Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (58 page)

Through the bustle of shifting bodies,
Brynlee saw Tavia scurry to her feet and take off down the hallway.
She pushed after her through the crowd.

She followed her outside around the back of
the house and up the stairs that led onto the roof. The air was
chilly, heralding the autumn that was soon to come.

“Stop following me,” Tavia said as she
wrapped the white sheet around herself. She went and stood by the
waist high parapet and looked out over the nighttime city of Perth,
the warm breeze toiling with a few strands of her blonde curls.

“Are you all right?” Brynlee asked.

Tavia looked at her. The usual bounce of
life in her crisp blue eyes was dead. “Just give me a moment.”

Tavia jumped when the piercing scream of
Placidous tore through the night. She covered her face and cried,
shivering from head to toe. “It’s not true what they say about him.
He wasn’t a rapist. He never hurt me. We’ve been together many
times and he’s never been anything but kind.”

“Did he really steal from Mistress
Rose?”

Tavia didn’t answer at first, just cried and
shook her head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” She shot Brynlee
a vicious scowl. “What do you care anyway? Little Miss
Perfect.”

Brynlee never knew what to say to Tavia’s
insults, but as her eyes once again fell on the red whip marks on
the back of the girl’s hands, she got an idea. She unbuttoned the
top two buttons on the back of her dress until she could slip her
right shoulder out from the collar, revealing a faint pink scar
along her shoulder blade. She turned so Tavia could see it.

“I didn’t get out of his way in time,” she
said. “He was drunk and had a stick in his hand, so he whacked me
with it. Left a scar.” She pulled the sleeve of her dress back up
and started refastening the buttons. “See? I’m not so perfect.”

The corners of Tavia’s mouth twitched as if
to smile. “Who was he?”

Brynlee shrugged. “Just a customer of
Mungo’s.”

Tavia leaned over the wall and looked down.
“Sometimes I wander how long it would take me to fall from up
here,” she mused.

A nervous flutter blossomed in Brynlee’s
stomach. “Why would you wonder something like that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe cause I’d like to think
that I can fly. Maybe if I jumped off and opened my arms the gods
would let me soar away from this awful place.”

Brynlee watched the young woman lean out
over the edge, further, further, and further. Tavia had a strange
distant look in her eyes, almost like she wasn’t there, and it
pimpled Brynlee’s skin.

Taking Tavia’s arm, she asked, “Are you all
right?”

She blinked and leaned back. “Yes. I’m
just…” She paused. “I’m just tired.”

Brynlee felt her shivering under her hands.
“Let’s get you out of this chill. You’re not dressed to be out
here.”

The two girls slipped back inside unnoticed.
Brynlee did her best to keep Tavia from seeing the nude mutilated
body of Placidous hanging in the window. She urged her back to her
room where they shut the door, pulled the drapes, lit as many
candles as they could find, and then burrowed under the pillows and
silk blankets of the large bed. They tented the sheets over their
faces, hiding from the muffled noises of chattering guests, bawdy
laughter, and the rhythmic thumping of aggressive sex two bedrooms
away.

“I misjudged you, Emma,” Tavia said, taking
Brynlee’s hand. “You’re not so bad.”

“Thanks. You’re not so bad either.”

Tavia rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes I am.”

The two girls shared a giggle that seemed to
deflate any lingering uneasiness between them.

“What did you mean earlier tonight when you
talked about falling from the roof?” Brynlee asked. “Why would you
think about something like that?”

Tavia was quiet for a long moment. “Don’t
you ever think about running away from here?”

“No.”

“I do. I think about running back home,” she
whispered. “My parents are dead, but, oh, to be among the cattails
and dragonflies again, hunt for turtles in the pond. You don’t
think about running away ever?”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

Brynlee thought for a moment. “When they
brought me to Mungo’s it never occurred to me to run away. Then one
night this other girl, Murron, she decided she wasn’t going to be a
whore. She tried to go out the window. When Mungo caught her, he
beat her so bad she limped for many days after that. Since then,
any time I think about running away, I think about Murron.”

“How old were you?”

“I was seven.”

Tavia’s spirit seemed to deflate.

“Besides,” Brynlee continued, “where would
we go?”

“I hear that on Efferous Edhen is known as
do locus dubi veevay
.”

“What does that mean?”

“The place where evil abides.” Tavia shifted
to bring her head closer to Brynlee’s. “In fact, Placidous, he told
me lots of things about Efferous.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Amazing things!” She lowered her voice even
more. “He said Halus Gis is a place of hope. Said it once helped
refugees from Aberdour. We could find safety there, and peace.
Maybe even live there. We should get out of here. Work our way to
Efferous. Start a new life!”

Brynlee shook her head. “If you’re caught,
Mistress Rose will beat you, maybe even sell you off. You
can’t—”

“She can kill me for all I care. I can’t
stay in this place any more. Will you come with me?”

The directness of her question caught
Brynlee off guard. “Uh, I don’t… I don’t know. I mean, no. I
can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

Brynlee didn’t know what to say. The
conversation alone made her nervous.

“Will you at least think about it?” Tavia
asked.

When Brynlee didn’t answer, Tavia rolled
over in a frustrated huff.

Neither of them spoke the rest of the night.
Brynlee lay awake wondering if she had become too complacent, too
willing to accept her fate. Maybe it was time to start dreaming
about something beyond the walls of Rose’s brothel.

Then again, she found herself wondering if
her life was truly so horrible? Her days in Aberdour were a memory
now. She had adapted to life in the capital city quite comfortably.
She had food, clothes, a warm bed, and she found it quite enjoyable
to feel beautiful and appreciated by so many. Rose was a strict
mistress, but she took care of her girls, far better than Mungo
ever did, and Brynlee was learning business savvy from her every
day.

She drifted off into a dreamless sleep, and
didn’t wake again until after dawn. She was alone in the bed, and
Tavia was nowhere to be seen.

Brynlee trotted downstairs in a linen
chemise. The scent of fresh bacon spitting in the kitchen made her
stomach rumble and her taste buds salivate.

When she rounded the corner and saw Korah
her heart burst.

“Oh!” Korah exclaimed as Brynlee threw
herself into her. “I’m glad someone is happy to see me return.”

Rose sat at the wooden table sipping a mug
of warm herbs, a red robe draped over her frame. She looked
frazzled with a head of disheveled hair, but Brynlee guessed that
she had been up late entertaining a charge or two.

“You’re late,” Rose remarked. “Sir Dunmore
was here last night. Where were you?”

“Didn’t my lord tell you? We encountered
Marshall Linfeld at the Margretian Wall. He wished to bed me for
the night, and so I stayed.” She handed Rose a small ivory pouch of
coins.

Rose pursued her lips. “Linfeld must stop
taking advantage of my girls. I wished you had been here last
night.”

“You missed quite a show,” Brynlee said.

“Oh?”

“Never mind that for now,” Rose said.

“Are you hungry?” said a fat kitchen maid
waving a spatula dripping with yolk. “I’ll have some eggs and
honeyed mead done right for you in a just a moment, young
miss.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“Tell me about your trip,” Brynlee said.
“Was the castle at Tay as large as I’ve heard? Is it really white?
Did you figure out why?”

“Oh, hush child,” Rose said. “Your questions
are giving me a headache.”

“Mistress Rose!” cried one of the girls as
she came running down the hall. “Mistress Rose!” It was Abby, one
of the brothel’s more popular courtesans. She was dressed in
nothing but a red robe.

“What is it, dear?”

“It’s Tavia, mistress. She’s run away.”

Rose’s eyes crinkled in anger. “What?”

“Her bed is empty. Her things are gone. And
I can’t find her anywhere.”

“Go fetch the…” but Rose stopped when she
noticed Abby wasn’t dressed. She looked at Brynlee’s chemise and
sighed in frustration. “Is anyone in this house fully dressed?”

A young woman hurried in from an adjoining
room wearing a simple serving gown. “I am, mistress.”

“Fetch the magistrate at once! Tavia can’t
be far. Go now, child! Go!”

The young woman ran from the house, the
straps of her apron trailing behind her.

Rose rubbed her face and started pacing and
muttering. “Little wench. Going to cost me more to hunt her down
and bring her back than she’s earned me all year.” She stopped when
she noticed Brynlee and Korah and a couple other girls staring at
her. “Don’t any of you have work to do?”

While the others peeled off to various
corners of the house, Brynlee helped Korah to her room with her
travel bags. As soon as the young woman closed the door, she
unleashed a flurry of hushed questions at Brynlee. “What in all the
kingdoms happened while I was away? Why did Tavia leave? Is the
mistress all right? She looks sad.”

Brynlee found it difficult to spit out last
night’s tale of horror just off the cuff, but she did her best. She
finished by describing Tavia’s desire to run away.

“She even asked me to go with her,” Brynlee
said. “Oh, Korah, I should’ve known she would do this. I should’ve
stopped her. You don’t think this is my fault, do you?”

Korah put her hands on Brynlee’s shoulders.
“Shh. Listen to me. Tavia’s choices were all her own. You must
promise me, no matter how bad things get, you must never run away.
Don’t even attempt it. Do you understand?”

Brynlee wasn’t sure if Korah’s words made
her feel better or worse. “Why not?”

“Because there is no place better than any
other,” she said. “We are all made for a purpose, and we must
endure whatever purpose we’ve been given.” She stood and wandered
to her wardrobe to remove her dress. “We can’t change our
destinies, Emma. We have to live the lives we have.”

“‘Few will ever be great enough to bend
history, but if each of us works to change a small portion of
events, then we, in the total of all those small acts, will write a
greater history then has ever been written.’”

Korah narrowed her eyes in confusion. “What
does that mean?”

“It means just because we can’t change the
world doesn’t mean we can’t change anything.”

“And who said that? Someone famous, I’m
guessing.”

Brynlee grinned. “My grandfather.”

Korah smiled. “Just promise me you’ll never
do anything foolish. It’s a dangerous world out there, my
love.”

Korah’s words were poignantly illustrated
later that afternoon when Tavia returned. The magistrate found her
nude body lying in a ditch, unconscious and covered in mud,
bruises, semen, and blood. Her face was unrecognizable, and her
left arm was broken.

Rose asked the magistrate to send the doctor
who arrived later that afternoon. Life in the brothel came to a
near standstill. The girls gathered outside of Tavia’s room, heads
peering in through the doorway as the doctor set her broken arm in
a splint and sling, stitched up her wounds, and gave her some
medicine for the pain.

Tavia didn’t know how many men had raped
her, but she knew she had spent the night in the cold and mud of
the gutter.

Suppertime came and went in almost total
silence. Mistress Rose ate alone in her bedchambers, which she had
never done before.

While Brynlee was preparing some tea for
Rose, one of the girls asked, “What’s wrong with the mistress?”

“She’s mad at Tavia,” said Abby as she sat
down at the kitchen table. “She’s never liked her. The girl is such
a clumsy oaf.”

They all started speculating in between
mouthfuls of vegetable soup and bread. “Rose has invested a lot in
her and what has she gotten in return?”

“Nothing.”

“And she probably won’t get nothing from her
at all. Probably sell her off now that she’s all damaged like she
is.”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“You just wait, honey. I’m right.”

Brynlee ignored them and stole down the
hallway toward Rose’s lavish bedroom. Dark red drapes covered the
windows and walls. A massive four-post bed piled with lush pillows
and decorated with whips and shackles occupied the north wall. The
room was heavily perfumed and featured several large paintings of
nude women in wanton poses.

The mistress was sitting at a large dark
wood desk, gazing out at the evening streets and the commoners
walking by.

“Mistress, I’ve brought you some hot
tea.”

Rose said nothing. Brynlee took the tray and
set it on the desk. She poured a small cup and placed it on a white
saucer next to Rose.

“See if Tavia needs anything, will you
Emma?” Rose said. “I want you to stay with her during the night.
Can you do that, please?”

“Of course, mistress.”

“You’re a good girl, Emma. You have a rare
kindness in you.”

Brynlee had never heard such soft-spoken
compliments from Rose. She almost didn’t know how to respond.
“Thank you, mistress.”

She retreated from the bedroom and went up
stairs to check on Tavia.

The halls of the brothel were growing dimmer
as the daylight faded, making the dark red and brown wood walls
feel ominous and empty.