by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 46
Ilahe pulled the door open, unable to keep a frown from her face. Light laughter and the murmur of voices, along with the splash and slap of water met her. The early morning sun did not reach the windows of Hash’s bedroom, and the charcoal drawings reminded Ilahe too much of her own nightmares, but the dark room still seemed safer than facing cold stares. The silence of solitude was better than the sudden cessation of that friendly conversation outside.
With gritted teeth, Ilahe stepped into the hall. Women sat in their doorways, some scrubbing clothes in large copper buckets, others sitting on their stools and lounging. A collective intake of breath announced Ilahe’s arrival in her hall, and Ilahe felt her cheeks heat. A part of her wanted to chat and smile, to hear another woman’s voice, the way she had spent so much of her life. To counter the wave of loss and pain, Ilahe glared at the floor and reminded herself: these were not women. They were whores. Even a weapon was better than a whore.
The weight of their gazes settled against her skin, and Ilahe started down the hall, eager to be out of sight. The kitchen, perhaps, or a cellar, if this building had one. Somewhere she could hide until evening. Not Hash’s room; his scent lingered there, and the thought of his fingers against her flesh sent dangerous heat through Ilahe.
Unable to restrain herself, Ilahe glanced up to scan the hallway. Her eyes rested on the woman nearest her. Gyune, the whore Ilahe had rescued on her first—and only—day of work. Blue and yellow splotches still marred her left cheek, but she gave Ilahe a broad smile.
“Tair around us,” Gyune said, still grinning. “You’re the first woman Hash has had in that room, and he scurried out of there like a mouse free from a trap. I hope you didn’t pay him for that short of a show.”
Ilahe stopped. An inferno raged in her cheeks, shame and anger, and she glared at Gyune. Of course they despised her—Ilahe looked more man than woman, with her broad, muscled shoulders, and her dark skin like coal compared to theirs. It did not soften the humiliation.
A soft, easy laugh broke the tension as a woman two doors down leaned back from her tub, a dingy white shift in one hand. “Father take us all, Gyune, you would have paid double the coin for half the time with that man! And Father knows, with your luck, he’d end up hitting you with those nice big hands of his.”
Laughter rippled and multiplied down the hall. Gyune’s smile widened, and she said, “There’s a time and place for a well-intentioned smack, Esmer, and I could put his hands to good use. I’d just let him lay me over one knee—” The rest of the woman in the hall roared with laughter, cutting off Gyune before she could finish, but the whore still managed to pantomime her imagined encounter with Hash. Ilahe’s cheeks burned, half with desire and half with embarrassment, but she did not look away.
“You’ve scared the poor girl to death,” Esmer said when the laughter quieted. “Look at her, she’s not said a word.”
“Well, tell us all about him,” a voice down the hall cried. “What was it like?”
More voices clamored for answers, shouting out questions that made Ilahe flush so that she thought even her ears must be on fire. Gyune must have sensed her discomfort, for she waved the rest of the hall to silence, although titters of laughter still trickled through the women. “Leave her be,” Gyune said, “let the poor woman recover. I know that after a romp with that godling, even as short as hers was, I’d not speak for a week!”
More laughter, and this time Ilahe realized she was laughing along with them. In part from nerves, in part at her own desire for Hash, which she realized was not so uncommon, but most of all, Ilahe laughed because it felt so good. As though she were back home again, with friends.
Hash appeared at that moment, descending the stairs to stop at the hallway. Another moment of silence, followed by laughter that echoed off the walls, and Ilahe felt tears trickled down her cheeks as she laughed too. Confusion, then annoyance, crossed Hash’s handsome face, and he rolled his clear blue eyes as the laughter continued.
When the sound had died down, Hash motioned for Ilahe and said, “I need to talk to you.”
One woman let out a guffaw, and Ilahe struggled to conceal the smile on her face. It was all so ridiculous; he would never be attracted to a woman like her. The way the women laughed about him without mocking her, though, made Ilahe realize that self-pity had no place here. She could simply laugh at the situation, enjoy herself.
As she passed Esmer, the petite blonde woman smiled up at Ilahe and said, “Come back down here when he’s done with you and we’ll find you something new to wear.”
Gyune shouted after them as they started up the stairs, “Give her her money’s worth, pretty boy. No cheating!”
Ilahe suppressed a nervous giggle, but only barely. Hash, small red circles burning in his pale skin, only shook his head.
“You’d think that whores would find sex much less amusing than the rest of the world,” he muttered, “but no, everything is a joke.”
“Not to you?” Ilahe asked.
“Maybe before,” Hash said. “It seems I came back a different man. A lot of good that will do me in this line of work.” He seemed to speak to himself more than to her.
“Came back from where?” Ilahe said.
Hash shook his head. “Cu found out you were still here. She’s not happy, but then again, you did save Ly’s life, so she’s willing to talk to you at least. We just need to convince her to let you stay.”
“Stay?” Ilahe said. She stopped him halfway up the next flight of stairs, her hand dark and rough against the smooth, toned muscle of his forearm. “I’m leaving tonight.”
“Why?” Hash asked. “What do you have to go back to?”
Ilahe stared at him. Revenge, she wanted to say. Hatred. Death. Promises made to the child she had never seen alive. In that moment, though, with her heart pounding in her ears, her blood still warm from the laughter and friendship extended by the women below, Ilahe found the words hard to say.
“Listen,” Hash said, “you obviously came here for a reason. Looking for someone to kill, I’d wager, and none too smart about it. At least, to judge by how things have gone. That’s fine. Find him, kill him. Do what you need to do. But I’ve seen that look before, and you already think you’re dead. You don’t have to be, though. You can have a life here—a happy one.” In spite of his words, the tone of his voice was dark, and his voice distant.
“The people here,” Ilahe said, “they hated me before; how could I stay here?” It was the wrong thing to say; she should have said no, should have told him what she had told herself all those months. That her life was over, the she was an instrument of justice, and that when the priests who had taken her child were gone, she would kill herself.
Hash snorted. “Father take me,” he said, “they certainly seemed to like you well enough a few moments ago. Naja will get over what you said about us; tair knows that I certainly don’t mind being called a whore, even if she thinks you were insulting us. The girls have already gotten over it, thanks to what you did for Ly. That kind of thing means a lot more around here than some words spoken in haste.” He stared at her, his blue eyes holding her in place, as though asking if she had meant what she had said that first night.
“I’m sorry for what I said. I had no right. You are a good man.”
Hash just nodded. He reached up, took her hand from his arm, and clasped it in his own. “Then let’s go see Cu about helping you start a new life.”
He led her by the hand to Cu’s door and they went in. Cu sat in the middle of a circle of folding tables stacked with papers and books so that they tottered precariously as she turned to look at them.
“Well,” Cu said. “You’ve put me in a difficult situation.”
Ilahe nodded. To her regret, Hash let go of her hand and leaned against the wall.
Cu’s eyes followed the movement. She cocked an eyebrow and said, “I thought you weren’t ready. Isn’t that what you told me, Hash? Shall I take this to mean you
are ready to accept clients and begin earning your keep? My charity will only last so long.”
Red flooded Hash’s cheeks, and he looked at the floor as he spoke. “Nothing has happened between us, Cu. I helped her because of what she did for Ly. That’s all.”
Cu’s mouth thinned to an angry line, but she turned her gaze back to Ilahe. “Yes,” Cu said. “I’m in your debt for saving Ly. Thank the tair that our surgeon decided he wanted a little fun while his wife was away. He said that Ly will be fine with rest, although some of the wounds will leave nasty scars. Perhaps there are men who will like that.”
Hash shifted, but at Cu’s angry glare, he subsided.
“Now, what about you?” Cu said. “You may be able to fight, but you make a miserable bouncer, and you walked out on the job last time.”
“I was provoked,” Ilahe said, glancing at Hash. “And things have been difficult for me.”
“Father take me, girl,” Cu said. “I know someone looking for trouble when I see her, and you’ve got murder written on your face in white letters. And a Cenarbasin to boot. Tair around us, I’m not going to get involved in that kind of trouble. Not when I can’t afford half the bribes I need as it is. I’ve made up my mind, Hash, and she goes.”
“Wait a moment,” Hash said, “that’s not fair. She saved Ly’s life!”
“And the tair bless her for it, but I won’t risk the entire shrine because she saved one girl.” With an apologetic shrug, Cu turned away from them both. “You may stay until tonight, but then you must leave. Hash, I meant what I said. You will begin working, or you will leave.”
Face red and angry, Hash took a step toward Cu, but Cu just shook her graying red hair and started thumbing through another stack of papers.
“Come on,” Hash said, taking Ilahe by the wrist. “We’ll figure something else out.”
Ilahe shook off his hand, regretting the loss of his touch even as she did, and stepped toward Cu. “There are other things I can do,” Ilahe said. Her mind ran back over the skills she had studied as a Cenarbasin woman. “Diplomacy, knowledge of foreign countries and their customs, sewing, music, languages.”
Cu glanced up, her pale green eyes fixed on Ilahe. “Men do not pay their whores to sing, girl, and your skin will make you more of a liability on your back than an asset. Now leave me, while I try to figure out which of these Father’s-glory merchants I can pay this month.”
Ilahe felt a smile creep onto her face. After the morning, smiling felt almost natural again. Almost. She could make a life for herself here. Cu had just given her the key.
Walking around the folding tables, Ilahe leaned over Cu’s shoulder to examine the document. “The butcher,” Ilahe said.
“What?” Cu said.
“You must pay the butcher this month. The dressmaker will scream, but dresses do not spoil, and they will last you for a while yet. The carpenters can wait as well; so long as they are not tearing the boards from the walls, they can wait. Same goes for the smith, although unless you’re shoeing horses, I can’t imagine why you owe him this much in the first place. Find a good tinker who will cost you a tenth as much.”
Cu stared up at her, pale green eyes wide, and Ilahe realized how lost the older woman was.
“You can . . . do all of this?” she asked.
“One of the skills my family insisted on was bookkeeping,” Ilahe said. She grimaced at the memory; she had hated the skill compared to foreign languages and diplomacy, but it had served her well after her marriage, when she had run her own household. “I can do this.”
With a smile, Cu said, “Keep the carpenters from pulling down the shrine around us, and I think we can find a place for you.”
Ilahe grinned, catching Hash’s shared smile, and felt lightning tingle along her skin at the happiness she saw in his face.
She spent much of the afternoon, and almost all of the evening, in Cu’s office, organizing papers and ledgers and trying to impose some kind of order on the madness. She hated the work, but Ilahe found herself smiling as she did it. True to her word, Esmer brought Ilahe a blue wool dress, broad enough in the shoulders for her, if a bit tight at the waist. Later, Gyune and a smiling Naja brought up food.
As she locked up the office near midnight, Ilahe found herself still smiling. The job to kill the tair had fallen through, and with it, Ilahe had nothing—no money, and without money, even less of a chance at revenge. The desire to hunt down and kill those priests still simmered inside her, but her hope of reaching them, even with her two remaining cam-adeh, was impossibly small. The night before, Ilahe had been determined to return to Cenarbasi even if it killed her, and then to die trying to reach the men who had hurt her. Now, everything was different, and for the moment, Ilahe tucked away her pain and embraced the happiness that had overtaken her so abruptly.
Here, in this strange city, she had a life again. People who cared for her. Work to do. The swords in her hand were a reminder, though, that she had had these things before. This time, she knew that things did not stay the same forever. Ilahe knew she needed to do what she could to protect this new life, to make it hers for as long as she wanted. If she left someday, it would be on her terms—not because men or gods took this from her.
And that meant Ilahe needed to kill the people who knew she was in Khi’ilan. Still smiling, she patted her cam-adeh, strapped the swords to her back, and hurried down the stairs and out one of the back doors. This time, things would be different.