the grave. Eskie wouldn’t meet his glance at all.
The nights thereafter were much the same. Over time he learned to identify returning customers well enough that if he was carrying their preferred drink or food, he would meet them at the bottom of the steps—an act that did not go unnoticed by Bogrevil, who reconsidered him, scrutinizing him as if to decide if he’d misjudged Diverus and, granted that he was a superb judge of flesh, been in some manner misled. He commented to the giant, “It’s a shame that one’s a mute, ’cause it’s clear he’s much more clever than what appears.” The giant, who was not more clever than he appeared, stared at Diverus in perplexity.
The later the night wore on, the more the clients came in clusters, and by the second half of the evening there weren’t but one or two individuals in any of the three parlors. The rest had retired to the private chambers. On his way to and from the kitchens he noticed some of them in the corridors, lolled on the settees between the private rooms; sometimes they were sleeping, but even the conscious ones appeared exhausted and muddled. Occasionally they needed assistance to manage the steps up to the span again, which task was assigned to boys who hadn’t been picked, or to him and the other servers if no one more suitable was available. These people always smelled mephitic, as if some poison leaked from their pores. Diverus did not focus on what was going on in the paidika, or what it meant that boys who were chosen for a night the next day had to be spoon-fed, didn’t leave their pallets, and often were given a second night off to rest. He didn’t want to know. He listened to other servers gossip about it—tales of how boys who pried into the goings-on in those chambers disappeared. The boys who entered the chambers with clients refused to tell those who weren’t chosen what happened to them.
Exhaustion became his excuse for not pursuing any answers. He slept through almost every day and worked through most of the night, with barely enough reserves to find his way back to his bed in the morning.
Then one very busy night, very late, one client in a purple cape and wearing a spangled mask arrived in the final minutes, and there were no boys left for him. At first Bogrevil tried to talk him out of his desire. “It’s so late, sir, you’ll hardly have time to enjoy yourself.” He gestured to the hourglass in the corner, as if it somehow supported his argument. “Come back tomorrow night—it’s an anniversary, a celebration. We’ll fête you better than anyone.” The client remained adamant, in the manner of a drunk who has made up his mind. He demanded satisfaction, and Bogrevil finally suggested that the man consider one of the servers. He called a coffee-colored boy named Abnevi over. Though unattractively scarred with pockmarks, Abnevi was intelligent and—Bogrevil assured the client—“brimming.” The client, with obvious reluctance, accepted the offer, and Abnevi set down his tray to follow. His eyes were round with terror.
When the three of them had left the parlor, the remaining server, named Olk, nudged Diverus. Olk had a deformed, withered arm, and Diverus supposed that as with himself, superstitious clients feared that the deformity was communicable. Grinning sourly, Olk said, “We’re lucky, the way we are. You’re stupid and they don’t want you, neither.”
Before he could ask Olk to explain more, Bogrevil came back and dismissed them. As Diverus passed by, Bogrevil grabbed him by the arm and whispered, “Another night, you’ll be chosen, don’t you worry, son. You’re too pretty to go to your death in servitude.” Then he strode off.
The paidika closed up for the day, and the boys returned their trays to the kitchen and slunk off to the dormitorium. Diverus hung back until the rest had gone. Before that night he had avoided looking at what it meant to be selected, at what purpose a paidika served, because there was only one purpose for such a place that he could imagine, and one use, finally, for all of them, however kindly Bogrevil pretended to be.
He turned from the hall to the dormitorium and took a different corridor, one that led to the private rooms Eskie had shown him.
Most of them were dark behind drawn curtains, but in a couple candlelight flickered, and in creeping to the nearest one he heard a