The building just outside the South Gate was running a brisk business that night. A crowd of men loitered just outside the doors, some passing around a bottle, the rest speaking in low tones with the ranks of Fatima's ladies who weren't currently engaged. The women were mostly sizing up their prospective clients' purses while the men, predictably, were contemplating the variation among the ladies' figures. Extra mage lanterns dangled from the building’s eaves, advertising services and discounts that Mirk would prefer not to learn the details of. He was there on business, after all.

When all their buttons had begun to rattle that night, they’d been gathered at the usual tavern after a long shift of doing a lot of nothing. Danu had been listening intently to one of Mordecai's stories about what new kinds of trouble he'd gotten himself into during his latest trip back to his home village, while Yule had been goaded into drinking nearly three times his standard measure by the Easterners. Yule had quickly gotten fall-down drunk off of free drinks and launched into a debate with Pavel about fate and the technicalities of divination, much to the Seer's displeasure. Pavel could barely get a word in edgewise, cradling his head in his hands and doing his best not to listen, while the rest of the Easterners enjoyed the show and matched Yule drink for drink. Since no one else seemed fit to answer the call, Mirk had headed off himself after reassuring Danu that he'd have the buttons set off again if the situation at the bordello was dire.

Mirk didn't recognize the woman guarding the front door, but she recognized him. Or perhaps she’d been at her business long enough to know that he wasn't a prospective customer, despite his robes being hidden underneath his cloak. Another woman stepped up to take her spot and she waved at Mirk to follow along closely as she led him inside.

Together, they dodged and weaved through the rowdy crowd in the parlor toward the rear of the building, to the common room where the ladies gathered to prepare themselves for the night's business. A cluster of women had gathered there, Fatima among them. She looked up as he entered, her eyes narrowing at the sight of him. "Finally decided to put some work in, seigneur?"

Shrugging off her critical reception, Mirk drew over to the rest of the ladies to see why he'd been called. A wounded woman was propped up in a chair, tended to by two others. They were pressing a rag to an injury on her chest, one trying to comfort her by rubbing her back while the other held her hand and murmured encouragement, her voice too low for anyone other than his panting and glassy-eyed patient to hear. It almost felt rude to intrude upon them, like they shared some kind of private pain he could never understand, empathy or not. Mirk bowed to them both and cleared his throat to catch their attention. "Euh...can I see, mademoiselles?"

The two women shot him curious looks, but nodded and shifted aside, the one pressing the rag to her chest lifting it so that Mirk could examine the wound underneath. It wasn't bleeding too badly, but the pressure seemed to have been alleviating some of its pain. Only a few trickles of blood escaped the strange symbol carved over her right breast, but the wave of hurt that emanated from her once the wound was exposed made Mirk wince.

He knelt down beside her, slinging his bag off his shoulder and searching in it for clotting powder. "This is a magical injury...I don't recognize the rune, but methinks I can do something for the bleeding..."

While he dug in his bag, Fatima came up behind him, snorting. "It's some bastardization of thurisaz. Leave it to a European not to know his own people's magic."

That didn't help much — Mirk was as ignorant to the rune's properties as whoever had carved it into the woman's clammy chest. Unable to find the bottle of powder, Mirk settled for going straight to his slowly regenerating magic. He pressed the fingers of both hands firmly to the edges of the wound, allowing his magic to seep down into her as he searched for the source of the pain.

The wound had begun to fester, though not so badly that it was reeking and dripping pus. Mirk handled that part of things quickly, drawing hard on his magic to call to the foreign presence in her body, taking one hand off her chest just long enough to gesture to the woman off to his right for the rag. He pressed the oozing yellow sludge he tugged out of the wound into the rag and set it down on the floor, then paused to consider how best to handle the remainder of it.

He called to a different aspect of his magic, the life-giving part that could grow and mend, and tried to press the wound closed. The woman’s body didn't respond fully, though the cuts that made up the rune narrowed a little. Mirk closed his eyes, listening close. The woman’s presence sounded faintly like crackling embers, like someone tapping their fingers lightly atop a drum. But there was something else inside her, something dark and twisted and creaking, like ropes straining under a heavy load. There was an ordered dark magic attached to it that was quickly unraveling what little of his healing magic had stuck.

"Euh...hmm. Methinks it might be a curse? Mada—"

Fatima cut him off with a sharp tisk. "Spare me your titles. Can you fix it?"

"I'm not very good at breaking curses, I'm afraid," Mirk said with a sigh. He thought for a moment back to when he'd lifted the bindings on the Montigny men through sheer force of will. He'd needed to draw on the staff’s potential to manage that. And he wasn't prepared to risk using it again, not when there still might be some other way. "This is the sort of thing Yule is best at."

"And where is he?"

The last he'd seen of Yule, the older healer had been shoving an accusing finger into Pavel's face as he ranted about how life was futile if everything was preordained. "Euh...methinks he won't be able to help us tonight. He's a little...euh..."

"Typical," Fatima said, her eyes narrowing so far they became nothing but slits.

"I can still heal it, methinks. It'll just take me more time." Mirk looked up into the injured woman's face. She was completely exhausted. He wondered how long the rune had been affecting her, sapping her magic and repelling any efforts to heal its damage.

Fatima answered his unspoken question. "She was locked up in a closet at Lorenz's for hours. Apparently a noble party is unbearable without a plaything to distract you. She needs this gone right away. Before she forgets what she got out of him."

There was a sudden bang of displaced air from across the room, a snatch of conversation and music that was out-of-place in the rear of the bordello. Lina had teleported into the room, breathless and flushed. And dressed in a fine gown that was far above her status as a washerwoman for the Supply Corps, a smooth gray silk cut rather too conservatively for what Mirk knew of her tastes.

Then again, it was unlikely she'd chosen it for herself. Mirk hadn't seen her around the taverns or the training hall or the infirmary since her and K'aekniv had ended things, but he doubted she'd come into enough gold to afford that style of dress between then and now. "Oh, thank God," she said, collapsing into one of the chairs arrayed in front of the changing room's counter full of mirrors. "She already made it back."

"Took you long enough," Fatima retorted, pivoting on her good leg to face Lina, jabbing her cane accusingly back at the woman Mirk was doing his best to heal. "What happened to breaking Joan out, huh? I've told you a dozen times, Lina, you need to keep your eye on the prize."

Lina ignored Fatima, staring across the room at the wounded woman, the muscles in her neck working as she extracted a fan from down the front of her dress and flicked it open. "I have your information. Dick talked, even if Lorenz didn't. Christ above, someone needs to kill that ugly bastard..."

Fatima limped over to the counter, leaning her weight on it so she could fiddle with her cane, spinning it methodically around her wrist in a fluid, practiced motion. It was the same motion Genesis used when he spun the hilt of his sword around his wrist, waiting for his training partners to stop dawdling and spar with him. "Dick talked? You sure are pumping a lot out of him lately."

"He's an idiot," Lina said, though her frown turned worried. "Or maybe just weak. None of the other commanders or guildfolk like him much, and he doesn't have any luck with the girls. He's lonely. Spills to anyone if you're willing to sit and listen and smile right."

"If everyone hates him, how does he know anything?"

Lina shrugged. "He's actually good at magic, I suppose. That and Alistair has something on him, though I still don't know what. That's how I got out, Alistair called Dick off to go do something back in the City. Dick gave me my own teleportation paper because I couldn't be let to see where he was going."

Though Fatima's suspicion only deepened, judging by how her cane spun around her wrist faster with every flick, she didn't comment on that part of it when she spoke next. "What did you get?"

"Everyone thinks Dick's the one who fucked Percy. Never agreed on anything, Dick's got the know-how to suck someone’s magic out, all that. Alistair doesn't think so, but the other commanders do, and it looks like Alistair is willing to let them keep thinking that if it keeps everyone angry at Dick instead of paying too much attention to what he's doing. Dick kept saying something about not liking being pushed around like that, even if Alistair lets him protect himself. Don't know what he meant by that either. Anyway, about Lorenz, North and Ansel are sick to death of him, so I think he'll be on the outs if they can get Ksyr to back their move. Got some other little Bavarian weasel to put in his spot. Didn't catch his name, but at least he wasn't locking anyone in a closet," Lina concluded, her eyes drifting back toward Joan's pained face.

Joan was biting her lip to keep from whimpering as Mirk tried to break the curse carved into her chest again. He tried bombarding it with his life-giving potential, overloading its ability to tear apart by feeding it more healing than it could handle. It only made her wound gush blood. One of the other ladies produced her own handkerchief to help mop it up.

Fatima seemed only grudgingly satisfied with Lina's explanation, turning her attention back toward Joan as well. "It's a start, but we still need Joan’s report. Lorenz's side of things might give us more details. Are you getting anywhere?" she asked, shifting her disapproval toward Mirk.

"Euh...no...but maybe if I give her a pain blocker, it'll give the curse something less to work with...I'm not sure..." Mirk lifted his hands from Joan's chest and dug through his bag again, hoping he might actually have a spare blocker left.

"Are you willing to let your patient out of his cage?" Fatima asked.

"Euh...pardon? Methinks I don't un—"

"Genesis. Is he allowed to use his magic yet?"

Mirk looked back at the rune, still oozing blood down the front of Joan's unlaced bodice. A mage with Genesis's knowledge and skill could handle the curse keeping her entombed in misery in seconds with very little effort. On the other hand, it would take him a few hours of trying and failing at different approaches to help. Mirk sighed, dabbing at the blood again, for lack of anything more useful to do. "Of course. Methinks I couldn't keep him from doing anything he wanted to anyway, ma...euh...Fatima. He always does what he wants."

"That's not what I've heard," Fatima said. Nevertheless, she limped away again, going to a table in the far corner of the room. She scribbled something on a piece of paper and shut it in a plain wooden box set in the center of the table. Then she folded her arms and settled in to wait as Mirk went back to work. Luckily, he had a single pain blocker left. He passed it to one of the two ladies still hovering anxiously around Joan, their faces white and drawn with concern, telling them both to help Joan drink it.

She'd just finished choking it down when Genesis appeared. As usual, Mirk had felt him coming before he actually arrived, his approaching presence creating a vague sort of restlessness in the shadows hanging about the dimly lit back room. There were no proper magelights there, only half-shaded oil lamps that filled the room with an odd, cloying perfume.

Genesis stepped out of the shadows near Fatima, nose immediately wrinkling in distaste at the perfume in the air. His hair was a touch damp, Mirk noticed. It was getting late; perhaps Fatima's message had interrupted his evening bath. "...yes?"

"Don't yes me. You can read. There she is," Fatima said, not looking up from the paperwork she'd started in on while waiting for Genesis. She waved a dismissive hand in the direction of Joan, whose breathing and heartbeat were finally starting to slow as the pain blocker took hold.

Genesis crossed the room, looming behind Mirk and surveying the rune cut into Joan's chest. "This is...not entirely physical," he said, after studying her for what felt like an interminably long time.

"No, messire. It's a curse, maybe? Though it doesn't feel very complicated. It's just that one rune. But I don't know much about those, I'm afraid."

"I will be...certain to provide you with an adequate beginner's text on the subject."

Whereas Mirk's first instinct when dealing with a person under the sway of foreign magic was to reach out and touch them, Genesis kept his distance. But he could sense Genesis's magic on Joan as he continued to study the rune. It manifested itself in the faintest tendrils of shadow that prodded at the wound in place of the commander's fingers, making its bleeding worsen once more. Mirk reached up with his borrowed handkerchief to dab the blood away, even though there was no saving Joan's dress by that point.

It was curious: none of the women were bothered by Genesis's magic or scrutiny. In fact, the two women who'd been helping him with Joan felt more relieved than anything else. It was far from the usual reaction that Genesis elicited in others.

After another long pause, Genesis sighed. "From a commander, one would...expect better spellcraft."

Genesis leaned down, reaching over Mirk's shoulder to press the tips of all five fingers of his left hand to the central line of the rune. As Mirk had suspected, it took very little effort on Genesis's part to destroy the magic that had been keeping Joan locked in her private suffering. The dark ordered magic connected to the rune dissolved under the force of Genesis's chaos and Joan took a deep, shuddering breath, blinking rapidly.

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Then she looked up at Genesis, managing a weak smile. "Thank you, comrade."

"You would be...well advised to invest more time on strengthening your...defensive capacities," Genesis said, drawing his hand back the instant it was clear the curse had been broken, producing a bottle and a handkerchief out of the shadows. When he opened the bottle and shook a measure of its contents onto the handkerchief, Mirk caught the barest hint of the scent of oranges over the heavy perfume from the oil lamps. The commander’s usual cleaning potion.

"Thank you too, mister...?"

Mirk glanced up. Joan's eyes had fixed on him, her smile growing warmer and stronger by the second. He returned it, reaching out his hand and touching the rune carved into her breast, closing it easily now that there wasn't any magic attached to it to work against his healing potential. "Just Mirk, mademoiselle."

"Are you new?"

"Sort of. Is anything else troubling you?"

"My dagger's losing its enchantment," one of the two women who'd been helping him with Joan said. She wasn't speaking to him. Rather, she was looking at Genesis. The commander debated things for a moment before relenting, holding his hand out to her, though Mirk noticed he kept his handkerchief at the ready in the other. The woman hiked up her skirts without the slightest hesitation, revealing a dagger strapped to her upper thigh with some kind of garter belt. She pulled it free and held it out to Genesis, hilt first.

Genesis took it with his handkerchief rather than his bare hand, setting to cleaning the whole of it as he stalked back toward the table Fatima was working at to take a closer look at the weapon's enchantments. The two women who'd been helping with Joan laughed and shared a knowing look before the one whose dagger needed re-enchanting followed after Genesis.

It was all very curious indeed, Mirk thought. After he’d healed a set of blisters that Joan’s ill-fitting dance shoes had left on her heels, she got to her feet with the help of her remaining friend and went over to Fatima to give her report. Mirk expected Joan to at least be a little put out by Fatima's indifference to her condition, but she was soon laughing and chatting with the madam like old friends, with no hard feelings between them. Just like the woman whose knife Genesis was working on leaned over his shoulder and pestered him about what he was doing, entirely unbothered by the commander’s brusqueness and obvious discomfort at having her perilously close to being pressed up against his back.

Mirk did his best to blot up the last of Joan's blood that'd ended up on the chair and the floor, debating what he should do now that his business was concluded. Everyone at the bordello seemed very familiar with one another, old friends who were working to the rhythm of some routine he was unfamiliar with. Lina had also joined the rest, sitting down beside Joan and adding bits of corroborating information to her tale as Fatima interrogated her. There seemed to be no hard feelings among any of them, each of their habits and temperaments accounted for by one another without comment. It reminded Mirk a little of the way the healers of the Twentieth worked, comrades through and through against the madness of the K'maneda and the Tenth despite their differences.

He didn't feel right intruding on it, though no one had been anything but friendly to him. As Mirk gathered up his things and prepared to leave, he noticed more ladies had started to arrive. All of them formed a disorderly line behind the woman who was still badgering Genesis, pulling out knives of their own as they gossiped about the night's happenings.

"Oh! Mirk! It's so good to finally see you again!"

Alice, the woman who the staff had helped him save, had arrived along with the others, her infant child bound tight to her chest with a sling made of wide strips of multi-colored fabric, the repurposed remains of a dress that had become so worn that it couldn't take any more mending. Mirk went over to meet her, smiling at the press of her happiness against his mental shielding. She felt like she was doing well, despite the difficult circumstances she'd found herself in. "Hello, Alice. Who's this?"

She beamed down at the baby pressed tight against her chest. "Ella. Like my mother."

Mirk stood beside her, leaning in to peek at the infant's face. She had wide, dark eyes, and a good smattering of patches of equally dark hair around the crown of her head. The baby girl wriggled in closer against her mother, her hands grabbing at the laces of Alice's bodice as she began to fuss. "Ella's a lovely name. I'm glad to see you're both doing well, mademoiselle." He hesitated a little at the title — though she was a mother now, Mirk had the impression that Alice was as of yet unmarried.

Alice gave a tittering laugh as she began to untie the front of her bodice. "Oh, you foreign sorts are so funny! All with your titles and fancy names. But it's all thanks to you that we get to laugh any more," she added, as she adjusted her baby's position to allow her to nurse. Mirk looked away, turning his attention back toward the strange goings-on at the back room's work table. Two women were now leaning over each of Genesis's shoulders, arguing over something he was doing. Meanwhile, Fatima had finished her interrogation of Susie and had set in on Genesis as well, shoving a paper at him and poking accusingly at something written on it.

The scene reminded him of when the three noble ladies had accosted Genesis at Madame Beaumont's ball. There was the same tenseness in the commander's shoulders, the same rigid set to his jaw. And, just like at the ball, none of the women gathered around Genesis that night were deterred in the slightest by his visible discomfort.

"I do feel a little useless, though," Alice continued. "I'm mostly dead weight around here for now. I can work on my arms and do some cooking and tidying, but none of that brings in any money."

"I'm sure no one minds," Mirk reassured her.

"At least I've been able to keep doing my training, like I said. We have a few older ladies with us who know what they're doing with a baby who can look after Ella in the meanwhile. Though she wails like a banshee every time I let her go! Mummy's daughter, I suppose, just like I was."

"Training?"

Alice's voice took on a more hopeful tone, closer to the one she used while speaking of the infant nursing at her breast than the one she had used while discussing the rest of her work. "Oh, yes! Sparring and daggers and all that. But Miss Fatima's given me some special work, since I'm so big in the shoulders. She's having a couple of us work on training to be archers! Can you imagine that? I thought, what with rifles being all the lads will talk about these days, what good is an old bow and arrow? But Miss Fatima says that they're better for magic than guns are. I'm glad Miss Fatima's not coddling me, what with Ella and all. I worked hard on these," she joked, flexing the arm at him that she wasn't using to support her baby's head.

She did have quite substantial biceps and heavy shoulders, some of the largest he'd ever seen on a human woman. The only human woman he could think of who could measure up was Kali, and her whole life would be fighting from sunup to sundown, if she had her way. "You're much stronger than I am," Mirk said, with an encouraging smile. "You could probably pick me up and throw me..."

"You'd be easy! I can throw most of the infantrymen now, except for the really big ones."

Mirk was taken aback. "You train with the infantry?"

"The weird blokes from out east," Alice replied with a nod. "You know, the ones who work with Comrade Genesis. They're great fun! And they mostly keep their hands to themselves, unless they want Niv to beat them. If they want that, they've got to pay like everyone else."

"I see..."

"Are the ones who went home back yet? It's the busiest time of year, so we're not hurting for gold, but you always know what you're getting into with them. With the rest of the infantry, you never know." Alice laughed to herself, bouncing on the balls of her feet to soothe her nursing infant. "I heard they made out like bandits on that last contract of theirs. Niv will pay for new dresses and daggers for everyone all by himself, now that Lina's decided she likes Dickey more."

"Who is this, euh, Dickey? Did she...?"

"Comrade Commander Richard Blacke of the Esteemed Eleventh Mage." Alice pitched her voice higher as she rattled off the title and honors, doing her best at mimicking the smooth accent of the upper-class English ladies, though she couldn't quite get her r's right. "Drippy little guy, dunno what she sees in him. I would have stuck with Niv. At least he's fun. But she likes him, for whatever reason. She won't say anything, but I'm sure it's not just the work. No one takes five assignments in a row on the same bloke unless there's something there or Miss Fatima's got you on a long-term mission."

Though Alice couldn't put the pieces together, Mirk spotted the difference instantly — their looks aside, anyone who was determined enough to become a divisional commander had to be exactly the sort of ambitious, cunning man that K'aekniv decidedly wasn't. And that was Lina’s main complaint with the half-angel, from what Mirk could remember of K'aekniv's rambling and sniffling explanations for the loss of the most recent love of his life. Mirk didn't know whether to be happy for Lina or worried for her.

He glanced across the room at where she was seated beside Fatima. If there were any hard feelings, none were on display. Then again, Mirk suspected that Genesis didn't understand the difference between K'aekniv's more casual liaisons and his great love affairs well enough to harbor any resentment toward Lina for breaking K'aekniv's heart. That and he was too resentful of the closeness of all the ladies to have enough energy left over to be cross with any one of them in particular.

"Does this mean Comrade Genesis is back too?" Alice asked. Mirk hoped she asked the question to sate her own curiosity rather than picking up on how he was staring at him. "I'd heard he'd been sick after that last contract, and that was why he hadn't come by."

Mirk sighed. "Well, he was ill, but I never told him he couldn't go out. If I'd known that you all needed his help, I'd have told him to come. I just didn't know he was so, euh, involved with things here. I thought he must just meet Miss Fatima from time to time. Since she seems more his...type."

Alice cackled. "Him? His only type's got two bits of leather and a lot of paper in between. It's fun teasing him, though. The faces he makes when you explain jokes to him! And it's even worse if you give him a pat on the back."

With that bit of information taken into consideration, Mirk could understand why Genesis had taken advantage of his suggestion to rest to avoid coming to the bordello. "Most people are too afraid of him to go that far, methinks."

Her laughter subsiding, Alice shook her head. "Him? Scary? We meet a lot of beastly men here, but he's not one of them. Comrade Genesis doesn't want anything from us that we don't want ourselves."

"Oh?"

"We're going to have our own division for the girls who want to fight. And for the rest of us, the same stuff the Supply Corps maids get, places to live and healing and steady pay no matter what." Some of Alice's good cheer faded into pensiveness then, as Mirk watched her stroke her infant's patchy hair out of the corner of his eye. "Comrade Genesis is really a gentleman when it comes down to it. None of the fancy bowing and titles men like you use, but he never tries anything with you, and you can't say that about most of the noble mages. And he never thinks you can't do something just because you're a woman. That's rare even with decent blokes. It's like he doesn't even notice that you're a woman at all. Which can be good and bad, but it's mostly good."

Mirk didn't know exactly what to make of Alice's evaluation of Genesis. He elected to shift the topic instead, albeit only slightly. "How did all of...euh, this start? Miss Fatima and you ladies working with the Easterners? Genesis never said."

Alice smirked. "It started with Niv, of course."

That wasn't surprising in the slightest. Mirk nodded, gesturing at Alice to continue.

"Well, back maybe...fifteen years ago? Ten? I don't know, I wasn't around, though I heard the stories. Anyway, there was a real bastard running things back then. Would buy girls up from wherever and use them and throw them in the gutter when they couldn't work anymore. He was Ravensdale's father, did you know that?"

That, Mirk was surprised by. "No. I thought Ravensdale had to be from a noble family, considering..."

"He's low-born like the rest of us. Just has enough magic from his djinn to hide it. And to keep people from finding out that he wasn't always all high and mighty. It's why you can't say his real name, you know. Anyway, Miss Fatima was just a girl back then. Ravensdale's father bought her off some slaver and was putting her out as a djinn. That's where Niv came into it. Back in those days, if you were poor, you got the bad end both ways. The lads would just get shown a room with whoever and us women would just get put in any which one until time was up. Unless someone requested you, which is what happened to Miss Fatima because of the djinn scam, until one of the bastards beat her and messed up her leg. Then she got put in the maze with the others."

"That's terrible," Mirk mumbled, shivering at the thought of it, despite the fact that Alice didn't seem overly bothered. A testament to how grim her life was, Mirk supposed.

"So the thing that happened was, Niv heard round the taverns about us, and decided he'd throw in a couple of gold and see what was going on. Too bad for Ravensdale and his father that they shut Niv in a room with Miss Fatima. Lord, was he angry! Putting a young girl out to work with a broken leg, he couldn't stand it. So he beat the tar out of Ravensdale, since he was running the maze back then, stole his gold, and carted Miss Fatima off to the healers. That pretty man, Yule, I think.

"Things just sort of went from there. Niv was mad, and he got Comrade Genesis in on it because Niv knew he'd be mad too if he heard about what was going on right outside the gate. Miss Fatima saw her chance to get even. Took her a year or two, since Ravensdale's dad had an in with some of the commanders, but eventually she had the father dead and Ravensdale gone and she took over. Ever since then, things have been run right around here. No more buying girls off whoever, deciding yourself who you want to go with, keeping most of your pay, all that. But you know Miss Fatima, she wanted more than just that. We all do. She found out what Comrade Genesis was up to and said she'd help him out if he helped us. And here we are."

"And here we are," Mirk echoed, watching Fatima and the other women continue to pester Genesis around the table across the room. "I didn't know about any of that."

Alice shrugged. "You know how Comrade Genesis is, you've got to badger him if you want him to fess up anything. Otherwise he just does what he has to and runs off into all those shadows of his. We only know what's going on half the time because Niv never stops talking. Weird pair, those two. But it shows you where comrade's heart is. If you're good to him, he'll at least be decent to you."

"He is good," Mirk agreed, without hesitation. "You just need to be patient."

Alice mulled this over as she adjusted her bodice, lacing it back up against the chill once her child had finished nursing and had gone back to sleep. "He really is a funny man. Never once looked at anyone, and we've got every kind you could fancy here these days. Even got a few men kicking around. Wonder what it takes to crack him. We've got a pool going on it, you know, bit of fun. Think it's up to thirty gold these days. My penny's on it being some weird magic thing. Like a love curse or something. You have any ideas?"

Mirk hoped his laugh didn't come out sounding bitter. "Not a single one."

"Well, I'm sure someone will figure it out eventually. A man's a man, after all, even if he's a funny one."

"I suppose you have a point," Mirk mumbled, considering the long line of women waiting for Genesis's advice. It was steadily growing longer as word got around the bordello that he'd arrived. Genesis really must have been avoiding coming there for a while now, if so many ladies were willing to pass up work just to get to sit in line and wait instead. Perhaps he could also do something to help make it a little more worthwhile for them, even if he didn't know how to enchant weapons. After excusing himself with Alice and telling her to come to the infirmary if she had any problems with her child, he went over to the line, taking his bag back off his shoulder.

"Pardon, mademoiselles. If any of you happen to be having any troubles, I'd be glad to help with them while you're waiting for Comrade Genesis. Even taking care of a blister or a cough can make life a little easier, non?"

A few of the women waiting in line perked up at his offer and began unlacing bodices and taking down stockings right where they stood. Meanwhile, Genesis cast a dark look over his shoulder back at Mirk. Though he had to bend sideways around the pair of women currently scrutinizing his work in order to do so. "I see you have decided to...make a night of this."

Mirk smiled and gave a helpless shrug, as a woman with a nasty scrape down the outside of her leg butted a few of the others aside in the hopes of catching Mirk's attention first. "Methinks it's the least I can do. Besides, look at how much everyone likes you here, messire! You never told me you were so popular with the ladies."

The crowd of ladies around them burst into cackles and snickers and guffaws, Fatima included. Hissing something to himself in his native language, Genesis went back to work, summoning a handful of shadows and coiling it around the dagger on the table in front of him. Mirk drew over a chair and set to work, digging a skin regenerating potion out of his bag. He supposed it wasn't kind to tease Genesis, but he couldn't help it sometimes. Nor could he blame the ladies for finding their own amusement in it. If he could bring a little light to their dark corner of the world, Mirk didn't see any harm in it.

Though Genesis might have thought differently. Especially if the ladies didn't stop crooning the word messire at one another soon.