Rooks and Romanticide (17 page)

Cain made friends with the other boys in his room. They ranged in age and price, of course. They called each other “Brother,” in a secret and confidential way, and Cain had stared at them all the first night and wondered if he'd be there long enough to be called “Brother” too.

He learned their names, because they talked to him even when he'd refused to talk back, convinced for some reason that if he stayed remote and aloof, somehow he might be saved.

There'd been Larke, and Jasper, and Mordecai, who had all been working the streets of New London in various shadowy ways before they'd stumbled upon Father Kelvin's circus and decided it was better than sleeping in the gutter another night. There'd been Garrett, who had fallen into Father Kelvin's grasp after being ousted from one of the Queen's many orphanariums. There was Andrej, who had once run with gypsies and sometimes resurrectionists, and who'd been stolen away from the hanging block of Yekaterinburg by Q and Oberon years before. And then there'd been Emil, whose parents knew he was there and took a quarter of the profit he earned, which was all Father Kelvin would allow them.

That was the saddest to Cain. First he figured, well, that wasn't fair at all, that none of them got paid for the work they did. But Andrej explained Father Kelvin assumed it was reimbursement for “room and board,” and Cain was struck by a void-like gloom, a sorrow for Emil. Cain was like most of the others, there only because fate had discarded them. But to be there because your family had signed you up for it? That was heartbreaking, in a cold and distant way.

Cain wished he could pity Emil, but he couldn't stop pitying himself long enough.

Without his father's rings, in this cold, dark underground place of moldering velvet and damp candlewicks, whispering footsteps and creaking beds, where the air was thick with secrets surely he was not Cain Dietrich anymore.

You're as good as dead
, Oberon, the eerie graveyard clown, had told him.

After all, Father Kelvin didn't refer to him by name. He called him “The Little Prince.”

 

 

N
OBODY
HAD
ever really told Cain what he'd be doing for Father Kelvin, but he made inferences.

He started out working the rooms under St. Mikael's. One of Father Kelvin's men snapped, “Stop snarling like that, we know you're not dumb,” and threw him into a festooned room.

It seemed all rational thought had dissolved into the thunderous bass chord of his panicked heart, but it was rather nice to be alone again for a short while, feeling the smooth marble floor underfoot and running his fingers over the vanity table, the clean mirror. He stooped over to smell the flowers at the bedside, and he took a moment to lay curled up on the maroon divan, pressing his nose to the cool gold frame.

He'd known what he was waiting for. And when the man was let in by another one of Kelvin's agents, there was a soft, genteel light in his deep-set eyes and his suit was of fine broadcloth. Wasn't it amazing how one's appearance and demeanor could tell the story of one's life? Lamplight glinted off the man's pocket watch. Cain stood in the shadows behind the draped bed and stared at him in bleak distaste, wondering just how much the gentleman had paid for a virgin with noble blood. Unless Kelvin's men had spun some other wild furtive lie about Cain, and in that case, what did the man think of him? Could he tell he was a noble son plucked from grace or did he just look like another one of the dark-eyed and underfed fallen of the rooms beneath St. Mikael's?

The wide beautiful bed creaked under the man's weight, and Cain's bitter acuity gave way to a vast and hopeless wasteland of despair. A cold black wave of it crashed into him as if it had just been waiting for the right trigger to elicit its presence, cresting and crashing around in the back of his soul.

Cain climbed up on the bed among the scarlet pillows, which only scattered when the gentleman dragged him down from the headboard by the ankle. The silence was strangling. Cain tried to hold his breath and maybe die of asphyxiation, but he was too chicken not to breathe when his chest felt it would burst. The man popped the buttons on his shabby shirt, and there they went, the last lingering rebellious shreds of dignity and attachment, snapping away.

The sex wasn't really the bad part, other than the way his insides felt bruised. It was more the shame and repulsion and self-hatred for giving up.

Giving up
.

The gentleman dressed when he was done and would not meet Cain's eyes—as if it had been Cain's fault he'd succumbed to rampant sin. If there was any other sort of arbitrary thought exchanged between the conqueror and the conquered, Cain ignored it, because the way the lamplight bounced and swelled in the corner was more interesting to him. He didn't even care to get more decent than yanking up his breeches again.

One of Father Kelvin's men poked his head into the room after the gentleman made his leave. Cain recognized this one from Lovers' Lane, with Oberon. The fellow looked around, seemed satisfied, then said, “Up, little boy blue. Get up. Make the room presentable. Your next client is coming in an hour.”

 

 

C
AIN
HADN
'
T
been sure how to measure the passing of time. All he knew was that life Before was over and this was life Now.

When he slept, images of his parents in Lovers' Lane and the last glimpses of the chaotic manor haunted him.

More times than he'd readily admit, he climbed into bed with Andrej, and pretended Andrej's dozing heat was the big German hound's. Now and again he woke up accidentally curling his toes into Andrej's calves, and Andrej laughed at him and told him to let the dream fairies kiss him back to sleep.

Cain was listless with the subdued shock, the repressed grief. He was numb, but cold with repulsion. Gradually the routine became familiar. Get up in what never felt like morning, wash off, get dressed, eat breakfast, and smile and laugh with the others like they weren't all off to sell their souls in fragile little bits and pieces, meet in the underground chapel to pray to the Lord and the Virgin and kiss the little wooden Christ on Father Kelvin's rosary. And then it was time to work.

Cain worked with the same passion that he'd played and learned back at home when life had been simple, because there was a time and place for hating himself and the laughing stock they called God and for letting the bad feelings take over. Work was not that time and place. That was late at night in bed when his body ached and his mouth was dry, and whatever was left of the pride from Before splintered and fell.

Cain kept the rooms assigned to him nice and clean. He always welcomed his clients graciously, waiting among red pillows and taffeta coverlets, smiling inviting smiles and greeting them like he wasn't imagining some untimely and atrocious death for them as they dived in for kisses.

There were many ways to say it.

He fucked. He bedded. He “played backgammon” and gave “lip.” Sometimes his Brothers called the clients
Corinthians
, and a few of them called Cain a
toff
, which he didn't take as an insult at all. He'd rather be considered a snob than a gutter rat.

“The Little Prince,” Father Kelvin advertised.

No client had ever looked him in the face long enough to ask why his eyes were not blue or brown or green like the other boys', or recognize it as the trademark defect that had once been such popular gossip in drawing rooms and salons. The Brothers didn't ask either, but it was more out of fear of Cain's icy glances than disinterest.

If clients wanted him to scream, Cain screamed. If they liked it when he begged and cried for mercy, he obeyed. If they wanted him to recite poetry, why, he most certainly did, and if they liked it when he laughed, he laughed sweetly, because they couldn't read his mind. They'd never know he was laughing at them and how pathetic they all were, men and women paying so much money just to exercise their filthy weaknesses without being judged.

Father Kelvin's ladies, who were older than Cain but younger than his mother had been, loved it when he visited their side of the maze under St. Mikael's, which was usually on what never felt like Sundays. They braided each other's hair and giggled when Andrej nuzzled their shoulders and necks, and they played with the young boys and winked at the older ones like they all shared some great secret. Sometimes they'd even read stories aloud and played music like they did for
their
clients.

Some regulars brought Cain candy and treats. He shared those presents with the Brothers in his room.

Mordecai disappeared at some point.

The whispers through the cold candlelit chambers said he'd been murdered by a client.

Cain hadn't even connected enough to feel fear.

And when it all got too much, which now and again it did, Cain sought out Oberon and offered his most lamenting of frowns. Oberon usually gave in almost immediately. He brought out the cigarettes rolled with opium and hashish, the morphine, the little flasks of brandy. All of it, anything to make the feelings die, because feelings were dangerous, and threatened to debilitate the instinct that got Cain by.

Once or twice, but only once or twice, Cain had wondered if Before had just been one great morphine dream, head rolling on his shoulders as a regular client left love bites along his hips.

There was a tier system of sorts, which Cain learned soon enough, like he learned soon enough that work was work and dissociation was an art he needed to perfect. There were cruel tortures masquerading as discipline for those who tried to shake loose of Father Kelvin and the crushing of the soul and the dignity that in hindsight would appear as indoctrination.

Cain found himself at the top of the class, which didn't seem surprising in the least.

“You're good in bed,” Father Kelvin had said, during a routine evaluation of his “circus” workers. “That's all I ever hear of you
—
you're good in bed and most of your clients wish to book you again and again.”

Whether he had a right to be proud of himself, Cain had never been able to tell. The pride still carried shame on its back, because why would anyone want to be proud of the things they did for Father Kelvin's factory of sin and lies?

They trained him for one circus, with Oberon, who seemed to be in charge of many aspects of Father Kelvin's operation. But Cain never traveled. Apparently he was too good. Father Kelvin wanted him always under his thumb, never too far away, forever close enough to pull onto his lap like Cain wasn't fifteen, going on sixteen, and quite aware now of monsters parading as men.

He was The Little Prince, anyway, and when he came out to dance, the men and women in the masked audience always clapped and cheered.

Surely he was the only
real
nobility there, and he was the
first choice
for some clients, his regulars. He was one of Father Kelvin's
favorites
.

A few times, even Oberon stopped by, slithering into the red sheets with him and letting Cain run his fingers through that dark and stubborn hair as Oberon surrendered to the unspeakable lust.

Cain knew that he was higher than the dirty-nosed boys and girls there because their families were destitute. He was higher even than the ones who had been kidnapped, or orphaned, or recruited, or the common-class ones who did what they had to.

He was The Little Prince.

He was Cain Dietrich, he was good in bed, and he was alive.

Six months, a year…? He was clueless as to how long he'd been there, in the clutches of Father Kelvin and his palace of pleasure.

Eventually there was nothing else to learn and even the sin and the seduction grew colorless, nondescript. He wanted to see the sun again. That was what he dreamed of, not nightmarish memories or hellish trauma, the sacrifice of innocence in a red-themed bed with roaring lion faces carved into the headboard.

There were no real answers to be found under St. Mikael's. Cain had come to dismal understandings. He'd given up on fighting before; now he'd given up on giving in. He had some questions, and he was ready to start finding answers.

 

 

F
OR
ONE
,
How did a boy escape Father Kelvin's
?

Cain found the answer one morning in what really hadn't felt like late March.

Gunshots ripped through the pretty gilded charade of Father Kelvin's underground gentlemen's club, but they were not aimed at anyone. It was quite unfortunate for the angel faces in the coffered ceiling, which took the bullets without much resistance.

Boys and girls and young men and pretty ladies in muslin tea gowns had scattered, taking shelter in red velvet rooms. Voices rose, coarse and roaring.

There was an argument between Father Kelvin and Wolfe, one of the men who had been with Oberon so long ago in Lovers' Lane.

Cain sat in Father Kelvin's office, on the scrolled daybed in the corner of the room. He'd been called to the office for something or another, when Wolfe had started ranting and raving in the hallways, yelling about how the city authorities were snub-nosed bastards and someone had lost the assignment book and clients were waiting but they didn't know who went to what room anymore, and about how Kelvin was a worthless, brainless
piece of shit
.

In the office, Father Kelvin had heaved a defeated sigh and patted Cain's shoulder, saying, “I'll be back momentarily,
malysh
.”

They'd yelled about the bust that had happened in Yekaterinburg, that barren, grungy city northeast of New London. Cain had waited, in boredom. Father Kelvin's voice echoed, grossly placating and very passive aggressive. More gunshots had ripped through the hush. He'd jumped. There was more yelling, interspersed with bouts of that coarse and guttural language they all spoke there.
Malysh
.