Chapter 10
Nine Years Later
I’m tired.
Tired of Otyx and his shit.
Tired of living with my heart in my throat.
Tired of hating my life.
And, most importantly, tired of hating myself for staying.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep going like this.
I’ve tried to leave. I’ve tried to find honest work.
But no one will hire me. They all know I’m a thief, that Otyx owns me.
He made sure of that. And I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Isi alone in this place.
She still refuses to leave without a solid plan.
She says if no one will hire me, they certainly won’t hire a whore.
We could have — should have — just run away and I could have continued to pick pockets.
The Rookery is crowded enough that we would have just melted away but she’s so afraid Otyx will find us.
She’s afraid of starving, of having nothing.
I’ve seen the hope inside her slowly dwindle over the years.
I’ve done everything I can to keep it burning, but she’s as tired as I am. Perhaps even more so.
These thoughts are my constant companions.
They’re particularly loud as I dump my haul on Berttom’s desk, because today marks exactly ten years since Otyx found me half-alive on the street and brought me here.
Ten years of stealing, fighting, running, and fear.
It’s the fear that weighs on me the most. I’ve always been a fighter and, though I loathe it with every fiber of my being, stealing is just a means of survival.
But the fear is exhausting. You never know which side of Otyx you’re going to get.
He’ll either reward your work with an extra fine meal and a pat on the head or he’ll beat or whip you senseless.
It doesn’t seem to matter how much you’ve earned him or what perceived crime you’ve committed against him, the punishment never fits.
He regularly tells us we’re nothing but commodities, we can be sold or traded for artifacts that will do as he says without question, an artifact like Isirae.
If he’s aware I’ve continued to teach Isi to pickpocket and fight over the years, he keeps it to himself.
I'm not na?ve enough to believe he doesn’t know.
He must have a motive for not stopping it, but I haven’t figured out what it is yet.
She’s small, so one would think she’d make an excellent pickpocket, but she’s still clumsy.
She’s also just as clumsy at fighting. Feron says she’s plateaued in her improvement.
Not that it matters much; I’m skilled enough for the both of us.
Still, she tries. And Feron is patient. And I keep fighting for a better life.
One hope to the next.
“That’s it?” Berttom’s wheeze brings me out of my head.
I shrug. “Slow day.” He gets up and rounds the desk. My shoulders sag. I know what’s coming. I should fight back, should knock him on his scrawny ass, but the repercussions wouldn’t be worth it in the end. His fist collides with my gut. I bend over, gasping for air.
“I should put you on a mattress for that pathetic load, Red.” He threatens to force me to sell myself often, but he has yet to deliver on those threats. Even if he did, the first customer he sent my way would leave with one less body part. It would be up to him which one.
Otyx fists my hair and forces my head back to look at him.
It took me nearly five years to grow my hair back to a length acceptable to him and every time he does this, I’m truly tempted to shave it all off again.
I didn’t mind dressing and acting like a boy.
It made me nearly invisible. In fact, I’ve taken quite a liking to trousers.
I now refuse to wear dresses, instead opting for trousers so baggy, they look like skirts.
Otyx still hasn’t noticed. My choice of clothing offers me both a level of protection from wandering hands and allows me to move more freely.
His breath on my face is foul enough to curdle milk. The few teeth behind his snarl are nearly black with decay; the rest have fallen out.
“Get out of my sight.” He throws me to the ground.
I know better than to ask for my percentage.
I won’t get it. I only get my part if he’s in a good mood now, which is rare.
I get up and wander up the stairs, looking for a bath and a good night’s rest. I’ve become accustomed to the sounds of the bordello at night.
It’s become like a kind of relaxing hum to me.
I don’t know if I’d be able to sleep without the sounds of sex in the air.
Gods Vayna, you’re so fucked.
I can’t deny it. So many years in this place will do that to a person.
I turn the corner at the top of the stairs on the second floor, heading for the bathroom when I collide with a large body.
“Watch where you’re going, Princess.” The nasally, deep feminine voice belongs to a rather large, dark-haired, black-eyed artifact Berttom owns.
Draya showed up on our doorstep about seven years ago.
Since then she’s become one of Otyx’s favorites for reasons I don’t want to think about, so she gets more food, better treatment, and more affection than the rest of us.
I think he’s in love with her but knows she’s worth more as a whore.
Isi thinks she’s just really good at her job.
She’s also been a source of abuse for Isi.
She throws her around like a rag doll whenever she’s in a mood.
I release an exasperated sigh. I don’t have the energy to fight with her today.
Even if I did, it would only end poorly for me with yet another punishment from Otyx.
But she knows better than to fuck with me.
A few years ago, she was beating on Isi for no other reason than she could.
Isi, bless her, was trying everything she knew to fight back, but Draya was just too damn big.
I stepped in. The big bitch didn’t know what hit her.
I took her down in three maneuvers, knocking her unconscious and leaving her in a heap on the floor.
When she woke up, she went crying to Berttom.
He, in turn, gave me five lashes and locked me in my room for two days without food or water.
Of course, Isi and I have a good system now, so she brought me hardtack and I collected what water I could from the window still not grouted back into the wall.
Unfortunately for me, this happened in the middle of winter, so all I had was snow that refused to melt in my frigid room. Still, it was better than nothing.
I step around the human equivalent of a Benea Mountain.
It’s difficult since her enormous frame blocks most of the hallway and she doesn’t move to get out of my way.
She’s been trying to get me to fight her again for years but refuses to throw the first punch, probably because if I strike first, she can cry to Otyx again when she loses.
And I won’t rise to her obvious challenges for dominance, which seems to piss her off more.
She hurls insults at my back that I ignore as I wander slowly to the bathroom.
I fill the tub and sink into it, ready to wash the day off my skin.
It was a particularly rough one. The rich snobs up in the Estates have decided they don’t like looking at the Rookery anymore and are tired of the rampant crime that occasionally spills onto their perfect streets, so they’ve hired new “security” called the Garrison to “clean up the streets,” or so the posters claim.
These new watchmen are nothing more than armed bullies picking on the poorest and the weakest of us.
They have the power to arrest us and throw us in the newly built jail on the edge of the Rookery, but they don’t.
Instead, they’ll beat the shit out of us and leave us bleeding in the gutter.
They were everywhere today. I spent most of the day dodging them. Hence, the lack of pickings.
A small knock pulls me out of my head. Isi pokes her head in. Her hair is up in a high ponytail, her face made up, and her clothes barely there. She’s ready for her night. My heart aches a familiar ache. It always does when I see her like this.
“How did it go today?” she asks as she perches on the rim of the tub. I’ve stopped caring about people seeing me naked. When you live in a whorehouse, being nude is more common than being fully clothed.
I sigh and sink further into my barely warm tub. “Bottom’s not happy with me.”
“Is he ever?” One of her eyebrows raises in question.
I snort. “Fair point.”
She has a sad look on her face that I’m all too familiar with. “Tomorrow will be better,” she sighs.
“What’s your hope?” I ask her.
She chews on her lip for a moment, thinking. “I hope to get my hands on another sticky bun.” Her lips tilt up. We splurged on sticky buns last week and she hasn’t stopped talking about them. I chuckle.
“Yours?” she asks.
“To get a full night’s rest,” I say. She nods.
“Get some sleep,” she says. She kisses the top of my head and walks out the way she came.
I dry off and climb the stairs up to my bedroom, wrapped in a towel.
I’ve spruced it up some over the years with the small amount of money Berttom allows me.
A nicer, less moth-eaten blanket covers the still sagging mattress stuffed with hay that stabs at me, the one that I haven’t been able to replace yet.
A vase with some lavender from Feron's garden sits on the windowsill, and a small sketch that Isirae drew of us as a twentieth birthday gift hangs on the wall above my headboard.
This room has slowly become both prison and sanctuary.