“You … you…” Morea blinked in shock.
“Relax, child. He ain’t poisoned, just drugged up a bit.” She shifted his body into a position easier to carry.
“Now come on. Help me get him into bed.”
Morea did as Ola ordered and tucked the young man into the large cotton-stuffed bed normally used by Ola alone.
The brothel madam retreated into the bathroom and brought back the tray of food, which she placed on a small table. She ate noisily, with great appetite, and motioned for Morea to do the same.
“I ain’t never called myself the boy’s mother,” Ola explained, “but I am his mother in all the ways that matter. I love him like he was mine. Just like he was born out of my own womb. And I’m proud of him. Proud as any mother could be of her son. I don’t want him coming to no harm. I’ll protect him, even if I have to protect him from himself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. Let’s just say that he’s stubborn. He gets that from me. Oh, he might act all flighty sometimes, but that ain’t how he is really. Truth, he gets something into his head, he don’t ever let it go. He’ll just keep worrying at it, coming back to it, until he’s worn it down, like the winds tearing down a mountain. Damn, but I wish his father had more sense. You can’t tell a boy like Kihrin to stay away from an invitation to the High General’s house and expect the boy will do it. Demons, no. Surdyeh’s gone and made that just about irresistible.* Being told he can’t just makes it all the worse.” Ola wrapped some fish up in a flat piece of sag bread and munched. “Mmm … good sauce today.”
“Would meeting the High General be so bad?”
Ola stopped in midbite, and gave Morea such a glare that the girl yelped. “Yes, it would, and I ain’t going to explain why that is. You need to trust that I know what I’m about. He can’t go.” Her expression softened, and she said, “He’ll sleep tonight, sleep deep, and he’ll have rowdy dreams because of what I gave him. In the morning, he’ll wake up with you in his arms and he’ll think missing the meeting with the General was his own damn fault. And everything will be okay.”
Morea didn’t answer, but her expression was skeptical.
“He likes you,” Ola said, “so you can help me. There’s a big reward in it for you if you do.”
“What sort of reward?”
“My boy has some money saved up. Don’t ask where he got it from. Never mind that. I figure he’s got a tidy sum stashed up with the priests of Tavris up in the Ivory District. He’s planning on buying his pappa a tavern in Eamithon, someplace nice and peaceful to retire to. Nice people up there. I found the perfect tavern a while back and I went ahead and bought it. Kihrin don’t know I done it though. So I figure tomorrow I’ll let Kihrin buy that tavern from me, on the cheap, and I’ll send Kihrin there with his father and his pick of a couple slave girls to do waitress duty and the like. They take a dim view of slavery over in Eamithon,? so it wouldn’t be long at all before you found yourself a free woman. You’d end up being paid—legitimately—for your time and trouble, and with that boy just as crazy about you as crazy can be.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Nothing you don’t want to. Don’t think I ain’t seen how you stare at him. Just keep the boy distracted, keep him from thinking too much about crazy ideas of rubbing shoulders with his betters. We ain’t nothing to people like them. They chew us up and spit us out as easy as eggnuts.”
Morea nodded. “Of course, I’ll help.”
“Good! Good. Now you get out of them clothes and make all warm and cuddly with my boy so he’s not thinking clearly when he wakes up.” Ola wiped her greasy fingers on the front of her agolé and stood, crossing over to where Kihrin lay on her bed. She stared at him. Her eyes were haunted.
“I’ve made a mistake,” Ola whispered.
“Mistress, did you say something?”
Ola almost smiled. “I said … oh veils, never mind. You get to be my age, girl, and you look back over your life and sometimes you don’t like what you see. I’ve done plenty I’m not proud of, but I always had a good reason for it. Survival, mostly. Just trying to get by, to protect myself, just like every other damn bastard in the Lower Circle. They’re all jackals down here, just waiting for you to make a mistake.” Then she laughed, hard and cynical. “I guess that ain’t much different from how things are in the Upper Circle, is it?”
Her expression sobered, and she said, “I ain’t done much in my life that was just pure maliciousness, pure spite. Save one thing. Just one. And it’s come looking for me. I can feel its breath on my heels…”
Ola Nathera closed her eyes, for just a moment, and shuddered. “You can look at someone your whole life and never see them. But Qoran, that damn General. Those damned eyes. Those Milligreest boys were never blind. He’ll know just what he’s looking at, assuming he ain’t seen it already.”
After a moment, Ola gestured toward the bed. “Well? Get in there and take good care of my boy.”
Morea nodded and unwrapped her agolé. Ola stared at her and then grunted. “At least he’s got good taste,” she said. “Must get that from me too.” Without another word, she turned and left.
Several moments later, Morea heard the sound of the front door opening and closing.
The dancer tiptoed out to the front room and looked around carefully to make sure no one was there, that Ola really had left.
“She’s gone,” Kihrin’s voice said behind her. “That woman weighs close to three hundred pounds. She’s good at a lot of things, but sneaking isn’t one of them.”
Morea turned to see Kihrin had stood up from the bed. Candlelight outlined his body in golden pink highlights. The rim light made him look otherworldly and unreal—beautiful but alien. He looked too beautiful to be human.
Morea reached for her clothing. “You switched cups, didn’t you? You knew she would drug the wine.”
“I couldn’t have done it without your help. You were the perfect distraction. Anyway, it was a safe bet. She likes using riscoria weed, and grape wine is the best way to hide the taste. She’ll feed it to a mark if she wants them to wake in a compromising situation, with the vague memory that maybe they did things the night before that they shouldn’t have.” He sounded disappointed.
“Stay with me,” Morea said. “Don’t go.”
Kihrin shook his head. “I have to.”
“You heard what she said. Eamithon sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
He looked at her, blinking with surprise. “I have to warn the General about that demon. Besides, Captain Jarith said he’d meet me tonight with news about your sister.”