by Jordan Reece
“What?” Elario almost yelled. “Are they still behind us?”
“They are hours away, the three who survived Sable. If their eyes aren’t keen, they won’t notice that we abandoned the road shy of Zavane. They’ll waste time in searching it and regaining our tracks. We shall be well into Cathul by then.”
As Hobbe clapped his hands and ran after the horses, Elario said in frustration, “Why didn’t you tell me, Westen?”
“Would it have eased your nerves? What was the point in telling you?”
“So that I would know! I have that right as the man they are pursuing.”
“Well, now you know,” Westen said infuriatingly.
After Hobbe hid the saddles, they started for the city. A bitter smell was on the breeze, strengthening as they reached the boundary of Cathul. Elario felt the patch to make sure his dragon’s eye was firmly shielded before he stepped after the others onto a cobblestone road. It cut between long lines of soot-stained, windowless buildings belching billows of smoke into the sky.
“The Arkway,” Westen said, adjusting the buckle of his satchel. “Rolling mills, which replaced the forge; textiles of woolen and cotton, so no longer do people need to spin and weave; there is a shoe factory over here, and a silk mill down where the River Sawame curls through. Steam engines are built there, too, and cutters crafted in the boatyard. Glass here, paper, soap, and-”
“What is that?” Elario asked about a tall post to the side of the road. A five-sided, enclosed glass ornament rested atop it.
“That is an aithra streetlamp, Master Elario,” Hobbe said. “They are lit in the evenings.”
A bell rang. People flooded out of the factories in droves, Westen linking his arm to Elario’s so they were not parted. Travel had coated Elario’s cloak in filth, but the factory workers were in scuffs equal in their filth from the day’s labors. Many had short cloaks of modest materials, dirty as well. In a matter of minutes, Elario counted three eye patches, two wooden legs, and a man who had one full arm and one empty sleeve pinned to his shoulder.
The ever-swelling torrent of laborers strode along the Arkway with luncheon boxes swinging from wrist-straps. The sound of their feet was thunderous upon the bridge over the river. Mixed in among them were a few mechanical men, who were not going home but carrying items from one factory to another. Hobbe inspected the insignia upon every cheek with keen interest.
Past the bridge, the stream of humanity split upon the three roads before them. Westen chose the center road. Boarding houses were what these people lived in, cracked plaster constructions with windows shut against the factory smoke. Though it was not yet sunset, the boarding houses were so tall that everyone walked in shadow.
Threading through the throngs were vendors pushing carts of cooked meats, breads and fruits, and glass bottles of ale. Dinner could be had without ever stepping inside the taverns, of which there were as many as boarding houses. Elario looked around for horses and came up short, nor were there stables behind the buildings. “How do they move goods without horses?”
“The factories have horses to draw wagons to the crawlers and cutters, depending on the destination,” Westen said. “But there is no need for the common laborer to own one, nor a stall to keep it.”
The storm of humanity faded with the passing of the blocks. Shops replaced the boarding houses, and solid, wood-and-brick inns. The scuffs turned to hoop skirts and slashed sleeves, and those detestable trousers with a flounce or two below the knee. One-horse carriages were parked along the sidewalks, the drivers offering rides to the shopgirls and shopboys leaving the establishments. Few climbed in. Most aimed for the corner, where a trolley was stopped, and the rest hurried down a staircase into the earth to catch the next snake.
“It is tiresome, isn’t it?” Westen commented as his shoulder was jostled. A flock of shopgirls were running past and shouting to the trolley to hold. “Everyone rushes everywhere in a city like an army of havok beasts, and nobody has a clue of who they’ve half-knocked over to get there. I remember when Cathul was so little of a town that you knew every person. One hundred people, and today it is one hundred thousand. But now you will think of me as a cantankerous old man in the body of a young one.”
“There are many things I think of you,” Elario said. “Cantankerous old man was not a description I had arrived at as of yet.”
Westen smiled. He really was a striking fellow. “Spare us one another’s thoughts. There was a knacker once who read minds, even excised thoughts from a head and inserted his own commands and opinions in their place. A dangerous ability, and a dangerous man. It was before even my time, and the merrymakers sang stories of him at Hallowmas. The Thief of Thoughts was one of those songs. He schemed for the throne of Queen Erabitha, wishing to marry her and be king, but fell shy of his goal. Oh, yes, he miscalculated, for one must have thoughts first for another to thieve them. She was a bejeweled simpleton, lovely but witless, and implanting a thought in the clear blue sky of an unsullied mind proved so great a toil that he burned himself out. Do you know this song?”
Laughing, Elario said, “No. I’ve never heard of it, or that queen.”
“A thousand years ago and more. I have not heard that song since the fall of the Great Cities. It is strange the things that were lost. Even music died in those days.”
“Sirs,” Hobbe warned. A man in tan-and-greens with one silver pip on his collar was standing upon a street corner.
“He is just watching for pinch-purses. Carry on as normal,” Westen said. Though the ensigno took no notice of them, his eyes on the shopgirls boarding the trolley, Elario was relieved when Westen turned off the Arkway to an unoccupied side street. It came to a dead end in a brownstone inn.
Not an inn. A scandalous picture upon the sign indicated the brownstone was a brothel. Sighing, Elario looked up to several stories of curtained windows. “Why here?”
“Because it is staffed solely by mechanical beings,” Westen said. “Mechanical beings who are programmed to erase their short-term memory stores of the brothel’s visitors and activities every two hours. People who wish privacy patronize this brothel. Every discretion is taken.”
He opened the door to a foyer, the walls covered in purple and crimson fabric. The only furniture was an armchair, where a mechanical woman was seated. Upon her cheek was a stamped river-cat. With pale hair and a coy smile, she reminded Elario too much of the abide. But the mechanical woman’s eyes were brown, and she had no cloak of fire. The tight dress she wore did not even stretch to her knees.
“Gentlemen,” she purred, crossing her legs.
The door locked behind them. Elario jumped. Soothingly, Westen said, “It will not open to admit another patron until we are ensconced in our room.”
“Clearly you have been here before,” the woman said, issuing a mellifluous laugh far more realistic than Hobbe’s choppy hah-hah-hah. “What’s your pleasure tonight?”
Digging into his purse, Westen said, “A room with a hot bath and large bed, and dinner for two.” The second meal was just a pretense, but Elario was hungry enough to eat it.
“And would you like to have your mechanical man stored for the night, or will he be participating in the activities?”
Westen chuckled and gave over a generous amount of gold. “He’ll stand in the corner and watch as we prefer.”
Blood boiled into Elario’s cheeks at the cheery lewdness. Whether sexual things were spoken of so boldly in the north, or if this was a difference in time, he was not going to inquire.
The woman flicked a finger to the room’s interior door, which opened though nobody was there. “Follow the opening doors to your accommodations. Should you wish to change the terms of this arrangement, pull the cord beside the bed. A staff member will arrive shortly to carry out your wishes.”
They entered a hallway dressed in silken sheets of crimson with golden light fixtures dangling from chains along the ceiling. “Is this truly safe?” Elario hissed.
“What are
the odds that someone will be inquiring after us in the next two hours?” Westen retorted. “By the time anybody stops in to describe your particulars, she won’t remember ever seeing you. The food arrives by dumbwaiter, and we’ll leave in the morning out the back exit. The machinery that controls this brothel won’t permit us to run into any other guest either now or tomorrow morning. It’s the safest place in all of Cathul.” His eyes swept over Elario. “Hobbe, remind me that we need to find new clothes for Elario and myself before we move on. We stand out too much as country fellows.”
“Yes, sir.”
The brothel was a maze of twisting hallways full of closed doors, and short flights of carpeted staircases. Unoccupied sitting rooms were adorned with oil paintings as brazen as the picture on the sign outside. Naked couples of all combinations clutched each other in ecstasy, and what the male couple was doing upon one wall of a sitting room made blood warm Elario’s cheeks when he peeked in.
“Gods of high and low, have you never had sex?” Westen sniped.
“I have had sex many times!” Elario said with indignation.
“Then why do you blush like a schoolboy?”
“Because this is . . . this is indecent! Entirely indecent! Who crafts these things and collects them?” To accentuate his point, he threw out his hand to a life-sized sculpture in the corner of two muscular men pressed to the sides of a voluptuous woman. One man was holding her breast and kissing her, the second man was cupping her between her thighs, and she was grasping their erections.
“I don’t think he’s ever had sex, Hobbe,” Westen commented.
“I agree, sir,” Hobbe replied. “Shall I pull on the cord for a mechanical whore-woman once we are in our room, Master Elario? I can deliver your requirements for pleasure: hair color, eye color, breast size-”
“No!” Elario squawked.
“You mistake him, Hobbe.” Westen was thoroughly enjoying the torment that he and his mechanical servant were inflicting. “He’s a man after Dagen’s heart, if I don’t miss my guess. It’ll need to be a male model or else you’ve left him limp in spirit, and limp elsewhere.”
“You are foul and disgusting!” Elario exclaimed. “I have probably had sex more recently than you as it is. If you’ve lost the hunger for food, you’ve likely lost the hunger for flesh, and good since I would not wish you and your queer humors and moods upon any man.”
Westen laughed hard at that as they went up another staircase. “So, you took me for a Dagen’s touched? A good eye.”
“It is not my eye but the dragon’s eye,” Elario snapped. “I saw you sitting as a boy upon the post in Sable while your masters entered the art gallery. You were looking to the game house for Dagen’s touched.”
“Perhaps it was boyish curiosity and nothing more.”
No. Olan was a man’s name, and the fright on Westen’s face as he searched through that panicked crowd . . . Olan had been beloved to Westen, or else Elario was misreading the impressions of that vision.
Just once did Elario hear a sound as they walked through the brothel. When they arrived upon some upper floor, for he had lost track of how many staircases they’d taken, there was a faint, rhythmic thumping from behind a door which could be nothing but exactly what he thought it was. He shifted his satchel to rest against his front rather than his back, the sound having stirred him.
Westen grinned as they passed the door. “Who was he?”
Irritated, Elario said, “Who was what?”
“Your most recent bed partner, of course. Who was he?”
“Elequa, take the other eye,” Elario mumbled about the orgy painted on the hallway’s ceiling. Men coupled with women, women coupled with women, men coupled with men, there were twosomes and threesomes and foursomes in infinite configurations of lust. It was obscene, yet he did not look away. “His name was Plathe. Plathe at’Devis. We spent two nights together in the spring.”
“Plathe at’Devis,” Westen repeated. “Was he a man of flesh or fantasy?”
“Flesh, you spawn of a dervesh! He worked as a stocker in a Ballevue grocery and had a good hand at cards.” A good hand at other things as well. “Who was he to you?”
“I don’t recall,” Westen said with airy indifference as they rounded the corner to another hallway. “It was before your grandfather was in nappies. Hard to form a tie to a man when he will age and question why I stay the same.”
The door at the end of the hallway stayed shut; a door to the side suddenly swung open to a bedroom. Westen gestured him in first with a show of false chivalry. Rolling his eyes, Elario stepped inside.
His boots sank into the lavender carpet, muffling his steps to the closet. Thankful to shed the weight of the satchel, his uncovered eye passed over the features of their accommodations. The lewd decorations were in here, too, and specifically chosen for the titillation of Dagen’s touched. Niches in the walls hosted small statuary in clay and metal of male figures frozen in passion. Over the headboard was a painting of two noblemen frantically coupling in a bed, discarded clothing strewn about everywhere, as an audience of servants both male and female looked on in open-mouthed wonder from the doorway.
Westen made a noise very much like a giggle and set down his belongings. “I do wish I could capture your face in a drawing, Elario. It would bring me joy from now to eternity.”
“Your memory will have to suffice.” The sound of running water drew Elario to the necessary, where he discovered a pool of dark blue tiles within a recess in the floor. It was filling with hot water from multiple faucets. A bench ran along the inner wall of the pool, breaking for the steps. Upon two ledges above the water was an array of red and green jars. Soaps and shampoos and lotions, he guessed from their pleasant floral scents.
How long had it been since his last true bath? Penborough. That disgusted him. His clothing was so saturated in dirt and sweat from his travels that it was stiff. Closing the door, he peeled off piece by piece and dropped them into a basket. “Can we ask for clothing to be laundered?” he called. “Cloak and all?”
“That’s not how it’s done.” Westen opened the door despite Elario’s nudity and protests. The faucets shut off, the pool at the brim, so Elario took refuge in it as Westen rapped twice upon a wall panel.
It opened to a compartment. Sliding the basket in, Westen proceeded to strip off his own clothing, which he included atop Elario’s. “Hobbe, come in here and give me your scuffs!”
“Yes, sir.” Hobbe joined them in the necessary moments later. Naked as the day he came off the assembly line, there was no genitalia between his legs. A smooth, flesh-colored swing reached from front to back. No need for him to sport that appendage as a machine made to work in the mines, Elario thought, having never seen a mechanical man naked before.
Once the scuffs were in the basket, Hobbe took himself to the sink to wash with a cloth. “I will need to shut down soon for some time to reorganize my programs, Master Westen,” he announced.
“Then do that after the food arrives,” Westen said, lowering the panel. A whirring hum emanated from the wall. “The basket is going down to the laundry room, where they have mechanical servants to deal with it. Our clothes will be back sometime in the night. Not that you’re going to be wearing that outfit much longer.”
“There is nothing wrong with my clothing,” Elario said. “Nobody on the streets looked askance at me.”
“They did not, but it indicates that you are an outsider in the golden ring, for those who are looking for outsiders.”
Standing at the ledges, Elario lifted the lid of a red jar. A mint-scented paste was inside. Water rippled at his back from Westen getting into the pool. “Are you sure that’s what you’re looking for?” Westen asked.
Elario set down the lid. “Is it soap?”
“Hardly. All of the red jars contain sexual stimulants. That one will stiffen you again less than a minute after you’ve flagged. It’s an ancient herb for virility. The green jars have soaps and perfumed beads to drop into
the water.” Westen crossed the pool and stood beside Elario to open a green jar. Scooping out a handful of cream, he worked it between his hands to a lather.
Then he retreated to wash himself. Elario faced the wall as he did the same. This brothel was having an effect on his body, and the soft splashing of Westen’s ablutions intensified that effect. A hand stretched past his shoulder, skimming his skin, to liberate a second green jar from the shelf. “This one is good for hair,” Westen said.
Elario’s breath caught in his throat until Westen went away. Whether his arousal was feeding his irritation, or it was irritation with this man that fed his arousal, he could not discern. The effect was identical.
“When did modesty become so celebrated?” Westen pondered.
He knew why Elario wasn’t turning around. Giving up, Elario sat on the bench across from him and continued to work lather into his skin. “I have never bathed with a man.”
“Yes, I can tell.”
“Were people immodest when you were young? Before . . . before this-” whatever this was, Elario thought, “happened to you?”
“Modesty was not particularly prized, no. In those days, we frolicked naked in the streets.” He looked hopeful that his lie might be swallowed without challenge, and chuckled when Elario just made a face. “There were lovely bathhouses in Ruzan and the Great Cities to which we flocked and whiled away hours in our skin, eating and drinking and talking in the hot water, or doing other activities. There were pools for relaxation, pools for games, and pools for energetics, as they called the sex pools back then. There were men’s pools and women’s pools and mixed pools. You told the attendant what you desired, and you were given a towel and taken to the correct pool. The bathhouse in Nevenin was exceptionally beautiful.”
Imagining it resulted in a rush of blood going where no more blood was required. Elario removed his eye patch, regretting that he had not included it in the laundry basket. He dipped it in the water to cleanse the material and laid it out on the ledge by the jars. “Were there pools for Dagen’s touched? There are no bathhouses where I am from.”
