The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - FORTUNATO (part 2)

Chapter 1, part 2

I returned to Twenty-three Stana-Fajfilo Strateto with the rosemary, potatoes, and limorancios in my mesh bag and a stone in my stomach. Militia knew about me, but they left me alone—mostly and so far. I took small cases and made small coin and paid my bills and caused no trouble. Mostly. I gave old Fat-and-Farty his odd bottle of viskion, and I kissed him on the cheek last Festivalo. I didn’t kick if the odd subaltern or two patted my bum. I didn’t do a lie-down for anyone, though; they respected that limit, at least.

But I didn’t like change. I wanted things to be the way I had them arranged. Neat, tidy, straight. You knew where the lines were and what the rules were.

Now, there was a new man in the commissariat office, no telling what was in his mind, and half the Green Quarter was being dragged into my patch of the town.

My office is up four creaking flights of crazy steps, and even in early spring, it was hot already in that narrow, dark stairwell. My door was propped to coax a draft, and Barsina was in the outer chamber that I pretend was my waiting room.

Barsina’s my girl. She’s a tank-girl, not a former citizen, with the nice, even, unflappable personality that implies. I only bothered to look at the numbers and qualifications in her contract once, but I remember she’s quite smart. I don’t need the stats to tell me that. She’s got good ratings from her two previous contract-owners, one old Miss Giray deceased, who didn’t know what a little genius she had as her parlor-maid, and Mama Solene, who picked up Barsina’s papers for a song at the estate sale and made use of Barsina’s other features.

These included light brown hair, dark blue eyes, a round bum, a firm, high—well. You know. And nice, nice hands and feet.

Her neck carried her collar well, too. She worked at Mama Solene’s for over two years until I got to town, and there’s a bit of a story there, as you may guess.

It lightened my heart to see her in the waiting room, pacing barefoot on the floorboards. I offered her the mesh bag as I opened my mouth to say something, but she reached out, put her finger on my lips, and pointed over her shoulder at my office.

Then she smiled, looking in the net bag. Limorancios, she mouthed, and, hiding them behind the skirts of her servant chiton, she went into my office.

“Sir,” she said with a humble curtsey. “Miss Fenek is here.”

There was a man in the chair in front of my desk, and he stood up, out of habit probably: I’m hardly the sort someone like him would stand for. He put his tablet away in his sash and gave me the up-and-down with his eyes. Green-gilt, an odd color, and thick black hair, and a woolly-worm mustache. Gray at the temples, and well-made clothes. A man’s short chiton, knee-pants, boots, sleeved blouse. Red silk sash, long fringe. I tried to guess his class. Epistarch? He wasn’t dressing flash, but that didn’t mean anything. Older men usually didn’t.

“Miss,” Barsina addressed me, “Mist’ Petro Fortunato.” She half-raised her left fore-finger prettily—but that was our code for what class he was: Aristoi.

She slipped through the half-open interior door with the food, but if it had been wide open, Mist’ Petro Fortunato couldn’t have seen much more of my rented space because that tiny room, or closet, is our bedroom, kitchen, and facilities. We shower in an alcove down the hall, taking turns watching each for the other.

Luxury I do not pay for.

I’m unused to aristoi appearing in my office, and I gave him a neat citizen’s curtsey, which he barely acknowledged. He sat himself down again in what—for him—must have been a very uncomfortable chair. I was proud of it: I’d carefully selected it off a junk pile and refinished it.

I took my slightly more comfortable seat with an air of grace. He was examining me critically. You can’t see my mind, so everyone looks at my breasts and face and long hair, and my bum if I’m standing and makes a series of assumptions for which the evidence is lacking. They see a short, ordinary woman just arriving at thirty, unmarried and unprotected, still young in the face, high cheekbones. Not heavy, but not rail-thin. Not remarkable. I imagine, if you checked around, you’d find dozens of Aulis women who look exactly the same. Put me in a coverall with a tray of fish and I’d be a fishwife. Put me behind a bar with an apron and I could be an alewife. I just happen to be a private inspector and nobody’s wife.

But sitting in my office, hands neatly folded on my desk, not in the women’s quarters of some fine house up the hill, and not doing some menial but productive work, I could tell he looked at me and thought: whore.

“Mist’ Fortunato, to what do I owe the honor?” I asked.

He stirred his gaze off my chest and looked me in the eye.

“Miss Fenek,” he said, “someone’s tried to kill me, and I don’t like it. Not a bit.”

( … this way to chapter 1 part 1 … ) ( … this way to chapter 1 part 3 … )