Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) (23 page)

“What do we do?”

Martlyn pressed her palms into her eyes, tried to clear her head. Think. She and Caerys stood in Vanora’s room trying to determine their fate against the low roar of activity from the common room below.

“What are we going to do?” Caerys asked again.

Martlyn pulled her hands from his eyes, and grabbed a drink. Threw back a shot of uske. “I’m going back to the Rookery,” she decided, and planted her empty glass on the table.

“You…,” Caerys fretted. “You shouldn’t do that!”

Martlyn shrugged. “What choice do I have?” She still smelled of smoke even though she’d changed her cloths at the inn. It was in her hair.

Caerys, her whole face knotted up with worry, pleaded wordlessly with Martlyn.

“I’m not going to work for him,” Martlyn said, “he’s going to get us all killed.”

“So we help him,” Caerys said. “He can stop the count.”

“Not alone he can’t!”

“He’s not alone. We can help,” Caerys stressed.

Caerys looked at Martlyn hopefully. Martlyn sneered and shook her head once. Her red curls looked black in the moonlight.

“Help,” she spat.

“We help him," Caerys repeated, "he kills the count, and we can do whatever we want.”

Caerys suddenly realized that Martlyn could not really be as skeptical, as hard, as she wanted everyone to think, otherwise she would have already left. She wanted to be convinced.

“We help him,” Caerys repeated, “and we run this place like Miss Elowen ran the Rose.”

Martlyn was obviously intrigued by this idea “What can we do?” she asked.

Caerys took a breath, tried to calm down. “He needs to find an alchemist named Tam. Us? The girls? How many clotpoles do we see? Some of the girls work here, they work at the Wheel, the Purse. How long do you think it would take to find this alchemist? To find anyone we need?”

Martlyn nodded. The idea appealed to her.

“We don’t do anything,” Caerys said. “The priest has his horn up for the count, he’ll go after him on all his own. All we have to do is find the alchemist.”

Martlyn fired a nail. Took a drag.

She blew the smoke out, held her right elbow in her left hand the way she’d seen Miss Elowen do when she smoked.

She looked down at the younger girl. “Tam?” she asked.

Caerys smiled.

Wellbridge was a small stone bridge, running over a canal used to divert water from the Wehl river for use in the city's sewage system. The water, as it ran under the arch of stone, was clean and the smell and sound were pleasant. Lovers often came here. At times, the Dusk Moon spun overhead lighting the river with a dull red color that made the water look like wine. Now it sparkled in starlight. The same starlight under which Heden had only two hours before, killed four black scarves.

He heard, rather than saw, Elowen take a position next to him on the bridge. He turned to look at her.

She stood there, a cloak around her for warmth, leaning on the stone, looking out at the river. She wasn't wearing heels. She looked like a normal girl. For some reason, to Heden, this made her more attractive.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She nodded.

"This is...it's probably my fault," he said.

"I know," she said flatly, not looking at him.

She sighed and shook her head.

"Here," Heden said, handing a collection of papers rolled up with twine to Elowen. "Take these."

Elowen took them gingerly, and gave Heden a look. "Parchment?" she asked.

Heden shook his head. "Paper. Money. Few thousand crowns. Capital currency."

She gripped the rolled papers tighter. "Capital," she said in a whisper.

“There’s a deed in there to an apartment, mine. I’ve signed it over to you.”

“You have an apartment in Capital?”

“Yeah,” Heden said. “It’s not much, a few rooms. Some servants. Been years since I've been there. Doubt I'll ever go back.”

“Servants?” Elowen’s voice squeaked a little.

Heden shrugged. “Comes with the territory. I’ve given you right and title to all my holdings in Capital,” he said. “There's a few tens of thousands of crowns in an account in one of their banks. I never needed it. And there’s this,” he said, handing her something else.

She took what looked like a sliver of wood, a few inches long. White bark on one side, like someone had peeled the bark off a birch tree and some wood had come off with it.

“Wood?” She asked.

“Ok,” Heden said, pressing his hand to his forehead. He hated explaining things like this. “We did a favor," he said meaning the Sunbringers, "a big favor, for one of the Lords of Capital." Elowen looked at him, her eyes wide, reflecting the stars above them.

She nodded.

“Her name is Lliara,” he said. “Well, that’s not her full name; I could never remember the whole thing. Take this to her. She’ll help you. She’ll give you all the help you need. More. She owes me a lot. A lot more than a brothel.”

Elowen looked at the pale wood. It was hard to tell in the starlight but it looked bluish.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It’s some of her skin,” Heden said.

Elowen snapped a look at him. “
What?
”

Heden shrugged. “She’s one of the Lunar Celestials. There are a few still left in Orden. She can’t leave Capital for some reason, she never explained it to me. I did her a favor and there was some kind of ritual and afterward she took a knife and…,” he gestured to the wood. “It’s like…you know, when men are being stupid and cut their palms to make an agreement? Same thing,” he said.

“She’s made of wood?” Elowen asked.

“She doesn’t look like a tree or anything, she looks like a normal woman. Well, ‘normal.’ You’ll see.”

Elowen took the wood and bundled it with the parchment. “I’ll see?” she said dully.

Heden shook his head. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“You’re giving me something like half a million crowns in coin and property and you’re apologizing to me?”

“Which would you rather have,” Heden asked. “The Rose and the girls, or that,” he nodded to the parchment.

Elowen smiled that smile she used when Heden was being stupid. “This,” she said, holding the papers up. “Don’t be stupid.” She laughed a little. “You get my place burned down and I end up a rich woman. Typical. And you want to apologize.”

“You were happy in the Rose,” Heden said, not accepting her answer. “You don’t like change.”

“No,” she corrected, “
you
don’t like change. I’ve been dreaming of Capital all my life,” she said. “You’re so naïve sometimes. Especially with women.”

“I guess,” Heden said.

She gave him a look.

“What?” he asked.

She stepped closer to him.

“Come with me.”

Heden took a deep breath. Not this again.

“Someone has to look after the girls,” he said.

“Heden the girls will be fine,” Elowen said, smiling, shaking her head. “They don’t need looking…
you
need looking after,” she said. “You need a woman like a boat needs water. Everyone knows it.”

“Everyone.”

“Most everyone,” she said. She turned and leaned on the stone railing of the bridge, looked out at the water under starlight.

“I know you’ve never…,” she shook her head. “You’ve never thought of me like that,” she began.

“What are we talking about?” Heden asked, leaning on the stone, watching her watch the water.

She looked at him for a moment and looked like she was going to cry again. Then the softness disappeared.

“I was never stupid enough to let myself fall far you,” she gripped the roll of parchment. Heden raised his eyebrows.

“But we could be happy in Capital,” she said. “It would be a lot of fun,” she urged. “You could use some fun,” she said. “You deserve to be happy,” she said.

Heden tried not to let his distaste at her use of the word ‘deserve’ show.

“It’s tempting,” he said.

She spun on him. “No it’s not,” she snapped. “You’d never consider it a million years. I’m not enough. You want to know why I never…because I’m not enough. You’ve got such a twisted sense of…Negra wasn’t enough. Rhiaan wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough, apparently,” she held up the bark. “None of us can compete with,” she threw a hand in the direction of the Tower of the Quill, “which is stupid, because we’re not competing with Reginam,” she said, and tapped her forehead. “We’re competing with the completely horseshit version of her you created in your head when you were kids. No one can compete with that, not even the real thing.”

Heden felt helpless again, as he often did around women who wanted more than he could give. Why was this all his fault?

“You’re like a fucking knight, except even the Hart comes to the Rose,” she said. “It was stupid of me to ask. They burned down the Rose because of you and I should be furious, but all I feel is stupid because I asked you to come with me.”

Heden didn’t say anything. Silence grew.

Eventually she held up the papers. “Thanks,” she said.

“Careful with them,” Heden said. “It’s all paper. They do everything with paper there. You’ll get used to it.”

“Probably,” she said.

“I’m going to take care of the girls,” he said, and realized he was swearing another oath.

“Find them nice homes?” she asked, looking down at the water. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know, I’m trying to take this one day at a time. Some of them have already been…doing business there for days. Nothing horrible seems to have happened. They seem like nice normal girls.”

“Of course they do, what did you expect?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I thought…,”

“Trulls are just like anyone else,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t imagine any of them are as fucked up as you.”

“Ok,” Heden said, letting her know he’d gotten her point.

She let go of something inside, relaxed. Turned to him.

“I know how your mind works,” she said. “How long will you be able to ignore what they’re doing? Act like nothing’s going on? This isn’t a problem to solve, Heden,” she said.

“Well,” he said thinking. “I don’t like what they’re doing.”

“Do they like it?”

“Yeah,” Heden said. He wasn’t answering the question; he was confirming its legitimacy. “Don’t think it matters what they like.”

“Doesn’t matter a little?”

“You think if they’d had different lives they’d be on the game?”

She couldn’t argue with this.

“But they didn’t have that life," she said. "This is what they know, it’s what they’re good at and most of them enjoy it.”

Heden thought about this.

“No,” he concluded. “No, you’re wrong.” She gave him a look. “I think,” he added diplomatically.

“They enjoy the sense of family," he explained. "They enjoy belonging. They enjoy having a place where they feel safe. Feel like someone’s watching over them. They enjoy feeling like they’re earning a living, feeling like they’re independent, have some control over their lives. And they maybe enjoy having this sense of power over men. But it’s horseshit. It’s the men who have the power, the men who pay.”

“Is that why you never opened the inn?” she said.

It was like someone had slapped him. “What?” he shot back.

“You serve a customer. He pays you," she said. "You have to do what he came in for. You’re obligated. He has the power.”

It was Heden’s turn to stare at the river, his eyes unblinking.

“You’d never accept any man having that power over you, except maybe Richard.”

For a moment, Heden felt like he was going to topple over and fall into the water.

“You’re right,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows, surprised at what Heden was willing to admit.

“Most people don’t have that problem,” she went on. “Most people earn a living offering a service, think nothing of it. Not you. You’re so…you. You won’t compromise, you won’t ever give anyone any speck of control over any part of you.”

“This isn’t about me,” Heden attempted.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

Heden kept thinking.

“I’m going to give them the choice.”

She nodded.

“That’s it. No pressure. Every girl there gets the chance to earn a living, fair wage, for running the inn. Might have to open my own butchers shop. Maybe start buying stuff direct from the pier. Doesn’t matter. The girls will have the chance. They can make the choice; I won’t make it for them.”

“Some of them won’t make the right choice.”

“Nothing I can do about that.”

“Some of them, you’ll never know what the right choice was.”

“Now you’re just stating the obvious," he said. "I never know what the right choice is.”

“Just making sure,” she said with a smile.

Heden stared out over the river. Elowen watched him.

She stood up on her toes, and kissed his cheek. He let her.

"Goodbye Heden," she said. "Treat the girls well. They're nice. They'll take good care of you. Maybe they're just what you need."

He didn't say anything.

"When you kill the count," she said, taking a step back. "Do it slowly."

He turned to her and smiled. She smiled back. Then her smile turned into a wry smirk, she sighed, and turned, and walked across the bridge.

Heden stood on the bridge alone. For some reason, relieving himself of all his Capital holdings felt good. Liberating. He wished he could wait a few years, and visit Elowen there. She was going to love it.

He looked across the bridge, the direction she'd left, and wondered at what his money had bought him. Her happiness? Maybe. Worth the burning of the Rose Petal if.... A thought struck him.

He realized he'd just bought a brothel. Complete with experienced staff.