cold and I'll not risk Lady Rose to weather like this. I might just as well mind the shop and give your lessons to-who is it today-Anny and Ket? I thought so. They're bare beginners. Easy. I could teach them half asleep. And their parents don't care if it's me or you who teaches them, so long as they get the lessons they've paid for.'
'But you aren't benefiting by this-' Tonno said fretfully. 'You should be out earning a few coppers-'
She shrugged. 'There's no one out there to earn coppers from. I picked up a little in my hat at Amber's last night, enough for the tax and tithe. And I am benefiting-' She gave him a wide grin. 'If I'm here, I'm not there, and I don't have to listen to Carly's bullying and whining.'
'You haven't been tormenting her, have you?' Tonno asked sharply, with more force than she expected. She gave him a quizzical look, wondering what notion he'd gotten into his head. Surely Carly didn't deserve any sympathy from Tonno!
'Not unless you consider ignoring her to be tormenting her,' she replied, straightening his bedcovers, then putting a kettle on the stove and a brick to heat beneath it. 'I try not to let her bother me, but she does bully me every chance she gets, and she says nasty things about my playing to the customers. She'd probably say worse than that about me, but the only thing she can think of is that since I dress like a boy sometimes, I might be a poppet or an androgyn. That's hardly going to be an insult in a place like Amber's! It's just too bad for her that the clients all have ears of their own, and they don't agree with her. Maddie is the one who teases her.'
Tonno relaxed. 'Good. But be careful, Rune. I've been thinking about her, and wondering why Amber keeps her on, and I think now I know the reason. I think she's a spy for the Church.'
'A what?' Rune turned from her work to gape at him. 'Carly? Whatever for? What reason would the Church have to spy on a brothel?'
'I can think of several reasons,' he said, his face and voice troubled. 'The most obvious is to report on how many clients come and go, and how much money they tip in the common room, to make certain that all taxes and tithes have been paid for. That's fairly innocuous as things go, since we both know perfectly well that all the fees are paid at Amber's and on time, too. There's another reason, too, though; and it's one that would just suit the girl's sour spirit right down to the core.'
'Oh?' she asked, a cold lump of worry starting in the pit of her stomach. 'What's that?'
She couldn't imagine what interest the Church would find in a brothel-and if she couldn't imagine it, it must be something darkly sinister. She began wondering about all those rumors she'd heard of Church Priests being versed in dark magics, when his next words cleared her mind entirely. 'Fornication,' he said. 'Fornication is a sin, Rune. Although the laws of the city say nothing about it, the only lawful congress by the Church's rule, is between man and woman who are wedded by Church ceremony. And, by Church rule, sins must be confessed and paid for, either by penance or donation.'
Her first impulse had been to laugh, but second thought proved that Tonno's concern was real, though less sinister than her fears. She nodded, thoughtfully. 'So if Carly keeps a list of who comes and goes, and gives it to the Church, the next time Guildsman Weaver shows up to confess and do penance, if he doesn't list his visit to Amber's-he's in trouble.'
Tonno sighed, and reached eagerly for the mug of hot tea she handed to him. 'And for the men of means who visit Amber's, the trouble will mean that the Priest will confront them with their omission, impress them with his 'supernatural' understanding, and assign additional penance-'
'Additional guilt-money, you mean,' she finished cynically. 'And meanwhile, no doubt, Carly's record-keeping is paying off her sins for working in a brothel in the first place.' She sniffed, angrily. 'Oh, that makes excellent sense, Tonno. And it explains a lot. Since Carly can't have a place at Amber's, she'll do her best to foul the bedding for everyone else. And she'll come out sanctimoniously lily-white.'
She picked up the hot brick and tucked it into the foot the bed, replacing it under the stove with another. The heat did a great deal of good for Tonno; already there was a bit more color in his face, and some of the lines of pain around his eyes and mouth were easing.
He took another sip of tea, and nodded. 'Do you see what I mean by suiting the girl's nature? Likely she's even convinced herself that this was why she came to work there in the first place, to keep an eye on the welfare of others' souls.'
'No doubt,' Rune said dryly. She stirred oatmeal into a pot of water, and set it on top of the stove beside the kettle to cook. 'She'll always want the extreme of anything; if she can't be a highly paid whore, she'll be a saint. What I can't understand is why Amber lets her stay on-you pretty much implied that she knows what Carly's up to.'
Tonno laughed, though the worry lines about his mouth had not eased any. 'That's the cleverness of our Lady Amber, dear. As long as Carly is in place, she knows who the spy is. If there is truly someone whose reputation with the Church is so delicate that he must not be seen at Amber's, then all the lady needs to do is make certain Carly doesn't see him. And I suspect Lady Amber has whatever official Carly reports to quite completely bribed.'
Wiser in the ways of bribery than she had been a scant six months ago, Rune nodded. 'If she got rid of Carly, someone else might get his agent in, and she'd have to find out what his price was.'
'But if she stopped bribing the old official, he'd report on what Carly had given him already.' Tonno shrugged. 'Amber knows what's going on, what's being reported, and saves money this way as well. And what does Carly cost her, really? Nothing she wouldn't be paying anyway. She'd have to bribe someone in the Church to be easy with the clients, no matter what.'
Rune shook her head. 'I guess I'll have to put up with it, and be grateful that I personally don't care that much about the state of my soul to worry about what working in a whorehouse is going to do to it. I'm probably damned anyway, for having the poor taste to be born on the wrong side of the blankets.'
'That's the spirit!' Tonno laughed a little, and she cheered up herself, seeing that he was able to laugh without hurting himself. She gave the room a sketchy cleaning, and washed last night's supper dishes. By then the oatmeal was ready and she spooned out enough for both of them, sweetening it with honey. She ate a lot faster than he did; he wasn't even half finished with his portion when she'd cleaned her bowl of the last spoonful. She put the dish into the pan of soapsuds just as the bell to the front door tinkled.
He started to get up from sheer habit, but she glared at him until he sank back into the pillows, and hurried to the front of the shop.
As she'd anticipated, since it was too early for either of the children having music lessons to arrive, the person peering into the shop with a worried look on his face was one of the University Students. The red stripe on the shoulders of his cloak told her he was a Student of Philosophy. Good. They had money-and by extension, so did their teachers. Only a rich man could afford to let his son idle away his time on something like Philosophy. And rich men paid well for their sons' lessons.
'Can I help you, my lord?' she said into the silence of the shop, startling him. He jumped, then peered short- sightedly at her as she approached.
'Is this the shop of-' he consulted a strip of paper in his hand '-Tonno Alendor?'
'Yes it is, my lord,' she said, and waited. He looked at her doubtfully.
'I was told to seek out this Tonno himself,' he said. The set of his chin told her that he was of the kind of nature to be stubborn, but the faint quiver of doubt in his voice also told her he could be bullied. Another of Tonno's lessons: how to read people, and know how to deal with them.
'Master Tonno is ill. I am his niece,' she lied smoothly. 'He entrusts everything to me.'
The soft, round chin firmed as the spoiled young man who was not used to being denied what he wanted emerged; in response to that warning, so did her voice. 'If you truly wish to disturb him, if you feel you must pester a poor, sick old man, I can take you to his bedside'-and I'll make you pay dearly for it in embarrassment, her voice promised-'but he'll only tell you the same thing, young man.'
Her tone, and the scolding 'young man,' she appended to her little speech, gave him the impression she was much older than he had thought. Nearsighted as he was, and in the darkness of the shop, he would probably believe it. And, as she had hoped, he must have a female relative somewhere that was accustomed to browbeating him into obedience; his resistance collapsed immediately.
'Scholar Mardake needs a book,' he said meekly. 'He looked at it last summer, and he was certain he had purchased it, but now he finds he hadn't, and he has to have it for his monograph, and-'
She let him rattle on for far too long about the monograph, the importance of it, and how it would enhance Scholar Mardake's already illustrious reputation. And, by extension, the reputations and status of all of Mardake's
