He thought of the lockbox that the vendor left defenseless in Hassan’s office. It would be easy enough to rob it. It’s only him and the Mistress up there, and three floors of screaming whores between. The guards outside would never know until we were long gone. Then he remembered the tapestries walling off Hassan’s office—Adam had taken them as a holy omen, one substantiated by the merchant’s constant warmth and kindness. For his own profit. He’s just like that old women, a Godless heathen out for his own interest. They’re gulling you, all of them. To hold faith with them is foolish.
“I don’t believe that,” the Messah prayed. “We forgave the Impii after the first purge of Babylon. We named a holyday after them.” The very day God started me on this journey. “Why should the Tsaazaari be any different?”
To this, his inner demons ceased their intimations, and that he took as a confirmation of his faith. One more day. Adam had no time to waste. Leaving Magdalynn safely hidden in the camp behind the ridge, he raced back into the heart of the maze—into the brothel common room, transformed again, tranquil, deserted, no sign of the mistress. He found Hassan at his desk, peacock quill scribbling swiftly over open ledgers, his free fingers fiddling an abacus to the rhythm of Ashaya’s snores. The merchant glanced up as Adam entered then returned to his ledgers, his head turbanless, balding at the crown of his black cropped hair. Then he looked a second time and jumped up with a smile as his belly bounced exposed in his unfastened robe. He smiled, yet he didn’t say a word. He was scared, Adam saw in the merchant’s tired eyes, of his wife’s waking. So they snuck back down to the common room and took a table. Hassan ordered some mixture of water, pepper sauce, vinegar, crushed peppercorns, and a raw egg yolk. “Traders call it the ‘meadow oyster.’ A good cure for a long night.” He offered one to the pastor’s son who refused on the grounds that he’d rather not die. “A Messah of little faith,” japed Hassan, slurping down the concoction in a single gulp. “I jest. A less steadfast man would not have returned. I received word from Yasmine, you know, and not just from Ashaya. She told me herself that you were quite the fellow, that she is hoping to meet you again tonight before she and her husband are gone to Mephisto. I promised to inform her whether that was possible by the middle hour. And now here you are. I’m glad. I was afraid you’d fled after how my wife treated you.”
“You said there was a second job,” answered Adam. A lump was forming in his throat, a pit forming in his stomach as heavy as stone. “Tell Yasmine I’ll do it.”
Hassan clapped his hand together. “Excellent! I knew you were the one. From when I first saw you, I knew.”
“But,” the Messah added, and for a moment, apprehension molded the merchant’s entire mien. “I want to discuss my pay.”
“Your pay?”
“Yes.”
Every muscle in Hassan’s body relaxed. He laughed, slapped the table. “Solomon, save me. You scared Hassan for a second time. Pay, you said? Well, my friend, I swear in the name of the king, you’ll not find a better price. Yasmine has already agreed to seventy drakes.”
“Seventy!” Adam’s voice cracked.
“The house takes a cut, of course. You will receive fifty-eight drakes and two demidrakes, assuming all goes well. We must live out our standards or suffer the price. Unhappy customers stay for free, eat for free, and sleep for free—at the offender’s expense. Do you follow?”
Adam nodded, nervous.
The merchant winced and said, “Your worry worries me. For all of our sakes, I don’t want to sell an Iisah virgin. You do have experience?”
“Yes,” Adam answered, and he said nothing else while the contract was drafted, recorded and signed. It wasn’t truly a lie, he tried to tell himself, but the weight of exhaustion was pressing against his eyes, pushing toward sleep. Somehow, that frightened him, though he didn’t know why, only that he was to stay and rest while the deal was confirmed on Yasmine’s end. Food and drink, in accordance with Solomon’s law, was provided. A flagon of amber wine, a slab of flat bread, and dried chevon to gnaw on. Eating eased his mind, though only for a while, and after, even thick swigs of wine couldn’t dampen the strain of Magdalynn’s life riding on an hour alone with a woman when he’d never known a woman so intimately in his life. It made him marvel at how brave he had been, lusting after the whores of Babylon, before knowing his ignorance. Not brave, foolish. I should have been terrified.
Thus, the hours ambled on under the self-chastising crop of Adam’s doubts and fears. The time grew near, and the servant women appeared again to wash and scent and dress him in queer clothes—a robe of cotton, red as blood and soft as gentle sin to the touch. They painted pale clay over his burns and blemishes, gave him bindii tea, and massaged him till every strand of sinew in his body loosened, till he was as ready as they could cause him to be. Then they led the Messah where his fate awaited.
It was worse than he imagined. Adam had led himself to believe that he would at least be alone as he blundered his last opportunity. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The fourth floor was an open apartment, a chorus of carnal rhapsody, an aria of libertine screams. There were no corners in which to sequester, no screens to hide behind. All would be seen as he was seeing now: a dozen plush couches and as many fleshy beasts mounting and
