Free Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear Page A

men come in here,” I said with a rush. “Most of ’em won’t be the same ones that go to the cribs. At least not regular. But one of ’em might … know your sister. Or at least have heard of her.”
    Men brag, I didn’t explain. Didn’t need to, by the spark of understanding on Priya’s face when I turned to look at her.
    “Madame said you couldn’t help me.”
    “Madame said she couldn’t help you.” I knowed it was a fine distinction, but wasn’t that what the whole profession of lawyers made their living off? “She didn’t say nothing about me. Besides, it’s just listening. There’s no harm in it.”
    Listening and maybe asking a question or two. But wasn’t that part of a whore’s job? Being the sort of ear that lonely men could turn to?
    I wondered who lonely women paid to listen. As with so much, it seemed as if the world had a solution for the one but not the other.
    Priya had stopped walking down the stair, so I stopped, too. A step lower, so our heads was level. She stared at me suspiciously.
    “What do you want?”
    “I want to help.” Which was the truth. I wanted to kiss her, too, and slide my hand over the warm skin under that white shirt. But that was probably a conversation for another day. Maybe a day after I had a better idea how Priya might feel about French favors and the rites of Sappho.
    She stared, still. I shrugged and went back to descending. “You’ll like the bedrooms,” I said.

 
    Chapter Six
    Well, it turned out Priya didn’t like the bedroom when I brought her up to the one Miss Francina had suggested was clean and empty. She didn’t say so—too polite or too scared—but when I opened the door and held the lantern up I could see from the way she looked at the narrow cot with its clean white sheets and the narrow room with its clean white walls that she was six inches, maybe less, from bolting.
    “There’s a window,” I said, walking in to show her how to pull the shade. I had to set the lantern down on the side table to free up my hands. Priya followed me in. The path beside the bed was so narrow she couldn’t stand beside me, so she peered around my shoulder.
    “It opens,” I added. I demonstrated how to work the casement. When I glanced at her for approval, her frown was a little less pinched. Just a little.
    “I like the window,” she allowed. She still looked like bucking, though.
    “Hey,” I said. It dawned on me that maybe this narrow room didn’t look too different from the cribs she was used to, if more freshly painted and probably with cleaner sheets. If Bantle even saw to it that they got sheets. I think I said about how some girls just lay a slicker down. “You never have to have anyone else in here, unless you want to.”
    “The walls are close,” she said helplessly. Then, again, “The window helps some.”
    I thought about where she’d come from. What she’d lived through. I thought about third-class berths on steamships from India. I thought about how I could maybe make a living gentling—it was work I might be able to get, even as a girl, because I was good at it and had my father’s name. And people could pay me less.
    Except I couldn’t bear to be around horses anymore. They reminded me of Da.
    Well, and I couldn’t bear not to be around them, either. Because they reminded me of Da.
    I reckoned I was going to have to sort that particular conundrum by the time I opened my stable and gave up on sewing.
    I tried not to think about the cribs and how I heard some of the girls down there never left them. Dead or alive.
    “Look,” I said finally. Helplessly. “This is what we’ve got. What would make it better for you?”
    That stopped her dead, as if she’d never paused to consider it. She blinked, licked her lips, stepped back—and tripped when the edge of the cot caught the backs of her calves. Like I said, it was that narrow.
    She sat down hard, the bed catching her. A puff of clean alfalfa smell surrounded her as her bum