He can tell everybody. They’re just like him.” He reached out and caught Diverus suddenly, dragged him close.
“It’s our anniversary tonight and we don’t want nothing to spoil that. Nobody answers no questions. You want to have a little fun being ‘enlisted’ in the wee hours, I don’t mind, see, ’cause you don’t take away from no customers. But no mistakes, pretty one, or what happened to Abnevi’ll be something you’ll wish happened to you.”
Diverus shook his head and drew a finger across his mouth to indicate he would say nothing. Bogrevil nodded that he understood. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “that’s right, you can’t say anything about anything.” He released Diverus then, caught Eskie by the elbow, and started back up the steps with her in tow. “Can’t say a thing!” he called out, and vanished up into the dark.
The sound of Abnevi’s unmoored laughter followed Diverus up the steps like a curse.
Bogrevil took Eskie with him, so Diverus had no one to speak with, no opportunity to confess the terrible guilt he felt over Abnevi’s fate. He returned to the dormitorium, where everyone was asleep, and lay down, certain that he could never fall asleep again. Abnevi’s mind was shattered and it was his doing—he had interrupted the afrit at its feeding. He kept reliving the moment when the creature’s head turned, severing its connection, the blue tendrils snapping back into the helpless boy: his fault. Those round white eyes seared him with accusation.
The next thing he knew, he was crawling from the depths of sleep and uncertain that the events had been real. Two other boys lay asleep in the room, sunken-eyed and pale. Afrit victims. Everyone else had gone. He got up and hurried past the sleepers to bathe and eat.
When he returned to the dormitorium, Eskie was feeding one of the weak boys. With the spoon she pointed to his pallet. A costume of red crushed velvet and white silk lay there beside a long white band of cloth. He dressed while she finished ministering to the other boy. The sleeves covered his hands, and strings dangled off the cuffs. She came and tied the strings to loops at the shoulders. The sleeves were so full that he could freely move his arms, but they looked like wings. Then she took the cloth and wrapped it around his head, forming a turban, efficiently, as if she did this every day. She tucked the end of the cloth into a seam, and then fastened a cheap jewel to the front of it. “That looks very good, you’re becoming one of the more attractive boys here,” she said.
The comment so appalled him that he stepped back from her. “How can you be so—” he snarled, but got no further, as the façade she had been maintaining collapsed. Her eyes filled with tears. She put her arms around him and whispered in his ear, “Remember what I’ve told you. Stay out of his way, stay out of sight. Don’t do anything to call attention to yourself. He’s dressing you for them and tonight he might do anything.”
When she drew back and smeared the tears with her palm, he saw that her cheek was bruised and swollen. “He hit you.”
“I—” She sniffled. “It was my fault.”
If he’d had a knife just then he might have changed all their fates.
The celebration commenced. Corridors and parlors overflowed with guests, more than he’d ever seen. A trio of musicians had been given to Bogrevil as a gift for the evening. They stood back-to-back in the center of the middle parlor: One played a small drum dangling from a lanyard around his neck, another plucked a lute, and the third fingered a reed instrument called a shawm. The paidika’s musician sat on the floor in the corner behind them, watching with envious eyes.
The side parlors had been fitted with long tables of food, artistic displays that were quickly turned into skeletal remains as if by a horde of insects and as quickly replaced.
The other boys like Diverus had been dressed in gaudier costumes than usual—feathers and glittering scales, splashes of color everywhere.
Diverus carried tray after tray of drinks—in his arms for a change, instead of on his head. Guests snatched everything off each before he’d even reached the parlors, some on their way to the afrits’ chambers—as he now thought of the back rooms. The masked visitors gobbled and guzzled as if fearing they might be stranded without sustenance for days.