Wolfsbane Winter (13 page)

She sat slumped in her chair and stared across the table at Abran. She should have guessed. Who had not heard about the sort of establishments where everything on sale was at five times the market rate, or about how they obtained their customers? Abran was not a trader who had lost his friends. The whole charade was a ruse to get drunken punters into his employer’s brothel. She wondered how big a cut he took from the profits.

“Deryn, this is Arnie, this is Lana, this is Del.”

Another pointless sham, and an insulting one. How stupid did they think she was? Deryn braced her hands on the underside of the table. She should just flip the whole thing over and walk out. But when she tried to flex her arms, they were too weak. Her legs were equally slow to obey her. Would they support her weight if she stood? And even if they did, would she be able to walk?

In an instant, her mood changed and the absurdity of the situation struck her. She began to laugh. Two whores joined in, although they could have no idea of what was so funny—but then, Deryn did not know either. The thought made her laugh even louder.

One of the women stood behind Deryn. What little lucid thought Deryn could muster was drowned in the sweet scent of flowers, now recognized as cheap perfume. The whore’s fingertips lightly traced the back of Deryn’s neck, and then massaged her shoulders. It felt so good. Deryn could not deny it, as the muscles in her back relaxed and any urge to resist was swept away.

The man shifted his chair closer to Deryn. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. Deryn made no attempt to stop him, but she met his eyes and slowly shook her head. A brief expression of regret crossed his face, but he released her hand and rose from the table. His place was immediately taken by the second woman.

Her hands were soft. Her lips were softer, hot and wet. She first sucked the tips of Deryn’s fingers, and then flicked her tongue against them. The effect of the suggestive touch rippled down Deryn’s arm, sparking a response in the pit of her stomach, and then lower. Deryn felt herself grow wet.

Why not?
The question drifted through Deryn’s head.

The contents of the bottle on the table would taste like hog’s piss. The chances were that it was rainwater, collected from the nearest horse trough, rather than wine. Nobody would drink any, yet she would be charged as if it were the finest vintage. A similar mark-up would apply to the whores, but Deryn had a year’s pay in her purse. She could afford it and she was in no fit state to go anywhere else. And was this not what she had been looking for when she left the Lodestone? Company with no questions, no ties, no risks?

And it’s not as if I’ve never bought it before.

Deryn made no objection when she was helped to her feet and urged along the corridor. The room she entered was darker than the one they had left. When the hands released her, she stumbled and fell. She landed heavily on a straw-stuffed mattress that was drenched in scent, although the cheap perfume could not cover the other, mustier odors. Deryn was grateful she could not see the state the mattress was in.

One of the women lay beside her and stroked the hair back from Deryn’s face. The whore’s lips touched hers, at first a tentative brush, then returning more assertively. Deryn pulled the woman to her. She was impelled by the sudden desperate need to touch flesh. Her hand scrabbled clumsily though the whore’s clothes, seeking a way inside.

The whore pulled away and then shifted over so that she sat, straddling Deryn’s waist. The weight, pressing down on her, ignited a fire in Deryn’s groin. Her hips began to move of their own accord, to the rhythm of her desire. She could not stop them if she wanted. She felt the whore’s fingers slipping loose the buttons on her shirt.

The material fell open, letting a cooler draft of air play over her inflamed skin. Deryn grabbed the whore’s hands and fastened them on her breasts. The whore trapped both nipples between thumbs and palm, squeezing and rubbing them, making Deryn groan. At the same time, other hands untied her bootlaces and slipped them off. Teeth nipped gently at her ankles.

Two whores. Double the cost.
Money well spent.

Deryn’s need to be touched, to be given release, was a monster inside her, taking control, except that lying down in the dark was working against her. Deryn’s thoughts had been dissolving ever since drinking the beer in the Warrior’s Return. Now the dark was seeping into her head. Her body was drifting apart.

The touch of a tongue between her legs was a flare of absolute pleasure, calling her back from sleep for an instant, but only an instant. The wave of darkness could not be held back. Deryn’s thoughts floated away on a sea of flowers.

*

Rain splattered on Deryn’s face. The droplets trickled down her cheeks and into her hair. They seeped around to the back of her neck and soaked into the collar of her shirt, so that the cold, clammy material stuck to her back and shoulders. Still asleep, Deryn twitched her head, futilely trying to avoid the unpleasant sensation until a chill gust of wind brought a sharper salvo. The sudden drenching was enough to draw Deryn back to the world. Her eyelids flew open so sharply that Deryn heard the snap.

A thin band of morning sky stretched above her, sandwiched by the dripping eaves of two roofs. Gray clouds scudded across the gap between. A mist of raindrops fell into her eyes, making her blink. Deryn raised a hand to her face, feeling her icy wet skin.

Memories returned in a stampede—soft lips and hooded eyes, masquerading desire; beer and Abran’s voice, urging her to drink more; the blur of streets as she had stumbled along with her new acquaintance; hands removing her clothes; the scent of perfume and sex.

Between one heartbeat and the next, a pounding headache erupted. Deryn clamped her hand over her forehead. Her skull felt as if it was about to crack open, but her groan owed more to despair than pain. How could she have been so stupid?

One hand she kept tightly wrapped over her head, just to be sure the top did not come off when she moved. Deryn levered herself up onto her free elbow. She was lying at the end of a blind alley. Green slime and refuse covered the ground. It stank of rotten cabbage, piss, and vomit. The rotten cabbage was nothing to do with her, but Deryn could not be so sure about the rest.

Her clothes were all in place, although disheveled in such a way as to imply that someone else had dressed her hurriedly, and with little care. Her belt and bootlaces were loose. Only two buttons on her shirt were done up, and one of those was in the wrong hole. Her pants were plastered with brown sludge that she hoped was mud.

At the far end, the alley opened onto a wider street. A solitary figure hurried by, without looking in Deryn’s direction. Apart from this, the town was quiet, which Deryn took to mean that it was not long after dawn. Normally she could estimate the time from the light, but something was wrong with her vision. Even through the thick clouds, the sky was painfully bright, making Deryn squint and her eyes water. Her lips tingled numbly and nausea was now matching her headache. Her hands were shaking, and not from the cold.

She had been carried from the clip joint and dumped, without waking. Deryn knew she had not drunk enough to account for it. Taking everything together, it confirmed her suspicion that Abran had laced her drink with some other drug. Why had she not been more suspicious of the strange aftertaste to the beer in the Warrior’s Return?

Carefully, Deryn rose to a sitting position and then buried her face in her hands. She needed to prepare herself before confronting the world and owning up to her ridiculous gullibility. She could not believe how dim-witted she had been. She did not know where in Oakan she had ended up the previous night and had even less idea where she was now. Apart from Abran, she would not be able to identify anyone she had seen, and it was a safe bet that he would not be showing his face around town until it was certain she had left.

Abran had hooked, drugged, and trapped her. How had she not spotted it? The con was so old that Deryn could not claim she had never been warned about it. Of all the sordid, catchpenny tricks, she had just fallen for the cheapest.

Deryn did not need to feel for her purse to know it was missing.

*

The King’s Marshals did not much care for Iron Wolves. The sentiment was mutual.

Deryn stood, glowering at the two officers on the other side of the room. “Useless, arrogant, fucking ass-kissers.” She mostly kept the thought to herself, no more than muttering the words under her breath. For their part, the two men ignored her, as they had been doing for the previous half hour.

The marshal’s station was a typical example of Oakan architecture, with rough-sawn, mud-plastered walls, a stone floor, and waxed cloth instead of glass in the windows. The main thing that marked it as different from any tradesman’s workplace in the town was the king’s standard, hanging from a rafter. The other thing was the complete absence of anything resembling work going on.

One officer was a clerk, sitting at a small writing table. He had insisted Deryn tell her story three times, doubtless for the entertainment value, before he had taken any notes. The other was a soldier, armed with a weighted net and quarterstaff, the usual weapons employed by marshals in towns for enforcing the king’s laws and subduing criminals. So why was he not out in the town, stopping crime, rather than farting around in the office? His only role seemed to be sniggering at the clerk’s comments and scratching himself.

From the outset, Deryn had known that making a formal report on the theft was a waste of time, but she was low on options. Without money, how would she get through winter? The only question would be whether she starved or froze first. If the marshal could not help her track down Abran and his gang of crooks, she would have to go cap in hand to the Wolves’ Den and see if someone would lend her money to cover the journey south. Having to beg would be humiliating beyond enduring, but nothing compared to hearing what Brise would have to say when she got to Ellaye.

Deryn closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, trying to restrain a groan. Maybe starving in the snow might not be so bad. The only good thing was that she had paid the stable in advance for Tia’s care. Of course, her final option was to sell her horse, and Deryn was nowhere close to being desperate enough to do that.
I’ll starve first.

“Hey. You.”

Deryn opened her eyes. “Yes?”

The clerk jerked his head toward the door behind his shoulder. “The marshal’s free now. You can go in.”

Seeing that nobody had left the room, Deryn suspected the marshal had been free ever since she arrived. The clerk had made her wait for the fun of it.

As she passed the two officers, she heard the soldier murmur to his colleague, “Like they say, fighting and fucking.”

“What else can you expect from rabble?”

Their voices had been low, but they clearly intended Deryn to overhear what was said. She clenched her fists, wishing she was able to force the words back down their throats. Regardless of her chance of winning the fight, taking her anger out on someone would feel so good, but under the circumstances, the luxury was not one she could afford. The door closed behind her, cutting out another round of sneering laughter.

The King’s Marshal for the district sat behind his desk, pouting disdainfully at the sheet of notes from the clerk. He was a hatchet-faced man in his mid forties, with a more businesslike manner than either of his subordinates, although this was no great feat. Deryn knew his name was Palemon, and that he was a distant cousin of the king, although allegedly out of favor, which explained his exile to the unfashionable northern fringes of Galvonia. The prior knowledge was useful, since Palemon did not bother to introduce himself.

“You claim to have had money stolen by a whore?” Palemon’s tone made a question of the statement, as if its truth were in doubt.

“Yes, sir.”

“But you have no idea where, and only a rough guess for when?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could you describe the whore?”

“No, sir.”

“Male? Female? Or didn’t you notice?”

Deryn ignored the sarcasm. “I can describe the grifter who spiked my beer and took me to the clip joint.”

The marshal looked again at the notes, as if refreshing his memory. “Ah, yes. You claim you were drugged.”

“I was drugged.”

“I have no difficulty believing you weren’t in full possession of whatever wits you own. But what’s your evidence it wasn’t merely that you’d had a few beers too many?”

“I’m sure.”

“Can you prove it?”

“I thought at the time the beer Abran gave me had a odd aftertaste.”

“I asked if you could prove it. Do you have any proof?”

Deryn sighed. “No, sir.”

Palemon leaned back and steepled his fingers. “So, supposing I have all my officers ignore the rest of their responsibilities, and devote themselves solely to tracking down this brothel, though we have no information about where to look, or how to recognize the place, or anyone in it. If they should be fortunate enough to succeed, what if the whores claim you had agreed to pay them this money for their services? Could you deny it? I agree, given the state you were clearly in, it’s doubtful you could have gotten value for money, but that’s not their fault.”