Califia's Daughters (34 page)

T
WENTY-EIGHT

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ORE THAN A HOUSE, LESS THAN A CITY, THE
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EN
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Quarter of Ashtown was a world unto itself, obedient along certain lines but with a distinct air of aloofness, of uncertainty, as if a woman could not fully depend on not being laughed at behind her back while walking its corridors. Or even—and this was the spice of it—count on not being physically attacked. Not that violence occurred here, or if it did, it was rare, and then usually between men. Or, even more commonly, one man against himself. It was difficult to say exactly where this air of threat came from, for it was by no means overt, merely an awareness of the potential for teasing cruelty such as that possessed by a cat, a desire to pounce and tear that the animal's owner had no control over.

The eeriness of the place was underscored by the women who worked there, all of whom would have been exposed at a crossroads by less-civilized peoples. Each had been touched somehow, physically or mentally twisted and deformed. Dian assumed that they had been chosen for the work in order that the men might not be tempted by their servants, but she was not certain. She had no idea who did the choosing here, or their motivations.

The Men's Quarter was part harem, part boardinghouse, all stronghold. Under the pretext of keeping the valuables in a safe place, Ashtown's menfolk were concentrated here, under lock and key and behind high walls. Some of them were members of a family and actually spent most of their time in their own private home with their wives, although theoretically even they lived here. Others were clearly courtesans, owned only each night by the highest bidder. Most were somewhere in between, independent but with certain duties to the city. Newcomers without money, such as Robin, were indentured slaves; it could take a long time for a man to work off his purchase price. Dian had no idea what the blond woman had received for him, but the price was sure to have been high, and unless he caught the eye of some wealthy family, his indenture would be long. The knowledge of the burden each carried did not help the morale of the men, and she had heard that a few years ago, when repression was particularly strong under Breaker's predecessor, there was an uprising one night that saw six Angels and nineteen men killed. Since then a state of cautious truce had prevailed, and women walked softly inside the walls of the Quarter.

Dian presented her identity badge at the desk and gave her knife to the woman there—her wand she was allowed to keep, both as her unremovable badge of authority and because everyone knew that a wand was useless to anyone but its coded owner anyway, and no man could manipulate it as a weapon against himself or others. It seemed that she had a lot of credits; what was her preference?

“I have an appointment with a gentleman by the name of Robby.”

“An appointment?” said the woman. She pulled open a book and ran the tip of her finger down the columns with the distrust of a near illiterate, her eyes narrowed and her mouth laboriously forming each name. She had a severe facial defect, a twist across her mouth that joined her upper lip with her nostrils and made her speech almost impossible to understand. “Didn't think Robby was on tonight,” she finally muttered. “No, I'm right. He's not due to be available until Wednesday.” She was clearly delighted at being able to thwart an Angel, although she was careful not to show it too openly.

“Tell him I'm here. I think he'll agree to see me.”

“Not until Wednesday. Only three days. Or could I call someone else? If you like the quiet ones, there's Jacky. Or we have a new one, who'd cost you a lot of credits but—”

“Robby,” said Dian very quietly. “Now. Please.” She shifted her arm so that the wand rapped once against the wood of the desk, then moved her hand away from a small glint of silver on the counter; it instantly vanished. Bribery was not encouraged, especially by Angels, but this particular woman was well known for her talent at slowing and obstructing the process with small irritations, which slid away on the grease of a silver coin. Dian had heard her called the Ferryman.

The woman made a show of looking up Robin's room location, sent a message off by a runner, a child of fourteen with an artificial leg (Was every woman here given the job for which she was least suited, wondered Dian?), and allowed Dian a chair in the next room among the other clients.

One by one names were called and women went through the ornate gilded doors at the far end of the room. No men appeared. Dian sat in the ornate and diabolically uncomfortable chair with her legs stretched out before her, a dark island avoided by the stout and pompous merchants and the less prosperous, nervous middle-class types alike. After a while another Angel came in, gave Dian a nod, and sat down across the room to set up an island of her own.

Dian had just concluded that a) the men themselves had designed this system to keep the women of Ashtown in their places, and b) the Ferryman's fee must have risen, when her number was called—outside the Center, Angels did not have names. She ignored the inaudible ripple of relief that went through her neighbors as she rose and followed the summoning crone through the encrusted doors. The woman, a twist of bone who barely reached Dian's chest, hobbled ahead of her to the registration desk. The woman there was nearly normal in outline but afflicted with some skin disorder that had left her with blotches of color ranging from Jamilla-black to Willa-white. The piebald effect was startling but not entirely unattractive. Apparently the woman herself thought so as well, for her dress was so scanty as to leave little to the imagination. She held out a pen between black thumb and pink forefinger and waited for Dian to sign for the authorization to transfer credits. Dian looked at the paper, then looked more closely with her eyebrows raised.

“This is a mistake,” she said. “I only want the one man for half the night, not six men until noon.”

“No mistake, ma'am,” the woman said in a throaty voice that intimated she would happily perform other functions than that of accountant. “Robby's new, quite vigorous, and most creative in his services. I think you'll be pleased with him. In addition, there is a surcharge for his being off duty and the additional medications it will necessitate.”

Dian took the pen and smiled thinly, tempted to drive it through the hand that lay on the desk.

“You misunderstand. No medications are required. The services I require will not prove . . . taxing on his strength.” She crossed out the total and wrote in a figure one quarter the original, signed it, and handed it back to the piebald woman. And bared her teeth. The woman's superior facade cracked slightly, and she held the paper as if Dian had smeared it with something foul.

“One moment, please,” she said, and ducked through a door. Dian leaned against the counter, studied a bad painting of a nude male on the wall, and cleaned her fingernails. After a considerable time the woman reappeared and put the paper in front of Dian, then put another beside it, and took a small step back. The figure had been changed again, twice Dian's offer and half the original, and initialed. Not, thought Dian, by this woman herself. The other paper was a short typed statement to the effect that she, City Guard 820, agreed that if she were to cause injury or damage to Robby VanDerHue (was that really Robin's last name, she wondered?) she would agree to pay an additional sum, which would bring the total up to the first figure that had appeared on the paper. Ah, she thought, amused: word of her encounter with Robin had reached the Quarter, and they were afraid she might be here for purposes of revenge. Stupid, really, to think that they could control the actions of an Angel.

Dian took up the pen again, signed the statement with a flourish, drew a line through the new figure on the other page and wrote one that was halfway between their second offer and hers, and initialed it herself with
D
and her number. The woman bit her lip and could not keep from glancing briefly at the sleek black wand strapped to Dian's bare arm. She was gone for a shorter time, then returned without the papers, looking relieved. Wordlessly, she took a key from a large rack and handed it to the child who rose from a seat at the end of the counter. As wordlessly, Dian took the key from the child's hand, reached across the counter to put it back on its hook, and chose three others at random. She handed them to the child, who seemed too stupid to be either frightened or confused but who moved placidly away with the top key held in front of her nose. Tonight Dian would choose her own room. The price extracted, over twice the normal, would pay for all but the most luxurious suites.

The three rooms she looked at were almost indistinguishable, each being impersonally furnished, tidy, but with the mustiness of ingrained grime and stale passion. She took the second one, slightly larger and not quite so tawdry in its decorations, and prowled around nervously while Robin—Robby—was brought. The curtains felt greasy and the window looked onto the back of another building, gray wood on top of two stories of brick, all in the shadow of the taller building Dian was in. The window across from her held three anemic potted plants, their leaves pressed up to the glass like the fingers of wistful children. Dian made a short sound of irritation and let the curtains fall shut, then went to sit on the room's single chair.

Robin knocked before entering, and Dian had to stifle the urge to leap up and fling herself on him. It was as well she satisfied herself with a laconic “Enter,” because he was not alone. The placid child who had brought her here followed him into the room, each of them carrying a heavy wooden box. The child put hers down on a table and left. Robin put his down beside hers and straightened his back.

“What is—” she started to say, but he was already talking.

“I brought the music you told me you wanted. I wasn't sure you were still interested, after all this time, but it's here if you want it.” His eyes were full of warning, and she answered carefully.

“Yes, you were right. Is any of it good?”

“Some of the records are badly scratched, but, here, I'll set it up and you can choose one.” He was already pulling from one of the boxes a venerable black and silver record player and its attached speakers. He set them up on the table, rummaged in the box and came up with an extension cord that was more mend than original wire, and crawled under the bed to plug it in. He went to the other box, took off the lid, and slipped out half a dozen black discs separated by sheets of soft paper.

“What do you fancy, slow or fast?” he asked, giving a nod on the first option.

“Slow, I think, at least to start with,” Dian answered obediently, with only the vaguest idea of what was happening. He selected a record, laid it on the turntable, and in a few seconds a hiss and the regular thump of a scratch filled the room, and then a rich syrup of music arose, and Robin moved forward with his arms slightly raised. It appeared that they were going to dance.

It took Dian a while to remember where her hands went and how to be led rather than lead, but after she'd stumbled twice and nearly sent Robin sprawling, they both shortened their steps and it worked fairly well. He was, to her surprise, a good dancer. She put her face awkwardly alongside his.

“Either you've gone completely crackers,” she whispered into his ear, “or you think there are listeners.”

“Can't be sure which microphones are working and which aren't, but it's best to be careful.”

“No watchers?”

“I don't think in here, but again, if you assume there's an eye at the keyhole, you won't step wrong.” He winced. “Speaking of which, could you take off your shoes?”

She unlaced her tall black boots and they met again in the middle of the floor, some male voice crooning about the impossibility of leaving his love. Dian draped herself across Robin and spoke urgently while keeping her face without emotion.

“I'm sorry, Robin, I started bleeding before I could get here last month; they wouldn't let me out. I couldn't think of any way to get a message to you.”

“I'm glad you didn't try,” he murmured. “I heard you were sick, glad you're better. Is the baby all right?”

“What? Oh, yes, fine. Look, Robin, we have only three weeks. Queen Bess will be here after that, and with her and her garrison camped here, it'll be impossible until early July.” Too late—but he knew that. She described briefly the preparations, how Breaker would leave the city, taking nearly a quarter of the Angels with her, for a period of five or six days.

“It's got to be then, Robin. Before that the clampdown will be hard, getting the people well-behaved. Without Breaker here, we'd have a chance. There are two problems. First, we'll have to have some help from inside the Men's Quarter. You'll have to find someone willing to risk a bribe to get you to me. Once out I can get you over the wall. The second involves Tomas. I may have to leave him behind.” She explained about the Captain's plan to take Tomas as part of the escort. “There are choices. I could injure Tomas slightly so she couldn't take him, but it'd have to look worse than it was or he'd slow us down. Or, if you could suggest something to make him sick but that he'd recover from in a day or two, I could use that. I don't know, though, Robin. I can't afford to make her suspicious. I love Tomas, almost as much as I loved Culum, but if it's a question of staying here or losing him, there's no choice. If having Tomas with her makes the Captain feel that I'm safely pinned down, so be it.”

Robin said nothing, but his body and hands were gentle, comforting. Not in the least erotic. They danced for a while without speaking, and when his voice came in her ear it was in the tones of a man who had something very definite to say.

“We'll try. About the other. There is . . . unrest in the city.”

“You know about it?”

“I told you, the Quarter knows everything, if a person can sort sense from nonsense. I hear everything. In fact, I'm known as something of an old gossip.”