooth by the river. The Cat deposited the apple in his palm and swiped the pebble.
Jack watched his face as he scrutinised his prize, examining it with keen, focused awareness.
“Mine now,” he said.
“Oh, no,” said Jack flatly. “I’ve been robbed.”
“You really aren’t scared of me,” said the Cat. “You should be.”
“No,” said Jack. “I’ve no reason to be.”
“You do,” he retorted. “I’m dangerous. I’m a menace — I kill indiscriminately and without mercy.”
“You discriminate a bit,” Jack pointed out. “Or I’d be dead already.”
“Some cats play with their prey before they eat it.”
“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Jack retorted. “Some cats get so enthusiastic licking their arses that they fall over.”
The Cat frowned at him, then looked to the path as the guards finally came down from the gates.
“Over there,” said the Cat, pointing to the pile of corpses, and the two helmeted guards moved forward and started tossing them into the back of the cart, their bodies still loose, not stiff yet.
The one without a helmet, a middle-aged man with a fancy emblem on his breast, stayed.
“Who’s this?” he demanded of the Cat, gesturing to Jack, and then he grabbed hold of Jack by his shirt, but the Cat immediately lunged between them, shoving him back.
“He’s mine,” the Cat hissed.
“He one of this fucking band?”
“No, I just came from Gilvary,” said Jack, peering around the Cat at the older man. “We just avoided these guys, happened to take the other path.”
The guard captain scowled, but he looked as confused as he did pissed off as he looked from the Cat to Jack behind him.
“We were coming back from the fête,” said Jack. “He helped us.”
The guard captain took this in, his eyes wide, his eyebrows raising, and he looked to the Cat. “You can’t fucking do this,” he told him sharply. “You can’t just take civilians.”
“He’s not taking me against my will,” said Jack as he saw the Cat’s hackles rise, saw one of his lips pull back in a snarl. “We’re friends.”
“Friends?” came the uncomprehending reaction, as if the guard captain had never even heard the word before.
The Cat raised his chin, turning his body, and then he put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Yes,” he decided loudly. “Friends.”
The guard captain took this in, his lips thin. “His lordship know about this?”
“Of course,” said the Cat immediately.
“… Fine.”
Jack let the Cat tug him along, and they moved up the hill ahead of the guards’ body cart but veered off the main path rather than going through the main gates — the Cat tugged him through a cellar door obscured by stone, and unlocked several magical gates to let them through.
“You told his lordship about me?” whispered Jack. He had to whisper, because down in the tunnels, every noise echoed.
The Cat looked back at him — his eyes shone in the dim light, reflecting what little there was, like a cat’s eyes.
“No,” he said seriously. “You don’t want that.”
They walked for what felt like miles through the stone tunnels, which initially got much darker, but the Cat conjured a ball of light that hovered ahead of them and showed their way. When they reached a ladder, the Cat put his hands on Jack’s waist and put him ahead to go first.
Jack hesitated a second, but then put his feet up on the first rung and started to scale up it — it was made of metal, and the rungs were a lot thinner, the rail narrower, than any ladder he’d ever scaled in the inn or at home.
He pushed open the hatch when he reached the top, and his mouth fell open when he put his head out and realised he was in a garden, luscious plants and flowers blooming around him on all sides — he couldn’t even see the grass for pink petals, because there was a cherry blossom in bloom.
“Wow,” he said, pulling himself up, and the Cat leapt up after him, closing the hatch behind them and sitting back on top of it, perching there as Jack took a few steps forward, looking around.
“Where are we?”
“The garden,” said the Cat.
He didn’t know what garden it was supposed to be — he’s never seen it or walked past it, has never even heard wind of it. Jack slowly walked up a row of neatly potted plants set up on tables, all of them with little wooden signs above them or at the sides of the pots.
“What do they say?” he asked.
“You can’t read them?” asked the Cat, tilting his head.
“No,” said Jack. “I can read numbers, Uncle Heath is teaching me to do the maths for the ledgers, but I can’t read this. The letters are different to what I know, anyway.”
“It’s cursive. The letters are joined up.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that,” Jack said, although he didn’t know that he had, really — Uncle Heath said he used a shorthand for the letters in the book, that he just needed to know what each note means, that he didn’t need to be able to read more than that. Uncle Heath couldn’t read more than that, anyway.
“This is hellebore,” said Jack.
“Yes,” agreed the Cat. “The roots are most useful, then the petals. The sap is good too.”
Jack looked up and down the rows of plants, although he didn’t recognise the rest. “They’re all… poisonous?”
“Yes,” said the Cat. “They’re all medicinal, in any case. The practice of poisoning, in my experience, is simply the administration of medicine in overabundance.”
“Fancy way of putting it,” said Jack, and looked back at him. “You do doctoring when you’re not killing?”
“No, they won’t let me,” said the Cat, and got to his feet, loping over with long strides of his ridiculous legs. “I just brew things for the lord’s infirmary, make poultices, potions, unguents.”
“The fuck’s an unguent?”
“Like an ointment. For burns or rashes.”
The Cat was standing very close, and he smelt of juniper berries and heather again, the scent filling Jack’s nose.
“You brew your own gin, too?” he asked, and the Cat’s eyes lit up. When they were wide like this, their pale colour caught the light, and they looked pale yellow instead of grey.
“Might not know medicines, but I know drink.”
“You do.”
“Can I taste?” asked Jack, and the Cat smiled at him, bouncing on his feet.
“Yes, yes,” he said, catching hold of Jack’s wrist with his warm fingers, “let me show you my laboratory, I — ”
Jack pulled him down by the collar of his shirt, and the Cat let out a noise of sharp surprise before it was muffled. His lips tasted slightly of beeswax and they were soft under Jack’s, soft and warm. Jack put his hand on his chest, leaning further into him until the Cat pulled suddenly back.
His eyes were wide. “Oh,” he said, his lips downturned. “Oh.”
“Sorry,” said Jack, feeling his cheeks burn as his stomach gave an uncomfortable flip, lurching in his abdomen. “Is that — Was that not alright? You didn’t want that?”
The Cat was touching his own lips with his fingertips like he was checking they were still there.
Jack had never been frightened of him, not really, not since the first time he saw him laugh — right now he couldn’t imagine anyone being frightened of him at all. He looked small and uncertain, looked as young as Jack does, and just about as dangerous no matter how scary he dresses.
“Riddell,” came a voice from the archway to the courtyard, and Jack turned to look at the source of it at the same time the Cat did, then felt himself blanch, taking a step back and bowing his head right down.
Lord Axley wore very fine clothes, and he was even taller close-up than Jack thought.
He bowed at the waist as the other man approaches, not daring to look up again at his lordship’s face, and the Cat stepped slowly between them, one hand brushing Jack’s shoulder, keeping Jack behind him.
“Milord,” he said. Suddenly his voice wasn’t sleek and confident and a bit haughty like it always seemed to be, with Jack, with the guard captain. Suddenly he sounded very small indeed.
“What is that?” asked Lord Axley coolly.
“Nothing,” said the Cat hurriedly, sounding nervous, and Jack stood still behind him, trying not to shake. “No one.”
“Riddell, I’ve told you before to keep your experiments — ”
“He’s not, he’s not,” said the Cat. “He’s just — a boy. From the city. We were just talking.”
Lord Axley’s voice was so cold it went straight through him as he repeated, “Talking,” as though it were the most unimaginable sin. He pronounced the word with all the severity of a tolling bell, then said, “Show him to me. Boy, step out.”
The Cat tried to stop him, but his lordship lets out a sharp, stern noise, the sort of noise you’d make at a real cat when it was about to do something it oughtn’t.
Jack stayed half-bowed as he came out from behind the Cat, and he heaved in a gasp as Axley’s gloved finger comes up under his chin, forcing his face up so that he had to look at him.
Axley was an older man with grey in his dark hair, although his neatly trimmed beard was black. His eyes were a deep, dark blue.
Jack swallowed, staring up at him, at his scowling lips, his heavy brows.
“Name?” he demanded.
“Jack, sir. Jack Harrow.”
“And where did he find you?”
“He saved me, sir, erm, milord. Just now, from the highwaymen.”
“Well, now you’re saved,” said Axley softly. “Off you go.”
Jack shuddered as Axley released him, and he looked to where Axley gestured for him to go, out to the corridor — there was a guard there, stood to attention, waiting to lead him into the corridor.
He looked back at the Cat, but Axley barked, “Now!”, and he rushed to obey. It wasn’t as if he didn’t think about the Cat, as he went, he did, he just —
He just had to go.
* * *
Uncle Heath panicked when he got back in, grabbed hold of him and looked him over, but he seemed soothed once he was certain that Jack was fine, that had no open wounds or signs of coming death.
“The fuck were you at with him? The Shadow?”
“Nothing,” he said, and his uncle let him go back to work with little further discussion.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it, the way the Cat’s body language changed when his lordship arrived, the way he became even smaller, more uncertain, the way he flinched. He’d had so much confidence, and it had faltered with Jack’s kiss.
With Lord Axley’s arrival it had entirely disappeared, and Jack couldn’t help but wonder at what should make the Cat look afraid of anything, what Lord Axley could possibly be like.
Bad, he supposed. He’d heard he had a temper, that the lord could be capricious. People did fear the Cat, after all, as an extension of his lordship’s temper, and no matter that he mostly killed people outside of the city limits, he did kill, and killed quickly, killed horribly — he can torture, can really make people suffer, when he needs to, when he wants to.
Jack’d never seen it, but he’d heard the screams.
He turned over and over again in his bed that night, and at some point he woke to a shadow in his window, and then standing over him.
He stared sleepily up at the Cat, whose eyes shone in the deep dark of Jack’s tiny attic room. He had to bend his head forward to keep from hitting it on the ceiling, even more than Jack did.
“Did he harm you?” asked Jack.
“No.”
“You seemed frightened of him.”
“He’d never hurt me badly,” whispered the Cat. “I’m his — I belong to him. Did he frighten you?”
“A little. I thought he would hurt me, or hurt you.”
Jack touched the Cat’s hand, and it made him jump, flinching back, but then the Cat was on top of him in his bed. It was just a small cot, wood-framed, and it creaked under their combined weights.
Jack took in a sharp breath as the Cat’s body fell on top of his, his knees landing awkwardly on Jack’s thighs before spreading apart so he could straddle him, his knees tight to Jack’s waist, his arse resting on his lap over the blankets. Like this, Jack could feel the powerful muscle of his thighs, of the whole of his body.
Either side of his head, Jack was framed in by the Cat’s hands, was surrounded by juniper and heather and a new, muskier, woodier scent. He swallowed, staring at the Cat’s shining eyes — enough light filtered in from outside to light the white flesh of his neck, his shoulders. He’d never seen the Cat in so little clothing, just leggings and boots and an unlaced shirt.
The shirt was ruffled, and as Jack stared he saw the marks around his throat, bruising showing in red and darkening to purple that in the dim light looked almost black. Jack touched his fingers carefully to the marks, and the Cat hissed, leaning back and away from him.
He was in the shadows again now, so Jack only saw his shining eyes and the barest edges of his silhouette, but he could feel the weight of the Cat on top of him.
“Did his lordship do that?” he asked.
“Why did you kiss me?” responded the Cat. Jack didn’t know how to judge his tone.
“I thought you’d like it,” said Jack honestly. “I wanted to. You’re — you’re beautiful. Handsome. I thought you’d kiss me back.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Why would I kiss you back?”
Something about that stung, made him feel anxious and sad at once.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “We’re the same age, you seemed to — I thought you liked me too.”
“I like you,” retorted the Cat, almost growling. “Of course I like you. Why should that mean you get to kiss me?”
“It doesn’t, I guess. I’m sorry.”
The Cat’s hands were on his chest, and it made him shiver because even through the blankets he was pressing down, squeezing.
“Do you want to fuck me, too?” he asked archly.
“No, not if you don’t want.”
“Why would I ever want that?”
Jack pressed his lips together, turning his head on the pillow. “Did you have to come here just to insult me?” he asked, voice sharp, teeth gritted. “You could just tell me you didn’t want it. You don’t have to act like fucking me would be the worst thing imaginable.”
The Cat’s hands were touching him, and Jack doesn’t know what he wants if he doesn’t want sex — they’re tracing his body through the cover of the sheet, and then they’re touching his bare shoulders, the upper part of his chest, sliding over the sides of his neck.
“Didn’t say that,” the Cat muttered.
“I’m good,” said Jack, and it came out awkward, stunted. “I’m just saying, I’ve been with — I’m good. With my hands, my mouth.”
“Good at what?”
“At — At sex?”
“I wasn’t aware it was something you could be good at. What, are there medals?” There was a sharpness to the Cat’s voice, and Jack shivered because his fingers were tracing around the shells of his ears and it tickled, genuinely tickled, and then the Cat slid his fingers through Jack’s hair and it just felt nice.
“I’m good at making someone feel good, that’s all,” murmured Jack, feeling soothed, somehow, because if the Cat really didn’t like him he wouldn’t be playing with his hair the way he is. “I’m not selfish or anything.”
“I don’t, with… He wouldn’t like it.” There was a hitch in the Cat’s voice, and Jack hesitated as he put his hands on the Cat’s waist, felt the obscene muscle packed on his body — he really was like a cat, like when you touch one of the street cats and it was all muscle.
The Cat peered curiously down at his hands.
“His lordship,” said Jack. “You and he…”
“I’m his,” said the Cat.
“And he fucks you?”
“Mm.”
“I’m sorry.”
The Cat’s curious eyes flitted to his face. “Why?”
“Because he hurt you, your throat.”
The Cat touched his own neck.
“He shouldn’t do that.”
“I’m not hurt,” said the Cat. “He didn’t break skin, and in any case, it’s not real hurt. It’s not injury.”
“No?” asked Jack, and he reached up and pressed on the Cat’s bruised throat now, made him hiss in pain and suddenly lash out.
Jack let out a sharp, desperate sound at the way his head was wrenched back by the hair, a blade against his throat, and his eyes were wide without his permission, his breathing heavy, his heart pounding.
“It hurts, then?” he asked shortly, and the Cat didn’t moue, didn’t frown. He just looked stricken and upset in a way that made Jack’s heart ache, even as the Cat put his blade away and sheathed it. “Why’re you here?” he asked.
“I wanted to know,” said the Cat lowly.
“Know?”
“If you wanted to fuck me.”
“I told you,” said Jack. “Not if you didn’t want it, not ever.”
The Cat’s face was unreadable. In a low voice, he said, “I can’t see you anymore.”
“His lordship said?”
“His lordship thought nothing of you,” said the Cat. “I would keep it that way.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack, and the Cat peered down at him, tilting his head to one side as if he didn’t understand what Jack could be sorry about. “It must be hard, that’s all. Not having — Not being able to have friends.”
The Cat stared down at him, studying the features on Jack’s face, taking him in, as if there was something in Jack he couldn’t understand, but wanted to, was trying hard to.
“Do you have friends?” the Cat asked softly.
Jack blinked, and then said, “Well, yeah. Yes. Uncle Heath and his mate, Bird, I go out with them and their friends, sometimes — they’re older lads, but they’re good, they treat me well. Mentor me like, you know? And there’s people my age who come in and out of the tavern, and I’m friendly with them — friendly with the baker’s daughter, the tailor’s twin sons, they’re good banter.”
“What do you do with them? Your friends?”
“Drink. Play dice, play cards. Wrestle, sometimes, kick a ball about. Sing, play music. Whatever’s fun together.”
The Cat stayed seated there for a second or two, taking time to digest that. He was a warm, comforting weight on top of Jack, straddling him as he was. Jack could get used to this, he thought.
“You wanted to show me how you make your gin,” Jack pointed out. “And we walked together, and that was nice. You’re not friends with his lordship.”
“No,” said the Cat. “Lord Axley does not have friends. He does hard, unforgiving work — it makes him difficult to like.”
“Unforgivable, maybe,” said Jack. “I wouldn’t call it unforgiving.”
The Cat peered down at him, and then asked, “What do you mean by that?” His voice was soft, perplexed, as though he really had no idea what Jack meant.
“Well,” said Jack, faltering. There was a creak out in the corridor, and he listened to it, wondered if someone would come and knock on it to see how he was. It wouldn’t be the first time Jack had had someone in his bedroom late at night, although he didn’t usually — it was too easy to make too much noise. Their voices had been soft all night, but Jack wasn’t so good at being quiet during sex.
“You said you fear Lord Axley,” said the Cat. “Everyone fears him, the power he commands.”
“Well, yeah, but he’s also…” Jack lowered his voice even more, and he saw the Cat’s gaze focus in on him, his head tipping forward, closer. “Well, he’s cruel, isn’t he? He has you torture people — make examples of them, but it’s not as if bandits give a fuck. When you rip a bandit apart so’s the city can see, it’s not as if the other bandits’ll see it, out in the forests. It’s so the people here will, and know it could happen to them. Taxes are high as anything, and people get whipped in the square even for small shit. And they say he’s raped women, too, that — that he’s had female debtors brought before him. Is that true?”
“I don’t know,” said the Cat.
“And everyone you — everyone you kill. Not the, not the highwaymen or the bandits, but like, the… The people in the city. The ones you torture, the ones you kill here. Do all of them need to die? Always?”
“I don’t know,” said the Cat. His expression did not change when he said, in lighter tones than before, “Would you say Lord Axley is a bad man?”
Jack wondered, suddenly, if he’d said something dangerous, if he’d mis-stepped in criticising his lordship — the Cat was his, after all, by his own admission. Jack’s mouth was dry, and he didn’t dare say anything at all.
“Would you?” pressed the Cat.
“I mean — ” started Jack. “Y… Yes. Yeah. I suppose. But I don’t mean anything, I mean, I would never do anything, it — ”
The Cat was gone before he could finish the sentence, but that wasn’t much of a surprise, not really, the way he was gibbering and stumbling through it, the way he couldn’t finish the sentence convincingly, make it come together.
“Wait,” said Jack. “Wait, where are you going?”
“I have to go,” the Cat said primly, and slipped out of the window like a shadow.
* * *
Lord Axley was dead two days later.
* * *
Lord Axley’s replacement as the ruling figure in Roam was his great nephew, whose name was Benedict Wittering: he had lived in Lark, the big city to the north, for some many years, but he had visited Roam a few times, normally during one fête or festival or other.
Lord Axley had had no wife, no children, and the decision had gone to his brother, who ruled Lark. Lord Benedict was not the only of Lord Spur’s nephews — he had two brothers, apparently, who ran city districts in Lark, and a sister who served in the king’s army.
All this gossip went back and forth around and over Jack’s head, and the general takeaway seemed to be that no one nearby much gave a whit what happened to Roam one way or the other, that Lord Benedict was sent to be in charge simply because someone had to be, and that they should all thank their lucky stars and be grateful, because anybody would be better than Lord Axley had been.
“Did you kill him?” asked Jack when the Cat appeared in his bedroom the third night after Lord Axley’s death.
“Of course,” said the Cat. “You said he was a bad man.”
“But you — you can’t just kill somebody.”
The Cat gave Jack a very queer look.
“I mean — Not because I said so.”
“It’s not as though you ordered me. You said he was a bad man — no one had ever told me that about him before. I went away, I asked some questions. I decided you were right — I took decisive action.”
“You’re telling me you never knew he was a bad man until I told you? Everyone was terrified of him!”
“People like you always seem frightened of everything,” said the Cat, shrugging his beautiful shoulders. Jack wondered what that meant, exactly, people like him. Normal people? Civilians? The poor? “What does fear have to do with anything?”
“That he got you to torture people?”
“He said it was necessary.”
“To kill people?”
“Would you have brigands and thieves run free?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Hmph.”
The Cat sat back on the sill of the open window, his fingers pressing into the wooden shelf. It made Jack nervous, how far he tipped back, his heels pressing into the wall to counterbalance him, to keep him from falling out, but it hardly seemed enough.
“It never occurred to me,” said the Cat quietly. “Your life seems very big, and very complicated. There is a lot of nuance in it, many shades of grey. My life, my world, has been very simple, so small and so simple as to pass through a needle’s eye. I am very small, Jack. I am very simple.” He looked down at his fingernails, which were perfectly clean. Jack wondered how long it took him to clean the blood out from them, when he started. “I get up in the morning. I wait for my orders — I am not to leave the walls of the central keep, nor bother the staff, and visiting nobles I am not to consider. They do not visit often, in any case. Lord Axley was never popular.”
Jack stared at him, at the gentle kick back and forth of the Cat’s feet as he looked down at them instead of over at Jack.
“No one says a word to me — no one used to say anything to me except Lord Axley. Go here, don’t go here. Kill them, don’t kill these others. Don’t speak to anybody. Go home. Everyone clears the streets, disappears wherever I go, evaporates. I thought I was doing what had to be done.”
“And now?”
The Cat looked to Jack, meeting his gaze.
“Lord Axley is dead,” said the Cat. “Things will change now.”
He fell backward out of the window, and Jack jolted up in bed, running over to look — the Cat, naturally, had landed on his feet, and was dusting himself off as he stood in the empty street, his feet on the cobbles. He looked up at Jack from the ground.
“Would you like to come and see my laboratory?” he asked.
Jack stared down at him, his hands still resting on the windowsill, and then he said, “Yeah. Okay. Let me get dressed.”
* * *
Jack had never had cause to walk the streets so late at night, after the taverns had closed but before the bakers started their work. It was a dry night with a balmy heat to it, and the two of them walked together through the streets and up the hill toward the central keep.
Jack expected for them to be stopped by guardsmen, for one or more of them to stop them like the captain had before and ask the Cat what he thought he was doing with him, or tell Jack that he had no right to be up here without dispensation, unless he was making a delivery.
None of them did.
A few of them glanced their way, but no one stopped them, or even asked what they were doing.
Jack followed the Cat up a flight of steps and into a tower, where they had to scale a ladder onto the next floor, and then they walked along the battlements to come down another that opened into the garden they’d been in the week before. From the battlements, Jack could see the garden was a section carved out on its own, filled with trees and plants and bushes, and a garden not just of herbs but of growing vegetables.
Once they were down on the ground level, you were buried in it — you couldn’t see how big it was around you.
The Cat lead him into a corridor and then into a large, well-lit room. There was a large bed with a canopy that seemed untouched, the sheets on it perfectly flat, square. Maybe the Cat made his bed by magic, to get it so perfect.
The bed was hardly the only thing in the room, although it dominated the space — all around was beautiful, handsomely decorated furniture, each individual piece probably finer and more expensive than all of the furniture in his uncle’s tavern, let alone in Jack’s own bedroom.
The Cat led him past all of it and down a set of stone spiral stairs, down into a windowless room that was quite cold. As they crossed over the threshold, the Cat dropping from the last step onto the floor, candles flared all the edges of the room, lighting it up, and a fireplace came to life as well.
To the far side of the room was a box bed, the cabinet open to show a single bed with rumpled blankets and cushions stuffed inside, such that it resembled a nest rather than a bed — and two mismatched desks that were scattered all over with papers and sketches and stacked-up books; in the centre of the room ran a series of tables with stills and beakers and glass pipes and tubes and little burners; to the far end were shelves filled with little barrels and kegs and bottles, and shelves of dry ingredients in bundles, jars, and bottles ran the length of the room.
The smell of alcohol was strong down here, and Jack followed the Cat over to a set of stills.
“I distil wine, first, cheap stuff, just to refine it down to a spirit,” he was saying. “Then I add the botanical elements — the juniper berries, the heather, maritime pine needles, cinnamon…” Jack watched his face and the movement of his hands as he chattered cheerfully on, explaining the ways he enthused the spirits with the flavouring ingredients, how long it took, how he siphoned things.
“The foreshots can kill you,” he said. “I use those in explosives.”
“Explosives?” Jack repeated.
“Well, as fire agents,” the Cat corrected himself, as though Jack’s issue was the technicality of the thing.
“Is that gin?”
“This? No, no, this is mead. Want to try some?” The Cat didn’t wait for an answer, moving across the room and pulling forward one of the kegs with a tap on it, and Jack smiled at the enthusiasm on his face, his excitement.
“Yeah,” Jack said softly. “Yeah.”
* * *
Jack woke up with a mildly throbbing head, still feeling sleepy and a little giddy, in the Cat’s bed with him — the Cat had closed one of the cabinet doors but not the other, and Jack was very warm with blankets all around them and the Cat himself sprawled on Jack’s chest, crammed between Jack’s legs, his arms banding Jack’s belly.
He was snoring softly, soft little noises that almost resembled a purr, and Jack felt a kind of warmth in his chest, looking down at him.
His belly was not so convinced of the romance and affection of the moment — it rumbled loudly, and the Cat blinked a few times, raising his head and looking at Jack sleepily.
“Y’hungry?” he asked.
“Um,” said Jack, reaching up and rubbing at the side of his head. “Yeah, but sorry, I can just, I can just go — ”
The Cat leaned further into his body, the movement sinewy, and Jack’s cock throbbed in the breeches he was glad he’d kept on, aching at the fucking ease of him like this, how beautiful he was with his hair mussed with sleep, his jaw lax, his eyes still half-shut as he blinked once, twice.
“You can eat breakfast here,” said the Cat, and slid out of Jack’s lap like he was made of liquid, dropping onto his feet on the ground. Jack watched, too stunned to speak, as the Cat stripped off his clothes and dropped them on the floor, opening a wardrobe compartment in the bed box and pulling out a fresh tunic and leggings.
There was a good deal of muscle on his body, but he had a slim frame — Jack was a young man still, but he’d been blessed with broad hands, and he wondered how much he could fit them around the Cat’s waist, if he held him.
He had a nice arse, heavily muscular thighs.
There were scars on his back and across his torso — marks like he’d been hit on the back with a belt or a whip, and more like he’d maybe been burned across his torso. With a cigar, maybe.
He dropped a tunic on over his body, then pulled on his leggings, put on slippers, pulled on a leather vest over top. Jack pulled his body forward, pulling his boots back on and reaching for his jacket.
“Come,” said the Cat, and took Jack by the hand instead of the wrist this time to lead him, tugging him along and up the stairs, through his beautiful, unused bedroom, down another corridor, another, a fourth.
Jack blanched when he realised that Cat wasn’t bringing him into a kitchen for them to grab a few pieces to eat, which would be bad enough — eating from the nobles’ stores! — but into a dining hall where several lords and ladies were sitting down to eat at one table, and several others in fine clothes on another.
A lot of the nobles were staring at the Cat and also at Jack as the Cat led him through the room, and Jack was unspeakably relieved when the Cat didn’t lead him to sit down at a table with some of these fancy folk, but through a side door and into a smaller dining room.
At least, he was relieved for a second. This dining room wasn’t like the other, a lofty hall with three long tables and big beautiful windows — this one had only one, smaller table, and the central seat was a big, fancy throne-like chair.
“Is this the Lord’s dining room?” asked Jack in hushed tones, feeling hot all over and shaky on his feet, and the Cat pulled out one of the seats at the side of the table, gesturing for Jack to sit beside him, which he did.
There were platters already resting on the table, piled high with eggs and bacon and bread and butter, all with the magical sheen of enchantment over them to keep everything hot and fresh.
The Cat began to serve himself from the plates, putting bacon and some fried eggs, some sort of gamebird, a fancy bread roll, onto his plate, and when Jack just sat there, staring at the table and not serving himself, the Cat placed his plate in front of Jack and started filling another.
“Is this okay?” asked Jack.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“This — This is the Lord’s dining room,” said Jack, staring at all the fine things around them, at the gold filigree on the serving dishes displayed against the room’s edges. He was almost scared to pick up one of the forks, which was shining silver.
“I always eat in here,” said the Cat simply, and took a mouthful of bacon.
Jack didn’t know how to explain it to him, didn’t know how to tell him that he was not the Cat, that he wasn’t meant to be in the fucking sight of fancy people like this, let alone dining at their table and eating the things they did.
The food was incredible, naturally, the bird the nicest thing he’d ever tasted, and Jack watched the Cat as they ate together. He was still sleepy, slouching somewhat in his chair and leaning over — he finished his plate before Jack did, and as he sipped at his wine, he leaned across and rested his cheek on Jack’s shoulder.
It was nice, actually. The Cat’s eyes fluttered shut, his wine goblet held loosely between his fingers, the base of it rested on his knee. His cheek was warm against Jack’s arm, and he was letting out those soft, snuffling snores again.
Until the doors opened and a man in the finest clothes Jack had seen so far swept in, and suddenly Cat was wide awake and standing to his feet. Jack hurried to join him, bowing his head.
“Hullo, Riddell,” said the man in fancy clothes — he wasn’t especially tall, but he had long limbs and a colt-like gait. “Who’s this?”
“Good morning, Lord Benedict,” said the Cat. “This is Jack Harrow, he works at a tavern in the lower city.”
“Oh, very good,” said Lord Benedict. “Bit of a shy fish, is he?”
“He is not a fish, Lord Benedict,” said the Cat.
“… No, Riddell, that’s really not — ” Lord Benedict stopped, and then clasped his hands together. When Jack risked a glance at his face, there was a gentle smile on it, albeit paired with an expression of mild perturbation. “Quite nice to meet you, Mr Harrow. Please, take your seats, I don’t care for standing on ceremony.”
The Cat dropped back into his seat immediately, and Jack stayed rooted to the spot, unable to move, until the Cat grabbed the back of his belt and tugged him down to sit again.
Lord Benedict took his seat in the central chair, and Jack looked at him — he had dark blue eyes like Lord Axley’s, similar proportions even though Benedict wasn’t nearly as tall as he had been, and that was where the resemblance ended.
“You’re, ah, you’re Riddell’s friend, are you?” asked Lord Benedict as he served himself from the table. There’d been servants in the other room, filling their plates for the nobles. He was thirty or thirty-five, maybe. “I’m glad to hear it. It’s really quite lonely for boys your age in Roam — I think the youngest up here in the keep is Lady Michel, and she’s, what, twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-nine, Lord Benedict.”
“Right, yes,” Lord Benedict said. “And she’s bit of a dim candle, isn’t she, Riddell?”
“She’s not a candle, Lord Benedict,” said the Cat placidly.
“Does he do it to tease me, do you think, Mr Harrow?”
Jack stared at Lord Benedict, his mouth dry, and then said, “Um. Maybe. He messes with me too.”
The Cat was smirking slightly as he swilled his wine around his cup, looking at the red liquid shifting inside.
“Do you have any duties for me, Lord Benedict?”
“Duties?” Benedict repeated. “Oh. No, listen, Riddell, I was — I did tell you before, I really don’t know that I’ll have much for you. Not like, ah… Well, if the guards mention they want your help for something, that would be alright, but I really don’t care for all this blood and guts business.”
“Are you going to get rid of me?” the Cat asked. His voice was softer when he asked the question, a little more vulnerable. His gaze was still on his wine, and not on his lordship.
Benedict blinked, stopping short with a forkful of kippers halfway to his mouth. “Riddell, I’m hardly going to — Please. My uncle took over your care when your parents died, and this has been your home for some, what, fifteen years? I’m not about to turn you out. You’re as good as family, hm?”
The Cat didn’t say anything for a second, and Jack looked at his face, at the loose press together of his lips, the wideness of his eyes. It had never occurred to him where the Cat had come from, exactly — the idea of his being in Lord Axley’s care was nauseating, especially since he’d been so young.
“I just, ah, I don’t have the same needs my uncle did,” Lord Benedict said. Based on his casual tone, he had no idea exactly what his uncle’s needs had been. “I’ve a rather different outlook on law and order, hm?”
The Cat’s lips were shifted into the slightest of smiles. “Yes, Lord Benedict,” he said.
“Why don’t you drop into the Roam Infirmary, hm? You make all sorts of medicines, that sort of thing. They might like for you to brew them some remedies.”
“I’m not permitted, lord.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I’m not permitted entry to the infirmary. Father Leshek thinks I portend death.”
“Well, even for Father Leshek, that rather strikes me as rather silly. I’ll have a word with him later today.”
“Thank you,” said the Cat. “Do you mind if I leave the castle today?”
“You don’t need my permission, Riddell, you’re a grown man,” said Lord Benedict, with a soft little laugh, as if even the fact that the Cat was asking was ridiculous. The Cat was smiling as the two of them stood to their feet. “Have a good day, hm? Young love is a charming thing.”
Jack’s cheeks blushed hot, even more so because the Cat looked at Lord Benedict very peculiarly, and the two of them walked together out from the dining rooms and into the centre of the keep.
“I should go back home,” said Jack. “And work. Do you, um — Do you want to come?”
“Yes,” said the Cat. “I just need to change — ”
“Don’t,” said Jack.
The Cat peered at him, uncomprehending, and Jack smiled at him.
“The, um… I’ve never seen you dressed like this,” he said. “In regular clothes. They won’t recognise you without your armour on, especially if we, uh, if we tie your hair up.” He reached out, playing with a few strands of the Cat’s hair, curling them around his fingers.
The Cat leaned his cheek into Jack’s hand, nuzzling against the warmth of his knuckles.
“Fine,” said the Cat, and pulled a ribbon out of the first bouquet of flowers they passed in the corridor.
End Part I.
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