Chapter Four
Hekate’s Eye was one of the most unsettling islands in Diabolos, and every captain in the Starian navy adored it.
The town was built in a giant spiral, twisting around itself like the inside of a conch shell.
It started with the docks on one end, melting into the brothels, bars, inns, and markets.
Houses piled on top of each other along the inner spirals, some rising almost four stories high, and a staggeringly tall library rose in the middle like a spike.
The librarians all wore pale uniforms with lines of brass buttons down the front, and people in Hekate’s Eye treated them like priests, scuttling to get out of their paths and dutifully returning their books in the boxes by every lamppost. There were even rumors that one of the librarians was a wyvern rider, making their home at the top of the auspicious tower.
The captains loved it there. Not because of the library, of course. They couldn’t give a whit about a pile of books. No, the captains of Staria loved Hekate’s Eye for the bustling, outrageously expensive pleasure district.
“Have you ever been to the Swan’s Crown?” Delauney asked, practically vibrating in excitement as he swung on a light purple vest and a belt with far too many crystal studs. Wes, who was putting on a simple white shirt and dark blue trousers, nodded.
“That’s the place with the giant statues out front that spit water at you,” he said. “I went there once.”
He hadn’t actually paid for any of the services there, of course. He’d slipped inside with a shipmate for a drink, saw the staggering price of a thimble’s worth of ale, and stumbled out again without a word.
“Isn’t it delightful?” Delauney said. “You should go. There’s this magnificent courtesan there, Virgil, who can make a man kneel with a snap of his fingers.”
“Good for him,” Wes said. He paused to examine Delauney as he patted scent under his ears. “Or good for you, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Delauney said, with obvious glee. “Very good. Oh, do you need wages? I’d hate for you to wander about with nothing to do.”
“I have some saved up,” Wes said. He wondered how Delauney didn’t know that most sailors weren’t paid until they docked at a Starian harbor or took a pirate vessel. Perhaps he figured that it was different with Wes. “I’ll be fine. Besides, I’ll probably go to one of the sailors’ libraries.”
Uneasiness flickered in Delauney’s eyes. “Oh. You like to read, then?”
“As much as the next man,” Wes said. Delauney didn’t need to know what a sailor’s library actually was. Most officers ignored the section of the pleasure district where enlisted sailors tended to linger, and Delauney seemed no different.
They took one of the rowboats to shore, but Ned and his family remained on the ship.
“Too rowdy for the girls,” Ned told them, sitting in the dining room with his feet propped up on a chair.
Alain came ashore with Delauney and Wes, sitting quietly in the corner of the rowboat with their knees drawn up to their chest. They looked so lonesome that Wes moved closer, startling them out of their reverie.
“Are you all right?” Wes asked.
“We have a cold,” Alain said. They didn’t look particularly ill, but their eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep, and they kept their shoulders hunched awkwardly.
They must have seen Wes’ confused expression, because they added, “not this vessel. Another vessel in the colony. We always feel... strange, when one of us is sick. The connection is thinner.”
Wes frowned. Alain was an unusual sort, but anyone would be worried if a loved one was ill. “I hope they recover soon, then. Are they close? Could you visit them in person?”
“That vessel is in Mislia,” Alain said. “But it was kind of you to ask.”
Vee met Wes on the dock, slinging an arm around his waist while Alain mournfully slipped away into the docks.
She’d insisted on eating with Wes as often as possible, taking him under her wing like a mother duck accepting a stray duckling.
She was dressed in a gown for once, instead of her usual sailor’s uniform.
“I’m off to the library,” she said, guiding Wes into a gaggle of sailors.
Delauney cast Wes a look as he disappeared into the throng, and Wes privately wondered if he’d expected him to join Delauney at the Swan’s Crown.
Surely not. He might have been an odd sort of noble, but he was still a noble, and it wouldn’t be proper to be seen bringing a commoner into a pleasure house.
“Oh, not again,” another sailor, Finnegan, said. “Vee and this harridan of a librarian have been arguing about symbolism for years.”
“She’s wrong about the wallpaper and I can prove it,” Vee snapped. The sailors around her groaned. “Just you wait.”
“I’m going to a library of my own, actually,” Wes said, “so I might leave you by the first bend.” The streets in Hekate’s Eye were known as bends, with small wooden markers to denote their place.
Vee raised her brows. “You little slut. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“He’ll have plenty in him by the end of the day,” another sailor said.
Wes flashed him a foul gesture. “Jealous, Jim?”
“Not at all,” Jim said. “I have a lovely redhead waiting for me down the bend. She’s got the biggest tits in Diabolos, I swear.”
“No, I have the biggest tits in Diabolos,” a sailor named Dani said, waving toward her chest.
“I know,” Jim said, looking pained, “but you’re my mate, Didi. That’s a crime, lookin’ at your mate’s tits.”
“I look at them all the time,” Vee said, speaking into Wes’ ear. Wes smiled.
“It explains why you’re always staring at the sky when we talk.” Dani said to Jim.
“It ain’t proper!”
Wes peeled away from the group near the edge of the docks, letting them chatter good-naturedly to each other as they wandered around the bend.
It was good to know that even with so much of his time taken worrying after Delauney, he was still welcome with some of the crew.
There hadn’t been much bonding on Lennox’s ship, not when he viewed whispering as ‘conspiring to form a mutiny.’
The sailor’s library was a few paces from the docks, through a small alley with creeping yellow roses growing up the bricks.
The roses glowed faintly as he passed, a clever bit of witchcraft to detect disease, and an older woman in a librarian’s vest looked up from a chair.
Beyond her, a series of holes, slats, and alcoves were carved into the wall at neat, tidy intervals.
She looked Wes up and down, her eyes glinting behind her glasses.
“Here to check something out or here to lend?” she asked.
“Lending would be nice,” Wes said. A little further down the alley, a man walked up to a hole in the wall and started unlacing his trousers. Wes eyed him as he took out his cock, already flushed with arousal.
“Toilets or the wall?” the librarian asked. Wes gestured to the wall. “All right. You can earn coin, a spell, or a book.”
“A book, preferably. Something about history?” Wes asked. The librarian nodded.
“Come along, then.” She waved a hand, and the bricks next to her rolled away, revealing a narrow entrance. “You’re early,” she said, leading Wes through it. The bricks rolled back up as they passed. “You’ll get the full service—is that all right with you?”
Wes smiled, already peeling off his shirt. “Oh, yes.”
The librarian actually smiled back, and her severe face took on a warm flash of loveliness before settling into her grim mask again.
Behind the wall, the alley looked considerably different.
There were stalls lining up with the holes and slots in the brick, some with padded benches, others with cushions, some with a hard stone floor and little else.
The librarian led Wes to a stall with a slat of wood at waist height, the small platform lining up perfectly with a hole wide enough for Wes to slip through.
He took off his boots and trousers and neatly folded his clothes.
There was a bottle of oil to prepare himself with and a padded cloth to wrap around his waist, but he didn’t take too long getting ready. He was too eager, trembling with need.
“Ring the bell here,” the librarian said, tapping a bell in easy reach, “if anyone tries something you don’t like. I’ll come by to check on you now and then, and we’ll have drinks in the back when you’re done. Go on if you’re ready, darling.”
Wes climbed onto the wooden platform, maneuvering himself so that his legs fell through the hole and into the open air on the other side of the wall.
He twisted around, getting comfortable, and settled with his chest against the wooden slat and his feet just touching the ground.
From the other side, it looked like he was facing the wall with his waist bent through the hole in the bricks.
“Comfortable?” the librarian asked. “Good. Have fun, sweetheart.”
She moved her hand in a circle, and the bricks around Wes shifted, tightening the hole around his waist until he only had an inch or two of movement on either side.
The padding around his waist prevented the bricks from scraping his skin, but he was effectively trapped there, out in the open for anyone to use. Wes’ cock twitched at the thought.
It was probably his family’s fault. They’d wanted Wes to be discriminating.
They’d wanted him to cater to the rich, to ingratiate himself in their customs and social circles, to make himself a polished jewel that any noble would want to wear as another brooch among hundreds.
Instead, Wes preferred to be admired on his terms, by the sort of people his parents would have shuddered to pass in the street.
To the nobles of Staria, he was an object.
Here, he was just a touch, a feeling, the heady rush of pleasure.
Someone ran their hands up his thighs. Wes shuddered as they lightly touched his cock, then drew away. Then, without preamble, they lined up a thin, hard cock and entered him in one rough thrust.