Lin
“Come now,” says , as if coaxing a child. “Show me your wrist.”
“It’s fine,” the girl sitting across from her—Silla, that was her name—says. “I needn’t have any treatment. No leeches and things. It’ll get better on its own.”
smiles. “I don’t use leeches; ask any of the other girls.”
Silla sighs dramatically. She is a pretty girl, with red hair a few shades lighter than ’s own, dark eyes, and a sulky mouth tinted red. She wears a silk dressing-gown with long flared sleeves, and as she turns her head, sees the dark marks of bruises on the other girl’s throat.
She feels her smile vanish and plasters a look of professional blankness onto her face. “It won’t hurt,” she says, and with another sigh, Silla pushes up her right sleeve, baring a long, slender arm. A delicate arm, made for languid gestures, marred now by an ugly bracelet of bruised, puffed flesh around the wrist.
takes the other girl’s hand and hears her suck in her breath as she examines the wrist as carefully as she can. Not broken, at least. Just a bad sprain, as if someone had caught Silla by the wrist when she tried to walk away, grabbed her hard, and twisted...
“When did this happen?” demands, hot anger coursing through her.
“Just today.” This seems true; the bruises look fresh.
“Who did it? You must tell Domna Asper. She won’t stand for it.”
“Alys hasn’t got much choice.” Silla looks glum. “Not when it’s nobles, like the Prince and his friends—”
The blood seems to stop in ’s veins. Suddenly nauseated, she hears the pounding of her heart in her temples. “Prince Conor did this?”
“No—oh, no,” Silla says, seeming genuinely dismayed. “He drinks and gets ridiculous like they all do, but he’s not unkind. It’s been nearly ten years he’s been coming here with his cousin, and never a bad word about either of them.”
expels a breath of relief. There is still a tight knot in her chest, but it has loosened slightly. She knows Prince Conor frequents the Caravel; Kel has told her as much. They both do. It is safer, Kel explained, than dalliances with the young men and women of the Hill, which could lead to awkward entanglements. This way, with the transaction up front, is easier.
Still. Ten years. She cannot help but think of Conor at that age, when he’d been all long legs and arms and big gray eyes under a thick mop of curling dark hair. Kel had told her frankly that he’d been terrified the first time he’d visited the Caravel; she wonders if Conor had been, too.
“So who was it?” says, removing a roll of bandages from her satchel. “Who did this to you?”
“Artal Gremont,” says Silla, after a long pause. The spilling of secrets must not come easily to her; her job tends to entail keeping them close. “Alys knows. I told her.”
“Artal Gremont?” demands. “I didn’t even know he was in Castellane yet. Antonetta didn’t tell me.”
Silla snorts. “The moment he landed in the city, he came straight to the Temple District. All he seems to want to do is stagger drunkenly from one bedroom to another. None of the girls can stand him. And Alys looks at him as if she despises him, but only when he’s not looking. She says we have to make nice—he has powerful allies.”
“He’s powerful himself.” begins to bind Silla’s wrist. “He’s about to take over the tea Charter. And marry into the silk Charter, too.”
Silla rolls her eyes. “He did say something about needing to have all the fun he could before the walls of matrimony close in on him. But he’s the sort of man to see courtesans behind his wife’s back. I think he was just whining for sympathy.”
“Ugh,” says. “Alys won’t make you see him again, surely?”
“No. But she can’t keep him away from the Caravel. There are other girls, the kind who cater to men who like to inflict pain. I suppose he’ll see them. But they’ll have to pretend they truly hate what he’s doing; he won’t enjoy it otherwise. He wants to cause misery.”
And this is the man Antonetta is supposed to marry? thinks. Should she warn Antonetta? Would it do any good if she did? Antonetta seems so removed from this world of the Caravel; would she even understand? Her determination to marry Gremont regardless of how awful he is seems immovable.
And marriage is a different thing for those on the Hill, she thinks. What Gremont felt no compunction about doing to a powerless girl in the Temple District was not what he might feel comfortable doing to the heir to the silk Charter fortune.
She has finished bandaging Silla’s wrist; as she bends to put her things away, Silla says, in an uncertain voice, “You know Kel Anjuman, don’t you?”
pops back up in her chair. “Did Alys tell you that?”
Silla nods. “I used to see him all the time. He was one of my more regular clients. Then he stopped coming around—but so did the Prince, and I thought perhaps he simply goes where Conor goes.”
It is odd to hear someone call Conor by his first name so casually, but the thought does not linger long in ’s mind: She is stunned to hear that he’s been forgoing the Caravel. Perhaps everything Kel has said about him is true. Perhaps he has changed.
“The last time I saw Kel, he made it clear to me our interactions were finished,” Silla adds. “It is a shame. I had hoped, perhaps...”
looks away, wanting to hide her expression from Silla. “I can imagine it is hard to have hopes when the object of your affection is one of those on the Hill.”
“Oh, affection.” Silla waves the concept away with her uninjured hand. “I’m fond enough of him, but I never imagined marriage or anything like that. But I had thought he might want a mistress—an official one. The dream of every courtesan is to become a mistress. One gets a house in the Silver Streets, a carriage, and a bit of money to save. Independence. It’s a decent living if the man’s kind.”
“And Kel is kind,” agrees, picking up her satchel. “But you will find another kind patron. I am sure of it.”
Silla only smiles at her faintly; knows her words probably carry little comfort. They are worlds apart, she and Silla, but as a doctor and a courtesan they share the same knowledge: that kindness is rare as gold in Castellane, and real goodness rarer than Sunderglass itself.