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“Oh, there is plenty of everything in Good Port,” he said as though he’d made the city home for his entire life instead of a handful of weeks. “Even the poorest people in Good Port have much more than half the people on the frontier. That’s part of what makes Good Port so unique. Everyone is provided for.”
I hummed as if I were impressed, but I wasn’t. Not at all. And I didn’t believe for a moment that everyone was as happy and well-fed as Lefric seemed to imply they were. It just didn’t make sense. I’d never known a place where everyone was content with their lot, and I didn’t think I ever would know a place like that.
We stopped briefly by the massive warehouse where the Hakobyan family did their business. The building was divided in two, and up until incredibly recently, one half had housed Patrius’s business and the other half was under Olympus’s control. But as Lefric explained, Olympus would be handing over his portion of the business to one of his younger brothers so that he could pursue a position as an ambassador of some sort.
The thing that impressed me the most about the warehouse was the sheer volume of goods it held. Every sort of luxury I’d ever known, from when I was growing up in Dunsk to when I lived with Ludvig in Meadowbrook, was stacked throughout the warehouse, as though the crates containing the precious cargo were no more important than stones a child had piled up beside the river.
No wonder Lefric thought that everyone in Good Port was wealthy and happy. If things like silk and spices, porcelain and exotic fruits were treated like afterthoughts, then of course it would seem like Good Port was a land of plenty.
I began to see subtle signs that not everyone lived the way the Hakobyan family did once we left the warehouse and wandered along the shops and stalls of the waterfront so that Lefric could show us his favorites.
I caught sight of an adolescent girl wearing a drab, beige dress selling fist-sized bags of what looked like rice between two busy food stalls. She didn’t wear shoes, and her eyes held a desperate look. Lefric had handed us each small bags of coins once we set out from the warehouse, telling us to buy whatever we wanted. I hadn’t intended to purchase anything, but I gave the girl a coin, making her eyes go wide, and accepted a bag of rice in exchange.
“Where do you live?” I asked as my friends walked on to a cart selling candied nuts.
“Across the river, sir,” the girl said. “In the rice swamps.”
“The rice swamps?” I was beginning to see a broader picture of the rich and beautiful city.
“Over there.” The girl pointed across the harbor to the far shore.
I stood straighter and looked. As glorious and gleaming as the buildings were on the northern side of the harbor, they were small and dull on the southern side.
“Anton, what are you doing? Hurry up!” Lefric called from where my friends had moved on.
I smiled at the girl and caught up to them, but the girl wasn’t the only sign I spotted that all was not sunshine and glittering tiles in Good Port.
Some of the smaller boats traveling the harbor were old and scuffed, with chipping paint and tattered sails. Of those, a few seemed to be doing some sort of trade, selling food to people on boats. Others looked to belong to fishermen. Still others appeared to be transporting goods and people. But none of them could be described as beautiful or wealthy. To the point where I felt compelled to give the bag of rice I’d just purchased to a scruffy boatman who couldn’t have been more than thirteen.
And then there were the brothels.
“The waterfront is famous for them,” Lefric said, as though they were fine museums or libraries. “I’m sure that’s because sailors come from all over the world to trade here, and a lot of them probably don’t get the chance to fuck around with their shipmates during their journeys. Especially the ones who don’t want to fuck men. See, the brothels are marked by pink and red banners hanging from the upper windows. The colors represent the prices and services of the trade inside. All of them employ both men and women.”
“There you go, Anton,” Jace teased me, moving to clap a hand on my shoulder. “You can call the rest of us whores all you want, but they’re the real whores.”
Jace nodded ahead to a large brothel whose yard was enclosed by shoulder-high walls. A few scantily-clad women stood out in front waving at sailors and drawing them to the place. A couple of women and one or two young men sat atop the walls, calling out to passersby.
“Lefric!” one of the women squealed loudly from her perch atop the wall. She looked into the brothel garden behind her and called out, “Hayk! Lefric is back! And he has his friends with him.”
With that, the buxom blonde woman leapt down from the wall and ran to meet us on the road.
“Billie!” Lefric shouted, opening his arms wide.
The blonde, Billie, slammed into him, nearly knocking Lefric over. My brow shot straight up. I hadn’t realized Lefric liked women as well as men.
Except that the way Billie hugged him seemed more like the way a sister would greet her brother.
“We’ve been so worried about you,” Billie said, grasping Lefric’s face in both of her hands, pinching his cheeks. Definitely like a sister. “Word of Gregorius’s death is all over the city now, and the fact that Lord Vikhrov has hired men to investigate it. Half of the men I’ve entertained in the last week think either you or Olympus killed him, since you both vanished as soon as word got out.”
“They think Olympus or I am the killer?” Lefric looked startled, as though it was ridiculous that anyone could come to that conclusion.
Even though it seemed like a logical guess to me. I still didn’t know more than the basic facts about the murder of Olympus’s secretary, but if I hadn’t known Lefric well enough to know that my friend wasn’t capable of murdering a fly, let alone a person, I might have thought—
My thoughts stopped dead, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe as a man walked out from the entrance to the brothel. He was tall and impossibly fit. I could tell because in spite of the chill, all he wore were a pair of low-slung linen trousers and a long, loose jacket, like the outer garment I’d been given to wear over my tunic. The man’s lean, hairless, muscled chest and flat stomach were exposed all the way to where the vee of his muscles pointed to the slight bulge in his trousers.
I caught myself staring at that bulge as he approached our group, and forced my eyes up across his tight abs and chest to meet his. He had mischievous, blue-green eyes and light blond hair that indicated he was from the north. His lips were full and pink and a little bit swollen, as though he’d been kissing someone moments before. No, not kissing….
“Same time tomorrow, Hayk?” a swarthy, middle-aged man called as he exited the brothel yard, tying the drawstring of his trousers as he went.
