Inyx frowned. The way the man said " Fine Rooms" sounded as if it meant something more than a description of a boarding room. The contempt carried in his tones were those a churchgoer reserves for " whorehouse." She slipped fingernails between the boards and pulled. Pain shot up her arms, but she had to see. After a wooden protest, the flooring parted enough for her to look into the room below.
A man dressed in a black suit over a frilly white shirt stood by the door. He gave the grossly overweight man seated in a chair a look cold enough to freeze fire.
" One hundred score by the end of the week. You will not like the alternative, len- Larrotti. I promise you that."
" Odissan, you bore me. I tell you that everything' s going to be fine now that I' ve got some high- class talent to sell."
" Maybe you will actually have a fine room," said Odissan. " It doesn' t matter. Good day to you."
The bloated frog of a man seated just at the edge of Inyx' s field of view made an obscene gesture at the departing man' s back. He rocked back in the chair and drummed stubby fingers on the battered chair arms. Inyx felt a wave of polar clarity wash through her brain. Everything fit into place.
This was Reinhardt. Or rather this gross blimp of a man had made her believe he was her husband. Reinhardt had died three years ago. Somehow she had been duped into thinking he still lived. The herb tea, the muffins, something had drugged her. Her thoughts were disturbed by someone knocking on the door below. She watched as Luister lenLarrotti rose and waddled forth.
As he walked, his form shifted, flowed. He became an old womanthe same one who had greeted her yesterday.
" Come in, my boy," cackled the old woman- Luister len- Larrotti. He ushered into the parlor an adolescent male, obviously nervous. " What can 1 do for you? Some herb tea? The muffins are superb."
" I: I want a Fine Room."
" Such a youth, so big and muscular. A real brawler. You want only the best, I' d wager."
" Yes," he said, head bobbing as if it were on springs. " The best."
" How much do you have?" The bite of greed made Inyx recoil. How the youth missed it was beyond her. Yet she couldn' t be too critical. She had entirely missed the illusion directed at her the day before.
She shuddered. Even worse, she had accepted the illusion of her dead husband as real. She' d wanted it to be true, and Luister lenLarrotti had played on that weakness, changing his form to match her every need. He was nothing more than a human chameleon, moulding himself to mood as well as physical surroundings.
" So much? Two score? You get the best."
" My m- mother," the youth stammered.
" She knows of your: love," said len- Larrotti. " And she is anxiously awaiting you upstairs. Come, I' ll show you the way to the best Fine Room in the house."
Inyx listened to the footsteps outside her door. One was heavy, confident. The other set came hesitantly. A hand rested on the handle. Inyx stood, fists tensed at her side. She' d fight her way out, if she could.
But magics permeated the room, gripping her, confusing her, turning her inside out. She felt her knees go weak and all resolve drain away. When the door opened, her Reinhardt stood there. How could she fight the man she loved?
" My dearest," he said, his voice ringing forth in the baritone she knew and loved so well. He came to her, undressed her, made love to her. Inyx shivered after he left.
Faint words drifted up through the floorboards.
": Luister, you were right. She was worth it. You run the best Fine Room in all of Dicca."
" Come back soon."
Inyx rolled over in the shabby bed and began to cry.
" It will be an exciting new venture for us, my dear," Reinhardt told her. She carefully hid away the food he' d given her and artfully poured the herb tea behind the bed. Inyx faced slow starvation, but in the past two days she' d learned that her first suspicions had been correct: the food was drugged. By not eating, she maintained some semblance of her former self.
But all resistance faded whenever Reinhardt came into the room. She knew now that her husband was dead, that this was Luister lenLarrotti hiding behind illusion. She knew it intellectually; emotions presented another facet Inyx couldn' t cope with. She wanted Reinhardt to live, to breathe, to hold her in his arms and love her. She wanted that with all her heart and soul.
Luister len- Larrotti used it against her.
" There will be customers coming to the diorama, paying good coin to see you in your full glorious beauty. This will be the finest exhibit of its kind in all of Dicca."
She stared at Reinhardt- len- Larrotti. Four scars on the cheek. Even as she doubted, the illusion changed.
" Why are you doing this?"
A sly look totally unlike Reinhardt came and went on the handsome face of the man confronting her. He smiled, and the smile took on evil qualities.
" My dearest, I want all of Dicca to share what I possess."
Inyx repressed a shudder. Since coming to this place len- Larrotti had paraded men and women through this tiny room. All had made love to her- raped her. And in each she had seen Reinhardt. What had they seen? Len- Larrotti' s magics provided illusion, for a price. He grew rich off others' obsessions and guilty desires.
" What of the Lord of the Twistings?" she asked.
" You jump from topic to topic, my dear. What of the Lord? The election is soon, only days away."
" What does he do?"
" He rules, of course. What an odd question. Now, come with me. I will show you the new quarters I have prepared for you. Fine ones they are, too."
" Fine magics?" she asked, her temper flaring. Inyx realized that len- Larrotti stiffened, although the Reinhardt facade he adopted barely moved.
" You will like the new quarters," he said, voice flat and cold.
She allowed him to lead her away from the room where she' d been imprisoned. The new one hardly suited Inyx more. It had a bed in it, no better than the one she left behind. There was also a large window facing Lossal Boulevard. She went to the window and touched fingertips against it. Pressing her slightly feverish cheek onto coolness brought a moment of mental clarity.
The bloated slug of a man holding her magically bound smiled ominously. She' d be used in even more degrading fashion. And she' d do it. Fight as she would, the hold of Reinhardt' s memory was stronger than her will.
" The first customers come. Enjoy, dearest, enjoy, and they will also!" Laughter filled the room in which she was on display, like an animal in a zoo cage.
" Show me what they see," she said in a listless voice. For another two days she' d been locked up in len- Larrotti' s picturewindow room, her every intimate moment on display to anyone passing by outside. She' d lost track of the men who' d used her in that time. She fought but it did no good. They all were Reinhardt. All.
" You know there is only me," said the man. She had learned to distinguish between Luister len- Larrotti as Reinhardt and his whoremongering customers, who also appeared to her as her dead husband.
" Show me."
Out of cruelty, he did. A small group gathered outside the window to peer in at her. She closed her eyes and then opened them. The man nearest saw her in a tawdry corset, net stockings, and high spiked heels. The man next to him saw her as a plain country girl, barely fourteen- a lost love. The one in the back of the crowd viewed her magically altered appearance as male, burly, rough. Inyx began to cry softly.
Out of stark hunger, she had been eating small bits of the food len- Larrotti brought her. The effects of the drug wore off quickly enough because little entered her bloodstream. But the paucity of food also made her progressively weaker and less able to resist the drug' s insidious shape- changing effects. Immediately after she ate, the man would come to her while the image of Reinhardt burned brightly in her mind.