Dagny: An Inheritance Cycle Fanfiction.

10. Madam Missarie

And to celebrate 100 votes - another chapter! Thanks so much to everyone who voted! :)

Dagny was surprised to find Madam Missarie still in business. The lady had been less-than-youthful the last time Dagny was in Teirm, three decades ago. Now...Dagny thought she must be verging on seventy. Mid-sixties, at least.

She'd been suspicious when the little pickpocket, rather than leading her down shortcuts and sequestered alleys, took a familiar route through some of the busiest areas in the slums. That suspicion had turned to outright disbelief when the boy halted in front of a very familiar building. In fact, a notorious building.

He'd seemed earnest, though, swearing blind that the Thief Lord was in Madam's établissement - "He's always in there at this hour o' the day, m'lady. Honestly!" - and she thought if he was misdirecting her, he would've picked someplace more plausible. In the end, she'd tossed him his gold more out of pity than anything. She hardly needed it and he looked like he did, badly.

She was getting soft. Old age. Or maybe just Elvish influence.

He'd vanished as soon as he was paid, leaving her alone on the doorstep of Teirm's most infamous whorehouse.

Dagny eyed the knob with trepidation. She'd passed this building countless times as a child. The slum children used to make a game - maybe they still did - of running up the steps, seeing who was brave enough to touch the scarlet-painted wood of the door. The paint that, by the laws of Teirm, marked the brothel for what it was.

Funny, she reflected. She'd learned magic, ridden a dragon, fought in battles, trafficked with elves and dwarves and Urgals, killed men since the last time she'd stood here. And yet it still wasn't any easier to open the door.

A huddle of guardsmen was winding its way up the street, against the steady flow of people. Their destination was clear and Dagny was standing blocking the door.

Now or never, she told herself, and pushed through the door into a heavily perfumed, silk-draped hell.

The place was a bodyguard's nightmare. Right from the moment she stepped in the door, it was a maze of gauzy curtains, dimly lit by flickering candlelight. Even Dagny, with her better-than-average vision, couldn't see more than a metre in front of her face. The air was so thick with incense it made her skin itch.

She coughed, and stumbled forward a step to let the off-duty (hopefully) city guards pass her on their way in the door. She observed wryly that they seemed very sure of their way around. But she swiftly dismissed the idea of following them. It was unlikely they were going to meet with the Thief Lord, and the very last thing she wanted was to be mistaken for one of Madam Missarie's employees. Not, she admitted, that that was very likely. Several of the ladies drifted, like ethereal, scantily-clad spirits, past Dagny's view, appearing and disappearing through invisible slits in the omnipresent curtains. They were all so clean, groomed, sweet-smelling and generally lovely that Dagny felt suddenly keenly aware that her scruffy hair was unbrushed, her clothes were ragged and she most likely still reeked of wine from the night before.

"Can I help you, sweetheart?"

Dagny twisted sharply, jumping a little, but the woman wasn't speaking to her. She watched silently as the woman, wearing nothing but a filmy robe and the silky length of her hair, led a short, grubby merchant through a sweep of gauze, up an elegant flight of stone steps.

Dagny's eyes narrowed. So. That was where they took the clients. And if the little pickpocket was right - and his was the only information she had to go on - the Thief Lord was a client. Up those stairs was the man she needed to talk to, if she was going to salvage her spectacular failure and find a way to keep her promise to Arne and win Tornac Teirm's support.