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It's an ordinary, quiet night. The . . . patrons, or whatever they are, of the lab equipment shop downstairs, took off about forty-five minutes ago.
There's silence, mostly. You can only be out at night in Sothis if you have business. But there's some business. Every so often a party passes under Katie's window. Their conversation is mostly what Katie has become accustomed to thinking of as "focused", though occasionally some is just downright tense or revelrous.
Wind. Distant insects. Dogs.
Something shuffles downstairs.
And continues to shuffle.
"Are we good?" The voice is insistent, alto, and right underneath Katie. And it's female.
"Yes, fine". Higher. If Katie knows what female halflings sound like, it sounds like that.
The shuffling moves deeper into the shop. A glass clinks. Laughter starts, whispering at first, then merely hushed.
"Oh my god." A third voice.
"All this stuff is fake, you know. This and this and this used to be one bespoke fixture."
"Fuck."
Whoever it is is going through the merchandise.
Expensive, heavily regulated merchandise. Katie's parent have only been in Ulunat for two weeks, but she's picked up that the proprietors of this place have gone to a moderate effort to secure it against thieves.
She throws a knife through the loose part of Somayyeh's cloak, pinning her to the wall.
"Ugh, don't lump me in with those romance novel reading heteros. It's different when I do it."
"Are you unfamiliar with the concept of heterosexuality? Do they not have it where you're from? If so, where is it and can I move there?"
". . . Lastwall. No.
Why would you want to?
And I . . . know what heterosexuality is. Especially through Tazich. I just don't know why you'd despise someone for it."
Shit, Katie thinks Teg mentioned that earlier and she just forgot because she's an idiot. She hopes she isn't judged for it. "Because it's gross and boring and pathetic. Men are gross and ugly and they aren't really capable of loving women, that's why they need marriage to force them to cooperate long enough to pop out more little serflings to till the fields."
"Male serflings and female weavers, you mean."
She hasn't heard anyone ever talk this way about men before. It's incredibly offensive.
"Serfs are still serfs even if they're weaving rather than plowing the fields, definitely spiritually and I'm pretty sure legally."
"You would know better than I.
Serfdom implies, like, a sort of responsibility, though, a custody of the land and a liability for it, which weavers don't have.
Not that I'm from a place that actually has serfs, and this isn't either. I'm not even from a place where most women are weavers. They're teachers and nurses and store-tenders and bookkeepers and bureaucrats, apart from being mothers and wives."
"Having a job doesn't make you less of a docile broodmare, just means you're subserviently obeying two masters instead of one."
Two . . . ?
The husband.
Her stomach is getting cold. She still hasn't had the chance to drop off the letter to Doe. What exactly is she dealing with here?
"Dividing unilateral holdings does reduce tyranny, just as a matter of how things work, but that's not what I was talking about.
What . . . is life supposed to be, if not work? Never mind about the masters."
"Would you like a hands-on demonstration?" Teg apologized for being forward, so she hopes she doesn't mind if she is as well.
"Well, not just sex specifically, but pleasure in general. Also winning, and spiting the haters, which I suppose is its own kind of pleasure."
She really wants to interject with something about how Urgathoa would love Katie, but holds her tongue for now and again tries to concentrate on her project. Give her breathing space.
