Free R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation by Richard Lee & Reid Byers Page B

the reason Nym had not seen fit to hang a placard outside.
    In Menzoberranzan, where a goddess and her priestesses reigned supreme, few female dark elves ever found it necessary to sell their bodies. Only a handful of the sick and infirm, dwelling in the most abject need, had ever stooped to such a degradation. Accordingly, one might assume that any male wishing to purchase intimate companionship would find his choice limited to these rare unappealing specimens or the females of one of the inferior species.
    But that wasn’t quite the case, at least not if a male had a heavy purse. The reason was that, while they generally devoted their military efforts to fighting cloakers, svirfneblin, and other competing civilizations of the Underdark, drow cities on rare occasions waged war on one another. Once in a while, such conflicts yielded female prisoners.
    The prudent, legitimate thing to do with such potentially dangerous captives was interrogate, torture, and kill them. That fact notwithstanding, Nym had on several occasions managed to bribe officers to give him their prisoners, whom he then smuggled into Menzoberranzan and down to the cellar of the Jewel Box.
    Nym had gone to all this trouble based on the shrewd and wellproven assumption that a goodly number of Menzoberranyr males would pay handsomely for the privilege of dominating a female, and in his establishment, one could do anything one wanted with a captive. Nym would even provide a customer with a bastinado, a brazier of coals, thumbscrews . . . his only stipulation being that one must pay a surcharge if one left a permanent mark.
    Since the brothel’s existence was an open secret, Pharaun wasn’t sure why the matron mothers hadn’t shut it down. On the face of it, it certainly seemed to encourage disrespect for the ruling gender. Perhaps they felt that if a male had a refuge in which to act out his resentments, it would make him all the more deferential to the females in his home. More likely, Nym was slipping them a substantial portion of the take.
    At any rate, the Jewel Box seemed a reasonable place to seek information concerning rogue males, especially if one had a spy in place. Pharaun wasn’t confident that he did anymore, but one never knew.
    The stairs emptied into a hallway of numbered doors. Moans of passions and grunts of pain sounded faintly from behind several of them. It was busier than usual.
    The mage strolled down the passage until he found number fourteen. He hesitated for an instant, then scowled and turned the largest of his keys in the lock. The door swung open.
    Seated on the bed, shackles clutching her wrists and ankles, Pellanistra looked much as he remembered, the same powerful, shapely limbs and heart-shaped face, with only a few more scars where one or another of her visitors had pressed down two hard, as well as a split lip and closed, puffy eye where a more recent caller had beaten her.
    She lifted her face, saw him, and charged with her long-nailed hands outstretched. Then she staggered as one of her governing enchantments riddled her body with pain, and an instant later hit the end of the chains securing her to the wall. She lost her balance and fell on her rump.
    “Hello, Pellanistra,” Pharaun said.
    She spat at him, then screwed up her face at another flare of punishment. The gobbet of saliva fell well short of the wizard’s soft, high boots.
    “Much as I dislike descending to the obvious,” Pharaun said, “I feel compelled to observe that you’re only hurting yourself.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Come on, let’s sit and have a talk, just like in the old days. I’ll even remove the shackles if you wish.”
    “We had a bargain!” she said.
    “I refuse to have an extended conversation with someone sitting on the floor. It compromises my dignity as much as it does yours. Come on, be sensible. Take my hand.”
    She didn’t do that, but, chains clinking, she did clamber to her bare feet unassisted. He