grey city
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Kalah brought her two girls to Beraht when they were eight and ten years old, her eyes red-rimmed from lack of drink and desperate from lack of coin.
"They're good girls," she offered, a wheedling note in her voice that was pure Dusttown. "They do what they're told."
In all truth, it was nearly impossible to tell that they were girls. The pair of them were as skinny and filthy as underfed Nugs, their brands still inflamed and tender on their faces. Casteless children were branded at an early age, and Kalah wasn't stupid enough to try and sneak them out of it. Everyone knew her for a noble hunter, and everyone knew that her last two forays into the Warrior caste had resulted in nothing more than a taste for strong drink, and a pair of girls too worthless to feed.
Beraht snorted. "Please. I've got enough on my hands without taking care of your whelps for you."
She shifted, wringing her hands. He could already see the change in her face, the subtle downward shift of every line in her body, and knew that the last of her status as a noble hunter would trickle through the cracks before the year was out. "They're yours." she blurted out. "They're good girls. They'll do whatever you want."
He looked them over.
Up close, the comparison to a pair of nugs was growing more apt by the minute. They shivered, huddled on the floor of his office. The taller, older one looked nervously from its mother's face to his over and over again, as if torn. The smaller one stared at its feet, its frightfully ugly little face as expressionless as the stone.
"Are they clean?" he asked sharply. "And I don't mean are you scrubbing behind their ears for 'em every night, I mean have you already sold them off?"
She shook her head. "No sir, no sir," she said, her fear showing through and making her sound imbecilic. "They're good girls." Then, babbling rapidly, and wringing her hands harder than ever, "Please, if you just give me enough to cover my rent, they're yours. They'll do whatever you want. They won't complain, or I'll see to it, I swear." Here she shot a look to the eldest that made it shrink even further down to the floor, thin arms clutching around its sister's shoulders. She'd clearly see to it in a heartbeat.
It fairly warmed his bones to witness it.
He shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I can take them off your hands."
Kalah nearly kissed his feet for that, until he had Jarvia escort her outside with a shove to her back.
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He let them know right away what he expected of them.
This was key. It wouldn't do to let this start out on a misunderstanding.
He took each one separately into his office. He examined their teeth. He checked for (and shortly discovered) vermin in their hair and clothes. He bid them to take off their clothes to let him see for himself whether or not Kalah had already sold away their most valuable aspects before coming to him. (She had not.)
When he was finished, and while they were still naked and shivering in his office, he looked them in the eye and told them exactly what he would do to her sister if she didn't do what he said, when he said it, and with a sodding smile on her face at the time.
The eldest collapsed into tears, and right then he knew what he could use her for. She swore that she'd do anything he wanted, that she'd never complain, that she'd never talk back. Just please, please don't hurt Natia, or whatever her name was. Disgraceful. But useful.
He bundled her clothes in her arms and shoved her out of his office without another word. Nothing further needed to be said. He invited the younger one in with a jerk of his fingers and expected more of the same.
Naturally, he'd been somewhat surprised when she merely sucked in a breath at the cool lack of emotion in his words as he told her any number of crude, irreversible things he would do to her sister if she didn't cooperate. He was almost disappointed at her lack of reaction. She also hadn't resisted when he'd pried open her jaws to see her crooked baby teeth, or when he'd brusquely shoved her legs apart to verify her virginity at eight years old. Not like her sister, who'd started crying in shock even then.
Of course, that was when she launched herself at his kneecaps, howling and spitting like a mad thing.
She fully intended to kill him. In a way, he admired her for it.
After he rendered her as docile as a black eye and a boot to the chest could make her, he broke her sister's two smallest fingers for it, and made her watch.
It got the message across.
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The younger one was a bruiser, pure and simple.
The elder was something he could use.
He had her teeth capped by the time she hit fourteen. Warrior caste types liked to see the flash of gold around their cocks. Noble caste needed wining and dining, needed a girl to show she could play all forty measures of Carridan's Lament on a string harp before they'd deign to take her top off. By sixteen, she'd mastered the string harp, and was learning how to use one of those surfacer lyres.
The younger one he set loose with the pack of Duster kids he'd set amongst the Merchant's quarter, cutting purse strings and teasing handkerchiefs. Within a year or so, she was running it. She required no reining in. She required no discipline. In other words, he had half a dozen Dusters just like her. She was beneath his notice.
Jarvia actually surprised him by dropping a quiet word in his ear after Brosca had come in to report.
"Watch that one," she said, her voice a gruff curl, the one reserved for him alone.
Her eyes were flinty. They went flintier when Beraht laughed at her.
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When word came back of the events of the Proving, he couldn't bring himself to feel surprise. Anger, certainly. Satisfaction was in there somewhere as well- Rica might have caught the Prince's cock between her pretty teeth, but she'd never forget about Uncle Beraht now- but surprise was entirely absent.
She wasn't her sister. She wasn't Jarvia, She wasn't even that useless Duster Leske, who at least knew enough to send someone else out to take the worst of the fire.
She wasn't anything now, he thought with some satisfaction.
Beraht enjoyed being proven right. No matter how long it took.
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