“I don’t know, and neither does Cazio.”
“If that’s the case, won’t they be watching the ships, as well?”
“Yes, but Cazio says he can find a captain who won’t ask questions or tell tales—if we have the silver to pay him off.” She sighed. “But that’s not yet, and we have to eat, too. Worse, I was paid nothing today. What am I going to do tomorrow?”
Austra patted her shoulder. “I got paid. We’ll stop at the fish market and the carenso and buy our supper.”
The fish market was located at the edge of Perto Nevo, where the tall-masted ships brought their cargoes of timber and iron, and took in return casks of wine, olive oil, wheat, and silk. Smaller boats crowded the southern jetties, for the Vitellian waters teemed with shrimp, mussels, oysters, sardines, and a hundred other sorts of fish Anne had never heard of. The market itself was a maze of crates and barrels heaped with gleaming sea prizes. Anne looked longingly at the giant prawns and black crabs—which were still kicking and writhing in tuns of brine—and at the heaps of sleek mackerel and silver tuna. They couldn’t afford any of that and had to push deeper and farther, to where sardines lay sprinkled in salt and whiting was stacked in piles that had begun to smell.
The whiting was only two minsers per coinix, and it was there the girls stopped, noses wrinkled, to choose their evening meal.
“Z’Acatto said to look at the eyes,” Austra said. “If they’re cloudy or cross-eyed, they’re no good.”
“This whole bunch is bad, then,” Anne said.
“It’s the only thing we can afford,” Austra replied. “There must be one or two good ones in the pile. We just have to look.”
“What about salt cod?”
“That has to soak for a day. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry now.”
A low feminine voice chuckled over their shoulders. “No, sweets, don’t buy any of that. You’ll be sick for a nineday.”
The woman speaking to them was familiar—Anne had seen her often on their street, but had never spoken to her. She dressed scandalously and wore a great deal of rouge and makeup. She’d once heard z’Acatto say he “couldn’t afford that one,” so Anne figured she knew the woman’s profession.
“Thanks,” Anne said, “but we’ll find a good one.”
The woman looked dubious. She had a strong, lean face and eyes of jet. Her hair was put up in a net that sparkled with glass jewels, and she wore a green gown, which, though it had seen better days, was still nicer than anything Anne owned at the moment.
“You two live on Six-Nymph Street. I’ve seen you—with that old drunkard and the handsome fellow, the one with the sword.”
“Yes,” Anne replied.
“I’m your neighbor. My name is Rediana.”
“I’m Feine and this is Lessa,” Anne lied.
“Well, girls, come with me,” Rediana said, her voice low. “You’ll find nothing edible here.”
Anne hesitated.
“I’ll not bite you,” Rediana said. “Come.”
Motioning them to follow, she led the two back to a table of flounder. Some were still flopping.
“We can’t afford that,” Anne said.
“How much do you have?”
Austra held out a ten-minser coin. Rediana nodded.
“Parvio!” The man behind the tray of flounder was busy gutting a few fish for several well-dressed women. He was missing one eye, but didn’t bother to cover the white scar there. He might have been sixty years old, but his bare arms were muscled like a wrestler’s.
“Rediana, mi cara,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Sell my friends a fish.” She took the coin from Austra’s hand and passed it to him.
He looked at it, frowned, then smiled at Anne and Austra. “Take whichever pleases you, dears.”
“Melto brazi, casnar,” Austra said. She selected one of the flounders and put it in her basket. With a wink, Parvio handed her back a five-minser coin. The fish ought to have cost fifteen.
“Melto brazi, casnara,” Anne told Rediana, as they started toward the carenso.
“It’s nothing, dear,” Rediana said. “Actually, I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk to you.”
“Oh. About what?” Anne asked, a tad suspicious of the woman’s goodwill.
“About a way you could put fish like that on the table every day. You’re both quite pretty, and quite exotic. I can make something out of you. Not for those oafs on our street, either, but for a better class of client.”
“You—you want us to—?”
“It’s only difficult the first time,” Rediana promised. “And not so hard as that. The money is easy, and you’ve got that young swordsman to look out for you, if you come across a rough customer. He works for me already, you know.”
“Cazio?”
“Yes. He looks after some of the girls.”
“And he put you up to this?”
She shook her head. “No. He said you would turn your noses up at me. But men often don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“He does this time,” Anne said, her voice frosty. “Thank you very much for your help with the fish, but I’m afraid we must decline your offer.”
Rediana’s eyes sharpened. “You think you’re too good for it?”
“Of course,” Anne said, before she could think better of it.
“I see.”
“No,” Anne said. “No, you don’t. I think you’re too good for it, too. No woman should have to do that.”
That put a queer little smile on Rediana’s face. But she shrugged. “Still you don’t know what’s best for you. You could earn more in a day than you do now in a month, and not ruin your looks with scrubwork. Think about it. If you change your mind, I’m easy enough to find.” With that, she sauntered off.
The two girls walked in silence for a few moments after Rediana left them. Then Austra cleared her throat. “Anne, I could—”
“No,” Anne said angrily. “Thrice no. I would rather we never made it home, than on those terms.”
Anne was still fuming when they reached the carenso at the corner of Pari Street and the Vio Furo, but the smell of baking bread put everything from her mind but her hunger. The baker—a tall, gaunt man always covered in flour—gave them a friendly smile as they entered. He was slashing the tops of uncooked country loaves with a razor while behind him his assistant slid others into the oven on a long-handled peel. A large black dog lying on the floor looked up sleepily at the girls and put his head back down, thoroughly uninterested.
Bread was piled high in baskets and bins, in all shapes and sizes—golden brown round loaves the size of wagon wheels and decorated with the semblance of olive leaves, rough logs as long as an arm, smaller perechi you could wrap one hand around, crusty egg-shaped rolls dappled with oats—and that was just at first glance.
They spent two minsers on a warm loaf and turned their feet toward the Perto Veto, where their lodgings were located.
There they walked streets bounded by once-grand houses with marble-columned pastatos and balconied upper windows, picking their way through a shatter of unreplaced roof tiles and wine carafes, breathing air gravid with the scents of brine and sewage.
It was four bells, and women with low-cut blouses and coral-red lips—ladies of Rediana’s profession—were already gathered on the upper-story balconies, calling to men who seemed as if they might have money and taunting those who did not. A knot of men on a cracked marble stoop passed around a jug of wine and whistled at Anne and Austra as they went by.
“It’s the Duchess of Herilanz,” one of the men shouted. “Hey, Duchess, give us a lass.”
Anne ignored him. In her month quartered in the Perto Veto, she had determined that most such men were harmless, though annoying.
At the next cross-street they turned up an avenue, entered a building through an open door, and climbed the stairs to their second-floor apartment. As they approached, Anne heard voices above—z’Acatto and someone else.