Aside from greetings and goodbyes, her only comments were, “Soon’s you git upstairs, you’ll be able to carve your own vittles, honey. Lady Djoy, she ain’ the leas’ bit a-feared you’ll kill yours’f, thet bein’ why we don’ give othuh new gals enythin’ sharp,” the redhead chuckled. “Aw, naw, honey, she Aspects you; she’s afeared you might use it to carve up me or somebody ‘nd try to git away.”
Though she was not really hungry, Neeka forced herself to eat part of the well-prepared and tasty repast. It was a way to pass the time without worrying herself sick over whether or not Ratbane had been able to find and summon help. The wine was a fine vintage, and she was sorely tempted to seek the temporary solace of drunkenness, but she forced herself to dilute it with a large proportion of water from the jug.
She had barely finished and recovered the tray when she had a second visitor, Djoy Skriffen. Under one fat arm, the huge woman carried a bundle and, in the other hand, a silver decanter and a brace of tiny goblets. Behind the brothel keeper strode the most thoroughly evil-looking man Neeka had ever seen.
The male was tall, but small-boned and very slender, and the wide, padded, carven and inlaid chair he bore so effortlessly looked to be as heavy as he was. His beardless face was heavily pocked, crosshatched and misshapen with the puckered traces of old scars, and a pair of beady, ratlike, black eyes were separated by a great, hooked beak of a nose. The nose was dripping, and he wiped it from time to time on the shoulders of his shirt, breathing through open lips and the gaping void where his front teeth once had been.
Djoy set the bundle on the cot and the decanter on the stool and, after indicating where she wanted the chair, sank into it gratefully. The chair creaked alarmingly under her weight, but held. Noting that Neeka was trying vainly to cover her naked body from the gaze of the man, the big woman chuckled.
“Neeka, don’t you worry about Iktis, here. That damn Loo Fahlkop come in here drunk last year and knocked out Iktis last two front teeth. He was happier than I was when you tore into that bastid this morning. And sincet we got word you killed him, well, you can figger Iktis’s your friend for life. Much as he likes hurting women, I doubt he’d do nothing to you, even if I told him to.”
While talking, Djoy had unstoppered the decanter and filled the goblets, now she handed one to Neeka, tossed down her own and quickly refilled it.
“He… that guardsman is dead?’ Neeka felt stunned, weak with the knowledge she had killed, though she endeavored not to show her real feelings, sensing that an appearance of tough callousness was all that would impress these evil people and retain their grudging respect for her.
Djoy chuckled again, echoed by the lounging Iktis. “Aye, he’s dead, and good riddance, say I. Stoo brought word down from the fortress, about an hour ago. While that Zahtohgahn, Master Hahmeel. was setting the bastid’s elbow back in the socket—you gonna have to show me how you done that, sometime, Neeka—Loo started puking up blood and in five minutes, he was dead. The fortress surgeon cut him open and said sornma his innards was just split opened.
“This here little Ehleen cunt fixted Loo Fahlkop good, didn’t she, Iktis?” Djoy poked at the thin man with an elbow.
Iktis’ smile broadened enough to show that his jaw teeth were still in place. “Yeth, my lady. I but with I had been down here to thee it” Despite the lisping impediment of missing teeth, the slender man’s Ehleeneekos was pure and unaccented.
“You take your post, Iktis,” said Djoy. I’ll be out in a while, but I wants to talk to Neeka a little bit more.”
With a nod, the man spun on his heel and departed, moving lightly and almost soundlessly.
Djoy waved a fat, beringed hand at the bundle. “I brung some clothes and things there for you, Neeka. Nothing you could use for a weapon, of course.” She grinned yellowly. “The Blue Lady knows, you’re dangerous enough without one. I never done all this for no new girl afore this, but you is special. You got guts and you knows how to handle yourself, too. And on top of that, you a Ehleen.
“Neeka, I was borned a Kahlinzburker and I been a-whoring the mosta my life, all over the Middle Kingdoms with the Freefighters, and in my first house in New Filburk, and then here. I done never had me no trouble learning new languages, they comes natcherl to me, like. Like you can tell, I learned Ehleeneekos right off the bat and I talks it good.”
Neeka had seldom heard the tongue of the Southern Ehleenee so misspoken, thickly-accented and generally butchered, but she wisely kept her thoughts to herself, simply smiling noncommittally.
Djoy poured herself another measure of the fiery brandy and went on. “But, Neeka, these here Ehleenee is a stiffnecked bunch of bastids. I gets along just fine with sailors and soldiers and Confederation folks, but mosta these here Ehleenee treats you like pure dirt lessen you is a Ehleen your own self, and I thinks some of these here rich Ehleenee what lives in Esmithpolisport would make me damn fine customers, if I just had a real Ehleen to deal with them.
“Now, yeah, I got me some Ehleen girls upstairs but none of the whining bitches what I can trust or would trust any further’n I can th’ow a warhorse. Ain’t none of them got the frigging sand to even spit, much less maim a man or kill him, like you done. I had plans when I got Hohp, but she’s too damn easygoing, she trusts dang near ever’body. But with you working the Ehleen trade, Neeka, I think I could really make something down here.
“And not just whorehouses, neither. I got gold, Neeka, lots and lots of gold, but the dang Ehleenee won’t take none of it, for all they always crying, I hear tell, for folks to invest in all the big, money-making schemes they all got going. Now, you’re a young girl and just as pretty as you can be. Anybody what sees you or hears you talk wouldn’t have them no doubts but you’re one of them kath-ahrohs Ehleenee. I thinks you just what I been a-Iooking and a-hoping for, for years.”
Djoy heaved her vast bulk onto her big feet and the chair squealed its gratitude. “I’m leaving the resta the brandy here. Help yourself. You may need it to get some sleep, ’cause it gets kinda noisy upstairs some nights. But you can sleep tight and not worry ’bout no mens a-pestering you. This here’s a corner of the winecellar and it’s always a man a-guarding the door down from the main cellar. Iktis’ll be there tonight, and he’s the fastest, bestest man with a shortsword or a hanger I ever seed, and I seed a heap of fighters in my time.
“You think on whatall I told you, Neeka. You do right by me and you can be a rich woman afore long. You need anything tonight, you yell for Iktis.”
Then she turned about and waddled out the door, closing it behind her but, Neeka quickly noticed, not bolting it.
Unfolding the bundle, Neeka found two undergowns of soft cotton, an overgown of bright-orange silk, a pair of gilded leather sandals, a hairband of beaten copper set with turquoise, a hairbrush, a horn comb and a handmirror of polished brass, all rolled in a quilted coverlet for the cot. She clothed herself immediately; the garments and sandals fitted as if they had been cut to her very measure.
Seating herself in the wide chair, she poured another thimbleful of the brandy and sipped at it thoughtfully. She had had no more contacts from Ratbane or any other fencat and was beginning to lose hope. Djordj had said that Master Lokos was an old man. Possibly such a man would be loath to take on so wealthy and ruthless a woman as Djoy Skriffen over a girl he had never even seen.
If escape was impossible, she must make do, make the best she could of a bad situation. She reflected that the fat woman’s offer was tempting. Neeka was certain that she would be well treated as long as Djoy had a use for her, and as long as she did not openly defy her owner. If the guards-man she had attacked had truly died, in fact, she might be safer here than in Master Lokos’ employ, for Djordj had been very harsh to those who had slain any of his men and she had no reason to believe that his successor would be less so.