“The
Lady ain’t gonna like this, eeh?” She giggled. Her blackened teeth and
incomplete jaw repulsed Julian and aroused him at the same time. Ah, cheap
whores, they were the greatest virtue of an Errantry war. One could do without
them, but hey, let’s be fair, one didn’t. So far her Ladyship’s divine smiting
hadn’t occurred yet. She probably had better things to do than divinely
molesting innocent young rapists. He growled and threw himself upon her warm,
skinny frame. Her ribs were clearly visible underneath the tightly stretched
skin, but there was life in her eyes. An emotion somewhere between fiery
passion and burning hatred, she was a good whore, this was how he liked them.
Come on, whore, do your best. Howl, moan, scream. The loud clanging of jugs
dropped or thrown downstairs accompanied his own growling as he took her. She
barely made a sound. She had had many men like this knight. Too many to
remember. From Bretonnia, from the Empire, from Kislev itself. At least they
paid, that was all that mattered to her. If they didn’t, Ivan arranged
something and they would get the money anyway. She let him come. It didn’t harm
her. When he was done, he dropped himself onto her and almost broke her bones.
His stinking breath warmed her face. That was the worst of it all. Her clients
drank, too much. She only ever got the drunk ones. Dominika got all the rich
ones, she only ever got the drunk ones. The stinking, sweating, hitting drunk
ones.
Ivan
came in. The drunk knight lifted his head from her chest and looked at the
Kislevite. He growled. Ivan smiled. “You’re done. Pay and get out.” His tone
was sharp and unforgiving as his personality. As long as he supported her, she
stayed. She wouldn’t stay for any other reason.
The
knight lifted himself from her wrecked body and kept looking at Ivan with those
drunk eyes of his. The contrast with papa
couldn’t be bigger. His sharp blue eyes under sharp eyebrows observed him like
cat. His sharp hooked nose was lifted in disdain of the Bretonnian nobleman’s
son. His grip around the dirk on his belt tightened. He had dealt with men like
Julian of Bordeloux before.
The
drunkard stumbled to his belongings and grabbed his sword, only to feel the
cold steel of Ivan’s blade stabbed into his neck. She watched the man bleeding
to death, not quite screaming but growling inaudibly in his dying spasms. Ivan
stood over the corpse-to-be like a wolf stood over its prey. Proud and silent,
savoring the moment. He turned to Lyuba.
“It cuts
into the amount of customers, but sometimes it has to happen.” He said with a
monotone voice. He wiped the dirk clean with a cloth he took from his belt and
laid both on a stool. She didn’t smile. She hid her rotten teeth. She hid the
sparkle in her eyes. She hid her joy. She hid everything she was, but she
couldn’t hide from him. She had had many men like the knight and they were
horrible in their own respect. She had only ever had one man like Ivan and she
loved him, but he was vicious. The scars on her chest he had carefully drawn
with his knife after he had taken her from her burning village. The way he had
killed Natasya, Katharina, Alexia, Fransesca. But he fed her and gave her
warmth against the cold and shelter against the Great Open. He was never drunk.
He hardly ever hit her and he was strong.
He
smiled, no, grinned at her. There was at once his own lust and viciousness in
his eyes. He looked down upon her, not just on her ghoulish face, but also on
her being. She was his slave. As he took her, he knew very well she would
always been in his power. It was an old trick. Starve your whores, make them
dependent on you. They’ll always follow you. Lyuba did, Dominika did. The other
girls, did, up to some point. It worked most of the time, this syndrome. There
was no hate in Lyuba’s eyes. There was nothing amongst the indifference. No
pleasure, no pain. Just cold coins.
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