Prince of Traitors

Rahmi

Six Years Ago

"This is our only chance," Val says. She's wearing a dress of sheer, dark blue fabric, wrapped around her chest and hips, falling off her shoulders. She's tense next to me, her bare arm pressed against mine.

"Tonight?" I ask, my voice quiet.

My sister doesn't look at me. "Tonight," she replies. "I told Iris you're feeling ill and I have my blood. We'll be cooped up in our room all night, not to be disturbed."

I exhale, long and shaking. I nod, ignoring how my heart jumps in my chest.

Val glances up at me, the long coils of her hair swinging. Her gold earrings clink as she turns her head. "You were never good at hiding your nerves, little brother." She chuckles a little. "But after tonight, we won't have to suffer this place any longer. We do this, and we're free," she whispers.

I look down at her, and find her hazel eyes focused sternly on me. Her mouth is pressed into a tight line, her brows knit.

I take a deep breath, the straps of sheer fabric wrapped across my chest and shoulders squeezing too hard. "You're sure we can pull it off?"

"If we do it right—and we will," Val says. "We've been through so much already. We won't fail."

I give her a small smile. Even now she quells my nerves, soothes my troubled mind. "Together," I say.

The grin she gives me is broad and confident. "Together."

*

The Violet Iris is swathed in candlelight as night falls over Grayside. The Odrendi city sits nestled low in a valley, waterfalls rushing into the river that curves around it and continues on to the distant sea.

In the room where Val and I have endured nearly seven years of horrors, we change out of the sheer blue fabric that is the uniform of the workers in the pleasure house. The fabric loops around my underarms and the tops of my shoulders, and crisscrosses over my chest. It serves no more purpose than the sheer smallclothes that wrap around my hips My gold cuffs dig into my biceps and wrists, the collar around my throat stiff and unyielding.

Our wide, plush bed is draped in canopies of the same cloth, the only double-wide bed in the whole brothel, perhaps maybe the one in Madam Iris' chambers. The only good thing about being the exotic brother-sister pair in this pleasure house is the comfort of a bigger room, but it doesn't make up for the shit we've had to do in here: being forced to touch my sister, kiss her, let people do awful things to both of us, unable to raise a finger against our mistress.

Val stands before our bed as she removes her dress. Her back is marred with scars from whippings old and new, same as mine. She pulls on trousers and a shirt, all black, stolen from drunken customers over the course of several months.

My change of clothes is the same. Though my heart pounds under the shirt and jacket I wear, my hands are steady as I tuck the sharp stiletto up my sleeve. Val and I don't speak as we get changed and pull on our stolen boots. She tucks a stiletto of her own into her sleeve.

Pausing by the door, we listen for sounds in the hallway. Laughter drifts up from the parlor downstairs, where the patrons are gathered for the evening's festivities.

The hallway is empty beyond the door. We leave our room, silent and quick, and jog along the balcony overlooking the courtyard. Down below, customers and prostitutes mill about, sipping wine and laughing amongst themselves. The night is young, couples not yet departing the courtyard in favor of the private rooms.

Val and I dart along the perimeter of the courtyard, to the southern end of the pleasure house. My sister pauses, signals to me with a tilt of her head, and we silently slip into Madam Iris' sitting room. My stiletto slides into my hand.

Her office is attached to her sitting room. I catch the scratching sound of a quill against paper through the door that stands ajar. I peer through the gap and see Iris at her desk, balancing her books in her blue gown, her blonde hair falling over one shoulder.

Val taps my arm. "Shall we?" she whispers, nearly soundless.

I grin at her, my heart drumming in my chest. For the first time in a very, very long time, I am filled with exhilaration, hope. I push the door open and it creaks on its hinges.

Iris doesn't look up. "You've disturbed me enough for one night, girl," she begins, her voice sharp. "How many times must I whip you before you remember to knock—"

She doesn't finish her sentence, because my blade has sliced deep across her throat.