by Damien Lake
She sized him up without moving. By his dress, and the fact he arrived alone, she could easily see he was no cityguard. Nor was he likely connected with any form of government service. Rather than rising from her seat, she leaned back further. “And would you care to expound on this accusation?”
“I’m sorry?” Marik met her eyes. He noticed that when she shifted position, her hair bobbed up and down under her chin.
“That is a serious claim to lay. Attacking one of the Blood. I think you had better elucidate the facts of your allegation.”
Marik did not quite understand what she had said, but he thought she wanted him to explain what he meant. Did she truly know nothing about the assassin? Or was she testing him? Perhaps to buy time? Long enough for thugs deeper within the building to come deal with him? Or to escape?
He disliked those possibilities. A quicker response would serve best. Inflating his pompousness, he strove to impress upon her that he had every right to the answers he demanded. “I am referring to the attack by one of your women last night at the House of Sestion. She is now under guard in the holding cells,” he growled, hoping that was true. “She also had enough damning evidence on her to make sure she never sees the light of day again, and maybe others as well! Are you going to find me whoever is in charge or do I need to return with others?” Marik puffed out his chest such as the army officers tended to do whenever speaking to a man they considered of lower stature but still outside their command. Such as a mercenary.
She scrutinized him while a second woman entered from deeper inside the house. “Rosa? What’s going on?” This beauty’s neckline plunged drastically, exposing what the suspicious Rosa kept hidden. The new arrival openly appraised Marik. He suddenly felt like a scrawny chicken at the market, pecking away at the ground amidst fatter brethren while women shoppers passed a cold, rejecting eye over his feathers.
“Take over a moment, love,” Rosa said after reaching a decision. She crossed to the door the second woman had entered from. When Marik made to follow, she coolly told him to wait where he was.
The second woman took Rosa’s seat. A flowery scent wafted to his nostrils. It was a sharp contrast to the usual smells he had grown accustomed to around others. Sweat. Blade oil. Old leather. Horses. Even the pungent beeswax candles in Tollaf’s study that followed the old man wherever he went.
Everything about her, especially the way she leaned her head against her hand, made her whole body shift at an angle, emanating femininity in a way absent from Rosa. Her head slipped further so her fingers twined among curling locks of sun-gold hair, making her neckline billow forward. From where he stood, Marik had a view to remember of soft, curvaceous breasts, bulging closer together when she shifted her other arm. Cleavage squeezed the thoughts from his brain. Minor shifts in position made the neckline dip yet further.
The feminine cleanness of the perfume she wore combined with the sight of her nearly bared breasts to addle his brain. With a start, Marik realized he was staring avidly at her bosom. Not only that, but she watched him watching her. He faced away with a jerk. A familiar burning crept over his face, a flush he had not felt since leaving Kingshome, and with it Natalie’s explicitly graphic descriptions. His back to the woman, he missed her playful grin and sparkling eyes.
Rosa returned to find him facing her as stiffly as a fanatic army recruit. She cast the second woman a sour look. Behind Marik, she shrugged, then straightened, causing the neckline to snap back to its designed position.
“I did not receive your name,” Rosa told him, maintaining her place in the threshold. “Nor did you reveal your involvement with this unfortunate event. What is your connection?”
“What?” Rosa wore no perfume he could smell but the aroma still filled his nose from the other woman. His sudden embarrassment had driven the story he’d prepared straight from his mind. He fumbled for a response. “Oh, that.” He plowed onward despite Rosa’s raised eyebrows. “My charge, or that is, Lord Garroway…I’ve been sent to protect him.”
Idiot! What happened to your story? Now they know you for who you are! Why not escort them back to the inn while you’re at it?
Rosa’s mouth traveled to one side of her face. She considered him. Though smaller than he, Marik felt as he had around the village women during his childhood. Any one of them held authority equal to his own mother.
She reached under her hair to tug her ear. Marik tensed. Was that a predetermined signal to hidden assailants? No attack followed. Finally, she said, “Perhaps Madam Vashti will find a moment to sacrifice for you. Abide in the second entryway to your left until you are called for.” Rosa pointed down the hallway she blocked with her body.
He felt her eyes marking him like an eagle-hawk, ensuring he went nowhere other than where she specified. The perfume smells intensified. They saturated the air in the hall. Unlike the few shops he knew that sold perfumes, the mix in the air around him was actually rather pleasant. At most, perhaps only four or five odors mingled together, rather than the hundreds which combined to create one hell-stench in the perfume shops.
The doorway he arrived at, only twenty feet away, led into a windowless room that also faced the street, matching the reception room, except this room was smaller than the first. Four chairs, leather padded, occupied the space, though no other amenities were present, including an actual door.
Before he sat, he heard Rosa’s voice drifting from the reception area. Her irritation laced the words. “Corissa! Do not play games outside your limits! Not every tomcat through our entrance has legitimate clientele admission.”
She lowered her voice after that, leaving Marik to wonder how the remaining conversation would flow. With nothing to do, he sat, thinking about everything so far. It proved a surprisingly difficult task. Visions of milky curves bulging with every slight movement attempted to crowd out his other thoughts. He would force them away, only to find them the sole inhabitant of his brain half a minute later.
Idiot and then some! What is wrong with you? You’ve been through how many battles? You’ve felled how many foes? You also faced down Colbey until he caved in, and suddenly you’re falling to pieces for a glimpse of breast? You’re sitting in a viper’s lair, perhaps, and you’re letting yourself be distracted!
To put his mind back into combat readiness, he chose two facts to pick apart. What was Rosa’s role at the Standing Spell? She was easily beautiful enough to keep an upper-class man company. Except her dress concealed more that it revealed, and that manner of hers…
If she had been sitting at a proper desk instead of a corner table, he would assume her simply to be the brothel’s version of the clerks who worked in the Kings’ records office. That seemed incorrect, though.
Well then, what about this Madam Vashti? An unusual name, certainly. At a guess, it sounded Gustur, or maybe from Vyajion. His curiosity aside, it would likely be best not to ask. Those two kingdoms might be neighbors across the Stygan Gulf, but they hated each other with a passion. Mentioning either could very well offend this lady. Such would likely be an unwise move.
That was another matter. Perhaps it stemmed from spending too much time within the male-dominated Kingshome, but whenever he formed these mental pictures of the world lately, he always envisioned a man being in charge. Strange how much an outlook could change without him realizing it. Back in Tattersfield, many of the most successful townsfolk were women. Minta had always been the largest merchant/trader in town. As far as he knew, no one had ever gotten the best of her in a deal.
Despite that, he had spent the entire morning walk pondering the best way to talk to the man in charge of the Standing Spell, never once considering it might not be. He had no experience with brothels. From the stories, he’d always thought they were a place no woman would ever wish to fall to. A woman owning one? And running it? That ran sideways to his views of the world.
With that thought, an image rose in his memories. It was Hilliard, standing in the backyard of a roadside inn, watching Dietrik so
intently one might think the young man wanted to dissect the mercenary with his eyes alone. Marik had never relinquished his belief that the noble was slightly a fool in that aspect. His confusion that anyone could wield a sword effectively without having undergone instruction from a proper swordmaster had only been further proof that the nobles lived in an imaginary world, their eyes shut tight to the reality outside their tea parlors.
What had Dietrik said that first time? He has spent his entire life behind walls, taught about the world by whichever scholars his father or the duke had on hand. Was he so different? Marik had never lived in a palace…and yet perhaps he’d lived behind walls all the same. Walls formed of inexperience, growing from his isolation first within Tattersfield, then within Kingshome. No bevy of scholars waited to teach him about the world as they believed it should be. His knowledge of the outside came through people he met, minstrels singing their songs and hardheaded folk who had gone no further into the world than he’d ever been. In both cases, were not his and Hilliard’s views born and shaped by other people rather than personal experience?
Dietrik had said more too, hadn’t he? I’m sure he will gradually learn the difference between theory and fact as time moves on.
Marik laughed bitterly. Perhaps he was the one learning the difference between reality and preconceptions. Wasn’t that a joke? After all his efforts to grow into an independent man, in so many ways he was still the child he had thought to leave behind.
A woman passing by in the hallway looked at him before continuing on. He winced inwardly. Every woman in here a beauty, and they’ll be wondering why a man sitting alone in an open room is laughing like a moonstruck loon. Marik might be in a bear trap, but he never enjoyed looking a fool to anyone.
He jerked out of his thoughts when he realized an argument raged nearby. The words were indistinct yet the angry tone suggested it could be nothing else. Well, he had succeeded in taking his mind off Corissa’s charms…and also managed to blot out everything else around him at the same time. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a viper pit, because I’m not together today. Must be all this perfume.
Whatever the two women were arguing about, they were close by. They refrained from screeching or being particularly voluble. Still, their opinions differed enough to be heard from where Marik sat. The argument stopped, apparently in mid-sentence, and footsteps marching down the hallway followed.
Marik recognized her in a flash when she strode past the door. The woman he had spoken with last night at Sestion’s manner. She also glanced into the room. Not out of any interest for what may lay inside, Marik sensed, but out of habit. Certainly she did not expect to see him. When the doorframe blotted out half her body, she came to a startled halt before back-stepping to stand in the frame.
Deepest irritation marred her radiant features, or would have if anything in the entire world could dampen her beauty. “Damn it, persistence in a man can be cute, but stalking is altogether different!”
“W-what?” Marik’s brain, finally almost under control, spun away in a confused spiral. It amazed him! He had encountered this vision again! So amazed that little room remained in his head for much else. A rhythmic beating in his ears sounded as his heart pumped harder. She continued glaring at him with an expression he, even in his muddled state, could tell fell short of enthusiasm. But a clever reply might clear up the situation! “Uh…what?”
“That’s the problem with men. They never hear unless it’s what they wanted to hear.” She speared him with her cold gaze. “So you better listen this time. Go away and leave me alone!”
“But I’m not—”
“I suppose you asked Ferdinand how to find me?”
“Yes, but—”
“Wasn’t the fact that you were less interesting than my book enough to point out the obvious?”
“That’s not what—”
“Who is this, Ilona?”
A second woman approached behind Marik’s accuser. Older, in her late thirties or mid-forties, he guessed. Her skin shone a deep brown, as though she spent all her time under the blazing sun. Except one look was all it took for Marik to know it was her natural color, thus confirming his suspicions on her origins. This could only be the Madam Vashti.
She wore a minimum of makeup, and wore it well. Carefully applied, it accentuated her attractive features without standing out like a horse in a cattle herd. Her wavy, rippling black hair fell across her shoulders with as many dips and troughs as Ilona’s.
“This—” Ilona started, but Marik frantically cut her off.
“Good morning, Madam Vashti,” he greeted loudly, drowning out Ilona’s attempt to label him a stalker. “I serve a young noble by the name of Hilliard Garroway, attacked last night in the home of Ferdinand Sestion.”
He paused to continue, except Vashti, comprehension lighting her face, replied first. “Oh, I see. Ilona,” she glanced aside, “and I were only just discussing that very matter.” Her words were accented by a dulcet enunciation of hard vowels that Marik primarily associated with Gusturief.
“Yes,” he agreed, as though he knew what that meant. Marik’s gaze had followed the madam’s and was tracing the soft angles of Ilona’s features. His mouth, experiencing a period of separation from his brain, continued on of its own accord. “I came to talk to you about that woman who attack Hilliard. I wanted to learn whatever you could tell me about her.”
“As would I,” Vashti countered. “She only joined my employ very recently.”
Ilona stared coldly back at him. It jolted Marik into the awareness that he nearly stared her straight in the eye. “Huh?” He furiously replayed the last few moments, realizing what Vashti had said. And what he had blurted. Damn it! Well, no hope for it any longer but to play it to the end. “Truly? How long ago was that?”
Vashti raised a thin finger to her chin in thought. Though much older, Marik could hardly help but think her beauty rivaled Ilona’s. “I do not hire new women often, Mr…I’m sorry. Did I miss your name?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. I am Marik Railson.” Reflexively, he offered his hand before stopping. That’s a man’s greeting, idiot! Aren’t you supposed to bow to a woman?
Vashti offered no hesitation in grasping his hand with her own. Her touch was firm, her skin cool against his. Well that’s no surprise. I think I might be sweating enough to head the Varmeese River. He glanced toward Ilona, faint hope rising in his chest. She showed no interest in touching his hand.
“As I said, I do not hire new women to work for me on a spur of the moment. Were you aware of that?”
“No, madam, I was not.” He forced his eyes to remain on Vashti, which did not prove to be so difficult a challenge at all.
“Though I am sure you are aware of our reputation. We are a well respected gentleman’s club, and our clientele are among the high end of Thoenar’s society.”
“Club? I thought it was a br—” He stopped himself with a visible mental slap. Why not call her a whore, too?
Vashti took no offense, fortunately. “Such services are part of the wide range we provide. That is no secret. Yet our reputation is that we are ladies any highly placed man may appear with in public without shame. Our reputation is one of the best in the city, so I must take care with the women I choose to hire.”
Marik nodded. This at least was something he understood completely. Gold held little value when compared to the Crimson Kings’ reputation. If their reputation ever suffered, the entire band might fold. “So you check your women’s backgrounds first? What did you find on this one?”
The madam smiled sadly. “I never hire anyone I haven’t known for a period of time beforehand. That is how I come to know the women I take on. I usually never hire anyone I don’t know.”
Hopes sinking, Marik saw where that led. “You skipped that for her?”
Ilona, having spent the time glaring at Marik, shot out, “What do you care about it? You’re master is still alive and the guards have the bitch assassin!” The venom
startled Marik momentarily. “Count your stars as lucky and quit on it!”
He meant to say ‘Because she targeted Hilliard specifically’. What came out was, “Because they targeted Hilliard before.” Nice, he berated his mouth when he heard the words, but then his attention diverted to watching her lips purse into a near perfect O.
“Then I have additional questions,” Vashti said, reclaiming his attention. “She came to me only short of two eightdays gone. I had never met with her before. I would have sent her away had she not come from one of our oldest clients with a request that I find a place for her.”
Two eightdays ago? That would be right after the attack on the chapter house! But that made no sense. How could they have foreseen Hilliard would be anywhere near the Standing Spell’s women? “That seems…unusual.”
“It is not the first time we have done a similar favor for a preferred client.” Vashti offered no elaboration. “She bore a letter, and I met with him later that afternoon. Only then did I accept her into the Spell. Presently, of course, I wish I had done otherwise.”
“But this, uh, client must have told you about her background, didn’t he? And how did he know her? She was a professional, no blind fool a stranger convinced to do the job for quick coin.”
“He gave me nothing of her history. That, too, is normal. Women who hide in an establishment such as ours with the help of the noble-born usually have troubling pasts. Both for them and their patron.”
“Still, this is too coincidental for me. I realize you might not want to tell me who, but I think I need to talk to this old client of yours.”
Before Vashti could say yes or no, Ilona exploded with exasperation. “You don’t need to talk to anyone! You are not cityguard and you are not a magistrate! What makes you think you’d be allowed through the front gate, let alone see the owner?”
Marik felt the burn crawl through his face. He refused to allow his mind to be addled by the delicate line of her neck as she stretched her head forward to pinion him. “It is my business to protect Hilliard. I do need to talk to this noble because I need to get to the bottom of these attacks! If he knows where she came from, then I need to know it too!”
