All the Stars and Teeth(47)
Ferrick squints at the sign. “Even if he does know where we could find a mermaid, how do you intend to get him to tell you?”
Bastian pats the side of his cloak and the pouch he stole from Mornute jingles, heavy with coin. “Everyone has a price.”
There’s a makeshift handle built into the stone slab. Bastian doesn’t wait another moment to use it.
I’m nearly knocked back by a pungent odor as warm air greets us. Ferrick chokes on it, but quickly stops himself when Bastian elbows him in the side.
The smell is a mix of vomit, oily bodies, and what seems like iron. I know better, though. I’m familiar enough with the smell to know it’s blood. Yet the lustrous panels of dark wood are spotless.
I peer up enough to see the store itself doesn’t quite match its nauseating stench. The walls are painted a handsome amethyst with thick whorls of silver and gold that swoop from the crystal chandelier on the ceiling and thin as they near the floor. There’s a bar in the corner constructed from ivory—sleek, polished, and impossibly different from everything outside.
Dozens of Kers sit on heavy bar stools, a giant spinning wheel between them. A tiny ball whirls around the middle, floating over a series of squares and numbers as the wheel spins and spins.
“Care to try your hand at a game of roulette?” a raven-haired woman asks Ferrick, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “Just last week, a friend of mine won five years. What do you say, handsome? Come give it a try.”
The entirety of Ferrick’s face floods a deep crimson. Beside him, Bastian scoffs.
“We’ve no interest in your rigged games,” he says. The woman pouts her full pink lips, but I pay little attention.
It’s as though I’ve been struck. My knees buckle as I suck in a sharp breath, eyeing the handful of Kers who sit around the roulette wheel, gambling away not money, but years off their lives. They’re time trading—a rare and banned practice where only the most skilled Kers are able to transfer time from one person to another.
And they’ve no shame in their actions. They do it openly, not trying to hide their crimes.
Kerost truly has been abandoned.
Someone slams into my shoulder, forcing me to bite back bitter words as I stumble. But the man who knocked into me doesn’t look back. He drunkenly sways past the wheel and toward the back of the strange store, where another line is forming.
Everything about this place feels wrong. But the longer I’m here, the more the smell of iron fades beneath the sweet scent of warm vanilla and heavy spices of cinnamon and nutmeg. The aroma twists around me, attempting to calm me and mask the stench of blood.
Women in a variety of silks are lined up in the back. Some hold their jaws high with determination while others look shy and bashful. All their eyes, however, are cool and lethal as they slice through the crowd.
A young man stands before them. His hair’s blond as sand, and the smoothness of his milky-white skin matches the ensnaring grin he flashes at the crowd. We catch him in the middle of a spiel he speaks fluently, undoubtedly well practiced.
“—so let’s forget all our struggles then, shall we? It’s worth it, after all! One night, after all our hard work, to finally be treated as a man should!”
There are grunts of agreement from the crowd, full of men who hungrily eye the women before them. My anger swells; it takes everything in me to keep my mouth clamped tight.
I assume this man must be Blarthe, though he seems too young to run this place. He has to be somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, though it’s hard to tell when his skin is spared from even the slightest wrinkle. He’s bright where the other men are barely standing, exhaustion weighing them. I highly doubt he’s the one who’s been doing any of this “hard work.”
He waves the first woman over, a Ker with smooth pale skin and spiraling waves of red hair. Though Blarthe opens his mouth to speak, she interrupts him.
“I want five weeks,” she says haughtily, earning a roll of the eyes from several of the girls behind her.
Blarthe’s grin wavers with annoyance, but he catches himself before it breaks his placid face. “She means two weeks,” he offers instead, teeth gleaming.
Someone in the small crowd raises their hand, and the girl steps down to take it with a grin. The man who’s bought a night with her gives a wave to the crowd as he and the woman disappear to a private room in the back.
A stunning Ker with russet skin and silky black hair steps forward next, smirking at the hungry crowd she’s drawn.
The pattern continues, girl after girl. I search their faces for any sign of discomfort, but the higher the amount of time they earn, the more their eyes glint.
Only when the auction is complete does the crowd disperse. Blarthe grins as he pats the backs of several men, ushering them toward the roulette wheels, or to tables filled with patrons playing cards. His hearty laugh doesn’t fit his young face.
Others line up near the entrance opposite us, their faces worn and hands outstretched. When they reach the front of the line, they prick their finger with a pin and press their bleeding thumb against a sheet of paper.
“One week,” says a young girl once she’s done offering her blood. The worker in charge of the area nods, makes a note, and then hands her several stacks of wood and a bucket of nails and supplies.
When the girl turns back out the door, her face is ashen and eyes hollow.