Aster slid his fingers over Nikos’ hand under the table. “No one says that’s how it has to be.”
A body fell into a pit. Nikos threw a body into a pit. Haris killed a man and Nikos threw his body into an unmarked grave.
Aster kissed him softly at the back door of the tea shop, and Nikos went home and pressed his face into his pillow so no one could hear him cry.
“I don’t think I want to keep working in the marriage office,” Nikos said a few weeks later, leaning against the wall of the tea shop with Aster’s hands in his.
“Then don’t.” Aster’s voice was soft, gentle. “You can stop.”
“I didn’t have a choice. They picked me when I was thirteen.”
“Why?”
Nikos didn’t answer. His friend, Felix, had broken his leg so badly on an ill-timed jump off a wall that a bone had stuck out through the break. Nikos was the only one who hadn’t blanched at the injury, and one of the interrogators had seen him there, carefully soothing Felix with his dominance, and they’d spoken to the Strategos. That was all it took to set a new course for his life.
“Tell them you want to stop,” Aster said. “They have to understand.”
Nikos shook his head.
“We’ll be out of a job soon enough,” Haris said the next day. “Akti’s stepping down for his son in a few months, and Evander Akti’s too soft a touch to allow the interrogators to do our work.”
“He’ll close down the interrogation rooms?” Nikos looked up from the table he was scrubbing. Haris grimaced.
“It’s likely. His brother, now he was a proper Arkoudai. A shame he’s dead. He would have known what was right.”
“And that’s us,” Nikos said, slowly.
“Us, the interrogators up north, the spy network that keeps Arktos from civil war… it’s all going to the dogs soon, you’ll see. You’re young, and you can’t tell yet, but we’ll have more traitors than we know what to do with. Evander Akti and his soft heart will pay the price.”
Nikos looked down. He didn’t know Evander. They hadn’t been in the same year in the barracks, and he’d only seen glimpses of him at official events. He hadn’t looked particularly soft then, but maybe it was different for men like Haris. Lately, Nikos was starting to feel like his head wasn’t right. None of his thoughts in the right place, too many details cast in sharp relief that he’d never noticed before.
The tea shop was closed when Nikos came back to it that evening, and he threw up what he made to eat at home. He went to bed and dreamt of Aster lying in a field, his body surrounded by bees, their humming growing so loud that Nikos woke with a start.
He found Aster in the interrogation rooms the next afternoon.
“This one needs a cleanup,” Haris said, swinging the door open. “He was smuggling poison in from the south. His parents were the ones we found in the west interrogation rooms this morning.”
Nikos looked into Aster’s bruised, battered face and felt a strange coldness rush through him. He hadn’t recognized Aster’s parents. There hadn’t been enough of them to recognize.
“Probably won’t get much out of this one,” Haris said, and left Nikos alone with Aster, closing the heavy iron door after him.
For almost a full minute, Nikos couldn’t bring himself to approach Aster. When he did, his hands were shaking, and he gathered Aster in his arms with none of his usual grace or care.
“I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I suspected you didn’t work…” Aster swallowed heavily, “in the marriage office. Wrong symbol on your uniform.”
“I’m sorry.” Nikos held Aster in his lap on the floor of the interrogation room. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “It isn’t really poison, though. It’s honey. Isn’t it? It was just honey you were bringing in. I can tell them…”
“Wasn’t just honey,” Aster said. His dark hair was matted with blood. What had Haris done to him?
His job, a small voice said in Nikos’ mind.He did his job. And you’re doing yours.
“But you weren’t involved.” Nikos touched Aster’s hand, and Aster hissed in pain. His fingers must have been broken. One, or was it more? Three. Three fingers on one hand, one on the other. “I can convince them.”
“I was involved, Nikos. It’s wrong, what they do to us.” Aster looked up at him, and Nikos felt Aster’s submissive need sweeping through him like a tide. He had to take care of him, but he didn’t know how. All his knowledge of care and comfort was gone. He felt young, terrified, like the apprentices who couldn’t make it, or the friends who couldn’t look at Felix’s leg. “They tell us what our job is and they break us until we fit. Like you. You aren’t a torturer.”
“It’s called an interrogator.”
