Rojan Dizon 02 - Before the Fall by Francis Knight Page A

her, that she expects so little from life and even I can’t just ignore that. Added to that I liked her and if I tried talking her into bed I’d screw it up at some point and she’d want to strangle me and, so, well, I haven’t tried.
    It wasn’t long before Kersan ushered me into her room. She’d managed to salvage a fair bit of stuff from her old place: the lounger, the bed that looked like it was made for six. The bath. Ah, the bath—until I went to the ’Pit I’d never experienced the luxury. Now I was becoming addicted, especially as my own living arrangements currently meant I was sleeping on the sofa behind my desk. The best I managed there was a quick sluice in the sink, but Erlat’s bath was a thing of beauty. Shaped like a large barrel, it came up to my chest, deep enough to sink right in.
    The deal, unspoken but real in my mind, was this: I got a bath and Erlat to help me untangle my thoughts, tell me what an arse I was. Afterwards, we talked and she could be herself. No pretence of seduction except when she teased, no smooth talk and practised wiggles. Instead, I did my best to make her laugh, though it always seemed to end up being at my expense. I didn’t mind—I liked to hear her laugh, to know that for a few moments she’d forgotten why she was here, why she felt she knew nothing else. Besides, she helped keep my rampant ego in check and my sanity on this side of lost. I never heard the black in Erlat’s house.
    Erlat was a sight to make a grown man believe. I’m not sure in what, but she made me believe in all sorts of things. I’m not certain how old she was—come to think of it, neither was she—but she had a serene poise that came from seeing the very darkest of what life had to offer, straightening her shoulders and bearing it with grace.
    The face of a young woman, maybe eighteen or twenty, with smooth skin and a mouth that seemed built to laugh, especially at me, and most especially when she was making me blush. And eyes that had seen far more than a girl her age should. There was something about Erlat that always twisted my gut a little, put me off balance. Not that she was a Downsider, or that she’d once worn brands. Not that she ran a brothel either—hell, brothels are some of my favourite places. I couldn’t be sure what it was, only that it happened.
    She was dressed today in a green robe that skimmed the floor, but was split up the side to give enticing glimpses of a smooth thigh that I tried not to notice. Her dark hair was in its usual elegant coil at the nape of her neck, showing off the angles of her face to perfection. We’d gone past the stage when she thought she needed to be someone else, smooth like a precious stone, polished and impenetrable—her professional persona—with me, and I could be myself with her, too. Perhaps that was what I didn’t want to screw up by jumping her.
    “Starting to smell, are we?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
    “Stink like anything.”
    Her nose wrinkled in a delicate show of faux-disgust. “I can tell. Off you go then.”
    She didn’t turn away when I started to undress, but stared at me with a frankness that made me blush. Again. Erlat’s the only person alive who can make me blush.
    She laughed at me, and made a show of turning her back. “You’re such a prude, Rojan. Are you sure you don’t want company in your bath?”
    I got out of my clothes quick before she turned back again—a trick she tried every time, a game she liked to play with me. I slid into the water just in time. “Quite sure, thanks.”
    As usual, the water felt hot enough actually to peel off skin. I dangled my bad hand over the side and shut my eyes. Or tried to. I kept seeing dead bodies, dead boys.
    Erlat’s hands on my shoulders jerked me out of my thoughts. Her fingers kneaded the muscles there, forced them to loosen. She didn’t usually stay—she normally left me to my bath and we talked after. This time, though, her hands were