seen life played out in others. She was still so innocent— ignorant, really— and more desperate than she would acknowledge.
"Please, Mistress Grace," he said with unusual familiarity, "we must leave before it is too late."
She reached for his hand, and he hoped she was finally about to heed his words. But instead, she lifted it to the rope handle, turned, and pushed open the door.
The dark room before them swirled as motes of dust were caught in the last streaks of day. Sunset skidded over the threshold, exposing emptiness— a chamber that had once held buckwheat grain or sacks of hemp waiting to be taken to market. Dried game may once have hung from the low rafters. Now a swag of herbs swayed in the afternoon breeze with a lonely rustling.
"I see I'm wrong. No one's here," Ahcho said. "I brought you all this way for nothing. So sorry! We will go now."
Grace stepped down onto the dirt floor and held up her hand. "Sh-sh-sh," she whispered as she walked deeper into the room.
Ahcho, practically stumbling over her heels, repeated, "Please, Madam, we go."
But now she had reached the door that led into the second chamber and smiled at him over her shoulder.
"I must warn you," he began, but it was too late.
Grace had turned the handle and pushed open the second wooden plank. Smoke curled out from the darkness of the back chamber, and Ahcho followed his mistress as she continued toward the lamplight. More than the stinging smoke, he hated the stench. Ahcho pulled out his handkerchief, one of the master's own, and offered it to the mistress, but she shook her head. He lifted the thin fabric to his nose and tried not to gag. Mistress Grace did not stop but proceeded into the room, which slowly came into focus as Ahcho's eyes adjusted to the dim light.
The sight was the same as it had been when he'd come here before: all around them on dingy mats lay mere stick figures with sallow eyes and sunken cheeks. Some sucked on opium pipes as the oil lamps were fired up and smoking. Ahcho tried not to look too closely for the source of the constant moaning. In a corner, the same young girls huddled, their heads upon one another's bare breasts, their legs and arms riddled with sores. They looked like tattered dolls, flung about unclothed and uncared-for. Their eyes stared fiercely in search of something— food, no doubt. They didn't even have the strength to rise and curl themselves around the visitors and beg. Ahcho almost missed their pathetic attentions, but he could see that they had lost all life.
The smell was unbearable, and Ahcho tried again to hand his mistress the Reverend's handkerchief. This time she took it, but she didn't press it to her nose, where it might have done some good.
"We've seen enough," he whispered. "I will ask if they know the Reverend's whereabouts, but then we must leave. They have the sickness."
Grace studied the prone figures. "These people?" she asked, finally taking in the drugged and ill bodies.
"The cholera, Mistress. That explains the smell."
As he said it, she finally pressed the cloth to her nose and began to gag. And yet she still did not turn back. Instead, Ahcho followed his mistress as her dusty, cracked boots shuffled toward the niche where the gamblers had once tossed their dice and raised their voices in drunken boasts. Only one or two men sat on the hard ground now, their legs splayed and their backs slumped against the damp mud walls.
An oil lamp flickered from where it had been placed upon a barrel beside a straw mattress. Upon that primitive bed lay the shriveled figure of the old proprietress of the brothel.
Ahcho stepped around the corner and now saw what had stopped his mistress in her tracks. There, in the darkest shadow, seated on a small stool placed against the wall, was the Reverend. His head re mained bowed, and his hands lay folded in his lap, the fingers nervously fingering the sack that held the orb. Ahcho noticed immediately how sallow and ill shaven his cheeks had become. The man needed his proper ablutions. Ahcho stepped closer and would have given anything to attend to his master, or at least fling away that terrible hat given to him by the nomads. It pained Ahcho to see it still cocked crookedly upon the Reverend's head.
Mistress Grace, however, did not appear nearly as upset by the