was best bestowed.
She kept a private den backstairs, that rag-piled, perfume-stinking boudoir with
the separate back door, out of which her Boys and Girls came and went on her
errands, out of which wafted the fumes of wine and expensive krrf-he lived
opposite that door like the maw of hell, had been inside once, when he let his
room. She had insisted on giving him a cup of wine and taking him to Her Room
when explaining the rules and the advantages her Boys’ protection afforded. She
had offered him krrf-a small sample, and given him to know what else she could
supply. And that den continued its furtive visitors, and Tygoth to walk his
patrol, rapping on the walls with his stick, even in the rain, tap-tap, tap-tap,
tap-tap in the night, keeping that alley safe and everything Mama owned in its
place.
“Come backstairs,” Mama would say when the money ran out. “Let’s talk about it.”
Grinning all the while.
He knew the look. Like Elid’s. Like-He drank to take a taste from his mouth,
made the drink small, because his life was measured in such sips of his
resources. He hated, gods, he hated. Hated women, hated the bloodsucking lot of
them, in whose eyes there was darkness that drank and drank forever.
There had been a woman, his last employer. Her name was Ischade. She had a house
on the river. And there was more than that to it. There were dreams. There was
that well of dark in every woman’s eyes, and that dark laughter in every woman’s
face, so that in any woman’s arms that moment came that turned him cold and