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Chapter Text

“Master?"

"Yes, Stanislav."

"I’ve been wondering… Those tinctures you used during the sand pest outbreak. What were they, exactly?”

Isidor does not seem surprised by his question, except perhaps by how long it had taken him to ask it. Stakh has waited almost an entire year to scrape together the courage, knowing that the details of the answer would likely be forbidden to him. "Traditional medicine of the steppe folk,” Isidor explains. “Many who now live in the Crude Sprawl are of the Kin; it was the same at the time of the outbreak. It gave them comfort to be treated with their own medicines."

"So… placebo?"

"Not at all. You'll recall I tried many unfruitful approaches -- I simply chose the one most familiar to the patients. A doctor must know many ways of healing.”

Stakh can still picture his master’s workspace during those dark days: the modern tools of a surgeon cast aside for herbs, strange-smelling tinctures, and bloody organs. But the tinctures had been no cure. The Crude Sprawl had been boarded up with the survivors inside, and Isidor's gruesome work had been put away once more and never spoken of again. “Will you teach me how to make them?”

“Are your steady hands not already full enough with your duties?”

“I mean eventually.”

“Eventually it will be Artemy’s responsibility, should he choose that path. As a Burakh he possesses both the right and the will.”

Stakh manages not to scowl. He sets his jaw to relieve a phantom ache, hammered into it by Artemy’s fist the night before he’d left town. Two years and four thousand miles away and he's still getting in one last punch. “You're training me to care for the townsfolk; your Kin are few, but as you say, some still live here. Surely if the medicine works I should know how, even if you won't allow me to make it."

Isidor regards him across his desk for a long moment, and Stakh consciously straightens his back. He won't hunch down like Artemy, trying to blend in with the common folk; he's earned his place here at his master's side. At last, Isidor stands and beckons him to follow. "Come with me."

He picks up a lantern from the cabinet on the landing and leads him down the stairs to the ground floor of the Burakh house, to the unfinished room around the corner. He ushers him inside and closes the door behind them. The storage room is too dark to see until he lights the lantern, which he sets down in a patch of dirt.

“It’s the wrong time of year for harvest,” he explains, kneeling into the earth exposed by the broken floorboards, “but they’ve begun to sprout. They won’t be ready until late summer, or early autumn. Look, here.”

Stakh kneels in the dirt next to his master and bows low so he can see, and the earthy scent of mud and plant matter fills his nostrils. Cupped in Isidor’s hands is a fragile black shoot. He recognizes it from idle childhood days spent far from the Town’s embrace. “It’s twyre.”

"Yes. Not just an annual nuisance when it blooms. Twyre is the primary ingredient for the tinctures I used during the outbreak.”

"But you don't use it now?"

"Not so often." Isidor wipes the dirt from his hands on his knees. "I have… distanced myself from the ways of the Kin. For good or ill, I don't yet know."

"It would be a shame for the technique to be lost."

"Artemy will learn, when the time is right." Isidor gives him a stern look, the one Stakh often receives when he's been too prideful. "Are you displeased that the knowledge should go to Artemy instead of you?"

Stakh ducks his head -- chastened, but not deterred. "I don't see why it has to be only one of us."

"Then I'll enlighten you. Tell me: what do you hear right now?"

Stakh frowns, turning his head this way and that, listening for anything out of the ordinary. "Branches scraping against the hallway window. The house settling, maybe. Why?"

"You don't hear the twyre."

"The... twyre?"

"It's a skill among some of the Kin," explains Isidor. "To know the Lines of Mother Boddho's body, to hear her pain and her love in the life that emerges from her flesh. The Brides can hear it, as can the odonghe -- and the menkhu, of course. That is why it is for Artemy to learn. Not you."

Shame prickles at the nape of his neck. Why had he never noticed Artemy possessed such a skill? He'd never mentioned it before, not in all those childhood years they'd spent out in the steppe together. He wonders, angrily and irrationally, if he had simply withheld such a secret out of rivalry -- or worse, pity, knowing years before Stakh did that he would never be permitted to know it. "If it's a skill, it can be learned," Stakh insists desperately. "Master, you know I will do anything you ask of me. Please -- teach me how to hear the twyre as you do."

Isidor exhales quietly, and gazes at him in the lamplight. In the stillness he looks statuesque, face carved in a noble likeness of philosophers of old, dignified in a way that still makes Stakh feel like he is standing ready at the gates of knowledge. "How does one learn to listen?" he muses, but his tone is not dismissive. He is truly wondering, asking the question aloud as a way of working through a problem, as he often does. "I fear you have spent too much time within the body of the Town to truly understand how the Kin see the world. I will need to think on this more."

Stakh nods respectfully, a flicker of hope warming his heart. Isidor gives things serious, measured thought first, but when he does make his decisions, they are firm; if the answer was a straight "no", he would have said as much. Encouraged, he brushes the fragile shoot of twyre emerging from the earth with his fingertips, and asks, "What does it sound like?"

Isidor closes his eyes and tilts his head a little, ear cocked to the earth. Stakh steals the opportunity to study his face, committing the way the lamp's flame lights his handsome features to memory. "The rattle of bones, the buzzing of flies. Reeds swishing in the marshes. It will call to you before you ever lay your gaze upon it." He opens his eyes, and Stakh quickly glances away, blushing in the dark. "You and the twyre came from the same body, and when you hear it, you will feel that kinship in your blood."

Stakh doesn't know if he believes that. But words have a way of sounding like truth when they fall from his master's lips, and in those days, that was still a comfort.

***

Stakh had always been a quiet and serious boy, prone to fits of melancholy and withdrawal that had set him apart from other kids from an early age. He'd had his circle of friends who'd understood him, and that was all he'd needed. They were all outcasts in their own way, he and Cub, Gravel and Grief, so the four of them had formed their own kingdom with no one else permitted inside, and that had suited him just fine.

He'd never thought much about the girls who would hang around their hideout in the Warehouses, trying to catch Cub's attention before Gravel would drive them off, hissing and spitting like a feral cat. They were sixteen when Cub mentioned to Stakh in passing that he and Gravel had a lot in common and should spend more time together. The suggestion had perplexed him. He liked Lara well enough; she didn't waste words and didn't prod him to speak when he didn't feel like it, so they'd always gotten along. How could their friendship be improved? He'd stewed over Cub's suggestion for weeks before deciding he was jealous of the favour Stakh had been gaining with his father as an apprentice, and simply wanted him out of the way.

It wasn't long after that when the war broke out and trains started taking the town's young men to and from the front. Stakh would spend hours sitting at the station and watching them: the excitable recruits boarding the army trains with their backs straight, clean-shaven or still too young to grow much facial hair at all; the returning soldiers disembarking in their striking uniforms, possessed of a quiet maturity and camaraderie the youth lacked. Something about them made his heart seize up in his chest, a feeling he at first mistook for the fear of some day having to join them. It wasn't until he saw one of them in Master Burakh's house having a poorly-healed wound re-bandaged that he'd finally recognized it as attraction. The handsome, half-dressed soldier had caught him staring and winked at him, and he'd flushed so furiously that his master had thought him feverish and sent him to lie down.

He’d told no one about his realization, not even his friends -- the first crack in the foundation that would crumble years later. This knowledge was for him alone. If discovering this fact about himself felt like the punchline to a lifelong joke, then concealing it gave him the power to deny others the laugh they so obviously wanted at his expense.

But as he came of age, he only grew more resentful of Artemy's occasional dalliances with girls, of Lara’s unfortunate failure to understand him without words, of Grigory’s freedom to come and go as he pleased and answer to no one. It seemed that everyone got to be whoever they wanted but him. Loneliness and resentment crushed him like a vise by the time he turned twenty. When Artemy left him for the Capital it was the final straw, as if his heart had been cut from his body, and he retreated fully into the unfeeling safety of his work and his studies, desperate to prove himself useful to their master. And so he worked diligently, and moulded himself in the image of the soldiers who came and went over the years: a tool in the hands of men infinitely greater than him.

Only a fool could hope to become anything more.

***

In early Spring there is an accident in the Termitary that keeps the tiny infirmary in the Burakh house overflowing for the better part of a week. A section of one of the stone floors had collapsed, crushing several workers to death and injuring dozens more. Stakh barely has time to eat or sleep while treating the wounded; the days pass in a blur. Among the blood transfusions and head injuries and broken bones, there is a man whose injured and infected arm needs to be amputated, so Isidor has him brought to the house for the operation, where they can work in a sterile environment.

The patient is a butcher, one of the Kin. He lies weak and feverish on the operating table hastily set up in one of Isidor's empty rooms, shaking his head and uttering words Stakh does not understand as he prepares him for surgery. He ignores his angry diatribe and injects him with morphine. While he marks his skin where the cut must be made, just above the elbow, Isidor lays a gentle hand upon the man's chest and speaks softly in their shared tongue. His baritone instills a calm in both their patient and in Stakh, who'd been unconsciously mirroring the man's agitation.

Stakh watches him, mesmerized. He's handsome like this, solid and reliable, a lifeline in a sea of pain and anguish. He watches Isidor stroke the man's hair from his forehead and speak soothing words, watches the man close his eyes and nod as the morphine takes hold, and senses a silent pact of trust form between them that he can see, but cannot understand.

He wonders what that would feel like: to be seen and understood by another, for a touch to carry meaning beyond words.

"He will only allow me to perform the surgery," says Isidor, as he turns to the tools Stakh had set out earlier. "It is to be expected: the townsfolk may be lenient with you as my student, but he is Kin. For him this is the menkhu's duty; no one else's."

Stakh can't help a prickle of irritation at the snub. The Town has it right, in his opinion. He is his master's apprentice -- his one and only, if the son does not return. Being able to act in his place is his ultimate responsibility; being permitted to is a frustrating obstacle. "Of course," he says, instead of giving voice to his resentment, and moves to the man's side to hold his doomed limb in place.

Isidor performs the operation swiftly. He even sews up the loose skin on the newly-formed stump himself -- leaving nothing to chance in case someone later objects to even a needle having pierced flesh. Nearly as soon as he’s finished he needs to return to the Termitary to continue seeing patients there, leaving Stakh to clean and dress the wound and administer the antibiotics: a white mixture in one of his glass bottles. A treatment familiar to the patient.

He sleeps on the floor of the infirmary that night, as he had during the outbreak, and as he has every night this week when he can afford to close his eyes for more than a few minutes at a time. A muffled noise of pain from the side room wakes him while it’s still dark. He stops long enough to collect a needle and a vial of morphine from the cupboard, then follows the muttered steppe language into the makeshift operating room.

“Lie still,” says Stakh as he lights the lamp.

The man says something he does not understand, before giving up and rasping his displeasure in Russian: “Not you.”

A flash of sleep-deprived anger darkens his mood and sharpens his tone. “I’m not waking Master Burakh to give you a shot of morphine. Give him a moment’s rest. Despite what you may think, you aren’t his only patient.”

“Then leave. Your blasphemy will worsen the wound.”

Stakh sighs irritably and slips the unused needle and morphine back into the pockets of his robe for later. “Have it your way. It’s no concern of mine if you choose to suffer needlessly.”

“Needless suffering is what happens when any but the menkhu pierces flesh. I will not permit it.”

“You can’t be much of a butcher if you so disdain cutting flesh."

The man gives him a flat look that clearly indicates he thinks Stakh is an idiot. "Butchers cut the flesh of animals, not men. Dirty work. Even for our esegher, cutting the flesh of men is only for when there is no other choice."

He doesn’t know the steppe word, but the reverence in the man’s voice makes it abundantly clear of whom he’s speaking. "Don't compare yourself to him. His work is irreplaceable; you would be dead today without it. You could simply not be a butcher and no one would suffer."

"Tenegh. And then who would cut your meat?”

“Someone would.”

“Yes, someone would. My father, my brother... But I cut so they don’t have to. Would you take on that burden for him?"

Stakh scowls. The answer sits bitter on his tongue, and all the more so for how his patient already knows it. "I am neither a Burakh nor a menkhu. Your law would have me put to death if I did."

"Then you do not love him as we do."

The accusation slides under his skin like a knife. He can’t suppress an angry scoff as he turns away from the bed and extinguishes the lamp, blood rushing in his ears. “Sleep, if you can,” he snaps. “When the pain becomes unbearable you’ll change your mind.”

But he does not. The butcher slips back into sleep and does not stir again until morning. It is Stakh who lies awake for the rest of the night, lost amid the silence of the infirmary and the cacophony of his own thoughts.

***

"You know what you need, friend," says Bad Grief. He sprawls against the doorframe with an easy familiarity Stakh tolerates from very few, and grins. "A night on the town."

Stakh is already closing his apartment door on him. Grief sticks out his boot just in time to keep it open. "I think not."

"Come on, it'll be a laugh. Pub's just around the corner, you can stagger home when you've had enough."

"Your gang's not really my crowd."

"A good sawbones is welcome anywhere, Stakh. Besides, I miss that dour mug of yours." Grief teasingly grasps his chin between his thumb and forefinger, and Stakh yanks away like he's been burned. "I admit, things are a little lonely, what with Cub away, and Gravel... well, my gang's really not her crowd, I think. Don't want you driftin' off, too."

Stakh sighs. Admittedly, he does miss the way things used to be. Artemy leaving had gutted them in a way they weren’t prepared for, none of them aware of what an anchor he had been until he'd gone. Or maybe it wasn’t him at all; maybe it was just because they were growing older that they never seemed to have time for each other anymore. He'll have to pay Lara a visit soon; Grigory, he can deal with now.

"One drink," he agrees, fetching his coat from the rack. “And I’m off duty. Anyone who feels like fighting can stitch up their own wounds.”

***

They've barely stepped inside the Broken Heart and he already hates it. It's dark, the winding stairs are a nightmare, the ambient music is awful and there are too many people. He eyes the patrons as they descend the stairs toward the seating area -- fellow denizens of the Earth quarter, mostly. He sees men and women who look Kin, like so many of those in the Crude Sprawl, along with a smattering of factory workers and the armed thugs the governor uses as a police force. Despite his promise to Grief, Stakh automatically notes which faces will probably need stitching up in two or three drinks' time.

Grief leads him to a table in the corner where a few men and women are already sitting, and introduces Stakh to them as an old friend. He doesn't recognize any of their faces -- a mix of town and steppe-folk, men and women, young and old. They haven't finished sizing each other up before Grief sits him down on the couch next to a beautiful Kin woman in a tattered dress, puts a glass in his hand, and urges him to drink up.

He makes a face after it goes down bitter. Twyrine, but somehow worse. "Ugh. It's swill."

"You're tellin' me,” Grief laughs. “The owner of this fine establishment brews it himself. Got the recipe from some Worms, don’t ask me how.”

“It clearly needs work.”

“Or better ingredients.”

The man Grief had identified as Piecework smirks at him. “Maybe old Burakh could be convinced to part with some of his good twyre for experimentation.”

He doesn't dignify the suggestion with a response -- which is just as well, as the strangers seated around the table erupt in laughter at what he hadn’t thought to be a joke.

Despite his better instincts he breaks his promise to only stay for one drink. As the night wears on he gets drunker, but no less irritable. Grief’s gang is too tight-knit for him to penetrate their camaraderie, the woman next to him is getting too touchy for his comfort, and the terrible twyrine is only making him think miserably of Isidor and how disappointed he’d be to see him drinking a bastardized liquor made of his people’s herbs. When he gets up to use the toilet he seriously considers simply leaving without saying goodbye -- Grief's gang is too drunk and having too much fun to really notice his absence anyway.

But as he heads back to the table after he’s done, a man seated at the bar catches his attention and gestures him over to join him. Confused, curious, and more than a little drunk, Stakh settles on the empty stool next to him as the man signals the barkeep to slide a shot glass full of spirits toward him. Equally relieved that it’s not more twyrine as he is to be free of the rowdy discussion currently ongoing at Grief's table, Stakh knocks it back gratefully.

"Crow," the man says by way of introduction, and holds out his hand, which Stakh shakes without thinking. "You’re old Burakh’s apprentice, am I right? Your master saved my brother Kestrel's life last winter. Any associate of Burakh gets my full slate of hospitality. What's your name, son?"

"Rubin. Stanislav."

Stakh realizes belatedly that he hasn’t withdrawn his hand yet. When he does, the man's fingers curl lightly against the inside of his wrist and palm; the skittering touch makes him jump. He clears his throat and turns to the bar, praying his reaction went unnoticed.

Evidently more confident with talking to strangers than he, Crow launches into the story of how his brother had been injured doing something or other, and Burakh had arrived just in the nick of time, weren’t they so lucky, while Stakh half-listens and appraises him with an unfocused gaze. He must be twice Stakh's age at least. He was handsome, once upon a time, and truthfully still is, a bright light dimmed only slightly by the lines in his thin face and the wide grey streaks in his dark hair. His hands are large, scarred across the backs and the knuckles. Stakh watches his long fingers play with an empty shot glass on the bar and finds himself wanting to feel their calloused tips on his wrist again.

(Or resting heavy on his chest, a soothing gesture for a fearful soul; a touch between men who see each other in ways that can't be spoken in words.)

Stakh sucks in a trembling breath, and banishes the thought of Isidor from his mind.

But he doesn't protest when Crow orders them both another drink, or when he leans in closer to speak to him in a quiet, inviting tone of voice. When he slaps him on the shoulder after a joke and leaves his hand there, thumb tracing an idle pattern on the side of his neck, even Stakh can no longer excuse the behaviour as friendly and has to accept he's being flirted with. The merest hint of such familiarity would have gotten his hackles up had he been sober, but his blood is racing from the heady mix of alcohol and intimacy, and Crow's boldness lends him confidence. So Stakh lets his eyes drift until he's gazing openly at Crow's lips, which crook upward on one side when the other man notices his attentions are finally being returned.

Is this how it happens? Stakh wonders, as his cheeks warm and the room spins around them. His heart slams against his rib cage in a frantic rhythm as Crow stands up, then locks eyes with him and cants his head toward the stairs. Stakh doesn't wait for a second invitation.

It isn't until they step outside and the frigid air rushes into his lungs that he remembers he left his coat inside, back at the table with Grief and his gang. Before he can decide if he should go back for it, Crow nudges him into the shadows next to the door, presses him up against the side of the building with his body, and kisses him. Stakh's stomach flutters with the thrill of it -- it's not his first kiss (with Artemy, who'd been teasing him), but it's his first with real fire behind it, burning with intention and the feeling of someone wanting him. He groans and kisses back, hands flying up to cradle the man's face. He tastes like cigarettes and the terrible twyrine served by the house, and Stakh can't get enough of it. The alcohol surges in his blood as he pushes his tongue past his teeth, suddenly desperate to devour the meal he's been denying himself his whole life.

"Pretty boy," Crow murmurs against his lips. He winds his fingers through the long strands of Stakh's dark hair, and cocks his crooked smile. "Cold night like this… why don't you come warm my bed?"

Stakh nods -- too fast, he knows, too eager, but he wants this and he doesn't know when the stars will next align for it to happen again. So he lets Crow lead him by the hand across the tracks and into the tenements, his heart pounding and his abandoned company from the Broken Heart forgotten.

They go inside one of the crumbling buildings, up the stairs and through the communal hallways, and into the second last room. Crow shuts the door behind them by pushing him up against it and claiming his mouth again, plunging the room into darkness and silencing the anxiety rising in the back of Stakh's mind. It's safe here, he reminds himself, off the street and out of sight, safe to explore the older man's body with his hands, his warm mouth with his tongue. He feels everything all at once: rough, scarred skin and hard, sinewy muscle under his cold hands when he slips them under Crow's clothing; the rough burn of stubble when his lips miss their mark; a foreign hardness at his thigh that signals the other man’s arousal matches his own. Stakh closes his eyes and gasps when Crow sinks his teeth into the sensitive skin at his throat, sucking a bruise into his flesh, leaving proof of their connection. When he peels back the layers of Stakh's clothing it’s more than skin he’s baring to the darkness, as the loneliness he's felt since he was a teenager falls away with the fabric drifting to the floor.

They stumble across the room and onto the bed, shedding the rest of their clothing as they go. It’s barely large enough to hold both of them, and the old mattress plunges under their combined weight. Stakh freezes when the springs creak, and Crow openly laughs at his scandalized expression. "Rumours spread fast in this town," he teases. He turns onto his side and takes both their cocks in hand, drawing a low moan from Stakh's lips. "Better keep it down, or by noon everyone this side of the Guzzle will know I had you..."

"Shit…" Stakh's dick throbs with arousal that's undiminished by the shame of that thought. Those hands he'd so admired in the pub are strong and rough on his skin, their grip firm and sure, and Stakh, holding on tight to his partner’s broad shoulders and panting desperately into the crook of his neck, resigns himself to the fact that he's going to come just from this. Those hands… What did he say he does for a living, anyway? A leatherworker in the factories? His head is swimming so badly he can't recall, and the heat of the man's body against his own is rapidly draining him of the will to care. Crow tightens his grip and strokes them together, harder and faster -- he manages to bite back the groan that coils in his throat, but the bedsprings squeak tellingly beneath them with every stuttering thrust of Stakh's hips, and Crow may be shushing him but the delight on his face at his inability to hold back tells a different story. In another second he's coming, spilling over himself and Crow's hand, his eyes squeezed shut and Crow’s mouth on his to quiet him.

"Good boy," Crow hums, deep and rumbling, and Stakh is so high from his orgasm that he’s only a little ashamed when he whimpers in response. Crow presses his lips to his throat and works lazy bite marks into his skin as Stakh heaves for breath, slightly dazed and deeply content. He wants to pretend the prickling at the corners of his eyes is from the overstimulation of the man's hand, still idly stroking his dick -- but he knows it's the praise that brings him to the brink of tears and makes his heart stutter in his chest.

As his muscles relax and he melts into the mattress, Crow nudges him onto his back and crawls over him, settling between his legs. Stakh drags his hands across the man's shoulders and chest, letting his fingertips catch on ribs and old scar tissue, making himself feel it now that his body has been satisfied. While he’s focused on touching what has been always out of his reach, Crow strokes himself with the hand covered in Stakh's come, and then swipes up the rest that had spilled on his stomach as he pushes his knees apart. Stakh freezes as his slick fingers press up against his ass and he realizes what he intends to do. "Hey -- wait a second..."

Crow cocks an eyebrow at him. "Don't tell me you've never been fucked..."

Stakh flushes violently, suddenly feeling stupid and lost. Of course he hasn't, he wants to snap back. He's been hiding this secret his entire life, this part of him unseen by even his closest companions, and he quietly adds his inexperience to the list of shameful things to keep hidden. But maybe he’s overthinking it -- maybe it’s fine he doesn't know what he's supposed to do or what he might like. That’s the whole point of fucking an older man, after all, to have someone lead him through it. "Just... get on with it," he mumbles before he can change his mind. He grunts and digs his heels into the mattress as he feels the uncomfortable pressure of a finger being pushed inside him -- too quickly, as if Crow had tired of waiting for permission.

"Relax," Crow murmurs. The numbing haze of alcohol had been pleasant at first, but now it’s making him dizzy and disoriented as his anxiety mounts. A second finger joins the first, roughly pushing and stretching him until he feels like he's going to tear open. He's about to tell him to stop when the fingers brush up against his prostate, slamming him with an unexpected swell of pleasure that makes him gasp. Crow graces him with a sly grin. "See? Better already."

It isn't better, exactly, but his fingers eventually stretch him open enough that it gets slightly less uncomfortable. Coupled with the occasional stroke of pleasure deep inside him, it’s enough to convince him to keep going. Still, he isn't quite ready when Crow withdraws his fingers and lifts his hips up into his lap, but before he can gather his thoughts, the man lines up his cock and pushes in.

The pain is breathtaking. A sharp cry tears out of his mouth and Crow slaps a hand over it to muffle the sound. Before he's even recovered from the initial penetration, he pulls back and thrusts again, driving deeper, and Stakh sobs against his palm in pain and shock, fingers twisting in the sheets. The meagre lubrication of his own come isn’t enough; the burn between his legs is unbearable as the man begins fucking him, and no matter how he twists or arches he can't find a more comfortable angle. Crow isn't being careful about the noise, either; it's Stakh who has to be quiet, Stakh's reputation at risk, and he has to hold back noises of pain the same as pleasure. Below him, the bed springs groan in a telling rhythm; above, Crow moans and calls him obscene things that would have gone straight to his dick in the shadows outside Stamatin's pub, but now just turn his stomach. These walls are even thinner than the ones at his own apartment, and here there are neighbouring rooms on either side. He can't make a sound, or they'll know…

They'll know. What will his master think of him? What is he doing?

Suddenly, the handsome older man sitting at the bar loses all his allure as the room closes in on him. Feeling sick from drink and revulsion, Stakh tries to turn his head away, only for Crow's fingers to tighten over his face to hold him still. His blood turns to ice in his veins.

"Relax," Crow says again, and this time Stakh hears the threat behind the order. He leans his weight forward, leaving Stakh with little leverage to move or get away, seeming to realize his reluctance has become outright refusal. Stakh shouts, muffled as it is by the hand over his mouth. "Kid. Keep it the fuck down or I swear to -- fuck!"

Crow snatches his hand back when Stakh manages to sink his teeth into the meat of his palm and bite down hard. He snarls and returns the favour with a vicious blow to his face that blackens Stakh's vision and leaves him limp on the mattress, head spinning in a painful, sickening spiral. He comes back to full alertness in inches: first the sharp sting of broken bone in his nose, then the tang of blood in his mouth, the ache in his ass, the bed creaking incessantly as Crow continues to fuck his semi-conscious body. He lies there, dazed and detached from himself, stomach churning as he waits for it to end, until the man gasps, shudders, and finally comes inside him, and it's over.

When Crow pulls out, still panting from the force of his orgasm, Stakh finally gathers enough coordination to drive a knee into his rib cage and shove him off. He rolls out of bed and staggers to his feet, his broken nose throbbing with pain, and ignores Crow's storm of cursing as he looks for his clothes. His ass hurts with every step and something warm and wet that he hopes is only come is sliding down his inner thigh. He refuses to even think about it.

"What's the matter," Crow sneers at him. "Big guy like you can't take it a little rough?"

Stakh's throat seizes up as he yanks on his clothes, shaking with rage and humiliation. "Shut up."

"Don't act so high and mighty, bitch. You couldn't get on my cock fast enough back at the pub..."

Stakh doesn't rise to his taunt. He just shoves on his boots and slams the door on his way out, ignoring the abuse hurled after him as he goes.

He makes it as far as the other side of the tenement block before he doubles over and vomits, resting his weight on the corner of the crumbling edifice. From there he shambles in the cold past the Broken Heart and up the street to his apartment building, furious tears freezing on his cheeks and nose already swollen painfully closed from the break. He stumbles up the stairs into his flat, where he locks the door behind him, strips off his clothes, and heats some water to wash himself.

He holds his breath as he turns on the lamp in his room and examines his thighs, and then exhales shakily when he doesn't see blood anywhere. With the confirmation that he'd escaped the worst of any physical injuries, all the adrenaline drains out of his battered body and he sags onto his bed, fists clenched around the sheets as his chest heaves in silent, furious despair.

Idiot. What the fuck was wrong with him? Poor, stupid Stakh, so desperately lonely that he'd go home with the first man who'd offered him a kind word and the promise of company. And not just any man: an older one, possessed of a quiet self-assurance, who'd shown interest in him, wanted him, seen him...

But men like his master don't hang around in seedy pubs, waiting for a younger man to take to bed. He's at last starting to realize that there simply are no men like his master.

He doesn’t know how long he lays there, aching and miserable, but eventually enough time passes that he can’t stand to feel unclean anymore. He drags himself out of bed and takes up the cloth, washing away the night's disgrace, scrubbing his skin until it’s red and raw and new.

Chapter Text

A frantic banging on his door startles him out of sleep just after dawn. Stakh bolts upright and immediately regrets it. His tongue is thick and dry in his mouth, and a persistent pain throbs everywhere, from his eyes and nose all the way down to his thighs. He drags himself out of bed, finds a robe and a loose pair of pants to throw on, and makes his way to the door while the pounding grows more insistent.

"Stakh, you there? Open up!"

At the sound of Grief's voice, he pauses with his palm resting on the handle. Fuck. He'd left without saying anything last night. Grief will want to know where he went, and with whom. His stomach twists as the unpleasant details of his evening come rushing back to him in flashes of fear and shame. The last thing he wants is to answer the questions waiting for him on the other side of that door.

But before he can make that decision, the lock clicks open and his door swings inward. Grief bursts in brandishing a shotgun and a wild-eyed expression, wearing Stakh’s coat draped over his shoulders and wielding a lockpick in his free hand. It’s only when he sees Stakh standing there with his hands up defensively that he lowers the gun and heaves a sigh of relief. “Fucking hell, this is where you ended up?”

“It’s my flat,” Stakh snaps. “I’m supposed to be here. What’s your excuse?”

“Sorry, mate, you disappeared on us. I thought--”

“I said ‘one drink’, didn’t I?” He watches Grief run a hand over his face and through his dishevelled hair, and feels deeply guilty. Stakh has seen men awake all night from drugs and drink before -- none of them had looked as haunted as Grief does now. “...What happened?”

Grief barks out an incredulous laugh. “‘What happened?’, he says. You had me draftin’ my condolences to Burakhs old and young, ready to paint the Town bloody crimson on your behalf, is what happened!”

“Why?”

"Crow, that old bastard. Barley said he saw the two of you go outside and not come back. I thought he'd shanked you and left your corpse in a trash bin somewhere!”

Bile crawls up his throat. "Crow… You know him?"

"I know he's a vicious cunt I don't want 'round my boys." Grief scowls. "He was part of the gang before we had… professional differences. One of the old guard. He wasn't fond of me risin' to the top of the food chain, let’s leave it at that.”

Stakh feels his knees go weak under him and leans against the desk, as casually as he can to avoid drawing attention. He can picture it now: Crow sitting at the other end of the pub, at the dark corner of the bar where he could watch everyone else’s comings and goings, relatively unseen. And Stakh, obviously not enjoying Grief's company, deflecting the attention of the beautiful woman sitting next to him…

A mark picked out of the crowd. A perfectly-crafted hook to slip under his rival's skin.

"So?" Grief urges, when Stakh fails to say anything useful. He shrugs Stakh’s coat off and drops it on the desk next to him. "What the fuck happened? He the one that did this to your face?"

Grief takes his jaw in hand and tilts his head so he can examine his broken nose. Stakh shrugs him off, defenses slamming up at the violation of his personal space. "Stop it. He was looking for a fight, so we went outside. He got a punch in, but he was so drunk he could barely stand so he wandered off. Wasn’t in the mood to stick around so I went home."

Grief peers at him with a scrutiny that spikes his pulse, though how he would know it was a lie escapes him. “A punch, huh?" he finally says. "Figured him for a cutter.”

“Yeah, well…” Stakh swallows hard. “Guess I got lucky.”

Grief sighs again and rubs at his red, exhausted eyes. Stakh tries not to feel guilty -- how long had he been out looking for him? “Look, Stakh, when you’re with me you’re hands-off. No one’s gonna touch you where I can see ‘em do it. But wander off on your own and some washed-up old fuck with a grudge might take his chances. You understand?“

“I handled it. I’m fine, all right?”

Grief throws a hand up in surrender. “All right. My sincerest apologies for tryin’ to make sure my dear friend wasn't dead.”

His sarcastic tone makes him feel so wretched that Stakh nearly tells him everything right then. The words are sitting on his tongue, merely waiting to be spoken. Grief isn’t anywhere near the affable idiot he pretends at being -- it’s entirely possible he’s already guessed at Stakh’s preferences, and from there it doesn’t take much of a leap to figure out why he’d disappear from a bar with a stranger. So now all he has to do is admit the truth: that he’d let his guard down this one time, and been made to regret it.

“You don't need to worry about me,” he says instead, and the moment slips out of his grasp. "Go home, Grigory. Get some sleep."

He pats Grief amicably on the shoulder to send him off with something, if only a gesture to indicate his goodwill is appreciated. Grief mumbles his farewells as Stakh ushers him out the door, fatigue claiming him now that the crisis has been resolved, shotgun held limp at his side. Stakh watches him disappear down the stairway, then closes the door behind him, shutting himself inside with his thoughts and regrets.

***

A blend of pride and the desire to avoid raising questions prevents him from skipping work, even though all he wants to do is crawl back into bed and sleep off the black cloud hanging over him. Keeping busy will clear his head; he'll only wallow at home. So he gathers himself together, forces down a breakfast of slightly stale bread and milk, and sets out for the Burakh house.

He doesn’t see the bruises forming under his eyes until he catches sight of his reflection in one of the house’s windows. He keeps his head down when he enters, but Isidor looks up from digging around in one of the storage room's cupboards when he hears the door and raises a brow at his dishevelled appearance. "Had a misadventure, did we?"

"Nothing serious," replies Stakh. He strips off the coat Grief had returned to him and hangs it up on the rack. When he looks up, Isidor is watching him from the cupboards with a measured gaze. "...What is it?"

"That looks painful. I'll mix you a salve and check it over for you later." He tilts his head toward the ceiling. "Go on upstairs for now. The lady Kozlova brought her daughter in this morning. Bronchitis, I suspect. I'll be along shortly."

Isidor turns back to his work and says nothing else of Stakh's uncharacteristic tardiness or roughed-up appearance, for which he is grateful. Comforted by the presence of his master and the quiet of the house's familiar hallways, he heads upstairs to the infirmary and prepares for work, as if this is any other day.

The work keeps him focused, as he'd hoped, but as the sun goes down and the patients thin out, there's less to keep his mind occupied. He turns on the lamp in the dining room when the sun dips below the horizon and settles at the table with one of his master's surgical books, but his focus won't hold.

Pretty boy, says a voice at his ear, and his hands crease the corners of the pages as they ball into fists. For a second he closes his eyes and imagines them squeezing the man's throat, a dark fantasy fuelled by rage and shame. Ending that lout's miserable life is out of the question, of course. There's no version of that story that doesn't end with the punishing gaze of Governor Saburov on him, and more importantly, on his master, who would vouch for him at the cost of his own reputation. Stakh can't even do so much as issue a complaint against him -- not without revealing the truth about himself and what had happened. The law will see him equally guilty for having consorted with a man, no matter what had been done to him...

The clatter of a tray being set on the table startles him out of his spiralling thoughts. Isidor settles on the chair to his right and begins setting out his tools: bandages, bottles of clear water and opaque orange liquid, a bowl full of mysterious white paste, and a teapot with its matching cups -- a gift from a patient with little else to offer in exchange for treatment. His eyes linger on the tea set as his heart pangs in misery. Isidor is beloved and respected by everyone, steppe and townsfolk alike. If Stakh ever diminished that respect through his own actions, he would never forgive himself.

Isidor uncorks the orange tincture and tips a splash of its contents into a teacup, which he then dilutes with the tea. "For the pain," he says, sliding it across the table to him. Stakh accepts it with a murmur of thanks. The mixture is bitter and floral on his tongue; the smell makes him think of the steppe in autumn, of orange flowers blooming in rings around great stones reaching toward the sky. While he sits and contemplates it quietly, Isidor examines his face to determine the extent of the fracture, then cleanses his bruised skin with the water and begins applying the acrid-smelling medical paste to it. “This will deaden the nerves temporarily. Tell me when you lose feeling in your face.”

Stakh wrinkles his nose to test the anaesthesia and hisses in pain. Too soon. “I wasn’t expecting your traditional medicines...”

“The supply train isn’t due until Tuesday.” Isidor sighs, and adds quietly, “Sometimes, we must make do with what we have.”

They sit in silence as Isidor angles the lamp toward his face and gets to work realigning the fractured bone fragments. Even with the anaesthetic the mild pain and pressure is challenging to bear stoically, so Stakh must remain blessedly focused on that task instead of his wandering thoughts.

"Are you ready to tell me how this happened?" Isidor asks quietly as he works.

"A stupid fight with a drunk." The lie comes easier for having practiced it on Grief, but he doesn't meet his master's eyes when he repeats it. "We got into it at Stamatin's pub. Nothing to be concerned about."

"Who was he?"

"Some lowlife who has it out for Grigory. I was just in the way." That part is technically true. Stakh casts around for a detail that will back up his deception, and blurts it out without thinking. "He mentioned you treated his brother last year. Saved his life, is what he said. A Kestrel."

Isidor hums, low and troubled. "I know him. Neither he nor his brother is what I'd call a respectable man. But it's not for a doctor to judge such things."

Stakh doesn't say anything. Did everyone know but me? How is it possible to have spent his whole life striving to be worthwhile to someone, only for them keep him in the dark about these things? Or is it my own fault, he wonders, as he looks at the surgery book lying open on the table with glazed-over eyes. Head down in medical texts and practice as he grew older, too far removed in time and space from the cruelty of real people. Grief knows what horrors men are capable of; his master, too. To them, surely the danger would have been obvious.

"Stanislav, I've never had to worry about you. So permit it this once." Isidor's voice is a deep rumble in the quiet as he fixes a bandage across the bridge of his nose to keep it aligned. "You'll stand up for yourself if trouble finds you, but you aren't the type to go out looking for a fight -- not even on behalf of your friend Filin. I want you to tell me what really happened."

Stakh holds his breath, trying his damnedest to suppress the spike of panic in his gut. "I don't understand..."

"You wanted me to teach you the ways of a menkhu? Then this is what it means to be Kin: you are a part of a whole. Your wounds injure not just your own body, but ours. Mine."

"I know." He stares down at his hands, clenched tightly on his lap. "I'm not involved in Grigory's business. You don't need to be concerned about that."

"I'm not. What I'm concerned about is you drinking in twyrine dens with a disreputable crowd and sleeping with dangerous men."

Stakh's blood runs cold. When he looks up, his wide-eyed expression betraying him, Isidor's face is preternaturally calm. "...What?"

Isidor drops his gaze meaningfully toward Stakh's open shirt collar. "I'm not so old I no longer recognize a love bite."

Shit. Stakh slaps a hand over his throat instinctively, even though trying to hide it is useless now. He feels his face drain of colour as he realizes Isidor had noticed the marks as soon as he'd taken off his coat in the hallway. "It's not -- I didn't…" He trails off, praying to be interrupted, scolded, anything -- but Isidor does nothing except wait for him to find the words. He swallows thickly. "I didn't mean for it to happen."

"Stanislav, your preference of bed partners is not my concern -- insofar as they don't endanger you. That man is a thief and a murderer; a flagrant violator of our taboos. You don't need to justify yourself," he adds, when Stakh opens his mouth to do just that, "I'm simply explaining why I feel the need to intervene. You are my disciple; you look to me to teach you, to give you work, to provide you with guidance. Protecting you is also a part of that role."

Stakh closes his eyes, teetering on the edge of collapse. It would almost be preferable for Isidor to admonish him. He's shocked by how badly he craves it, in that moment: a firm hand to shackle his heart and body, to forbid him from going back out and doing it all over again. If it were commanded of him, he would suppress his desires -- he would never look at another man for the rest of his life if Isidor would simply tell him what to do. "I'm a grown man, Master. I don't need to be protected anymore."

"I know. Perhaps that's why I kept you at arm's length, when I should have been drawing you closer." Isidor sighs deeply. "I am not blind, Stanislav. I've known of your desires for some time. For other men, and for me."

Stakh squeezes his eyes shut tight. This isn't happening. He sits there praying for the floorboards to swallow him up so he doesn’t need to have this conversation, but Isidor continues.

"It's hardly surprising. Your life has lacked structure and certainty, so you are drawn to those who can provide it to you. For better or worse, your devotion to me rivals that of any of my Kin -- had I directed it properly, you might not have felt compelled to seek more dangerous outlets. And I will take responsibility for that."

Something in his chest dislodges then, as if a great spike buried deep between his ribs had been suddenly and viciously extracted. A pain both physical and mental erupts from the wound at those words, at the acknowledgement of a life spent searching for order and meaning in any place he could find it. He grits his teeth, eyes stinging with tears he refuses to shed. "Forgive me," is all he can say.

"My boy, there is nothing to forgive." Isidor raises his large, strong hand, and cups it under Stakh's jaw in a deeply comforting gesture. The pressure calms Stakh instantly, like an embrace. He exhales softly into his broad palm, his skin too numb to know for certain his cheeks are blazing even if he suspects it. "I know what you need from me. I also have need of you. Serve me with loyalty and devotion, and in turn I will see to it your needs are met."

Stakh barely dares to ask. "My... needs?"

"For teaching, for guidance… and for companionship." He makes his meaning clear with a gentle brush of his thumb over Stakh's jaw. Stakh sucks in a breath. "Is that what you wish?"

Stakh nods, astonished and still afraid that if he says the wrong thing, this longed-for moment will evaporate into morning mist, like so many others like it in his dreams. "And... what exactly do you need of me?"

Isidor’s smile is faint, and tinged around the eyes with a deep despondency, as it so often is. There are times when the sight makes Stakh worry about what troubles him so. But when he speaks, he commands fealty and compels action, and any impulse to comfort him rather than obey dissipates in the face of it. "I need you to hear the twyre. If you can learn how, I will teach you the Lines. I will teach you everything I know. Is that agreeable to you?"

Stakh’s heart pounds in his chest, pumping hot blood that heals over the void there and fills it with new life. "Yes, Master," he whispers, the words leaving his lips as a prayer.

***

On the surface, nothing about their relationship has changed. Isidor will ask something of him -- pass me a scalpel, change the infirmary beds, fetch fresh bandages from the pharmacy in the Tanners -- and Stakh does it without question or complaint, the same as he would have before. If their conversation at Isidor's table hadn't happened, an external observer would never think anything had changed at all.

But it isn't the same, and Stakh knows it. Now, the commands carry a weight he hadn't heard before, a significance known only to them, and when he fulfills his tasks and Isidor gently touches his shoulder in approval, he is flooded with a new, exhilarating warmth that he never used to feel. His service had always been mostly self-motivated, to learn as much as he could about medicine and fill the gap left when Artemy had been sent away to the Capital; but now on top of that, he is driven by his adoration and respect for Isidor, striving toward ever-higher levels of focus and achievement. He works himself to the bone, learning, studying, practicing medicine, anticipating his master's need for food and tea and rest, and at the end of the day, he goes home to his apartment exhausted and at peace. He wonders if this is how those soldiers in the army feel: used and worked to their limit, their lives dictated by the whims of their superiors. He wonders if they sleep as well as he does, these days.

His last task before he leaves the Burakh house each night is to go to the little room under the stairs, where the twyre sprouts from the earth, and listen. He kneels in the dirt in supplication, hands at rest on his thighs, and does everything he can think of to accomplish the goal Isidor has set for him: straining to hear; letting his mind wander; thinking of absolutely nothing at all. Each time, there is no sound but the house settling around him, and his master’s footsteps on the floor above.

“Next time,” Isidor says when Stakh emerges in failure yet again, and he takes a little heart in that small encouragement.

He takes the problem home with him, turns it over and over in his mind as he lies awake in the dark. How does one learn to listen? His master is experienced, but it can’t simply be a measure of skill, for even Artemy had regarded the twyre curiously whenever they would go out to play in the steppe as boys. And if it were an inherited trait borne only amongst those of the Kin, Isidor would hardly waste time training Stakh to hear it. What is he missing?

He resolves to try harder, even on those nights he comes home bone-weary and falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. He will figure out what to do, and he will do it. He's prepared to give everything to Isidor, if it means his life will finally have purpose and direction.

***

For several weeks his life settles into this steady drone, an ascetic routine of work and sleep and little else, until he is numb to the world outside the Burakh house. One late afternoon, tired and frustrated after his latest failure to hear the twyre, Isidor calls him up into his study.

Isidor is standing at the window, reading some notes by the fading afternoon light that he tosses onto his desk as Stakh approaches. "You were distracted today," he says mildly, as he settles himself into the armchair. "It's unlike you."

Stakh crosses the room to stand opposite him at the desk, and lowers his eyes in deference. He didn't think his ongoing problem with the twyre had affected his work, but he won’t make excuses for himself. "My lack of progress is… frustrating. I'll work harder tomorrow."

"If you work any harder, you'll wear yourself down into nothing," says Isidor wryly. "Why don't you tell me what's troubling you."

For a moment, Stakh hesitates, caught between the twin desires to appear capable, and to oblige any request his master makes of him. The latter wins out, as it always must. "It’s the twyre. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. Or even really what I’m supposed to be doing at all, except ‘listening’.”

“Don’t fixate on it too much. Your work with me is what’s important -- the ability to hear the twyre will come in time, if my theories are correct.”

“And what are those?”

Isidor regards him distantly, and continues on as if he hadn’t spoken. “There’s something else on your mind, is there not? Please, speak freely.”

Stakh opens his mouth to respond, and then closes it again -- he doesn't want to lie, but the admission will not come. Seeing his reluctance, Isidor leans back in his chair with his chin tilted up, his brow stern and face impassive.

“Come here,” he commands quietly.

There’s a tug behind his navel at the words, like a hook buried inside him that pulls him forward on his feet. He rounds the desk with measured steps, and when he’s standing beside the armchair, Isidor nods toward the floor. Stakh pauses only a moment, as he questions if he’s really being asked to do what he thinks he is, and then, slowly, he sinks to his knees next to the chair.

"You've served me well, Stanislav," says Isidor. He reaches out and strokes a hand through Stakh’s hair, letting his fingers slip through the long strands and brush against his scalp. Stakh has to exert effort not to lean into the touch. "You've met my every need without error or complaint. But you haven't yet asked for me to meet yours."

Stakh's pulse races as he gazes up into his master's eyes, enthralled. Despite their agreed-upon terms at the outset of this strange arrangement, he’d been determined not to ask for what he is technically entitled to. It’s enough in his mind that Isidor has agreed to further his training, rather than throw him out on the street for bringing disgrace to his doorstep.

"If that is what you wish," says Isidor, when he fails to respond, "you must ask."

Isidor’s hand caresses his cheek, and his resolve shatters. "...Will you?"

"Will I what?"

Stakh's stomach flutters at the firm tone of his voice. He wets his lips. "...Lie with me.”

The faintest hint of a smile graces Isidor's features; there is no movement of his lips, but there’s a softening around his eyes that Stakh recognizes after all these years as fondness. "Not yet," he says gently. "But soon."

Dual waves of disappointment and satisfaction wash over him. Not yet -- but not never. But why, then, would he prompt him to ask? His conflicting emotions must show on his face; Isidor lets his hand slip down to cup his jaw, tilting his head up and ensuring he has nowhere to look but at him.

“Understand,” murmurs Isidor, “that although this is your desire, you are my subordinate, and you answer to me. If I take you to bed, you will follow my instruction there as you would anywhere else in this house.”

Stakh feels the embarrassment wash over his face, but dares not look away. “Of course, Master.”

“Understand also, that I said I would care for your needs. That does not necessarily mean you will receive what you want, be it sex or satisfaction. Trust that I appreciate the responsibility you’ve given me -- but don’t forget you are in my service.”

The heat in his face spreads down his neck and chest, as Isidor’s thumb brushes his lower lip. He’s seized by the desire to touch his tongue to the pad of his finger, but restrains the impulse, even as arousal spikes hot in his gut and makes his breath hitch. “Then let me service you,” he says, voice straining, made bold by desire. “I would do it. Anything you ask.”

Isidor searches his face for a long moment, as if contemplating allowing him to do just that. But at length, he simply withdraws his hand. “Another time,” he says, a finality in his tone that quiets Stakh’s urge to ask again. "Until then... I expect you to be chaste. Under no circumstances are you to touch yourself. Understood?"

A slow pulse of arousal flares with such ferocity inside him that he makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. His heart feels like it's going to burst out of his chest at the knowledge that his master is even considering him this way. How would he know if I did? he thinks wildly -- but that’s a foolish question. It isn't a matter of him knowing whether Stakh disobeyed his order: it’s a matter of him knowing he would never even dream of it. “I understand.”

Isidor dismisses him with a wave of his hand, and returns to the documents he’d been reading when Stakh had arrived. Stakh gets to his feet and exits as calmly as he can, drawing his robe around himself to hide the fact that he’s hard.

As always, the room with the twyre is his last stop before going home for the night. The air in there feels thicker somehow, warm and a little dizzying, but there is no noise; it’s as silent as ever.

***

Isidor is scarce for the better part of the following week, leaving Stakh to handle most of the daily influx of patients and house calls while he attends to business in the Termitary and the Bridge Square. Their work keeps them so starkly separated that their conversation in the study feels like it could have been a dream. Stakh knows it wasn't, of course -- the command he'd been given holds him in its thrall in a way no half-remembered reverie could.

Each day is a test of his patience. The years of harbouring all that shame-wracked desire for his mentor had been bearable precisely because he'd been unattainable -- nothing but a fantasy, safe to indulge in from time to time. But now, after the promise Isidor had made him, Stakh can hardly think of anything else. During the time he is made to wait, he dreams nightly of his master with him, on him, inside him, and he wakes aching with a ferocious want he's been forbidden to satisfy. It's an agony unlike any he’s ever known.

But he remains patient, and as always, he obeys.

He's in the twyre room a week later when the front door of the Burakh house opens and closes, signalling his master's arrival home. Isidor's shadow falls over him from the hallway. When Stakh looks up, he sees him wrapped in the layered garments of the Kin, covered in blood spatters up to his elbows.

"A difficult ritual this year," he says blithely, holding up his bloodstained hands. Stakh knows better than to ask for the details. With the steppe folk it's as likely to be a human cut to pieces as a bull; in fact, the involvement of their menkhu almost certainly means the former. "Heat some water, would you? I'll wash down in the lab."

"Yes, Master."

He does as instructed. The whole time he's preparing the water, Stakh is thinking about Isidor's ritual blade cutting open some poor creature, human or otherwise. He has the right to do so, as menkhu, but a dark shroud always seems to envelop him after he's completed the deed, one Stakh wishes he could free him from. He finds himself thinking of the butcher with the severed arm -- ostensibly permitted to cut, but stained by the profanity of his role. If it were allowed he would spare Isidor the shame of cutting without a single thought for himself. If the steppe laws can’t decide if cutting is a sacred act or a profane one, then wouldn’t it make sense for him to do it, rather than someone much more deeply bound to the spiritual roots of the practice? Why should their most holy man defile himself in such a way, if he could avoid it...?

Still troubled by his thoughts, he brings a towel and the small washbasin to the lab where Isidor is waiting, still dressed in his traditional garb and flecked with the remaining blood he couldn't remove with a cloth. The tile in this room will clean well, if any water or blood spills upon it -- that will also be Stakh's job, later.

"It is good to feel the blood of the steppe on my hands, now and again," muses Isidor. "But it is just as good to wash them clean."

"They've made a mess of you this time," Stakh notes dryly, as he sets the washbasin down on the exam table. "There's soap and a washcloth already in the water."

"Thank you, Stanislav." Isidor holds his arms out slightly apart from his body. "You may disrobe me."

Stakh's heart skips a beat. A month ago he would have frozen and asked for clarification. Now, he stands before his master and grasps the outer layer of his garb, a long tunic cinched at the waist with a sash. He unwraps the layers of leathers and roughspun wool reverently, revealing weathered skin and sparse ripples of soft, dark hair on his chest and abdomen. Isidor’s frame is tall and solid, even as the muscles have softened with age, and Stakh stands in awe of him, even though he himself had grown to be taller. His scent is that of the steppe, of blood and grasses and floral herbs. When he removes each layer of clothing, he folds it neatly and sets it aside on the nearby table.

The pants are the last to go. Stakh turns his gaze pointedly toward the floor as he bends and slips them down his master’s legs, and keeps it fixed there as he realizes undergarments are not a part of the ceremonial dress. Isidor steps out of them, and these, too, he folds and sets aside. His head is swimming and he knows he’s flushing, but he keeps his demeanour stoic and respectful, even as his mentor stands naked before him.

“You needn’t worry about spilling any water,” says Isidor calmly. “The drain in the corner will catch it.”

Ah.

Stakh doesn’t allow himself to react. He rolls up the sleeves of his robe as he turns to the washbasin, and plunges his hands into the hot water, finding the soap and cloth at the bottom. The steam rising off the water makes him feel dizzy -- or at least he tells himself that’s what it is, and not the thought of what he’s about to do.

The soap is new and rough, but Isidor does not complain as Stakh brushes it over the skin of his neck and chest and shoulders, working it into a thin lather that he rinses away with the warm cloth. Excess water trickles in rivulets down the planes of his torso, and Stakh does his best to catch them before they slide too low for him to dare. He washes clean his arms, paying special attention to his hands, wrists, and fingernails, still lightly stained with blood; then the outer thighs that had been faintly marked red from being touched by his hands after Stakh had disrobed him. And then…

He has to sink to his knees to clean his legs and feet, and then there’s no ignoring what’s literally in front of his face. Contrary to Stakh’s own cock, already uncomfortably hard in his pants, Isidor’s is still soft. Strangely, the sight relaxes him. This sort of bathing does strike him as highly ritualistic -- he wonders if this isn’t the first time this beloved, respected man has been attended in this way. The thought that this act might not be entirely sexual quiets his mind and allows him to focus on something other than his own desire. Carefully, he slides the cloth higher up the inside of one of Isidor’s thighs, under his heavy scrotum, and then back down on the other leg, working soap and water in a cleansing pattern. When he can no longer avoid his penis, he gives it a perfunctory wash with just the cloth before moving on as quickly as possible.

The silence is so fraught that Stakh jumps when Isidor at last breaks it. "You followed my instruction."

Stakh swallows. He is painfully aware Isidor is not talking about his current task. "Yes."

Isidor’s cock gives a small twitch, finally showing some interest. "Do you still desire me?"

Stakh nods, wordlessly.

Isidor threads a hand into his hair. "Then go ahead."

He lets the cloth fall from his fingertips into the washbasin, and braces his hands on his master’s thighs. With one last glance upward for encouragement, he presses his lips in tentative kisses over first his abdomen, then lower, testing the feeling of smooth skin before taking him into his mouth all at once. Isidor hums in quiet appreciation. His cock is soft and cool inside the warmth of his mouth, tasting faintly of the soap Stakh had just finished washing him with, and he takes his time gently worshipping it. It takes longer than Stakh is used to with himself, but as he curls a hand around the base and sucks lightly on the shaft, Isidor begins to grow hard on his tongue.

He closes his eyes as he works, unsure of what exactly to do, but trusting he'll be told if he's doing something wrong. That's the part that makes him bold with self-assurance: the knowledge that Isidor will either correct or praise him, be ready to give his efforts meaning one way or the other. He slides his lips and tongue over the head and then sinks back down, knowing that just the heat of his mouth regardless of skill or technique will feel good. Isidor touches the back of his head to stroke an affectionate hand through his hair, and he moans around his mouthful -- such a simple touch and he feels overwhelmed. His own erection throbs, as if he's the one receiving pleasure instead of giving it.

It goes on long enough that Stakh’s knees twinge in pain on the tiled floor and his jaw begins to ache from being held open, but he doesn’t let himself rest. He absolutely would have come by now, and only the knowledge that Isidor will naturally take longer to climax calms his anxiety that he isn’t performing well. At last he feels the signs: the tightened grip on the back of his head, his thigh flexing under his free hand, and the precise, restrained thrust of his hips starting to lose their rhythm, and Stakh readies himself for what he must do next. With little more than a satisfied grunt, he comes in Stakh’s mouth, spending bitter fluid on his tongue. Stakh takes it dutifully, holding still while his master finishes, and then carefully pulls off him and swallows.

"Very good," breathes Isidor, a hand cupped to Stakh’s cheek, and his heart swells with the praise. He reaches for the towel and dries himself off while Stakh recovers and gets to his feet. "You should wash up as well. I’ll be in my room. Come to me, when you are finished."

He sets the towel down, gathers up his clothing, and leaves Stakh alone in the lab, heart racing and painfully hard, the taste of him still on his tongue. Stakh quickly strips and washes himself as asked, full to bursting with equal parts pride and curiosity -- but not fear. He has served his master for weeks, and been treated with nothing but kindness. Isidor will care for him, just as he promised.

He wears the towel for modesty as he makes the long walk to Isidor's room on the other side of the house. The room is dark inside, save for a lantern glowing on the table. Isidor is standing at it, mostly dressed now in pants and a loose shirt, laying out a vial of something when he arrives.

"Good," he says, when he notices Stakh has arrived. "Lie down there on the bed. Towel off."

Stakh obeys, even as the shame creeps up his back as he removes the towel wrapped around his hips and reveals his obvious erection. It's strange, to lie there aroused and waiting while his master calmly goes about preparing whatever it is he'll need for whatever it is he's about to do. When he’s ready, Isidor settles on the bed between his legs and moves his knees apart with a firm nudge. The position makes him nervous, his apprehension tempered only by Isidor being fully clothed above him. His hands clutch the sheets anxiously, a reflexive action that draws Isidor’s attention.

“The man you met in Stamatin’s pub,” he says quietly. “He forced you?”

Stakh’s chest tightens. He casts around for something to look at, and focuses on a crack in the ceiling. “...Not at first.”

Isidor nods. He dips his fingers into the vial he'd brought to bed with him and coats them with a slick, oil-like substance. “I will ask you to do many things, Stanislav, but I will not hurt you. No need to worry.”

“You’ve... been with men before?” Stakh suddenly asks -- partly to distract himself, and partly because it feels odd that it had never occurred to him to ask.

“Not for a very long time.” Isidor applies some of the oil to Stakh’s entrance, a slick, strangely warm sensation that helps him relax a little. “Are you ready?”

Stakh takes a calming breath, and nods.

Isidor pushes in. His finger slips in easily with the lubrication, something Stakh had been too drunk and inexperienced to ask for the first time. The sensation is wet and warm as it slides into him, and he makes a faint sound in his throat in response. Isidor angles and crooks his finger, finding his prostate and circling it gently. It's strangely clinical. He suddenly recalls, from what feels like another life, the single-minded passion he'd felt with the man from Stamatin's pub, the eager push and pull with which they'd flirted and fallen into bed together. And look how that ended up, he thinks. Whatever this is he's doing with his master is something else entirely, and he's grateful for it.

"You're doing well," says Isidor. Stakh knows he's turning red -- a heat is flushing through him that he can't control, and Isidor's praise is fuel on the fire. He can't help the twitching of his hips, the straining of his thighs, as his master opens him and explores his body as he wishes. "Tell me how you feel."

Stakh opens his mouth just as Isidor presses a second finger into him, and a moan slips out. Both fingers slide in with ease, prodding and pressing inside him. "Good," he pants, and it's true. Much more pleasant and much less painful than the last time he'd done this. When he notices Isidor is watching his face carefully, he rests a forearm across his eyes so he doesn’t have to see, but Isidor chuckles and pulls it away.

"Don't be ashamed.” He twists his fingers in an insistent rhythm that has Stakh squirming and shivering beneath him. "Your desires have never been secret. Your Lines have long called to mine."

"M-My…" A knuckle catches on his rim as Isidor inserts another finger, and he jolts. His body feels like it's floating, and he loses his train of thought when Isidor's fingers start to thrust more than massage him. His self-consciousness ebbs away as the pleasure mounts, and soon he’s rocking his hips on his master’s hand, fucking himself on skillful fingers. There is no fear like there was before, no pain or discomfort. He feels cradled in Isidor’s hands -- safe, cared for, needed, useful, loved. He wants his master to lean down over him, slot their bodies together, enter him, fill him, use him until he has nothing left to give…

"Stanislav," Isidor says, when he catches him drifting. "Focus on me. You aren't to come yet. Understood?"

Stakh chokes out a moan of dismay -- his pleasure had just been starting to crest, and Isidor's fingers aren’t slowing their brutal pace inside him. A few more minutes and what his body does will be fully out of his control. "I-- I can't--"

"Remember what I told you: even in here, you are in my service. An extension of my will. You will do this because I ask it of you."

He arches back, head pressed into the pillow, eyes shut tight and a frustrated groan rattling through his teeth. Tears of overstimulation gather beneath his lashes. His fingers tear at the sheets. “Master, I can’t...”

“Yes, you can, and you will. If I were to command you not to finish, you’d obey me. Wouldn’t you?”

A wild fear spikes in his heart that Isidor will tell him to do just that, but he answers dutifully. “Yes…”

With his free hand, Isidor finally touches his cock, hard and straining on his belly. Stakh whines in relief at the added stimulation, only distantly recognizing that it’s very quickly going to make his command impossible to follow. "You've let no one touch you this past week, as I asked. Not even yourself. You've followed my every word so far to the letter. Why is that?"

Why? He can barely think clearly enough to answer. "I... I owe you my life.”

"And you’re giving it to me?"

"Y-Yes...!"

Isidor nods thoughtfully. "Then I will use it well. You may come, when you’re ready."

Stakh does, almost before he’s finished granting permission. His orgasm slams him in a powerful wave, making him cry out and clench down on Isidor's fingers as he trembles and comes over his stomach in long, hard spurts. His fingers dig into Isidor’s thighs as he comes down, weak and shivering on the sheets, desperate for something solid to orient himself with.

"What do you hear?" Isidor asks, as he lays there catching his breath. While he’s still dazed, Isidor takes his hand and presses the palm to his own chest. “What do you feel?”

Stakh closes his eyes. Isidor’s chest is on fire beneath his palm, even through the thin linen shirt. He draws his fingers down it in a nonsense pattern, breathing hard and shaking his head. "Nothing," he pants. "Your heart. Mine. I... I don't know."

Isidor nods, seemingly satisfied with that answer. "Next time, perhaps. You did well."

Stakh is too high with the praise and the realization that there's going to be a next time to wonder what he means.

Chapter Text

After the first time, the dam is broken. The armor of self-denial and repression he’d always worn being so wholly shattered leads to Stakh craving physical contact constantly. Isidor doesn't always indulge him, of course, but that makes the times he does sweeter -- and even his rejections are a test of his willpower and patience that Stakh relishes. With the same single-minded devotion he applies to his work he dedicates himself to learning every inch of his master's body, to mapping it’s geography with his hands and mouth, to memorizing where it reacts to his touch and where it rejects him. And in turn Isidor holds him, pleasures him, praises him until he's brought to tears and loses all sense of himself. It takes little more than a glance and a soft word to get him wanting now, ready to offer all of himself and do whatever is asked of him.

In truth, his body has always belonged to his master. It's only the list of tasks it performs that has changed.

Spring arrives and passes, and then the summer. He spends so much time at the Burakh house that he rarely bothers to go home anymore, choosing instead to sleep in one of Isidor’s empty rooms, and even on the floor of his own bedroom, on occasion. But never in Isidor’s bed -- that would imply an equality between them that simply does not exist.

The first chill of autumn touches the air before he remembers he’d meant to visit Lara more than a month ago. He doesn't see much of Grief anymore either. According to the rumour mill, he'd had a run-in with Andrey Stamatin recently and ran off to the Warehouses with his tail between his legs. He’s going to get himself killed one of these days, playing at being something he’s not, but it’s none of Stakh’s business anymore. He has his own life, keeping himself busy with his studies and with assisting Isidor's practice, learning all he can so that he can someday be of use to him and the Town.

He has a new kingdom that no one is permitted inside, and it suits him just as fine as the old.

***

"I received a letter from Artemy yesterday."

Stakh stops on the second floor landing with an armload of fresh linen. Around the corner, his master's voice grows quieter as he moves through the infirmary and further away into the dining room. A second set of footsteps follows him.

"A happy surprise," says the imperious voice of Simon Kain. "How are his studies progressing?"

"Suspended for the moment. He and most of his fellow students have been conscripted into the war effort."

Stakh leans against the infirmary wall, clutching the linen to his chest as if it would keep his heart there instead of climbing up into his throat like it wants to. Cub -- in the army? What an idiot. What good is he to their town and their master if he gets his head blown off at the front before he can return to them? But his annoyance is swiftly set aside for concern at the unsettling presence of Simon Kain in their house. Visits from the Kain patriarch are rare, and even more rarely do they suggest good news, especially considering the two so seldom agree on anything involving the Town, their favourite topic of conversation. But the more Isidor distances himself from his Kin, the more frequent Kain's visits become, and Stakh finds himself growing warier of the old sorcerer by the day.

"We've both seen the sorry state of the men coming home from afar," says Simon. "A waste of life. But your son will do much good there, applying his skills where they are most needed." Whatever Isidor says next is too quiet for Stakh to hear, but Simon's authoritative voice carries much further. "Ah, of course… Ersher's loss broke your heart, old friend. Fate would be cruel indeed to take your second son as well. But you must anticipate that cruelty."

“I have. Since the very day Artemy left this house.”

“And your solution?”

“There are other menkhu clans. My Kin must be parted from me someday, one way or another. They will find what they need.”

“Certainly. But what of our need? If young Artemy never returns, when the time comes...”

Stakh can’t tell if the conversation has stalled or simply become too quiet for him to overhear. Footsteps shuffle closer in the other room and he ducks back around the corner out of sight, heart still pounding. He isn’t sure why exactly he’s afraid of getting caught eavesdropping -- Isidor knows he’s in the house, and if he’d wanted a private conversation he wouldn’t be conducting it in the halls. But he still feels as though he’s heard something he shouldn’t have, and retreats back downstairs.

Simon Kain. A letter from Artemy. Talk of the menkhu clans. Life has focused so narrowly to this house that Stakh hasn’t thought about any of those things in a very long time.

***

"There is something important I must ask of you."

"Anything," says Stakh.

Isidor beckons Stakh to follow him into the lab, where a body lay on the table under a white sheet. When Stakh casts him a curious glance, Isidor explains. "As you likely know, the town laws forbidding the cutting of bodies has not been a hindrance to me. Surgery, stitching, autopsies -- all these tasks need to be performed, regardless of what it means for our traditions. The Saburovs have long been lenient toward me in this matter.”

“Our Town would be in trouble were they not.”

“Yes. The Kin, however, are... somewhat less permissive. In their eyes, my work is just as necessary, but the stigma of cutting flesh remains.”

Stakh’s mind wanders to the springtime, to a sewn-up stump where a crushed arm used to be, and to a man with butcher’s eyes prying open his soul. “It’s unjust.”

“It’s the way of things. We do not conceive of death as a Townsman would. Even dead, a body is a body -- a part of the whole, a part of Mother Boddho. Cutting it is the highest sacrilege. As a menkhu, I am technically permitted, but as the Kin's Warden... they would prefer I do not."

He gazes at the corpse hidden beneath the white sheet, and nods. "I understand what you're asking of me."

Isidor’s gaze is razor-sharp. "Do you?"

"I am no menkhu, but I have the skill, and I have your teachings.” Stakh straightens his shoulders, feeling as though they had been designed to carry this burden -- as though he had been designed to carry it, from the moment he had become his master’s apprentice. Why had he been made in the image of a protector, if not to protect someone dear to him? “I am replaceable; you are not. I will cut so you don't have to."

He doesn’t quite know what sort of reaction he’d been expecting. Not outright praise, perhaps -- but certainly not the look of profound sorrow that pinches his careworn face in that moment. "Understand,” says Isidor quietly, “that I would not ask this of just anyone. Only of someone I trust to act with courage, and with loyalty. If you agree to follow this path, I will teach you to open the body in the ways the Town finds acceptable. You will learn to follow the Lines, even if you cannot yet hear them."

Stakh hesitates. He should be honoured, he thinks, but the clear heartbreak etched in his master’s features tempers his pride. “I haven’t yet learned to hear the twyre...”

“There is still time for that.” Isidor nods toward the body on the table. “This is a more pressing matter.”

Stakh takes his place beside his master, his misgivings sufficiently quieted. "We’re starting now?"

"Yes. Remove the sheet."

He grasps the top edge and pulls it down to the corpse’s waist -- and freezes. A cold, grey face stares up at him from beneath the sheet, its once handsome visage still and lifeless.

"He’s suffered multiple cuts, but the gunshot wound appears to have been the fatal blow," says Isidor calmly, drawing a finger alongside the gory crater that used to be Crow's pale chest. "Still, you never know what one will do to conceal the true cause of death, so we will make a thorough examination." He pauses, and waits until Stakh looks up and meets his gaze before continuing. "Are you prepared to do as I ask?"

Stakh swallows hard. “Yes,” he whispers. The word slices his throat raw.

He has only the barest recollection of what happens next. They prepare themselves for the procedure in silence, don protective gloves and masks, ready their tools and various containers for the viscera that will be removed and examined, all while Stakh’s mind drifts further and further away from his body. Isidor stands at Stakh's shoulder and directs his arm, closing his hand over his own and guiding his scalpel in light motions across the corpse’s ashen skin, showing him the path his blade must take when he begins to cut. Stakh’s hand trembles just slightly when his scalpel makes contact with skin, and seeing this, Isidor tightens his grasp on his hand and moves it as if it were his own, pressing down with firm confidence until the blade sinks into the corpse's flesh.

“If you could hear the Lines,” Isidor murmurs at his ear, “they would draw your blade to them. You would hear it: the cavities beneath the flesh, the places where bones and muscle long to give in. Here, under the ribs: then here, in toward the linea alba. Were the chest intact, you would draw your blade up the center, and then the same on the other side...”

Stakh can no longer speak. His blade traces lines in daylight that his fingers have already touched in darkness, dips in muscles and ridges of scar tissue that are etched as firmly in his memory as they are on this skin. The cavity in his chest draws his eyes even as he tries to look everywhere else but directly at it. In his mind he sees the shape of a man -- sitting alone at the bar in Stamatin’s pub, sinking teeth into his skin, looming over him in a dark room -- but he can no longer remember what he used to look like. There must have been sharp eyes and a dangerous, wolfish smile on that face, he thinks, but now there is nothing but a stone mask, gazing lifeless at the ceiling.

They cut together, wordlessly. When they are done, Isidor sets aside samples of blood for testing, dead tissue for examination, and an entire kidney, for reasons he does not explain. Nothing looks out of the ordinary: the fatal wound does seem to have been the gunshot, and unless the blood tests turn up anything unusual, that will be pronounced the official cause of death. Stakh dresses the wound as best he can given the circumstances, and sews up the additional surgical openings with unfeeling, practiced precision.

"I said I would take care of your needs, Stanislav," says Isidor, as they finish sterilizing their tools and cleaning their hands. He gestures to the corpse. "This is something you needed: to know this man is no longer capable of harming you, or anyone else. I've dug out the bullet; now you must sew the wound closed before it bleeds you dry. The pain will bury you if you don’t.”

"Who did this," Stakh croaks at last.

Isidor looks at the body dispassionately. "I’m not sure. One of the ferrymen found him, washed up on the bank of the Guzzle. Guns are a relative rarity in our Town, although I'm sure it isn’t a problem for the criminal contingent to find them. This wound was from no ordinary handgun, however. Judging by the size and spread of the damage, I suspect a shotgun."

Stakh’s stomach curdles.

“I wouldn’t look to Governor Saburov for help,” says Isidor. “Whoever did this is not likely to be the sort of person who wants to draw his attention, so he won’t have the details. He’ll be just as swift to blame the odongh who found him as he is the true culprit. Or me, for taking the body...”

God. Stakh swallows thickly and as the room swims around him. He leans his back against the cool tile wall of the lab and sinks to the floor. Isidor stands beside him, allowing him to rest his head against his thigh, a calming hand coming to lay atop his head. He closes his eyes and chokes back the miserable sound that threatens to escape him.

This shouldn’t have happened. None of this should have happened. He should have broken the bastard’s neck himself. He should have joined the army the moment he was old enough and left town for good. He should have said no, that night Grief had invited him to the Broken Heart. None of this business of death and disrepute should ever have darkened the door of his master’s house.

He breathes deeply to calm himself, and opens his eyes. He can fix it. What’s more, there is only one thread he needs to cut loose in order to do so.

***

His fist comes down heavy on the cold metal door of Grief's warehouse hideout, demanding entrance with each strike. When the door opens for him he barges in, only to be held back by the two men standing watch.

"Filin!" he bellows. "We need to talk."

Further inside the warehouse, more men step forward to get between him and their boss. They don't draw guns on him: they draw knives. The sight startles him in his already volatile state. What would be a dangerous threat to anyone else is a deeply personal slight to him, as a doctor, as a friend, as a menkhu's apprentice, and his hurt spirals into anger quicker than he can catch hold of it.

"Knives now, is it?" he snarls. "You moron. What do you think you're playing at?"

"Everyone take a deep breath," Grief calls out, lounging on his wooden throne -- a stack of crates undoubtedly filled with his ill-gotten gains. "You fellows remember my dear friend Stakh Rubin, don't you? He deserves a warmer welcome than that."

The men fade back into the shadows that line the walls, but fix him with a wary eye. Stakh scowls at them and marches straight up to their leader.

"Well, well, look who's finally come 'round?" Grief spreads his arms open in a magnanimous sweep. "Haven’t seen you in months. Someone got you locked up in his castle?"

"Did you do it?" Stakh snarls. "Did you kill him?"

Something flashes across Grief's face, but an irritating smirk covers it up just as quickly. "Don't ask questions you don't want answered, friend."

"Oh, trust me, I want answers. And you owe me honesty."

"I don't owe you anything, Rubin," says Grief, a sharp, unfamiliar warning mixed incongruously into his sing-song tone. It occurs to Stakh too late that they shouldn't be having this conversation in front of his gang, who are still idling in the warehouse's dark corners and watching them keenly. He realizes he's never been on Grief's turf before like this, never been in his lair and seen his gang boss persona projected at full force. He isn't going to get anywhere posturing in front of his underlings; Grief will never cede him ground on his own territory.

Reluctantly, Stakh reins in his temper. "Can we talk outside? ...Please."

Grief hops down off his perch and ushers him to the door with a wave of his arm and a gracious smile. "There now, that's more like it. A little politeness will go a long way! After you, my dear."

Stakh turns away from him, seething.

"Not your brightest idea," Grief muses, when they're safely outside and the heavy doors have closed behind them. He leads Stakh around the corner of his nest, further into the maze of warehouses where the moon casts the deepest shadows. "A den of thieves is no place for a man of honour."

"Cut the bullshit," Stakh snaps. "Crow is dead. I sewed up his corpse an hour ago -- his chest was caved in by a shotgun. Did you do it?"

"Workplace hazard, Stakh," says Grief without missing a beat, and Stakh, who had been expecting a flat denial, is brought up short by the flippant confession. "He hurt one of my men. When an insult like that goes unanswered, you lose face. Lose face and before you know it, next goes your head."

"So... that's it," says Stakh in disbelief. "Some thug crosses you and you just kill him?"

"What did you imagine I'd do?"

"Give him to Saburov! That's his job, isn't it?"

Grief's burst of incredulous laughter almost stings worse than his admission of guilt. "Saburov! Now there's a man as clever as he is useful. Still, he's smart enough to know better than to stick his nose into Olgimsky's warehouses. We live by our own law out here."

"Oh, I see," Stakh scowls. "So this is what's become of you? This is what you are now, huh?"

"And what is that, Rubin?" Grief snaps back. "Despite what you may think it's not just my hide I'm watchin' out for. My boys need to know I can protect them. Not everyone has so respectable a benefactor as yours. How is old Burakh doing these days, by the way? Makin' you do his autopsies, is he?"

"Keep his name out of your mouth."

"Or is it just this one he decided to let you do?"

"I offered."

"Oh, I'm sure you did. The perfect pupil." Grief shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat, hunching down into its protective shell as he leans back against the outer wall of his lair. "Well, you weren't supposed to know about it, but what's done is done. Gotta say, though, your less than enthusiastic reaction is a surprise. Thought you would have been first in line to see that bastard dead."

Stakh narrows his eyes. "...And why is that?"

Grief's silence, too long by only half a second, draws his suspicion. "He broke your nose, didn't he? Messed up that handsome face. Thought you might still harbour some ill will, but maybe you're more the forgive-and-forget type these days."

"What did he tell you, Filin?"

"I don't kiss and tell, mate--" Grief's playful tone cuts off in a yelp as Stakh lunges at him, clutches the lapels of his coat tight in his fists and pins him to the warehouse wall. "All right, all right! Keep your trousers on. Barley caught our little lost birdie flittin' 'round here a couple days ago. Cut him up pretty bad, of which I don't approve, by the way. Rules and laws might be made for breakin', but taboo is taboo."

"Get to the point."

"The point is that a man in his position always begs for his miserable life -- not him, though. He screams and swears and shoots his mouth off about how he should've killed me years ago. How he should've killed you when he had the chance, to teach me a lesson."

Stakh clenches his jaw. "Did he say anything else?"

"Started to." Grief looks him in the eye, unusually sober, and that's when Stakh realizes with a sickening twist in his gut that he knows. "Anyways, I heard enough, and we weren't alone. So I put the bastard down before he could say much more."

Stakh uncurls his stiff fingers from around the lapels of Grief's coat and takes a step back. He covers his face with both hands and breathes into them, shutting out the cold, the night, and Grief's damnable, sympathetic gaze. "So you know, then?"

"Stakh," says Grief flatly. "Did you think your apartment wasn't the first place I checked that night? I figured it out pretty quick. Just thought maybe someday I'd hear about what happened from you, rather than that worthless wretch." He spits on the ground and scowls. "Trust me, I did us all a favour sendin' him off to meet his maker."

"You can't... You can't tell me these things."

"You said you wanted answers, mate. What did you expect?"

"For you not to have done it!" Stakh punctuates his outburst with a hard shove that slams Grief back into the warehouse wall. "You're saying you killed someone on my behalf. What does this look like for me? For Master Burakh? Don't you think if I wanted this I would have done it myself?!"

"And bring the good Governor Saburov to the door of your precious master? You wouldn't. Not in a million years."

"It wasn't your choice."

"Look, if it makes you feel better, I'm certainly sleepin' easy knowin' he ain’t a threat anymore. It's not like it was entirely out of the goodness of my heart." Grief's hand comes to rest at the crook of Stakh's neck -- from him, a gesture of affection and intimacy so raw it makes him want to recoil. "But let someone do you a favour, eh? You're the respectable doctor, here; you need to keep those healing hands of yours clean. If the trigger needs to be pulled, then better if I do it, so you don't have to."

The words pierce Stakh's heart like an ice pick. He steps back, unable to do anything but reinforce the distance he's been putting between them for months now.

"That's not the same," he says hoarsely.

Grief's brows knit together in a curious frown. "Er... what isn't?"

"Shut up. I didn't... I never wanted this."

"He hurt one of my men, Stakh," says Grief again. He shakes his head and holds out his hands in a distinct gesture of resignation: nothing to be done about it. "That doesn't go unanswered."

"I'm not one of yours," says Stakh. He wants it to bite, wants it to tear out Grief’s heart with the force of his anger, but it catches on the lump in his throat and falls miserably flat. "Not anymore. We're done, Grigory.”

“Stakh, you don’t mean--”

“Stay the hell away from me."

He doesn't wait for a response before he turns and stalks off into the endless, pitch-black corridors of the warehouses, moving with sure-footed confidence through its narrow passages. His feet have never forgotten these paths -- but it’s been too many years since he’s felt at home here. Now, there is only one place he belongs.

***

It has been many years since Stakh has gone out into the steppe. He couldn't remember the finer details about his last trip if he tried, but the broad strokes are there: he and Cub, Gravel and Grief, a fire kept low enough to give off heat but not so bright as to bother the local Kin. He'd always felt strange about venturing out past the town limits, like he was trespassing, no matter how often Cub insisted it was fine. They'd stayed up until dawn, watching the open sky turn pink and orange before the sun finally climbed above the horizon. The world had seemed so much larger, then.

The moon is full and high above them when Isidor leads the way out of the Earth quarter, through the housing blocks of the Crude Sprawl and past the impenetrable silence of the graveyard, further than Stakh has ever gone. The stillness is eerie; he would much prefer to stay at the house, safely locked inside with his books, his master, and their patients. The steppe is a reminder of the outside world he forgets more often than not, these days. The Town is separated from it by walls in all quarters but Earth, where one spills into the other and they merge together, a river of earth and stone flowing past the looming shadow of the Abattoir, a river of blood flowing out of a body.

Now he and Isidor flow out of their dominion on the same path. Stakh adjusts the canvas satchel Isidor had packed before he'd arrived at the house, slung high over his shoulder. Isidor says nothing until they reach their destination, a small clearing in the tall grasses marked by a scattered circle of large stones. He turns to Stakh, takes the bag from him, and invites him to sit on the ground.

“I don’t come to the steppe as often as I should,” says Isidor as he joins him, head tilted toward the stars overhead. “When I do it’s to see my Kin and gather twyre. To cut bulls and dig in the Earth. I never come here to simply be one with it anymore.”

“It’s quiet,” says Stakh, following his gaze.

“It has its own voice. But compared to the Town, certainly.” Isidor’s sigh is soft and mournful. “Never has the machinery of the Town been louder than in these past years. It is... moving. Although in which direction, I don’t yet know. More and more I feel I must be prepared for every eventuality, and I am growing tired. The time to pass on my mantle is swiftly approaching.”

Stakh frowns, a sudden sense of dread creeping up his neck. “Is Artemy returning?”

Isidor looks to the dark horizon, where the train tracks disappear into the endless expanse of the steppe. "I don’t know. I sent Artemy away so that he could see us with clear eyes from a safe distance -- you, myself, the Kin, the Town. What I wanted was for him to choose his own path in the world, rather than blindly follow the one laid before him since his birth. If he survives the war and decides that path does not bring him home... you must be prepared to take up my burden, Stanislav."

As little as six months ago, that honour would have overwhelmed him. Now -- now he doesn’t know anymore. Now what he wants more than anything is to simply let go. "I can't do the things you do, Master. Medicine is my skill. What you practice is... something else."

"I know. But I’m afraid we’re out of time. I need an heir -- one who can hear the Earth and know the Lines, sense twyre and understand its properties so it can be made into medicine. This knowledge is still alien to you, but I'm not prepared to give up quite yet.” Isidor opens the satchel and removes several items: a bottle of water, one of his tinctures, a couple of small jars whose contents he can’t discern. “I told you that to hear the twyre, you would need to see the world as the Kin do: to see yourself as part of a whole. I’d hoped it would come to you in time, but you have spent so long within the body of the Town. Altering your perspective now needs to be handled carefully." Isidor bows his head. "Remove your clothes."

Stakh disrobes without shame or hesitation -- indeed, almost without any thought at all. He's done so in front of his master so many times by now the command is ingrained in him. The cool breeze of the steppe carries with it the unnerving feeling he's being watched from all directions, but he keeps his eyes on Isidor and remains silent as he sets aside the last pieces of his clothing and sits bare in the grass.

Isidor passes him the bottle containing the tincture, which he drinks without further prompting. The liquid goes down like good twyrine, lighting a fire all the way down his esophagus and pooling warm in his belly. It probably is twyrine, he realizes, or at least a form of it, as his head goes soft and swimmy and that distinctly heady scent of autumn in the steppe becomes tenfold sharper. At Isidor’s murmured command, Stakh stretches out on his back, the sensation of grass on his skin so distinct he imagines he can feel every blade. Above him, Isidor holds one of the jars aloft as he kneels beside him and dips his index finger into it. Stakh spreads his knees apart out of habit, but the substance isn't what he thinks -- it's a paint of some kind, or perhaps wet clay, a dark, rust-brown colour that stands out clearly on Isidor's finger. It's cool and pleasant on Stakh's skin where it touches him, although with the tincture working its way through his body he suspects anything touching him would feel good right now. Isidor takes his time drawing symbols of the steppe language on him, on his forehead, his chest, his shoulders, his thighs. When ordered to, he rolls over onto his stomach, and Isidor draws more symbols on his shoulder blades and at the small of his back.

“What are these?” Stakh asks. The words slip out of him almost unbidden; it takes him a moment to realize he had spoken his thoughts out loud. “Steppe symbols, I know. What does it say?”

“The long marks of Bos Turokh,” says Isidor. “The meanings aren’t as simple as words or phrases. They encompass people, places, ideas. You’ll see them on branded cattle, now and then.”

The comparison strikes him as absurd. “Am I cattle?”

Isidor finishes his work and sets the jar aside. “Simon Kain would call you a larva -- or perhaps a cocoon. Personally I find the comparison crass, but perhaps it is more apt than I thought. You are in a period of transformation. The symbols are less important than what they are made of: a union of your body and the earth's clay. That is what you must always remember -- that you and the twyre both come from the same earth. Parts of the same whole."

Stakh closes his eyes as the twyrine burns through him and Isidor caresses a soothing hand over his back. What he wouldn't give for that to be true, but... "I don't feel like a part of anything."

"I know. That's what I've been trying to help you with. When you submit to me, you necessarily become something more than yourself: an extension of my body and my will. A connected part that serves a greater whole. When your sense of individuality is muted, it becomes easier to feel such connections."

"...What?" There's a dead weight in the pit of his stomach that should feel like something -- hurt, dismay, resignation, anything -- but does little more than anchor him to the ground. "I'm... This is an experiment?"

"A theory. There are many ways to subjugate the will of another -- this one happened to serve us both.” Isidor's hand dips between his legs, and Stakh inhales sharply. “You've felt it, haven't you? The warmth of my Lines, when you give yourself to me. I've felt your hands trace them without knowing what they were. You’re learning to see the world as I do."

The twyrine makes his head heavy, even as his hips rise obediently into the air when Isidor’s hand urges them up. Is that what I've been doing? Three feet away from his face there are several sprigs of twyre swaying among the grass, stubbornly silent, and doubt clouds his mind. That's what he wants -- to shut down, to forget the pain and betrayal of the world and simply exist as a tool to be used -- but he can't seem to reach it, no matter how hard he tries...

The tincture has already warmed his limbs and softened his muscles, and its numbing haze distracts him enough so that when Isidor uses the slippery contents of the other jar to prepare his entrance, he offers no resistance. A finger enters him, then two, stretching and working him open, and normally this part is enough to make him a panting, writhing wreck in his master’s hands, but he isn’t even hard yet. When Isidor’s fingers brush his prostate he lets out a low moan, and it does feel good, but the shallow trenches he digs into the dirt with clenched hands are an outlet for his roiling anxiety, not pleasure. What happens to me, he wonders, as he instinctually pushes back onto his master’s fingers, when the experiment is over? When he has his answer? What happens to me when it works?

What happens to me when it doesn’t?

Isidor enters him in one long slide, and Stakh gasps into the earth beneath him. Despite his sudden misgivings he can’t deny how good it feels to be joined with his master like this. The warmth where they touch soothes him, the broad hand on his back encourages him to move, and soon, the familiar ebb and flow of their bodies eventually makes him grow hard. He closes his eyes, presses his ear to the ground, and listens. A living Earth, tenuous Lines that connect living things, a Mother from whom they had all emerged -- he wants to think it superstitious nonsense, but his master indeed works miracles, and he trusts his master above even his own reason. He hears the low drone of Isidor’s voice praising him, urging him on, commanding him to let go his conscious self. And a part of him, that lonely part hiding behind towering walls of his own creation, wants that more than anything -- to lose himself, to not be him anymore, to be nothing but an instrument of his master's will...

“Please...” he whimpers into the earth, drunk on the tincture and the sparks of pleasure racing through his body. “I want to... I want--”

Haven’t seen you in months. Someone got you locked up in his castle?

Just as he feels his consciousness start to slip, a hot flash of anger surges up his throat and the spell is broken. Painful thoughts spring to his mind unbidden, chaining him to the reality he wants so desperately to escape -- bright, searing anger at Grief's interference, at Crow's abuse and deception, at himself for allowing them to hurt him, for allowing himself to be hurt. It isn’t fair that Grief gets to be the one to do what he wants. It isn’t right that Grief took on the burden of acting on his behalf. Grief, who knew all along what had happened to him and felt pity (or was it guilt, for bringing him somewhere he didn’t belong? A den of thieves, no place for a man of honour--)

"Stay focused on me," says Isidor, from what feels like a thousand miles away. (Or is it four thousand? Is that where Artemy is now? How can someone still hurt him so much from so far away?) "Relax..."

Relax...

Crow's warning tone makes his blood curdle. Behind his tightly closed eyes he sees the man's dead face, sitting at the bar, pushing him back into the shadows for a kiss, hovering over him in bed. The hands grasping his hips are cold, long-fingered, scarred across the knuckles... no, no, he’s in the steppe, on his hands and knees. But Crow is here too, isn't he, buried in the graveyard weeks ago. If he listens he can hear the bell above his grave chiming in the wind -- or is he still alive? Holding him down against the mattress, taking away his will and imposing his own--

"...Stop," Stakh rasps. "Stop! Enough..."

Everything ceases like the flick of a switch. Isidor withdraws, leaving him cold and empty. His steady grasp turns gentle as he urges Stakh to turn over onto his back to catch his breath and ground himself. Stakh sits up and wraps his arms around his naked legs, hunching down defensively, his face wet with hot tears he doesn’t remember shedding.

“I can't," he croaks. "I can't do it. I can't let go..."

Isidor’s expression is unreadable. Stakh doesn’t know if it’s disappointment or approval or pity, and he doesn’t care. He doesn't care anymore. He doesn’t come from the Earth, not like the twyre -- there is nothing he has in common with something so sacred and beloved. And if there is a Line he feels, it’s the one that’s hooked under his skin and tied to the Town.

There is no escape from that place, except by train or by death.

In the silence of the steppe, Isidor takes Stakh’s robe and drapes it across his shoulders to warm him. It has been many years since Stakh has cried in front of anyone, but he does now, harder than he can ever remember doing, mourning the future that is closing off to him as they sit in the place where it should have begun.

***

Stakh goes back to his own apartment the next day. Nothing is said about the night before.

Nothing is said about anything that’s happened in the preceding months. Isidor asks nothing of him outside his typical responsibilities. They work in the lab where Stakh had washed his body and taken him in his mouth, they take tea in the room where Isidor had fixed his broken nose and touched a gentle hand to his face, and they go on as if none of it had ever happened. It’s as if a curtain had simply been drawn around them and was now pulled back, revealing that the world outside their own had not ceased to exist after all.

The only thing Isidor asks of him is that he continues to cut. He steers him in the direction of autopsy and pathoanatomy more than general medicine, and sends him home with more books and papers for self-study than he used to. It’s difficult not to feel like he’s being punished, but he knows that’s absurd. The task he’d been set was simply beyond him -- the Town-born, the lesser student. It will fall to Artemy, now.

He'd been prepared to give his master everything -- his body, his heart, his mind, every part of him -- but he can’t change who he is.

Left to his own devices, he withdraws. Loneliness seeps in like the cold damp of autumn. Just the thought of being touched makes him feel ill.

Day 0

No one needs him to identify Isidor Burakh's body. The list of people who knew and loved him is long, in this town.

When he has no more tears to shed, Stakh retrieves the straight razor from his belongings, and sits doubled over it clutched in his hands for nearly an hour as he decides what he will do now. His hair has grown long and falls around his eyes in a dark curtain. It's impossible not to feel the fingers of dead men combing through it.

In the end, he takes the razor to his scalp, rather than his wrists, and cuts it all off.

Day 2

On the cold, bright morning of Isidor Burakh’s funeral, while Artemy is receiving his inheritance and his burden, Stakh Rubin is receiving a letter of a very different sort.

It arrives at his door in the hands of a courier, but the script on the front is unmistakably that of his master. “Instructions were for it to arrive today -- the day after his death, to be precise,” the courier blurts out, seeing the vicious look in Stakh’s eyes. “Very sorry for your loss, both of you. If you see young Artemy--” But Stakh slams the door on him before he can offer any more unwanted sympathies.

The Town has been in an uproar since Simon Kain’s death and Isidor’s murder, and Stakh is struggling to handle the aftermath. There are women being burned alive in his backyard and men roaming the streets with knives, as if Simon and Isidor had been holding the fabric of civil society together by force of will alone. The man from the Capital in that ridiculous snakeskin coat keeps coming to see him, as if he has any answers about the death he hasn’t even been able to mourn. Things have gotten so bad even Grief has tried to ask him for help, which he’d rebuffed in the same manner as that poor courier.

And now, on top of everything, Artemy’s illustrious return. Swooping in to take up the mantle he’d abandoned, that Stakh had wanted more than anything and couldn’t have. Let the roving gangs of bandits take him. Artemy had no time for his father in all those years he’d been away, so Stakh has no time for Artemy now.

He tears open the letter and sits sullenly at his desk to read it.

My dear apprentice, Stanislav,

There is much I need you to forgive of me, and much I have done that does not deserve to be forgiven. First and foremost is my attempt to shape you into something you are not. My hubris made me think such a thing was possible, and the consequences fell upon you.

For many years I have thought about my Kin’s place in the Town and my role in guiding them, and for a time I wondered if it were possible for a menkhu to come from outside the Kin -- indeed for the Kin and the Town to be reconciled at all. I have my answer now; but you suffered the misfortune of my failure.

But more importantly, I must ask your forgiveness for the manner in which I make my final request of you. Had I made it in person, you would not have understood.

We are dying: myself, Simon, the Town, the Kin. When our time finally comes and this letter finds you, I ask you to carry out this one final act in my service: you must perform the autopsy of Simon’s body. The Kains will want it to be swift -- to that, I say: be instead thorough. You now possess the skill and knowledge to execute this task, and Simon is a clever man; he will have much to tell you, even in death.

As for Artemy -- whether he will take my place among the Kin is his decision to make. So I will not say the devotion you’ve shown me should now go to him -- that is your decision to make.

Live well, my student. The town will need you before its end.

Your teacher,

Isidor Burakh

Stakh folds his hands over the letter and lays his forehead upon them for a long time. He will need to burn it -- he can read the unspoken warning in the part about the Kains -- but he is not yet ready to let the last piece of his master slip from his grasp.

One final task.

He will do it, because Isidor no longer can. He will love him as his Kin do. What comes after that is no longer in his hands.