by Jean Johnson
Alys fumbled out most of the coins, counted fifteen, snatched back the extra two she had tossed out, and waited impatiently while the woman recounted them.
“Very good; go through that door there, and follow Mage Roether’s instructions, please.”
“Thank you!”
Clutching the remaining six—six!—coins to her chest, she darted through the door. Six gilder were far more wealth than she had expected to escape with. Six was wealth enough to buy passage on a ship . . . if any ships would dare take a woman to Nightfall Isle.
They wouldn’t, of course. The High Council had declared the Nightfall sons banished to the isle and had forbidden any women to set foot on the island, in a vain attempt to thwart the brothers’ prophecied Destiny. As it was, Alys knew she would have to swim the distance between the mainland and the island.
The mage in the room, standing before a largish mirror, gave her an impatient look. “Step through the mirror quickly, and don’t touch the edges. I can’t hold the link for much longer, with today’s backlog of travelers!”
Scooping up the hem of her skirt and cloak, Alys hopped through the mirror.
Someone on the other side caught and steadied her as the disorientation hit. “Careful—if you feel sick, there is an urn right over here ...”
Alys shook her head; she had done this enough with her uncle’s mirrors that she recovered after taking just two deep breaths. The other trips had been over an equally long and disorienting distance, but she had done it twice a day for many years now, attending to the morning and evening feedings of her uncle’s menagerie. “Thank you—how do I get out of here?”
“That door over there,” the woman helping her pointed. “Are you sure you’re all right? Most people who come such a long way get very sick.”
“Cast-iron stomach,” Alys muttered, heading for the door.
Even if she had been sick, there was nothing in her stomach to come back up. She had carefully refrained from hunting mice as an owl; the bones that a bird would cast back up later would have caused her human digestion a great deal of trouble. And now Alys had six solid gold coins to spend on a meal, and a rest, and maybe a bath, and a few supplies to supplement everything she had left behind.
“Thank you, Kata,” she prayed to the gentle goddess of the two Gods of Katan. Boisterous Jinga had never really drawn her, but serene Kata always had. Not enough to want to go serve in a temple—as if her uncle would have let her—but enough that she felt comforted whenever she had caught sight of a shrine dedicated to the mother-goddess of their people.
Emerging from the magic-cooled depths of the local Guild hall, she immediately felt the sweltering, humid heat of the northeastern coastline. Forced to take off her cloak, she bundled it on her arm and looked around, orienting herself as best she could in a town she had never seen. The architecture was different, with pillared roofs fronting each building, providing shade against the northern-hot sun. Her wool-and-linen spun gown was too hot, now that she was in a region where everyone was wearing linen or cotton, or thin silk if they could afford it.
Keeping to the shade, sniffing the air, redolent with unfamiliar, northeastern spices, she headed for a food stall to spend one of her precious coins. No, better yet—an actual meal in an actual tavern. Spying a carved sign of a winking woman holding a tray of bread and ale, with the Katani characters underneath the wooden shingle for “The Trenching Wench Inn,” she hurried across the street. She had to dodge two magic-powered carts, sidestepped horse droppings that hadn’t been swept up yet for composting and selling as fertilizer by some enterprising, hardy soul, but finally was free to duck inside.
It wasn’t as cool as the Mages’ Guild building, but it was cooler than the burning sun outside. She sighed in relief . . . and froze. The only women in the tavern were serving-wenches—low-cut bodices, cleavage-baring corsets, with skirts hiked high enough to bare the knee. That type of wench. The kind Alys instinctively knew served a lot more than bread and mead to the all-male clientele.
Especially since, as if cued by her very thoughts, a woman’s moan and a man’s shout floated down from the rooms rentable overhead, muffled only somewhat by the wood and plaster of the walls. Some of the men grinned crudely; others ignored the sounds, eating their meals, flirting with the women. There was a mix of women, too, some paler-skinned from the southlands, some darker-skinned from the northlands of Katan, and plenty whose coloring fell between.
Alys bit back a groan. Her first taste of adventure since being cooped up in her uncle’s care, and she had to wander into a brothel-tavern! Backing out quickly, she bumped into an entering patron and scrambled to get farther down the street as he gave her a grin, his teeth gleaming white in his suntanned face. Then she gasped and reversed her course, ducking back into the tavern in an effort to hide herself from an even more alarming sight. It was her other uncle, Donnock of Devries! Seated in a mage-driven carriage heading down the street—coming her way, no less.
What is he doing all the way over here? Alys thought frantically, hurrying as fast as she could through the scattered tables. Last she had heard—albeit over a month ago—her father’s middle brother was taking care of an errand for Broger on the west coast, a full two month’s journey away, or thirty whole gilders by Gate. She swatted without stopping to aim at a hand that tried to grip her bottom and escaped through the back doorway. It couldn’t have been him! It just looked like him, that’s all . . .
“Here, now! What are you doing in here? You’re not a part of this tavern!”
Shaking her head and making a hushing noise at the wench who was passing the other way, she peered through the crack in the doorway as soon as it swung shut again—he was coming inside! Heart pounding, she shrank back, then firmed her courage and looked through the crack again. Her uncle, about as black-hearted as his older brother, had grabbed a wench and was squeezing her bottom, feasting on her neck.
Alys could see the woman roll her eyes for just a moment, then muster a smile and a coo for him, nodding her head first at the tray of drinks she was still balancing. Then the wench nodded toward the doorway. As Alys watched, the woman divested her tray of its drinks at a nearby table, collected the coins from the thirsty patrons, handed her tray to another woman, and joined her uncle in heading toward the back door. Straight toward Alys’ position.
Turning, Alys fled to the next door down the short hall.
“Hey! Who are you?” the cook called out, looking up from the roasted fowl he was disjointing.
Alys quickly retreated before he could make a further scene and draw her uncle’s attention. There was only one other way out of the brief passageway, and that was up the stairs. Scrambling up them, she reached the hall upstairs, breathless from her dash and the fear of discovery.
Blushing at the sounds from behind some of the doors, she slipped quickly to the end of the hall and cautiously peeked into one whose door stood open. No one was inside. Darting within, she shut the stout panel. The room had a bed, a small table next to it with a pitcher and bowl, some toweling cloths, an armless, unpadded chair to one side by the window, and a largish wardrobe cupboard against the wall. The room smelled of men and women, of musk and sweat and copulation.
She had smelled that scent before. Sometimes it amused her uncle to shock her by ordering her to bring him up one of his tamer “pets” while he was still in bed with one of the household. That was when she had learned what a naked man looked like and learned that her eldest uncle thought about wanting her, about having her.
If she hadn’t had so much to live for, if her careful deflections of his interest—temporary pleasure at best, Uncle, compared to the price you could get for a virgin niece—hadn’t dissuaded him, she probably would have ended up slitting her wrists if he had ever touched her.
She heard footsteps coming down the hall. She tensed, then relaxed as another door creaked open. Then she heard the footsteps again, closer, closer . . . the handle on the door turned! Whirling around, she yanked open one of the wardr
obe doors and climbed inside, pulling it almost, but not quite, shut behind her—she didn’t dare bang it closed when they were right there!
Trying not to pant too loudly or let her heart pound too hard, Alys heard the murmur of voices, heard the bedchamber door being shut, and then saw the back of a woman and a man heading to the bed, just within her strip of view.
It wasn’t her uncle, Donnock, thankfully—this man had blond hair, not dark brown. As she watched, he grinned and shucked his boots, his tunic, and pants. The woman, a more northern-born one than the blonde she had seen her uncle grab, pulled off her blouse, heeled off her slippers, and started to work on the laces of her skirts. Wide-eyed, Alys held herself very still as the man immediately cupped the woman’s light brown breasts together, sucking first on one large, rosy-brown nipple, then on the other, growling something indistinct as he laved them with his tongue. The wench laughed, managed to shimmy out of her skirts, and the man picked her up and tossed her on the bed with a laugh of his own, the rod at his groin twitching and hard.
The angle of the wardrobe gave Alys a fairly clear view as the man spread the woman’s thighs, exposing her brown curls and dark-pink, moist core . . . and put his mouth there? Shocked, Alys watched as he licked and kissed and nibbled. Even more amazing, the woman not only put up with it, but sighed, then moaned, then squirmed and writhed as if it was something really good. She clasped his head after a few minutes of the odd treatment, her body convulsing, shivering, bucking up into him, as she let out a wailing cry. The man laughed as she panted, sagging limp into the bedding.
He rolled her over after a moment, giving her backside a slap, and pulled her up onto her hands and knees. She wiggled her hips and gave him a laugh, and he gripped his rod, edging closer on his knees. Their position now made Alys have to lean to the side a little to see what he was up to; curiosity and shock compelled her into tipping her head just that little bit more, angling for a better view. He was teasing her glistening-damp slit with the reddened head of his shaft, rubbing the rounded tip against the folds of her cleft. Especially against that little peak toward the front of her core, until the woman begged for more. As Alys watched, amazed at this . . . this playing, the man gripped her hips and sank abruptly into her body, slick and swift and deep.
As Alys stared, captivated in shock and fascination, the man swayed back almost all of the way out, then shoved back in so deep, not even the curls of their respective groins could be seen by their amazed, hidden audience. The woman moaned and squirmed, and he pulled back and obliged with more. Alys had never seen this position before, since her uncle had always been on top of his wenches, and they had endured it on their backs, not enjoyed it on their hands and knees.
The client groaned and rocked and plunged himself in and out of the wench he was paying for. He reached forward and fondled her swaying breasts, thrusting into her rhythmically, over and over, faster and faster, until he was grunting with each stroke and she was gasping for more. Hairy thighs slapped against the back of her light brown ones as his hands clutched her hips, everything in their straining, animalistic copulating building to a frantic pace.
The man suddenly grimaced and shouted, his back arching as the woman moaned, and they shuddered and bucked together. Drooping over her back, he panted hard through his grin, and the woman struggled for her own breath. Then he slid out of her, his manhood limp, wet, and shriveling. They stayed like that for a few moments, then the man sat up, heaving a sigh of satisfaction.
A moment later, he slapped her hip again and pointed at his groin, stating a crude order that made Alys blush, but the woman obeyed willingly. As the man sank back on his heels, the woman turned around and knelt on the rumpled bedding. She bent low and took him into her mouth, licking and sucking and using her hand, until the capped end of his manhood came out of its little cowl-hood once more, stiff and hard and throbbing visibly in her grip.
The crude things he said as she did that told Alys he liked it a lot, and then he pushed the woman over, his rod stiff and jutting as it had before, and took her the same way Alys had seen her uncle humping over his women. Only, this woman wrapped her legs around her customer’s waist and encouraged him with an amazing vocabulary of words, arching herself up into him as if she enjoyed his weight bouncing on her. This time, when the man groaned and arched his back, then slumped in completion, he lay limply insensate for several minutes on top of the whore.
Alys watched in silence as the woman lifted her hands behind his head and checked her nails. The wench cleaned underneath each of them with a thumbnail, relaxed them onto his back again for a few moments more, then finally jiggled the man back to consciousness. He kissed her, climbed off the bed, and used one of the rags and a little water from the pitcher to clean off his no longer rampant groin. Climbing into his clothes, he dug out a couple of coins from his pouch and tossed them at the woman. She caught most of them, hunted in the bedding for the last one while he buckled his belt, and thanked him with a sly admonition to “come again, soon” that made Alys blush three seconds later . . . finally getting the innuendo.
When the man left, the woman got out of the bed, straightened the bedding, threw on her blouse, stepped back into her skirts . . . and walked straight to the wardrobe door. Alys shrank back, but there was nowhere to hide; the clothes hanging on their pegs inside weren’t nearly enough to cover her. The woman pulled the door open. And froze, staring at the extra contents of the wardrobe.
“Well, well. What have we here?”
Alys squeaked and got her throat working, her cheeks aflame with shame and embarrassment. She shook her head, her curls wisping free from the braid she usually tried to confine them in, balling her cloak tight against her stomach. “I didn’t mean to be in here!”
“I can see that. Usually I’m paid in advance if someone wants a peek at whatever goes on in here . . . and they’re invariably men,” the woman added frankly. She eyed Alys’ flushed cheeks, her wide eyes, and stepped back, flipping her hand. “Come out. If your reason for being in there is a good one, I won’t charge you.”
Shocked that someone would pay to see something like . . . like that, Alys crept out. Shaking out her gown, she stared at the bed, then shook her head and closed her eyes.
“You’re an innocent, aren’t you? Sit down—don’t worry, the bed isn’t going to bite you,” the other woman added, guiding her over to the edge. She sat down next to Alys. “I’m Cari. Who are you?”
“A—” She broke off, and lied about her name. If her Uncle Donnock ever heard of her visit, her Uncle Broger wouldn’t stop at anything to hunt her down. “Analia,” she lied. “I came in here because I saw my uncle outside on the street, but I couldn’t escape through the kitchen because the cook shouted at me, and my uncle was in the tavern room by then, so I ran upstairs, and I came in here, but then you came in, so I had to hide . . . and I . . . and you . . .”
She couldn’t finish. The wench cocked a dark brown brow in her light brown forehead and studied her. “Analia, huh? Well, tell me, why were you afraid your uncle might see you? Why were you so afraid that an innocent like you would rather run into a brothel than meet him?”
The gentleness in her tone was the first piece of sympathy Alys had received since the Corvis servants had bid her a regretful farewell. “I’m running away from home,” she admitted in a rush. “My uncle’s not a very nice man, and if he saw me, he’d drag me home in spellbound chains, and then I’d have to marry a fat, smelly, sixty-eight-year-old lecher, because I’m a virgin and my uncle wants lots of money.”
Cari blinked, looked across the room at nothing in particular as she worked that part out, then nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. And of course you had to hide either under the bed or in the wardrobe—but why didn’t you shut the cupboard door?”
“I didn’t want it to bang and let you know I was there,” Alys admitted, glad the woman wasn’t hollering or making a fuss. “And I didn’t really mean to see anything, but there wasn’t enough room
to move . . . and I couldn’t seem to close my eyes—did you really like that?” she asked bluntly. “Was it actually . . . enjoyable ?”
The wench laughed. “Let me close the door, honey.” Getting up, she crossed the room, shut the door, then came back and dragged over a chair. “Have you got a silvara?”
Alys shook her head. “I’ve got one gilder to my name,” she lied, smart enough not to tell this woman or anyone else how much money she did have in the sash pouch inside the bundle of her cloak. “But I’m headed to a friend’s home, so I don’t need much money.”
Cari got up again, crossed to the wardrobe, did something to the bottom that lifted the wooden panel up, bent over and did something more, then closed everything up. She came back and held out nine silver coins. “Nine silvaras. Give me the gilder, and I’ll answer any questions you’ve got, for a full hour . . . and if you’re as innocent as I think you are, I’ll tell you what your mother should have told you long ago—you’re, what, twenty-two?”
“Twenty-four. My parents died ten years ago. My uncle has been raising me,” Alys added, eyeing the coins. Sighing, she unrolled her cloak just far enough to dig her hand in and fetch out a single coin, then exchanged it for the silvaras. “I . . . I suppose I would like to know a few things. Does it feel good, as good as you made it look?” she asked, tucking the coins away and rolling up her sash and cloak once more.
Cari, Alys guessed about twenty-six or so, turned the chair around and straddled it, bracing her arms across the back. “Honey, I’m a whore. Which means I do it for a living. Now, sometimes it feels good, if the man knows what he’s doing . . . or if I’m in the mood . . . but oftentimes for me, it’s just work.
“Sometimes I shiver, I sigh, I give a little cry,” she added in dramatic rhyme, touching her cleavage-low neckline and batting her eyelashes, making Alys smile a little, “but that’s mostly so the guy feels good about what he’s doing—I have to please my customers, after all, or they won’t come back for more, and they all like to think they’re Kata’s greatest mortal lover. Jinga, on the other hand, knows that most of these guys don’t know their rods from a hole in the ground. Unfortunately, a lot of ’em treat women that way—like a hole in the ground.