Erotic tapestries draped the walls. Several scantily clad women lounged on chairs scattered throughout the room. The lamps on the low tables had their wicks turned down, and their glass shades were pink or violet. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness and my nose took in the smells of the place, my expectations dropped. I was still in Gettys. The trappings of the brothel were tired and worn. Smoke had dimmed the florid pink flesh of the preposterous nude in the painting over the fireplace. The dingy carpet that floored the room needed beating. A huge fire roared in the big hearth at the end of the room, but its warmth was feeble where I stood. There were three tables with chairs around them, mostly unoccupied. At one a man sprawled, facedown on the table. His lax hands still clutched at an emptied bottle. Hitch was nowhere to be seen. There were four other women in the room besides Glory. Sarla Moggam was the one who commanded my attention. She was a small woman, well past her middle years, with unlikely yellow hair that fell in loose ringlets to her bare shoulders. I don’t know what to call the garment she wore. It had a black lace skirt that barely brushed the tops of her knees and a beribboned top that held her breasts up as if they were in goblets. The brazenness of it would have been shocking on any woman; on someone of her years, it was appalling. The flesh of her throat was lined with wrinkles. Even in the dim light, I could see how her rouge was caught deeper in the lines of her face.

She held me firmly by the wrist, as if I were a petty thief she’d caught and cackled as she turned to her girls. “Look at this one, sweeties! Who’ll have him?”

“Don’t even look at me,” a raven-haired woman warned me in a faked Landsing accent. She rolled her eyes in disgust that I’d even consider her, and I felt a tingle of both anger and desire at how she disdained me, for in truth she had been the first to catch my eye. I considered the other woman. She was either drunk or exceptionally tired. She couldn’t seem to make her eyes focus on me. One sleeve of her green dress was torn free of the bodice and dangled at her side, unnoticed. She gave a few blinks and then forced a sloppy smile onto her face. She muttered some sort of greeting, but it was so slurred I couldn’t make out what she said.

“I’ll take him, Mama.”

I turned my head to see who had spoken.

I saw a woman about my own age, but only a third of my size. Her brown hair hung loose to her shoulders in waves. Despite the chill of the room, she was barefoot. She wore a simple blue shift, and I realized that I had seen her, but had immediately classified her as a maidservant rather than one of the prostitutes. She walked toward me with the assured arrogance of a house cat. “I’ll take him,” she repeated.