Everyone's entitled to a darling

[desperance]

So I am not yet proof-listening, but I am in fact proofreading the same book (why yes, it did have a starred review from Publishers Weekly; how kind of you to ask); and every now and then, y'know. I read a thing I wrote and think "Oh, that's quite good, actually."

So here is this evening's darling, from the story "In The Night Street Baths", first published in Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah J Ross:


“Why don’t you have your own key to the gate?” Teo asked. “The sergeant
would give you one; and then he wouldn’t need to wait around all night, when
there’s a good comfortable guardhouse at the main gate, and we could come and
go when we chose, not just when he had the duty, and...”

Djago chuckled wheezingly. “Oh, you are such a youngling! Listen, brat: it is
always, always better to own the man. A key can do two things for me, just the
two. It can open one gate, one; and it can betray me. I can be caught with a key.
I can never be caught with the key to that man’s heart. And because I have that,
I can have him do whatever I ask, over and above the keeping of gates. I never
have asked anything, beyond a pipe of weed and a night’s talk now and then, but
I could. What could I ask of a key?”

The old dwarf had the key to Teo’s heart too, of course. And others’ too, no
doubt; maybe many others’, maybe he collected heart’s-keys and kept each one
as carefully as these.