Eisenach frowned at the bottle, then spoke to it, the bottle. “Well, my child, you will have to last me. For there is no hope I can fulfill the request of this young priest and soldier. What gunpowder we have is contracted for and bespoke.”
“We’ll have to try the district military commander, you know,” Abel said to him.
“I hope you will tell him I cooperated as completely as I am able.”
“And the prelate,” said Golitsin.
“Most regrettable,” Eisenach said. “I’m sure he will find a way to help you. I wish you success.”
His sardonic grin as they left the office let Abel know that the director of the powder plant did not expect Abel to receive such help in the slightest.
They found their donts where they’d left them, and Abel handed the young boy his promised three figs. The youngster disappeared down an alley, chased by four others who suddenly emerged from the shadows and stalked toward him.
“You should’ve told me about the wine,” Abel said to Golitsin.
“Zilkovsky said to hold it back as a last resort,” the priest answered. “I wasn’t even supposed to mention it.”
“Anything else you forgot to mention?”
The priest smiled. “You know we’ll never make the garrison, even if we do get across the River before the ferries shut down at sunset.”
“We can try.”
“I have another idea,” said Golitsin. “I was in Bruneberg three years ago, and I had to find a place to stay one evening. Did, too. Very nice place. It’s not too far from here, I don’t think. At least, I remember being able to smell the powder plant from there.”
“You think you could find it again?” Abel asked.
“Yes,” Golitsin said. “It’s a place that’s hard to forget.”
And, true to his word, the priest mounted up and, as if by a sense of direction as sure as a flitterdak’s, led Abel through alley and down lane until, about a quarter-watch later, they arrived at a stable with the symbol of a boat on the River etched above the entrance lintel. Across the street-it was little more than a three-pace-wide passageway-was another door with a similar sign above it.
“What is this place?” Abel asked.
Golitsin nodded toward the stable. “This is where we leave the donts,” he said. “Then we go over there.” He motioned back over his shoulder to the other door.
“And what’s over there?”
“Where we leave everything else,” answered Golitsin.
2
It was not precisely a whorehouse, Abel discovered. There were indeed sleeping cots for rent, and these separate from the other beds for rent by the quarter hour. There was food of a sort to be had, and Golitsin ordered them both a dak steak, a loaf of barley bread, and a jug of wine.
The central hall was filled with rough-hewn tables and chairs, with pedestals strewn about upon which stood women. They were elaborately veiled about the head, but otherwise unclothed.
They swayed to the loud blare of rivercane pipes and some sort of percussion instrument that was made from an even larger, halved reed set on a resonating frame.
Interesting that some form of Hrand’s Planet kahlpipe music has either been preserved or reinvented, Center intoned.
Do you even know what this place is? Abel asked. And do you approve?
Oh, we know where you are, lad, answered Raj. At least, I do. As to whether or not we approve: that’s really none of our business, now is it?
Damn right it’s not, Abel answered with an enthusiastic nod of the head that surprised Golitsin, though he took it for assent to something else he was talking about.
A waitress approached, almost as naked as the veiled dancers, and Abel saw Golitsin pay with a clay piece rimmed with hardwood. It was a sum equal to nearly a month of his lieutenant’s pay. Abel waited to see the waitress bring back change, but there was none.
“I can’t pay you back. I…didn’t bring those kinds of funds,” Abel said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Golitsin shouted over the music. “The prelate said to tell you it was your Scout’s bonus.”
“Bonus? For what?”
“Killing Redland devils, I suppose,” Golitsin replied. “Now drink up, because I don’t think you’re going to like the taste of that steak otherwise.”
“Why not?”
“Not sure anybody told these Bruneberg cooks that you’re suppose to put meat in them.”
Abel drank. Then he sat back and for the first time really looked around.
The women were stunning. Or at least their nakedness was. He hadn’t seen a woman undressed since…well, since Captain Blackmore’s wife had flashed her breast at him while he’d stood detail outside one of Blackmore’s all-night officers’ bones games one night. He’d been fifteen. She’d stumbled outside and tried to pull him into the stables. After he resisted, she’d shown him her breasts. After he’d continued to resist, she’d reached under his tunic and grabbed his cock, as stiff as a musket barrel by now.
“He won’t come out,” she whispered. “He’s winning, you know. He’ll never come away when he’s winning.”
And Abel had almost done it, almost followed her into the stable. But another officer who was not Blackmore and who was not winning had stumbled out to relieve himself in the yard.
And, just like that, Captain Blackmore’s wife or concubine or whatever she was had transferred her entire attention to the officer.
Abel heard the pissing abruptly stop. Laughter. And then the creak of the stable door opening. And the sounds from within that he knew were not the sounds of rutting donts, no matter how much they sounded like them.
I won’t stand holding my musket tonight, Able thought. I won’t. But which? And how?
He turned to Golitsin. “They have special dispensation for this kind of thing in the priesthood? Special prayers or something?”
“Never heard of Zentrum smiting a brother who responds to his urges now and again,” Golitsin replied. “So long as you don’t break Stasis by, you know, trying something wrong.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know exactly. There’s stories about brothers that like to…do things…you know, with metal instruments.”
Abel shook his head. “I don’t know. Tell me.”
“I’ve only heard stories, I mean,” Golitsin quickly replied.
A bit too quickly, Center said. Stand by and I will perform a first pass interpolation to determine the priest’s deviancy from norms and specific instances of-
No, no, no! Abel shouted in his mind. I don’t want to hear any of that, let alone see it!
Very well.
“But they say Zentrum finds out things such as that, if you do them, I mean. That Zentrum knows when a priest breaks Stasis, even then, even doing that.”
Quite possible, Center said. But even for a planetary defense computer with powers as immense as Zentrum, that would seem to be one calculation too many.
Golitsin tugged at Abel’s sleeve as the steaks arrived. “How about that servant girl?” he said. “They are for sale, too, you know.”
Golitsin began to flirt with the wench, who, after a moment, allowed him to pull her onto his lap. She cut up his food and fed it to him while the priest begged like a flitterdak chick for the next.
Abel noticed that the knife in her hand was trembling a bit much, as if she were having trouble controlling the urge to plunge it through Golitsin’s upturned chin. But after he finished off another cup of wine, the serving girl pulled the priest away toward one of the curtained doorways in the back of the room that led-well, Abel wasn’t sure where they led. It certainly wasn’t to the sleeping area, which was down a clearly marked separate hallway well-lit with torches.