LITMIR.BIZ

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house for us. I would keep it tidy and clean. It would always be there for you to come home to, and I would always be ready and clean for you. I vow there would never be the smell of another man upon me.’

      ‘And you think I would like that?’ he scoffed.

      ‘I do not know,’ she said quietly. ‘I know that I would like that. That’s all.’

      ‘I care not at all what you would like or not like,’ he told her. He reached back to lift her hands from his shoulders. The fire had heated her skin. He rose from the chair and turned to face her. He ran a hand over her bared skin, fascinated for a time with the feel of the fire-warmed flesh. It roused him again. But when he lifted his eyes to her face, he was shocked to find tears on her cheeks. It was intolerable.

      ‘Go back to the bed,’ he commanded her in disgust, and she went, obedient as ever. He stood facing the fire, recalling sleek skin under his fingers and wanting to use her again, but dismayed at the thought of her wet face and teary eyes. This was not why he bought a whore. He bought a whore to avoid all this. Damn it, he had paid. He did not look at the bed as he commanded her suddenly, ‘Lie on your belly. Face down.’

      He heard her shift in the sheets. He went to her quickly across the darkened room. He mounted her that way, face down like a boy, but he took her as a woman. Let no one, not even a whore, say that Kennit did not know the difference between the two.

      He knew he was not unduly rough, but still she wept, even after he rolled off her. Somehow the near-noiseless weeping of the woman beside him troubled him. The disturbance he felt at it combined with his earlier shame and self-disgust. What was the matter with her? He paid her, didn’t he? What right did she have to expect any more than that from him? She was, after all, just a whore. It was the deal they had made.

      Abruptly he rose and began pulling on his clothes. After a time, her weeping stopped. She turned over suddenly in the bedding. ‘Please,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Please don’t go. I’m sorry I displeased you. I’ll be still now. I promise.’

      The hopelessness in her voice rang against the hopelessness in his heart, steel against steel. He should kill her. He should just kill her rather than let her say such words to him. Instead, he thrust his hand into his coat pocket. ‘Here, this is for you,’ he said, groping for some small coin to give her. Money would remind them both of why they were here together in this room. But fate had betrayed him, for there was nothing in his pocket. He’d left the ship in that much haste. He’d have to go back to the Marietta to get money to pay Bettel. It was all damnably embarrassing. He knew the whore was looking at him, waiting. What could be more humiliating than to stand penniless before the whore one had already used?

      But there, in the smallest corner of his pocket he felt something, something tiny that jabbed him under the fingernail. He picked it loose in annoyance, a thorn or a stray pebble, and drew forth instead the tiny jewelled earring from the blue kitten’s ear. The ruby winked at him. He had never cared for rubies. It would do for Etta. ‘Here,’ he said, pushing it into her hand. He added, ‘Don’t leave the room. Keep it until tomorrow night. I’ll be back.’ He left the room before she could speak. It irked him, for he suspected Bettel would demand a small king’s ransom for keeping both room and girl occupied a full night and a day besides. Well, let her demand, he knew what he’d pay. And it would keep him from having to admit to Bettel that he had not the money to pay her tonight. At least he could avoid that shame.

      He rattled down the stairs and out the door. ‘I want the room and girl kept for me, as they are,’ he informed Bettel as he passed. Another time, he might almost have enjoyed the look of consternation that brought to her face. He was well down the street before he felt his purse thudding against his hip. It was in his left pocket. Ridiculous. He never kept it there. He thought of going back and paying Bettel off right now, but decided against it. He’d only look like a fool if he went back now saying he’d changed his mind. A fool. The word burned in his mind.

      He lengthened his stride to try and escape his own thoughts. He needed to be out and moving just now. As he strode down the mud-sticky street, a tiny voice spoke at his wrist. ‘That was likely the only bit of treasure ever carried off from the Others’ Island, and you gave it to a whore.’

      ‘So?’ he demanded, bringing the small face up to his own to stare into it.

      ‘So perhaps you do have both luck and wisdom.’ The tiny face smirked at him. ‘Perhaps.’

      ‘What mean you by that?’

      But the wizardwood charm did not speak again that evening, not even when he flicked his forefinger against its face. The carved features remained as still and hard as stone.

      He went to Ivro’s parlour. He did not know he was going there until he stood outside the door. It was dark within. It was far later than he’d thought. He kicked at the door until first Ivro’s son, and then Ivro yelled at him to stop.

      ‘It’s Kennit,’ he said into the darkness. ‘I want another tattoo.’

      A feeble light was kindled inside the house. After a moment, Ivro jerked the door open. ‘Why should I waste my time?’ the small craftsman demanded furiously. ‘Take your trade elsewhere, to a dolt with some needles and ash who doesn’t give a damn about his work. Then when you have it burned off the next day, you won’t have destroyed anything worth having.’ He spat, narrowly missing Kennit’s boots. ‘I’m an artist, not a whore.’

      Kennit found himself holding the man by his throat, on his toes, as he shook him back and forth. ‘I paid, damn you!’ he heard himself shouting. ‘I paid for it and I did what I wanted with it. Understand?’

      He found his control as abruptly as he had lost it. Breathing hard, he set the artist back on his own feet. ‘Understand,’ he growled more softly. He saw hatred in the man’s eyes, but also fear. He would do it. He’d do it for the heavy gold that clinked in the purse Kennit showed him. Artists and whores, gold always bought them. An artist was no more than a whore who had been well paid.

      ‘Come in, then,’ Ivro invited him in a deadly soft voice. With a shivering up his back, Kennit knew the small man would make sure he gave him pain as well as art. But there was enough of the artist in him that Kennit knew his tattoo would also be as perfect as Ivro could contrive it. Pain and perfection. It was the only path to redemption he knew. And if ever he needed to make reparation to his luck, it was tonight. Kennit followed the man into his parlour, and unbuttoned his shirt as Ivro lit branch after branch of candles. He folded his shirt carefully and sat down on the low stool with both his shirt and his jacket across his lap. Pain and perfection. He felt a terrible anticipation of release as Ivro moved about the room, setting up candles on tables and pulling supplies closer.

      ‘Where and what?’ Ivro demanded. His voice was as callous as Kennit’s when he spoke to a whore.

      ‘The nape of my neck,’ Kennit said softly. ‘And an Other.’

      ‘Another what?’ Ivro asked testily. He was already drawing up a table beside them. Tiny pots of brilliant inks were arrayed upon it in precise rows. He placed a taller stool behind Kennit’s and sat upon it.

      ‘An Other,’ Kennit repeated. ‘Like from the Others’ Island. You know what I mean.’

      ‘I do,’ Ivro said harshly. ‘It’s a bad-luck tattoo, and I’m more than happy to drill it into you, you son of a bitch.’ His fingertips walked lightly over Kennit’s skin, measuring. In Jamaillia, an owner could stab his mark into a man’s face. Even if a slave won his freedom later, it was for ever illegal to deface the marks of his servitude. But in the Pirate Isles, that same man could put whatever art he wanted anywhere he wanted on his body. Some former slaves, like Sorcor, preferred a burn scar. Others had artists like Ivro rework their old slave tattoos into new symbols of their freedom. Ivro’s fingers prodded the two scars that already adorned Kennit’s back. ‘Why’d you have them burned off? I worked hours on those tattoos, and you paid well for them. Didn’t you like them?’ Then, ‘Drop your head forward. Your shadow’s in my way.’

      ‘I liked them fine,’

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