Five Years Ago

  The garden is beautiful as night falls, crystalline lamps glittering between ornate trellises of honeysuckle and clematis; Rafael’s troupe shines just as brightly. It’s been a long stretch of hard road, small performances in struggling towns, and the invitation to perform and entertain for an entire gala of the wealthiest distillers and businessmen in the territory once known as “Kentucky” is a glorious windfall.

  By now the guests are well into their cups and easily impressed, but Rafael has never been one to give less than his all. He flourishes a bow to his audience and then throws himself into a chain of handsprings and flips that makes the lights of the garden wheel around him, catching on the golden thread and charms woven into his braids.

  They’re already applauding as he lands, and Rafael doesn’t need to fake a beaming smile as he lands the final round off and bows again, in the direction of the head table where the host of the party is watching with a pleased, distracted look.

  A man leans down to say something quietly in their host’s ear as Rafael watches. He has to lean down quite far, because he must be almost seven feet tall, built on an entirely different scale from the people around him, with plain, neat, expensive-looking clothes that only serve to quietly accentuate the heavy muscle in his arms and shoulders. There’s grey in his neatly-trimmed beard and at his temples, but he doesn’t carry himself like an old man. Slow-moving only by intention, deliberate with the power of his stature. Rafael has caught glimpses of him several times tonight, walking the perimeter of the party, ordering the guards one way or another with an authority that makes it clear he wasn’t invited purely as a guest.

  The man looks up as Rafael is watching him, and his eyes flash wolfish gold in the lights as their gazes meet. Rafael falters, momentarily uncertain; the man must be genetically modified, to achieve so monstrous a size and so fearsome an aspect. Not every lineage of soldier mods is hell-bent on war and ruin, and indeed many may be honorable and kind—Rafael has had very little chance to find out. The Bread and Roses troupe has certainly not lasted so long, indigent and vulnerable as they are, by gambling that men and women created for destruction might choose to play against type.

  Fortune favors Rafael tonight, it seems. The man shows no sign of offense or anger; on the contrary, his golden eyes soften, smile lines creasing the corners of them, and he gives Rafael a brief but unmistakable wink and joins in the applause.

  Rafael smiles back in relief, startled to be charmed, and bows again, this time to those warm golden eyes. Then he gathers himself and turns away, vanishing into the crowd.

  He flits from place to place, as the night goes on; skits with Ty and Mark, juggling with Felicity and Tabitha, feats of gymnastics with his siblings Sofia and Gabriel. The man with golden eyes smiles at him from a distance, gaze warm and lazy, following the motion of Rafael’s gesturing hands, lingering on Rafael’s collarbones through the low-laced front of his shirt. Rafael lets him look, playing to the audience that wants to see him, letting his acts carry him closer and then slipping coyly away again, coming almost within speaking distance and then drawing back with a sly smile. He meets the man’s golden eyes over and over again, a little more thrilled each time they connect across the crowd, letting the slow, hungry anticipation build to a sizzling tension.

  The man may well be wealthy—he’s dressed very well, and he carries himself with quiet confidence among the party’s invitees. A wealthy patron who clearly finds Rafael attractive could be a valuable acquisition for the whole troupe’s sake, and even if he turns out to be disinterested in the arts… well. It’s been a hard few months, and his brother and sister don’t mean to outshine him, but between Gabe’s cheerful charm and Sofia’s bright and knife-edged beauty and the comparatively smaller pool of interested men that Rafael has to choose from, it has been a tragically long time since Rafael got some pleasant company all to himself.

  His final performance of the night ends up being a recitation—none of the ringing speeches that he might have delivered earlier in the night. Venus And Adonis he can perform to a sleepier, more drunken audience, and to a man pursuing him, to those warm, golden eyes, addressing the pleas of the love-lorn goddess to the man’s smile, by turns playful, passionate, beseeching.

  He closes his recital with a bow after the sensual part is over, knowing full well that most of his audience was barely following the story well enough to notice he ended it early. No one wants to hear the part where Adonis goes and gets savaged by a boar, and the party is beginning to break up anyway, people drifting in the direction of their coats and rides, saying their goodbyes to the host.

  “Beautiful,” says a voice as Rafael straightens from his bow, and he startles to find the man with the golden eyes has closed the distance between them, fast and silent, smiling down at him. He holds out a hand—Rafael hesitates a moment, then takes it, and the man sweeps a bow of his own and raises Rafael’s hand to kiss the back, a brief courteous press of warmth and whiskers.

  “That was something to see,” he says, in a very deep, soft drawl, and straightens up, loosens his grip, but doesn’t quite let go of Rafael’s hand. The rough brown pad of one thumb sweeps back and forth past Rafael’s knuckles, catching one at a time on the cheap golden glitter of Rafael’s costume rings. “Sure you wouldn’t like to fly off again, starling?”

  “I think I might be persuaded to alight,” Rafael says demurely, belying the hot thrill of his heart. “For a man of such patient intention, and gentle manners.”

  The man laughs softly and releases Rafael’s hand, lingering. “Well, some pretty things are worth being patient for,” he says. “You’re quite something to watch, mister…?”

  “Rafael.”

  “Carraway,” replies the man, and smiles again, warming the gold of his eyes. “Arthur Carraway. You must be the one they named an angel after.”

  “And you must be the namesake of the king,” Rafael says, and Mr Carraway laughs out loud, deep and booming and showing a lot of sharp white teeth.

  “You’re a sweet-talker, aren’t you?” he says. “Lots of pretty words behind that pretty face.”

  “I’ve been told I declaim most pleasingly,” Rafael says, with a shrug of his shoulders far more coy than demure. “Poems and plays, works of literary merit fit to amuse the refined palates of the great and good…”

  “So I saw,” says Mr Carraway. “I could stand to see more.”

  “A private encore, for my most attentive audience of the night,” Rafael says, and this time when the man takes up his hand it’s to kiss his palm, meeting his eyes and holding them, drawing him closer.

  “Well, if you’re sure you won’t be missed,” he says, and he sends a brief, meaningful glance over Rafael’s shoulder. Rafael turns, following his gaze; Sofia is very obviously and pointedly looking up to the heavens, but Gabe is watching them directly, looking worried and incredulous and amused all at once.

  “Big boy!” Gabe signs to him in front of God and man, and Sofia clasps her hands as though praying for strength.

  Rafael gives them both his very best eldest sibling smile, the broad flashing of teeth that promises blood and thunder if they don't leave him to his own private pursuits, and signs to them, behind one hip and away from his new potential patron’s eyes: “Don't wait up.”

  “Siblings,” he says, turning back, and gives Mr Carraway a far more sweet and winsome smile. “They’re inclined to their most filial performances at just the most unnecessary times.”

  “Thought they seemed almost as pretty as you, starling,” Mr Carraway says with tolerant amusement, but his eyes sweep with flattering hunger over Rafael’s dark skin, the arch of his nose and the shape of his face. “You better talk to them if they need talkin’-to.” He lowers his voice, a trace of a soft, heated growl below the words. “I’m a patient man, but I’m inclined to have a taste of you sooner rather than later, sweetheart.”

  “I’ll talk to them in the morning,” Rafael says, and steps into the touch of a hand on his side, his hip, the curve of his lower back. “Don’t worry, as long as I’m back by noon they’ll have no need to release the hounds. For tonight… I’d like nothing better than to play whatever part pleases you most.”

  “Oh, sugar, you please me just fine,” says Mr Carraway, and his hand completes its slow journey up along Rafael’s spine to slip under his braids, curling warm and possessive around the back of his neck. “All you have to be for me is mine.”

  “Then swift desire hath indeed caught his yielding prey,” says Rafael, breathless with the heat of that look, and allows himself to be led, heart pounding, away into the dark.

  EARLY AUGUST, CURRENT YEAR

  “Thena, hi,” Basil says, waving weakly at the screen. “Look, I don’t mean to be a total creep, but have you heard from Rich lately?”

  “Not since that big group call we had before the tournament,” Rich’s younger sister says. “So, what, day before yesterday?”

  “Right. Cool. Okay,” Basil says. It isn’t cool, or okay. “It’s just he’s supposed to come back home tomorrow and I can’t get any messages through. It’s, uh, it’s probably nothing, right?”

  Thena pulls a face: it’s weirdly identical to the same face her brother pulls when something’s gone really wrong but he doesn’t want to be the first guy to say so.

  “Call Trimmer,” she says. “If his brig buddy hasn’t heard from him either, it’s not nothing.”

  Basil sighs, waves again, signs off.

  “What’s wrong with Rich?” Trimmer asks, as soon as the call goes through.

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  “Haven’t heard from him since the group call at the watch party,” Basil says. “You?”

  “Not a word,” Trimmer says tightly. “I was trying not to flip the fuck out, but if he hasn’t even been phoning back home for you, something’s happened. He doesn’t just forget to call, half his fucking brain is scheduling apps!”

  “He’s supposed to be home tomorrow,” Basil says, trying to sound calm and authoritative and totally failing. “He’ll be home tomorrow and it’ll be fine.”

  “Newsflash, puppy, he’s already not fine! Go call his trainer up. See what happened. Get back to me.”

  Basil bites back a pissy retort—why can’t you do it? But of course Trimmer can’t, he’s tied down to his penny boat and you can’t just go jaunting off to the Mall on a whim when you’re a solo operative, even to check up on your missing fiancée. That's gonna have to be a boyfriend’s job. So he just salutes, sarcastically, and goes off to get a hopper.

  He tries to push a call through to Rich, then Liam, the minute he gets to the Mall and gets an outside line through the Fleet’s data bottleneck. Nothing happens. He paces the top deck while the calls ping, and ping, and no one on the other side ever picks up.

  Katrina Chau, Rich’s hoverboarding coach, isn’t exactly quick to pick up either; Basil’s screen reads rerouting… rerouting… for a few endless minutes after he calls. But she does pick up, in some strange landside room, looking old and small and tired—nothing like the larger-than-life battleaxe he’s used to seeing onscreen.

  “He’s not dead,” Ms Chau says, just as Basil is opening his mouth to ask. “Yet. That we know. Sorry.”

  “What?” Basil says, and leans against the deck railing, staring blankly out over the water far below, and the massive anchor chains slanting down into it. “I’m sorry, but—what?”

  There’s a dragging pause, five or ten seconds of lag—then, just as Basil is about to repeat himself, Ms Chau grimaces to the faint, glitchy echo of Basil’s voice from her screen. “You’re calling about Mouse, right? Rich. I haven’t seen the dude since he went offstage—or his little scientist dude. He did his routine, he fuckin’ nailed it, he smooched his science guy very cutely on camera, he called me from the locker room to check in, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “Fuck,” Basil says. He presses the heels of his hands into his face, trying to think. “You can’t do anything from all the way out there, right?”

  Another long pause. Basil paces the Mall’s battered deck, and resists the urge to—he doesn’t actually know what he wants to do. Yell, or kick something, or jump out of his skin. Everybody knows going landside is dangerous—

  “From Singapore?” Ms Chau says finally, incredulously. “Yeah, I can do roughly half of jack shit, bro, all the walls up between here and the Americas are crazy. I’ve put a bounty out for info on a couple frontiers that might get attention, but hiring detectives from halfway around the world is a crapshoot. So far I’ve called half a dozen of the motherfuckers, and five of them hung up as soon as they heard the missing dude is a Hastings mix. Most of the time, poking your nose in Hastings business is a free ticket to getting your whole head shot off.”

  “And the sixth guy?”

  “A complete idiot, but at least I get to feel like I’m doing something.” Ms Chau grimaces bitterly. “Look, my dude, Rich is always saying you’re smart. Anything you can do from Boatland?”

  “I can try to collate any surveillance footage that might have been taken of him,” Basil says doubtfully. “I don’t really know—I mean, anything, I don’t know anything about New Orleans, if they have a lot of cameras or what. I’ll look. Send me as much as you know about where he was before he disappeared and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Right. I already got an info packet for the detectives, I’ll forward it. Thanks, dude.”

  Basil puts in for an emergency personal day and goes to rent a work berth, whose hardware will let him work long range without the kind of nasty headache this much implant use in one sitting would earn him. Twelve hours later he’s finally gotten enough of a handle on communicating with the ad hoc mess of New Orleans’ many and various security systems to piece together a rough outline of Rich’s movements the night of the tournament. He forwards the footage and a write-up to Ms Chau, then, self-pityingly, tries again to push a call through to Rich, then Liam. Just like the last time—the last twenty times—nothing happens, and no one answers.

  Stomach in knots, Basil takes the hop back over the water to his home posting, locks himself in his berth, and makes a group call.

  “He went up to the VIP box with Liam after his set, then left with this huge, well-dressed old guy—I think maybe a lykoi, the guy’s got sharp ears and I think yellow eyes. Rich and Liam never made it back to their hotel afterwards, or checked out. Hotel says their stuff’s been held, though, and a relative or a spouse can come pick it up if they’re there by the end of the week.”

  “Wow,” says Thena. She’s out on a deck somewhere, windblown and worried. “Okay. So—”

  “That idiot,” Trimmer says, because he’s a mean little asshole. “Merrill stepped foot on land for more than three days and followed his dick straight to some fucking wolfman?”

  “We don’t know the guy was reeling him in,” Basil says, but halfheartedly.

  “A fucking wolfman,” Trimmer repeats, not even justifying that with a response.

  “A rich, powerful one, yeah. I mean I can’t check for sure, some other Southern rich guy bought out the whole VIP box and he kept his guest list private, but… I don’t think the guy who took Rich and Liam off to dinner was just some random bodyguard, he had really nice clothes on the footage I dug up. It’s just a grainy little clip from a wall camera as they go by, but he’s talking about taking them out to dinner, his treat, and the restaurant he mentions has a pretty insane price tag. So I think he was one of the guests.”

  “So… gimme a second to process this, pal,” Thena says. “We’re going to New Orleans to pick up their luggage and hunt down some Southern soldier mod millionaire?”

  Basil takes his own second to process. In the corner of his berth, his other boyfriend Mitch is sitting up a lot straighter all of a sudden, watching him with no trace of his normal sunny smile. He finished his shift and showed up to hang out halfway through the call, but by the look on his face he’s figured out the broad strokes of what’s going on, and he’s not happy about it.

  “Basil?” he says, low and tense.

  “…Yeah,” Basil says, and meets his boyfriend’s eyes past the screen. “Yeah. I think we gotta. Do you have time off saved up?”

  “Nope,” Thena says. “But I’m going anyway. You?”

  “I got a week,” Basil says. “But—it takes as long as it takes, right? Gimme a day to get some things packed up.”

  “You’re on,” Thena says.

  Basil looks at Trimmer, and sees the guy standing very still, all of a sudden, still enough for a second it looks like his call glitched out.

  “We could use your help,” Basil says, even though the last thing he wants in the fucking world is Trimmer bitching in his ear the entire trip down South. But if there’s one thing he’s picked up from Rich’s weird adoration of the little asshole, it’s that he’s good to have around if things get dangerous, and everybody knows landside is as dangerous as it gets. “You have leave, right?”

  “I—” Trimmer bites off the word, sharp little shoulders tense as he chews over whatever he doesn’t want to say. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t,” Thena says incredulously. “You work on a plastics trawler, man, they can find somebody to spot you—”

  “Yeah, because the kind of asshole who gets put out on a solo plastics trawler is a dime a dozen,” Trimmer says, viciously sharp. “And Admin fuckin’ knows it, kid. They haven’t run me aground, because I do my work and keep my hull clean, but it’s not a secret if a guy with a demerit record like mine goes landside, their visa’s over the rail by the time they hit the marina.”

  There’s a sharp, ringing silence.

  “Besides, you don’t want me out in some fuckin’, landside hellhole,” Trimmer says, like if he pretends hard enough to be sarcastic and unbothered he can erase the raw break in his voice. “Merrill knows I’m not good with—” he shakes his head, a sharp little spasm of motion. “He’d kick my ass if he got back and found out I got myself locked out by my own stupid choices. So.”

  “Fine,” says Thena. “Fine! Okay. Stay and shovel plastic. And—well then, you can be the guy to tell Angie, once we’re clear.”

  “The fuckin’ club?” Trimmer says, and on the other side of the room Mitch grimaces, distracted from his growing distress by a sharper spasm of hurt. He acts like it doesn’t bother him, the way Rich and Trimmer act toward Security, but Basil knows how upset he gets at the evidence of their years of mistreatment, of cruel men in Security colors playing favorites and violently suppressing their crews, like a corrupted landside police militia. It's a quiet, half-ashamed hurt that Mitch doesn't like to show, the way Rich doesn't like seeing him in uniform and Trimmer won't so much as share a deck with him unless he's got Rich to brace himself behind.

  Rich’s big sister Angela seems like a good officer, from what Basil’s seen, sober and respectful and level-headed. But she’s only human, and she’s not going to be happy when she finds out her brother’s gone and their little sister has jumped ship to swim after him. And Thena isn't stupid, and has known Trimmer longer than Basil has. She must know what a challenge she’s throwing in his face.

  Trimmer’s mouth twists sourly, and he gives Thena a long, hard stare. But all he says is, “Yeah. Okay. Smooth seas never made a skilled sailor. Good luck to the both of you.” And then ends his call.

  Thena gives a frustrated snarl, kicks something off-screen, and then looks back at Basil, gives a bitter salute, and hangs up too.

  Mitch is already standing up by the time Basil looks over at him; not to do anything specific, though. Just walking to walk, pacing the few steps across Basil’s berth and then back again.

  “Mitch,” says Basil, and reaches out as Mitch paces past, catching a fold of his wrap. It's white with red hearts, like underpants in cartoons, because Mitch is as ridiculous as he is sweet. Usually, he takes whatever choppy water comes his way with resilient good spirits. He’s not smiling or laughing it off this time. He tries to keep walking—Basil tugs gently. “Mitch,” he repeats. “Hey. Talk to me.”

  “So, what,” Mitch says, like he can’t hold the words in anymore. “So, you’re just leaving? Tomorrow? And I’m—I’m, what, I’m not invited? Trimmer’s invited but not me?”

  It wouldn’t have made it any better to tell him later, but… shit. “You can’t afford to run off on your posting, even less than he can,” Basil says, and sees his boyfriend’s jaw set stubbornly. “C’mon, pumpkin, you know how administration is about Security officers—by the time you even get authorization to set foot onshore, I’ll be there and back again. I’ve got a week, I can get down to New Orleans, grab Rich and Liam’s luggage, see if we can dig up any more security footage and get a decent detective on the, uh, on the case—”

  “I don’t like this,” Mitch says unhappily, not even cracking a smile at the pet name. “I can apply for the time off right now, cite family emergency—”

  “You think Administration doesn’t know neither of us have families?”

  “You’re my family, Basil! I went off suppressants to be with you, there's paperwork with both our names on it, that’s pretty official! Holy crap, come on.” Mitch gives a rough, unconvincing laugh. “Don’t run off on me like this, man.”

  Basil’s heart gives a guilty, aching twist in his chest. “We can’t wait,” he says, and when he steps closer and opens his arms Mitch turns immediately into them, putting his head on Basil’s shoulder, squeezing sturdy arms around his chest like a drowning man clinging to a shipwreck. “Rich has been missing three days already, and the trail’s only going to get harder to follow the longer we leave it. We have to get there as fast as we can, and I don’t want—you’re such a good officer, you can’t just ditch on all your responsibilities, c’mon. Rich isn’t gonna come back and find out we threw our damn careers away on him.”

  “Okay. Okay. But. Come back.” Mitch thumps his forehead against Basil’s shoulder. “You gotta keep me updated, and you gotta come back.”

  “I swear,” Basil says. “I love you. I’ll come back. We’ll both come back.”