The next day Dally tried following Red again, as she went to claim the office post. Before they got halfway there Hannock stepped into their path. The ward was much more awake, and cheerful if not actually smiling. He smelled of smoke under the reek of damp wool.

“Not you, Dally,” he said, “you’re off to the parlour.”

Dally blinked. “I don’t, uh-”

“Red will show you.” As they both stared at him his face went flat. “Well? On your way.”

Red did show him, trailing a hand along the bare concrete of the servant passages. The longer they walked the more sideways looks she shot at Dally, like he had something on his face. Or, like she was trying to think of something to say.

“It’s a nice day,” Dally said.

“What?”

“It’s sunny. You know, outside?”

“Oh.”

Maybe it was, but winter had seeped into the house, coating all the windows with fog. His toes had gone numb, and everything smelled like burning wyr oil.

They stopped at an anonymous door, and she gave him a too-hard thump on the shoulder. By the time Dally figured out she was leaving him she was already gone, anxiously rubbing her neck as she stalked away.

Dally lingered at the parlour door, listening to her footsteps fade. Fire glow slipped through the cracks in the wood, and there was the faint tink of china on the other side. Who knew what mood the boss was in? Lane hadn’t talked to Dally since the night before, and Dally sure as hell wasn’t going to ask what happened.

Dally couldn’t stand here all day, though - you couldn’t get around your owner. At least he was a spy now, right?

He ducked through the door, and closed it soft behind him. When he turned around Lyle was beaming at him, leaning forward in his seat at the breakfast table. The governor was still in slippers and a house coat, cheeks red from the cold.

“See?” he asked Gita.

She glanced up from reading a novel, her eyes narrowing behind a veil of smoke. There was ten feet of table between the two humans, weighed down with piles of food on gilt china. Black coffee sent off a plume of steam, and the scent mixed with the smell of melting butter. Gita had a delicately arranged plate in front of her, fruit and quail eggs drenched in syrup. As she watched Dally, she carefully peeled the crust off of a pastry and ate it. Otherwise, her food was untouched.

“I’ve been waiting to get a look at you,” she said, “the great prize. But, maybe you’re slower outside the ring? Where were you?

Lyle’s mouth twitched as he looked at her. “Dally, this is Gita,” he said, before completely ignoring her. “You’re settled? I thought you’d like it here. You do, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master.” That wasn’t enough, though - the governor’s stare was still on him. “Everyone’s been real sweet.”

Gita gave him a lizard’s smile, without even taking the cigarette from her lips.

Lyle liked the answer, though. “Of course they are,” he said, pleased. He settled back into his chair, folded his hands. “Well. Go get the paper for me, there’s a good lad.”

And that was it.

When he came back with the paper, Gita abandoned her food almost instantly, bullshitting about a headache. That left Dally stood there, stiff and awkward, while Lyle scraped at his plate. Everything was slow. After that they went to Lyle’s rooms so he could dress, and it took what felt like two hours. Claymen showed him one shirt then another identical shirt. Ties, sash, handkerchief. Lyle looked at the ties, then looked at Dally, to make sure he was watching, before choosing.

After a while the secretary told Lyle through the door that the campaign directors were waiting. Dally, standing with a coat over his arm, blinked at her. There was an election on?

Let them wait, Lyle said.

When they finally got out, the campaign team glanced up with dull eyes before going back to their papers. They were used to it. A couple of them closed novels they’d been reading and stood, like they had been sitting on a train and this was finally their stop. Then Lyle made them all look at Dally, and admire him. Then, finally, the politics started.

Pretty soon Dally figured out why Gita picked him; the humans forgot he was there. It only took about three seconds. Dally’s face was blank, because that was important, but no one looked at him anyway. Even Lyle only stared at him in the lulls, bored and wistful. One time a junior-whatever put a cup of tea in Dally’s hand, and took it back off him five minutes later. Like he was an end table.

It wasn’t like the spying was easy, though. By the time they were done his head was spinning, trying to keep all the names straight. His leg wanted to bounce from so much standing still.

He must have looked dazed, after, because Lyle pet his back. That woke him right up, made him stand rigid until the touch drifted away.

“It’s all new for you, isn’t it?” Lyle said. “But it’s an improvement, I think, living with me. I think you don’t mind?”

“No, Master.”

Dally had answered this question probably a fifty times that day already, but Lyle’s searching look drifted over him again. Maybe he needed more grovelling?

Wasn’t Dally a spy, now?

“You’ve been good to me,” he tried. “I hope I do right by you.”

Lyle bit his lip. “I think you will.”

Dally couldn’t even force a smile, just stood there blinking too fast. Lyle eventually turned away, leaving Dally frozen behind him. At least Red was right - Dally was safer when Lyle was sober.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

When Dally finally left, there was screaming echoing through the servants corridors. Faint, raw screams, like the throat was already worn out. Dally slowed down, listening to them get louder as he crept back to the thralls quarters. The sound peaked as Hannock let him back in, but Dally still couldn’t see who it was. At the far end of the dorm was a blank wood door, that Dally hadn’t been through yet. The screaming came from behind it, along with the faint clink of chain.

In the dorm the others were mostly lying flat on bunks, blank faced. A couple were determinedly playing serbat in the corner, muttering their guesses through grit teeth. There was one empty bunk.

Dally, quiet, leant up on the side of Red’s bunk. “Is that Sansi?” He asked. “What’d he do?”

“Sansi,” she said. She rolled to face him better, but then wouldn’t actually look at him. “Yeah. Mistress, she said he was staring.”

She didn’t say what they all thought: she wished he would stop screaming.

Dally ran a hand back through his hair. He’d gone cold, and wasn’t sure where to look. Gita had figured out a way to punish him after all. At least she hadn’t figured out yet which thralls were his friends. That would be next.

It was black outside the windows when the creams faded to a rasping sob. A while after that the gate squealed, and a ward let Sansi fall through.

Whoever did the work had ugly writing - swollen red lines swarmed over his chest, criss-crossed like graffiti on an alley wall. The burns were still at the ‘okay looking’ stage. The puffy, split flesh wasn’t dying yet.

Only a human could come up with this, Dally always thought. Who else could take a rune meant to protect against demons, and write it on the demon?

Seeing the door open, Dally had jumped up like a dumb idiot, and he hovered there with his hands up; all ready to help. That was pointless. One of the females had got there first. She got a careful hold of Sansi’s slack arm, and started dragging him over to his bunk. When she had got him in he curled up, turning into a shivering hulk under the blanket.

Sansi stayed like that until all the others were asleep. Dally didn’t fall asleep. In the grey, freezing dawn he slunk up to the gate and draped his arms through. “Mistress asked for me,” he told Hannock. “You know how it is.”

“Lucky boy,” Hannock muttered, annoyed, but he let him pass.

Gita was awake too. Wide awake, and poised delicate on a chaise longue. An crystal ash tray on her side table had five butts in it, and she was picking at a dish of candied cherries. Waiting for him. The tropical, florid heat in her rooms was stronger than ever.

Seeing him she smiled. “You can’t have much to report, yet.”

“He looked at you wrong? Mistress?” Dally asked.

“Don’t be like that,” Gita said, “It was only because you put me in a bad mood. And you’re doing it again now. It was only a warning.”

“I’m warned,” he said, hurried, “I’ve been doing what you wanted.”

“Good.”

“Don’t take it out on them.”

She laughed, a high and fake sound. “You’re telling me what to do?”

Dally twitched. He must have looked how he felt, because she smiled, letting out a stream of smoke through her nose.

“Oh, don’t look so sore. Give me what you have.”

Fine. Dally glanced at the ceiling to take a deep breath, watching Gita’s silk hangings drift in the hazy air. Gita could do what she wanted. With Sansi, Red, anyone. That was her right.

When he started talking the edge had gone out of his voice. “Ansel thinks the governor can get re-elected if he keeps Farham and Tol.”

Ansel was Lyle’s Vice Governor. At least, Dally thought so. No one told him these things. Farham and Tol sounded like counties, from what he’d heard.

“Farham has a construction problem: there’s a uh, a union? Of steelworkers and chimer-men. They won’t go to work. They don’t like that most of the labour building the Dome went to Anvil Corporation. And the Farham people they don’t like all the uh, the ‘damned thralls’ being bussed in.”

If he was hoping Gita would explain what a union was, that hope was gone now. She hummed, and ate another cherry.

“Boss-“ Dally sighed through his nose. “Mistress, you know that your man bought me off of Anvil. The thing is, I wasn’t for sale. Anvil must want something from him, and it’s probably those Farham contracts. The eastern rail link needs done, sure, but Anvil can’t move thralls that far.”

Gita’s chewing slowed, as she considered him. Eventually she frowned, covered her lips as she swallowed. “He’s a daft man,” she said, “isn’t he?”

“He... got what he wanted.”

“They always do.” She pouted faintly as she tapped her ash into the crystal tray. “Go on, there’s more, isn’t there?”

Spelling it all out took another hour, maybe, with all the questions she was asking. Most of Dally’s answers were ‘I don’t know, mistress.” He didn’t know the places he was talking about, and a couple times she had to stop to correct him on a name, or check something he was saying. When she finally let him go she was pleased, though; lounging like a well-fed cat. Dally slunk out with a hollow feel in his gut, and his shirt unbuttoned. In the corridor it was so ice cold that his breath steamed. A maid closed the door behind him, with a look on her face like she’d just seen a rat.