Catch your breath hit the wall, scream out loud, as you start to crawl back in your cage the only place, where they will leave you alone.

Darid 25th, 1513 – The Academy of St. Hugh, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

“Don’t tell me you’re done already.” A strong pale hand caught Brother Dustin by the throat. It’s twin caught him as somewhat lower as well, the lower hand shifting slightly so that broad, close cropped nails dug in the length of him. Dustin didn’t know what to tell him, not that it really mattered, he couldn’t have spoken even if he had known.

Loki stepped just a bit closer, the grip on his neck tightening to the point where his instincts were starting to kick in, adrenaline raced down his muscles, it’d hurt more if he tried to run, but his body wanted to. Perversely, it also wanted to press him back against the broad chest flush with his shoulders, to grind against Loki.

He’d prayed to the Lord so many times to clear him of these thoughts. But he came back, he always came back. Even when he had to walk, humiliatingly, into the dining hall at the abbey, the eyes of all the monks on him, his abused body clenched tight against leaking, unable to clean up because they were running late–or because Loki just hadn’t given him permission to do so. The knowing looks burned like salt sprinkled on the shallow cuts of Loki’s riding crop on his back.

But every time Loki cocked an eyebrow at him, Dustin slunk back to his metaphorical bed–in the years that they had been doing this, there had only been a couple of times that they’d had anything so mundane as a bed. Hughian monks, bar the abbot, slept in a barracks like dormitory room. Some other orders gave their monks the privilege of cells, even if they were no more than a cot, clothes chest, and place to kneel and pray.

There had been the once that Valen had sent Loki and Dustin to Port Finessa to collect some materials for him, they’d stayed one night in an inn because the weather had taken a nasty turn and the one monastery that would have put them up for the night, the brothers were suffering from a nasty flux. A couple of overnights to the capital in Reme, where Albionese monks were not always welcome.

But even had a bed been available to them, Loki probably would have chosen the floor, or a bench, or table. Beds, Dustin figured, were for lovers–not whatever the hell he and Loki were–other than on a fast track to hell.

“You’re not attentive tonight, cher.” Loki pouted in his ear. It was pretty much the only Gaulish that Loki ever used and the closest to informal they ever were. It was like they couldn’t do this if Loki was calling him by his Wrightian name. He grabbed hold of the back of Dustin’s neck with those neat, even white teeth sinking in to a point that would leave a bruise. He hoped to Wright that it was some place that his tail would cover. The last time he had to wear a high necked undergarment for like a week for the bruises to fade. It wouldn’t do for the students to see a monk running around with bite marks and bruises on his neck.

Loki was getting worse about it, it was like something inside the other monk was slipping… But like Dustin had any room to talk. He was the one who let Loki fuck him open wide right there on the desk that Loki’d be teaching at come morning. He raised his hand and touched the lock of hair right above Loki’s temple. It was one of their signals that Dustin needed to talk to the other man.

He wondered if it would work. It didn’t always. But Loki stepped away, letting Dustin take a couple of hard breaths. “I’m sorry.”

Loki stepped closer, heavy lids half closed. “Don’t be sorry, just say whatever you need to babble about so we can get back to what we were doing.” He gave Dustin’s nipple a quick pinch/twist as if to remind him. As if he could forget. “I don’t have all night, someone’s bound to notice we’re gone, and I don’t feel like dealing with Valen’s slurring tonight and Baron Jayson in the morning.”

“The baron? Why are you seeing him?” Dustin blurted out without thinking.

“Are you jealous?” Loki asked with a sneer.

“No.” Dustin didn’t know why his voice trembled on it. He wasn’t jealous, in fact it would probably be better if Loki found some other playmate. (…Plaything…) Not that he would, at least not in Jayson of Carico, the baron would never submit to Loki, and Loki needed to be the undisputed alpha.

The sneer jumped up a notch, before melting into smirk that ended in a heavy lidded salacious smile. “I need to talk with him about Joshua.” Dustin bit his lip.

“Why?” He couldn’t have been acting up in class, Joshua hadn’t been in since the previous week.

“Because he’s been skipping class.” Loki told him, rolling his eyes.

“I thought he was ill, he hasn’t been in anyone’s classes.” Dustin offered. It was hard not to notice Joshua, even in a class full of young noblemen, he hardly blended in, there was something about his glossy ash blonde hair and cat swept slate eyes that made him stand out almost always.

“I had thought that myself, but according to what I heard from a little bird, whatever this mysterious illness is hasn’t stopped him from going to the tavern in the evening.” There was something about Loki’s expression that twisted Dustin’s stomach with both fear and lust. He ignored the lust for now.

“You do know what will happen if you talk with the baron, Loki.”

“Oh, how sweet.” Loki simpered. “You’re worried for poor Joshua. If you have the time for that, cher, I guess I’ll have to take it off your hands.” The other man pulled Dustin into a crushing grip, forcing his mouth onto Dustin’s and smothering any protests with his mouth and tongue. Leaving Dustin with nothing to do but scrabble at his back and tip his head to give Loki the angle he needed to steal all of Dustin’s air entirely.

When he was breathless and shaking with reaction, Loki struck again, forcing him to the floor, pinning him in place. He felt the other man’s spit slide between his cheeks before being forced open with careless disregard for the state of Dustin’s internal organs.

—

Darid 27th, 1513 – Carico estate, River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

Josh’s hand shook as he reached for the library door.  Dorine had had that almost expressionless, sympathetic look on her face when she had tapped on his bedroom door to tell him that his lord father wished to speak with him in the library. It told Josh all he needed to know. He’d been caught, there was nothing to do but face up to the music. But that didn’t stop him from wishing that he could do anything but go into the library and speak with his father.

But Jayson was not one to be kept waiting and so Josh pushed the door open. His father was sitting at one of the tables reading a book. He looked up when Josh entered, glanced one last time at the page and shut the book with a soft thud.

“Have a seat, Joshua.” Jayson’s voice was as clear, icy, and even as if he were giving a speech. Josh wasn’t fooled, but he walked to one of the chairs by the fireplace, unlit logs sitting on the andirons at the moment, the fire wasn’t needed and given all of the books in the room, if it wasn’t needed, it wasn’t kept lit. He slipped into the chair and stared at the carvings on the fireplace.

He heard his father put his book away, then his firm footfalls as he walked to the other chair and sank into it with an easy grace that always made Josh feel like a lumbering behemoth. Jayson smoothed his tunic and looked at Josh with what was ostensibly disinterested curiosity.

“I’ve had a most interesting conversation with Brother Loki at the Academy, Joshua.” Jayson began, pinning him in place with a glare that practically dared Josh to squirm. He didn’t and Jayson continued. “He tells me that you’ve been skipping your classes this week. Is there a reason for that?”

It sounded so reasonable, so like if Josh would just explain then this could all go away. It wouldn’t and so Josh worked up enough spit to say “Not really.” If Josh had cared to inform his father about why he was skipping class–well–he wouldn’t have been in the situation that lead him to skip class in the first place.

No, he really didn’t want to tell his father about Philipa’s drug problem or all the money that she owed some thug in a stylish suit. He didn’t want to tell him about how he had gone to talk with said thug when Philipa told him that Marcinak was pressing her to steal some trial information from her father so that he could set his lackeys to intimidating the jury in a case against one of Marcinak’s lieutenants.

Philipa would never have gotten into her father’s office to steal that information. Either Marcinak didn’t understand that–or he was trying to set her up somehow. Josh didn’t know. Although that wasn’t really the reason that Josh had been skipping class this week. Sure, walking through the halls with a face as worked over as his had been would have been more attention than Josh would have wanted, but not all of it would have been negative.

No, it had more to do with where he sat than what his face looked like. Josh felt like he owed Darin some sort of an answer for all the crap he’d put the other boy through the other night and Josh didn’t have one. And somehow, even having run over in his head what was likely to happen to him if he did cut class–Josh didn’t have any hope that he would have been able to get away with doing it–he couldn’t go sit in those classrooms right next to Darin and not be able to tell him something.

You don’t just kiss a man and go on with your life as if nothing happened. Josh had a tough enough time with the idea of kissing a girl and going on with his life like it hadn’t happened. No, Darin’s willingness to let it go or not, he deserved an explanation and Josh didn’t want to face him until he had one.

Seeing as he couldn’t come up with a reason why he kissed him and his mind just wouldn’t let go of the fact that he had, the only thing he could do was avoid Darin, which considering he sat next to him in most of their classes, wasn’t all that easy to do. At least without skipping school.

And if telling Jayson about Philipa was out of the question, telling his father that he’d randomly kissed a man for no apparent good reason was a whole other universe of something altogether.

“I see.” Jayson said, folding his hands. “Joshua, what am I going to do with you? One of these days you are going to have to think about what you’re doing. You will be a baron one day and do you think that the other noblemen are just going to shrug or throw their hands up if you continue to act without thinking.” He paused as if collecting his thoughts.

“Has it occurred to you, Joshua, that having an ineffectual lord in this town is simply asking Reme to attempt to take it back? And do you really think that you would survive it if they did? And what might happen to your mother? Your sister? if that happened?” Jayson sighed but it didn’t cover the sound of the door closing.

Josh’s spine tingled, knowing there were eyes on his back. He knew exactly who was watching him, but Josh knew enough to know you didn’t take your eyes off Jayson, the other wouldn’t make a move until Jayson loosed his reins.

“Ah, Cox, right on time.” Jayson said with a half smile. Josh heard the sound of cloth rustling and felt his throat go drier if that was even possible.

And just a moment later, at the corner of his vision, Cox appeared. As Josh had suspected, he’d shed his coat and waistcoat, Madame Cox refused to even send his clothing to the laundress if he had blood on it. Blood, she had apparently told him, was not part of his job description and cleaning it up was not at all part of her job description. If he was going to get his clothing bloody, he could make sure that it got clean too.

“I am just trying to make you think, son.” Jayson said before standing. “I’m sure you understand.” Josh said nothing, nor did Cox. The library door shut with a soft click that might as well have been the ponderous thud of a stone crypt door.

Josh said nothing, just got out of his chair, no reason to make more work for the parlor maids and walked over to the empty space next to the door. Cox followed and Josh turned, his lips turned faintly up at the corners because you didn’t show fear to a mad dog.

That was the last coherent thought that went through his mind before he doubled over the wind knocked clear out of him.

His last thought at all was how brightly the light seemed to catch Cox’s wedding band right before the fist it was wrapped around caught his chin and all he saw was black.

—

The library was dark except the light of a single candle when Josh came to himself, curled up on one side, blood puddled under his cheek. The hem of a something fluttered near him, neat slippers stopped just a fingers-width from the blood.

“Bet?” He pushed the rough croak out of his desert-dry throat.

“Well,” She said, voice sounding on the edge of tears. “It’s not the queen.” He tried to chuckle–it hurt. The cold stone floor had leeched all the heat from his body and seemed to make every bruise protest that much more as he slowly pushed up into a sitting position and then even more slowly got to his feet. He could barely stay on them starting to tumble back to the floor when Elizabet caught him. How her small, almost frail body managed to keep him even a little upright amazed him.

“I got you.” She whispered in his ear. “I got you.”

“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame…”

Imsdyn 7th, 1513 – River Sulis, Lothianshire, Albion

The early morning light, thin and spiteful, barely scratched at the weathered parchment stretched over the small window. It would be so easy to ignore the light creeping in, to roll over and go back to sleep. Except now that the light had given it’s cue, there were a hundred other minor discomforts that would make pulling the gray fog back over his head like a blanket impossible. There was an errant piece of straw poking up from his mattress, jammed somewhere into his thigh near something he might eventually want to make use of. Something else was informing him it was time to go find the privy. His shoulders and neck were telling him they needed to move if he wanted to use them any time today they needed to be relieved of their own pressures.

Sixteen and already creaky. Wright damn it. And if he were going to sit up and take care of those inconveniences, he might as well get out of bed. The Lord Wright could damn that too. With the soft crinkle-crackle of displaced straw protesting, Darin shoved his way up into a sitting position and cataloged the world around him. Outside, the annoying wuh-kk wuh-kk of the chickens kept in the yard, the soft hiss-scrape of a tree branch against the house, slightly fainter than that, Goody Butcher calling for Frankie to come in for brekky.

Inside the house, however, was silent and still in an eerie sort of way. Memories floated to the surface, reminding him of why the silence was a ghostly hand at the back of his neck, trying to raise the hair there. He shoved them aside with the same motion that pushed him up out of the strawbox and propelled him out of his cubby and into the cottage’s main room.

Nothing stirred, except a few dustmotes kicked up by the curtain that separated his sleeping area from the rest of the house. The pervasive gloom, not at all bothered by the banked fires at either end of the main room, not, if he were to be completely honest bothered even when the room was lit with full fires and candles, was as much a part of the house as the scratched and patched and crumbling stucco that covered the soft brick of the walls. It was like, more or less, a third resident of the house, made up of ghosts and memories and sadness, an unpleasant house-guest, blessedly silent, but always aware.

After answering natures call and a quick, but thorough wash-up, he made his way back into his cubby and dug out the doublet and hosen that made up his school uniform. For a boy far more used to rough canvas and even rougher wool, the linen felt too light under his fingertips. He flipped his blankets up over the bed, scooting the pillow down so he could sit on it, a little more padding between the hosen and the prickly straw of his mattress, as he tied the garters ’round his legs. Loose at first, so he could tie the bow in front then work it around to the back as was the style.

Nevermind that the boys who set that style all had valets to tie their garters and didn’t need to worry about getting the bow straight on the leg. If he tried to make sense of everything his schoolmates did, well, the next thing he’d wear would also be linen–white and provided by the order of St. Betsy when they put him in the tower next to the old man who claimed he was St. Robert reborn and had tried, three times, to walk on the river to prove it.

I’d probably see Sara-Beth more often that way. The traitorous thought floated up before he could quash it. But he shoved it back down. He cocked his head and listened brushing the thick strands of his hair out of his face as if thinking of his step-sister would bring her to his door. Silence was all that greeted him, odd because if he was a cranky old crow in the morning, Sara-Beth was a lark, insisting that the best time was when the world was new and bright.

He walked to her door and tapped, but was only answered by the tap of that branch on the roof in the wind again.

“Sara-Beth?” He asked, pushing the door open to reveal an empty room. Though objectively nicer than his cubby, something about her room, worn rough at the edges contrasting with the brightness of the flowers she kept, that made Darin feel–guilty might be the best word? Like he was holding her back. Like she could be so much more if she just didn’t have to take care of him. It made his hand tug lightly at the hem of the school doublet.

Not for the first, fiftieth, or five-hundredth time he wished that he could just quit school. There was no reason to go to some fancy, rich noblemen’s school, sure, he’d get that education that Sara-Beth touted, but it wasn’t as if he’d go to Camford or do anything with it. What good would all that fancy learning do him when he was mucking out stables for Lord Carico or keeping watch out the back door of some counting house for the guard while his fellows stripped the place of every copper?

He shoved those traitorous thoughts down with their fellow and turned, the soft leather half boots seemed impossibly louder than his normal cat-silent footfalls as he strode across the room, if he didn’t go now–he’d be late for his first class. Out the door and into the morning sunlight, growing stronger with ever heartbeat.

“Mornin’, Darin.” A soft voice broke his reverie of all the things he’d rather do than walk in late to Brother Loki’s class, like crawl through broken glass, a far more pleasant thing to think about than all of the things he could be doing with this perfect early summer day besides being trapped in some dusty hall that smelled of incense, chalk dust, and cologne, pretending he were something other than a gutter rat there on sufferance.

“Eric, morning.”

“Glad you didn’t say good.” Eric chuckled, watering the young plants that lined the side of the house. The carpenter felt about mornings about the same way that Darin did.

“There ain’t such a thing.” Darin smirked at the old joke, then added. “They’re the cow-demons of the times of day.”

“Blasphemy and an ain’t, ’tis a good thing I won’t rat you out to your sister.” Eric grinned.

“Yep.” Darin said solemnly. Eric probably had some comment to add to that and Darin might’ve lingered,  but an exasperated voice broke in. “John! Johnny!” Raven–Eric’s wife and Sara-Beth’s best friend’s–called for her son from the other side of the house.

Raven rounded the corner, her hair falling out of it’s arrangement, giving her a harried look.

“C’mon, Johnny, come to mama.” She squatted down and held her hands out to the toddler who was watching her, a suspicious look and a pair of braises the only things the boy was wearing. “C’mon, Johnny, we need to put your clothes back on.”

“No! No clothes!” The little boy dashed between his mother’s outstretched hands, shedding the braises with the same ease he broke into a huge grin, flinging the cloth to the side, his naked ass bared for all the street to see.

“Your son!” Raven leveled an accusatory finger at Eric before diving for the little boy. Eric ducked his head to hide a smile as his wife swooped in front of the boy and grabbed him before he could reverse his course. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do with this boy.”

“No clothes!” John protested as Darin moved past the two. “Dary, tell mama no clothes.”

“Sorry, Johnny, smart men don’t argue with your mama.” He called over his shoulder as the boy protested.

Darin was still laughing to himself about Johnny when he rounded the corner and reached The Academy of St. Hugh. The other boys were arriving both in carriages and on horseback, turning the care of the latter over to boys like Darin had been. It was an easy way to make a copper and there was still plenty of time to lead the horses to the stable before they had to be in their seats at their own school. It was, Darin thought, how he’d caught the eye of the monks and been offered the scholarship that was now something of his bane.

He cut quickly around the corner to avoid the press of boys and horses, only to find his path blocked.

“No, I will not authorize you to take those books out of the library, Remi!” Father Valen, the headmaster and abbot of the brothers of St. Hugh snarled at a man in white and silver satin with the short tail that was favored by the religious orders.

“They’re dangerous books, Valen.” His voice reminded Darin of… damn! What was it?

“There is no such thing as a dangerous book, you can’t unmake something by pretending it never existed and you, of all the orders, should know it. I am in charge of that library and I will not let you decide what is fit for the consumption of those here and what is not.” Father Valen punctuated the words-spoken quietly enough that Darin could barely hear and the other boys, over their own noise, would not be able to hear at all-with firm thwacks of his fist into his palm.

“Men often think they’re more clever than they are, Valen. It’s better to take the temptation away before it can lead to harm.” Remi tossed the words over his shoulder, shooting Darin a smug smile that again tugged at some memory.

“Oh, I’ll buy that, Remi. I’ll certainly buy that you’d know all about men who are far less clever than they think they are.” Father Valen hissed, eyes so focused on Remi’s back that he didn’t even seem to register Darin’s presence at all. He turned and wrenched open the heavy, carved wooden door that lead into the school building and headed in and apparently up for he was on the stairs when Darin came in the door moments later.

“Brother Dustin, what are you doing in the broom closet again?” Valen’s voice floated down the stairs.

“I was looking for the broom, father.” Dustin spoke with a faint lisp.

“And–as your hands are empty apparently you didn’t find it?” Valen asked.

“No, father, it wasn’t that important.” The monk was scurrying, there was really no other word, except perhaps scuttle, to describe the quick hurried movement that the monk made as he went toward his classroom and away from his abbot. The third monk in the small hall as Darin crested the stairs, Brother Loki, sauntered toward his classroom, looking somewhat disheveled as well, but sated and with the air of a cat who had just eaten the canary.

“Isn’t–” Valen looked at the broom closet, then closed the door with a slam. “Never mind.” In the next movement, the monk had pulled a small flask out of his sleeve and took a long draw off it. “And they wonder why I drink. Two flasker today.”

If there was one thing that you could say about Brother Loki, it was that if one could at all avoid it, it would be best not to be the sole focus of his attention. (That and that he was in a long, extended catfight with sanity, and Loki was winning. But one digresses) There was something about the flat gray gaze that he turned on everyone, the sharp, angular planes of his face, and the barely contained hostility and driven madness in his gaze, but when Darin entered the classroom only to find it empty, it wasn’t exactly like he could just turn around and walk back out. Brother Loki would definitely notice that and Darin didn’t want to answer for that.

So instead Darin walked to his seat, refusing to scurry as he passed the monk, nose wrinkling unconsciously as he caught the whiff of anger, sex, and blood clinging to Brother Loki like some sort of bizarre incense. Brother Loki said nothing to Darin, just picked up his flint and went about the room lighting the lamps.

Sadly though, Brother Loki smelling like a brawl in a brothel wasn’t even the worst part of the class. No, that strolled in the door a couple of minutes after the monk finished lighting the lamps, as Darin tried to pretend he was terribly interested in what the book on the table said. It–or he rather–sat down in the chair to Darin’s right with a casual, boneless grace that seemed at war with the broadness of his shoulders, the muscles that bunched under his doublet as his hand clenched and unclenched under the edge of the desk and swept a no-more-sane nor any more warm gaze over him.

“Joshua, might I suggest, in the future, if you’re going to bully your schoolmates into doing your classwork for you, that you, at least, copy it into your own writing?” Brother Loki asked before standing up to start the lecture? “Or begin providing your classmates with handwriting samples. After-all who knows when a Lord will need the talents of a forger.”

“Oh, gee, Brother Loki, you caught me. I am appropriately chastised.” Even though Darin wasn’t the recipient of the black gaze that Brother Loki tossed at their table, even though Darin had stared down the man who had killed his father without flinching, it took every bit of strength and will not to cringe in the face of it. Don’t fuck with crazy, Reggie always said.

But if Joshua felt anything in response, he didn’t show it. He simply dipped his quill in the inkwell on the table and looked attentively at the monk with a smile.

By the time that Darin had gotten through his morning classes, through lunch, to his last class of the day, a religion lecture that was given by Father Valen, Darin’s shoulders were so twisted and knotted with tension, what was probably a very good meal sitting in his stomach like a lump of dried brick mortar.

This was the most pointless class that he took. It was intended to prepare students for the religious curriculum at Camford, and if Darin got within a day’s ride of Camford, it would probably be as a wagoner delivering a load of wood or something.

But Father Valen was a good speaker, and it was always interesting to see how drunk the man would be by this point in the day. He was always drunk by this time, but to what degree was the question.

And unlike the other instructors who insisted that they sit in some sort of arranged order, Darin could grab a seat on the bench at the very back, as far away from Joshua and his friends as was simly possible.

A two flasker, Father Valen had said that morning. It meant that to even the unobservant the man was a little off his game. He didn’t slur or stumble, nor did his hands shake as he followed the book with one finger, but the fact that he had to follow the book was telling. No matter how soggy his brain was, he had to be pretty far gone to not remember exactly where he was and exactly what he was saying.

It also meant when the knot of boys surrounding Joshua started getting a little loud and were obviously not paying attention, Father Valen didn’t even try and quiet them. At first, Darin thought that Father Valen didn’t even notice, but the way his eyes flicked up and to the right belied that. For some reason, today, Father Valen just didn’t care.

Darin slipped out in the confusion at the end of the class, and when the door opened again, bringing with it the musky smell of Joshua’s cologne, Darin basically darted straight for the chapel across the hall. It wasn’t guaranteed to save him, not being exactly like the Lord Wright would shoot lightning into the chapel and fry anyone who dared to fight, bully, or antagonize anyone in it. But Joshua seemed reluctant to go in there if he could avoid it.

Maybe bad luck was just with him today, because almost immediately after his butt hit the pew, the door opened again. He slumped down, not because it would hide him but out of resignation.

“If you were one of the other boys,” Father Valen murmured, “I’d tell you about how your mother would lecture me if they knew I let you slump.” He wound his way around the other side of the pew and sat down next to Darin without invitation.

“But you know I don’t have a mother.” Darin said, staring at the cross carved into the paneling over the altar.

“No, that’s not it. And not even in a “you do have a mother, she’s just been taken home to the Lord Wright” sort of way. Your sister is far too busy and practical to take time out of her day to yell at me for something that all boys do.” Father Valen said. “If your sister is going to come yell at me, it’ll be for a good reason. It’s so rarely for a good reason, you know.”

Like Remi? Darin wondered. Whoever he was. “Sorry.” Darin muttered to his feet instead of inquiring.

“For what? The fact that of all of the people I get coming through my office door so many are silly and there for completely ridiculous reasons?” Father Valen. “That certainly isn’t your fault and unlike some others, I don’t look to you for someone to blame. The fact that you’re here on scholarship, or as others would say, sufferance, doesn’t mean that you’re brainless.” He paused for a moment and continued on in a musing tone. “In fact I’m not sure it wouldn’t mean the opposite, half the time, with all the well-born dunces in my class, I’d half imagine the brains have been breed out of the nobility.”

Darin blinked. “But–” He cut himself off by biting his tongue before it followed to aren’t you the cousin of the Duke of Avilion?

“If you’re thinking that I’m a nobleman by birth,” Valen snuck a swig from his flask. “I will point out to you that I am the one who is in charge of all of this mess, which is more a nod to my brainlessness than my overwhelming intelligence. Go on, Darin, enjoy the summer day before it’s over. You’ll have plenty of time to wander these moldering halls, days like this don’t last forever, boy.”