a whore—was still a woman, but a bender was something less than a man. That the new Shinga used to be one wasn’t the kind of thing one would expect him to admit, much less announce.
“Not that long ago, the Sa’kagé was primarily smuggling riot weed and tobacco and whiskey,” he said.
Together, Jarl and Momma K had set up a lot of new brothels since the invasion. Most of them barely broke even, but that wasn’t the point. They’d done it to protect as many women and men as they could. The Craven Dragon, however, was one of the lucrative ones because it catered to the exotic. There was a girl named Daydra who could have been Elene Cromwyll’s twin, without the scars. Virginal was her gig. Her suitemate, Kaldrosa Wyn, played a Sethi pirate. There were silk-clad Ladeshians and heavily kohled Modainis and bell-wearing Ymmuri dancing girls.
“Now,” Jarl said, and paused, “you’re whores, I’m the Shinga, and the Sa’kagé still smuggles the same damned things. Like nothing’s changed. But I’ll tell you something: I’ve changed. I got out. I’m different. I took my second chance and did something with it, and you can, too.” It was the only part of the sermon Jarl thought might be a lie.
He’d asked Momma K about it. “Why don’t people argue about whether the earth is flat?” she asked.
Jarl shrugged. “It’s general knowledge.”
“Exactly,” she said. “The things that evoke passion are the things we can’t know for certain.”
“Ah, like the gods,” Jarl said.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re sure everything you say is true. It matters that you passionately want to believe they’re true—because then you’ll be compelling. And in the end, what matters is not whether the girls believe your arguments. What matters is that they believe in you.”
It was the kind of thing the old Momma K would have said. Jarl was vaguely disappointed. She had seemed different after the coup, after Kylar had poisoned her and given her the antidote. Perhaps the pressure of looking in the face of unrelenting evil was destroying her hope. But her pragmatism had the ring of truth, so Jarl preached on.
Jarl hadn’t banged since he’d become Shinga. He hadn’t slept with a man since he left Stephan’s house the night of the invasion, but he hadn’t slept with a woman, either. He’d survived all his life by doing what he had to, always building his web of friends and influence, always looking to the future when he wouldn’t have to whore.
That future had arrived so suddenly he didn’t know what to do with it. Freedom lay useless in his hands. He didn’t know how to feel. It reminded him of Harani iron bulls. He’d never seen one, of course, but it was said they captured the young calves and bound them to a stake with thick chains. By the time the iron bulls were full grown—more than fifteen feet high at their mighty shoulders—they could snap the chains, but they didn’t. Their handlers staked them out with thin rope. The iron bulls were so sure they couldn’t get free, they never tried.
Jarl had been chained to sex and pleasing his clientele for so long that now he felt sexless. He’d never had a choice before. Most of his clients were men, but there had been women too, from the entire range of levels of attractiveness. Now that he had a choice, he couldn’t make it. He couldn’t have said with any certainty whether he would have preferred men or women if the life of a rent boy hadn’t been forced on him.
The girls at the brothels treated him differently now. They looked at him differently. They flirted.
It was terrifying. Flirtation carried demands. There were appropriate and inappropriate responses to learn and he didn’t know the rules of sex outside a brothel. His regulars had always spoken of it as being unsatisfying—but then their experiences couldn’t exactly be representative or everyone would be regulars at a brothel, wouldn’t they?
He was losing his focus. He couldn’t think about this now. Hope had to be sold as a whole package.
“Of all the women in the Warrens,” Jarl said, “you’re the luckiest. You were lucky enough to become whores here.” He shook his head. “Lucky enough to become whores. Six months ago, most of you would have crossed the street rather than pass a whore. Now you are whores, and I’m the Shinga, and the Sa’kagé is still doing the same damn things.