a floor manager of the Crossroads, then took sips from a number of wineglasses a pretty young slave brought out on a tray, apparently discussing them with the manager.
Of course. Atevia was wine merchant to the nobility. The Crossroads would be a major account, or had the potential to be one, Teia supposed. Atevia was here for his actual business. Maintaining contacts with a huge number of important people was simply part of his job.
As Atevia seemed to be concluding his work with the manager, Teia slid closer.
The manager slipped out from their table and said, “Oh, there are some barrels in the cellar that I’m afraid have gone bad. Could you check on those for me?”
Atevia grinned and said, “Well . . . if you insist.”
“Oh, I do,” the manager said, winking. “There’s a new, ahem, barrel I think you really need to sample.”
Teia actually thought they were still talking about work until Atevia reached a hand down to adjust himself on the stairs.
Oh, gods, she really was naïve. Conspiratorial winks? The new barrel Atevia needed to sample . . . in the basement, which happened to be a brothel?
Dammit, T, how naïve can you be?
Teia had given up her chance to kill Murder Sharp—not to do anything productive, not to save anyone, but to wait around while Atevia emptied his coin purse before his big meeting tonight.
Suddenly, a bubbling cauldron of bile in her boiled and spilled over, hissing and spitting as it hit the flames of Teia’s frustration and disappointment.
She wanted to wreck this man. She wanted to ruin him. She was going to follow him to his whore. She’d experiment on him: see if she could make him go limp, then back off, let him get aroused again, then make him go limp again. Hell, maybe she could figure out how to trigger his climax before he even touched the woman. That might be handy, too, not least for Teia to protect herself in the future—assuming she had one. And such practice wasn’t exactly possible on terrified slaves, who don’t tend to spend much time aroused.
As she followed Atevia into the Crossroad’s basement, she knew she was acting out of all proportion.
She barely knew this man. Why did she hate him so particularly? Why did she want to punish this one so much?
Something about him grated her. So he was stupid, lustful, deceitful, small. Murder Sharp was worse—a hundred times worse—and she didn’t hate him, not exactly. She feared Sharp. Hated how vulnerable he made her feel, tried to convince herself she could stop him from making her feel that way again, but she didn’t despise him.
A beautiful hostess in a white silk chemise that barely hung past her pudenda greeted Atevia at the base of the stairs. She clearly recognized him.
The hostess’s dark kinked hair was a perfect halo around her head, and when she walked, leading Atevia to a room, she stepped as if walking on a rope, her hips swaying with each deliberate step.
Atevia didn’t look anywhere else.
The woman glanced back over her shoulder, saw his appreciation, and smiled beatifically. She was either a very good mummer or she actually enjoyed her work.
Amazing how we deceive ourselves, and tell ourselves we do good, Teia thought.
And then she was struck with the thought that maybe she wasn’t exempt from that ‘we.’ This woman helped men cheat on their wives; Teia murdered people. She couldn’t really look down on her. The woman was most likely a slave herself, making the best of a bad life she hadn’t asked for.
Teia was the last person who should be judging her, but Teia’s hatred was like a flame right now, lashing about, looking for fuel to feed on wherever it could.
She tried to hold off that fire, push it toward some barren, analytical place.
Why did she hate this man who seemed beguiled by the lowest of sins, lust? A mere sin of the body, of weakness. It was common, trivial.
Yet entangling. Teia’s own mother had—
It hit Teia in the face.
Atevia Zelorn was the very image of Teia’s mother. Blinded by lust, choosing to disregard the suffering of those who loved them, Atevia was selling out his family, while Teia’s mother had literally sold her family. Teia’s father had tried to give mother all the better things in life she said she needed, and had traveled farther and farther abroad to get them for her—which had only given her more opportunity to cheat on him.
Teia was going to destroy