"Your pick, mister." The brothel-keeper's voice was ragged and thick, like someone who'd been gargling on cheap ale and tobacco for a decade or three. The smell of the ramshackle house suggested that the impression was not far from the truth, but the tall man with rumpled, soot-coloured hair and a dingy bottle in his fist didn't seem to mind.
Getting a good look at the line of women who stood abreast was no easy task in the poorly lit room. Their faces were mostly clean. The thin, cheap dresses hanging from their bodies would perhaps impress a local farm laborer, but even with the drink soaking about his brain, he could tell poor cloth from fine. These women were cast-off's from farmers who decided their wives and daughters were too homely, too thin, too fat, missing too many teeth, or too slow in the head to be useful.
The man stepped forth and peered down at the first girl from his imposing height, as the crown of his head nearly brushed the ceiling. She was slender and small-framed, with a bent head and hands clenched together. He felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach. She couldn't have been more than fifteen winters old. There was a passing thought that he should snatch her and drag her out the door, away from the inevitable future of diseases and pregnancies, and perhaps track down her father to bash all of his teeth in, one by one. But these thoughts were not conducive to the empty forgetfulness and freedom from conscience that he wished to achieve before dawn, so he took another pull from the bottle in his grip and moved on down the line.
One by one, he paused before each figure, inspecting them with a silent, glowering eye while the brothel-keeper hemmed and fidgeted behind him. He could hear her biting at the coin he had given her, testing its authenticity with annoying little clacks of her teeth.
He paused at the fourth girl in the line. Unlike some of the others, she did not hang her head in shame, but nor did she look up to meet his eye. Straight ahead she gazed, acting as if he weren't even there. He leaned back slightly to inspect her further, scrutinizing every inch, from the texture of her dark hair to the promise of what sort of figure lay behind the shapeless, threadbare dress. The only thing he could not see was her eyes.
"Look up here, girl," he grumbled. He needed her to look close enough to the other, but not so close that he might fall into danger.
She obeyed with cool, silent indifference. In the wide, brown pools, he saw resignation, solemnity, and a hint of contempt. For a brief flash, she seemed to become the other woman, their faces swimming together in a blur.
One of the women coughed. The floor creaked as someone shifted their feet. The man gave a blink and realized that he'd been standing there, staring at this particular girl for an unknown span of time. She looked confused and slightly frightened now.
"This one," he grunted, placing a hand on the girl's shoulder and forcefully tugging her out of the line.
