The Dew of Flesh

  Chapter 57

  Ilahe dipped the quill once in the ink and scribbled Cu’s name at the bottom of the sheet of paper. She blew on the page lightly, watching the edges of the smooth lines crinkle as the ink seeped into the rough fibers. Administering finances had never been a passion when she studied the skills, but something about watching the last beads of ink ripple and dry under that soft breath gave Ilahe incredible satisfaction. When she was sure the last of the ink had dried, she laid the sheet on top of the pile of paper next to her.

  It was one of two piles. The mountains of paper and ledgers that once occupied the room had been carefully examined, some pages thrown out, others burned, and many more neatly stored in bundles in a pair of old trunks that Cu had provided. The office, empty of the tottering folding tables and their clutter, now felt spacious. An early evening breeze came in from the windows, stirring the latest addition to the pile. Irritation mixed with relief; the breeze broke some of the heat that had gathered in the office, but even so, the upper chamber felt like an oven, and sweat rolled down the back of her neck in tight drops. Ilahe shifted her braids, felt the reminder of the black cloth ties. The breeze stirred again, threatening to undo her organization, and Ilahe added a stone paperweight to the pile to stop the page from fleeing.

  As she straightened, cool air brushed the back of her neck. Ilahe jumped in surprise, spinning and reaching for her swords. Swords that now sat in her room on the floor below. Her arm, swinging back to grab air where there should have been a sword, collided with one stack of papers. The pages exploded into the air with the rustle of dead leaves and began to flutter down.

  Ilahe glared at Hash. With those full lips, he blew again over the surface of a cup of wine, and that same cool air—this time laced with the scent of his breath and the bouquet of wine—caressed Ilahe.

  “Thirsty?” he said with that same smile that hovered on the edge of mockery.

  That smile touched a chord of anger in Ilahe. Heart pounding, she felt sweat sliding down from the hollow of her neck to disappear between her breasts, felt the sweat along her thighs. Blackness take her, the dress Esmer had given her was twice as revealing as the other. It was pretty—not a doubt about that. A delicate, buttery yellow against the smooth ebony of Ilahe’s skin. But it barely covered her, and when Hash’s gaze slid along Ilahe’s form, the way he always looked at her, she could barely keep from slapping him. He had no right to mock the way she looked—the dress did nothing to hide the freakish bulk of Ilahe’s shoulders and arms, her torso like a tree-trunk.

  Pressing down the urge to strike Hash—and fighting, at the same time, to breathe as she stared into his too-blue eyes—Ilahe accepted the cup. Although it had only been chilled in the cellar, it tasted like snowmelt compared to the heat of the office, and Ilahe drank it in deep gulps. When she had finished, she lowered the cup and stared at Hash. The lines of his jaw and brow. The curve of his lips. The shape and color of those eyes. Something brushed her arm, and then something else, but she couldn’t seem to tear herself away.

  “Let me help you clean up,” Hash said.

  Ilahe started, suddenly coming back to the heat of the room, the sweat of her body, the tremble in her legs as he took stepped in close to her and took the cup.

  “Thank you,” she said as she released the cup.

  “I might as well earn my keep somehow,” Hash said. “Although I doubt Cu will keep me on to bring you wine.” Setting the cup on Ilahe’s new work-table, he knelt and began to gather the papers.

  Kneeling next to him, Ilahe said, “Pity, that.”

  Hash flashed her a grin—a real smile, not the one he usually gave.

  “What are you going to do?” Ilahe asked as she collected the pages of her work.

  “About Cu?” Hash said. He leaned forward, stretching to reach a small scrap of paper, and his shirt pulled up, the deep blue linen sliding to reveal smooth white flesh. Well-muscled, flesh, Ilahe noticed, before she tore her eyes away. “I don’t know. Maybe things will change. If I work, Cu will keep me. If not . . .”

  He did not need to finish. Cu was many things—a terrible accountant, for example—but she was not a fool.

  “And why aren’t you working?” Ilahe asked. “I can’t imagine it’s for lack of clients.” For a moment, her heart surged into her mouth when she realized what she had said.

  Hash just laughed and said, “No, I imagine I could find work, if I wanted to.”

  “But?” Ilahe said.

  “Curious about a whore’s mind?” Hash said, that mocking smile returning.

  Ilahe stiffened, her cheeks heating.

  “I’m sorry,” Hash said after a heartbeat. “That’s not fair of me. My apologies.”

  “No, I deserved that,” Ilahe said. “I should be the one to apologize.”

  “Then we’ll both be apologizing until we’re old,” Hash said. “And I have better things to do. Maybe we should let the past be the past.”

  Ilahe smiled; it came easier now, although she was surprised to find herself speaking so calmly to the man who made her heart pound like a drum. “Agreed.”

  “I’ll trade you an answer for an answer,” Hash said.

  Clutching her pile of papers, Ilahe leaned back against the wall, near the window, and drew her legs up modestly. Strange, how easily old habits came back to her. Like wearing a dress. She nodded.

  “I haven’t taken a client because I . . . can’t,” Hash said. For the first time in her life, Ilahe saw him truly blush—bright, hot red, in cheeks like the snow of the Danma. He looked away, as though searching for more paper. After a few moments, his voice low, he said, “Why are you really here?”

  “To kill someone,” Ilahe said. “At least, that’s why I was here. Now, I don’t know. Because I don’t have anywhere else to go, I suppose.”

  Hash looked up at her, the red still hot in his cheeks, but his eyes clear. Suddenly, even though he sat on the other side of the room, Ilahe felt uncomfortably close—as though she could feel his breath on her skin again. Each heartbeat sent tremors of desire through her veins, like fire and wine.

  “Why did you become a . . . pleasure-boy?” Ilahe asked. She stumbled over the last word; in Cenarbasi, if there was an equivalent, she did not know it. A polite term for a whore. Such a strange concept.

  “The money,” Hash said, and for some reason, the red in his cheeks grew, like two fires Ilahe’s words had kindled. “I grew up in a bad part of the city—Old Truth, along the southern edge. Started out mugging people, but that work is dangerous, and doubly so when the different gangs get riled at each other. Then one day, the head of a shrine of life saw me, offered me a spot. I spat in his face that day, but a few weeks later, when I was looking for a place to hide . . .” He stopped and shrugged. “I never left. Until they took me for the High Harvest.” Eyes fixed on Ilahe, he said, “Why are you an assassin? I’ve heard the women of Cenarbasi do many things that a man should do, but I’ve never heard of one fighting.”

  Whether it was the wine, or the sense of impossible intimacy with the man who sat so close, and yet so far away from her, Ilahe felt the words latch onto a rent in her armor, and she started speaking before she realized it.

  “Women are not warriors in Cenarbasi; fighting is an art, and art is a man’s job. Painting, especially, but poetry, or the dance of blades. Just like the art of quickening a woman—the greatest art of all.” Her lips quirked into a bittersweet smile. Even now, thinking back, there was pleasure in those days. Feeling the life within her, the warmth of Cinar’s hand as he pressed it against her bare belly, wanting to feel their son move. His smile when the child kicked that first time. Caught in her memories, Ilahe said, “They took him from me, before he had even left my womb. Drugs and blades.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes—blackness take her, she hadn’t cried in months, had thought the tears all used up. She blinked them away, drew in a shuddering breath. “I will kill them, one day.” That part, at least, of her hatred remained. Cold an
d hard, like the stone of the solars’ altar beneath her bare flesh when they quickened her.

  “Perhaps that’s enough,” Hash said, his eyes unreadable as he watched her.

  Ilahe did not know if he referred to their conversation, or to her declaration that she would kill the priests, but she nodded and drew herself to her feet. Taking the rest of the papers from Hash, she replaced the pile of papers and the paperweight and started toward the door. Their conversation had stirred up old feelings she had thought long gone; Ilahe needed to be alone, where she could scream or cry.

  “Wait,” Hash said. He grabbed her wrist, his hand soft but firm against her skin. “A woman—your friend, from the inn—saw me today, in the street. She asked me why you hadn’t responded to her last note. She sounded worried. She wouldn’t let me leave until I promised to deliver another note for her.”

  He pressed a neatly folded piece of parchment into Ilahe’s hand; she could feel the wax seal against her calluses. Daye, still playing her foolish games of the Thousand Suffering Breaths, and hoping to find love there, somehow. Not realizing that love was just a doorway to pain, that Thousand Suffering Breaths was true to its name.

  “Did you tell her where I was?” Ilahe asked.

  “No,” Hash said. “I’m not that foolish.”

  “Thank you,” Ilahe said.

  A shout echoed up the stairwell. “Those bastards,” Gyune’s voice reached them. Furious.

  Ilahe glanced at Hash, and together they ran for the stairs, down to the second floor. At this time of the day, the closed doors murmured back and forth to each other with the sounds of lust, but several women, those not working, were gathered in a tight circle.

  “What’s wrong?” Ilahe asked. Her swords were near; if a man had decided to start hitting, she could get them quickly enough.

  Hash repeated her question, and when the women saw him, a ripple of voices agreed to let him through. He had become, somehow, the designated the healer for the whores. Ilahe stepped behind him, determined to figure out what had happened.

  Gyune sat on the floor, Naja lying across her lap. Tears streamed down Gyune’s face, but Naja only whimpered and shook. Dark red fist-marks, tinged with yellow, covered Naja’s face, blood had dried along the corner of her mouth and down the curve of her slender neck. A patch of the beautiful woman’s dark hair was missing, and the raw wound confirmed that it had been pulled free.

  Ilahe thought she might be sick; this was why Cu had hired her in the first place. It had all been Naja’s idea, someone to keep the girls safe. And Ilahe had let Naja down, after everything Naja had done to help her and Hash both. Pain gave way to rage, though, and Ilahe found herself kneeling next to Naja and clutching her hand.

  “Who did this to you, Naja?” Ilahe whispered, her voice tight and strange to her own ears. “Who in the blackness did this to you?”

  Naja flinched at the touch, but she did not open her swollen eyes.

  “Those bastards,” Gyune said, still crying. The blue-black mark on her cheek had faded, but it reminded Ilahe that Naja’s fate was nothing new to these women. “The eses, they did this to her. She was supposed to see their captain tonight, and this is how she came back. Don’t know what happened; when she didn’t come back like normal, Cu went to fetch her.”

  “Cu didn’t go,” Esmer said, “she’s been gone all day. Looking for a new carpenter, she said.”

  The words were like ice in Ilahe’s belly.

  “Who went to look for Naja?” Ilahe asked.

  It took a few moments of confused whispering, but when they said the name, Ilahe heard nothing else.

  “Ly.”