by Regina Watts
“Order recruits and young Church members alike are shielded from such nuances of the faith,” he confessed, shaking his head sadly. “Generally, once a paladin learns of them, he’s already been confirmed and battle-proven, and he is much too devoted to the protection of the Church to think twice…therefore, it never changes. The practice is traditional, extending back many centuries to, oh, several wars, when concubines taken amid the spoils required education in the ways of their new faith.”
My jaw hung open only wider. “Is this not the very practice of slavery for which we people of the surface claim to despise the durrow? For which our Church has called the whole species heretical?”
Still quite grim-faced, Fortisto said, “That is, I should say, only the foremost reason why the dark elves are so despised by the Order…but, populated as it is by brutes worse than Zweiding, I must admit your branch of the faith has no particular love for anything but itself. It has no patience for other faiths, species, or thoughts. We share the same roof, and our god bears the same name…but there are times when I wonder if we are, in any sense, part of the same organization.”
I overflowed with questions about such a disturbing revelation from which my childhood had shielded me, but the old priest was already heading back into his office. As I followed him, he adjusted the reading glasses he’d put on to study the runes.
“Now—if I’m reading our Lord’s will correctly, it seems you’ll find what you seek in this area, or thereabouts…”
Of all districts, he pointed to the one where we stayed. My heart leapt with hope and I caught his shoulder in enthusiasm. While Fortisto laughed merrily as I told him, “Of course, the slums—Grimalkin hates to spend money even more than Odile.”
“Odile?”
“A friend.” I hesitated, guarding the truth only because of my conversation with Zweiding. “Someone from the Nightlands. Surely—surely, Father, it was the right thing to stand by my honor and do as Weltyr commanded me?”
“It was, of course. You know the culture of the Order…you’ve never been suited to it. If you were not such a superb fighter I would tell you to join the brotherhood of priests—but then, you are as much a wanderer as Weltyr himself! And when he commands us to wander where we are not comfortable, we must swallow our fears for his sake.”
I nodded, somewhat more vindicated, and looked over the runes with curiosity. “So, Father—where might I find the men called Grimalkin and Hildolfr?”
“Hard to say…” Humming, looking over the runes, Fortisto said, “There’s so much…feminine energy here. And…money…one of these traitors wasn’t a woman, was it?”
“She was, but she has since repented for her crimes and agreed to assist me in reclaiming the Scepter.”
“What a good time you seem like you’re having! Making so many friends. Well…hm, then I don’t know what all this female energy is amid these messages…”
Yes, it was strange. Of all the men I’d ever known, Grimalkin was perhaps the least feminine by far. In fact, I’d heard it said the whole race of dwarves knew nothing of femininity—that even their women had been seen wearing beards. Whether this was true, I couldn’t say: all the female dwarves I’d known were smooth-faced. Whatever the case, Grimalkin tended to love women of other races…and he did love them. Women were the one matter on which we agreed—until, of course, our final conflict.
We’ll all be dying eventually anyway. Might as well die rich, fat, and well-laid.
“A brothel,” I said suddenly, crying out in delight to realize my own foolishness. “Of course! Where else would Grimalkin be? His last nights in Skythorn…naturally, he’ll be spending them in one of our brothels.”
“Good show, Burningsoul!” Excited to have been whisked even peripherally into the quest upon which I’d been sent, Fortisto slapped his hand to his fist and said, “That’s the way Weltyr’s sight works…through us, my boy. Through our knowledge.”
“So it is, Father.” My attention caught by the arrangement of runes upon the map, I indicated one that had fallen at the very edge of the board. A blank rune sat just outside the city boundary. “What does this one indicate, sire?”
“Ah—Weltyr. There are some priests who believe that, because the blank rune was incorporated later than the others, it is less valid…but Weltyr would not have inspired the meaning had he thought it inappropriate. All runes have some purpose, some definition, as much as the letters of the alphabet are defined by their sounds. I would take this to mean”—he prodded the blank rune just north of the map—“that Weltyr is watching over you very closely, Burningsoul…very closely indeed.”
“What a gratifying thought that is.” My hand pressing to my heart through the plates of my armor, I nodded at Fortisto. “Thank you, Father, for your time and service. Now it’s a question of discerning just which house of ill repute he’s chosen to visit! There can’t be that many, can there?”
GRIMALKIN AND THE SINGING NIXIE
HOW NAIVE I was! Looking back, I laugh at my relative innocence. Not having ventured far from the Temple until that far-venturing took me away from Skythorn altogether, I had not explored the more derelict districts of my own city and was therefore out of touch with them until we took rooms in the Mongoose. I therefore did not understand how desperate the poorer citizens were for any form of entertainment, be that an old-fashioned tavern brawl or the embrace of a woman paid for a few minutes of tenderness.
After bidding Fortisto good evening, (and assuring him more than once that, whatever the outcome of my duel with Zweiding, I accepted it was the doing of Weltyr), I exited the Temple. All the time, I looked for Elishta. Finding no sign of her, I resolved to check in on her the next day but then sadly had to rearrange my priorities away from concern for my friend. The most pressing issue was, in my opinion, the matter of finding Grimalkin. If I didn’t catch him soon, it would be some trick to subdue him in either the airship or Rhineland.
Therefore, my heart with Elishta, I hurried through Skythorn and headed again to the outer districts. As the air thickened with putrid chemicals, I slowed to more carefully assess my surroundings.
Amazing. When one wasn’t looking for them, they blended in completely…but, when the eye searched the crowd for a working woman, the fast-acting mind could pick them out in droves. Amid the artisans and hard-working laborers of the factory and production districts, a woman scanned the crowd on nearly every block.
Now realizing this process might have been a mite more challenging than previously anticipated, I regretted not having brought at least one of the women along to approach the prostitutes on my behalf. The truth of the matter was that, to a Skythorn woman looking for clientele—whether she was independent or affiliated with a brothel—the tattoo on my neck and the armor I wore was the ultimate sign of authority. The Temple had legal power as well as religious power, and the city guards were trained as part of the Order before being disseminated to cause trouble for already very troubled people. Add to that Strife at my hip, and I appeared to be an extremely unsubtle officer of the law looking to harass the working poor.
Therefore—thanking my good looks and even pausing by the window of a nearby leather-worker to fix my hair—I approached a ragged but motherly-looking older woman poised in an alcove where she intently scanned the faces of passers-by.
“Excuse me,” I said, trying to soften my tone further when she cringed at my coming and turned toward me with hard eyes that defied me to arrest her.
Speak from the heart, said a spirit inside me. Another of Weltyr’s messengers: intuition.
“Do you have a moment to answer a question in the name of Weltyr?”
Her expression changed into one of mystified amusement. Looking me up and down, beginning to relax, she asked, “You some kind of missionary?”
“Yes, in fact.” Seeing her heavily made-up eyes lingered upon Strife, I gestured to its pommel and told her casually, “For self-defense.”
“Uh-huh.” The woman looked harder into my
face. Her hair had been bleached blonde with queer concoctions enough times that it had started to thin, and it moved stiffly in her hand as she pushed it from her eyes. “You don’t seem the type of fellow to be talking to a lady like me.”
“Well, you see, I’ve lost track of a friend of mine. I think he’s probably spending some time with one of you lovely ladies somewhere around here.”
“A friend, huh?”
“One of my best,” I said with a smile that couldn’t help its own crookedness. She laughed at my unveiled irony, her posture relaxing more fully, her gaze turning from me and across the crowd again. “Lucky for me, he’s quite recognizable. A dwarf”—I gestured and her attention returned to me—“about yea tall, reddish beard usually adorned with runes, can’t seem to remember if he happened to have a weapon today…”
Rubbing her jaw, the woman drifted into thought before saying, “I ain’t seen anybody like that come through today. But you just go down these blocks here and try a few of my friends. If you have problems, tell ‘em Kuldi said they can talk to you. You don’t seem too bad…I can tell a real bastard when I see one.”
I laughed, assuring her, “If that’s the case, you would have remembered my friend.”
While Kuldi threw her head back with a witch’s cackle and a light slap of my arm, I smiled, bade her good evening, and set out again.
You may imagine, friend, that this process was repeated many, many times…with some variations. A few of the ladies I approached tried very hard to earn my patronage, and though I admit I have never had anything against prostitution, I certainly didn’t have a need for affection what with my companions waiting at the Mongoose. Therefore, politely as I could, I kept it short and sweet, inquiring whether anyone on the street had seen Grimalkin. At last, slowly, my blind dousing yielded a trickle of information.
A pair of girls were able to tell me that someone fitting his description had walked by earlier, perhaps an hour or so before. Someone else said they saw him walking with So-And-So. And where did she work? Oh, the girl I asked wasn’t sure…but maybe if I checked with What’s-Her-Name at the end of the next block over, she could remember it.
Finally, I got a chance ask Miss What’s where Miss And-So happened to work. Thanks to my ability to invoke the names of Kuldi, Veria, Quorana and Ishtrina, (as well as a few ounces of copper), the information was yielded: So-And-So was an elf named Cloyenda, and she worked at an establishment called The Singing Nixie.
The very sign for the place seemed, to my sometimes naive eye, quite risqué for something visible from the street…but what did I know about such things? It had surprised me how readily the women tried to push me into employing them. Things were very forthright in those hard-working quarters of the city, and it was simultaneously amusing and disorienting.
Particularly disorienting was the mingling of professionalism and sexuality. As I had been instructed, I went to the side of the building (for, like many such lightly disguised operations, the front was an apothecary) and knocked upon the employee entrance there. A slot slid open and a woman’s rustic voice demanded after a few seconds, “Who sent you, Paladin?”
“My god,” I told the darkness of the brothel, “and Kuldi.”
With a light snort, the madame informed me, “Kuldi’s our competition. Why would she send you to us?”
“Because I’m not looking for company. I’m looking for a customer.”
A hesitation. Consideration. Finally: “If I let you in here, what cause have our customers to trust us again?”
“The customer isn’t from here, and knows no one to tell about all this. You needn’t tell anybody any details. It’s rooms men buy in these establishments, correct? Not women. Therefore”—I held up a few gold coins and swore I saw points of light in the darkness of the slot—“all anyone need know is that I came to buy a high-priced room for a few hours, and things got out of hand.”
The slot slammed shut. After a second or two, the door protested its way open. A severe-looking woman with tight gray hair and a dress of red velvet appeared on the threshold. Her hand extended without remark. I set the coins in her palm and she tested their weight, sought the impressions of her teeth, then slid them into her slightly stained pinafore before she stood aside to let me in.
“If you intend to cause any kind of trouble, cause it outside.”
“Thank you,” I told her, trying to make myself seem as small and harmless as I could in the lounge dotted with faded furniture and dying plants. “I swear to you, madame, I will mind my business…but, theoretically, if a red-bearded dwarf did come through here—say, with a Cloyenda—what room would you have rented to him?”
She gestured, heading through a beaded curtain to put her money away. “That hallway, past the parlor, third door on the left once you’re up the stairs. Don’t let me hear a commotion.”
With that, the madame of the house vanished from my sight. I set a hand upon Strife’s pommel and made my way upstairs as quietly as my armor and size would allow…and although the thunder of my usual stride was softened by my intent, it was by no means muted.
There was also the small matter of getting into the room. I therefore stopped by the parlor before the stairs, hoping to find someone who might assist me in this scheme. At once my eyes filled with a wealth of silk, lace, and floral flesh.
It was fair to say that not every woman there was of exceeding beauty, but it was true that each had her charms, and most were, at best, half-dressed. They perked to see me fill the doorway. After taking in my face, a fair few looked a way I can only describe as hopeful. Preening, smiling, batting eyelashes, these interested saleswomen leaned forward or recrossed their legs to fix the hem of their skirt a bit higher. Only one, however, spoke up to me: a splendid redhead, a woman perhaps fifteen years my senior who was as beautiful as Weltyr’s bride ever made her chambermaids. With a foxy smile fluttering past her crimson lips, the woman looked me over and said from where she leaned beside the hearth, “Are you looking for a room, soldier?”
“And someone to take me to it, yes. You look like you might be willing to help.”
“Oh, for a visitor like you? Always.” With a sly wink at the disappointed ladies who sank back into their couches and resumed their conversations at a more subdued murmur than before, the redhead pushed herself upright and smoothed the fabric of her long slip. The extraordinary sky blue of her thin gown was one of the things that drew my eye to her (aside from her many other natural qualities, of course) and, as she slunk past me, she smelled of rosewater and myrrh. I took a liking to her instantly: whatever her profession, the aroma of her hair and body reminded me of church. This seemed to me as fine a sign as any that I had made the right choice.
Indeed, I discerned she may well have been pious. In the hallway into which she led me, she asked, “Are paladins of Weltyr permitted the leisure our rooms afford, sire?”
“Please, miss, ‘Rorke’ is fine…and, unfortunately, I must confess I am not here on leisure, though if I were I do not think Weltyr would have the least qualm were I to spend leisure time with you. Only priests and monks need to turn their attentions away from women…we paladins are so much of the world already, and so much in tune with Weltyr’s dynamic power as the All-Father, that it does us no harm to indulge in other worldly pastimes.”
Having paused upon the first landing of the stairs to listen, one foot poised on the step before her and the other still supporting her slight weight, the woman looked at me curiously. “If it is not leisure that brings you, then what?”
“That would be a far longer story than to just give you a few coins to get me into a certain room…a story that might get you into trouble, too, depending how this goes.”
With a crooked sort of grin and a twinkling light to her strange green eyes, the prostitute folded her arms over her ribs. “I never get into trouble that I don’t cause…believe me.”
“Weltyr has sent me here,” I decided to say, the coins already rattling in my hand evidently
not sufficient to buy the businesswoman’s compliance. “I am on a mission from the All-Father to retrieve a missing relic of his. The man in the third room on the left should have information as to its whereabouts.”
“What relic would that be, sire?”
“Please, ‘Rorke’ really is perfectly fine—I don’t suppose you’d be wiling to accept that this is a private matter on behalf of the Church?”
“For all I know, you’re not a servant of Weltyr at all, ‘Rorke.’ You could be anyone…a slave to Oppenhir.”
“Then this tattoo”—I indicated the black sun upon my neck—“would have faded; and this sword would have broken, no longer serving any purpose in my master’s name.”
“I suppose that’s true…” Considering me thoughtfully, the woman at last extended her hand for the coins. I filled her palm and let her count before, smiling, the prostitute crooked a finger and continued up the stairs. “Very well, Paladin. Come along, follow me…let me give a moment to get my colleague out of the room. You said he was staying third on the left? With Cloyenda?”
“I believe that’s just the case.”
“I saw him come in…a dwarf, was he? Red hair?”
“The very man.”
“Well, be careful…he brought an axe with him, much as you brought along your sword.”
I had been counting on that—that some altercation would occur regardless of whether or not Gimalkin was armed—but I don’t think I anticipated the struggle that awaited me. The greatest problems had previously been the matter of how to get into the room, and how to get the prostitute named Cloyenda out before any collateral damage could be done to her person.
The woman I hired solved that for me, both matters simple with her at the task. I walked softly with her and, at her gesture, waited against the wall. She paused before the door and rapped lightly upon it, calling, “Cloyenda?”
A bit of muttering was audible from within the room. Footsteps creaked along the wood and the door cracked open. My guide through the house smiled at her colleague, asking, “Could you come out here please, Cloyenda?”
