Dragon Weather

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Arlian started to ask why there was a stool, then thought better of it and hurried to the closet door.

  In his past experience, which had been limited to one mountaintop village, “closets” were small, rough storerooms; his family had had none, but the two largest homes in Obsidian had boasted one closet apiece, off the master’s chamber. Arlian was rather startled to discover that Sweet’s closet was another matter entirely.

  It was small, not much more than a cupboard, and made to seem smaller still by the gowns and robes hung on hooks on either side. The rear wall held half a dozen large drawers.

  And everything, the walls, the drawers, the inside of the door, even the ceiling, was covered in rich red velvet; the floor was hidden by the smallest, thickest carpet Arlian had ever seen, woven in a floral pattern in a dozen shades of red. Two fine white tapers, unlit but half burned, were mounted in golden sconces on the rear wall, to either side of one of the drawers.

  And as Sweet had promised, a stool stood in the center of the tiny room—a stool upholstered, like the walls, in red velvet, its black wooden legs adorned with golden filigree.

  Arlian stared, trying to imagine why anyone would waste such appointments in a windowless storage compartment, then remembered himself and stepped inside. He turned to close the door, and stopped dead.

  The closet was not entirely windowless after all. The door had a window set into it, a little window completely hidden from the outside by the pink silk covering.

  Sweet glanced up just then and noticed his puzzlement.

  “Sometimes we have customers who just want to watch,” she explained.

  “Oh,” Arlian said, blinking as he tried to absorb this completely unfamiliar notion. He found it troubling; he settled slowly onto the stool and pulled the door shut.

  He found himself looking out through the silk, with a good view of most of the bedroom; Sweet and the bed were in the center of his field of vision. The filtering silk gave everything a pinkish cast, as if seen though a rosy mist, and the pink bedclothes consequently tended to fade into the background while Sweet’s pale skin and black hair stood out sharply.

  She smiled at him, then tugged her satin jacket into place, gave her hair a final pat, and sat waiting on the bed.

  Arlian thought she was heartbreakingly beautiful there, dark curls spilling over her shoulders, wearing only the light jacket, lace skirt, and golden girdle.

  And then the door opened and a man stepped in, a man dressed in fine clothes, with rings on his fingers and plumes in his hair; Sweet bowed her head and murmured, “My lord.”

  The man backhanded her cheek. “I gave you no leave to speak,” he said.

  Arlian started from his seat at the sound of the blow, but caught himself. He clenched his fists and forced himself to sit back down.

  Sweet did not speak again while her customer was there; the customer addressed her only to give curt orders that she hastened to obey.

  Arlian watched what followed in sickened amazement—or sometimes could not bear to watch and turned his head aside, eyes tightly closed, trying not to hear the sounds from the bedchamber. He bit his lower lip until it bled to keep himself from shouting out in protest; his fingernails dug into his palms, his knuckles white.

  He found himself praying to the dead gods that it would stop. Had Sweet called for help he knew he would have been out of the closet and upon the customer in an instant, even if it meant his capture and execution.

  But she did not call out, and eventually it was over. The customer tied his breeches, straightened his velvet jacket, and left without another word.

  And Arlian fell out of the closet and staggered to the bedside, desperate to do what he could to comfort Sweet after such abuse. He struggled for words and could find none as he reached out to touch her cheek.

  She sat up, startled, and looked at him dry-eyed.

  “He hurt you,” Arlian said.

  “No more than usual,” she replied calmly. She picked up the mirror from the bedside table to study the shallow scratches on her face, left by the man’s rings. “Mistress isn’t going to like that,” she said. “She’ll probably charge him extra.” Then she looked at Arlian and saw the expression on his face.

  “Oh, Triv!” she said, “you look so surprised! What were you expecting?”

  Arlian could see her struggling not to laugh at his stricken appearance. She seemed so utterly untroubled by what she had just been through that he began to doubt his own memory of what he had seen.

  “Did you enjoy that?” he asked.

  She snorted. “Of course not,” she said. “If I had, he wouldn’t need to pay for it, would he?” She smiled at him. “You poor boy,” she said. “You do have a lot to learn. I didn’t like it at all, but I’m not as delicate as I look.”

  “So I see,” he said, struggling to control the seething tangle of emotions he felt.

  She stared at him for a moment, and tears started in her eyes. “You’re so sweet, to worry about me!” she said. “You should be Sweet, and I should be Trivial!”

  “Never,” he said. “You could never be unimportant.”

  “Oh, you’re silly!” she said. She blinked away her tears and gathered herself. When she was composed she said, “We should have a little while now, at the very least, before anyone else comes in, and we may have all night—let’s see about getting you cleaned up!”

  11

  Rose

  There were sixteen slaves in sixteen rooms on the upper floors of the House of Carnal Society; crippled as they were, and kept busy by customers, they ordinarily saw little of one another.

  Arlian’s presence changed that. On the very first night he was there, long after midnight, after the lanterns by the coach door had been doused, after the lamps in the hallways were out, after the guards had taken their nighttime post and the dreaded Mistress had retired to her ground-floor chamber, Sweet threw her arms around Arlian’s neck and had him carry her out into the hallway and up the stairs to the first door on the third floor. “I could walk,” she said, “on my knees—that’s what I usually do. It’s hard work, though, and slow. It’s much more fun this way.”

  They moved slowly in the dark, and Arlian tried to be as quiet as he could; fortunately the stairs were stone, and did not creak. Sweet did not seem to be particularly concerned about maintaining silence, but she wasn’t trespassing, and she was valuable property. If they were caught she could claim to have been carried off against her will.

  They were not caught; they reached the door Sweet had indicated, and Sweet took one hand from Arlian’s shoulder. She knocked, and then knocked again.

  The motion unbalanced them, and yielded no reply. Finally, at Sweet’s whispered insistence, Arlian took over the task and rapped on the polished wood until a voice from within called, “At this hour?”

  “It’s me, Rose,” Sweet called. “Let me in!”

  “Sweet? Why?” Rose asked sleepily, but a moment later the door swung open, spilling light.

  At first Arlian stared right over Rose’s head; after a moment’s confusion he remembered that of course Rose would be female and therefore shorter than himself to begin with, and unable to stand because her feet were gone. He looked down and found her kneeling in the doorway—a redhead, a little taller and older and plumper than Sweet, with an oval face and green eyes, wearing a gauzy nightgown. She held a candle.

  “Who’s this?” Rose asked.

  “Rose, this is Triv. Triv, this is Rose, my best friend here and the only person I’m absolutely sure we can trust,” Sweet said. “May we come in, Rose?”

  “What’s he doing here?” Rose demanded, but she moved aside and let Arlian step inside and deposit Sweet on the bed.

  Where Sweet’s room was decorated in pink silk, Rose’s was decorated in dusky red velvet; where Sweet’s room held four glass lamps, Rose’s had fat candles perched in a dozen places. Arlian took a quick glance around, then asked Rose, “Shall I give you a hand?”

  “You’
re not a customer, are you?” Rose asked, looking up at him. “Nor a guard, dressed like that.” She didn’t answer his question, but raised her arms toward him, the candle foremost.

  Arlian took the hint. He placed the candle on a nearby table, then carried Rose to the bed, setting her beside Sweet—who immediately leaned over and gave Rose a hug.

  “It’s been so long since we had a chance to talk!” Sweet said. “Why did they ever move you up here?”

  “What’s he doing here?” Rose asked, ignoring Sweet’s question. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  Arlian decided that more light would be a good idea, and began lighting more candles from the one Rose had provided.

  “I was looking out the window, and I saw him in the stableyard,” Sweet said. “I invited him to climb up, and he did!” She giggled.

  Rose turned and eyed Arlian appraisingly. “You know, if they catch you in here you’re in serious trouble.”

  “I’m in serious trouble anyway,” Arlian said, looking up from his third candle.

  Rose looked questioningly at Sweet.

  “He’s an escaped slave,” Sweet explained. “From the mines in Deep Delving.”

  Rose frowned. “If anyone asks, he broke in here uninvited, right, Sweet?” she said. “And we poor helpless crippled women couldn’t do a thing to stop him.”

  “Of course!” Sweet agreed, nodding enthusiastically. “Oh, absolutely. We couldn’t even scream for help, with the thick walls—no one would hear us. He was unstoppable. And he raped me, too.” She giggled again.

  Rose threw Arlian a glance. “Did he?”

  “More the other way around,” Sweet said.

  “Not that I minded,” Arlian added, as he put a fifth candle back in its place and decided that would do.

  “Anyway,” Sweet said, getting down to business, “I thought we could clean him up, give him some real clothes, so he won’t have to hide all the time.”

  “We could,” Rose admitted.

  “And maybe somehow I can help you, in exchange,” Arlian said, setting down the candle he had started with.

  Rose snorted. “Help us?” she asked. “Help us how? Unless you’re a wizard who can grow us new feet, what can you do?” She shook her head. “No, we’ll be here until we’re too old to please the customers, and then we’re dog food.”

  Sweet bit her lower lip. “Don’t say that,” she said.

  Arlian stared at the two women. “Dog food? You don’t mean that literally, do you?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Sweet said, clapping her hands over her ears.

  “It’s one possibility,” Rose told him.

  Arlian stood staring stupidly at her, unable to think of anything he could say to such an outrage. For a few seconds no one spoke.

  Then Sweet recovered herself and said, “Let’s start with his hair.”

  Rose hesitated. “Sweet,” she said, “letting him in here is one thing. We can say he forced us. But fixing his hair? What if someone finds us?”

  “Then we’ll be dog food that much sooner,” Sweet said. “What’s the difference, if that’s how we’ll wind up anyway? Come on, it’ll be fun!”

  Rose frowned at Arlian.

  “Why would anyone check on us?” Sweet asked cajolingly. “They never do—that’s the whole point of cutting our feet off! The guards only watch for people breaking in, they don’t see what we do in here.”

  “Mistress does.”

  “She’s asleep downstairs! And Triv’s here, and we can’t just send him out into the cold the way he is! If we hear someone coming he’ll hide.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you like. Under the bed, in the closet…”

  “In the attic?”

  Sweet blinked. “There’s an attic?”

  Rose pointed at a panel in the ceiling of her room, its edges hidden by gilt trim. “That lifts up,” she said. “Mistress was thinking of putting in a peephole, but decided against it.” She looked at Arlian. “Think you can get up there?”

  “I think so,” he said, gauging the height of the ceiling carefully. “If I have something to stand on. That chair would do.” He pointed.

  “Well, put the chair where you need it, just in case,” Rose said.

  Arlian nodded and moved the chair; while he did the two women whispered together. When he was satisfied with the chair’s location he turned back to them.

  “Come on,” Sweet said. “We’re going to fix you up. When we’re done you’ll be the most beautiful man in Westguard!”

  “At least,” Rose agreed. “Give me a hand, would you?”

  Rose, Arlian discovered, did not have the same small bedside table Sweet did; instead one corner of her room was equipped with a vanity table, two stools, three mirrors, and a huge quantity of cosmetics, as well as a pair of brass lamps to provide steadier illumination than candles could. Arlian set one woman on each stool, then knelt between them.

  Rose untied his scrap of leather and began vigorously brushing out his tangled hair; Sweet was more direct and snatched up a pair of scissors.

  “I liked the way Lord Inthior wore his, didn’t you?” she asked.

  Rose looked up from Arlian’s tangled curls and frowned. “You mean swept back in the center and cut short on the sides? I don’t know…” She studied Arlian, took his chin in her hand and tilted his face up.

  Arlian had no idea what they were talking about, of course. He had never heard of any Lord Inthior, and had little concept of hairstyling. He was hardly inclined to resist, though; being alone here with two beautiful women, in these warm and perfumed chambers, was so wonderful he could scarcely believe it was really happening. If he just had something to eat, and no concerns about discovery, he thought this would be complete perfection.

  Rose turned his head and he found himself staring up into her intense green eyes.

  She was beautiful, no question, but he found himself looking critically at her face, noting all the tiny ways in which Sweet’s was preferable.

  Then Rose smiled at him. “Inthior’s style it is,” she said. “I think you’ll like it, Triv.” She turned to the table and found a metal comb, which she handed to Sweet.

  Sweet had already started clipping at Arlian’s dangling locks, but she accepted the comb and began tugging it through the tangles. Rose, meanwhile, found another comb and scissors and attacked Arlian’s beard.

  In time Rose traded her scissors for assorted cloths and powders and began cleaning Arlian’s face, while Sweet continued working on his hair. It took an hour, and much fussing and fraying of tempers, before the two women declared themselves satisfied and sat back.

  “Take a look,” Rose said, gesturing at the biggest of the three mirrors.

  Arlian looked.

  The face that confronted him was one he could hardly credit as his own. His beard had been trimmed, shaped, and slicked down with some unfamiliar waxy substance, and was now reduced from the chest-covering chaos he had seen reflected in windows and ponds to a short, almost triangular affair that reached a graceful point just an inch or two below his chin. His hair had been cut away and swept back from his forehead, leaving a point at the center of his forehead that seemed to echo the beard, and showing bare skin at either temple. Dark curls wrapped neatly around his ears. Wax and powder had concealed his sunburn, and his complexion was now unnaturally smooth and clear.

  And the face thus adorned was straight and strong, with clear dark eyes and firm, full lips surrounding a long and elegant nose—a nose like Grandsir’s—eyes like his father’s, and his mother’s mouth.

  The result was nothing like the face of the village boy he remembered; he looked instead like an aristocrat.

  “That’s amazing,” he said.

  Sweet leaned over and kissed him on the now exposed temple. Rose just smiled.

  “Now,” Rose said, “I think it’s time to get some sleep before they wake us for breakfast.”

  “Should I go, then?” Arlian asked, ges
turing at the window.

  “Must you?” Sweet asked.

  Arlian hesitated. “I don’t want to be caught,” he said.

  “Then you don’t want to leave yet,” Sweet said. “If you go walking the streets with a lord’s head above a farmer’s best shirt and that filthy pair of workman’s breeches and your own bare feet, the guards will be very curious about who you are and what you’re doing in Westguard.” She pointed at the attic and asked Rose, “He can sleep up there, can’t he?”

  “Go ahead,” Rose said resignedly.

  Sweet smiled. “And tomorrow we’ll see about fixing you up below the neck!”

  Arlian smiled back at her.

  This was wonderful, being here; the tin-roofed attic would surely be at least as comfortable as the barns and sheds he had been sleeping in, and the risk of discovery would be less. These women were providing him with what amounted to a perfect disguise—no slave-catcher searching for an escaped miner would bother a man with his hair trimmed and oiled and his face powdered.

  And being around women was a pleasure he had never before experienced—just enjoying their company, quite aside from Sweet’s unorthodox welcome. That welcome, of course, was another, and much more intense, pleasure he had never known until tonight.

  If only he had something to eat … but surely Sweet would think of that in the morning, and they would manage something. Maybe he could slip out long enough to find something, then return.

  Or if necessary he could simply wait until his disguise was complete. He was hungry, but not starving.

  “Go on, then,” Rose said. “Take Sweet back to her room, and then get up there.”

  Arlian, perhaps inspired to extra courtesies by the lordly image he saw in the mirrors, rose gracefully and essayed a bow. Then he picked Sweet up.

  “He’s a strong one, isn’t he?” Rose remarked, upon seeing how easily Arlian lifted her friend.

  “Seven years hauling ore,” Arlian explained as he held Sweet in one arm and opened the door with the other.

  A moment later he had deposited Sweet back in her own bed; then he turned away and hurried back up the stairs.