The Last Lagharis Pt. 02

The caravan plodded into town, and the cold loomed around them. Snow frosted their clothes and clung to their pouches. Frozen mud stuck to their boots. The merciless mountain wind coiled around their ankles, around their bodies, around their necks, and the cold cut through layer after layer of fur and leather. Yaks, loaded with sacks of goods, picked up their pace as the snow beneath their feet grew shallower. Maybe they sensed that rest and food were near at hand.

The humans sensed it too. They uncurled their hunched backs to look around, their minds warm with thoughts of hearths and meals. They, too, quickened their pace.

Misha let them pull away from her. She knew what it felt like to be warm and comfortable and full of food. She also knew the feeling would go away as soon as they set out for the next town. It was a dull, ugly, grinding cycle, and she saw no reason to rush it.

A tumbleweed blew into her way, and she made a point of stomping it into the snow. It was a petty, pointless gesture, but for the last few days, the gods had used nature to abuse her, and this was the closest she could come to abusing them back.

The town ahead was ensconced in a little canyon the gods had carved into a ridge. Ten times as deep as a woman was tall and about that wide, it was a place to hide from icy wind that came screaming down the mountainside. It was cramped, and the central street—the only street—was black with ash and grit. Buildings clung to the canyon walls, stacked so high that they were almost flush with the ground above—in a few generations, Misha thought, maybe they would fill it out. Maybe their roofs would meet at the top of the canyon and turn this long, narrow pit into a great tunnel. It would be warmer that way, which suited Misha. It would also be sunless and grim, but that, she had to admit, suited her too.

Truly, this town could look any way it pleased, and Misha would not mind. Here, there was nothing to fear, and that was what mattered. As the caravan's guard, it was her duty to watch for the bandits who preyed on travelers out in the isolated mountain passes, days away from anyone, where anything could happen and no one would know of it. Here in town, she let her guard down, and others took over. The merchants found a place to quarter everyone and then saw to it that everyone was paid. The porters checked the goods and sorted them. The rangers and explorers pored over their charts. And when they weren't working, they talked to brothers and sisters and friends about hopes and trials and futures.

Misha stalked off alone, to a little house she knew well. It was a flat, broad building that hung high in the canyon. The ladder that led up to the threshold took her up three stories, but it was worth the climb.

On the other side of the heavy, rustling flaps over the front door, she smelled sweat and perfume. She felt warm, moist air. She heard happy yelps and gasps coming from the other rooms, muffled a little by the wooden walls but still easy to hear.

It was a brothel. It was Misha's favorite, and apparently the madame knew it, because she greeted Misha by name and cheerfully informed her that Kiran was available.

Kiran must have remembered her too. He leaned out from his room, all muted smiles and guarded earnestness.

There was a time when Misha couldn't get enough of him. From his split, neatly trimmed moustaches to the painted stone beads he wore around his ankles, he reminded her of the valley where she had lived until a few years ago. For clothing, he wore only a fur-trimmed kilt and boots that looked like they had never once been dirty. It was a salacious parody of the heavy tunics that mountain men wore, but it did what it was meant to do—it reminded her of them. It showed plenty of his pale skin, and that paleness, too, reminded her of home. His perfume matched what her neighbors had worn. His accent was the same as hers.

Looking at him, she thought of her home, her sister. She thought of her brother, dead on the table. She thought of her Old Binsa's heirloom crossbow that she had taken and still carried with her, and she thought of the promise she'd made to her sister as she took it, 'I'll bring light back with me.'

More specifically, she'd promised to bring money. Enough money to pay the dowry for men they could marry and thereby continue the bloodline. They were brave words, easy to speak in the comfort of home. But now, with a year of hard, bitter work behind her, she was no closer to raising the money. At this rate, she never would. When she thought of her promise, she thought of the hopelessness that confronted her, and she only felt hurt.

"No," said Misha, "Not this time."

The madame tried to hide her surprise. She recovered quickly and said, "Maybe you'd prefer someone more... exotic?"

She'd hit it right over the heart as always. "Yes," she said. "Yes, that's exactly what I want. The same man as I had last I was here. What was his name?"

The madame snapped her fingers. "Ruhab?"

"I'm right behind you."

Misha turned around to see a slim, muscled man with a rich red-brown tunic that half covered his rich red-brown skin. He towered over her, head almost hitting the ceiling, and she had to tilt her head up to look into his eyes. His dark eyes and swarthy face and dusting of black facial hair, and his height and the angular shape of his face, his outlandish clothes and even the scented oils he wore, they all spoke of a land far away, of nothing Misha knew.

"Yes," said Misha. "You're perfect."

He swept her into his room. Actually, he didn't touch her but only opened the door and beckoned her in, but she felt swept along all the same as she came in after him. He did not allow her to sit on her own, but laid his hands lightly on her back and shoulder and guided her down as if she were fragile. After the rough weather and rough company of the caravaners, the pampering felt like heaven. Ruhab and the other men here, they seemed to be the only people in the world who were aware that she could feel pain.

"You have braved the ice and snow," he told her. "You resisted by becoming warm." He placed a hand on her sternum, clean, soft fingers on that brittle part of her body. "Good preparation for coming here, yes?"

"I still feel cold," she said, and it was half a lie. She was warmer than she'd been all day, but she wasn't ready to take her clothes off yet.

"If you feel cold, then imagine the sun," said Ruhab. "Not as it is here. Here, it is weak and far away. Imagine the sun as it is on the plains of Zaghan. A great floating eye of such power that it draws sweat in mere heartbeats." His hands explored around her bundled-up body, trying to get the same reaction from her. He was partially succeeding. "And if one braves the sun for too long, she burns."

The sun could burn here in the mountains too, but Misha did not enlighten him on this. She did not say anything except, "What else is there in Zaghan?" And Ruhab told her, transported her to another, warmer country far away from her old grief and her old promises.

She said nothing, and he did not prompt her to. He demanded no effort at all, letting her lie back and relax as he peeled away her clothes, one careful movement at a time. Wherever he exposed her skin, he washed it with a hot, soaked towel. Everywhere her frigid clothes came away, warm air rushed in to touch her instead, and soon she felt flushed and full and well again.

Then it was time for Ruhab to give himself to her. His washing turned to caressing, then fondling, and he lay in the bed with her. As beautiful as he was, Misha did not watch him, but only closed her eyes and savored the feeling of his body against hers. He flowed atop her, so gentle for such a large man, and she allowed him to ease apart her legs.

He pressed himself into her. Before, she had forgotten her life outside the whorehouse. Now she forgot about the house too. For a short, blissful time, it seemed as if there was nothing but her and him. He stoked her, teased her, kept her on the brink and finally gave her release.

The haze faded slowly. Even after she was sated, she still enjoyed the feeling of his warm body formed around her, accommodating her. But eventually, the spell ended. She remembered that she was poor and alone. She remembered that she had a promise to keep and no hope of keeping it. And when she remembered those things, the warmth and the wetness and even the sizzling memory of this handsome man inside her did not console her.

"Ah, you look cold again," came Ruhab's voice.

She looked at him. "I wish I could just marry you."

He smiled at her, probably a sincere smile, but a sad one too because he knew she couldn't. He was sterile. He could not quicken life in her, or in anyone. Only a husband could do that, and Misha was as far from having one as she had been when she had walked out of her house all that time ago.

She barely noticed herself putting her clothes back on and climbing out into the cold air to rejoin the caravan.

As she climbed down the ladder, she noted with relief that her clothes, at least, had finally warmed up.

"Warm clothes!" came a girlish voice down in the street.

Misha startled at hearing her thoughts echoed. She saw a tall woman, thin but bundled in enough clothes that she almost looked normal. From under her bulbous fur cap peeked a swarthy face bent into a wooden smile. Misha opened her mouth to tell the girl to mind her own business.

The girl spoke first, and fast. "Do you get cold out there, m'lady? Cold can kill, and we travelers know it better than anyone. You look like you brought inferior materials from farther downhill, but for just a few silvers, I can offer you something twice as good, that can keep your insides and outsides warm against any chill the gods see fit to cast!"

Despite herself, Misha sat through the whole breathless speech. Then, equally in spite of her instinct, she actually looked at the thick stack of clothes the peddler thrust at her. The clothes, unsurprisingly, fell short of the peddler's praise.

But Misha found she was in a mood to be kind—she was too tired to do otherwise—so instead of brushing her off, she politely said, "I do not think these would serve in the mountains. The outer layer would not resist water. It would soak. And these tight straps, they would not allow any air between skin and cloth. They would choke out the wearer's arms and freeze her eventually.

The peddler's smile became bigger and glossier, and she seemed about to say something, but then she choked, and her face fell. "I know," she said sadly. "But if I don't sell them, I'll have nothing."

Misha could only shrug sadly.

"I guess I'll go," and the girl slinked off.

Seeing it, Misha was almost inspired to buy a set of clothes or something purely out of charity. But that, she knew, would only buy the girl a little sustenance and leave her a few days older and no closer to a good life. Then another idea struck her.

"Girl, wait!"

The girl turned around.

"What's your name?"

"Chaarumathi," she said. "Of Hide Plain."

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen years."

"I can't solve all your problems, Chaarumathi, but I can make your day. Come with me." And she led the girl back out into the street, up the ladder to the brothel.

Chaarumathi said nothing, but when she emerged into the house and realized what it was, her hands leapt to her mouth.

"Have you ever seen a place like this?" asked Misha.

"No." Chaarumathi blushed and looked down. "Yes."

"Pick one. Pick any, on my silver."

"Oh." Chaarumathi's jaw worked, and her eyes danced between the men who stood and leaned and sprawled on cushions, arrayed the way you might lay out meals in a feast hall. "Oh. But... why would do this for me?"

"If I feed you, then in a few days you'll just be hungry again. But this, I trust you won't forget."

"Which one should I pick?"

One of the men piped up, a young, delicate man almost as thin as Chaarumathi. "It's all well to be nervous, miss. Come with me, and there's nothing to fear."

Chaarumathi took a tentative step towards him, then stopped and looked back at Misha with big, vulnerable eyes.

"If you want my advice," she offered, "Try Ruhab." She pointed at the wall where he watched patiently. "He'll make you forget everything, and he's always clean."

Chaarumathi marched up to him, opened her mouth and once again failed to say anything coherent.

Misha chuckled. For a peddler, this girl was shockingly poor with words. "Warm her up, Ruhab," she said, tossing him a few lengths of silver. "Do for her what you do for me."

He gave a smile that had no words but spoke perfect understanding, then he took Chaarumathi's shaking hand and eased her into the back room.

Misha sat and waited. But she did not mind waiting. Her patience, after all, was infinite, forged as it was by the merciless mountains.

She looked at the other men who waited, and a few of them responded by flirting with her. She responded in kind, which she knew was low of her, since she had no intention of buying a session with any of them. Soon, they realized it and began to ignore her.

A few moments after the conversation died, she felt an itch to start it up again, simply to make something happen, and she was forced to concede that her patience was not, after all, infinite. "What is taking them so long?" she caught herself saying.

"Why don't you find out?" asked one man, a sinister-looking specimen whom she was fairly sure used to be a sneak-thief.

"We won't tell if you peek," said another man, and the others nodded their agreement.

So Misha, in spite of her honor, peeked around the corner at what Chaarumathi and Ruhab were doing.

She had expected to see Ruhab monologuing. Instead, the two were pressed together in a kiss, Ruhab leaning back as Chaarumathi draped over him. She plied his mouth hungrily, her fingers clenching his arms in a claw-like grip. It must have hurt, but he showed no sign of pain. He only grinned back at her as they separated, his lips wet with her saliva. "Are you ready for something more?" he asked, in his sultriest voice.

Chaarumathi answered by kissing him again.

Misha thought on what she saw. She had never kissed Ruhab. She hadn't even thought of it. A twinge of jealousy pulled at her, and had she been five years younger she would have hated Chaarumathi. But she was old enough to know the truth. She was jealous because she knew that this clueless nineteen-year-old was a better lover than she was.

She pulled away from the corner, full of shame. But even now that she was no longer watching, she could still hear the kissing, then the murmured talk. Then, inevitably, the moaning. Chaarumathi's moaning wasn't like Misha's—at least, Misha didn't think so. It was loose and lively, and it came in yelps, timed to the rhythm of her sliding wetly off Ruhab and back onto him. Misha could hear her smiling all the way up to her climax. Then to her second one, then her third.

Another glance at the men reminded Misha that, as long as she had no more business to give them, she was no longer welcome. Seeing to reason to stay, she ambled out the door and down the ladder to find a place to rest for the night.

It didn't take her long to find one, and not much longer to find a place with a fair price. In her room at the inn, she started the long process of accounting for all her equipment and taking stock of what she would need to buy before the caravan left again.

But there came a knock, and that voice she thought she had left behind. "Miss? Miss, my name's Chaarumathi—uh, but you already knew that—and I want to thank you."

Misha opened the door to find Chaarumathi with her hands clasped in front of her. "If you think I'll buy you more rides on Ruhab," said Misha, "forget it."

"No, I want... I just want to repay your kindness."

Misha reminded herself to soften. "I don't mean to be rude, but you have to take care of yourself first."

"Well, maybe I could help you do something. Two heads can do four times the work, after all, and if we split the profits, we'll both come off well." She said it quickly and with conviction. It was an echo of her street-peddler self, not the stuttering, wide-eyed girl she became in the brothel.

"You want me to take you under my wing." Misha shook her head sadly. "That's for rich women who are old and wise and have the time. I am none of those things."

"Are you sure? I used to have a sister who taught me everything, and all I had to do was follow her around and do what she did. And if you don't like me with you, you can send me away with nothing, and I won't complain."

Misha looked back at her supplies and thought a moment. "Do you want to help me? When dusk comes, help me hunt. I set out from the spear stone on the north end of town."

Chaarumathi beamed. "I know where that is! I'll be there." She clasped her hands together. "Thank you, miss, thank you!"

That banished her, and Misha went back to what she'd been doing. She caught herself hoping that the girl honored her promise and showed. After all, two heads were indeed better than one.

The next morning, she made her way up to the slim, sharp stone that pierced up from the snowdrift north of town. And there she found Chaarumathi waiting for her. She smiled a big, girlish smile.

"You came," said Misha, and she allowed herself a little smile of her own. "Good. Let's get going."

Watching this eager, energetic girl follow her, Misha started to wonder why she'd been so unwilling to deal with her before.

"If I may ask," said Chaarumathi, "Were you always a caravanner?"

"No. My sister and I are brotherless. I came down from the mountain to earn money for a dowry, but... I gave up on it."

"Why?"

Why? She couldn't put it into words. Or at least, she couldn't put it into words that she liked. "This life... is easier. It's simpler." Hope for the future, she had found, was a heavy burden. It was far easier simply not to think of the future. Not to think at all.

"Oh. Bringing me along with, that must have felt very... not-simple."

"Yes." She thought of that dream she and her sister had shared, of the promise she'd made. She thought of what Chaarumathi had said, that two heads did four times the work. Keeping her promise and finding a man would be a lot easier with four times the work getting done. Hope for the future was indeed a burden. But after so long without it, Misha found that she missed it. "You're right." she said, "it's not simple. But maybe it's better this way."