1.22 In Which the Dark Lord Pets the Dog

1.22 In Which the Dark Lord Pets the Dog

Over the next hour I learned that Miss Minifrit was a capable administrator, as well as someone who had the respect of her working girls and did her best to look after their interests. One by one, she singled out and brought before me women who needed medical attention of one kind or another, and also one of her bouncers who had taken a kick to the knee recently and was still limping. She did this without interrupting her business, or revealing to any of her clients that there was anything out of the ordinary going on in the back halls. Some were discreetly pulled off the main floor, some collected as they left the private rooms having finished up with clients, all brought brought to me with no disturbance to the Alley Cats operations.

Early on, Minifrit asked me pointedly if I needed to see what was amiss in order to heal it. She did this in front of a woman of barely twenty who had nothing obviously wrong with her; Fflyr lowborn was mostly too dark-skinned to visibly blush (at least to my eyes), but the poor girl looked at the floor in clear mortification. I did not, and told her so. After that, Id say at least half of the women brought to me showed no signs of anything wrong, though a few had patterns of sores along their lips, hairlines, or the backs of their hands. Odd symptoms, but okay. Id known before coming here what prostitutes in a dump like this would mostly need healing from, and just worked my magic without comment.

There were other things, too. Nobody else had been beaten nearly as badly as Kastrin, but a handful of the women had bruises and scrapes in suggestive places. One had a bad burn on her arm from a kitchen accident; to judge by the way she burst out crying upon being Healed and had to be stopped from hugging me by both Minifrit and Aster, it must have hurt her a lot. Another just had a bad toothache, which seemed almost prosaic given the rest of what Id seen here but which I knew was a serious matter. In a pre-dentistry society, an untreated infection like that could eventually kill, and it would be a very painful death.

I quickly found that I preferred the suspicion to the gratitude. It wassensible, even comforting, the way some of them warily watched me for the other shoe to drop, unwilling to believe anyone with this kind of power would do such a thing with no ulterior motive. Mostly, I supposed, because they were right. My ultimate intentions werent harmful to themor at least, I told myself, no more dangerous than the way they were living nowbut I was definitely not the selfless saint I was pretending to be here.

Kastrin herself emerged from her room, dressed in one of those short robes, both so Minifrit could show her to other girls as proof of my power and apparently so she herself could stare at me as if she could figure out the mystery of the Healer by sheer force of will.

Minifrit definitely never got over her certainty that I had ulterior motives. I suspected that when she tried to offer me money, it was at least half in an attempt to square any debt so I couldnt call it in later. I had no intention of doing that anyway, but I naturally refused. In fact, in keeping with my persona and the legend I had come here to build, I declined any and all payment, no matter how mundane. Minifrit did try to bargain me down to accepting drinks or a hot meal, even hinted obliquely at sharing rumors she had acquired concerning the movements of Lady Gray and her cartel. That was the only one which even tempted me, and made me reflect that Id made a tactical error by mentioning the criminal queen of the slums at all. I turned her down, though, as much as data to fill in the gaps of what Gilder could overhear would have helped me. I was after bigger game.

Minifrit specifically did not offer me free sex, though she didnt intervene and simply watched my reactions when half a dozen of her employees did. I enjoy getting laid as much as the next guy, but I was not even tempted, and not even because never having sought it in a place like this was a point of pride for me. Im sure a brothel is plenty of fun if you go there as a client and get the full treatment, but from my position behind the curtain, cleaning up the aftermath, I only found myself alternately sickened and enraged by this whole business.

That was good, I told myself. I had to learn how to channel that, before I could provoke these women to do the same.

When Minifrit decided there was no one else who immediately needed my attention, I had to disengage myself from a small adoring crowd at the back door. Not all of those whod benefited from my magic participated; Im sure some just took the benefit and ran back to their business, while quite a few remained wary of my motives. There were enough to make it physically hard to get out of the building, though, tearful and gazing at me as if I were the only beacon of hope in their grim world.

The guilt was crushing. I think it mightve been worse than when Id Immolated Larinet.

We made it down the boardwalk one buildings distance, just out of easy earshot from the Alley Cats backdoor bouncer, when Minifrit finally asserted her authority and ushered everyone back inside and back to their tasks. Then, I finally had to stop to breathe, and gather myself.

Seems like that woman couldve been more grateful, Aster muttered, stepping close so I could hear her voice even muffled by the scarf. There are kings wholl never get that kind of treatment.

Some people are just ingrates, I said. Around here, though, I figure everybodys got reason to be suspicious of a free lunch.

True enough.

Biribo, any insight?

He poked his triangular head out of my collar. One benefit of this cloak-and-longcoat ensemble was that, unlike the open noblemans coat I normally wore (for some reason the style for well-to-do men was being unable to button their damn coats, in a country which tended on the cool side of temperate), was that I could keep my familiar close enough to whisper info to me as he found a need.

Only a couple Blessed among the patrons, boss, and they were just there to screw. No sign anybody was interested in or even aware of you. Except for one of the girls you healedthat tall number with the long nose, mid-twenties, scar on her left forearm? Blessed with Might. Probably a washed-up former adventurer.

Adventurers can end up working in brothels? I demanded in muted disbelief.

Its not an easy life, Aster said quietly. Very dependent on luck. If you dont get the right rewards from Spirits or dungeons, you can find yourself unable to pay bills or Guild dues, much less rent. Success grants equipment and breeds reputation, which means opportunities. Lack of its a cycle going the other way.

Shit, he muttered, then drew in a steadying breath and let it back out. Okay, thats enough lollygagging. On to the next place.

I had not come here expecting to enjoy my jaunt through the sordid underbelly of the blue light district. Im not an idiot. And yet, once again, it seemed I had underestimated the real horror of which Ephemera was capable. I had not expected this nights work to be the most harrowing thing Id yet experienced on this world. Eventually, surely, my expectations had to get low enough that I couldnt keep being shocked. Surely?

One after another, we went to every brothel in Cat Alley that we could reach in the course of one night.

Our reception wasnt the same everywhere, of course. A few places told me to fuck off entirely; those were honestly a relief. Everyone greeted me and my gifts with suspicion, varying only by how quickly and how much it abated once I got to Healing and not accepting any payment. I just told them all, time and again, the price has been paid. Hopefully after this nights work it wouldnt take long for that little meme to get around. Whatever else I was doing, I had to be starting rumors.

In the course of the night, I learned some surprising things about the sex work industry in Gwyllthean.

For one thing, every single one of the brothel owners was a woman. That surprised me the most; given the way women seemed to be treated in this country, I had expected female business owners like Minifrit to be the exception, not the rule. Evidently this whole industry was, itself, an exception. Was it the law, or something about the Sanorite religion, that prevented men from going into this line of work? I didnt find a single male prostitute, either, and I knew human nature well enough to know a demand for them existed. Unfortunately asking questions like that, while it wouldnt exactly have blown my cover, did not fit with the image I was carefully crafting, so I had to stew in my ignorance for the time being.

Obviously, not every madame ran her business or treated her employees the same way. It turned out starting my tour of Cat Alley at the Alley Cat had been the best way to ease myself into this nightmarenone of places I subsequently visited was as well-run, nor their workers as well looked after. And to think I had started out privately condemning Minifrit for what shed allowed to happen to the girls under her care. I quickly learned how painfully wrong Id been: to manage as well as she had, Miss Minifrit was more a saint than I was pretending to be, and I suspected, more of a leader.

The better places were clustered near the center of Yrshith Streetactually, the Alley Cat was as close to being the physical center of the blue light district as it apparently was its cultural epicenter. There, I mostly found the places clean, the women in relatively good health, and the business model built around cultivating a boisterously upbeat atmosphere. They seemed like they were designed to be fun places to pass the time, sex work aside, at least as long as you werent in the back rooms fixing what this life did to the women who had to live it. There were several traits the successful, centrally located brothels had in common that made them stand apart from the rest of the street.

They were effectively pubs, for one. They sold food and drink in a front common room, and the better ones had a musician on staffor rather, I observed, owned a guitar which passed between various working girls who knew how to play. The method of conducting sex work seemed to be that the prostitutes would hang out and socialize with potential customers in the public area, drinking and generally carousing, and a john could hire one of the girls from there for a private room. It was a solid system, in that the house made money from more than just prostitution and the workers seemed to have some say in who they took to a room.

As one traveled up and down the street from the Cat, with the exception of a few more boisterous places at the entrances, the brothels got less and less cheerful. Service dwindled from full public house to just cheap liquor to nothing; in the smaller and dingier places there was no singing, but just rows of bored-looking young women behind thin akorshil bars from whom clients could pickor in the cheapest ones, just sitting along benches lining the walls. In the dankest little holes where the service was at its lowest point, the public room was just the madame or a bouncer in the foyer, who would take money and assign you a girl. Those were the hardest to convince I was giving out free healing and not trying to pull something over on them.

I never pressed when told to leave; over future visits, I knew, Id build a reputation which would make me more welcome here.

Another interesting point was that the better establishments had character which set them apart from one another even when they had a rough parity of overall quality, and always seemed to be inherited from the large personalities of their madames. Miss Minifrit conducted herself like an expensive courtesan who far outclassed Cat Alley, and by extension her place was considered the safest, cleanest, and generally nicest. I also met Gannit, a gray-haired woman who looked like she was pushing seventy but moved and spoke like a spry young adventurer (especially after I Healed her touch of arthritis); she was as immediately suspicious of my agenda as Minifrit, but much quicker to decide my services were welcome as long as I behaved, and tried to ply me with booze, food, and/or a night with any two of her best girls. Gannit had a cheerful, braying cackle which she deployed liberally and her place, the Jostled Jugs, was equally loud and bawdy. The Simmer was run by Adinet, the first overweight person Id seen here apart from Yoshi, who affected a motherly persona, preferred a quieter atmosphere in the place, and apparently served the best food in Cat Alley. The Simmer was basically a decent restaurant where you could rent the services of your waitress. I was most confused by Fanfare, whose employees were by far the most sexually aggressive, and not in a playful, teasing way like the girls at the Jugs. I swear those women practically climbed my leg, and only got more eager to get under my cloak when they understood what I was there for. I could not square that with its madame, Miss Idrit, who wore a stiff heavy robe like a nun and the stiff heavy expression of a schoolteacher who was disappointed in your work. She spoke to customers (and me) entirely in clipped, curt phrases, ordered her workers about with a drill sergeants bark, and baldly offered Aster a job. Fortunately, that was the only time all night the greatsword came out of its sheath, and even more fortunately nothing more came of it.

Interesting and identifying features became less of both as the establishments got poorer, to the point that the last dingy holes in the wall all seemed to be run by carbon copies of the same dour, dissipated middle-aged woman trying unsuccessfully to look more sexy than exhausted. Few of those places even had names.

If only that was the worst of it.

The quality of these brothels correlated directly with the quality of life of those working in them. Minifrit and Gannits places were the only ones that had workers well into their thirties; it seemed that on average, a Gwyllthean prostitutes lifespan topped out at twenty-five. It diminished all the way down to the worst establishments, in some of which I saw nothing but teenagers who looked like theyd endured at least thirty years of beating and deprivation. I didnt want to know what happened to the women after age and use wrung every last spark of profitable life out of them. Unfortunately for me, I got to learn that anyway.

No fewer than five times I cast Heal on a woman clearly breathing her last rattling gasps, lying outside the rear door of her place of work, because at least her madame had the good taste to wait until she was dead before tipping her into the canal. I got to learn that was the designated final resting place of a dead whore thanks to the four cases I was too late to help. The rats and crawnsliteral rats, not Gilders fellow orphansdidnt always wait till they were dead to start scavenging.

It was ironic that after living through the aftermath of lethal fights with bandits and nobles alike, it was by providing basic medical care to prostitutes that I learned the limits of my supposedly world-changing Heal spell.

It didnt re-grow anythingI could do nothing for missing teeth. Or fingers, toes, or eyes. Heal didnt seem to do much for sheer exhaustion, and had no affect on psychological problems at all. If there was any magic that treated PTSD, depression, or simple despair, it was clearly above my pay grade.

I sawjust so many cases of disease. A brothel district was practically a petrie dish, and not just for STDs; anything contagious would tear through such a place like a forest fire, especially when it was a damp and narrow stretch between two fouled canals. I took to casting Heal on both myself and Aster after we exited every brothel, just on general principles. In one dim little hole literally named the Hole, I discovered they catered to a very specialized clientele even though none of the clients were in evidence, simply because every woman working there had an advanced case of gobrot.

Almost none of the many, many injuries I Healed looked accidental. Not only bruises and lacerations, but multiple broken bones, obvious stab wounds, and one case of a clearly cracked skull with evidence of brain damage; the poor girl was barely responsive. I had been afraid even Heal wouldnt fix that, but she seemed fine after casting it. Evidently if the mental problems were caused by physical neurological damage and not purely psychological effects, they counted and could be remedied. I also discovered that Heal would, by itself and with no further physical help, re-set a dislocated shoulder, which to judge by the scream it prompted hurt just as much as doing it the old-fashioned way, if not for as long. A few times I was afraid my spell was starting to wear out, but no, it turned out that even with the black eyes fixed, those eyes were just too sunken and shadowed to make much of a visible difference.

For some of the men who came here, I guess it was all part of the fun. Visit Cat Alley, fuck the whores, and then beat them.

I was really glad I had modified my original plan from having Gilder show me around to getting the general rundown from him on how this place worked and directions to find it. The choice had been because he accidentally let slip that the Gutter Rats were not liked or welcome in Cat Alleyand I was definitely going to ask about that laterand I didnt want to alienate the people Id come here to treat. I knew Gilder had seen some shit, and my ideas of what was child-appropriate had almost no bearing on Fflyr Dlemathlys, but fuck it. I was not going to expose the boy tothis.

Poor girl, I murmured. Her tail began wagging in earnest as she stepped forward and pressed her nose into my hand. Just look what a mess you are. Heal.

Pink light burst; I could tell by the minute shift of her posture that she was startled, but she didnt jerk away. She knew Id done it, and trusted me.

It made a world of difference. Gone was the limp; her coat was restored to a much greater plushness, no sign of that mange. The ear didnt re-grow, and she was still thin, but at least the rejuvenated coat disguised her ribs. She was a sizable dog, bigger than a German Shepherd, her slightly shaggy coat black with gray and brown markings. Unsurprisingly, centuries of evolution on Ephemera had caused some genetic drift from dogs as I knew them; she had a rather bushy tale like a fox, a triangular face that looked almost feline from some angles, and an odd combination of long, lean legs and a bulldogs burly chest. Altogether a scruffy, awkward-looking creature, even restored to good health.

Hey, Aster, gimme one of those meat pies.

Are you serious?

Dont worry, Im not gonna feed her your lunch. Ill just eat when were back at the fortress.

She handed one over without further complaint; in fact, when I glanced up, I caught her smiling.

Dont tell me youre planning on bringing the dog with us, Biribo exclaimed while she got down to scarfing the meat pie, tail now wagging furiously.

Dogs are very useful creatures, I said solemnly. Arent you, Junko?

Junko?

Well, I have to call her something.

Thats a name? Aster asked uncertainly.

A common enough girls name, where Im from. Still kneeling and ruffling Junkos ears while she ate, I grinned up at Aster and gestured at the lot full of old rubbish amid which the dog had been hiding. Plus, I found her in the junk.

It took me a moment of staring at her nonplussed expression to realize what Id said was thwilic, the Fflyr word for trash. Fluently speaking a language I had never actually learned caused some weird effects now and then. My brain kept assuming any language I was speaking that wasnt Japanese must be English, when neither was any use to me here.

Thats a bilingual pun, I explained.

Ah. Impressive.

Trust me, if you speak those two languages, that was hilarious.

Im sure it must be, Lord Seiji.

You hear how she talks to me? I complained to Junko. She thinks I cant tell when shes being sarcastic, but I can.

Junko had finished my meat pie, and now barked at Aster, still wagging her tail furiously. Grinning in spite of herself, Aster leaned forward to scratch the dogs ears, causing the tail to loudly thump against her own flanks, so hard was she wagging it now.

We had both needed this, after the night wed had. Theres just something pure about dogs.

Aster looked up at me, her expression growing more thoughtful, and I gestured expansively as I started moving again. Junko fell into step alongside me, followed by Aster and Biribo buzzing along in the rear. Go ahead and ask, I know youre dying to.

She sighed, then nodded. Why prostitutes, Lord Seiji?

Oh. That hadnt been what I thought she was going to ask. Well, still a valid question.

Looting caravans is all well and good for pocket change, I said, affecting an airy tone. If what you really want is to strike a blow at the foundations of society itself I turned a grin on her as we walked. Invent feminism.

Man, that wouldve been such a good line on which to end the conversation, but Aster had exactly as much patience for my bullshit as usual.

I really hope you get a lot of entertainment from dropping these arcane references to your old world, Lord Seiji, especially since its apparently more important to you than me being able to understand what the hell were trying to do.

I decided not to call her down for sassing me. She never did that in front of the others, and also she wasnt wrong.

I need recruitsenough of them to form a sufficiently big force to take on the other bandit gangs.

Right, obviously, but Really, the whores?

Are you suggesting women are less valuable than men? I asked archly.

Junko, bite him.

Junko licked my hand.

Its not about what they can do now, I said, wiping my hand on my coat. Fighting is something you can be taught. I bet Goose and Sakin between them seem to know enough about violence and skulduggery to adequately train whoever I decide to bring home. Its about finding people whove been spat on and mistreated enough that theyll be willing to not only turn bandit, but actively work to overthrow the whole social order. And thats a lot of people, Fflyr Dlemathlys being the fucking mess it is. I need, specifically, to do this without drawing the attention that will inevitably come if I start removing a bunch of people from the cityand I do need to recruit a bunch at once rather than building in ones and twos over the course of years. Aside from Virya breathing down my neck, the turf war between Lady Gray and the Olumnachs is my only window of opportunity, and it wont stay open forever. Someone will notice if I take enough warm bodies to do what needs doing, no matter where I take them from. So I need to recruit those who wont be missed. I need to make the established powers not take me seriously. Oh, ha ha, look at this idiot Healer, trying to make an army of whores, what a joke. This countrys prejudices against women can be used to bring it down. Any prejudice can; thats a better argument against prejudice than simple compassion, if you ask me.

Huh, Biribo commented. Yknow what, thats actually a good angle. Suss out the situation and find an unconventional way to approach it that increases your power. A real Dark Lord move, boss.

Aster shook her head. I think youre going to find it harder than you expect to motivate them into action, Lord Seiji. Gratitude for the healing is only going to take you so far. Not far enough, I dont think. Not nearly far enough.

Thats only the first step. Next I have to remind them of all the reasons they have to be angry.

She still didnt look convinced. These are women whove fallen all the way down the social ladder and been whacked by every rung they passed. All the fight was beaten out of them years ago.

Aster, I said, staring ahead, its me, Seiji. One way or another, if there is one thing I can manage to inspire in people, it is rage.

Hm, she mused after a long moment, I guess thats so.

Hellish as the night had been, as we walked on Junko pressed herself against my leg, and I felt a little bit better.