“Take another breath,” she urged, leaning toward the lamp.
He could see everything then, from root to nipple. The forbidden sight took his breath away and he choked on the vapors.
Geddie pounded between his shoulder blades. “Shite for guts, haven’t you done this before?”
Between gasps, Dace shook his head.
“Want something easier? Something better?”
Good fortune indeed! Dace nodded vigorously. He wasn’t sure what came next, then Geddie shoved a pitcher into his hands.
“Go downstairs and buy some wine.”
Downstairs was worse than upstairs, but he’d do it for the reward he thought she’d promised. Except—Except—
“I don’t drink much. I have enough trouble staying upright as is.” He laughed, but the joke fell flat.
“You don’t have to drink. All’s you’ve got to do is dip.”
Dace wouldn’t admit it, but he didn’t understand that remark. He had another painful confession: “I’ve only got three padpols.”
“That’s enough.”
Three padpols of the Frog’s cheapest wine filled the pitcher halfway. Four padpols and he’d have spilled some struggling up the stairs a second time. Geddie had her head in the lamp fumes when he opened the door. She called him to the cot with a question:
“Ever done opah?”
Dace felt like a wet-eared puppy, shaking his head for the umpteenth time.
She patted the cot. “I’ll show you.”
Obediently, Dace sat beside her. Geddie produced a palm-sized square of dirt-crusted cloth.
“Here. Just dip the corner into the wine”—she demonstrated the proper motion—“and hold it against the tip of your tongue.”
The first sensation was an alarming bitterness, but the second, a heartbeat later, was a tingling that raced down Dace’s throat and down his arms as well. He pulled away from the strangeness. Geddie laughed, re-dipped the cloth, and challenged him to stick out his tongue again. Unwilling to be shown up by a woman, Dace obliged. The tingling shot down his spine like ice and fire together.
“Now, suck the wine out,” Geddie commanded. “Suck hard.”
A part of Dace knew that was a bad idea, that nothing that made him feel so odd could possibly be a good thing. But that wasn’t the part he listened to. He closed his lips over the cloth and sucked for all he was worth.
The bitterness damn near took his breath away and the tingling—“tingling” wasn’t the right word. Dace’s flesh quivered and his body seemed to expand. His eyes watered. When they cleared there new colors everywhere, colors Dace could taste and hear.
He watched in rapt fascination as Geddie repeated the process for herself. Her eyes closed as she released the cloth and lolled back on the cot. Dace’s arm moved toward her breast, which was also the location of the damp cloth. He barely stopped his arm in time and wasn’t completely certain which he’d been reaching for.
“So, now you’ve done opah,” Geddie told him in a dreamy, distant voice. “Ready to do it again?”
Dace didn’t need to think. The unpleasant quivery sensation had passed and he felt … he felt better than he’d ever felt Even the pain in his leg that had been a part of him forever was gone. He reached again … for the cloth. Geddie met his hand halfway. Their hands touched. Dace felt the tiny ridges on her fingertips and much, much more. He did the opah a second time, and a third, and there was nothing he couldn’t have done after that third dosing.
Geddie poured more fortune oil. They knocked foreheads over the fumes and collapsed, laughing, against each other. Dace endeavored to untangle himself, but, as good as the opah made him feel, his hands weren’t moving quite the way he expected them to. He was still solving that problem when Geddie’s hand closed over his shirt and pulled him close.
The brutal heel of midsummer settled firmly on Sanctuary’s collective neck. Life slowed especially during the midday hours. Bezul retreated to the warrens where there was always something that needed straightening—and where the shadows were still cool. Chersey retreated to the kitchen. She poured tea from the jug in the sump and sipped liquid, marginally cooler than the air.
The children played in the courtyard under Gedozia’s watchful eye. Neither the old woman nor the youngsters seemed to feel the heat as heavily as working folk. Little Ayse laughted as she chased one of Sanctuary’s gem-colored bugs and distracted Chersey from other concerns.
Dace hadn’t returned from the market. He’d left at sunrise, as usual—or as close to usual as he’d been since taking up with that girl from the Frog and Bucket. Geddie was no sorceress, but she’d cast a spell over the naive Nighter all the same. The boy’s habits now included evening visits to her room above the tavern. He’d roll in late, reeking of wine and a bitter perfume Chersey couldn’t place. Even Perrez had noticed the deterioration.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Perrez had been skulking lately. Something to do with the shipwreck fishermen had discovered on the reefs where they caught their summer fish. Chersey didn’t know—didn’t want to know—what Perrez had gotten himself into this time. So long as he didn’t involve the rest of the household, she preferred to ignore her brother-in-law’s affairs.
Chersey took another sip of tea and succumbed to the thoughtless drowse of a too-hot morning. The next thing she knew there was noise at the kitchen door. Dace with the sack slung carelessly over his shoulder and sweat beading on his face.
“The market’s frogged for fair.” He’d never used language like that before Geddie.
She replied, “The heat’s hard on everything.”
“The heat and some sheep-shite nabobs. There wasn’t a melon to be had and the beans weren’t fit for pigs.”
Dace emptied the sack on the sideboard. The fish were stiff and glistening with salt, the cheese glowed waxy from the heat, and the greens were wilted. Not an appetizing array, but unless you lived rich, you didn’t expect appetizing meals day-in and day-out. The palace wasn’t the problem—the Irrune ate like animals: meat, grains, and wine or ale. It was the city’s own aristocrats that bled the markets dry. Chersey couldn’t count the number of times Gedozia had returned from the market with a half-empty sack and curses galore for the nabobs.
“Don’t worry,” she reassured Dace. “The weather and the market will cool soon enough.”
“Maybe.” Dace picked up a fish by its tail. “Three padpols and look at the size of it! I had to buy two. You can’t tell me that the froggin’ nabobs are feasting on salt-fish! Gets any worse and I’m going to have to go back to baitin’ crabs”
“We’ll get by. We’ve always got eggs—”
The changing house’s security, when not provided by Ammen and Jopze, came from the flock of geese Bezul turned loose every night. The birds were nasty creatures but the changing house had never been robbed and, come morning, there was always a clutch of eggs for Ayse to gather.
“Oh, I’ll find something,” Dace assured her. “But a shaboozh isn’t going as far as it did a month ago. No change again today.”
“We’ll get by.”
Chersey thought of the folk who wouldn’t, the folk who dribbled into the changing house with their precious possessions. This summer was turning into a bad season. Bezul couldn’t pinpoint the reason. They’d had a mild winter and moist spring. The farmers were content, notwithstanding the current heat wave. Content farmers were the surest measure of a content Sanctuary. Yet something lurked below the surface, siphoning off the small change.