Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [78]
Finally he reached his destination, a three-story stone roundhouse with a freshly thatched roof and neatly whitewashed walls. Gwenca could afford to keep up her whorehouse because she catered to a better class of clients than mere sailors. He paused at the door, released his aura, then stepped into the ground-floor tavern. Arranged around the central spiral staircase were wooden tables, standing on clean straw. A peat fire smoldered on the hearth to take off the chill, because the young women sitting on cushioned benches were either naked or wearing only gauzy Bardek shifts. A lass wearing nothing but a square of black silk tied around her hips hurried over. Her blue eyes were lined with Bardek kohl, and her long blond hair smelled of roses.
“We haven’t seen you in ever so long, Sarco,” she said. “Do you have any?”
“I do, but your mistress is the one who’ll be handing it out.”
A drop of sweat ran down between her breasts. He reached over and wiped it off with the side of a lingering hand. She simpered and moved closer.
“Where’s Gwenca?”
“In the cellar, but can’t you let me have a little bit right now? You can come fish in my bucket if you do.”
He took one slow kiss, then pulled away, grinning at her.
“I’ll give you naught until your mistress says so.”
The tavernman moved aside two ale barrels from the curve of the wall, then pulled up the trapdoor to let him go down into what seemed an ordinary cellar. Ale and mead barrels stood in profusion; hams hung from the ceiling amid nets of onions. But on the far side was a door, and when he knocked, a gravelly woman’s voice snarled, asking who he was.
“Sarcyn, back from Bardek.”
At that the door opened, and Gwenca stood smiling at him. About fifty, she was a stout woman with hennaed hair and brown eyes that looked out from a web of lines and pouches. On every finger she wore a jeweled ring, and round her neck a chain with a blue-and-silver charm against the evil eye. Sarcyn smiled inwardly; she knew him only as a drug runner and had no idea that he was exactly the sort of man who could cast the evil eye.
“Come in, pretty lad. I take it you’ve got somewhat to offer me.”
“I do, at that, and good quality it is.”
Gwenca’s private chambers were oppressively stuffy. Although there were vents near the ceiling, the room reeked of scent and stale opium smoke, as if the tapestries and cushions exhaled the smell. She sat down at a small table, inlaid with glass in a gaudy spiral of red and blue, and watched while he unbuckled his sword belt, laid it close to hand on a chair, then pulled his shirt over his head. Slung from his neck like saddlebags were a pair of flat leather pouches. He took them off and tossed them down in front of her.
“Five silvers the bar. You’ll see why when you open them.”
With greedy fingers she untied the pouches and brought out the first bar, about three inches long by two wide. She unwrapped the oiled parchment and sniffed at the smooth, black opium.
“It looks good,” she pronounced. “But I’m not saying a word more until I smoke some of it.”
A burning candle lantern stood on the table, next to a long white clay pipe and a stack of splints. She shaved off a pipeful with her table dagger, laid it in, then set fire to a splint. First she heated the pipe bowl, then coaxed the sticky opium to burn. The first mouthful made her cough, but she kept sucking at it.
“It’s splendid,” she said with a spew of smoke and another hacking cough. “What’s the price if I buy ten bars?”
“Fifty silvers.”
“What? Naught less at all?”
“Naught.”
“Well, then, maybe I won’t buy a jot.”
He merely smiled, waiting.
“You’re a hard man, Sarco.” Reluctantly she laid the pipe down to let it go out. “I’ll get the coin.”
While Sarcyn counted out the bars, she disappeared