Page 82 of By Any Means

“Chary!”

Laurie’s voice, harsh and cracking. Chary looked up over the motorcar door. Laurie stood on the sidewalk in front of the station, next to a short, slim man with a long blond mustache and a big bowtie. Sam Sullivan “Steamship” Warren, Laurie’s editor. Chary recognized him from his picture byline.

Chary didn’t know what to do. Smile, wave, cry out? It felt like all he had left in him was weariness—perhaps the barest smidge of self-preservation—and neither of those applied to how he felt for Laurie, which was at the moment primarily shame.

In the end, he did nothing but stare numbly. Laurie stepped forward—he had a limp⁠—

Raberding put a hand on Chary’s shoulder to force him into the motorcar. “By the by,” he whispered, “I carry a pistol on my person.”

Chary went.

This Pierce had a door to the right side only; Raberding slid in beside him. “Fucking drive,” he demanded of the chauffeur through the glass partition, then pulled down every shade around them.

Once the auto had lurched forward, engine pistoning, he turned to Chary. “See, now,” he said loudly, his accent pitching bright like he shouted down the radio, “not even an hour drive, and then food and rest… I have a very nice guest apartment adjacent my own at the Ansonia. A return to luxury will have you see reason again.”

Chary said nothing. He put his head on the window, then winced. He’d forgotten about his face. Raberding rattled on: “A friendship between us is natural, wouldn’t you think, given our upcoming business partnership?”

Propositions were absurd when said at a decibel of a near-shout. They ought to have been a silken whisper. Chary’s head hurt like one pulsing blister, red-hot, ready to burst.

“But…” He chose his words carefully: “I am nothing like August.” Not handsome, to begin with.

Raberding looked astonished. “Why would that matter?” He put a hand, stacked with gold rings, on Chary’s knee. “But you two brothers are old hands at taking the other’s place. Aren’t you?” He clamped hard. “I suppose it wasn’t a total exchange. Suppose we’ll see if you won’t take to whoring. Won’t we?”

Oh, Lord. Chary closed his eyes. Threats aside... had August told Tjofabier Raberding absolutely everything? Or was August’s true identity something Raberding had learned since his presumed death? Either way, it was very bad. If they were exposed as playing the other, it would be fraud and worse. If Raberding was waiting to greenlight that story—if he had a reporter ready and waiting to print it…

Not journalist Laurie Tulley, though. Chary knew that now without a doubt. This was something Laurie simply couldn’t have known, because if he had known it, he’d never, ever have looked at Chary in the same fond way he did now. Laurie had sympathy for Chary the queer, disinherited eldest—not the twenty-four-year-old rich boy with a glassblowing hobby. Not Chary the inheritor, who by being born had usurped his brother.

“… you won’t be an invert anymore. Understood?”

“I beg your pardon?” While Chary had disassociated, Raberding had been speaking. Hurting Chary’s knee again, gripping and rubbing.

“An invert. You’re cleared of being one. Those were merely despicable rumors begun years ago by your dear departed brother. He wanted to keep everything from you unlawfully.”

“I’ve just been arrested for actual sodomy⁠—”

“Keep your voice down. And no, you haven’t. The Chief Inspector has erased everything,” he said smugly. “Last night never happened.”

Chary sat up straighter. “Except that it did happen. I would rather be Wilde than to have it never have happened, and made so by you.”

Raberding turned heated eyes upon him. “Your British schooling comes out when you’re angered. It must be you that speaks French properly.”

“Who,” Chary said wearily. Raberding didn’t notice.

“And Latin?” he pressed.

“Strictly speaking, no one speaks⁠—”

Raberding leaned in. Chary had thought he was too tired to recoil; it turned out he wasn’t. “Greek?” he breathed.

Ancient or modern? It didn’t matter. He didn’t speak either. “Ah… no. Er—I may pass out.”

“No, you won’t—” The man seemed to change his mind, eyes narrowing. Chary couldn’t especially tell: fuzzy black apparitions were encroaching at the corners. “Oh, Jesus Christ. Fine.” Raberding pulled him sideways.

Tjofabier Raberding’s thigh was marginally softer than the window. He wore cologne, and it was godawful.

“I don’t wish you any harm, you know,” Raberding said, soft as he could and still be audible; the car had changed gear. He pushed Chary’s hair back—like Laurie had in the Berryfield house, except not quite. “You’re the one I was supposed to meet. The true heir. Not the whore.”

Chary’s dizzied chills turned full-body. “But you want August.”