by Wen Spencer
Jerin scrambled to take his mind away from her fingers. “Don’t they lack certain vital equipment?”
“There are artificial devices.” Cira dipped her finger into the crock again, and rouged his cheeks, her breath on his face as she blended color out. “They call them bones because they’re made out of ivory.
They strap on. Whores carry them sheathed to their leg, here, to look more manly.”
She put her hand on him, and found him excited. She smiled, stroking him gently, her eyes full of lust.
“Wh-wh-why red on the lips?” he asked.
“To advertise they know how to use their mouth.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, moistening them, drawing a slight gasp from him. “It feels very, very good.”
He understood then what she was referring to-his wives claimed he was very good at it. He couldn’t believe he had anything in common with a whore. Maybe she was just repeating a rumor. “You-have you ever- you know-been with a whore?”
“I had a lover, a beautiful young officer, whose mother had been a whore.” Her voice turned bitter as she draped the scarf about his neck, trying to cover his man’s apple. “She should have been a whore herself. She was well suited for it: ambitious, heartless, and very talented. She could make you feel like you were about to turn inside out.”
“What happened to her?”
She caught his hand and pressed it to her scar. “This happened to her. After I was scarred she couldn’t bear to touch me, look me in the face.”
“Why?” He traced the scar on her face. “‘It’s like an exotic piece of jewelry. It becomes you.”
In a sudden angry move, she pulled her shirt off and turned her back to him. revealing a mass of puckered skin and silvery scars. At some point she had been badly burned. “Look at me! I’m repulsive!”
He ran a hand over the wounded skin. His fingertips reported only warm flesh and solid muscle, the ugliness of the burn invisible to the touch. “No. You’re not repulsive.”
She turned-her eyes luminescent with unshed tears- and kissed him. Apples flavored her mouth. He retreated. She advanced. They ended sprawled in the hay, no more room for him to retreat, and she on top of him, her groin pressed against him instead of her hand, rocking suggestively. They fitted together as if molded from one flesh, only her trousers and his walking robe and underclothes between their bare skin.
“Show me,” she whispered against his mouth. “Show me how beautiful I am.”
“No!” He pushed at her shoulders. ‘’You’re taking me back to my wives. You promised. I won’t be unfaithful to them.“
She laughed, seemed about to say something, and then shook her head. “I won’t push you. my love.
This will all be over soon, and you’ll see that you can trust me.”
He snorted as she retreated then, drawing her shirt back on.
“We’ll pad the front of your shirt a little, to make it look like you’re hiding breasts.” Cira glanced at him and laughed. “And we’ll have to put the lip paint back on again too.”
Three hours later, they started into the town of Sarahs Bend. Cira would have liked to wait until they heard the steam whistle of the packet docking at the landing, but was afraid they might miss the boat. A weak sun had burned off part of the fog, revealing the edge of town within rifle shot; Cira still insisted that he ride the big roan while she led it.
Sarahs Bend was much larger than his hometown of Heron Landing. There were several blocks of paved streets flanked with tall, narrow but deep, brick buildings. The first floors were storefronts, while the upper floors were obviously residences of the store owners. Some of the buildings were four stories tall, casting shadows onto the cobblestones. The edges of their roofs sparkled oddly in the sunlight.
“City people hang laundry on their roofs,” Cira explained when Jerin asked about it. “People embed broken bottles into the roof parapets, to discourage husband raids.”
He noticed then that the storefronts also had cast-iron gates that could be padlocked shut at night.
It surprised him how many types of stores there were. Besides two mercantiles, there were stores for apothecaries, books, dry goods, shoes, tailors, watchmakers, and more. Each carried the name of the family that ran it and then symbolic signage for the illiterate; he recognized all but one.
“What do they sell there?” Jerin pointed to a gas lamp with three blue glass globes. The stone building lacked the glass front of the rest; while the front door stood open, heavily armed women guarded the entrance. Customers came and went, but they carried items neither in nor out. “Is it a bank?”
“Hush, don’t point,” Cira murmured, and then clucked the roan to speed them past the store.
“What is it?” Jerin whispered.
“Pay it no mind.”
He’d heard that tone enough in his life to realize it was a crib. He looked back to study the fortresslike building. He never thought such a thing would be on a Main Street corner, its gas lamp bright in the overcast morning so it couldn’t be missed. How many men were inside? A dozen narrow windows cut into the thick stone of the first story. One window per man? Iron bars covered the larger windows of the second story. A short railing lined the roof with sharpened iron points. He knew that they were there to keep out women, but they would work to keep men in. The trickle of women in and out of the building was constant-each representing a forced coupling.
His breakfast churned in his stomach. “Cira, I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Now?” Whatever she saw on his face convinced her. She guided the roan into a narrow alley.
His breakfast came up while Cira kept his hair and clothes out of the way.
“That’s where I’m going to end up.” He moaned. “In a place just like that. Locked in and drugged.”
“That is not going to happen to you. You’re getting home and it will be just like nothing happened.”
“Ren won’t be able to take me back. No one is ever going to believe that nothing happened to me.”
More bread came up, and then his stomach was empty, but his body continued to heave.
Cira rubbed his back soothingly, patiently waiting for him to recover. “Ren will believe you. If she loves you, she will trust you and believe what you tell her to be the truth, even if you were gone for years.”
He shook his head. “Her mothers wouldn’t let her offer for me for weeks-they might force her to give me back to my sisters.”
“Jerin.” Cira straightened him up and wiped his face. “I swear to you, you will never be in a crib. I can guarantee that you’re clean. I might seem like a river trash, but I come from a powerful, old family. The Queens will take my word.”
He thought of all the fine belongings in her saddlebag, everything that indicated that she was much more than what she seemed. “Really?”
“And I am not poor either. If need be, I have the money to pay your brother’s price and marry you.”
“All by yourself?”
“We can start a new trend. One wife per husband.”
He laughed at the ridiculousness of her plan.
The loud roar of the packet’s whistle came from the river.
“Come on. Dry your tears and put on a smile. We’re almost home free. Just a little more, and we’ll be safe on the river.”
It was odd to be among people and not be the center of attention. He and Cira moved through the crowd waiting on the landing without anyone noticing them. Amazingly, the flimsy disguise was working.
Women would glance his direction, see the bright boa that Cira had him wave lazily about, gather in the lack of veil and the painted face, and lose interest in him.
They almost made it.
A few feet from the gangplank, Cira took a sudden deep breath, and hands caught Jerin tight from behind.
“Not a word!” growled a familiar voice. “A single noise, missy, and we’ll pop you where you stand.”
“Ya should pop her anyhow, stealing ‘im away like that!�
�� Dossy whined.
He swung about. They had a revolver tight to Cira’s spine. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”
“Or what, little boy?” Bert sneered. “Ya cry?”
“I’ll tell your bosses that you raped me. Oh, it was awful! You dirty, infected crib sleaze took me again and again. They’re paying for clean and untouched. I’ll be sure to convince them you’re pulling a double cross. Selling used goods!”
“Shut ya mouth!” Bert jerked her gun back, swinging the butt around to strike him with it.
“Bert!” Fen snapped, catching her hand. “Don’t you dare, shithead! Unharmed and untouched, they said!”
“So what do we do?” Bert asked.
“Give them both to the bosses. Let them work it out,” Fen said.
Jerin glanced around them. The other women on the landing looked on but made no move to interfere.
Guns were already in the mix. From their faces, he realized that they still saw him as a whore having trouble with river trash. If he appealed to them as a man, once they rescued him, would they try to keep him?
“Come quietly,” Fen said. “Or we will pop Miss High-and-mighty here and now.”
He let himself be dragged to an alley where horses waited. Since none of his counteroffers had worked, he tried a new ploy. The Porters had left no witnesses behind them-surely they wouldn’t allow Fen and her women to live, knowing their darkest secrets.
“The Hats are a noble family planning to marry me to claim the throne,” he told them. “You’ll know as soon as the marriage is announced which noble family is the Hats. You’re the only ones that can testify they’re one and the same. They’ve-”
Fen cocked her hand in warning. “Hush your mouth, or I’ll knock you silly enough you can’t talk, and blame it on Miss High-and-mighty.”
He wanted to stay conscious, so he kept his suspicions to himself.
The side-wheeler Destiny sat waiting for them, tied off to massive oaks on a secluded bend in the river, its stage lowered to the desolate shore.
Kij and her sisters came down to greet them in the woods, six-guns holstered on their hips. Kij smiled at Jerin, then noticed Cira and frowned. “So, you make an appearance, finally.”
“Gods, your soul must be black,” Cira growled.
Kij waved the insult away. “Faith is for the well-to-do. My grandmothers left us too destitute for that nonsense.”
“But Keifer, and your Eldest, and your mothers?” Cira asked.
“Our family doesn’t age well,” Kij said lightly, as if she were talking about spilling cheap wine and not her family’s blood. “Our mothers had long slipped into senility, and babbled family secrets right and left.
They made a useful sacrifice-one last service to the family. Keifer, dearly as I loved him, was an idiot.
He was to get himself to the first-floor bathroom. We picked that theater primarily for a place he could survive the blast. The walls reinforced by the plumbing would have protected him. He never showed.
Eldest went to fetch him, but then- they weren’t supposed to be killed.”
“Ahhh, too bad. So now a husband raid?” Cira asked.
“Oh, we didn’t raid for a husband,” Kij cried, pressing her left hand to her chest, looking wounded.
“The royal guard can testify without influence from us that not a single Porter sister took Jerin from the palace.”
Kij’s right hand flashed downward, drawing her pistol.
Jerin had been watching for the move; he stepped in front of Cira, shielding her. “Kij, no!”
The Porters’ revolvers fired in thunderous rounds. Fen, Bert, little Dossy. and the others went down in a hail of bullets, the Porter sisters emptying their six-guns into the hapless river trash.
Birds startled up out of the trees and winged away as the echoes returned from the far shore. Gun smoke wreathed them. The smell of blood grew as the river trash’s lives poured out into the dirt around them.
“There’s an interesting law that applies here,” Kij calmly explained as she reloaded her pistol. “It’s similar to war plunder. It says that if an unmarried man is kidnapped by party A and rescued by party B, then he belongs to party B. Losers weepers, finders keepers.” She spun the chamber on her pistol. “Step out of the way, Jerin.”
“No.” Jerin was pleased that he sounded more firm than he felt.
“Sisters, please, get our new husband out of harm’s way.”
“If I were you,” Cira called out to Kij from behind him, “I’d think long and hard before you walk down that road.”
“It’s a road we’ve walked before.” Kij raised her revolver. “A few more miles, and Queensland is ours.”
“Kill her and I will never be your husband!” Jerin growled. “You’ll have to keep me chained to a wall, because I’ll escape you every chance I get. I’ll tell anyone I see of the crimes you committed. You’ll have to rape me for my seed! You’ll have to raise our children alone.”
“Jerin, hush.” Cira caught his shoulders and started to push him aside. “Don’t give them cause to hurt you.”
Jerin dug in his heels, refusing to move out of the way. “Let her live, and I marry you willingly. I’ll stay by your side. I’ll pleasure you in bed, and I’ll take joy in our children. My word of honor.”
“She knows too much,” Kij explained to him gently, then made a shooing motion with her gun. “Move aside, Jerin.”
“Kij!” Kij’s sister Meza hissed. “Not in front of him. Frankly, I want a husband with a tongue.”
“Let’s keep our options open,” their sister Alissa added.
Kij stared at him and then lowered her pistol. “You win for now, beloved.” She turned away. “I don’t want him haring off over the countryside again. Search them both, Alissa, and handcuff them in my cabin.
We’ll do a rotating guard on them.”
“Search them both?” Alissa quirked up an eyebrow.
Kij holstered her pistol. “He may be gently born, but his family were knights of valor. Unless I miss my guess, they’ll arm anything that can hold a gun.”
They found his derringer and knife, which made them search up under his robe, teasing and touching him rudely. He covered his face, and hid his fierce attention to which pocket Alissa dropped his stuff into.
When Meza found his stash pouch, Cira winced. Obviously she had hoped he would free himself a second time.
“I can’t believe you’re turning against the Queens,” Jerin said to cover his turning, watching Meza as she frowned at the jumble of items in his pouch and then slipped it into her own pocket.
“You can’t?‘” Kij took his hand, pleading understanding with her eyes. “Did you think we gave a fuck which princess was Eldest? Either one would have been the same to us! So an idiotic war we cared nothing about was waged, and our entire livelihood was blown away!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to murder the royal family!” Jerin cried.
“They destroyed our family!”
Cira gave a bitter laugh. “How do you figure that? No Porter was killed in the war, and you received reparations for the damage to the locks!”
“We received chicken feed! We could only rebuild half the system on what we received, and half is worthless! We had to mortgage everything to scrape up the money, and still it wasn’t enough! So we started smuggling and stealing and murdering to make ends meet. We lost our honor. We lost mothers and sisters overseeing the dangerous construction and smuggling ring. I had to shoot my own sister in the face so she couldn’t be identified! The indignities we’ve suffered-all because the royal family couldn’t settle who would be Eldest. Well, never again. We’re taking the thrones.”
Jerin exaggerated his limp, and as he came off the stage, stumbled against Alissa. She caught him out of reflex, and as she righted him. he dipped his hand down into her coat pocket. His fingers closed on the cold, welcome grip of his derringer. Lightly, he lifted the small pistol out, his heart hammering fit to break, and slipped it
into his robe pocket. There was no outcry from her sisters and Alissa smiled as she took the opportunity to grope him. Even Cira, who was watching him with concern, seemed unaware. He limped forward, faked another stumble into Meza Porter, and retrieved his stash pouch. He didn’t even want to try for his knife-it was so awkward a shape he was sure to be caught. Instead he meekly allowed himself to be led to Kij’s cabin.
Kij’s cabin was on the second deck, in the corner farthest from the great churning paddle wheel. Jerin balked at the door, for here was surely a den of seduction. A huge bed dominated the room, covered with a thick feather mattress, sheets of silk, and drapes of brocades and dark green velvets. Cherry paneling and stained glass on the portholes darkened the room. Alissa, entering before him, took a match to the oil lamps, and the warm glow of their flames reflected on gold leaf and brass.
Alissa looked at the bed and then at him, nostrils flaring. “On the bed, love.”
Conscious of the four armed Porter sisters behind him, Jerin limped to the bed and sat on the very edge.
“Chain her to the foot like a dog,” Alissa said, eyes locked on him. “She can watch while I tumble him.”
With a great deal of laughing, they handcuffed Cira to the foot of the bed. Jerin braced himself. Against the five of them, there was nothing he could do except act as if he would honor his vow. Thankfully Alissa made no attempt to undress him. She merely pushed him back onto the bed. He twisted his robe as he fell so his pistol and stash were under him as Alissa sprawled on top of him. She writhed against him as she raped his mouth.
“Really, Alissa,” Cira said in a tone near boredom. “Taking Diva from me hurt me more than anything you can do with him.”
Alissa laughed, tossing her head to flip her gold hair out of her eyes, and slunk up, catlike, until she sat astride Jerin. “She was a delightful little bitch. You had her trained well. Tell me,” she said as she ran her finger over Jerin’s painted lips, “is he as talented with his mouth?”
“Why would you think I would know?” Cira drawled. “You know my tastes. You’ve eaten my leftovers.”
Alissa glared at Cira. eyes narrowing, Jerin all but forgotten below her. “If you are so disinterested, why are you riding herd on him?”