The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

“Rollas?” Looking up from my close inspection of the amphora’s interior, in search of hidden wine, I saw a man turn from the main street into a side alley. Something about the square cut of his shoulders below the blunt and bristly back of his head, put me in mind of my friend Barras Jon’s man, Rollas. I stood, swaying somewhat, steadying myself with a hand to the shoulder of a man seated by the next table. “Your pardon.” The words slurred over numb lips. “Just getting my land legs.” And I stumbled out across the street. It hadn’t just reminded me of Barras’s man. It had been him. I’d followed the back of that head home to the palace after enough drunken Vermillion nights to know it anywhere. It was habit more than anything that made me set off after it this time.

I walked carefully, not wanting to step in anything unpleasant, and had to negotiate passage around an ill-smelling beggar even more drunk than myself. I emerged from the alley into another street leading from the docks to the heights, sure that I must have lost my quarry, but found myself just in time to see him enter a whorehouse. You can always tell the places: better presented than the drinking holes, more conspicuous than gambling dens, and if business is slow then girls will be leaning out of the upstairs windows. Besides, this one had “Hore House” painted in big red letters on a sign running the length of the eaves.

I crossed over and let the street-hook snare me.

“A fine-looking man like you shouldn’t be alone on a nice afternoon like this now.” The hook, a striking, dark-haired woman in her forties took my arm, steering me toward the brothel door.

“And you’d like to keep me company would you?” I leered politely.

She smiled, professional enough not to wince at my wine-sour breath. “Well, I’m a little old for a young man like you, but there are some beautiful girls inside just dying to meet you. Samantha has the b—”

“Do you know the man who went in just before me?” I held back against the tug of her arm, just shy of the doorway and the door-guard hulking in the shadows of its porch.

She released me and looked up, smile erased. “We’re a very discreet establishment. We don’t tell tales.”

I held up a Liban bar between finger and thumb and let the rectangular coin catch the afternoon light. I’d borrowed ten bars from Omar the night before I left, each made of a touch more gold than an Empire ducat.

“I haven’t seen him before. I would remember. Handsome fellow.”

“What did he want?”

She rolled her eyes at that. “A whore.”

“He came straight here. He wasn’t wandering. He didn’t hesitate . . . did he come to see a particular girl?”

“That’s a pretty coin. Does it weigh much?” She held her hand out, palm up.

“Yes.” I pressed it into her hand. It seemed a lot to spend on what was probably mistaken identity—and I didn’t quite know why I hadn’t just shouted out to Rollas. I considered walking away but Barras was my friend, albeit a treacherous, backstabbing one who had married the girl I’d been mooning over in the frozen north . . . at least when there weren’t any other girls to keep me warm. And if it was Rollas I’d seen then something was very wrong. I couldn’t think of any good reason that the man the Great Jon hired to protect his son would be hurrying into a Port French brothel. “I’m spending any change inside, so the better the story the less work this Samantha of yours has to do.”

The woman bit her lip, considering the odds. She’d make a terrible poker player. She glanced at the doorman, at me, eyes finally coming to rest on the Liban bar in her hand. “Said he wanted to look the girls over. Wanted to know if we only used free workers, or if we bought chained skin. Asking after any new girls. White girls. My height, dark hair. Told him no, but he wanted to look anyway.”

“Did he mention a name?”

“It doesn’t do to ask questions like his on the Isles. It’s an easy way to get a cut throat.”

I took her meaning. Even drunk I knew it wasn’t idle talk. Even so. “Did he mention a name?”

“Lisa?”

“DeVeer?”

“New girls only get one name. Do a good job and you might get another in a couple of years. DeVeer, though? That’s not going to bring them in. DeLicious, maybe. Mine was FourWays. Serra FourWays.”

Lisa? A corsair captive? I needed to think it through. I stepped away, almost crashing into a man laden beneath sacks. “Your pardon.” Somehow I’d been reduced to apologizing to common labourers. “I . . .” I turned and started down the street.