Few of these comforts were native to Myrken. Here, with the anvil at the meeting of her collarbones and embroidered on the shoulder of her dress, she felt due them. Important. Worthy. A woman who could enjoy a regualr bath (albeit with the last night's water); a woman who could choose the satisfaction of sweet jam, even if her nose had been beaten into a peasant's permanent slant.
She was out of the Gruelmaster by the day's seventh hour, and marched with purpose down the winding runnels and avenues of the city. Razasani mornings were a flurry of color and stench, especially along the lowstreets. Mongers slapped out the days fish. Boys and girls seeking a penny or two swept horseshit from the cobbles with thistlebrooms. Crowds converged on the bazaar. Gloria Wynsee shoudered her way through them, holding her skirts away from the refuse, piloting her broad frame through slow-moving passers-by at the extension of her wooden hand.
Today was Visiting Day. And she hated Visiting Day, especially on days with a half-winesick head and a pulsing, loathsome ache behind her brow.
* * * *
First, she visited the home of Aremeda Follox, where she stood in a dark green room and tilted her chin toward meager commands and expectations. Collect the day's dues, whether in money, blood, or fear. Aremeda Follox said the same names she always said; she exposed her forearm while she spoke to Gloria, and let her surgeon carve the lines of soft, white milk into her skin until the scars bled anew and she sought sleep behind dreary lids.
Second, she visited Volani Guerro, who said she'd have the twelve-an'-one-shillin's at the top of the for'night, Gods as my witness, which was good and well, but did not save her from a swollen lip. It took only one lazy strike. Gloria promised several more had fifteen not been met by week's end. Then she complimented the lady's anklet, for it was very fine, very turquoise, and she wished for it, a desire for a coveted object never spoken aloud.
Third, she met a man at the fourth Port Zenith dock, and stood sweating black onto her white bonnet-rim until he jammed a tiny leather satchel of into her palm, fat with greenish bulbs, its bottom damp and foamy. They did not speak; they never spoke, but if they did, she would compliment the woven bits of twine in his beard. When he left she stared at the glinting daggers of water cut apart by the shoreline winds and imagined she was standing on the edge of the whole world.
Her last visits were effortless and unremarkable. They bored her.
A final visit was paid to Twice-Marked Kualdin underneath the overhang of the livery stables on Dolister Way. She smiled a cork-colored smile at him and slipped two shillings into his open palm. It was nice to see him, him and his elfen cheer, the rings in his ears, the dust of the flourmill under his fingernails. She said, "How do you fare, Kualdin," very properly, and he rolled the two shillings between his knuckles before he looked left, looked right, and ensured the street was appropriately dull and absent of onlookers.
"The usual?" he asked her.
"My two shillings' worth," she said.
He nodded. Then, with courteous ease, he came forward, balled his fist, and proceeded to pound it viciously into the barrel of her stomach, right underneath her ribs. He did not watch her as she doubled over; instead, he gazed at the street with disconnected amusement, as if this was all perfectly normal. Gloria started to stand, wiping saliva from her lip before he cocked his elbow and hammered her again. She coughed into the hay. He dragged her up by the collar, and one of her sharp, Sun-bleached eyes rolled up to meet him. "Not the face," she whispered to him.
"What do you take me for," Kualdin said. "Some kind of fucking savage?"
By midday, she'd completed her necessary visits, and found herself standing — ribs swollen and bruised, stomach revolting with tight pain — at the intersection of Jowick and Cadderly. Her satchel, full of tax and poppy, sagged heavliy enough at her skirt-hip that she could rest her elbow upon it. The Glass Sun battered down upon the cobbles with unrelenting force. Tarsweat drenched the neck of her tunic and crawled down into the small of her spine. It would have been right, in that moment, to turn on her heel and work her way back toward the lowstreets with Follox's claim. But with sweltering afternoon yawning wide and free before her, Gloria Wynsee found herself driven ill at the thought of rat'vak work; the Sun, after all, was hers. Fully, truly hers, by birthright and blood. And she ought to be in it, and savor it, and let her heart beat beneath it.
A friend's abode was just up the street — was he a friend, she wondered, or was it but a paltry line of letters that simply sounded like friend, with no meaning or gravity? Should she call, there would surely be tea, and conversation, and she could fill the sluggish pit of her brain with a dutiful helping of memories. Glenn Burnie, former governor of Myrken Wood, had certainly been the last soul she'd intended to crash into in Razasan, but on any day, he would do. They could clap words against one another. She could keep the whetstone of her mind working. Ever since she'd arrived in Razasan, they'd said so much, but almost nothing at all. Or had they?
You should tell him. You should confide in him. His life is but an economy of secrets. And suddenly, you would be worth everything in the world.
Gloria Wynsee swallowed the stone in her throat, and began to march up the avenue toward his dwelling.