The next day came with a pounding headache, eyelids sealed shut with gunk.

“Nf,” he croaked, remembering.

Red was shoving at his shoulder, rolling his head side-to-side. Dally realised, bleary, that she’d been there poking him for a long while.

“Time to go, champ,” she said. “Okay? Harper?”

Dally got up. He splashed icy water on his his face from a trough in the wall and staggered around until he found his pants. Red wordlessly shoved a fresh shirt at him. In ten minutes they both stood in a corridor by a door, squinting into grey morning light. Their breath fogged the air and he thought he could feel the cold from the marble tile through the soles of his boots.

They were guarding a door, a massive, curlicued slab of iron. When no-one was passing he turned to look at it, trying to figure out the swirls and arcs in the metal. No good. Near the handle, a membrane lock pulsed wetly, the surface gleaming with faint frost.

Lyle probably wasn’t in there, Red said - that was the office. Mostly he wasn’t in there. This was a good spot. She had to trade for this shift, so she could look out for Dally. How was it being so drunk?

“I’m not drunk,” Dally said, “I’m hung-over.”

“Are you sure? You look drunk.”

They were only stood there a few minutes when they heard a fast clip of heels, and a woman burst out of a side door. Seeing the two thralls she stopped, and shrugged a mink stole back up around her shoulders. She was flushed and glaring, with dark hair slipping from under a pearled net. As she stalked towards Dally she carefully swept the stray hair back, her lips pressing in a hard line. Her earring flashed blue and green - Lyle’s river-serpent.

“Mistress Gita,” Dally guessed. He stared past her at the wall.

It didn’t help - Gita stopped in front of him. “Mistress? Did he tell you to say that?“

“I- yes, mistress.” It sounded like Dally was meant to apologise for something, but he wasn’t sure what. He just stood there instead, awkwardly steadying the hilt of his saber with one hand. A long, long moment passed, while she looked him up and down.

“This makes perfect sense now,” she said, eventually. The acid note of disgust wasn’t hidden too well by her accent. “What was your name? Darry?"

“Dally Harper.”

She made a faint noise and turned, beckoning as she started away. “Come along, Dally.”

Red was watching him with wide eyes, but when Dally glanced at her she just shrugged; ‘she’s the boss’.

Gita stopped at the door, and glared at him until he figured out he was meant to open it for her. In the next hall she led him away at a fast clip. He could still feel her eyes on him, measuring.

“This is how he spends Jona’s inheritance,” she said, “on toys.”

Dally’s mouth twitched, before he got back to blank. “Something you need, mistress?”

“Yes.”

But she didn’t say anything else, not until they’d gone through a side door and under a veil of silk. It could have been a different house, past that veil. Choking incense wrapped around him, spiked with the smell of fresh sage. After one more silk hanging it was tropical warm, and he was treading on a floor softened by cushions and furs. Amber wormlight took the place of sun - there were no windows.

The hair rose on the back of his neck, reacting to a new, scary idea. Dally should not be here; these were Gita’s chambers. A shadow behind one last curtain had the shape of a four-poster bed.

Gita moved away from it, to stare into a dresser mirror. With rage-fueled efficiency she snapped open a silver case, took a cigarette from inside and lit it. Smoke coiled slow between them, turning the incense smell dirty.

“I have a job for you,” she said. “It’s very important.”

Here it came. “Alright,” Dally said, faint.

“My husband is a busy man, and he’s become very… private,” she said. “You’ll look after him for me, and report what you hear. So that I can better manage the house.”

Relief hit him so fast he almost laughed. “You want me to spy on him?”

“Monitor him.” Her eyes narrowed, like she couldn’t tell if she was being mocked. “I’m his wife. It’s not right, there being secrets between us.”

“Monitor.”

“Yes. For the good of the house.”

Maybe it was Gita’s smoke, or her calling him a toy, but the world around Dally seemed to be coming into focus. Everything since the fight with Greenlees had felt like a fever-dream, like something not-quite-real. He kept thinking he would wake up tomorrow back in a corporate bunk.

Now suddenly he got it; This place wasn’t different, under the layers of gold lacquer. It was just another Anvil Capital, with a core of graft and bullshit. He understood this.

Dally’s fingers drummed restlessly on his thigh as he listened; not a good sign. He stared past Gita at the glittering room, taking it in. Maybe Red was right; maybe he was still drunk.

Gita sighed smoke. “There will be opportunities to collect information when he takes you into the office. You’ll only have to listen, and try to remember the exact words. Of course, you’ll tell no one. Just come to me in the small hours once or twice a week-”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Why should I?” Dally asked. Shit— “I mean, what do I get out of it?”

Gita blinked at him. “Did you say something?”

His head shook a little, but his mouth was already running. “I said ‘what do I get out of it’.”

“What?”

Dally waited, while she slowly absorbed that, while his heart started hammering.

She was straightening in her chair, a snake slowly bracing it’s coils. “You get protection,” she said, “from me.”

“I don’t need that though.” He forced a smile.

She didn’t say anything for a while, filling the silence with smoke. In that quiet Dally could hear his boot heels squeek on the floor as he rocked. Finally she carefully brushed past him, eyes blazing, and went to a dresser in the corner. While Dally tried not to move she rummaged through the drawers, sifting through half-full perfume bottles, letters, bits of silk. Eventually she found an old pen in the back, a carved ivory tube bound with tarnished silver. Ink crusted the nib, turned black from years of drying. It was his imagination, of course, but Dally instantly smelled burning hair.

“Come here,” she said. “Roll up your sleeve.” There was a snick of metal as she uncapped the nib.

The sound made Dally’s teeth itch, turned his fake smile even more brittle. “Mistress, you don’t want to do that.”

“Come here.”

Somehow he didn’t take a step, just swayed in place. “I- He’ll see the burn on me.”

Gita paused.

“Yeah,” Dally said, and swallowed the crackle in his voice. “Yeah, he’ll see it, and ask me, and I’ll tell him. You know? ‘Your wife tried to get me monitoring, and I said no thanks. Actually, maybe I should go tell him right now?”

Once, on a job, Dally had watched a fresh-built scaffold collapse as the struts buckled. All sixteen stories, banging right into each other like a deck of cards, letting off claps of dust. Bang bang bang. Gita looked like how Dally had felt, watching that. Her cheeks were going slowly red. Ash fell from her forgotten cigarette. She glanced at it, confused, then took a long, deliberate pull.

Eventually she breathed out. “You belong to me,” she said.

“It’s his name on my contract. Maybe I’m loyal?”

Gita laughed, a little too high and sharp. When she fell silent Dally was still just staring at her.

‘I- well.” she said. “Alright.”

“Alright...?”

“What is it you want?”

Dally grinned, panicking. What the hell did he want? He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I want you to keep him off of me when he’s drunk,” he tried. “And… and in three months I want to be sold on out of here.”

“Keep him away?” Her laugh had a note of hysteria. “And how exactly should I make him sell you?”

“I don’t know. You’re a smart lady, you’ll figure it out.”

“He doesn’t sell thralls,” she said. “It’s impossible. Even if he did, three months is hardly any information at all for me.”

“That’s my demand.”

Dally heard Yaral say that once, demand, and it worked the same now.

Gita stared, more quiet. “I tell you, it’s not possible.”

“Okay,” Dally said. “In that case I should, just, uh-” He glanced around the room, and turned to stroll back towards the door.

A yank on his arm stopped him - Gita had lunged, catching his sleeve. “One year,” she said, “one year, and that’s the best I can do.”

He looked down at the hand, considering. Her fingers were very tight. “Three months,” he said.

“…Nine months.”

“Three? Months?”

“You-“ Gita licked her lips and swallowed whatever she was about to say. “Six. Six months and you’ll have a case of cigarettes. Alright? I’ll keep Tannis away as much as I can, but there are limits to what I can do for you.”

Six months? That was a whole lot shorter than forever. Dally’s throat ached - he wasn’t actually breathing, from standing so close to her. The pen was still tight in her other hand, an outline under her gloved fingers. He only stared for another second, before slowly nodding. “Okay,” he said, and coughed. “Yeah. I want the cigarettes up front, though.”

“Of course you do.” She’d got her bearings enough to glare at him, although the fading blush kind of ruined it. “Come to the kitchens at third bell. And-“

She reached for his head, fast enough that Dally couldn’t flinch away in time. She careful tousled his hair and leant back to examine him again, before letting him go.

“I want the maids to think we’re sleeping together,” she said, acid, “you should act... satisfied.”

Then she was gone, thrashing a silk screen out of the way. When the sound of her heels had faded Dally forced a breath, staring up at the filigreed ceiling. His chest hurt, and his throat, like his heart was trying to climb up his neck and strangle him.

By the time he got back to the office door, he was feeling a lot better, though. Grinning, actually, like an idiot.

Red, seeing him, gave a sidelong look at his mussed hair. “You okay?”

“Okay,” he said. ”Yeah. Hey, do you smoke?”