"I never had a choice, is all," Henryk finished. "She does, and she doesn't even want to think about it." He took a swig of whiskey from the cut crystal glass in his hand, and looked over to Arianna, who was already pulling her dress back on, although she was – probably very deliberately – taking her time about it.
"It sounds as though it's not a choice to her," Arianna said softly, pausing to stretch out before she put one foot delicately up on a chair to pull her stocking on. "A high risk is better than certain starvation, surely."
"You would know."
Arianna's expression flickered for a moment, and she was silent for just long enough for Henryk to realise he might have offended her, then chuckled lightly. "You've already shown her a lot of kindness. Just try to find a little more, if you've any to spare."
He drained the glass, put it down heavily on the table and leaned back into the pillow. "Like as not, I'll be the one to have to kill her if she goes bad." He sighed heavily. "Why couldn't Iosefka just make the damned choice? Fine. If the girl insists she wants the treatment, she can have it. Let her have a chance."
"You're a better man than you know." Arianna sat down on the side of the bed and laid a hand on Henryk's knee, smiling softly. "She doesn't yet know how lucky she is, but she'll thank you when she does."
Henryk laughed bitterly. "Like the crowds of other Yharnamites flocking to thank every hunter they meet?"
She gave his leg a gentle squeeze. "None of them know how lucky they are to have you. You know, in some parts of the world when a man saves a life, he owns it."
"Owns it?" She nodded. "Slavery in Yharnam. The Church would love it."
"There's already slavery in Yharnam." Seeing Henryk's frown, she became uncharacteristically serious. "How does a girl from an orphanage get sent to a brothel, when there's so much decent work they could have found her? You can bet your hat a fee was paid. A sizeable one, for someone young and pretty. A human being, bought and sold like a horse and sent away somewhere she hasn't the freedom to leave. What would you call that, if not slavery?"
"And you?"
"Oh, don't worry about that. I'm my own master. I chose this life." And then the serious tone faded away to her usual calm amiability. "See, you've done even more good than you thought. She's free."
But her words floated over Henryk's head, as words he'd heard a few hours ago replayed in the front of his mind. If they find me, they'll drag me back. I have nothing in this world but enemies. He sat up, looking Arianna straight in the eye. "You know a few things about that world. If whoever bought her finds her, what are they likely to do? Speak plainly."
Arianna rarely looked uncomfortable, but she wavered for a moment. "You said the wound to her face had already happened? If her face is scarred, she's practically worthless to them. In all likelihood they'd already decided to kill her. Her only value now would be as an example to anyone else who thinks of running away, or… whatever else she did that made them do that to her." She looked away. "I'm sorry to be so depressing, but you're right. I know a few things about that world."
They'd already decided to kill her. In his head, he saw again the look on her face when she lunged at the scourge beast and stabbed the glass shard into its eye. He had already been there, fighting quite competently. She could have scrambled back, or gone flat to the ground to get away from it, and she would probably have been alright, but she had fought instead, even at the cost of ruining her hand.
Unbidden, his mind went back much further, to a teenage boy with a wild tangle of white-blonde hair and an aversion to backing down so suicidally stupid it was a miracle he had survived that first night.
He threw back the sheet and swung his legs out of the bed, reaching for his clothes. "You can see yourself out. Money's on the table," He said briskly, no longer even looking at her. She was used to him, after all. If she couldn't put up with his ways, their association would never have lasted this long. He'd certainly managed to drive away enough working women before her. Her silence could have been taken for annoyance, but as he buttoned his shirt, he was vaguely aware of her blowing him a kiss on her way out.