1.
"You're still dressed," Stathan remarked, the first thing he'd said to her for nearly half an hour, "Is that customary?"
Chade felt a surge of anger, extremely difficult to restrain. She'd promised herself she would make no great display. It seemed almost impossible. Perhaps she succeeded, even so, and managed not to give her feelings away. Not the full extent of them, at least. When she answered, she spoke with control and with courtesy. A semblance of indifference, and also unruffled and refined professionalism, as if he was the same as any other client. She made her accent more posh than it normally was, and kept her eyes half-lidded and her chin angled high. Her face was red hot, sweating profusely, but it had already been flushed like that since the moment this encounter started. The moment she saw him. It had been weeks, after all, since he put her in this place. Weeks and weeks.
"We are instructed not to undress unless the guest asks us to," she told him.
"Ah," he acknowledged, but said nothing more. She continued steadily kneading the upper surface of his thigh with both hands, working in the oil. She kept looking at his cock, draped against his opposite leg. The more she tried not to, the more it drew her eyes.
Stathan was still flaccid. She would not have predicted that, and she was uncertain what it signified, if it signified anything. Older clients and fatter clients didn't begin to harden until the appendage received direct attention, which she had been trained not to apply there until told. Most of the clients Stathan's age would be standing proud by this point, unless they were the sort that never grew interested at allâthe rare few that wanted nothing more from her than the massage. For the majority, the application of the oil and the thorough rubdown that followed were a mere prelude. Or a pretext.
She didn't think she'd ever seen his cock limp like that before. It looked very strange to her in such a state. So small and shriveled, so ugly and silly-looking. She was used to being appalled by it, threatened by it, and, in fairness, mesmerized by it. Knowing what it could do to her, knowing what it had done. At present it wasn't the same thing at all, and it felt baffling to imagine that it could ever have been what she recalled, or change back into that other prodigious form.
And furthermore, to be able to see all the rest of his body entirely displayed across the tabletop, stretched full length, glistening because of the oil she'd put on. She'd seen him plenty of times with no clothes before, but never under bright illumination. All the other times, it had been very dim. She knew this terrible young man's rangy body in more detail, sad to say, than she knew anyone else's, including her own. She'd run her hands over every line and angle of himâshe'd run her tongue over all those same lines and angles, just as he in turn had done to hers, repeatedly. She had come to know the whole rugged reddish-brown landscape of his flesh, every aspect of him, every facet. Or she thought she had, but now in the bright rays pouring through the skylight she was seeing scars and birthmarks and small scattered blemishes that had never been visible to her before. He was new and strange again, and frightening, and beautiful. But he had always been frightening from the very beginning, and it was equally true, alas, that he had always, in his way, been beautiful to her. That was why she had selected him.
Her mouth was very dry and her head was swimming. She felt hollowed out and itching inside, and it wasn't only her face that was sweating too much, sweating much more than she normally wouldâcold trickles kept streaming down over her ribs from her armpits. Chade was so tense and skittish, she was standing on the balls of her feet beside the table. It wasn't necessaryâas she worked on him, she was perfectly capable of reaching anywhere on his body without stretching or straining. She simply couldn't settle herself down enough to stand normally at rest and let her heels touch the floor.
And all the while, Stathan looked nearly asleep. He would never look directly at her. Often clients snoozed during their massages, many of those snoring or farting while they were unconsciousâbut never the young ones and the fit ones. They didn't come to a place like this to nap. They demanded much more attention and strenuous effort more from her, for the money they were paying.
Was Stathan paying any money or didn't he have to, since he'd brought her there?
Didn't she arouse him anymore, like she used to? Well, why else had he dumped her at that place? Why was she surprised? Why was she upset about it? She hated this boy. He was a loathsome thug and he had destroyed her life.
She used to be a sorceress. Not much of one, admittedlyâher Talent had always been weak and fitful. She'd known she was never destined for greatness. All the same, she had a position in the world, she had rank. She was part of a sisterhood, a secret courier for her superiors. It wasn't fabulous work, but nonetheless it counted for something on the magical world of Chax. Even a Talent as pitiful as hers still meant a great deal. It set her apartâmore crucially, aboveâall the wretched people who had no sorcerous Talent of any kind. She was Favored.
No longer. All that was lost to her, swept away beyond her reach in degradation, irrevocable crippling shame. She was powerless and she was penniless, trapped in a filthy, overcrowded, unimportant city, with no feasible chance of getting away. She had been robbed and then exploited by a gang of ruffians. Just a pack of violent dirty street rats. The best part was, she herself was to blame, more than they were. They'd only been able to do what they'd done to her because of her idiotic mistakes. Her own stupidity and weakness.
A true Favored would never have allowed it to happen. She was unworthy. She was a pathetic disgrace to her sisters, and trying to cast spells again, in the face of such a realization, felt impossible. Even criminal. An affront to the proper dignity of witches.
And finally, some several weeks back, Stathan had put her to work as an attendant at a bathhouse. The secret witch courier had become a lowly serving girl, a "caregiver", a masseur. All silly euphemisms, obviously. In truth, she'd been turned into a whore.
The money she made all went to Stathan. Well, a chunk of itâprobably the house got a larger share, the woman running it. Chade herself never saw a coin and never would.
"Did you want me to undress?" she asked him, unable to wait any longer. What she meant was "Don't you want me to undress?"
"You can stay like that, it's fine." He said it like he was making a concession, offering her comfort. Did he really believe he was? Did it matter?
The attendants of that place all wore sheer tunics, sleeveless and cut very high at the bottom, not covering the legs at all. They clung to the wearer's flesh, and became practically transparent in the damp air. In Chade's opinion, wearing a garment of that kind felt more demeaning than outright nakedness. The unicorn tattoo over her pelvis, small as it was, showed up quite clearly through the tunic. She'd been frequently astonished how many of her clients recognized the magical inscription for what it was. They knew exactly what it was intended to do. (The function was twohold: contraception and sensory enhancement.) Spells of that sort were supposed to be a carefully kept secret. That was what she was told. Evidently no longer true, if it ever was.
The girls wore clunky wooden clogs in the corridors but not in the bathing chambers with their clients. Chade's hair was much shorter than it used to be. She suspected the locks had been sold after their removal to a wigmaker or something of that nature. Her remaining hair had been bleachedâall the attendants' hair was bleached and styled the same way. Dark eyeliner was applied to their faces, too thickly. It tended to run down their cheeks, on account of the humidity. That seemed to be intentional. The clients liked seeing it do that. Chade didn't understand why, or perhaps she only liked to pretend to herself that she didn't. The exaggerated sadness it gave their faces. It exaggerated their youthfulness as well.
It was the same sort of bathhouse that had originally got her into trouble, when it was raided by sanctimonious witches of the Pillar Sisterhood. This wasn't the exact same building, but it was near to the other one and owned by the same woman. The one she'd gone to was for women; this one was for men.
She'd thoughtâshe'd assumedâthey'd all been closed down permanently, now the Pillars had taken charge of the city. She was wrong about that. Dead wrong. The Pillars hadn't gone awayâthey still patrolled the streets and preached in the marketplaces, day and nightâbut the bathhouses were reopen, regardless, and most of the city's taverns and gambling hells, all of them operating exactly as they previously had, despite all the high and mighty pronouncements of the Pillars to the citizenry. How? How else? Bribes had been paid. The eyes of authority were averted and would continue to be, so long as a schedule of regular payoffs was maintained ...
The Pillars were corrupt hypocrites, like everybody else, or worse. Chade probably shouldn't have been as shocked as she was, when she found that out. She thought she understood the world better, and she thought she had a better, clearer understanding of herself. Coming into this city had changed everything. All the rules of her existence had been rewritten, or wiped out altogether. She'd become a whole other person, almost.
"Boss Lady tells me," said Stathan, "Most of the men come in here, they don't fuck you. They don't want to. Not just youâall the girls in here. She tells me mostly all they want is for you to use your hands at the end. Tug-tug-tug."
"If they want more, it's more expensive afterward."
