Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

Her expression changed into one of mystified amusement. Looking me up and down, beginning to relax, she asked, “You some kind of missionary?”

“Yes, in fact.” Seeing her heavily made-up eyes lingered upon Strife, I gestured to its pommel and told her casually, “For self-defense.”

“Uh-huh.” The woman looked harder into my face. Her hair had been bleached blonde with queer concoctions enough times that it had started to thin, and it moved stiffly in her hand as she pushed it from her eyes. “You don’t seem the type of fellow to be talking to a lady like me.”

“Well, you see, I’ve lost track of a friend of mine. I think he’s probably spending some time with one of you lovely ladies somewhere around here.”

“A friend, huh?”

“One of my best,” I said with a smile that couldn’t help its own crookedness. She laughed at my unveiled irony, her posture relaxing more fully, her gaze turning from me and across the crowd again. “Lucky for me, he’s quite recognizable. A dwarf”—I gestured and her attention returned to me—“about yea tall, reddish beard usually adorned with runes, can’t seem to remember if he happened to have a weapon today…”

Rubbing her jaw, the woman drifted into thought before saying, “I ain’t seen anybody like that come through today. But you just go down these blocks here and try a few of my friends. If you have problems, tell ‘em Kuldi said they can talk to you. You don’t seem too bad…I can tell a real bastard when I see one.”

I laughed, assuring her, “If that’s the case, you would have remembered my friend.”

While Kuldi threw her head back with a witch’s cackle and a light slap of my arm, I smiled, bade her good evening, and set out again.

You may imagine, friend, that this process was repeated many, many times…with some variations. A few of the ladies I approached tried very hard to earn my patronage, and though I admit I have never had anything against prostitution, I certainly didn’t have a need for affection what with my companions waiting at the Mongoose. Therefore, politely as I could, I kept it short and sweet, inquiring whether anyone on the street had seen Grimalkin. At last, slowly, my blind dousing yielded a trickle of information.

A pair of girls were able to tell me that someone fitting his description had walked by earlier, perhaps an hour or so before. Someone else said they saw him walking with So-And-So. And where did she work? Oh, the girl I asked wasn’t sure…but maybe if I checked with What’s-Her-Name at the end of the next block over, she could remember it.

Finally, I got a chance ask Miss What’s where Miss And-So happened to work. Thanks to my ability to invoke the names of Kuldi, Veria, Quorana and Ishtrina, (as well as a few ounces of copper), the information was yielded: So-And-So was an elf named Cloyenda, and she worked at an establishment called The Singing Nixie.

The very sign for the place seemed, to my sometimes naive eye, quite risqué for something visible from the street…but what did I know about such things? It had surprised me how readily the women tried to push me into employing them. Things were very forthright in those hard-working quarters of the city, and it was simultaneously amusing and disorienting.

Particularly disorienting was the mingling of professionalism and sexuality. As I had been instructed, I went to the side of the building (for, like many such lightly disguised operations, the front was an apothecary) and knocked upon the employee entrance there. A slot slid open and a woman’s rustic voice demanded after a few seconds, “Who sent you, Paladin?”

“My god,” I told the darkness of the brothel, “and Kuldi.”

With a light snort, the madame informed me, “Kuldi’s our competition. Why would she send you to us?”

“Because I’m not looking for company. I’m looking for a customer.”

A hesitation. Consideration. Finally: “If I let you in here, what cause have our customers to trust us again?”

“The customer isn’t from here, and knows no one to tell about all this. You needn’t tell anybody any details. It’s rooms men buy in these establishments, correct? Not women. Therefore”—I held up a few gold coins and swore I saw points of light in the darkness of the slot—“all anyone need know is that I came to buy a high-priced room for a few hours, and things got out of hand.”

The slot slammed shut. After a second or two, the door protested its way open. A severe-looking woman with tight gray hair and a dress of red velvet appeared on the threshold. Her hand extended without remark. I set the coins in her palm and she tested their weight, sought the impressions of her teeth, then slid them into her slightly stained pinafore before she stood aside to let me in.

“If you intend to cause any kind of trouble, cause it outside.”

“Thank you,” I told her, trying to make myself seem as small and harmless as I could in the lounge dotted with faded furniture and dying plants. “I swear to you, madame, I will mind my business…but, theoretically, if a red-bearded dwarf did come through here—say, with a Cloyenda—what room would you have rented to him?”

She gestured, heading through a beaded curtain to put her money away. “That hallway, past the parlor, third door on the left once you’re up the stairs. Don’t let me hear a commotion.”

With that, the madame of the house vanished from my sight. I set a hand upon Strife’s pommel and made my way upstairs as quietly as my armor and size would allow…and although the thunder of my usual stride was softened by my intent, it was by no means muted.

There was also the small matter of getting into the room. I therefore stopped by the parlor before the stairs, hoping to find someone who might assist me in this scheme. At once my eyes filled with a wealth of