A Fall of Ashes: Chapter 13, Three More Slaves
Getting Jakol a girl to replace her and what he lost, gets more complicated that Ashes planned
Three days later, Ashes watched Jakol approach the whore-wagon master about buying Peaches when the fat man went to get their food. But strain as she would, they were too far away. Not even her cantrip helped her hear what they said. With a sigh, she turned her attention to the man approaching her to have her while that whore master was busy.
When she finished taking care of him and the wagon master handed her, her plate, he gave no clue to what he and her owner had said.
Late into the night, well after the drunken wagon master turned in, and she was asleep under the wagon, Jakol woke her. “He won’t sell just her. It is all three or nothing,” he whispered into her ear.
He wet his lips, then whispered some more. “He’s offering a good deal. But one I just can’t do only on what Cass and I are getting for this job. To get the rest of that money, I would have to see a moneylender. I would have to have a contract at an inn to have any chance of getting him to loan me that money. Even then, one look at the three of them, and he would say no. It would have to be a contract for four girls to an inn for a month, or no deal.”
“Please don’t do this to me,” she whispered as she rubbed sleep from her eyes and looked about nervously to be sure everyone near was asleep. If someone saw her telling him what to do or arguing, it would blow her cover. They were not that far beyond those hunting her to risk that yet.
His whisper got louder. “Would selling those books pay for them instead? Or maybe giving them to the moneylender as collateral?”
Her heart raced. He knew damn well they would. “Please don’t sell my books, master. I can’t cure her or any of them without those books.” In truth, she only needed to have her spell book, though the others were useful in healing and research. She hoped continuing to call him master would sway him.
“Then I take out a loan with you as part of the collateral and you work in an inn until we pay it off?”
She swallowed. It was a tough decision. She needed to balance her karma. Those girls had at most months to live if she didn’t act. Saving them would go a long way to balance the people she had killed. Giving Jakol and Cass an income to replace their farm would balance it even more. She could convince him to sell only books on medicine and leave her her spell book. That would pay for those three and help her balance. But it would likely take her years to replace them. Stacked against that, one more month working an inn wasn’t too much, was it
Ashes admitted her defeat. But this was the last time. “You need to find one where I am working from a room and not out on the floor, and you have to limit how much time I am forced to work each day so I can study and rest each night.”
“I will see if I can find such, but if I can’t, you will work the best place I can find?”
She hated it but answered, “Yes, but this ends all debt between us. You getting me away from Gru, you losing your home, we will be even after this.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, then nodded.
Jakol stopped checking on her, and only Cass came by each morning, and only to collect his cut of copper bits.
With two days to go before they reached Lowford, the wagon master spoke to her. “So, your master left you and his son here and went on ahead. I hope he can get that money.”
* * *
The sun was well past its zenith when the caravan pulled up outside the walls of Lowford and circled to the far side of the small town. She searched the crowd there for the face she wanted, but Jakol was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Cass when she looked at the caravan guards still there.
The bastards were leaving her here!
A local handed a copper bit to the whore master for her. With little choice, Ashes turned to please him. But those three would find out, tonight, spell books were not the only way to do magic, just the easiest.
**
“So these are the four you want the money to buy,” said a voice.
Ashes shifted her eyes from the man’s balls she was licking, to the well-dressed speaker.
“Yes sir,” Jakol said, standing next to him.
So they hadn’t abandoned her to the whore master.
“Only one of these is the quality you said,” said another. “They will have difficulty earnings you enough coin competing against the other girls in my inn.” He then noted the rash on Peaches. “None of my customers will touch such a girl.”
Jakol responded, “Good sir, as I have said, I have made arrangements for a healer in a few days. This healer owes me a favor, so will heal them without charge. I confirmed that before seeking out a moneylender. But it cannot be known that they healed whores, so I cannot tell you who.”
Ashes made note of his story. It was a good one. It would not do for people to know what she could do while she was here.
“So you say.”
“I would not be willing to take on that much debt unless positive that my healer could heal this. Have you any doubt that, cleaned up and healed, they would not turn me a nice profit if I could get that healing without having to pay for it? All are young and without deformity.”
“You are asking for a lot of trust on your word that you have a healer willing to work for free,” said the moneylender.
“Not free; to pay off their debt to me.” He looked at Ashes, “Believe me, healing a bunch of whores, they are still getting off cheap on that debt. There are other services that they will need to do for me before we are square.”
Ashes became worried. If they would not lend him the money without knowing who, he might just tell them. She was still in too vulnerable a position for anyone to know she was a mage. She might just exchange Mistress Gru hunting her for someone else.
“I believe you, but don’t know this healer and how serious he is about paying off his debt to you. In addition to these girls, you will put up your armor, bows, and swords as collateral. I will take the armor, swords, and bows with me. In thirty days, you pay back one-and-half times this amount and get them back. You don’t pay, I come and take your girls too.”
Jakol gave a sharp nodded. “Agreed.”
One of the moneylender’s guards pulled out a piece of parchment, a quill and ink well from a pack, handed them to the moneylender, then bent over. On his back was a small board that the moneylender put the parchment on and began writing out what they had agreed to. Four men signed it: Jakol, Cass, the moneylender and, to her surprise, the innkeeper. Then a different guard paid the wagon master.
That fat man took the coins, then handed a punch and hammer to Cass. “Go ahead and release your girls. I’ll be back soon.”
Moneylender, innkeeper and fat man all got in line to pass through that gate.
To Ashes’ disappointment, Cass moved to start with the girls on the other side of the wagon.
After a moment she heard banging, then Cass saying, “Dad, give me a hand with this. The pin doesn’t want to come out.”
Both men worked on it, cursing often for more than half an hour before it popped out.
They were still working on the second girl on that side when the wagon master and another returned.
“Not like that,” he said. “You place it on the side and shear the pin, open the collar then, and knock the two broken ends out of it.” He turned to the man with him. “Go ahead and inspect the wagon while I help them get their slaves unchained.”
A single hit with the punch in the right place freed each girl.
She would have to be very disparate indeed before she let anyone chain her again.
**
“You two are last,” said the caravan master, with their large bag sitting beside him. “We already started loading that wagon your stuff was in.”
“It took more effort to get the collars off them than expected,” Jakol said, nodding at the girls.
He nodded. “Here’s your pay. We pull out tomorrow, heading back if you need more work,” he said, holding out a few coins.
“Got stuff to do here.” Taking them, then turning to his son, he said, “Get that pack broken up on the four girls and get them roped together.”
**
With her on the end of the four girls roped together, Jakol led them through the gate, then turned right. Only a few buildings down, he led them up three steps and into the Passion Rose. The front room told Ashes she’d never worked a place like this. The Passion Rose served no food or drink. Their money came only from renting rooms to men renting out women.
“Just got four rooms clean for you on four,” the man behind the desk said as he came out. “Don’t have anyone else up there, but it is the only place where I have four rooms open on the same floor.” Without his richly embroidered over robe on, he looked far different here than he’d looked back at the wagon. Did only four rooms mean the men would leave, or were they expected to share rooms with the girls? He led the way down the hall.
On the ground floor, two doors stood open with painted women standing in them and the sounds of sex emanated from at least two of the others. They had to walk that entire hall to get to the steps up to the first floor.
Only one painted woman stood in her door watching them pass by her on that floor. They had to traverse that hall to get to the stairs to the second floor. Three women, still with makeup, but not what you might call painted, stood in these doors. Not a woman they passed gave them a friendly look.
Ashes saw a problem. Customers would have to pass four floors of women before ever even seeing them. The third floor showed five of the eight doors with women standing in them without customers. She didn’t know if the other three were empty or had girls with customers.
Her alarm grew. She didn’t want to be kept busy, but this could lead to them not earning enough to pay back that loan. Yet the inn was one of the cleanest, and most well maintained, inns she had seen, despite the wooden building’s age. This meant that it was profitable enough that the building’s owner spent a lot of coin keeping it maintained. But did those profits reach this high?
The innkeeper turned to Jakol. “These four by the stairs will be your rooms. You can take your girls one at a time down to the public well and get them cleaned up. There is a bucket in each room. You can have them get more water for their rooms there. Chamber-pot is under the bed, and the chamber-pot boy comes by mid-morning to collect it and hand you a clean pot. I don’t expect anyone to move on soon, but if they do, I’ll move you down a floor. Now I have to get back to the front door. Part of what you are paying for is me keeping the riffraff out and I need to be by the door to do that.”
A clean chamber-pot each day made it an even cleaner place than she thought. Maybe it was the right place to pay back that loan after all.
It wasn’t until Jakol lifted a bar on a door that she realized they barred these rooms on the outside, not the inside. Still, it was better than being chained up.
“Inside,” he said to the first girl, untying her from the group.
“Thank you for getting me off that wagon and inside, Master. I’ll do my best for you. Are you really going to get me a healer?” she said, stepping inside.
“That is my plan,” he said as Cass close the door on her, cutting off her gratitude, and put the bar in place.
The next two were just as grateful, and Cass entered that third room instead of baring that door.
After removing the rope from her, Jakol said, “Get your bucket and let find that well. I told the innkeeper none of you start until tomorrow.” He lowered his voice. “After I have the other girls cleaned up and fed, I will bring you your spell book.”
Keeping her voice just as low, she replied, “Thank you. You need to get four hoods. You will place them on your four girls as they stand outside their doors each morning, then your healer will come in and heal them. Tell them not seeing the healer is part of the magic that heals them. It will take me more than a week to do all that needs to be done, maybe more than two. That and better food, and your girls will start to improve to the point you can have a good income from them.”
Part of why it would take so long, Ashes didn’t tell him, was she would not render herself helpless again by using up all her spells, and her fire and sleep spells were first on her list to memorize. “You bring them all to my room after you have them cleaned up, and I will talk to them and convince them to do a better job whoring than they ever did for their last owner.”
With a big grin on his face, he told her, “I’ll do that.”
**
At a very public well, he surprised her, handing her a bar of soap and washcloth. Not the harsh laundry soap, but a perfumed, softer one. He even cranked the handle on the well that turned the wheel, so the tiny bucket on the rope dumped water down the flue for her.
That water and soap felt wonderful. It was her first bath since before she awoke tied up, those weeks, no month ago, she thought as she realized she had been whoring as a slave for months now.
She stretched and smiled despite the leers of the men watching her.
“She’ll be available tomorrow on the fourth floor of the Passion Rose,” Jakol said to the onlooker.
Not even Jakol using the opportunity to advertise her charms being available could dampen her pleasure and getting clean. She gave the men a smile and made a production of getting clean.
As they walked back, giving her a grin, Jakol said, “I’ll have to talk to the Innkeeper and find out where other good places for you girls to wash up are.”
**
The bolt being drawn woke her before the door opened. The bed’s softness and the darkness of the room had been impossible to resist when Jakol closed her in. His son entered, followed by the three now clean girls and finally Jakol.
She looked at them, still bone thin and sickly, but being clean was a big improvement. “You three ended up chained to a wagon with a master as cruel as your last because you are not well behaved. I convinced my master into giving all of you a chance. He is even going to bring in a healer witch to fix us all up, despite having to go into debt to do so.”
That brought surprise and a touch of fear to these girls as Ashes made eye contact with each. A Healer Priest was one thing, but a Healer Witch, something else entirely. But none would turn it down.
“If you don’t want to end up back with another master like your last, you need to improve your behavior and convince him you are worth keeping long term instead of just using you up as the last was doing. When you get men, you make damn sure you are giving them the best time you know how.”
They looked at Jakol at that, then to Cass.
To Ashes’ frustration, Cass responded to that look, putting an end to anything more she had to say. “You start whoring tomorrow. Today it is just me and Dad you entertain. All of you, up on the bed.”
Ordering the girls to do each other and entertain him was the type of behavior she had come to expect of the young man.
To Ashes relief, Jakol, knowing she had to study to do the healing, called an end to it much earlier than Cass liked. Once he had them all in their rooms, he brought her the books and left her a single oil lamp.
The door closed, and she heard the bar slam home.
