Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  He heard a voice behind him and spun around. A young man stood there, completely naked. He was about Alex’s age, and was unusually beautiful, his face almost feminine in appearance. Then Alex glanced down, noticing the stranger had no genitals. But his hips were narrow, and he had no breasts either. A eunuch, catamite? It did not surprise Alex that a male or sexless prostitute would be in the House of Delights, but he was shocked he had not been aware of him until now. Usually his senses were preternaturally sharp; most of the time he was hyper-aware of his surroundings. So how had he not noticed? The catamite had said something incomprehensible, and Alex realized, now that the shock had passed, that he was speaking in a foreign language. This was not unusual. The men and women of Kemet were especially prized by the famous brothel, the children even more so; the exotic nature of their looks attracted a lot of customers. The catamite spoke again. There was something strange about the language, a musical quality, though it was like no tonal language he had ever heard. The catamite was frowning and seemed angry. Alex turned back to the stairs and thought he heard footsteps coming down. He would have to silence the catamite. As much as he did not like gratuitous violence, he liked even less being the target of it, and he was sure that if one of the guild manglers got hold of him he would get a thrashing, or worse. Despite Alex not being a natural fighter, his father had taught him many tricks before he had died. A chop to the side of the neck would stun the prostitute momentarily, and give Alex enough time to get him in a strangle hold with his hand over his mouth. He spun around, his hand rigid and raised, already moving toward its target. But the catamite was gone. How? For a brief moment he felt off balance. He doubted the acuteness of his senses. Though there were few thieves as talented as himself, was it possible that a new thief, even stealthier than Alex Quickfingers, had come to town? His competitive instinct was piqued. Then an alternative possibility occurred to him. The hairs rose on the nape of his neck. So many prostitutes had been murdered in this place. Perhaps it was an angry spirit, haunting the brothel it had been murdered in.

  It was a puzzle he would have to solve later. He sidled back along the wall to the foot of the stairs. The footsteps of the guard were receding along the upstairs passage. He would have to be quick. He darted up the stairs, skilfully avoiding every squeaking stair. At the top was a long corridor. Incense mixed with poppy seed paste smoked in an alcove, filling the air with a pungent sweetness, more cloying than pleasing. He had nothing against intoxicants, but needed his senses to be sharp when wandering the guild’s domain. Doors lined both sides. From behind one came the sound of music, lute and flute and timbrel. Curtains hung across the doors, and moaning or screaming came from behind them. He held his breath and crossed to the end of the passage.

  The guard watched the action on the stage beyond. Alex could hear the whore within the last cubicle moaning, “Ooh, baby, it feels so good. Give it to me. You’re not like the other customers. You really know how to please a girl. I should be paying you. If they’d let me I would. Fuck me like that, baby. Yes, just like that. Yes, yes.” The guard began to turn away from the stage, and Alex ducked into the cubicle, keeping low in case the customer were looking in that direction, though it sounded like he was too preoccupied to notice anything much. The customer was on top of the whore. Alex rose from his squat. He lifted a finger to his lips as he saw the glazed eyes of Sandy, a fading whore, gazing at him. A friend. She smiled kindly at him and continued moaning as the customer thrust away, sweating and grunting. Sandy had been one of Alex’s adoptive mothers. In fact most of the whores in North Bank had been either mother or sister to Alex since his father’s death, and he had lifted many a purse from a customer to their mutual profit, replacing gold with silver and silver with copper. Today he would leave it to Sandy to extract wealth, and other stuff, from the customer.

  “Ooh, baby. That’s just the way. Just there, that’s it. That’s so deep. You’re so big. Only you can do it like that.”

  Alex winked at her then darted out and through the door into the theatre gallery before the guard reached the other end of the passage.

  Now he was in one of the upper galleries of the theatre. On the stage below an actor was rehearsing a bombastic speech, something to do with blood and honour. He wore aristocratic costume, a pea’s cod bellied doublet, puffed knee breeches slashed with the inner layer tugged out, hose dyed a bright scarlet slipping comfortably into neatly trimmed leather shoes. A cloak hung from one shoulder. On his head sat a wig, as though a furry animal had fallen asleep there. From his ear was suspended a pendulous golden earring, dangling low to a large gem that sparkled as the sun rose above the ring of playhouse thatch. His whole head seemed a strange dish served on his huge, stiffly starched ruff, his red lips like an elaborate entrée, opening and closing, leaking a sauce of spittle and affected threat. As if to simultaneously confirm and satirise the threat his hand rested on the elaborately decorated pommel of a rapier, with a guard more like a golden cage to catch his bird like hand than functional protection. Another fake aristocrat approached him from behind. As he finished his lines, the other plunged a fake sword in his back, and he gasped and grasped a crimson handkerchief to the wound.

  Alex did not wait for the rest of the rehearsal. He quickly moved to the end of the gallery, barely heeding the few early morning wastrels watching the free performance. The wall at the far end seemed blank, but Alex felt for the secret catch and released it, slipping through and closing the door behind him.

  There was an unusual presence here. Nothing supernatural, not like in the necromancer’s tower, but not right. These were the whore’s private quarters. None of the usual business of the brothel was transacted here, and the door was inaccessible without knowledge or thieving skill. Were the manglers roughing up one of the girls for holding back on her earnings? Alex slipped silently through the shadows, past several doors before stopping. It was behind him. How was that possible? How could he have not noticed them until now? He spun and his hand went to the sword, but all he saw was a shivering of shadow at the end of the passage, near the concealed door from the gallery. He froze, and listened. He heard the faint click, felt the subtle shift of air, and darted up the passage to the door, reaching it as its secret catch clicked a second time. He hesitated for a moment thinking it might be a guild mangler or thief, but an mangler would have thrashed him not fled from him, and no guild thief would steal from a whore owned by the guild. By the time he had thought this through and gone to the door and opened it there was nobody but the few early morning wastrels he had noticed before in the gallery. He looked carefully at all three of them. Was the one behind the other two there before? He was leaning forward between them laughing with them. Alex would have sworn he had been there before. He looked to the other door, but it was empty. Was someone following him? Someone other than the guild? Or had someone come for Rose?

  No thief could sneak past Alex. He thought of the sexless young man below. Almost no thief. Alex sometimes shadowed the Lord of Law just to prove to himself his own skill. Even the Dark Monks, the city’s assassins, were clumsy compared to him. Would the Dark Abbot be good enough? Would even the master of the guild of assassins be sneakier than the master of the guild of thieves? Surely not. But he realised he was being foolish. Whoever it had been had been in one of the rooms he had passed. He had not passed Alex. Alex had passed him, and had heard him when he had moved. Still it was unnerving. Was he getting clumsy, complacent? He would have to be more careful.

  But the thought of assassins sent a chill up his spine. Rose! He closed the secret door behind him and rushed to the end of the passage, forgetting in his fear his need for caution. When he reached the last door his heart was beating so loudly he could hear nothing else. He reached out, but hesitated, afraid to pull back the curtain. He swallowed hard and threw it back, stepping through.

  An attractive girl about his own age was sitting naked on an elegant chair, whose wood was carved with figures of seduction, in front of an equally ornat
e armoire, on which rested a large looking glass of polished silver. She was combing her long, wavy, honey blonde hair, which, even when dry and curling up, reached all the way down her back, and now fell half across her face, cascading over one breast into her lap. She was slim but shapely, with narrow shoulders and waist, firm, not overlarge breasts, with light coloured, large nipples, erect from the occasional tickle of her hair, wide hips, and a flawless, milky complexion. She looked up and smiled, not only with her mouth, but also with her eyes. Those eyes were large and hazel hued, tending more toward green than brown, though the balance of hues changed from day to day and, she believed, with her moods. They were intelligent eyes, aware and quick and ready with laughter, but in unguarded moments deeply sad. They were overhung by artificially long lashes, which when lowered seemed like tiny fans behind which she hid a shyness none of her customers could imagine, let alone understand, and lengthened by eyeliner at their edges. Her brows were carefully trimmed and their outlines made precise with a touch of charcoal. Her small, sensual lips, lightly glossed with a rosy food dye, were slightly drawn back by her smile from small, unusually straight, perfectly white teeth. Alex did not believe any other Thedran could possibly have such perfect teeth, or complexion. She suffered from none of the pock-marks that most North Bank whores had to carefully conceal beneath layers of foundation and powder. Altogether, her face had the quickness of an experienced actress’s, though her eyes could not always hide a hard earned stoicism, which in turn overlay a desperate, ineradicable sadness.

  “My favourite customer.” He felt a sudden confusion of emotions, and his thoughts raced to understand and control them. Stunned by her living. Angry at himself for his fear. Mocking the intensity of feeling and yet undeniably glad to see her unharmed. His mouth was dry but he forced himself to speak in his usual bantering manner. “You mean it’s not love, Rose?”

  “Can’t it be both, Alex?”

  “Ah, I’ll take you away from all this one day.”

  “The day you become a respectable silk trader?”

  “Something like that.” She giggled and he grinned. He sat down on a clothes chest next to her. He liked to see her like this, unselfconscious, without that fake seductive look she wore too easily, sometimes even with him. “You know you’re wasted here.”

  “That’s what I keep telling Charlotte, but she won’t agree to a bigger cut.”

  “There’s always the House of Love.”

  “The convent?”

  “Classiest courtesans in Thedra. Don’t you want to be the best?”

  “I’m just an ordinary whore,” she said harshly, but the harshness was not for him; it was for herself.

  “Nothing ordinary about you.”

  “We’re all back to front. Aren’t I supposed to seduce you?”

  “That’s right. You’d better start earning. What I’ve got…” He reached into his pack and brought out the jewelled necklace. She gasped. “So you like it?”

  “I love it. For me?” She laid down the comb on the armoire, touching a hand to her breast, displaying her long, clear, lacquered nails.

  “For a while.”

  She pouted playfully. “You don’t love me anymore.”

  “I’ll always love you, and get the best price through you. You’re easily the best fence in North Bank.”

  “That’s all I am to you?”

  “You’re so many things to me, I’ve lost count. But I need your connections for a piece like this.”

  “I do know lots of people in low places, some in high places too.”

  “In deep places and wet places.”

  “Alex! You’ll shock my innocent ears. But they do all love me. None like you, of course.”

  “Of course,” he said dryly. As much as he liked Rose, he had heard the same line uttered by too many whores to too many men over the years to take it seriously. He stood behind her and hung the necklace.

  “A necklace fit for a queen,” she said, admiring it on herself in her looking glass, dangling between her firm, shapely breasts.

  “Queen Rose.”

  She extended her hand in what she thought was a queenly fashion and he kissed it. “My knight in shining armour.”

  “A knight girded with sword.”

  “Ooh. Show me your sword.” She reached down.

  “Not that. A real sword.” He showed her.

  “Oh. That’s a strange looking sword.”

  “I know. And there’s something…”

  “Something?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I thought you didn’t like carrying a sword. Something about an invitation to be murdered and have it called self-defence.”

  “I don’t but…this is different.” She peered curiously at him, but could see he did not want to say more and chose not to press him.

  “You really should join the sisters,” he said.

  She was surprised by his sudden earnestness. It was not like Alex to be sincere. He saw the surprise and hurriedly amended. “I mean, what man doesn’t like to see a woman in holy orders. Something divine to peel off.”

  But he could not fool her. “What’s worrying you, Alex?”

  “Nothing worries me. I’m Alex Quickfingers.”

  “The quickest tongue in Thedra.”

  “Well I know what a woman wants.” He sank to his knees in front of her and gently pushed her legs apart. She snapped them shut.

  “Talk to me.”

  “I pay good money to be silent. You know I have secrets.”

  “Ooh! Secrets! If you knew women so well you’d know that’s what we want most of all.”

  “So you can blackmail me?”

  “You know I’d sell you out in a heartbeat.”

  “You break my heart.”

  “It’s what I’ve been raised to do. No morals. No integrity. No humanity. I know what I am.” Again her lightness had graded into bitterness.

  “Just a pretty face and a wet place.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Well, if that’s all you think of me…”

  “I think a lot more of you. You have to get out of this place.” Again he was being earnest, and he tried to cover it with a grin.

  “Why? I’ve been in this business since we were both kids.”

  “All the more reason to get out.”

  “There’s no getting out. If I tried Randy would cut me into little pieces and feed the pieces to the fish.”

  “Not if you were in the convent. They have the protection of Urysthra’s monks. Nothing better than War’s Monks to scare off the Randy Bastards of this world. Even the Dark Monks wouldn’t dare touch you there.”

  “If the Lord of Law even got a whiff of a hint of a possibility of me maybe thinking about it he’d have me gutted like a fish by a fishmonger before I could take one step.”

  “He might not.”

  “You’re right. Probably he’d just tie me up in a cellar and hold an auction to find a kinky murderer who’d pay good money for the pleasure of flaying me alive, maybe sodomising me violently along the way.”

  “If anyone…”

  “You’ll what, Alex? What would you do? What could you do? I know you’d want to, but you’re as powerless as me. We’re just two sentimental thieves in a city of upright men.”

  “You’re a thief? Since when?”

  “A thief of hearts.”

  “So you’d like to do Finusthi’s work.” He restrained the earnestness this time, trying to replace it with an honest evaluation, however tendentious. “Love is your thing.”

  “No, love is their thing. I don’t do it.”

  “Just make us feel it.”

  “Them.”

  “Ooh, you’re so special, Alex, so special. You do it better than any other man. You’re so big. It’s so deep! I’ve never felt anything like it. Alex, Alex, Alex! Ooh! Oh! Ah!”

  “Don’t be cynical,” she snapped, furrowing her brow, “no, you know what? Do be cynical. You know I’m nothing but a whore. I don’t care about
you or anybody else. I’m just here to make money for the House of Delights. I’m alright with that. It’s my fate, my place, until I’m too old and faded for anyone to want to do it with me, even in the dark. Then maybe I’ll become a beggar’s wife and hope he doesn’t take everything I steal for himself and beat me to death when he’s drunk. Don’t try filling my head with romantic notions. I’m nothing. I was born nothing, I am nothing, and I’ll die nothing.”

  “You’re not nothing. You’re better than that. Here, let me show you.” He slipped a hand up between her thighs, and she opened them slightly. “Oh, hang on there’s nothing here,” he said, as if surprised, “a whole lot of nothing.” She snapped them shut again, pleasurably trapping his hand there. He wiggled his fingers, brushing her clit with one, another probing inside her. “There’s so much nothing I can feel it. It’s kind of wet. Can you feel it?”

  She giggled. “Cheeky bastard!”

  She opened her legs, displaying her manicured pubic triangle, and her lower lips. He licked and kissed along the insides of her thighs, turning first to one side then the other then back, her flesh jumping every time the tip of his tongue brushed a nerve. His tongue circled and crossed and circled, slowly moving up to her rising heat and wetness. She caressed his cheeks with the flats of her fingers, so softly each detail seemed magnified in her mind. She could feel soft wispy hair starting to grow on his face. They were no longer children, she thought sadly, regretting for a moment that loss. But with an unhappy childhood was that a bad thing? When had she ever had innocence to lose? She could not remember. With Alex she refused to scrape his face with her nails. She had to be truly tender with someone, if she was not to drown herself in the lake; and he, for all his roguish dishonesty, was the only person she dared to trust; as she knew he trusted her, despite her seductive false faces. Their mutual deceits born of like suffering, they clung to each other’s understanding, their bodies’ pleasures mute signs of recognition that here, together, was a refuge against despair. Her feelings were intensifying so much now, an exquisite mixture of thought, emotion and sensation, and she needed to bring them more truly together. She grasped his hair firmly and threw her head back, arching her back against the chair, her hair trailing all the way to the floor, grinding her mound against his willing face, her labia against his lips, as his tongue flicked against her moist clit.