Robert Asprin - Thieves World

It was gathering dusk. The girls could be heard throughout the house, giggling as they prepared for the evening. Myrtis kept no one who showed no aptitude or enjoyment of the profession. Let the other houses bind their girls with poverty or drugs; the Aphrodisia House was the pinnacle of ambition for the working girls of the Street.

'I got your message.' A soft voice called from the drapery-hung doorway near her bed.

'1 was beginning to get worried. My girl has not returned.'

Lythande walked to her side, draping an arm about her shoulders and taking hold of her hand.

'I've heard the rumours in the streets. The new regime has chosen its next enemy, it would seem. What is the truth of their demands?'

'They intend to levy a tax of ten gold pieces on every woman living on the Street.'

Lythande's habitual smile faded, and the blue star tattooed forehead wrinkled into a frown. 'Will you be able to pay that?'

'The intent is not that we pay, but that the Street be closed, and that we be sent up to the empire. If 1 pay it once, they'll keep on levying it until I can't pay.'

'You could close the house ...'

'Never!' Myrtis pulled her hands away. 'The Aphrodisia House is mine. I was running this house when the Rankan Empire was a collection of half-naked barbaric tribes!'

'But they aren't any longer,' Lythande reminded her gently. 'And the Hell Hounds - if not the prince - are making substantial changes in all our lives.'

'They won't interfere with magic, will they?'

Myrtis's concern for Lythande briefly overshadowed her fears for the Aphrodisia House. The magician's thin-lipped smile returned.

'For now it is doubtful. There are men in Ranke who have the ability to affect us directly, but they have not followed the prince to Sanctuary, and I do not know if he could command their loyalty.'

Myrtis stood up. She walked to the leaded-glass window, with its thick, obscuring panes which revealed movement on the Street but very little else. '

'I'll need your help, if it's available,' she said without facing Lythande.

'What can I do?'

'In the past you've prepared a drug for me from a qualis-berry extract. I recall you said it was quite difficult to mix - but I should like enough for two people when it's mixed with pure qualis liqueur.'

'Delicate and precise, but not particularly difficult. It is very subtle. Are you sure you will only need enough to serve two?'

'Yes, Zaibar and myself. I agree; the drug must be subtle.'

'You must be very certain of your methods, then.'

'Of some things, at least. The Street of Red Lanterns does not lie outside the walls of Sanctuary by accident - you know that. The Hell Hounds and their prince have much more to lose by hindering us than by letting the Street exist in peace. If our past purpose were not enough to convince them, then surely the fact that much of the city's gold passes through my hands every year will matter.

'I will use the qualis-berry love potion to open Zaibar's eyes to reality, not to close them.'

'I can have it for you perhaps by tomorrow evening, but more likely the day after. Many of the traders and smugglers of the bazaar are no longer well supplied with the ingredients I will need, but I can investigate other sources. When the Hell Hounds drove the smugglers into the Swamp of Night Secrets, many honest men suffered.'

Myrtis's eyes narrowed, she released the drapery she had clutched.

'And if the Street of Red Lanterns wasn't here ... The mongers and merchants, and even the smugglers, might not want to admit it, but without us to provide them with their gold while "respectable" people offer promises, they would suffer even more than they do now.'

There was a gentle knocking on the door. Lythande stepped back into the shadows of the room. Ambutta entered, a large bruise visible on the side of her face.

'The men have begun to arrive, Madame Myrtis. Will you collect their money, or shall I take the ledger downstairs?'

'I shall attend to them. Send them up to me and, Ambutta -'

She stopped the girl as she headed out of the parlour. 'Go to the kitchen and find out how many days we could go without buying anything from any of the tradesmen.'

'Yes, madame.'

The room was suddenly empty, except for Myrtis. Only a slight rippling of the wall tapestries showed where Lythande had opened a concealed panel and disappeared into the secret passages of the Aphrodisia House. Myrtis had not expected the magician to stay, but despite all their years together, the magician's sudden comings and goings still unsettled her. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, Myrtis rearranged the pearl-and-gold pins in her hair, rubbed scented oils into her skin, and greeted the first gentleman-caller as if the day had been no different from any other.

Word of the taxation campaign against the Street had spread through the city much as Lythande had observed. The result was that many of their frequent guests and visitors came to the house to pay their last respects to an entertainment that they openly expected would be gone in a very short time. Myrtis smiled at each of them as they arrived, accepted their money, and asked their second choice of the girls before assuring them that the Aphrodisia House would never close its doors.

'Madame?'

Ambutta peered around the doorway .when the flow of gentlemen had abated slightly.

'The kitchen says that we have enough food for ten days, but less of ordinary wine and the like.'

Myrtis touched the feather of her pen against her temple.

'Ten days? Someone has grown lax. Our storerooms can hold enough for many months. But ten days is all we will have, and it will have to be enough. Tell the kitchen to place no orders with the tradesmen tomorrow or the next day, and send word to the other backdoors. - .

'And, Ambutta, Irda will carry my messages in the future. It is time that you were taught more important and useful things.'

A steady stream of merchants and tradesmen made their way through the Aphrodisia House to Myrtis's parlour late the next morning as the effects of her orders began to be felt in the town.

'But Madame Myrtis, the tax isn't due yet, and surely the Aphrodisia House has the resources ...' The puffy-faced gentleman who sent meat to half the houses on the Street was alternately irate and wheedling. .

'In such unsettled times as these, good Mikkun, I cannot look to luxuries like expensive meats. I sincerely wish that this were not true. The taste of salted meat has always reminded me of poverty. But the governor's palace does not care about the poverty of those who live outside its walls, though it sends its forces to tax us,' Myrtis said in feigned helplessness.

In deference to the sad occasion she had not put on one of the brightly embroidered day-robes as was her custom but wore a Soberly cut dress of a fashion outdated in Sanctuary at least twenty years before. She had taken off her jewellery, knowing that its absence would cause more rumours than if she had indeed sold a part of it to the gem-cutters. An atmosphere of austerity enveloped the house and every other on the Street, as Mikkun could attest, for he'd visited most of them.

'But madame, I have already slaughtered two cows! For three years I have slaughtered the cows first to assure you the freshest meat early in the day. Today, for no reason, you say you do not want my meat! Madame, you already have a debt to me for those two cows!'

'Mikkun! You have never, in all the years I've known you, extended credit to any house on the Street and now ... now you're asking me to consider my daily purchases a debt to you!' She smiled disarmingly to calm him, knowing full well that the butcher and the others depended on the hard gold from the Street to pay their own debts.

'There will be credit in the future!'