He couldn’t help it. She noticed the color in his cheek, and her careless gaze became curious; but she said nothing. Her fingers brushed his hair from his forehead. “A proper server,” she commented and stepped back to let Bogrevil see the boy dressed in white finery, loose silk trousers, and a slender jacket.
“He wears the clothes well enough, don’t he? Superb, Eskie, superb. Now we must find out if he can balance a tray.”
She considered him. “I shall be surprised if he cannot.”
Bogrevil turned to leave. “Oh,” he said and raised a finger. “We have to give him a name. Can’t keep calling him boy. If I were to call out Come here, boy, whenever I wanted him, I’d be crushed by the onslaught.”
“He has no name?”
“I don’t know. His former keeper didn’t bother to assign him one, and he can’t tell me, if he even knows.”
She put a finger to her lips and tapped them. “Let’s call him…something like divers.”
“What?”
“Because he is different.”
“Diverus,” he repeated, mispronouncing what she’d said. “Yes, we got others like that, don’t we—Delicatus and Draucus. Like a—what, lineage, yes.”
Rather than correct him—never a good idea with Bogrevil—she concurred. “Diverus, then.” It was not a bad name in any case.
“Different. Oh, yes, he is. Nice job, Eskie. I can always rely on you an’ your upbringing.” She bowed her head at the compliment. “You go take him to his room, show him about. Maybe some of it’ll stick. We’ll try him out tonight if he can balance a tray.” He went off to see to the rest of his “merchandise.”
Eskie had put on a long white robe. Her black hair cascaded down the back of it. She wore bangles on her wrists and a small chain of bells on her ankles, so that her every movement tinkled and chimed as she led him through a warren of rooms and tunnels. Something about the sound created odd warmth in his belly.
The main parlors of the paidika—there were three—had intricate tapestries hung upon the walls. Two had carpets on the floor, and pillows strewn upon the carpets. The room farthest from the stairs had a square pedestal in the center, and small, backless cushioned chairs ringing the sides of it, as if a show of some sort was about to begin. Lamps and candles of various sizes and shapes filled every corner, and lanterns dangled from the ceilings. Bowls containing some sort of aromatic herbs floating in liquid stood off to each side of the doorways. Their entering the room swirled spice around them. The rooms were not occupied.
Leading from the parlors were narrow halls. The one she led him along opened onto a wider corridor lined with curtained doorways, with leather settees in between them.
Eskie saw him trying to peer into the rooms, and she stepped up to one and drew the curtain back. It was sumptuously decorated, though small and dark. The central feature of the room was an immense sinuous hookah, the cap of which nearly reached the ceiling. Two hoses depended from the side of it and snaked around the bulbous base, mouthpieces resting on pillows as if the smokers had just left the room. In the shadowy recess behind it lay a peculiar lacquered box big enough for someone to lie in. Curving tines of bone like the rib cage of a monster as big as the hookah rose from the side of the box and curled over it toward the center. Symbols painted in the lacquer were meaningless to him. Along the rest of the walls were shelves and niches that held candles, small lamps, and assorted odd objects—tiny silver pillboxes, a few statuettes of fish and other creatures, some carved from wood, others blown from colored glass, and more things he couldn’t identify. When he’d had a good look, Eskie dropped the curtain again.
Owing to the nature of the paidika’s business, she said, the boys generally slept the day through. She led him down another hall and a short flight of steps, taking them even farther from the public part of the paidika. At the end of yet another hall, a set of double doors barred their way. She opened one quietly and ushered him in.
The stone walls of the dormitorium bore brown water stains in jagged rills. The smell in the room reminded him of the underspan itself. High up near the ceiling he saw a grate, no larger than his head, which let in all the light there