“Where’s the merch?” Terelle asked.
“In the water-room,” Vivie said and giggled. “Sick as a sand-flea that’s lost its pede. Drank too much, I suspect. I was bored, so I rang down to the kitchen. Now you can have a rest, too.” She patted the divan and flicked her long black hair over her shoulder. “And Kade’s not a merchant, you know. He lends people water tokens. Which means you should address him as Broker Kade. Terelle, you
have
to learn that sort of thing. It’s important. Keeps the customers happy.”
“Vivie, if Opal catches us doing nothing, she’ll be spitting sparks.”
“Don’t call me Vivie! You
know
I hate it. It’s not a proper name for a Scarpen snuggery girl.”
“It’s your name. And you’re not Scarpen. You’re Gibber, like me.”
“Not any more. Opal’s right when she says ‘Viviandra’ has class and ‘Vivie’ doesn’t. And why shouldn’t we be lazy occasionally? I deserve a rest! You think it’s easy pandering to the tastes of the men who come here? You’ll find out when your turn comes.”
“I’m not going to be a handmaiden,” Terelle said. “I’m going to be an arta. A dancer, like the great Arta Amethyst. In fact, I am going to be greater than Amethyst.” To demonstrate her skill, she bounced to her feet, undulated her hips in a slow figure of eight and then did the splits.
Vivie groaned. “You are
such
a child! You won’t have any choice in the matter, you know. Why in all the Sweepings do you think Madam Opal paid Pa for the two of us? So as you could be a dancer? Not weeping likely!”
All hope vanished as Terelle glimpsed the darkness of her future, crouching in wait just around a corner not too far away. “Oh, Vivie! What sort of handmaiden would I make? Look at me!”
She hadn’t meant to be literal, but Vivie sat up and ran a critical gaze over her. “Well,” she said, “it’s true that you’re nothing much to look at right now. But you’re only twelve. That will change. Look at how scrawny Diomie was when she first came! And now…” She sketched curves with her hands. “That jeweller from Level Nine called her luscious last night. A plum for the picking, he said.”
“Even if I burst out of my dresses like Diomie, my face will still be the same,” Terelle pointed out. “
I
think I have nice eyes, but Madam Opal says green is unnatural. And my skin’s too brown, even browner than yours. And my hair’s too straight and ordinary, not wavy and black like yours. No load of powder and paint is going to change any of that.” She was not particularly upset at the thought. “I can dance, though. Or so everyone says. Besides, I don’t
want
to be a whore.”
“Opal will stick a pin in your backside if you use that word around here. Whores sell their bodies on the street for water. We are trained snuggery handmaidens. We are Opal’s girls. We do much more than—well, much more than whores do. We are, um,
companions
. We speak prettily, and tell stories and sing and recite and dance, and we listen to the men as though they are the wisest sages in the city. We entertain and make them laugh. Do it properly, like I do, and no one cares if we don’t have fair skin and blue eyes and straw hair like Scarpen Quarter folk.”
“Opal says I’m the best fan dancer she’s seen for my age.”
“Maybe, but she can’t teach you, not properly, you know that. You’d have to go to a professional dancer for lessons, and that’d cost tokens we don’t have. Opal’s not going to pay for it. She doesn’t want a dancer, or a musician, or a singer—she just wants handmaidens who can also dance and sing and play the lute. There’s a difference. Forget it, Terelle. It’s not going to happen. When your bleeding starts, the law says you are old enough to be a handmaiden and Opal will make sure that’s what happens.”
Terelle lifted her chin. “I won’t be a whore, Vivie. I
won’t
.”
“Don’t say things like that, or Opal will throw you out.”
“I wish she would. Ouch!”
Vivie, irritated, had leaned across and yanked a lock of her hair. “Terelle, she’s given you water for more than five whole years, just on the strength of what you will become after your bleeding starts. You
know
that. Not to mention what she paid Pa. She
invested
in you. She will spit more than sparks if she thinks she’s not going to get a return on her investment. She won’t let you get away with it. Anyway, it’s not such a bad life, not really.”
But the crouching shape of her unwanted future grew in Terelle’s mind. “It’s—it’s horrible! Like slavery. And even barbarian Reduners don’t own slaves any more. We were
sold
, Vivie. Pa sold us to those men knowing we would end up in a brothel.” The bitterness spilled over into her voice.
“This is
not
a brothel. It’s a snuggery. A house for food and entertainment and love. We have style; a brothel is for lowlifes with hardly any tokens. And I am not a slave—I am paid, and paid well. One day I shall have enough to retire.” She picked up her hand mirror from the divan and fluffed up her hair. The reddish highlights in the black gleamed in the lamplight. “I think I need another ruby rinse.”
“I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” Vivie smiled at her kindly. “Terelle, you’re not a slave, either. For the odd jobs you do, you have water and food and clothes and a bed, not to mention the dancing and singing lessons. You’ve been taught to read and write and recite. When you start working properly, you’ll be paid in tokens like the rest of us. You can leave any time you want, once you pay back what you owe.”
“Leave? How can I leave unless I have somewhere else to go? I’d die of thirst!”
“Exactly. Unless you save enough tokens first.”
Terelle slumped, banging her heels against the legs of the divan in frustration.
Vivie laid her mirror aside. “Terelle, Terelle, don’t you remember what it was like in the Gibber Quarter before we came here? I do. It was
horrid
.” She shuddered. “The only time we had enough water was when we stole it. I was
glad
when Pa sold us to the Reduner caravanners—”
She broke off as they heard footsteps in the passageway outside. Terelle jumped off the divan and grabbed up her tray. When the waterlender entered, she was picking up the empty mugs on the low table. She bobbed and scuttled past him. When she glanced back from the doorway, she saw Vivie smile shyly at Kade from under her lashes. One bare shoulder, all invitation, had slipped from the confines of her robe.
Terelle pulled the door shut.
Back in the main reception room, the crowd had thinned. Most of the handmaidens had gone upstairs with their first customers of the night. Men who had not secured a girl waited their turn. Opal, plump and painted, flirted shamelessly as she bargained prices with latecomers. Servants brought more amber, keproot and pipes. The air was thicker now, yet there was an edginess to the atmosphere. Terelle scanned the crowd, seeking the cause.
The pedeman in the blue tunic sat alone, and his eyes, still sheened with feral hunger, sought her—but he wasn’t causing any trouble. On the other side of the room, Merch Rosscar glowered at Merch Putter, the man he had earlier called a cheat. He began another drunken tirade, his speech slurred, his words threatening, his nastiness growing more and more overt. Putter stirred uneasily. Terelle glanced at Opal, who gave the merest of nods. Terelle dumped her tray and slipped out of the room. She went straight to the unroofed courtyard where Garri the steward and Donnick the doorman controlled entry to the snuggery via a gate to South Way.
“Trouble,” she told them. “Madam Opal wants Merch Rosscar removed.”
“Drunk again, I s’pose,” Garri said. “Look after the gate a moment, Terelle. Anyone comes, they’ll have to wait a bit till we get back. Come on, Donnick.”
Terelle sat down on the doorman’s stool next to the barred gate. Outside in the street all seemed quiet; at this late hour, not too many people were still up and about. The city of Scarcleft tumbled down the slope known as The Escarpment in stepped levels and South Way was one of three roads that descended from the highlord’s dwelling, on Level Two, to the southern city wall, on Level Thirty-six. During the day it was usually one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city.
She leaned back against the courtyard’s mud-brick wall so she could look up at the sky. On those nights when Opal’s was closed, once every ten days, she would take her quilt up to the flat roof so she could fall asleep watching the stars as they slid, oh so slowly, across the black depth of the sky. She liked not being surrounded on all sides by walls. She liked the feel of the wind gusting in from the gullies of the Skirtings in unpredictable eddies. She even liked it during the day when the air was so hot it crackled the hair on her head, and she had to rub rendered pede fat onto her lips to stop them drying out.
Whenever Terelle tried to explain such things to Vivie, the older girl would throw her hands up in incomprehension and remark that talking to her sister was as unsettling as having a stone in your sandal. So Terelle didn’t try any more. She learned to accept the fact that she was odd and Vivie was the one who fitted in. Terelle wasn’t comfortable in the snuggery; Vivie revelled in it like a birthing cat that had found silk cushions. Terelle sometimes cried real tears—and Vivie had never shed a tear in grief in her whole life.
Now, though, the oil lamps around the walled courtyard dulled the sky and made it hard to see the stars. A flame sputtered and shadows danced. Once more she saw the dark lump of a future crouching just out of reach, waiting to smother her.
I’m trapped
, she thought. It had been her fate from the moment she had been included in the deal made with the caravanners passing through their settle. Her father had his tokens, enough for a year or two’s water, and she had this. She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of citrus flowers, a hint of perfume, the stale smoke of burned keproot.
She had to get out. She wasn’t Vivie, and she never would be. Yet how to escape?
Garri and Donnick returned, hustling an irate Rosscar between them. Outside in the fresh air, he appeared less drunk and more dangerous. “I’ll be back, Merch Putter!” he shouted over his shoulder, even though the merchant was nowhere in sight. “You’ll regret the day you cheated me!”
Terelle opened the gate, but when the steward attempted to guide the man through it, he lashed out with a kick, catching the older man in the knee. Terelle winced. Garri had swollen joints at the best of times. Donnick, a hulking youth of eighteen with few wits but a good heart, gently levered the drunken man through the gateway and closed the gate.
Terelle stepped back into the passage leading to the main reception room. Light flickered as some of the lamps guttered. There was someone coming the opposite way, and she politely flattened herself against the wall to let him pass. But he didn’t pass. He stopped: the pedeman in the blue tunic. She turned to hurry on, but he barred her way, his arm braced against the wall at chest height.
Her heart scudded; fear broke through on her skin in goose bumps. She did not look at him but kept her head lowered. “Excuse me, pedeman. I have work to do.”
He did not move the arm but lowered his head to whisper close to her cheek. “How much is your first-night price, child?” The tip of his tongue thrust into her ear, seeking to know her.
She tilted her head away, reminded of the forked tongue of a snake questing after prey. “I’m not a handmaiden. I’m a servant.” Her voice sounded thin and frightened to her ears. Her terror was out of all proportion to her danger; after all, one way lay the security of Garri and Donnick, the other way Opal and her servants. No one would allow him to touch her. Not this night. Yet she shivered as if the cold of a desert night wind brushed her skin.
Madam Opal won’t sell my first-night before my bleeding starts, will she?
“You’re a lying Gibber child,” he whispered. “And you should not try to deceive your betters. I will buy your first-night, and you’ll pay for that lie.” He placed a hand on the bud of her breast and squeezed, the touch a promise of horror. “It won’t be long now, will it, sweetmeat?” She pushed him away, ducked under his arm and ran for the safety of the reception room at the end of the passage.
But the safety was illusory, her danger only postponed.
She was crying when she entered the room, and dipped her head to hide the tears.
The night was unending. The man in the blue tunic did not come back, but from one of the handmaidens she learned his name: Huckman. Pedeman Huckman, and worse still, he was a relative of Opal’s. He owned a train of packpedes and ran cargoes from the coast to Scarcleft, bringing pressed seaweed briquettes to fuel the ovens and fireplaces and smelters of the city.
A wealthy man, and wealthy men bought what they wanted.
Fear fluttered at the edges of Terelle’s thoughts for the rest of the evening. She still felt his hand on her breast, bruising her as he enjoyed her shock. Just thinking about him made her stomach churn.
At last the final dirty dishes and mugs were delivered to the kitchen and Opal indicated she could go to bed. Feet dragging with fatigue, she walked down the passage to the courtyard once more, on her way to the servants’ stairs. Merch Putter was walking in front of her, on his way out after his time upstairs with one of the handmaidens.
Donnick opened the gate for the merchant, but before the man stepped through, he turned to press a tinny token into the youth’s palm. And that was when they all heard it: a shrill keening, like a fingernail being dragged down a slate. No, more than that, a screech so horrible it shrieked of danger, of death on the move. Terelle had never heard such a sound before. She was terror-struck, rendered motionless. The merchant flung himself back into the courtyard, plunging sideways into the potted pomegranates.