with Bobby gone, you’re the man who’s been nicest to me. The men sometimes say things to the other girls, about me, but I don’t mind. It’s just, well, you’ve never been anything but nice to me.’
Erik shrugged and said, ‘I know what it’s like to have some tough luck, I guess.’
‘You can’t know what life is like on the street.’
He said nothing, just watching her in the flickering torchlight. She went on, ‘Girl children aren’t thought much of, except for whores. There’s good money for little girls in some places.’ She hugged herself. ‘My mum was a whore, that’s the truth. No one knows who my father was. My mum threw me out when I was six. I think maybe she was keeping me from the crib. Her whoremaster kept looking at me funny.
‘I got found by this man, named Daniels, and he took me to this place in the sewers. They gave me food and told me they’d take care of me, but I had to do what they said. There were other children there, too. They didn’t seem too bad off. They were dirty, mostly, but they were fed.
‘I begged, and I learned the best dodges. I could cry like I was lost and if some mark stopped to see what the problem was, someone else cut his purse. I started being the holder after a while.’
‘Holder?’ asked Erik.
‘Cutpurse, he gets spotted, he gets stopped by the City Watch, he’d better have nothing on him that don’t belong. So most Mockers work in teams. The cutpurse hands off the score as soon as he can, and the holder moves to the bagman, who takes it to Mother’s.’
‘Mother’s?’
‘That’s what the Mockers call the place we all live … lived.’
‘Oh.’
She said, ‘Anyway, I saw me mum and we talked after I’d been gone a few years. She told me I had a sister, who was a whore. That was Betsy.’
‘You found her, then?’
‘Yes, and we got along good. She didn’t like me being a thief and I didn’t care much for her whoring, but we got along. I liked her. She was the only one I knew who wasn’t always after me for something.
‘When I got these –’ she pointed to her breasts – ‘some of the men got rough with me. If I could stay close to the other cutpurses or hang out at Mother’s, I was all right. But sometimes you just can’t stay in a crowd, you know what I mean?’
Erik didn’t, but he nodded as if he did.
‘I got poked a lot until I started dressing like I was when you found me, like a boy, staying dirty, not smelling good.’
Erik didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent.
‘What I’m saying is I’ve never done nothing with a man that was ’cause I wanted.’
Erik waited, and when she didn’t speak, he softly asked, ‘Are you telling me you want to now?’
Tears welled up in her eyes as she almost imperceptibly nodded. He sighed as he gathered her into his arms. Erik had never felt so unsure of himself before. He had been with whores since he had joined the army, and he remembered what the first one told him, to go easy, but every woman he had lain with knew more than he did. Now he was being asked to lie with a girl who knew only violence at the hands of men.
He kissed her on the cheek and then the chin, then the lips. At first she was very still, then after a few more kisses she began responding. Soon she stood and took him by the hand and led him into the barn, toward the loft where she slept.
‘Erik!’ came the familiar voice. ‘You up there?’
A sleepy ‘wuzat?’ came from Kitty as she nestled in his arms. Their lovemaking had been tentative, slow, and awkward at first, then building until Erik felt he was in the midst of battle, as Kitty exploded in a riot of emotions in his arms. Laughter mixed with tears was unleashed by his touch, and at the end she lay exhausted, as did he.
A while later they made love a second time, and Kitty was much more sure of what it was she wanted. Erik had never experienced anything like this with another woman.
He wondered if he was in love.
He raised up on one arm as the caller again shouted his name. ‘Nakor, I’m going to kill you,’ Erik muttered as he sat up and began to dress.
Kitty came awake. ‘Is that the funny gambler?’ she asked.
Erik said, ‘He’s not being very funny at the moment.’
As he pulled on his boots, she slipped her arms around his waist and said, ‘Thank you.’
He stopped. ‘For what?’
‘For showing me what the other girls always talked about.’
Erik sat motionless for a moment. ‘You’re welcome, I think.’
She leaned her head on his shoulder. ‘You think?’
‘It wasn’t a favor,’ he said in a curt tone.
‘Oh, you enjoyed it, too?’ she asked innocently.
Erik realized she was again teasing him. He was pleased it was too dark for her to see him blush. ‘I ought to spank you for that,’ he muttered.
She kissed his shoulder. ‘Some of the girls at the White Wing charge extra for that, I’ve been told.’
A wave of uncertainty gripped Erik, as real as a sword thrust in his chest. He turned and gripped her by the arms, harder than he intended, and when he saw the look of panic in her eyes, he instantly released his hold. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘But I can’t stand it when you mock me.’
She looked at his face as tears formed in his eyes and suddenly she was crying. She laid her chin on his shoulder, cheek to cheek with him, as she whispered, ‘I’m sorry, too. I don’t know how to be any other way.’
‘I will never hurt you,’ he whispered.
‘I know,’ she whispered back. ‘I’m all jumbled inside.’ Then she pulled back and he saw she was smiling. ‘And it’s your fault, Erik von Darkmoor.’
He kissed her.
Soon, a cough sounded and Erik turned to see Nakor’s head poking up from below as he stood on the ladder to the loft. ‘There you are!’
Without a word, Erik extended his leg, pushing the ladder away from the loft, and watched it vanish, with a satisfying squawk from Nakor, into the gloom. A loud thud and an ‘Oof’ of breath exploding from Nakor’s lungs followed.
Kitty laughed and Erik finished dressing. After a moment, as Nakor lay groaning dramatically from atop a pile of hay, Erik said, ‘When you’re done with your act, put the ladder back up.’
The groaning was instantly replaced by a chuckle. ‘You know me too well,’ said Nakor.
The ladder reappeared at the edge of the loft and Erik glanced at Kitty, who was
