4. 3
Yona knocked me out of my thoughts by clapping her hands on my shoulders. “Remember, you always get a choice. If a man selects you, and you don’t want him, you give me the signal. What’s the signal?”
I nodded to her as I pinned back a final piece of my hair.
I had tried to do it differently to how I wore it as an Ekrissian, but the result was remarkably similar.
I twisted the front strands towards the back, where they joined two small plaits and bound together at the back of my crown.
With my hair out of my face, my eyes looked even bigger than normal, the mottled green staring back at me in the mirror.
“The word ribbon, or I stretch out my right hand behind my back,” I replied as I stood to face her.
After the money the stranger had given me, I had considered not returning to The Curving Eclipse.
I had sat in a taverna, bought a nice hot meal of dolmades and stewed lamb, and thought of how long that money might last if I bought a room in the city.
A month, maybe? A gold for a longer-term room in the rafters of a taverna. A copper or two a day to live off.
Then what?
I had sat in that taverna, entirely alone. I had nothing to recommend me. Since Ekris had cast me out, Yona was now my only friend in Dytho. What good was two months of loneliness?
She nodded, studying me. “Good. Our man at the front keeps most of the problems out, and there are three men stationed in the upstairs corridors.”
The Curving Eclipse offered something. Purpose, a community, a familiar face, and the only work I was any good at. The only thing I had been trained for; fine conversation and the art of a smile. I offered her one of those smiles. “I know, I’ve been watching the last few nights.”
“This dress is gorgeous," she said, staring down at it.
I followed her gaze, even though I knew the exact dress I had bought.
It was a high-necked, deep brown gown with buttons to fasten it, and a slit up to the thigh.
The dark colour offset against my pale arms and the smattering of freckles across my shoulders.
This was how I had decided to use the man’s money.
A gold and seven silver spent on three gowns; this one I wore now for my more modern-favouring clientele, a classic peplos dress in saffron yellow which was as close to my Ekrissian attire as I could find, another undyed everyday chiton, and a pair of simple slippers.
There was little value in having youth without beauty.
Ekris had taught me that. There was also no chance of winning my betrothed back without something flattering adorning me.
“But you should get another with a lower back,” Yona said. “Like the red ones they wear at your House.”
I flinched at the casual mention. “I hardly want everyone to know that I’m a fallen Ekrissian.”
Yona laughed. “That’s exactly what you want them to know. You were trained for how long?”
“Four years before I started. Five years alongside the practice,” I answered.
She shook her head. “Nine years of studying companionship, and you’re still young and virtuous.
Do you know how rare a fallen Ekrissian is?
You will be a muse for every man who meets you.
You will be a beautiful mystery. They’ll all be desperate to know why you left.
Falling at your feet for you.” She watched me with a rare hunger glinting in her eyes.
Greed. “You are my new jewel. My onyx-marked Ekrissian.”
Something warm fluttered in my chest. “You really think they’ll want me?”
“Everyone loves something that is rare. You are the rarest of courtesans, my Annie.” She dragged her eyes up and down my slim form again, before offering me her own smile.
“Don’t worry about the lower dress. I’ll cover it.
I’ll get you a divine black one that dips to the base of your spine. You focus on your craft for tonight.”
The way she put it, how she wove my value into every curl of her word. The praise shuddered up through me, and I received it gratefully. I had missed it. Ekris would always adorn me with pretty words. “Thank you.”
“None of that,” she said, tutting at me. “Don’t thank people who are using you for their own gain.”
The praise cooled as she turned from the door and beckoned me to follow her.
It was my first night tonight, and perhaps that was my first lesson.
Except that I liked to be used for other people’s gain.
It was one of the many reasons I had devoted myself to Ekris in the first place.
I just had to be sure the gain was mutual.
My body hummed with anticipation as I walked down the amber-lit corridor behind her, ready to meet the patrons of The Curving Eclipse.
Gauzy curtains hung over alcoves and tables were draped with all manner of textiles and goblets. Every space between was filled with the smoke from pipes. A stage sat in one corner. Today, an older woman plucked at a painted silver harp, her hands calloused and her neck bent in concentration.
I watched from a velvet-laden stool at the bar, sipping wine from a thick, frosted glass.
I had been nursing it for the better part of an hour, and it was more of a prop than a refreshment.
The room had no natural light, lit with candles behind glass in reds and purples and greens.
There was a hallucinatory feel to the place, with pealing laughter from all corners and a haze of mystery to the room only elevated by the dark curtains and women who slinked around the curtains with hips as fluid as water.
There were ten other women who worked in its boughs, and seven of them worked tonight. Two had already slipped upstairs, and three of the others entertained with words and light touches until the temptation grew too much.
One of the remaining two unattached women sat beside me.
She had introduced herself as Daisy, and seemed kind enough, with an innocent face and blonde hair.
Her accent signalled she wasn’t born in Craetos.
It was similar to my friend Jusia’s from the House of Love.
Meldoran, I guessed. Meldora sat to the east of Craetos, and was one of our closest allies, if not a rich nation.
Many of its youth, especially second sons and those without a dowry, came to Craetos to seek their fortune.
“Yona is too picky with the men here,” Daisy whined. “There are never enough for us.”
I took another bird-like sip of my wine. “How does she determine their intentions?”
Daisy scoffed. “It’s not about that. We all know their intentions. They want to fuck. She only lets in men who she has decided are important enough.”
I blinked, staring at the haze of pipe smoke drifting to the ceiling.
It was entirely different to the House of Love.
There, the patrons would be escorted by one of our male ushers into a stark marble room with mosaic tiles on the glittering floor, and pillars looming over them like jailors.
I would be lined up with the other Ekrissians on either side of the room, veiled in red and facing the walls.
Once inside, they would throw a single gold coin into the fountain at the base of Ekris’ statue.
They would kneel, and send a silent prayer before him.
We would all wait in complete silence until we heard the sound of steam: Ekris’ approval.
“I suppose someone has to be the gatekeeper,” I replied.
She looked at me with a funny expression, and I saw her appraising me for the third time that night. “You were really an Ekrissian?”
“I really was.”
She put her drink down. “What was it like?”
What a question. It was everything. It was immortal ambition. It was the most pleasure I had ever known, and sometimes, the most lonely I had ever been. I shrugged at Daisy. “Hard to say. Intense.”
I could see the questions in her eyes, but before she could ask them, a curtain shifted at the entrance.
Daisy straightened her posture, picking her glass up again and twirling it from her fingers. “Finally.”
The other woman without a companion slid up next to us, quickly patting a smudge of rouge onto her lips as the curtain parted.
She had red hair and bright blue eyes, made sultry by a deep brown kohl.
She hadn’t said a word to me yet, but I’d heard the other girls talking last week, and I knew her name was Francine.
The man stepped through into the room. He was tall, and broad shouldered, but of course, that wasn’t what gave him away.
It was his mask. I sucked in a breath as he stepped inside, the faint glow from his pipe illuminating the metal on his face.
Dread coated my stomach, and I was glad I had barely drank anything.
Daisy pushed herself from her stool. “Who is that? He’s gorgeous.”
Francine had moved, too, pulling her hair over her shoulder as she stared in his direction. If the bumps on her flesh were anything to go by, she was nervous, too. “I can’t believe it. It’s Davian. What need does he have for one of us?”
Daisy paled. “That’s Davian?”
They clearly knew something I didn’t. I leaned forwards, keeping my voice low as Davian stepped further into the room, surveying the furniture with that same bored stare from Wrenton’s shop. “What do you mean?”
Francine didn’t look my way as she responded. “He’s from the House of Pain.”
I froze. The man who had bought my ring from me; who had followed me into the street and asked my name.
He was from the House of Pain? They had never visited Love.
They had no need for Ekris and his pleasures.
I had never even seen one of their members before, outside of the Night of the Dead festival each year.
They were remarkably secretive as a House.
“He’s a devotee of Samiscus?” I asked.
She nodded. “They have their own forms of pleasure. Their own volunteers. He would never need to pay for flesh.”
I recalled his words to Wrenton, about getting someone to give him a discount. That was no mere shop he ran, then.