by Watts Martin
“I didn’t know what was in them!” Roulette shrieked.
The vixen narrowed her eyes. “What was in what?”
“The perfume bottles. They—they—he tried to rape me.”
The pressure on her shoulders relaxed, and it took a few seconds before the vixen spoke, now softly. “Start at the beginning.”
Roulette swallowed. “All I was going to do was dance.” Tears started to mat the fur under her eyes. “He said he’d pay me a lot, and he agreed—no touching. But he got worked up and—and bent me over the dresser…”
She risked a glance up at the vixen’s face. Her expression remained frozen, unreadable.
“He had…bottles on the dresser. He said they were perfume. I grabbed one—sprayed him in his face to make him let go—and—and—his face started to burn. And bleed.” Her voice broke. “And I ran. That’s it. I swear.”
The vixen dropped her arms away and remained quiet for several seconds. “Acid in perfume bottles.”
“Yes! He…” Roulette shuddered. “I think he was going to use it on me. After the dance.”
At that, the vixen showed the most emotion the raccoon had seen from her so far: she closed her eyes for a full second and clenched her fists. “You don’t know who he was, do you?” she finally murmured.
Roulette shook her head, sniffling.
“An influential businessman in another town. A friend of the damned assistant mayor here. And someone I’d been watching for a month because I’m sure he is—was—planning something.” She ran a hand through her hair, then focused her gaze on Roulette again. “Get your things. Just what you can carry.”
“What?” The raccoon shook her head. “Look. Look. I just want to get out of here. I’m going to go to Raneadhros and—”
“The Brothers are going to be looking for you, and if they find you, they will kill you. They can’t take the chance, however small, that someone official might actually listen to you. You’re not going to make it to the border.”
“What? This is crazy! Who are the ‘Brothers?’ Why should I—”
The vixen took her shoulders again, more gently, but her expression remained hard as ice. “This is why we don’t have time for this. Get your things. Now.”
Roulette stared into her eyes. She could tell the vixen believed what she was saying, although that didn’t mean she wasn’t crazy.
“Dammit,” she swore aloud, then crouched by her trunk, surveying its contents. Clothes, mostly none too fine. Jewelry. Three pairs of sandals. Four books. Her knapsack. A few mementos of home. She began stuffing clothes hurriedly into the sack. “I at least need the strongbox—”
“You need to be alive, and that means you need to move fast. I don’t want the next place I see you to be the morgue. Lock the trunk, shove it back under your bed, and lock the door. How long is the room paid for?”
Roulette did as instructed, re-locking the trunk and pushing it under the bed until it was well-hidden once more. “Through the end of the week—hey!” Her ears folded back as the vixen pulled her out of the room.
“Lock the door.”
“I know,” Roulette snapped, locking it.
“Then come on.” The vixen rushed her outside, marching her at a military pace away from downtown, glancing from side to side constantly.
When they reached a corner two blocks away, she abruptly pointed to the right. “Go down the street another block, turn right at Andersen, then three blocks. The Aid Society will be on the left side of the road. Tell them Lisha sent you.”
“Where are you—”
“To check out your story.” She spun on her heel and walked the other direction.
Roulette stared after the vixen in stunned silence for several seconds, then swore again and hurried down the street.
Lisha’s directions took the raccoon through a section of Norinton she usually stayed clear of—the area around the boarding house had been unlovely, but this area was positively dismal. All the windows had bars, but few had glass. Most walls remained unpainted beyond crude messages from vandals. Trash piled forgotten in the streets. Even a human nose would find the air rancid, but she didn’t see a single human, only suspicious-looking L’rovri and Melifen, Vraini and Rilima she refused to meet eyes with. She gripped her knapsack tightly, wishing—not for the first time—she’d replaced the cheap little dagger that she’d lost on her journey from Orinthe.
Once on Andersen the atmosphere improved, although it never quite returned to the merely ramshackle heights of the boarding house’s neighborhood. After three blocks, Roulette studied the building to her left, a long brick warehouse. It didn’t look like any of its high, small windows had ever had glass to be knocked out. No address, sign, or even door could be seen.
She walked along its blank front. Maybe the Society was farther along the street? No, past the warehouse was a once-stately wooden house now doing time as a bail bonds office. Frowning, she looked down the wide alley between the two buildings.
There it was: a wooden sign halfway down the length of the warehouse jutting out over a plain wooden door. Simple, newly painted white letters read PAN-SPECIES AID SOCIETY.
With a glance around to see if anyone seemed to be looking her direction—no one was—Roulette hurried up to the door and rapped on it.
“It’s open,” a woman’s voice called from inside.
The floor of the small room she stepped into was so sandy it took Roulette a moment to be sure stone lay beneath; there was barely enough space for the receptionist’s desk and a wooden waiting bench. Pipes hung from the ceiling rather than being hidden. The air smelled faintly of charcoal and must.
“Good morning,” the Rilima behind the desk said, looking up. “Can I help you?”
Roulette brushed back her hair, finding herself looking away from the mouse woman. “I don’t know. I was told to come here.”
“We can provide shelter, food, clothes, help finding work, and legal aid.” The receptionist took on the cadence of someone reciting from memory. “We’ll need your name and a little about you.”
“I’m Roulette. Lisha sent me here.”
The mouse’s gaze abruptly sharpened, and she hesitated before continuing. “Roulette, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Yes.”
The receptionist stood up. “Wait here. I’m going to go find one of our advisers.” She waved at the bench, then stepped through a doorless opening to the right of her desk.
Roulette sat down. The bench creaked alarmingly.
She closed her eyes momentarily. Lisha had sent her to a damned homeless shelter, hadn’t she? In the name of the Three Lords, she didn’t need or want this kind of charity. She’d been getting by just fine on her own since coming here.
Of course, assuming Lisha wasn’t lying, she’d never had someone trying to kill her, either. She couldn’t see why the vixen would lie to send her here, but she hardly had a reason to trust her.
Sighing, she twisted her hands in the cloth of her skirt, suppressing a desire to crack open the door and see if anyone shady was glancing down the alley.
“Hello! Good morning!” an energetic male voice came before its owner came into the room. A trim orange tabby, a few inches taller and a good thirty years older than she was, stepped in, followed by the receptionist. He wore a tan tunic and dark brown breeches, a fashion long out of style. “Roulette?”
“Yes.” She stood up, clutching her bag.
“I’m Tiran Tharp.” He smiled, sweeping a hand toward the opening he’d just stepped through. “If you’d accompany me?”
Smiling back hesitantly, she followed him.
Past the office, the warehouse revealed itself as one huge space divided into a haphazard maze, rooms and hallways carved out by thin wooden walls that reached only two-thirds of the way to the high ceiling. As they spoke they walked past offices, storage rooms, bedrooms, even a cafeteria. “So. Roulette. You’re one of Lisha’s friends?”
“No.” She shook her head quickly.
“Not at all.”
“One of her enemies?” His tone grew amused.
“No,” she repeated. “I mean…” She sighed. “I’m—I’m in trouble that she knows about. She made me come here.”
“Mmm. Trouble, involving Lisha.” He lowered his voice. “Tell me this. Do you think people are going to come here looking for you? Or does Lisha?”
“She does,” she said softly.
“And you need a place to stay, then. For how long?”
“Just a day or two, I hope. I have things back at the boarding house I need to get. As soon as I can I’m leaving the country.”
He pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. “Well. I expect Lisha will appear this afternoon and give me whatever details about your situation she deems fit to share.”
“So Lisha works here?”
“She works with us part-time. She also works with other more activist groups.” He said activist as if he were tasting a spoiled anchovy.
“What is it she does?”
“She crusades,” he replied with a faint sigh. “Here, we’ve come to our best guest room.” He opened a door.
They’d tried to make it nice, with a few wall hangings and matching pretty—if worn—blue calico covers on the small bed. It was smaller than the boarding house room, and more spartan, but far better than the cot in a shared room she’d expected. “If you stay longer than you expect, we’ll likely have to find you less posh accommodations, but—just for a few days—we can spare this one.”
She smiled. “Thank you very much.”
“Lunch is served at noon—we passed the cafeteria on the way here. You’re free to go anywhere outside of the little front office space. We have a nice reading room, too.”
Roulette nodded.
“If you need anything and can’t find me, just go to the receptionist. We’ll talk again soon.”
“Thank you again.”
He closed the door behind him. The door had no lock on this side, just a simple hook latch. She could have a modicum of privacy, but no security. Of course, it wasn’t as if the boarding house had been a fortress, and the warehouse as a whole might be more secure. She’d just never stopped to worry so much before.
Hooking the door, she unpacked her clothes into the room’s dresser, smoothing them out as best she could, then tossed the knapsack on the floor and fell backward on the bed, staring up at the warehouse’s wooden ceiling. She could see birds in the rafters above the grid of pipework.
“Welcome home, Roulette,” she muttered, closing her eyes.
She didn’t intend to fall asleep, and when she woke she wasn’t sure she even had. But the light and shadows in the rafters had changed position slightly. There were soft voices in the hallway outside, and footsteps.
The raccoon held her breath until the footsteps passed, then grimaced. A life of hiding in shadows and flinching at noises would in time do her in as well as any blade. Standing up, she smoothed out her clothes, unlatched the door and walked out into the hallway, retracing the path Tiran had taken to get here.
A different side hallway led to a modest library, perhaps the “nice reading room” that the tabby had spoken of. The room could have held a thousand books, but she doubted there were more than a hundred shelved, and most didn’t look to be in good shape. Donations, no doubt, and ones that they hadn’t been able to turn around and sell. The room’s sole occupant was a young wolf who appeared to be playing chess with no partner.
Roulette stepped inside. Standing, the L’rovri would be just about six feet high, a touch short for his kind. The longer she looked at him the less sure of his age she was; he looked her age, but moved like someone much older, and muttered voicelessly as he pushed pieces around the board with deliberate motions. A flickering glass ball the size of a walnut sat on the table at the board’s edge.
He was so intent on the “game” that it took him ten seconds to realize someone was there. When he did, he jerked upright, nearly knocking over the black queen.
Roulette turned more fully to him and smiled, keeping her expression demure. “Hello.”
“I did not hear you come in.” He turned his attention back to the chess board. “You are new here.”
“I guess I am. I’m Roulette.”
The wolf grunted. “Gregir. Volunteer?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Refugee.” He moved two pieces at once, frowned, then started moving several into different positions.
“Just for a few days. What is it you’re doing?”
“That is what we all say. I am recording chess strategy.” He tapped the orb with a claw tip. “It captures what it sees.” Pressing his finger to it more firmly, he leaned toward the glass and said, “Stop.” The glow went out.
Tapping it once more, he said, “Show.” The air above the ball shimmered and coalesced into a small image of Gregir, the chess board and part of the room, distorted as if reflected by a curved mirror. The image of Gregir began to move chess pieces around, mutters replayed in tinny fidelity by the little device. He slid his fingers over it, making the image grow and shrink, then tapped it once more and again said, “Stop.”
“That’s amazing!”
“It is bound magic. Not very expensive, just rare in this country. There are a few of these around the building. Good for legal meetings, yes?” He picked up the orb and slipped it into a pocket. “So what brought you to this snowy pit?”
“I moved here with a friend to work at a vineyard down in Bergin Valley. She’d been offered a management job, and I was supposed to work in the tasting room. When we got there, her job became some kind of much lower-level assistant position and mine didn’t exist.”
He snorted. “They would never have anyone but a human serve customers.”
She folded her arms and half-smiled. “They had a Melifen working in the tasting room already.”
“Ah, then they had their token and could look very progressive, yes?” Gregir pushed back from the chess board and stood up. “Are you hungry? We can just make the end of lunch.”
“Yes. I am.” She stepped through the door he held open, but as they walked down the hall she avoided standing right by his side.
“When we work at farms here, we are usually in fields. But that does not look like what you do.”
“I’m a dancer.”
“Ballet? Exotic? Clogging?”
“Just street performances. A little exotic, sometimes.”
“Mmm.” He shrugged, tail wagging once behind him. “I am sure you are good, but it is very strange for one of us to do dancing here.”
“That might be what makes it work. I’m exotic just by being a raccoon.”
Gregir grunted again, the momentary curl of his lip suggesting what he thought of that rationale, and remained silent.
“How long have you been here? At the Society, I mean.”
“Seven weeks. Refugee and volunteer. I am trying to chase birds out of the ceiling.”
She laughed. “I guess they could get a warehouse cheap.”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t seen one with all the pipes exposed like this, though.”
He pointed up. “See the little valves on the pipes? If the place started burning, they could turn on the pipes and water would pour down from those and put it out.”
“Really!” She craned her head back to look more closely. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“You see the little valves in other buildings around Achoren. Warehouses, expensive hotels, meeting halls. But I am not sure the ones here even work, so try not to catch on fire.”
The cafeteria was only eight tables, and the sole other diner was finishing his meal—they’d just barely caught the last serving. Roulette had correctly guessed the style of food: one meat entree and one meatless, both so simply prepared they had no hint of character. She chose the vegetable plate, poured a drink from one of the pitchers on the counter, and brought her tray to a table. Gregir sat down across from her.
The food had little seasoning, relying on diners to help themselves to an array of dry spices and bottled sauces. This was standard practice for cooking food in quantity when you couldn’t know ahead of time which races would be dining, but she’d gotten so used to eating food cooked in Achoren style—seemingly founded on the principle that sage, salt and white pepper were the only spices anyone would need—that she’d forgotten how welcome a few shakes of garlic salt could be.
Gregir remained silent through most of his meal, but finally broke the silence. “So you are staying here for a few days?”
Roulette nodded.
“It will be frenzied around here soon. You know about the rally on Starday? Two days from now, yes?”
She shook her head. “No. For what?”
He downed the last bite of his meat. “The immigration referendum.” He waved his fork at her. “Do you know what that is?”
Roulette bristled, racking her brain to prove she wasn’t that ignorant of local politics. “A proposal to tighten the policies, right?” she hazarded. “But it’s not up for a Parliament vote yet.”
“‘Tighten,’ yes.” He snorted. “It would make it almost impossible to immigrate here unless you have a landed relative in Achoren. Non-humans could not own land in Achoren before the empire-wide Parity Edicts, so we all know what it is meant to do, yes? And there is no Parliament vote. It is a popular referendum.”
“Do you think it’s going to win?”
He shrugged. “It will not win in Bergin Valley, but here in Norinton, with Massey? It will win. And I think more of Achoren is like Norinton than it is like the valley.”
Roulette hated to ask, but she had to. “Who’s Massey?”
Gregir rolled his eyes, looking amused. “The assistant mayor of our fair city, and the man who wrote the referendum. You have seen any tiny framed Achoren crests showing up around town the last few months?”
She thought, then nodded. “Yes. One. Maybe two.”
“Courtesy of his fine upstanding group of fine upstanding Achoren nationals. You’ll meet a few at a counter-rally across from ours on Starday.” He downed a big gulp of birch beer. “You might even get to meet him. He gives the Aid Society money.”
