tomorrow night to ambush the Hell Hounds. He has been looking for an opportunity
to eliminate them. With them gone, Kittycat won’t be able to make trouble for
us.’
‘So Jubal is supplying the krrf now?’ Myrtis replied without sympathy.
‘They all have to pay to land their shipments in the Night Secrets, or Jubal
will reveal their activities to the Hell Hounds. His plan is fair. I can deal
with him directly. So can anyone else – he trades in anything. But you and
Lythande will have to unseal the tunnels so his men face no undue risk tomorrow
night.’
The remnants of Myrtis’s cordiality disappeared. The Golden Lily had been
isolated from the rat’s nest of passages on the Street when Myrtis realized the
extent of krrf addiction within it. Unkind experience warned her against mixing
drugs and courtesans. There were always men like Jubal waiting for the first
sign of weakness, and soon the houses were nothing more than slaver’s dens; the
madams forgotten. Jubal feared magic, so she had asked Lythande to seal the
tunnels with eerily visible wards. So long as she – Myrtis – lived, the Street
would be hers, and not Jubal’s, nor the city’s.
‘There are other suppliers whose prices are not so high. Or perhaps Jubal has
promised you a place in his mansion? I have heard he learned things besides
fighting in the pits of Ranke. Of course, his home is hardly the place for
sensitive people to live.’
Myrtis wrinkled her nose in the accepted way to indicate someone who lived
Downwind. Amoli replied with an equally understandable gesture of insult and