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Siora abandoned her second helping of food to join him. She took the tunic, slender fingers running over the cloth’s weave. She smiled. “It will do very well. Thank you.”
Gharek watched her features, noted the pleasure with which she accepted the clothes. She’d worn the same look when she came to thank him for the clothing his steward had purchased for her when she’d started work as Estred’s nursemaid. It had taken the man and the housekeeper two days to calm down after the hide-stripping he’d given both when he discovered they’d tried to pocketthe allotment between them and dressed Siora in cast-offs. His staff knew better, and after that incident, none of them tried such a stunt again.
Whoever had purchased the new garb had bought it with practicality and durability in mind. Plain and utilitarian, it worked perfectly in helping them both blend unnoticed into Domora’s crowds. Gharek was pleased.
He watched as Siora set the tunic carefully on the bed and returned to her seat to finish her dinner. Maybe not so unnoticed, he thought. At least not her. Clean and with her hair coiffed, she’d draw the attention of some. She was a pretty woman beneath the dirt. He’d seen that firsthand and had been startled by the fact when she first presented herself to him after a scrub in the kitchens of his fine house.
This bath was meant to be shared, either together or one right after the other, and as they’d posed as a couple, it made sense the brothel’s staff assumed the first. Siora stared longingly at the full buckets waiting to be poured into the tub before stepping back. “You first,” she said. “You aren’t as dirty as me. The water won’t be fit to put out a fire much less bathe in if I go first.”
He rolled his eyes. He’d expected this, and she hadn’t disappointed. “We’ll compromise. You take half the buckets, I’ll take the other half. You can’t submerge, but you can get clean enough with the water available. When you’re done, we’ll empty the tub and I’ll take my turn.”
Delighted by the solution, she wasted no time in pouring her half of the water into the tub, except for one bucket. Gharek expected some argument about him having to leave the room to protect her modesty and so finished the rest of his supper before itgrew cold and he had to leave. Instead, she began shedding her clothes with impressive speed, pausing only when he said, “Do you wish for me to leave?”
Bent, with the hem of her threadbare shift clutched in her hand, she gave him a questioning look. “Why do you need to leave?”
Her trust turned him speechless, though she was right in believing she was safe with him. He’d committed murder on command, but he’d never raped and never would.
He’d assumed she’d strip down to bare skin, but she proved him wrong, leaving the shift on while she used one of the buckets of cold water to wash her hair. By the time she was done, the shift was soaked through, outlining her small frame. She might not have been much bigger than a child with the fragile bones of a bird, but she possessed a woman’s curves and a natural sensuality in the way she moved as she dried her hair and wound the tangled tresses into a knot at the top of her head.
Desire surged through him as he watched her from his place at their supper table. Desire, not anger. Gharek dropped his eating knife to his plate and stood abruptly. Siora froze, startled by his sudden movement.
“Don’t loiter,” he told her in tones harsher than he intended. “My share of the water will be cold enough by the time I get to it. I have to speak with the door guard.”
He was across the threshold and in the corridor before she could respond, closing the door gently on the sight of her puzzled face and the tempting shadows of her body barely hidden by the damp shift. Gharek leaned against the wall adjacent to the door frame and exhaled a long breath.
Court gossip spared no one except the empress, and that wasbecause no one wanted to be publicly disemboweled should she chance to hear of anything other than praise and compliments said about her. Everyone else was fair game. Even Gharek, feared for his position but also despised for his low birth, had been the subject of blistering commentary and insults, often in his earshot. Conjectures over his parentage, whether or not he was a eunuch, if he desired women or men in his bed. Even children or beasts. He ignored it all, considering the gossip and those who gossiped ridiculous and tiresome.
Only once had such tripe made him react. A group of courtiers at one of Herself’s many banquets were gathered around the dicing tables, betting on everything from who would bed Lord Whoever’s latest favorite concubine to which horse would win a particular race. All of it shallow and deadly dull until one young nobleman wondered aloud if anyone knew that the cat’s-paw had a daughter. “The younger the flesh, the sweeter,” he said and proceeded to detail what he’d do with the cat’s-paw’s whelp.
One of Gharek’s many skills was to make himself invisible in a crowd. There was no magic to it, just the ability to capitalize on others’ inattention and with this crowd, their innate snobbery. None of them had noticed his presence nearby. Close enough to hear everything said and report back to Dalvila should she want to know the way the breeze drifted through her court at any given time. In this instance Gharek had no intention of mentioning anything to the empress, but he listened to every word, noted every face participating in the conversation.
Crude jokes and vulgar speculation about his daughter peppered their conversation as they placed their bets and rolled their bones. A week later, the body of the nobleman with a taste for thevery young was retrieved in one of the pleasure canals encircling the palace. Someone else found his head in a flowerpot in another aristo’s garden. Gharek continued to overhear remarks about his street-rat origins and his masculinity or lack thereof, but nothing—not even a whisper—about Estred.
If any of those gossiping twits could see his physical state now, they’d know for certain he was not a eunuch and that he very much desired women, even women he considered adversaries.
Was Siora truly an adversary now? The question raked across his mind, an annoying whisper that had grown in volume as it revisited his thoughts over and over, fracturing his outrage even more with doubt when the inner voice that refused to be silent asked,Was she ever the enemy?
She was definitely a distraction, one he couldn’t afford to indulge in, not with this difficult task before him and Estred’s life at risk. He pushed away from the wall, eyed the closed door, and took himself away from temptation.
The brothel’s second floor was an elegant place with carpets soft underfoot and decorative lamps that lit the space with enough light to see but not enough to highlight a prostitute’s flaws to her customer. Tapestries filled the wall space between the doors, aiding in muffling the noises drifting from the rooms’ interiors—a man’s guttural cries while in the throes of orgasm, a prostitute’s practiced reply refined to sound sincere to all but the most cynical ear. Gharek ignored them, concentrating on the placement of windows and staircases, which doors were barred from the outside and which weren’t.
Had they been in a different establishment, he would have searched for peepholes in the room given to them, but the BlueRat had a reputation in Domora for discretion and secrecy. The walls in the room he and Siora occupied were bare of any decoration and pristine. No holes, no cracks, no murals painted in such a way that they hid ways for the occupants of adjacent rooms to spy. The proprietors were clever. They wouldn’t share their wealthy clients’ valuable secrets to which they were privy with some court fop wanting a peek at his best friend fucking his other best friend’s wife. Extortion only worked when the secret was known only by a few.
By the time he returned to his and Siora’s room, he’d mapped out two easy escape routes and one risky one, and those didn’t include the windows in their chamber. The Blue Rat was indeed safe—as safe as any place in a city where his name was a curse on numerous lips and an engraving on the haft of many head pikes.
He knocked on the door and said, “It’s Saborak,” before easing it open. The last thing he wanted was to startle her and end up with a thrown knife sunk into his eye. He doubted she possessed such martial skill, and he was quick enough on his feet to dodge most things, but he rarely underestimated people and their capabilities. The rare times he did, he regretted it.
Siora had resumed her place at the table. She motioned to him, gesturing with one of the pastries loaded onto the plate. Her wet hair was combed and neatly plaited, and she wore the new shift and tunic he’d purchased. The tunic’s gray fabric, cinched at her slender waist by a black sash, suited her and the bath had done wonders for her appearance. He was reminded again of the first time he’d seen her clean and better garbed.
She had appeared very different from the women of the court, dressed in their bright plumage with their hard eyes in whicheither calculation or desperation shone. The empress’s own beauty far surpassed hers, as the sun compared to a candle flame, and yet in that moment when Gharek beheld her, he’d thought of a sunrise. So it was now, and he turned away from her to shut the door.
“I hurried as quickly as I could,” she said. “And left you an extra bucket of water to add to your share. It isn’t hot, but it’s still pleasant enough for a bath.” A hesitancy entered her voice. “Would you like for me to leave while you bathe?”
“That’s your decision,” he said, untying numerous laces and straps before peeling off his garb one piece at a time. He went slow, allowing her the chance to decide what to do before she got an eyeful of him in only his skin. He had no intention of flaunting his nudity, but he damn well planned to scrub the layers of grime and dried blood off himself. If she didn’t like it, she could walk outside like he had or turn her chair to the wall. She did neither, and Gharek hid a smile when she showed more interest in the pastry she was buttering than in him.
He made short work of his bath, dried and dressed in the long shirt he’d bought, and made sure the lock on the door was secured. No doubt there was more than one copy of the room’s key in existence, likely kept on a ring with several other keys the knock-shop madam carried. Gharek dragged one of the spare chairs across the room and wedged it under the door handle. It offered nothing in the way of defense, guaranteed to splinter under a solid kick to the door, but any who might want to enter would lose the advantage of surprise.
“Are you expecting intruders?” Siora watched him while she rolled leftover bread, pastries, and fruit into napkins and tucked them into her satchel. He had no doubt if the satchel could holdliquid, she would have poured the soup tureen’s contents into it as well. He didn’t judge her. When you didn’t know where or when your next meal might appear, you didn’t waste food.
