Countdown: 6 days, 20 hours
Aurelia pushes the large rimmed sunglasses she wears higher up her nose, and fidgets with the silk scarf she wears wrapped around her hair. She is acutely aware of every black and gold Mercenary uniform she sees on the street. She waits for one of them to recognize her, to twist her arms behind her back and drag her, kicking and screaming, to a holding cell.
She wishes she could stay cocooned in the safety of Camellia's mansion, but she does not have that luxury. Every tick of the clock is a tick closer to execution.
So she is here, out on the streets in broad daylight, less than seventy two hours after murdering a man. Holding a loaf of bread with which to bribe a pack of filthy children for their assistance. Three days ago, she had lived amongst pearls and gold-silk, in an underwater bedroom with a window overlooking the aquatic life in the bay. Today, she is hiding her face beneath cheap plastic glasses and begging for help from beggars.
It almost doesn't seem real.
She sticks close to the walls of the buildings as she walks, trying to blend in with the coral bricks to avoid the prying eyes of the Mercenaries assigned to Patrol duty. It is a relief when she is finally able to slip into the shadows beneath the bullet train bridge. There are seven such bridges in Glascoast, spoking outwards from the central hub of Polis Center like a wheel, and beneath their arching structures is where the little beggars she has come to see are known to make their homes.
Aurelia reluctantly removes her sunglasses so her eyes can adjust to the lack of light, and her nose wrinkles a little, in spite of herself, at the smell. There are worn linen blankets and cardboard boxes haphazardly leaned against the walls of the bridge base, a makeshift curtain rigged up around an area that smells to be used as the bathroom. Aurelia breathes through her mouth.
The children present grow quiet when they see her, their eyes large over their hollow cheeks. Aurelia holds the paper wrapped loaf out towards them, wordlessly. The youngest of the group step tentatively forward, each taking a piece of still-warm bread from her hands with their grimy, unwashed fingers. It takes every amount of Courtesan training Aurelia possesses not to shudder and wipe her palms clean against her dress.
Only when the little ones have eaten several bites do the older children finally step forward, convinced that there's no poison baked into the yeasty crust. The oldest of them all- those ready to tumble over the cusp of twelve into their legal working years- are the only ones that hang back as the other children eat their fill.
They know that a meal always comes at a price.
It is these children that Aurelia focuses on.
One is a pretty little girl with soulful eyes, chewing on a thumbnail as she watches one of the little ones lick crumbs from his hands. Another is scrawny with a mean, pinched face, glaring at her beneath heavy brows as his stomach rolls like thunder. The third isn't focused on her, or the bread, at all. Instead, he is watching the other children with a calculating gaze, concern in his guarded expression.
"It's sourdough," Aurelia says, stepping toward the third boy, pasting on a coaxing smile. He stares at her, unblinking, unmoving. She wonders if he's ever even tasted a loaf of real bread before.
Wheat is expensive, imported from far-off Rivergate- too costly for the lower rungs of the Citizenry class to afford. Instead, they subsist on the rice grown in the vast Glascostian rice paddies, the salted eel jerky so readily available in the marketplace, the fish they can catch themselves along the shore. Bread of any kind is a luxury. But bread with a golden crust and a soft, white, spongy center is the stuff of children's dreams.
The child licks his lips, but his guard remains up. Smart. Responsible.
"What do you want for it?" he asks, crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive gesture. The other children pause in eating, their bellies full enough to wonder the same.
"Nothing- for the bread," she tells him, honestly. "But, for some information, I'll bring you to the patisserie and buy you any sweet you want."
He eyes her, up and down. Takes in the dress she wears- a beige, shapeless, backless thing made of middling-quality material- takes in the lack of adornment save for a simple colored glass necklace. She knows what the boy sees: a middle class woman; maybe one of the lucky members of the Citizenry born into a good family, maybe a guilder- someone rich enough to afford the treats she doles out, but not so rich as to draw too much attention or try to pick her pockets.
In the end, the temptation and hunger win out over suspicion. "Anything I want?" he parrots, and she smiles at him reassuringly and nods.
Won over, the boy tentatively reaches out and takes the loaf of bread from her hands. "What do you want to know?" he asks, still wary, even as he takes an appreciative sniff of the bread. She notices the way he cradles it in his hands as though it is made of gold, how slow he is to take a bite, how long he savors the crunch of the crust.
She'd come close to this, once. If Kaol's parents hadn't taken her in after her Pabu's death, she would have joined the ranks of the bullet brats twelve years ago, would have starved in obscurity among boys like this. She pushes the thought away, and pulls out a picture of the mark she had decided was most worthy of death- Patricus Warmus.
"I've heard this man goes to one of the brothels around here pretty frequently. Do you know which one?" she asks, and the boy blinks as he looks up at her.
"What're you, his kept girl or something?" he asks, and she shrugs her shoulders, puts the photograph back in the simple leather satchel that hangs cross-wise over her body.
"Let's just say I'm an interested party," she replies.
He looks her over again, and then snorts. "If he's your man, he can afford to take care of you a lot better than does. You should get a new one," the child scoffs, glancing at her dress and necklace again. Aurelia forces a smile.
"Do you know where he goes, or not?" she asks, and the boy shrugs, scratches at his greasy brown hair with dirty nails.
"I don't know the name of it," he says, "It's a couple streets out, I think. Seen him coming and going from there a couple 'a times," he adds.
Aurelia nods. "Well then, why don't you show me, and we can stop at the patisserie on the way?" she offers, and the boy passes the rest of the loaf of bread to the scrawny, mean looking boy. He gives the mean looking one a significant look, and receives a stoic nod in return.
Aurelia makes sure her disguise is well in place as she steps back out into the sunlight, and holds her breath as a Patrolman passes her. Luckily, he is too busy eyeing the boy to ensure he won't pickpocket anyone to pay her any mind. Still, she doesn't breathe easily again until they are standing at the patisserie window. If the boy notices her discomfort, he doesn't mention it. In fact, he doesn't say anything at all until he puts his grubby hand against the display window and asks again:
"Anything I want?"
She nods.
Immediately, his grubby finger points to a two-tiered cake, slathered with layer upon layer of decadent cream-colored frosting and topped with a spun sugar pelican floating over a swirl of guava jam.
"A slice of the guava cake?" she asks, and he shakes his head.
"The whole cake?" she clarifies, and he nods.
Aurelia sighs. It will be expensive, but worth the investment.
"Wait outside," she says. When she steps inside and asks the shop girl to box up the cake in the window, she sees the boy's face pressed up against the glass, watching with wide and hungry eyes. As soon as she's paid the girl and stepped out the door, the boy is there, arms held out. She gently deposits the cake into his arms, and he stares down at it with wide eyes, as though he is convinced that he's hallucinating the heft of it in his grasp.
"The brothel?" she asks, drawing his attention back to her and the task at hand.
She sees him shake himself out of his sense of wonderment, and he jerks his chin in the direction they will be heading. She follows him as he winds his way through the streets, sticking close to the pilings of the bullet bridge that hovers over Hock Ave. She follows him for several hundred meters, making a left behind him onto 32nd street.
"There," he says, jerking his chin toward an ordinary looking, run down building, with windows made from red glass. She thanks him, and he scurries away, his arms wrapped tightly around the cake box as though he thinks she'll change her mind and snatch it from his grasp now that she's gotten what she wants.
She sucks in a deep breath, adjusts the bag across her body, and crosses the street to the near dilapidated brothel. 32nd street is in Midcity, halfway between Polis Center and the wall that separates Glascoast from the miles of farmland that stretch outwards toward the leafy green canopy of the jungle, where the Amaliem- the tribes her Pabu, as well as Kaol's father, had once been members of- live.
Warmus must have made more than his fair share of enemies at the more reputable brothels for him to come to Midcity. The Guilds don't even bother to maintain the buildings in this section of their hepts, since the people who live here often destroy things as soon as they are fixed. Graffiti mars the walls- 'No Justice, No Peace,' the motto of a terrorist organization set to murder the Senators- has been painted on more buildings than not.
A senator going to Midcity at a time like this is beyond reckless, to say the least. Going to a brothel in Midcity at all is putting your life at jeopardy- half the girls are strung out on Blaze, the other have some form of disease, and you're more likely to get mugged than not.
She's careful not to draw attention to her purse as she walks.
A bell rings as she steps through the front door, and Aurelia is pleasantly surprised by how clean the place is, considering. The light that pours through the washed windows paints the well-scrubbed floors in varying shades of scarlet.
A dark-haired girl lounges on a chair behind the front desk, her chin propped up in one hand, a book held in the other. Not the sort of picture Aurelia had conjured for a prostitute in this area. The girl's eyes are painted dark, her thin lips the trademark whore-red. She eyes Aurelia's clothes, her necklace, and appears to decide she's not worth fussing over.
"We don't have any boys- none that're willin' to serve girls, anyway," she grumbles, casting her eyes back down to her book.
The madam should definitely put someone else on greeting duty.
Apparently noticing she's still standing there, the girl glances back up from the book.
"You want a woman?" she asks, slightly more interest in her tone at the prospect of earning money.
She folds down her page and leans forward on her elbows, throwing Aurelia a sultry smile that manages to make her look something close to attractive.
"Sorry, Miss. You looked like you liked the lads," she says with a wink.
Aurelia smiles her best placid Camellia smile, and shakes her head. "I'm not here for any of that," she says, and the girl's gaze shutters again, her lips turning down into a scowl. "But, if you'd be willing to answer a few questions, I'll make it worth your while," she offers.
The dark-haired girl narrows her eyes, their black depths taking on a speculative gleam. "Twenty alums a question," she says, and Aurelia shrugs her shoulders and nods her head.
The girl leans forward again, all smiles and charm now that she knows she'll be paid. "Well then, how can I help you?"
"Do many Senators come here?" Aurelia asks, and the girl shrugs her shoulders, looking pointedly at Aurelia's bag. She sighs, takes out a 20 alum coin, and slides it to the whore, who immediately pockets it.
"Not many. We got one regular, comes at least three times a week. Only took a shine to one of the girls, though, dumb gilt. Heard he pays good."
"What days?" Aurelia asks, sliding another coin across the desk as she does, straight into the girl's waiting hands.
"Weekdays, mostly, when he's in the Polis on business. He's due in today. Usually calls to give us a head's up so his girl doesn't get booked. Happened once; wasn't pretty."
She stops, seems to consider the question more carefully. Her eyes narrow again and she leans back in her chair. "Who's asking?"
Aurelia turns on her best smile, the one that makes her dimples wink as she leans forward, extending her hand to the girl.
"Elia Payne, Entertainer's Guild. I'm writing an article on the corruption of the Senatorial class and the most recent scandals of the Senators. Rumor has it that not only was Warmus banned from soliciting Courtesans, he has also been using his stipend- paid by our tax dollars, mind- to pay for sex workers."
The girl snorts and rolls her eyes. "Hmph. Anyone else would be thrown into indentured servitude. But there's always a glow in the bay," she grumbles.
The expression references how Solar power is cut off to all but the wealthiest of Glastcoastian citizens after 9:00PM, while the bay always glows teal from the underwater lights of Indigo Isle, regardless of the hour. The Senatorial class has always been held to a different standard.
Aurelia makes a noise of agreement and mutual distaste at the back of her throat.
"Which girl is it?" she asks, placing another twenty-note coin into the prostitute's eager palms.
"That'd be Mari," the girl promptly answers. "Price is sixty an hour if you want to book her for an interview," she offers, and Aurelia sighs.
The girl at the desk just made the same amount in a matter of minutes.
"She's available now," the girl prompts, and Aurelia pulls out three more twenty-alum coins and hands them over.
The afternoon has already cost her a small fortune.
The girl immediately hops up and gestures for Aurelia to follow her. As she does, Aurelia notes that the slit up the side of the girl's sheer dress reaches all the way to her lowest rib. And to think, some of these girls try to pass themselves off as having once been Courtesans.
The prostitute knocks at door number 8, on the second floor, and it is answered by a pretty, young, nearly shapeless slip of a thing with wide eyes and pale pink lingerie. The brash girl from downstairs waves goodbye, and wishes Aurelia a good interview with a saucy wink.
Aurelia struggles not to roll her eyes.
The younger working-girl beckons Aurelia into her assigned room, empty save for a cot and a shower, and as she does, Aurelia notes a pronounced limp, a slight twisting of the young thing's right foot. Once the door is closed and Aurelia is in, the girl runs her fingers up Aurelia's spine, left bare by the backless nature of her dress. She jerks away and shakes her head, bile rising to the back of her throat.
"No- no thank you. That's not why I'm here," she says, and digs in her bag for the picture of Warmus. "Do you know this man?" she asks, before the girl has a chance to question her motives.
Immediately, Mari's face goes white and her lower lip trembles. "Put that away," she whispers, covering her face with her hands and sinking down onto her cot, quivering.
"You're afraid of him?" Aurelia asks, and the girl looks back up at her- all wide eyes and pale pink lips and freckled cheeks. She manages a tight nod, and bites her lip as she wraps her arms around her thin frame.
"He pays ten times the going rate, so the Madam doesn't care what he does, so long as it doesn't send me to the hospital again," she whispers, holding herself tighter. She is tiny- impossibly so, with narrow hips and shapeless breasts and eyelashes that curl to her eyebrows.
"How old are you?" Aurelia demands, and the girl's dark eyes flash up to meet hers, fear written in her gaze.
"Sixteen," she says, and Aurelia can practically taste the lie in the air. It is illegal to trade a body for alums until a person has reached their sixteenth year; it is why the sale of a Courtesan's priminocte frequently falls the day after their sixteenth birthday.
"Maybe in another year, or two," Aurelia concedes, and the girl's lip trembles again.
"I'm sixteen," the girl insists again.
In the end, the truth of her age does not matter. Aurelia doesn't need to play the character game to wrap her mind around this one. Mari was likely one of the bullet brats, probably one of the ones who dropped out of Primary before becoming eligible to take her comprehensive entrance exams to the guilds at the age of twelve. Who couldn't perform any jobs requiring manual labor given her crippled right leg, and likely wouldn't be hired as a shop girl for the same reason. With no one to go to for help, and no job on the horizon, prostitution in Midcity must have been the only option left to her.
"What does the Senator like?" she asks, changing the subject away from the girl's age. There is nothing she can do for the child. Besides, the investigators of the Mercenary's guild have bigger fish to fry than prosecuting a madam in midtown for potentially trafficking minors.
Like hunting down the woman who just murdered a Sevenist's son.
The girl goes pale at the question, her lips draining of color and her knuckles going white as she clenches them into fists. She doesn't answer, not right away.
"He likes it when I cry. And bleed. He chokes me until I think I'm going to die. And after... he likes to look at my bruises. Makes sure no one else marked me but him," she admits, quietly.
Aurelia casts a more critical eye over the girl- sees the slightest tint of gray beneath carefully applied concealer and powder on the line of her jaw, her collarbones, her arms, her thighs.
She has become very familiar with the shade of bruises beneath powder.
"I have a proposition for you," Aurelia says, and Mari looks up at her with watery eyes. "Let me trade places with you, just for tonight. Sneak me in, and I'll take your place when he comes. And I promise you, you'll never have to worry about him again," she says, and the girl stops shaking for the first time since Aurelia drew Warmus' picture from her bag.
The girl licks her lips. "Do you promise?" she asks, her voice small and unsure.
"I promise," Aurelia swears, clenching her hands together and forcing herself to appear strong, even though the thought of being alone with someone so alike to Marcus makes her want to tremble like a leaf.
The girl nods, shakily. Seems to draw herself together.
"He comes the same time, three times a week. Just after the power goes out and the glow-globes kick on. I don't think he wants us to recognize him- but when he's not here, I see his face in the papers," she says, voice soft and cracked.
Aurelia wonders how long it'll be before the girl turns to Blaze to forget.
"If you get here at dusk, I'll make sure the back door's unlocked," the girl continues. "Just act like you belong- if the other girls see you, say the Madam hired you on a trial run, and they'll buy it. It happens pretty often- a lot of them don't make it past their first night."
Aurelia reaches out and takes the girl's tiny, fragile, bird-boned hands within both of hers. In spite of herself, she feels for the girl.
"Thank you, Mari," she says softly, sincerely, putting all the compassion and gratitude she can into those four simple syllables. It earns her a tremulous smile.
She leaves the girl with another promise, and Mari looks at her with something like hope in her eyes as she makes her exit. It makes Aurelia nauseous.
Aurelia quickly walks the block back to Hock Ave, her head down to cast her face in shadow. She jogs up the steps to the bullet train station, and purchases a ticket to the station on Straemus Ave. She finds her seat- a plush bench upholstered in heavy, navy brocade, and scoots close to the window.
She stares out at the view, watching the polis grow more and more polished with each stop closer to Polis Center. The buildings go from worn to whitewashed so that they gleam like pearls in the sunlight. Within three stops, they have reached Polis Boulevard- the central-most road of Glascoast, which connects each of the seven bullet bridges that outline the seven hepts the polis is divided into. The boulevard wraps its way in a circle below the ring-shaped intersection point of the bullet bridges. In the center of it all, behind a moat adorned with mosaic tile, stands the gleaming, marble pearl of the Central Seven's and Senator's seat of power.
What used to be known as the Senatorial Palace was rechristened Polis Hall, after the civil war that toppled Argryus sixty years ago. It sits, a vestige of the tyrannical past, nestled behind a moat as wide as a river, with walls so high all that can be seen from the outside is its massive, multi-colored glass dome, which refracts rainbows of light in every direction.
As the train stops at the station located above Polis Boulevard, Aurelia feels her stomach bottom out.
Gathered at the landing deck are a group of men dressed in black and gold- the colors of the mercenary's guild. They hold a picture in their hands, and are checking the faces of each person who plans to board.
She feels her palms grow clammy; her heart races. A sick feeling coils in the pit of her gut.
Behind her, someone grumbles about the Senators' lap-dogs doing the politicians' dirty work for them. Another quickly hushes the man, sounding panicked at being overheard by the Mercenaries.
Aurelia curls one leg under her and lifts her arm so that her forearm is pressed against the glass. She buries her head against her forearm, and closes her eyes, forcing herself to even out her breaths, despite the hammering of her heart. She drops her jaw a little so that her mouth opens, and breathes in and out, slowly allowing her chest to rise and fall as she feigns slumber.
She hears heavy footsteps board the train ahead of the rush of passengers, hears those feet stop periodically along each bench. "...looking for the girl who killed the Helborus heir," she hears a gruff voice say in response to a question as to what is holding up the train, and she turns a little further into her hand, making sure to catch her upper lip against her forearm and scrunch up her nose, exposing her teeth and causing her mouth to drop open wider. Someone scoffs- a derisive, nasty sound. Someone else complains about being late for an appointment.
The footsteps get closer and closer. Finally, they come to a stop just beside her. Her heart is racing- pounding so hard against her chest she is sure the mercenary can hear from where he stands at the side of her bench. Another breath- and she feels a pool of drool dribble past her lips, down her chin. She takes in another breath, and it makes a gurgling sound- halfway between a snort and a snore.
The footsteps immediately move on.
She waits until the heavy footsteps have left the train, until the crowd of new passengers presses in, until she counts three more stops, before she allows herself to release her breath and open her eyes. But the tension stays, pulling tight along her shoulders.
It intensifies as she walks up to Camellia's front gates and the woman's hired guards allow her in. The sight of the men's black-and-gold tunics make her breath hitch, and as she hurries up the curved marble staircase to her room, she wills herself not to hyperventilate.
She can't stay here- not anymore, not with security crawling over the well-manicured lawns, watching over her every move. Their employer swore them to secrecy, yes, but a man's loyalty to his guild often runs even thicker than blood. What if one- just one- of her bodyguards reports Aurelia's presence?
She reminds herself to breathe, and methodically sets about packing her things. The cantaloupe colored dress Camellia had altered to fit her narrower form, the shoes remaining in her closet, the clothing and cosmetics she had purchased that morning. The ruined handbag filled with the jewelry Kaol had the foresight to tie about her waist before her mad race to the mainland, the heavy sack of alums that Camellia had traded for her garnet necklace, which should more than pay for all possible expenditures over the next week.
Camellia materializes at her door, and when Aurelia looks up, she sees that her former master's face is carefully blank.
"Where are you going?" the woman asks, her tone flat.
Aurelia knows how reminiscent this moment must be of the day she'd left, three years ago. Then, Camellia had watched with a shuttered expression as Aurelia had packed up every piece of her life, every piece of her future, into one, small duffel bag.
Just as she is doing now.
"I'll come back," she says, zipping her bag closed, meeting Camellia's guarded, neutral expression. "There's too much attention focused here. I need to go somewhere safe."
"You are safe, Ari," she says, and Aurelia shakes her head.
"Cam- everyone in your neighborhood is wealthy, powerful. I stand out like a shark in a reef. They'll notice that I keep odd hours; eventually, someone will contact the Mercenary's Guild about suspicious activity. If that happens, even your father won't be able to stop the drones from swarming," She insists, toying with her earlobe. Camellia instantly reaches up and pulls her hand back down to her side, interrupting the nervous habit.
"Where will you go?" Camellia asks quietly, releasing Aurelia's wrist. "You can't go to the Baliems- the mercenaries will have patrolmen staked out by the lighthouse," she warns.
"The Mercs don't venture into AS Hept much, not with how strained things are right now between the Assassin's and Mercenaries guilds. I'll be safest there," she says, and Camellia lets out a deep sigh and nods.
"Colin lives there, off tenth and Hock," she offers, and Aurelia breathes out a sigh of relief. "Might as well make him earn his commission, yes?" Camellia adds with an amused quirk of her lips.
When she has all of her meager possessions packed into a borrowed suitcase, Camellia presses Colin's address into Aurelia's palm, and lightly kisses the younger woman's forehead. She says nothing- she won't say goodbye, not again, not so soon, and Aurelia isn't sure what to make of that.
"I'll come back," Aurelia promises again, and Camellia manages a thin-lipped smile.
"If you need anything-" Camellia begins, and Aurelia nods.
"I'll call," she agrees, and embraces the woman who is mother, sister, and friend rolled into one.
As Aurelia climbs back aboard the bullet train, ticket in one hand, suitcase in the other, she checks her watch for the time. She has four hours until she needs to return to the brothel's back door, to take a life in exchange for her survival.
With the realization, she suddenly feels blood- hot and slick- beneath her palms. She wipes her hands against her dress and swallows hard against the rising tide of bile. She looks out the window, and forces the memories deep, deep down.
She'll think of it later, she decides.
Her vision swims and she closes her eyes.
If she can't hold herself together now, how will she survive the night?