Empire of Avarice (56 page)

Renet nodded and left. Clora looked up at Demtro
coquettishly. Although not a smooth skinned as some women he’d met, she was
pretty enough, and young. Demtro ran a hand down the side of her face. “How old
are you, Clora?”

“Sixteen, I think.”

“Not sure, darling?”

Clora shrugged. Not unusual. With no money, family or
prospects, many young teenagers in her position went into the business of
selling themselves. Demtro didn’t press her for details of her background; it
wouldn’t be a happy one. “What would you like me to do?”

Demtro leaned back and smiled. “Ahhh, now there’s a
question! How would you like to earn yourself a small fortune? You’re young,
pretty, and facing no future whatsoever. I can offer you one. Interested?”

Clora looked at him blankly. Clearly she had heard this
all before, and yet here she was still selling her body for a pittance, paying
most of her earnings to the barkeep in return for living in the back rooms of a
disreputable tavern. But what alternative did she have? She had no education,
little knowledge of how the world worked, no skills, no family, no benefactor. The
only assets she had were her body and looks, and they wouldn’t last forever. Once
they went what could she do?

Demtro leaned forward, then got up from the stool. He
pulled her up and looked at her closely. “Hmm, a little on the skinny side, but
I can soon correct that.” He stroked her breasts. “Nice and firm. Good. Turn
round would you, Clora, please?”

Clora looked at him a little oddly but did as she was
bid. She felt him unclasp her remaining clothes and she was naked, her clothing
on the floor around her ankles. She felt his hands run over her bottom and
waist, and it unnerved her a little. She was used to being groped and fondled,
and she knew what they were after, but this man with the gold coins was
different. He was examining her in a different way.

“I think you could wash up beautifully,” Demtro said,
squeezing her buttock. He turned her back to face him and she smiled hesitantly.
Demtro smiled back. “It’s alright, little one, I’m not going to do anything
unpleasant to you. I wish to take you away from this place and come live in my
house.”

“Really?” Clora was taken by surprise. “You really mean
that?”

Demtro nodded. “But please don’t think you’re going to
be a wife or anything like that – I’m not the marrying kind! No, you’ll be
working for me, like that man you were just paid by does from time to time.”

“Does he? What would you want me to do?”

“Some of the same you’re doing now,” Demtro said. “But
not all the time. No, I would like you to be a special kind of employee of
mine. You would live in my house, and keep it clean and tidy. It would be rent
free, and I would pay you a retainer each sevenday. For each special task I’d
set you I’d pay you more.”

Clora stood there uncertainly. “You mean I would be free
of this place? Would I be allowed to buy myself some things?”

“Of course, Clora. No more paying your protector money
you earn. No. You would earn me money, yes, but the money you’d earn me
wouldn’t come through your hands.” He smiled down at her. “Of course, from time
to time I’d like you to warm my bed but it wouldn’t be all the time. No, you’d
have much more freedom to come and go through Niake. You might even see places
outside the city.”

She gasped. “You mean – one day I might even get to see
Kastan?”

“Oh, most likely,” Demtro grinned. “What do you say?”

“Oh, please! I hate this place and the horrible people
who beat me. Please! Please take me with you!”

Demtro picked up her clothing and passed it to her. He
bent and kissed her on the cheek. “Go and dress and collect what you have
here.”

Clora almost wept. Nobody had kissed her that tenderly
before. At least, she couldn’t remember if anyone had. She hurriedly dressed
and stood there almost like a lost little girl. “I have nothing. What is your
name?”

“Demtro. Come. You’ll need a change of clothing. Those
are a little dirty and need throwing away.”

“Oh, I’m so happy!” Clora said, clinging to his arm. Demtro
had a moment where his heart was stabbed by his conscience, something he’d
hoped had gone for good, and he almost went back on his intention, but then his
business mind crushed it. Her life would be better with him, and although he
would be using her as much as anyone had up to now, surely in life everyone
used others. It was true of business. He had something people wanted so he used
their desire to set a price higher than he ought in order for them to make him
richer, and he paid others for raw materials at a higher cost for the same
reasons. Use and be used.

The empress used him for information, and he used her in
return in order to get money. He didn’t need her money really, as his business
interests paid for a living, but to be truthful he loved money and being able
to buy people. And, he admitted to himself, he loved the danger of it all. Buying
and selling and negotiating with fellow traders was so tiresome at times, and
he craved the life of a spy. All he was doing was employing a pretty young girl
to add to his spying abilities. Renet was all very well poking here and there,
but sometimes the female form was just as useful in obtaining information.

He would just need to train her in the ways in which he
wished her to become adept. Also she needed feeding and a wash. Getting her out
of the Black Rodent might have been a problem but a few more coins thrown at
the tavern owner soon changed his mind. Clora huddled into the crook of
Demtro’s arm as she shrank away from the greasy, overweight man. He had been
cruel to her.

His house, in the merchant quarter, was spacious and
tidy, and airy. Clora gasped in amazement as she looked round. “You live here –
by yourself?”

“Yes – and now so do you.”

“But – you must be terribly rich!”

“I get by,” Demtro said modestly. “I like this style of
life.”

“Where is my room?” Clora asked. Her ‘room’ in the Black
Rodent had been a shared pokey little space with no door. No doubt her place
would be taken fairly quickly. The tavern owner would find a replacement soon
enough. One poor teenage prostitute wasn’t going to be missed all that much. In
these days of poverty and austerity there were plenty waiting to join the
queue, and because there were so many prices were low.

“Let me show you.” Demtro led her up the wide, black
wooden staircase and along a corridor lined with paintings and with rugs
underfoot. Clora’s threadbare slippers felt the springy comfort underfoot and
she gasped, looking down. Then they were at a door and Demtro opened it
inwards, revealing a room, floorboarded, with a rug in the middle, a double bed
with sheets and a window that was latticed and looked out onto the main street
below.

“Oh, by the gods! It’s beautiful! This isn’t for me,
surely!”

“All yours, Clora,” Demtro grinned. “As long as you look
after it, of course,” he added seriously.

“Oh, of course I will!” she remained in the doorway,
staring in wonder at the space. After spending the last few years huddled with
one or even two others in a space, often the floorboards not covered by
anything, sharing fleas and lice with each other, this was a dream. She was
wondering whether suddenly it would be all taken away from her cruelly.

Demtro left her there and went downstairs to the
scullery and pulled out the big brass bath. The fire was still blazing away,
sending heat through the building via the pipes that led from the hood that
hung over the fire, and he filled a large kettle with water and hung it on a
hook suspended over the conflagration. He added more cold water to the tub and
waited for the water to heat up in the kettle, then when it was steaming, added
it to the tub. He repeated this a few times, then tested the water and nodded
to himself in satisfaction.

Clora had come down by this time and was staring in
wonder at the warmth spreading through the room. She had never experienced the
likes of it before. The outside was getting dark and Demtro threw a curtain
over the single window that looked over the rear of the property. “A bath,
Clora. Something you’re going to have.”

“I’ve never had one!”

“I know,” Demtro wrinkled his nose. In the past the
empire had possessed public baths but these had all fallen into disuse and the
buildings were now used for other things. The pipes in Demtro’s house were a
remnant from times gone past; new houses often didn’t have such pipes as they
were expensive to make and to maintain. He also had sweet smelling salts. Being
wealthy had its rewards. Clora was going to smell much better than she did at
present by the time he had finished with her. “Take all your clothes off.”

Clora shrugged herself out of her threadbare attire. She
was used to baring herself and so she didn’t think anything of it. She stood
there, half smiling, hoping everything was going to be fine. The man had been
kind and gentle with her so far so there was nothing to suspect.

“Sit down in there, Clora. I’m going to wash you.”

She gingerly stepped into the water and found to her
pleasure it was comfortably warm. Sitting down, her knees up to her chin, she
uttered a sigh of satisfaction. Her skin was soft but here and there were marks
where someone had struck her. A fact of life for a woman who sold her body,
working for a man who paid for her lodgings and food. Demtro slipped off his
jacket and knelt by the tub and began washing the girl, using the scented salts
to cleanse her skin of the dirt that had built up, and to leave it smelling
fragrant.

Her hair was the most difficult part; it was matted and
greasy and infested with lice. Demtro gently urged her to duck her head under
the water a few times and Clora obediently did so, compliant. All the fight had
been long beaten out of her and she’d learned to be obedient for fear of
attracting the stick or short handled whip the tavern owner liked to use.

Demtro used the long wooden comb he had to tease out the
knots. One day he’d get a decent hairdresser to see to her, but that was for
the future. This winter he would use to mould her into one of his agents, a
woman who would use her body to gain information for him. Part of him doubted
the morality of what he was going to do, but another part told him she would
have a much better life with him and she would be much freer doing what she did
for him, rather than being an abused object at the hands of a little landlord.

“You do know, Clora, that I will ask you to sleep with certain
people from time to time. I’m not doing all this out of the kindness of my
heart.” He decided to be open with her, as much to ease his conscience as
anything else.

“Yes, Demtro, you said. I’m used to doing that. You
won’t beat me, will you? I’ll be good,” she said tonelessly.

“No beatings, no. I’m going to teach you things this
winter. You won’t have to use your body on anyone, except me of course, during
that time.”

Clora nodded; she’d expected that. Men always wanted to
sleep with her, no matter what they said. She’d always been told she was
pretty, and to be truthful many of the women around her were less attractive. That
was why she was the first the visitors to the tavern always asked for. She got
no more rewards than the others, and the tavern owner had told her she was just
another girl who worked for him. If she had refused, she would have been
beaten. One girl had been so defiant she’d been beaten so badly she’d been
crippled and then had been thrown out to roam the streets. She hadn’t lasted
long. That lesson had taught her more than any other not to argue.

But Demtro was gentle with her, even when he spoke. She
wasn’t used to that and it unsettled her. His washing and kneading relaxed her
and she felt her eyes growing heavy. He gently encouraged her to stand and step
out onto the stone flagged floor of the scullery, then proceeded to stand her
in front of the warming fire and dry her with a thick cloth.

His hands weren’t rough, even when he touched those
places other men got excited by. It made her tingle in a nice way, and she
found herself getting excited; she didn’t very often look forward to performing
with a visitor but this was one of those times she actually wanted it to
happen. Demtro dragged a straight-backed wooden chair over and finished drying
her. He’d noticed that he’d turned her on and was never one to turn down an
opportunity – it was the merchant in him. Slipping off his clothes he sat in
the chair and pulled her down onto him so she was straddling him, her back to
the fire, warming her nicely.

“Take your time and do what you wish,” Demtro said.

Clora did, and found for the first time that what she
had been forced to do for so long could actually be a pleasant experience for
her too. Later, after they had gone to her bed, she had wept into his chest,
clinging to him. She had blurted out in between sobs that she would do anything
for him, and he had lay there stroking her hair, knowing that she would, and
hating the feeling that it had provoked in him. What was it about her that made
him feel so? That Tybar spy, Leiala, had been used by him for his pleasure once
he’d broken her, in return for her safe passage east to a place of safety far
away from Tybar agents, and it hadn’t bothered him in the slightest. Perhaps it
was because this girl here was an innocent; a victim. Leiala had done what she
had because that was what she wanted. Clora on the other hand was an
unfortunate who had suffered the loss of her parents and been left an orphan,
and because of her looks had been forced into the selling trade.