by Glenda Larke
When she cringed, he complained to Opal, and Opal berated her. "He's a customer, Terelle, and he's offering good money for your deflowering. Tantalize him, child. Blush. If he wants to pinch the fruit before plucking, squeal and let him-it will put the price up. I don't expect to have him complain that you are rude!"
"He hurts the other girls when he buys their time," she muttered, dreading.
"Nonsense! They love to exaggerate. Anyway, if you don't want Huckman, encourage some of the other men who like their bedmates young and fresh, so that they will bid high for you."
Terelle was desperate. The fact that the men vying for her had to wait apparently only added more spice to the auction. Some of the regulars were even betting on the date of her first-night and on who the lucky man would be. In the meantime, Opal brushed aside her protests as childish modesty, soon to be forgotten.
Since the day she'd first met Amethyst the dancer, Terelle had searched for an arta or artisman who would take on an untried girl as an apprentice. She slipped out of the snuggery at every opportunity. She met several musicians from the musicians' guild first, even though she had been doubtful that her talents lay in that direction. They had listened politely enough to her lute playing, then shown her the door. She tried the jewellery designers and makers next, followed by the stone polishers who collected and prepared gemstones for the jewellers. They all said they only employed family members. After that, she spoke to the fine metal workers, who made the settings. They laughed, saying it wasn't a child's job. She pestered every potter in the city. They had no need of outside talent, they told her. She went to the bab palm carvers. They shook their heads and said they only employed men. She begged the tile-bakers, the lacemakers, the weavers and the rug designers. Every single one turned her down and the reason was always basically the same: these trades were handed down within families. Who wanted to take on an outside apprentice who had no experience and no proven skill? Besides, it would mean having to pay off Opal's snuggery.
And so her fourteenth birthday had dawned without any sign of a future outside the snuggery-and with every indication that the future within its walls was about to plunge into horror. In her despair, she sneaked out the gate once more that morning, and went to visit Amethyst.
For over a year now, she had been receiving five tokens every quarter in exchange for a newly created dance. She had saved the tokens, but it was the time she spent with Amethyst that she treasured. The dancer always gave her hope, hope that there was a way out. It was just a matter of finding it. After all, Amethyst herself had been born on the thirty-sixth level; in Scarcleft, that was the lowest. And now, even though she was no longer young, the rich of Scarcleft begged to see her dance. "It wasn't easy," the dancer admitted once. "In fact, there were times when I wondered where my next sip of water was coming from, when I had to do things I didn't want to, just in order to survive."
"You sold your body."
Amethyst smiled slightly. "You are blunt, child. But yes, I sold myself. Oh, not as a street whore, or even in a snuggery. But there are other ways-more subtle, but just as destructive." She looked away from Terelle, as if unwilling to meet the sharpness of her gaze. And Terelle was glad of it. She had glimpsed something in the dancer's eyes that spoke of a deep self-loathing. "And it wasn't just for water, either. It was for the right to dance at all. It was as simple as that."
She stopped and Terelle thought she wasn't going to say any more, but then she added softly, "He was a young rainlord; and at that time it was within his power to give me a water allotment and allow me to perform uplevel-or not. He fancied me and made it clear that if I bedded him, my career and my water entitlement were assured. If I didn't… well, he never said what he could or would do. But knowing what he was like, I was afraid to find out. And so I slept with him. I was his mistress for ten years, until he tired of me."
She saddened. "One of many. He had a theory that he had a duty to have as many children as possible, in the hope that some of them would grow up to be rainlords. Not sure if he was successful, though, because we don't see too many rainlords these days.
"Fortunately he didn't require me to bear him a child. All I had to do was be his when he wanted it. And only his. For the water entitlement alone I might not have done it, but for the right to dance? Sometimes I think I would have sold my soul." But the look she gave Terelle then was one of devastation. "Sometimes a price can be too high, Terelle. Remember that." Terelle did indeed remember as she climbed uplevel on the morning of her fourteenth birthday. How much, she wondered, was she willing to pay to be free of the snuggery?
As usual, Jomat the steward opened the door to her, but only with reluctance. He always resented her intrusion on Amethyst's time, although he had never actually refused her entrance. Every time, he would open the door a crack first, and wait for her to ask for entry. Then he would lean forward to stare at her with his myopic eyes, running his gaze over her body. And always, always, he would smile pleasantly and then lay down his poison, disguised as casual conversation.
"Arta Amethyst is such a kind lady," he might say as he pulled himself laboriously upstairs, wheezing as he went, with sweat beading along his forehead and running down his nose. "Always so generous to the girls who come for lessons or advice. Never turns anyone away, even when they are not worthy of her attention. She hasn't the heart to be honest."
Another time, as he ushered Terelle in through the front door, brushing his hand against her thigh, it was, "Arta Amethyst tells me she finds your dances delightfully naive. They remind her of when she was unskilled." On her previous visit he had remarked, "Arta Amethyst said yesterday she was so looking forward to the next time you came. She finds your downlevel simplicity so refreshingly charming." And he had smiled, his eyes glistening at her. "Your visits do her so much good, my dear. Do come whenever you can get away from your duties in the snuggery." She had come to hate his smile, his unctuous statements, the sting in the tail of every remark.
This time, as his gaze lingered on her budding breasts, he murmured, "How lovely you are looking today, my dear!" He smiled suggestively. "Quite the young lady now, eh? Please do go up. Arta Amethyst will be so sad when you are no longer able to come."
For once, Terelle could not keep her irritation in check. As she joined the dancer, she burst out, "Oh, that man is horrible! Why do you keep him on?"
Amethyst raised an eyebrow without saying a word.
Terelle's indignation dissolved into embarrassment. "I'm-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"I hope that is not the kind of manners they teach you at Opal's, child."
"No, Arta. I'm sorry. It's just that-oh, it doesn't matter."
Amethyst looked at her shrewdly. "You are upset about something else. Sit down here beside me. What is it?"
To her shame, Terelle found her chin wobbling as she verged on tears. She fought the temptation to cry. "My bleeding has come," she said simply. "I've run out of time."
Amethyst looked away with a sigh. "Oh, Terelle, I don't know what to say to help you. It seems to me that you have tried hard. I have been to see a few people, too. I didn't want to tell you for fear you would be discouraged, but I couldn't find anyone who would take you on, not when it would mean paying back the snuggery for so many years of free water, plus your father's sale price. Opal even wants interest, and legally she can do that. That's a small fortune."
"You went to see Madam Opal?"
"I sent a friend to inquire. I was wondering if I could afford to pay off your debt. I can't. I must conserve what meagre wealth I have for my old age, once I can no longer dance."
Terelle's spirits sank. She had wondered if Amethyst could-or would-be prepared to buy the debt; it had not occurred to her that the dancer could not afford it.
"Then what will I do? I could run away, but where could I go? I might have just enough tokens to pay for a caravan seat to Breccia City or Pediment, but what would I do in another city? It would be the same there!"
; "Opal can't force you into prostitution."
"No, but if I can't pay the debt, I can be forced to work it off. It would take my whole life if I was doing work that didn't involve the upper rooms." Even as she said the words, she hated the bitterness she heard in her own voice.
"And if you refused to work it off, you'd have to go to court and they'd sentence you to the city's labour force. Which would mean something far more unpleasant, like the lye-makers. I know."
Terelle nodded miserably. "It's not fair."
Amethyst looked at her in compassion. "Have you told Opal you don't want to be a whore?"
"Of course. She dismisses it as-as girlish qualms. She thinks I'll 'settle down' once I've had a few men." She shuddered. "I've seen the men who want me now. Watergiver have mercy, I don't want that! It's just not fair."
"No, it rarely is." She pondered, then added, "There are people who live without allowances or regular jobs, you know. Down on the thirty-sixth. Have you ever been there?"
Terelle shook her head.
"I was born there. There are ways to live. People who want casual labour often employ workers from the lowest level. It's worth a try. If it doesn't work out, well then, you can always go back to the snuggery."
"They'll come looking for me. I know it."
"Yes, no doubt. The important thing is for them not to find you for a while. If you can hide out for half a year, they may not bother to look any more."
"Is it possible to hide there?"
Amethyst gave a derisive laugh. "Every second person on the level is hiding from something! Go there. Have a look for yourself. Then decide. For now, let's forget your woes. We'll dance together. It will make you feel happier."
But later, when it was time for Terelle to leave, she added, "Be careful, my dear-don't trust anyone who lives on the thirty-sixth until they have proved themselves, and be careful of the highlord's enforcers as well. Those men love an excuse to use their swords on the waterless. However, there are better things to be found on the thirty-sixth level, too. It all depends on whether you want to take the risk involved in finding them."
I do, Terelle thought. I'll risk anything. It was true, Terelle decided as she looked around the main thoroughfare of the thirty-sixth. Bad and good, all mixed up. Freedom, of a kind. That was the good. But then there was the poverty. And the dirt. And the smell.
She had never been curious to visit Level Thirty-six, believing what she had been told: that this was the lowest level not only of the city, but of humanity; here were the dregs that had sunk down from the city above. Thieves, criminals, murderers, the waterless, the undeserving. They clung to the hem of the city's robe like grime, impossible to brush off. They received no free water allotment, yet still they survived. They sucked up the city's moisture and held on to life.
Terelle had heard tales-the young bloods who came to the snuggery were full of stories of how they'd survived a night of debauchery down in the dregs-but nothing had prepared her for the reality. The lack of order, the commotion, the stench, the untidy milling movement of it all. She had never seen so many people in such a small space, never heard so much noise, never been assaulted by so many different odours all at once.
Yet it was the absence of colours that she noticed first. The drabness. The dreary shades of brown seeping into everything. Skin, clothes, buildings-all coated with the misery of a hue that had no spirit, no animation. The shade of dust, of dead leaves, of detritus, of a life sucked dry of beauty. The colour of dirt.
On the other levels, each homeowner paid taxes and in return the streets were kept clean, the tunnels and cisterns were kept in good repair, and the nightsoil was collected each morning and carted outside the walls to be dried and processed into manure. On the thirty-sixth, none of that happened. Street urchins collected rubbish uplevel to bring downlevel, where it was sold and re-used, and there were piles of it everywhere. Privies stank. Rats scampered up and down walls and through lanes, heedless of the daylight or the throng of people.
Houses were made of ancient mud-brick or woven bab palm leaves; some were hardly more than lean-tos against the city wall. It would have taken no more than one carelessly discarded ember to set the whole place on fire. Worse, the poor could not afford the seaweed briquettes brought into the city by the packpede load. They used instead a volatile mixture of pede dung and dead palm fronds for fuel. She understood now the plumes of smoke she had seen from time to time curling from the foot of the city. Here, buildings often burned.
Everywhere she looked, there were people. Bare feet, ragged clothes, skeletal thinness, skin diseases. Sunlord save them, such poverty. Men and women and children even lived at the edge of the roadway, their pitiful heaps of belongings next to them. On a corner, for a price, a waterseller dispensed water from a transport jar. Not far away, a woman lounged against a wall, eyeing the men in the street. Terelle had never seen a street whore before, but she didn't need to be told the woman's trade. Snuggery women may have had a veneer of class, but the signals were still the same.
A group of children sat in the dust behind her, weaving mats from palm fronds; another two children pounded bab kernels in a single stone mortar, each with wooden pestles as large as themselves. They had built up a rhythm: whump-whump, whump-whump, like the beat of a drum. A man walked past, bent double under a load of palm fruit. Another two hefted a body wrapped in a tattered mat that wasn't long enough to cover the skinny bare feet of the corpse. Several wailing women followed, with barefoot children trailing behind. Someone pushed past with a bucket of liquid that smelled like stale urine. Another man was hanging sinucca leaves to dry on a line. Terelle was familiar with those: the snuggery bought them to make the paste that the handmaidens used to prevent pregnancy.
A child with no hair came up to her and tugged at her robe, holding out a grimy hand in supplication. It was a gesture she remembered from her childhood-an action of her younger self? She rather thought so, but the memory was vague and shameful-and she almost responded by digging into her purse. Then instinct told her that it wouldn't be wise to show she was willing to give up tokens to a beggar. She shook her head, her act of rejection bringing a lump to her throat.
As she turned away from the child, she saw that the whore on the corner was in luck: a young blood from the upper levels had come by, and he was leaning over her, staring down her blouse while he negotiated a price.
Terelle shuddered. Oh, sweet water, is this how I will end up?
She blundered away, the street blurred by her tears, and she had to stand still for a moment to try to regain her composure. She was next to the waterseller now, and he was eyeing her with interest. "Water?" he asked.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak, wishing she could stop the tears before anyone saw. A woman came up to buy water. She was carrying a standard dayjar, designed to contain a full day's water for an adult. To fill it would cost exactly one token. And yet as Terelle watched, she saw the woman hand over a full quarter as much again in payment. She blurted out, "How much is it?"
The waterseller replied as he poured, without looking up. "One and a quarter tokens for a dayjar. Regular price."
Terelle was incredulous. "Regular price? Since when has a day's worth been more than one token?"
This brought the full attention of both the seller and the buyer. The woman snorted. "Where you been all your life? On Level Two maybe? The poor pay more, don't y'know that?"
"But-that's illegal, isn't it?"
This naive remark resulted in a loud guffaw from the seller. "Nothing's illegal here, lass; you're on the thirty-sixth!"
"I don't understand," she said.
He finished filling the jar, handed it to the woman and put away the money. "No uplevel reeves will sell water to the waterless," he said as the woman left. "It's against the law. Water is only sold to licensed sellers like me-at one token a dayjar-direct from the waterhall on the first level. But I have to rent a packpede to bring the water down thirty-six levels, once a day. A
nd I got to live. So I sell it at one and a quarter. That's business, lady. Here you got to have business, or you die. Course, if you piss for the watermaker, then you save a couple of tinny."
When she looked blank, he said, "Collect your pee every day; take it to the watermaker outside the groves. He heats it on top o' the smelters, it evaporates and he collects the water, which he sells. The rest becomes manure for the gardens. There ain't nothin' you can't do here, if it keeps you watered. Uplevel law stopped the moment you took the last step down to the thirty-sixth." He gave her a calculating look. "And what's an upleveller like you doing mixing with the likes of us, anyway?"
But she had already turned away, her heart settling like a stone within her. She'd have to sell her pee to survive? If she had to pay a quarter as much again for water, her tokens were worth less than she had anticipated. She felt ill.
She walked on a little further and found a quiet spot against a blank wall. On one side, she was blocked from the bustle of the street by a pile of broken hampers of the kind used to carry bab fruits. On the other side, an oil seller sat cross-legged on a palm mat, his clay jars of bab oil heaped in front of him. He had his back to her, and his customers were few and far between, so she had a moment to adjust, unseen. She wanted to gather her wits; instead she found herself crying, tears sliding down her face, unstoppable. She was not sure what was causing her such grief. Unattractive self-pity? Empathy for the people here whose problems were even worse than her own? Guilt because she cared more about her own problems than theirs? Despair because she was not sure she was hard enough to survive outside the confines of the snuggery? Everything melted into a pointless welter of desperation and hopelessness. And that made her angry. She was better than that.
She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, willing herself to be inconspicuous while she strove to gain control. She would not be weak. Weakness was for people who gave up. Who settled for less.
I will never be like that!
What was it Amethyst had said? It all depends on whether you want to take the risk. Well, she would take the risk. She took a few deep breaths, slowed herself down. Calmed. Stopped the stupid tears.