Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

Ree nodded. Jem had stood up two days ago and he looked strong enough to survive, strong enough to do whatever he had done before meeting Ree. Why was it that Ree could not meet his eyes, and found himself looking at the floor as he said, “Stay away from the soldiers, Jem. You are—” He stopped short of saying that Jem was too pretty to be safe. He had not thought it, not thought it at all the whole time they had been together. Not consciously. Not with his rational mind. He had not. Jem was just . . . Jem. Ree looked up and caught a disturbing glimpse of broad blue eyes, like a summer sky. Threatening rain. “They are not . . . They do not have the restraints of the local patrols. They answer to no one.

“Jacona will be safer for you without me. You could stay here, get work, that sort of thing.”

Jem made a sound. It wasn’t quite a sigh or quite a sob, but it had a bit of both and more of frantic urgency. Ree looked up.

Don’t let Jem cry, he thought. Don’t let Jem cry. He is just young and hurt and recovering from a lingering illness. His crying meant nothing. And yet, I don’t know if I can bear to watch him cry.

Jem looked like he was trying very bravely not to cry. He was biting his lower lip, hard.

Don’t let him ask me to stay, Ree thought. I can’t stay. I can’t.

But instead of asking, Jem whispered, “My mother left me, on the street, when I was four. She gave me a sweet and said she would come back. She never—” He shook his head.

Ree started to say “Better than—” meaning to say better than have your mother sell you to a customer when you’re barely thirteen. He remembered the fear, the frantic humiliation. He remembered being told about it, being sent to the room. He remembered running away.

For months, before, he’d noticed his mother’s customers casting looks at him. There were men who didn’t seem to care if you were male or female, provided you were a young thing, whose services could be bought. Who could not complain. There were men who didn’t care what they did. Like that soldier, with Jem.

But as he was about to tell Jem this, Ree stopped. Because all through it, he’d been afraid Jem would follow him, Jem would come with him—that Jem would get caught by the patrols and hung outside the city walls to freeze to death. Or worse, now summer had come. And suddenly he wondered if his mother had been afraid of what would happen to Ree, if one of her customers found him. If one of her customers treated him as the soldier had treated Jem.

For the first time, he remembered his mother’s face that day, without flinching. And it seemed to him there was concern in her eyes, overlaid with a harshness she had put there, a false harshness. He remembered she hadn’t told him who the customer was. Or anything about him. Or how much he paid.

She’d told him just enough to make Ree run away and be safe.

Ree bit back tears, and forced harshness upon his features. He stepped close to Jem and did his best to growl, in his most threatening hobgoblin voice, “I’m tired of you. You’re human and slight and weak. I don’t want you with me. I can travel quicker alone, with my fangs and my hobgoblin senses, and my claws.” He saw Jem look startled, scared, and he felt as though his heart were bleeding, but he pressed on. “If you come with me, I’ll kill you. Like I killed the soldier.”

Without waiting to see Jem’s expression, to see the further devastation his words had brought to it, he turned around, he jumped out the window—he skittered and ran his way to the ground.

Running through the shadows to the abandoned washhouse, whose drains fed to the sewers and drains beneath the city, he wished he could remember how to cry. And he half-hoped a patrol would find him and kill him.

The washhouse was quiet, in shadows. No patrols in it, more was the pity.

Ree remembered it pretty well, from when his mother had come there with him, when he was very small. He didn’t want to think of his mother. It hurt even more now.

He bent to the manhole and prized it open, his claws making short work of it. He had told Jem the truth. He would travel faster alone. And besides, if he got caught, he would die alone. He was a hobgoblin. A . . . thing. Part animal. He had no right to the company of a true human.

Jem would be safer without him.

Ree wondered if there was anywhere he could be safe. If a thing like him deserved safety.

The drains beyond the manhole smelled acridly of old waste. Ree stared dubiously into the shadows. Nothing came racing out to eat him.