A Brother's Price

whore.”
    He knew some women pleasured others for money, but his mothers and sisters kept him innocent of the details. “Whores are women, aren’t they?”
    “In body, but not always in appearance. Many dress as men, the manlier, the better.” Cira glided her fingertip over his lips in a way that was at once intimate and erotic.
    Jerin scrambled to take his mind away from her fingers. “Don’t they lack certain vital equipment?”
    “There are artificial devices.” Cira dipped her finger into the crock again, and rouged his cheeks, her breath on his face as she blended color out. “They call them bones because they’re made out of ivory. They strap on. Whores carry them sheathed to their leg, here, to look more manly.”
    She put her hand on him, and found him excited. She smiled, stroking him gently, her eyes full of lust.
    “Wh-wh-why red on the lips?” he asked.
    “To advertise they know how to use their mouth.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, moistening them, drawing a slight gasp from him. “It feels very, very good.”
    He understood then what she was referring to—his wives claimed he was very good at it. He couldn’t believe he had anything in common with a whore. Maybe she was just repeating a rumor. “You—have you ever— you know—been with a whore?”
    “I had a lover, a beautiful young officer, whose mother had been a whore.” Her voice turned bitter as she draped the scarf about his neck, trying to cover his man’s apple. “She should have been a whore herself. She was well suited for it: ambitious, heartless, and very talented. She could make you feel like you were about to turn inside out.”
    “What happened to her?”
    She caught his hand and pressed it to her scar. “This happened to her. After I was scarred she couldn’t bear to touch me, look me in the face.”
    “Why?” He traced the scar on her face. “‘It’s like an exotic piece of jewelry. It becomes you.”
    In a sudden angry move, she pulled her shirt off and turned her back to him. revealing a mass of puckered skin and silvery scars. At some point she had been badly burned. “Look at me! I’m repulsive!”
    He ran a hand over the wounded skin. His fingertips reported only warm flesh and solid muscle, the ugliness of the burn invisible to the touch. “No. You’re not repulsive.”
    She turned—her eyes luminescent with unshed tears— and kissed him. Apples flavored her mouth. He retreated. She advanced. They ended sprawled in the hay, no more room for him to retreat, and she on top of him, her groin pressed against him instead of her hand, rocking suggestively. They fitted together as if molded from one flesh, only her trousers and his walking robe and underclothes between their bare skin.
    “Show me,” she whispered against his mouth. “Show me how beautiful I am.”
    “No!” He pushed at her shoulders. ‘’You’re taking me back to my wives. You promised. I won’t be unfaithful to them.“
    She laughed, seemed about to say something, and then shook her head. “I won’t push you. my love. This will all be over soon, and you’ll see that you can trust me.”
    He snorted as she retreated then, drawing her shirt back on.
    “We’ll pad the front of your shirt a little, to make it look like you’re hiding breasts.” Cira glanced at him and laughed. “And we’ll have to put the lip paint back on again too.”
     
    Three hours later, they started into the town of Sarahs Bend. Cira would have liked to wait until they heard the steam whistle of the packet docking at the landing, but was afraid they might miss the boat. A weak sun had burned off part of the fog, revealing the edge of town within rifle shot; Cira still insisted that he ride the big roan while she led it.
    Sarahs Bend was much larger than his hometown of Heron Landing. There were several blocks of paved streets flanked with tall, narrow but deep, brick buildings. The first floors were storefronts, while the upper floors were obviously residences of the store owners. Some of the buildings were four stories tall, casting shadows onto the cobblestones. The edges of their roofs sparkled oddly in the sunlight.
    “City people hang laundry on their roofs,” Cira explained when Jerin asked about it. “People embed broken bottles into the roof parapets, to discourage husband raids.”
    He noticed then that the storefronts also had cast-iron gates that could be padlocked shut at night.
    It surprised him how many types