Bradley, Marion Zimmer - SSC 03 Read Online Free

beneath the dirt and dishevelment
she was very beautiful and very young. "You can go, Bercy. He will not
touch you again; I have bested him fairly upon challenge."
                 She
flung herself on to Lythande's shoulder, clinging. "Don't send me
away!" she begged, clutching, eyes filled with adoration. Lythande
scowled.
                 Predictable, of course. Bercy believed, and who in Sanctuary
would have disbelieved, that the duel had been fought for the girl as prize,
and she was ready to give herself to the winner. Lythande made a gesture of
protest.
                 "No — "
                 The
girl narrowed her eyes in pity. "Is it then with you as Rabben said — that your secret is that you have been deprived of
manhood?" But beyond the pity was a delicious flicker of amusement — what a tidbit of gossip! A juicy bit for
the Streets of Women.
                 "Silence!" Lythande's glance was imperative.
"Come."
                 She
followed, along the twisting streets that led into the Street of Red Lanterns.
Lythande strode with confidence, now, past the House of Mermaids, where, it
was said, delights as exotic as the name promised were to be found; past the
House of Whips, shunned by all except those who refused to go elsewhere; and at
last, beneath the face of the Green Lady as she was worshiped far away and
beyond Ranke, the Aphrodisia House.
                 Bercy
looked around, eyes wide, at the pillared lobby, the brilliance of a hundred
lanterns, the exquisitely dressed women lounging on cushions till they were
summoned. They were finely dressed and bejeweled — Myrtis knew her trade, and how to present her wares — and Lythande guessed that the ragged Bercy's glance was
one of envy; she had probably sold herself in the bazaars for a few coppers or
for a loaf of bread, she was old enough. Yet somehow, like flowers covering a
dungheap, she had kept an exquisite fresh beauty, all gold and white,
flowerlike. Even ragged and half-starved, she touched Lythande's heart.
                 "Bercy,
have you eaten today?"
                 "No, master."
                Lythande
summoned the huge eunuch Jiro, whose business it was to conduct the favored
customers to the chambers of their chosen women, and throw out the drunks and
abusive customers into the street. He came — huge-bellied, naked except for a skimpy loincloth and a dozen rings in his ear — he had once had a lover who was an earring-seller and had
used him to display her' wares.
                 "How
we may serve the magician Lythande?"
                 The
women on the couches and cushions were twittering at one another in surprise
and dismay, and Lythande could almost hear their thoughts;
                 None
of us has been able to attract or seduce the great magician, and this ragged
street wench has caught his eyes? And, being women, Lythande knew they
could see the unclouded beauty that shone through the girl's rags.
                 "Is
Madame Myrtis available, Jiro?"
                "She's
sleeping, O great wizard, but for you she's given orders she's to be waked at
any hour. Is this — " no one alive can be
quite so supercilious as the chief eunuch of a
fashionable brothel — "yours, Lythande, or a gift for my
madame?"
                 "Both, perhaps. Give her something to eat and find her
a place to spend the night."
                 "And a bath, magician? She has fleas enough to louse a
floorful of cushions!"
                "A bath, certainly, and a bath-woman with scents and
oils," Lythande said, "and something in the nature of a whole garment."
                "Leave it to me," said
Jiro expansively, and Bercy looked at Lythande in dread, but went when the magician
gestured to her to go. As Jiro took her away, Lythande saw Myrtis standing in
the doorway; a heavy woman, no longer