The scent of exotic fragrances hung in the air like another guest; present in the background, reminding everyone that they ought to be dressing and behaving in a way that merits that amount of money being burnt in the censers. It was a strange request for a brothel, where it was expected that lust and greed colluded in the nastiest ways, yet its prosperity was owed in part to that meticulousness. No guest or servant could enter without offering back a sight of taste and refinement: you had to look good, smell nice and behave even better.

Brothels are the type of place where the invisible workers, those who are not being advertised for sale, are normally of a specific kind. They’re paid low wages and there’s a certain stigma associated with their profession, regardless of how fancy the brothel is; as such, only those from outside the city walls or the transient travellers down on their luck could afford to venture into their employment. The lockdown of the port had cut off those who resided outside of the city; as a result, all brothels were in dire need of help. They offered daily wages to anyone who could spare a hand; it didn’t matter to them if one were to jump from place to place, or fail to appear the next day. As long as the day’s duties were done, they were perfectly content to leave tomorrow’s worries to the next day.

Aristides had done some homework of his own when he appeared on the second afternoon after the Magistrate’s interrogation with a plan to propose to his lord: they could perhaps approach the Chaldean merchant, their only way out of the city, by finding him in one of the brothels he frequented. They wouldn’t be able to simply request an audience: Aristides had asked around to find the merchant’s address, had walked up to the large residence in the city’s opulent upper states, and was told that only through invitation he would be allowed in. He then remembered Felicia’s words, and asked some more; he was told the Chaldean frequented three brothels in the city, and actually conducted most of his business from the comfortable rooms of the high-end pleasure houses, served by beauties skilled in poetry and music. He used one in the morning, another in the afternoon, and the third one in the evening, with no particular rhyme or reason to the specific brothel of the three he would choose at each time. This made his schedule difficult to trace; an intended move from someone who didn’t want to be disturbed by those he didn’t want to associate himself with.

Aristides then proposed that, should one want to approach him, using just enough patience and a little bit of artifice, one could pose as a worker in one of the pleasure houses. “Since they’re short-staffed, and they want cleaners, they won’t be too fastidious in their search for references; they’ll take anything,” the old warrior had said to Phobos as Ophelia brought them lunch. “We can sneak in that way; you can work in one brothel, I’ll take another, and take turns to switch from one to the other until we come across him. Once we find him, we can simply make our request.”

“I doubt he’ll be pleased with our trickery,” Phobos replied.

“I’ll yield if you have any other good ideas, my lord,” Aristides pointed out. “But the port is open only to him, and although we’ve succeeded in tricking the Magistrate for now we shouldn’t trust our luck too much. The moment that the Phrygian envoys arrive it’ll take them no time to find out the truth. We need to find a way out as soon as possible.”

The exiled prince pursued his lips, but offered no counter-argument. Ophelia held up her hand. “If there’s three brothels and two of you, let me help. We can find him in one day rather than relying on luck.”

Phobos turned his face towards her so quickly that the woman almost jumped. “No, no, we shouldn’t involve you like this. It’s not proper for a reputable woman to be seen in such places.”

“We’ll be gone soon anyway, why does it matter?”

“I would never tarnish your honour for the sake of my own gain. I’d rather be captured and executed. I’ve done enough harm to you as it is.”

“As commendable as that thought is, my lord,” Aristides said, “she’ll be captured and executed alongside us. There’ll be no honour for someone who helped a murderer.”

Phobos nodded silently, but the tortured look in his face said volumes about how he felt about the situation. It was clear to Ophelia the man had a very strict code of honour, one he felt he’d breached when he’d let her vouch for him. His apology the night before had surprised her, and his compromise to look after her had warmed her heart; she thought that for a man who had to shoulder a lot of burdens at such a young age, he was very admirable in how he conducted himself. The fact that he was able to place her before his own safety surprised her: she hadn’t known many people who would do that for a stranger. It almost felt unreal, like a character from a story. Back in her own world, she thought, no one would act like that anymore.

The next day the three of them ventured out towards the upper districts. Ophelia had been worried that stares would follow them as they had some days prior; it seemed, though, that the rise and fall of the sun and the rumour mill that had kept on turning its wheels had conjured a fog in the citizens’ minds. With their torsos and arms completely covered in simple hand-me-down tunics, the men were no Phrygians in people’s eyes, and thus were unrecognisable to those who had seen them in their parade with the city watchmen. Ophelia herself wore a headscarf and a significantly more modest attire, and this was enough to hide her identity. They were back to being anonymous peasants, of the type that looked for work where they could find it.

The three separated early in the day to their chosen brothel. Ophelia, who was slightly nervous thinking of the crazy plan she’d agreed to help with, immediately found a relieved and stressed head maid in the little entrance that the help used.

“Yes, yes, come in,” the woman had said when Ophelia timidly asked if they were looking for a hired hand for the day. “If you could stay the whole week it would be fantastic. And if you have any friends looking for some work, send them here. This damn blockade has left us at the verge of collapse. None of our regulars can come in to help with the laundry and the cleaning, and it keeps piling up.”

She’d been then brusquely shown to an inner courtyard without any pomp; she could help with the laundry first, and then whatever else was needed of her. The head maid promised a hefty sum of money by the end of the day, or at least hefty by her own standards; Ophelia had very little clue as to how much things cost in Caudiceum. She was also given a very peculiar uniform and was told to wear it while working inside the brothel. That, and the look of the building inside and outside explained why Felicia had called them ‘oriental’. It seemed like the east in this world and the east in hers were very similar in some aspects.

Back in her world, movies had concocted a very elaborate picture of how Japanese pleasure houses were meant to be; whether they were true or not, Ophelia could not tell, as her only idea of them came from different sorts of media, none of which pretended to be historically accurate. The final result was very similar, she felt, to what she was experiencing now: a vaguely Japanese building with wooden floors and delicate linen screens for doors, where women in white makeup would offer food and drink while entertaining guests with songs and poetry, and given enough money, sex. They wore brightly patterned silk hakama pants covered in layers and layers of loose kimono robes, held together by a thin obi. The fabrics were luxurious, threaded in gold and silk; their hair was worn mostly in elaborate braids wrapped in different styles around their head, and pinned together with fresh flowers and gold pins.

Her own robes, and the ones of the other workers, were obviously not as luxurious as those of the prime commodities in the brothel: the outer kimono was made of sombre dark brown linen, the pants and the inner juban were the natural grey of untreated thread. If she had thought she’d stick out wearing that clothing that belonged to some other country, she was soon corrected: none of the workers, or the entertainers she saw, looked to be from anywhere in particular. It seemed that somehow, the east had been transformed into some sort of cultural reference in that city, one that presumed certain aesthetics and customs, rather than as a sign of true cultural exchange. Or perhaps easterners in that world looked nothing like the ones from hers.

Once in her uniform, she was left alone in the courtyard to go through some of the washing that had piled up in the days before. She’d been given a bucket full of ready-to-use soapwort, which she’d learnt at Felicia’s tavern was the equivalent of wash up liquid in that world. It had a pleasant scent, as it’d been made with aromatic herbs, and was meant to be used with the bedding that customers would sleep in, and the final wash of the underclothes of the entertainers. She sat on the floor next to one of the huge vats that had been placed in the courtyard and, as instructed, carefully let the clothes soak in the water.

The bedding was more complicated, and she had to stomp on it once it had been thoroughly drenched. Over and over again, she felt like a wine maker as she worked the fabrics, thankful that the weather in that port was warm. She could imagine how hellish the task would be if one were to do it in the middle of winter, outside, with freezing water.

Some little shortcuts allowed her to finish after two hours; she had, after all, to find an excuse to wander about in search of the mysterious Chaldean merchant they wanted to meet. Her strange and newly-discovered powers came in handy, as she figured she could perhaps skip the hard manual labour required to rinse and repeat. Invisible hands twisted the fabrics after some ten minutes of testing and trying; they dropped things into the vat, rinsed them, beat them, and squeezed them again. Finally she was done, and as she was hanging up the bedding and the clothes, the head maid opened the screen door to the courtyard and exclaimed in a disbelieving tone:

“Oh? You’re done? I came in to check how you were doing… Well, that is good news. We could use someone right now in the kitchen. Come with me!”

It seemed to Ophelia as the woman kept chatting to her that she wouldn’t bat an eye to any strange occurrences as long as it meant the work would be done. She could perhaps show her the extent of her abilities and rather than be met with awe or shock, she’d probably be told to work on something else. It was a comforting thought, it occurred to her, that an agitated work schedule could work in her favour.

She was brought to the kitchen, which followed more the likes of the old style of the tavern than any eastern fancy. It was, as one would expect, controlled chaos, with the cooks and the assistants moving from place to place chopping and stirring and seasoning multitudes of dishes, with a large chimney stuffed with a mixture of skillets, pans, pots and cauldrons, seven in total and all holding something to cook.

“Good, good!” shouted a man when he saw the head maid and her come in. “You got me someone. Tell her to come here, she can put together the dishes and send them to the guest rooms.”

The head maid nodded and turned to her. “You’ll need to serve breakfast and send them to the guest rooms.”

Ophelia was confused at the repeated command, and couldn’t help but say, “Yes, I heard him.”

It earned her a surprised stare from the other woman. “Oh? So you speak Faroese? Well, this is good. I’ll let you be then, you can let Oischar sort you out.”

The head maid spared no more time in moving on to her next task. Ophelia was then warmly welcomed by the head chef, Oischar, who was surprised to see someone from his motherland. As Ophelia made some excuses as to her perfect accent (‘my mother was Faroese, I learnt it from her’), she realised that once again her ability had played in her favour. Faroese people like the head maid and the chef were fiercely attached to their own language and customs, and gave those from their own tribe an incredible amount of preferential treatment. Oischar was more than happy to chat away to her in his native language, and thus, he served as a perfect source of information.

He told her that one of their regular patrons was staying there during the morning, a Chaldean merchant he thought was rather eccentric. “They normally travel with a large retinue, but he seldom comes with more than a few people. He never asks for the entertainer’s services for himself; it’s mostly for the men who do business with him. I think he’s a wily one, he is. He softens them with food, alcohol and women, and that’s how every one of his ships sails to strong winds.”

And then the strong wind came for her, when she was told to deliver food to his room. She prepared the tray; Oischar overlooked the process as it wasn’t meant to be a simple delivery—the dishes had to be carefully decorated, and the whole presentation had to be immaculate. Two more maids were required for the full menu.

They all set in line to walk around the hallways of the brothel, and up the first floor. She heard one of the maids say they were approaching the room, and as they stopped outside the screen doors, she asked her, “do we simply leave the trays here, do we knock, or what…?”

The maid was taken aback by her question, but whatever it was she thought, she didn’t voice it out loud. “Someone will open the door from the other side, and we’ll hand each tray to her. You just need to announce us; neither Aneesha nor I can speak Iberian fluently, so it’ll be better for you to do it.”

Something about the slight rhythm of her words told Ophelia that once again she’d slipped into a different language without thinking. She tried to clear her mind for a second before speaking in Iberian out loud, “We’ve brought breakfast.”

Two sets of steps were heard approaching, and then the screen doors were opened. A man dressed in silk tunics and a woman were waiting for them. “Just in time,” said the woman with a lazy grin. “I was famished.”