Chapter Five: A Glamour

That evening, Ilyria, led by Miasma, joined the girls—“companions” Miasma insisted they were called—in the large salon off the courtyard. Filigreed lamps warmed the room with light while breezes flowing through air channels in the walls, kept it cool. The girls had shown Ilyria how to wash down their bodies and apply scented oils so that now the room was filled with the heady scents of all the desert’s hidden flowers.

Softly cushioned divans sprawled around low tables sagging with sweet fruits and spicy savoury pastries. Ilyria felt her mouth watering at the sight even though she was still sated by the generous midday meal.

Mirrors lay along the walls, their gaze softened with hazy draped silks. Ilyria could not resist glancing at herself. Her long dark hair hung loose to her waist and the translucent tunic she wore fluttered around her slender limbs. She had allowed the girls to help her with a touch of kohl around her eyes and the effect was, well, she had to admit to herself, liberating.

She was neither dull nor ugly.

Alone or in groups of two or three, the men began to join them, passing through the vestibule and arriving with expressions of glazed happiness. The chariko vented through the vestibule helped them to leave their cares in the world behind them, Miasma had told her.

“But what do I do?” Ilyria had asked Miasma earlier that day. “I mean with the clients.”

“We serve them treats and drinks,” said Miasma, “Then, one might ask you to sit with him a little while. Maybe he will ask you to go somewhere more private. If he does, you show him to one of the rooms upstairs.”

“What if I don’t want to go with him though?”

“What?” said Miasma, looking confused.

“What if I don’t like him, or he makes me nervous?”

“We are companions,” said Miasma, saying the word as if it were sacred, “We care for everyone.”

Ilyria had been unable to come up with a response to Miasma’s resolute sweetness.

Now, Ilyria stood holding a tray, trying to become as translucent as her thin tunic. She had seen how the clients whispered in a companion’s ear, how they stood up too quickly, their movements clumsy with their evident desire, how the companion led them away toward the stairs up to the rooms. It all seemed different from how she thought it would be. Less sordid and more gentle, sometimes even a little sad. Perhaps Miasma knew something she did not about companionship.

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the vestibule and a man came striding through. His face was absent the glazed happiness of the other men’s. He scowled and she saw Madame Skia brushed past her to hurry toward him. “Merchant Machairi,” she said, and greeted him with small bow. She led him herself toward one of the more private divans.

Bonbon, standing nearby, muttered something under her breath but when Ilyria turned to her with a questioning look, she just shook her head.

Gradually the low conversations resumed, and the room seemed to settle back into its previous ease. Ilyria thought she heard one of the men sitting and Ilyria brough her tray over to the two men who were speaking. Miasma perched sleepily on one’s knee.

“So, you say you have not seen him either?”

Ilyria heard something in the man’s tone that made her pay attention. She brought her tray over to where the man sat, Miasma perched sleepily on his knee. He had spoken to his friend, a pot-bellied little man for whom the charo may have worked a little too well judging from his eyes. Kneeling down, she began filling the tray on the table in front of them with the sweet treats from hers, holding her breath as she listened.

The second man shrugged and beckoned toward one of the girls, a round-cheeked blonde with the face of an angel. “Companions”, Ilyria told herself again. Ilyria thought her name might have been Loulou.

“The palace say he is busy. Busy, busy, busy. With what though? The city is in terrible condition. Hello, beauty,” he greeted Loulou as she settled herself next to him.

“Well then,” said the first man, now stroking Miasma’s arm, “The Mogul has not been seen since at least the Twin Moon Festival past. Thank you, girl, we have had our fill,” he said, waving Ilyria away. Frustrated, she left them.

The Mogul was missing? For nearly a year it seemed. How had she not known of this? Unless …

Unless Daria and Dirk were somehow involved. Then they would not speak of it in public.

Hours later, the salon had emptied, its former occupants largely contained in the upstairs rooms. Except for Ilyria who yawned and stretched. She eyed the divans longingly. Surely no one would know if she just lay down for a small nap. As it was, her plan to disappear that night had worked so well.

A hand gripped her waist painfully, long nails digging into her soft flesh. Her own hand flew to the one at her waist, clutching and pulling at it. It was thick and hairy, and its grip did not lessen at all. She looked up into the face of the man who had caused the commotion in the vestibule earlier. The merchant.

“I know you,” he said.

“I am new here,” she said, her eyes watering with the pain of his nails in her flesh. To this pain she now added alarm. What if he had seen her at her mother’s side?

“Not from here,” he said, confirming her worst fears. “I know you.”

She acted without thinking, an instinct that even later she would be unable to rationalize. She stepped in closer to the merchant and kissed him. She kissed him with all the fear and anger and frustration that lay within her.

And he responded, releasing his painful grip of her waist and pulling her toward him. Ilyria felt the response to her in his body and was once more afraid. Kissing her harshly, he pushed up the fabric of her dress with one hand and with the other began digging into his pants.

He has forgotten about trying to place his memory of me, she told herself, trying not to think of the new danger.

“Merchant Machairi,” said Madame Skia and the iron in her tone forced him away from Ilyria, even with his pants undone and his tongue still hanging out of his mouth. He looked at Madame Skia with a murderous expression. “We have rooms if you would like to get to know little Kitten here better,” she finished sweetly.

Ilyria felt like running but one look at Madame Skia and she realized that running would be a mistake. She remembered what she had been told to do and led the merchant away.

At the first empty room, the still unbuttoned merchant shoved her inside. “On your knees first, girl,” he growled.

Ilyria stood paralyzed with horror as he dropped his pants. “Well come on then.” He said, “Before I tell them where you are.” He started laughing and Ilyria’s heart sank. He had remembered after all. “Oh, Dirk was not happy. No not at all. But he will have fun won’t he, once he knows where you are.”

Wait, she said, raising her hands. And the room dipped into darkness. There came a fluttering, sweeping sound that filled the room as a shadow crossed the moon. Wait, she said again, the words turning to gossamer and floating from her mouth. Ilyria felt rather than saw that the man was hardly moving at all. Then there was silence and a silvery voice rose from deep within her and whispered into that silence, Let me tell you a story. The floating, dreaming gossamer threads of her words drifted together and formed a web that wrapped around the merchant’s face, threading into his half-open mouth and wrapping his tongue as she told him the story of …

The night he spent at Madame Skia’s House where the girls were more beautiful than any you could see on your travels throughout the desert and beyond. Beyond? Yes, even there, where the land fell away into the endless waters. Such beauty as could hardly be named. A woman with golden hair sang to me and danced a dance of

Wait, she thought, and that whispering voice paused, listening. This merchant does not think like that. Very well, came the answer.

The story of the night he took all of Madame Skia’s girls. Each more desperate than the last to be with him, stripping themselves naked before him, holding themselves open to him like wildcats, they were, they did everything he told them to and some he things he had not even thought of.

Ilyria watched a cruel grin spread across the merchant’s face.

I could not recall a single one of their faces there were that many.

And for good measure.

Marvelous place that it is, I could not countenance returning until I am fully recovered.

And as she finished her story, the moonlight returned, releasing the room from its glamour. Smacking his lips, with his eyes still somewhere distant, the merchant turned and left the room.

After he left, Ilyria staggered back, sitting heavily on the unused bed.

What had happened? What had she done?

Her hands flew to her mouth. A feeling had overcome her, and something had happened. She turned and looked to the moon for an answer but there was none.

As dawn broke and the last of the clients left, Madame Skia’s girls made their sleepy ways to the cushions in the courtyard. Ilyria, exhausted beyond all measure, sagged when Madame Skia put her arm on her shoulder.

“What did you do?” she said, drawing Ilyria with her, away from her tired companions. There was nothing left in her to be alarmed at Madame Skia’s question.

“Do?”

“Merchant Machairi is one of our more,” she pursed her lips, “difficult customers. Tonight, he left a very large gift and departed with a smile. Which I will concede I have never seen.”

Ilyria yawned, “I did what you asked,” she said, “Kitten was a good companion.”

Madame Skia’s eyes narrowed. Then she released Ilyria though her eyes did not. If anything, Madame Skia would be watching her even more closely.