Andō has practiced this, one arm to pin the fragile Duke in place, the other down his trousers to tickle Ganymede’s seat of pleasure, and drive all words from his lips with gasps of joy. “Not me.” Ando’s words took turns with kisses. “I convinced Spain … to ask Madame … It had to come … from them … from me it … might’ve seemed an insult … You’ll be inducted … tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Different kinds of delight chased each other across Perry’s rapt face. “Does this mean Madame approves of me staying Prime Minister? The others approve? MASON approves?”
“They’re reconciled to you … Eventually they might want … to shunt you off … some high office in Romanova … Senate Speaker maybe … reinstate Spain … but you’re inside now … we’ll keep you at the top … somewhere.”
“I did it?” Perry voiced a little laugh, slow, like a timid chick, uncertain whether it is truly time to leave the shell. “I made it? Madame’s inner circle. It’s done. I’m done.”
“I’ve paid your dues for this year. I know you’ve nowhere near the means to pay yourself, but we’ll discuss the balance of your debts in time.”
“Thank you!” Perry’s voice cracked. “Andō, thank you! I can never th—”
“No, you never can, and never will.”
The Prime Minister froze, then bowed his head. “You won’t regret this, Andō, both of you, I swear. I’ll make you glad to be my sponsors, every hour, every day!” Sponsor was an interesting word choice, avoiding the dread word ‘patron’ as the Servicer Program avoids the dread word ‘slave.’ Sponsor feels so legitimate.
“I have high expectations,” Andō warned.
Perry filled himself with a deep breath. “I’ll exceed them.”
Ganymede wriggled in Andō’s grip. “Stop. This is serious. The Cann—”
Again Andō stole the Duke’s words with a long kiss. “The Canner Device?” he finished. “That’s old business. Don’t worry your head about it. The guilty have been well punished. It’s done.”
Ganymede wriggled. “No, you—uuuh.” A fresh gasp broke his words.
“It’s done.”
I do not know, reader, whether Andō mounted Ganymede here in front of Perry or spared him; it is the sort of detail a gentleman omits in interview. Perhaps Andō backed off, but, after Ganymede’s show of ducal fire at Perry, Andō might have taken this chance to drive home to both the others that he is and ever shall be first among (un)equals. Besides, I know Andō enjoys how the Duke’s unwilling buttocks clench like a virgin’s on these rare occasions when he is not ‘in the mood.’ You may choose for yourself, reader, how thorough a congress to imagine.
“Is this a perk that comes with being invited upstairs?” Perry asked, a freshness awakening in his face as he watched, as when a dozing dog pricks up its ears at footsteps.
Andō enjoyed that question. “Watching is. The twins are one flesh, and both of them are mine, as sure as man and wife and otherwife.” Fresh touches made sure Ganymede had no breath to contradict. “I paid for them, more money than you’ll see in your lifetime. The boy I leave free to share himself when he fancies, but the last man who glanced too long at Dana? is not here to remember it.”
“Understood.” The trial-weathered Prime Minister smiled as he stretched back to watch politics play out before him. “I really can never thank you enough, Andō. Tomorrow night. It hardly feels real; just one more night.”
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
Providence
Share now my horror, reader, as a liveried footman returns my confiscated tracker, and the first sight in my feed is Carlyle Foster stepping across the threshold of Madame’s. Dominic plays our puppet strings with a musician’s precision, like the grim matron who made him. He knew just how long he could keep me off the tracker network before Papadelias would go berserk, so he had my tracker delivered to my hands minutes before the Commissioner General would have called the Romanovan cavalry, and seconds after our sweet young sensayer had passed the door. That door, festive with its gilded ironwork of twining vines; I would have plastered it with warnings to match the gates of Hell, had I been free to reach it before Carlyle. Did Dominic know that I had tapped Carlyle’s feed? That I watched, live, as a pair of blushing housemaids swept the Cousin up, happy to serve as teeth for Dominic’s bear-trap. “Sister Helo?se is expecting you,” they crooned. “She’s just through here. She’s so been looking forward to your visit.” Their lies poured out like syrup as they coaxed their victim on, just a little further, through these suites, these doors, these bolts. I groaned inside. My warning had failed to save Carlyle, the instructions I had left with my fellow Servicers when I left them packing up Bridger’s toys to ship to Sniper’s doll museum: warn Carlyle to stay away, far away from Madame’s, from Dominic, and danger. But Carlyle had come fluttering to the flame, lured by the false invitation Dominic had sent in Helo?se’s name, and lured too by Carlyle’s conclusion that J.E.D.D. Mason was something not unlike a miracle. How confident the Cousin was that, in this golden age of peace and ever-watching trackers, a virgin with a bag of gold could walk across the Earth without danger. Our modern moths have bounced so many times off lightbulbs, they aren’t prepared for torches, and forget that wings can burn.
But thou canst save Carlyle, Mycroft. Thou art close at hand, yes? As I understand it, this whole house is thy large and roaming prison, strange haven from the wrathful world that calls anew for Mycroft Canner’s blood.
You are right, good reader. I am but four stories above the young sensayer, a few halls past screaming distance.
Thou must save Carlyle then. The Cousin is a fool to come, but still does not deserve what lies in wait.
Would that obedience were easy, compassionate master. But, while I may rival greyhounds over open ground, I am as helpless as any man in Madame’s labyrinth of doors and doorkeepers. I began at once to plead my way past the many checkpoints of the house, strong doors and their strong keepers, but even as I raced I feared that slow was too slow.
Call on thy tracker, then, and warn the victim of the trap.