Three months passed. Dally was a good spy, and waited.

He’d wait for Lyle at the office, or in the corner of the room as he dressed. Maybe they would go somewhere on the campaign. Those were the better days, because no one had time to drink or sit around. He saw the mine towns, with their slow-pulsing organs rooting into the ground, and a herd of cows being packed like thralls into a train car.

Once, they toured a factory, where cars and other machines came out hot and wet from their eggs. Dally had never seen something like that. The poor pillbug babies rolled steaming on the floor, smelling of solder and birthing fluid. Men had to scoop them up, and press their limbs straight before their shells could harden too much.

Gita seemed alright with his reports, maybe even happy. She answered her door, and she leaned in to listen. Sansi wasn’t wrote on again, or any of the others. Dally and Gita said a lot of true things to each other, which felt weird, and wrong. Talking to a human all honest. Still, she didn’t tell him to stop.

Maybe he was honest because he wasn’t sleeping much. The feel of Lyle’s hands lingered like grease, and not Gita or anyone else could really scrape him off.

When Dally did sleep he still saw Seth Greenlees, and woke up flinching, drenched in sweat. In his dreams the poor bastard died over and over, and then came back alive as Dally ate him. Sometimes Seth asked quiet questions, mostly he screamed. When Dally woke up he could never remember the questions. It nagged him. What did Seth want to ask?

It was fine. Dally just had to wait; eventually the dreams would fade, like the other times something stuck in his head. It would be better when he got sold.

Until then, though, his eyes were dry and red, and he looked pale when he saw himself in reflections. When people asked if he was okay he answered real slow, or not at all. He coughed. And he did take some of his cigarettes back from Red, one by one, until she moved the bundle somewhere and wouldn’t tell him where.

Winter closed around the house like a crushing fist. One morning Dally woke up in the dark, and saw the windows were blacked out with snow.

He brought Lyle the paper, and in return was given a slice of bread from the table. Dally was finally getting used to that - scraps of human food. He only hesitated for a second before taking it, retreated to a spot by the door to eat. The bread was warm from the oven, steaming, and smelled fresh and good. Lyle’s food was all like that.

Gita made a sound of faint disgust.

“Why do you sigh like that?” Lyle asked her.

“I’m not sighing.”

“Well, you have something to say, then, don’t you?”

Gita tapped ash from her cigarette, eyes narrowing. “It’s... ridiculous to give him food from the table,” she said, finally. “He has his own food. You’ll only make him fat.”

“Fat?”

“You’ll spoil him. I hope you won’t act like this in front of Jona.”

“I’ll feed him whatever I like,” Lyle said. “Besides, he likes it, don’t you Dally?”

"Ye-” Dally had already crammed most of the slice of bread in his mouth, had to pause to chew. “Master.”

“He’s a thrall,” Gita said, “he’d like garbage just as well, or a rotting corpse.”

In answer Lyle just held out another slice to Dally. “Here.”

Dally snatched it, and didn’t look to see what Gita thought. Bread was easily better than garbage, so she was wrong there. It wasn’t as good as meat, but you couldn’t have everything.

Gita sniffed. “Will you meet those Anvil men again today?” she asked Lyle.

Shit, that was not something she should know. Dally kept his eyes down, chewing.

Lyle’s cheeks was slowly going red. “Who says I’ve met with them at all?”

“Oh, you know,” she said, “ladies talk.”

“Ladies.” Lyle sniffed. “Well, you need not worry yourself.”

“I just think you could do better, with this Farham business-”

The governor’s chair squealed as he stood. “It’s none off your concern.”

As they left Dally shot a blank look over his shoulder at Gita. She glared back, like this was somehow his fault.

His heart pounded, as he trailed after Lyle toward the cars. Gita shouldn’t have known any of that. There weren’t many people in on these meetings they’d been having, and sure as hell no ‘ladies’. Dally was in all of them, though. Every single one. Was Lyle thinking that, too?

Lyle chewed his lip, not even looking at him. “Do your females nag so much?”

Dally blinked, struggled to switch gears. “No, Master,” he guessed, at random.

That must have been what Lyle wanted, because he gave Dally a bitter smirk. “I thought not,” he said. “Much more simple, your kind.”

They were going to Parliament. Outside the snow was blinding, but the sky was dee blue. Lyle had Dally ride on the flank, so the whole campaign team could fit in the cab. Pretty soon they were skittering through the fresh snow, down the slope from the manor. The car’s legs clawed at the buried road, kicking up white clouds. From his perch Dally could see the escort car, with Red and a few others hanging off the sides.

Okay? she gestured at him.

He returned it. Okay.

The others tried yelling something at him, but he couldn’t hear anything under the roaring wind. After a while he could tell they were singing, but he couldn’t hear that either.

Dally turned to the homunculus, clinging to the other side of the cabin. “You sing?” he yelled.

It stared, for a long time. Then it raised one thick hand to point.

“Me?” Dally asked. “You want me to?”

Silence.

“I’m not much to listen to.”

The stare continued.

“Well,” Dally said, “you just say when you want me to stop. ”

Singing alone felt strange but good, even though the wind shredded the sound right out of his mouth. The damn clay man didn’t tell him to stop at all, not before they were galloping between city tower blocks. Dally’s throat hurt by then, anyway. His arms ached from clinging and it felt like he breathed more air in the last two hours than all of the three months before. He was smiling.

His grin lasted until they reached the crowd. It was just a couple of humans, at first, blocking the road as they stared. Then there were fifty, a hundred, hundreds, getting closer and packed and loud. The snow under the car’s claws was already stamped to grey slush, and their wild gallop slowed to a crawl.

As they pushed into the crowd Dally flattened himself to the armored flank, cringing to avoid bumping any humans. The whole crowd was staring at the car’s fogged windows. A few pointed at Dally, and he picked out dirty tones; ‘Anvil corporation’ and something about Seth Greenlees. Mostly they yelled, though, and chanted; ‘Human hands built this city’.

It was a protest, Dally realised, feeling stupid. He found himself wide eyed, the way he was first seeing Seth. This was real live politics. Beyond the crowd the Parliament building glowed in the late sun, with all it’s spires and grooves casting long shadows. A bronze disk for Amn shone mirror-bright over the door, so big the nearest people were squinting. And shivering. Were they okay? It was cold already - their breath steamed in the frozen air. Not all of them had coats.

Lyle burst into the crowd, and the chants disintegrated into screamed insults. A second later he disappeared, surrounded by the pack of flunkies from his car. Around them the thralls from the escort formed a kind of lazy wedge shape, shepherding the humans towards the parliament. Dally attached himself to the group, and watched the crowd melt away from around them. The humans had a hard time backing up fast enough. They yelped, tripping over each other.

Lyle’s group forced their way easy enough to the steps, where the crowd was broken off by a police line. They were waved through, and the membrane seal around the door rippled before parting.

Dally was about to follow them inside, when a hand snatched his arm. “We don’t go in,” Red yelled, over the noise.

“Aren’t we his security?”

“Only out here. Capital Sec has their own guys in there, you know? Vets. Real scary.” She looked a little wistful. “They get better outfits than us, too.”

Now it was just them and the cops, the howling from the crowd was fading. The chants started up again, rhythmic and already hoarse. Red hummed, watching them. “Wonder what they want?”

“They’re Farham and Dunham workers unions.” Dally mumbled, he was already rocking in place, leaning to try and peer through the windows. “They want the Gov to stop throwing all the state construction contracts to thrall corporations, so they can get a little work for a change. Dunham’s a safe seat, though. They won’t get shit from him.”

Red was looking at him like he’d grown a second head. “What’s a union?”

It took a while to explain that. He had to talk about why unions came up in the factories and spread to construction, and how this winter was colder than normal, how the wyr oil subsidy ended last year and how the Brairi took and razed the Green Dish and all the barley and wheat in it. Now a guy like Hannock could maybe afford heat for his kids, or food, but not both.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

By the time he was done she was frowning at the crowd, biting her lip. “It’s hard to be human, huh?”

Lyle was gone for hours, while Dally paced and tapped the hilt of his saber. The shadow of the gold tower grew longer, stretching over the crowd. Their chants faded into bitter mumbles, rising and falling in waves. Lyle’s cars were surrounded now by people leaning on their warm flanks.

Still, most of the protestors stayed. The ones that didn’t were replaced, and then some, with more joining from the back as their shifts ended. They started fires, and passed around dark glass bottles without labels. As the sun set the calls got rougher, slurring together: ‘Lyle must have trouble talking with Anvil’s cock in his mouth.’ ‘Lyle should fuck a thrall, if he loved them so much.‘

“I don’t know about this,” Dally said. Without pockets he’d stuck his freezing hands inside the thin front of the uniform jacket.

Red was drawing in the sleet with her toe, and didn’t look up. “Like you said, they’re real mad.”

They were. When the Parliament doors finally opened again the crowd seemed to take a deep breath, before letting out an animal howl. The front of the protest marched closer to the police line, screaming, then were shoved from behind, staggered, and crashed into it. First one, then dozens of men fell through. The cops turned around to hit them, kick them, pull them back. Dally watched a baton clip a man’s shaved head, and vivid blood spilled down his face. Of course human blood was the same red as thralls, but he’d never thought about it before.

He only realised he was frozen when Red shook him.

“Would you look at that,” Lyle was saying to an aide, “ridiculous, isn’t it? But we’ll get through them.” He had a soft little smile on, like things were going well.

The thrall escort formed up again. Kit was the biggest, so she took the point and started punching her way into the crowd. The others shoved after, and Dally made himself follow.

They got about ten feet. This time the crowd couldn’t make a path for them. Inside the crush of bodies it was hot, somehow and slick under-foot with mud. The humans around them flinched, struggled, but couldn’t back away. A wall of bodies crushed them forwards in a tangle of bodies. Dally, wide-eyed, caught a shrieking woman as she was shoved into him. He set her back on her feet, but not before she scrambled, tearing at his cheek with her nails. The humans shuddered as they brushed up against him. Dally shrank, putting his hand gingerly on their shoulders or backs to squeeze past.

“They can’t move,” Red yelled in his ear. To prove it she bared sharp teeth at the nearest human, shoved him hard in the chest.

Dally’s heart lurched. He almost grabbed her, but the guy had already got back up, and was screaming uselessly at their backs. Right - they were security. This was fine.

The bubble they made for Lyle was somehow calm, and the governor was taking his time. He skirted the slush puddles, still muttering to the aide. The crowd surge didn’t reach him, and he didn’t see the brick coming.

It glanced off the side of Dally’s head, before skidding through the slush Lyle’s feet. Everything blurred, as Dally tried to shake his head clear. A rock whisked past, then more until they were coming down like rain - wet gravel, bigger stones. Dally caught the next brick in clawed fingers, just reached up and plucked it out of the air, ten feet up. The people closest to him shrieked, and turned, trying to claw through the crowd to get away. They were a lot shorter than Dally, now, and his breath steamed in a cloud as he snarled at them.

Numbly he realised he’d torn his uniform, changing shape when he shouldn’t. This was very bad, and wrong.

It was a lot better above the crowd, though, where the air was cold and he could breath again. People tangled with his legs and tail, but he just shook them off. The rocks bounced off his sides, rattled through spines down the back of his neck. One man hacked at his knee with a length of copper pipe, and Dally yelped, kicking reflexively. The man staggered, then disappeared under the boots of the crowd

At least Lyle had finally seemed to notice what was going on. He jogged with agonising slowness towards the cars, snapping his fingers like Dally should catch up. He did, but by the time he got there they were already pulling away. In this form he could keep up - barely - and the others watched wide-eyed as he sprint after them.

A while later the car slowed, and Dally did too, taking huge hacking breaths. He’d been running on his clawed hands and feet, scrabbling at snow and concrete just to keep up. His fingers had gone numb. They were still in the city, which was now glowing with wyrlight in the dark. It was starting to snow again, but Dally’s sweating body seemed to burn a hole in the cold. Snowflakes settled on him and melted instantly. In one of the tenement windows above them a bare-chested human boy was staring at him with huge eyes.

Lyle’s car door opened, spilling gold light. An aide carefully stepped out, his shoulders stiff with rage. The man looked up at Dally, and Dally figured this was it - he pushed Lyle too far. He’d be sent to that back room where sansi went, and Gita would abandon him -

“Get in,” the aide said, and flung a blanket at him, before stalking back towards the escort car.

He got in. Lyle waved him over immediately, and made him squeeze next to him, actually crushed against the side of a PR flack. There was a half inch of whisky in the bottom of Lyle’s glass. He touched the wet patch in Dally’s hair, rubbed the blood between his fingers. “You-” he turned to the nearest flunky. “Didn’t you see what he did?”

“Yes, Lord Governor.” These men all had a trained blankness, but it was never actually hard to read them. They were seething.

Lyle’s mouth trembled. “He saved my life.”

“That’s as may be, my lord, but he should be told how to act-”

“He did what he had to. Didn’t you?”

Dally curled his fingers into his scraped palms, swallowed. He was still panting. “Of course, master.”

The aide turned that bland look on him, and licked his teeth. They both knew Dally was lying: some guy threw a brick, and Dally had to change form for that? Really?

Lyle’s face was getting all soft, his mouth drooping with too much feeling. “Maybe you should all get out,” he said, suddenly, “I think you all need to go. Not you, Dally.”

The cabin still felt crowded when they were gone. Lyle leaned into him, as if they still had to squeeze in. He put a hand on his cheek, forcing Dally to look right at him.

“I hope you know how fond I am of you.”

Was Dally meant to say that too? I love you? A good spy would say it. The damp heat of Lyle’s hand was cutting through the thin shield of melted snow. Finally Dally nodded, feeling stupid.

Lyle didn’t even notice. He made a soft noise, dragging him closer.

That night, Gita’s rooms had a thicker than normal fog of smoke. She was wrapped in it like a veil, looking cooly from under her eyelashes. For a while she looked him up and down.

“Aren’t you lucky,” she said. “He should have had you writ on. Acting like an animal in front of the press.”

Dally had wiped the blood off his face, but hadn’t gone to the baths yet. Sweat had gone cold all over him. He couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t even focus enough to fake an expression for her.

“It was bad.” he said.

“Of course it was bad, stupid thrall.”

“They hated him.”

“So you decided to make it worse? Do you know, I had started to think you you had a little cunning, a little subtlety-”

“You find me a buyer, yet?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, not by a long shot. Usually she looked annoyed, and this time he thought she might actually hit him. Instead she smiled, her eyes narrowing to blue slits.

“I told you I would,” she said.

Dally coughed, choking on a sudden tight feel in his throat. “Who?”

“First, apologise.”

“Mistress, please-”

“Apologise.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I- I don’t know why I did it. It won’t happen again.”

“You’re a stunning example of how thralls act without discipline,” she said, and took a deliberately slow drag. Dally waited, silent.

“Honor Wately,” she said, eventually.

“The senator?”

“Mhm.” It had taken a while, but Gita had finally stopped acting surprised when Dally knew something.

“What does he want me for?”

“How should I know?” She frowned, stamping her cigarette out. “You’re just lucky I found someone with currency Tannis will take. He very much needs the Occupancy bill to go through, you see, and Wately will cross the floor...”

She kept going, but Dally couldn’t pay attention to the details, couldn’t even care that he was getting traded in some weird backroom deal. It didn’t matter. He was almost smiling, and rubbed his mouth to hide it. Two months left and he’d be gone.