The Woman They Kept (6 page)

Gideon didn't quite know what to
say. The dogs had stopped menacing him, simply sitting and watching
him. The room was quiet enough that he could hear his heart
pounding in his ears. “Are you kidding me?”

Akem shrugged. “Maybe I
am. I'll help you out, but you have to learn that people like me,
and there are very few people like me, will never do anything for
you for free. I have a job that needs to be done. If you do it,
then I'll tell you what I know about your precious little Rolanda.”

Gideon's heart skipped a beat at
the name and his arm tingled for a moment. “You know her?
Where is she? My god, let's go right now!”

“
Not so fast, young buck,"
Akem said with a smile as he held up a hand. "I told you, it's
my business to know things, and business is good. Now, will you do
my favor?”

“
Anything. What can I
do?” Gideon was seated at the edge of his chair. He felt
closer to finding Rolanda now than he had in months.

“
It's very simple.
There's a bar on the other side of town called Trinity. I want you
to go there and wait for a man with red hair. He'll probably be
wearing a suit and some cheap, gaudy jewelry.”

“
Do you want me to tell
him something, or give him something?”

Akem shook his head with the
smoke billowing out of his nostrils. “I don't want him to
know that you are there, I just want to know the particulars. When
he comes, when he goes. Who he talks to.”

“
What if I can't catch
names? It's not like I know any of these people.”

Akem smiled, his teeth long and
sharp. “Describe them to me, remember their faces,
distinguishing characteristics, things like that. I should know who
they are.”

Gideon was wasting time. He
felt it like grains of sand sliding through his fingers, feeling
small and futile knowing that this was the only way he would advance
in his search. He had gone straight to the bar Akem had asked him
to be at, nursing drink after drink, trying to tip as much as
possible into a potted plant he sat near. It was a simple
establishment, just some tables and a jukebox, dimly lit and with a
smoky haze of someone's cigarette floating a few feet over his head.
The bartender had an ugly flap of scar tissue over one eye, but he
held his body sidewise so you would only see it briefly. The
clientele were mostly older patrons, they had the sad stink of
life's little rejections written all over them. One played with a
wedding band he set on the table opposite him, another tried to
engage Gideon by saying how he was too old to do anything but drink.

It was late in the afternoon by
the time a slender man with red hair walked in to the bar. A gold
chain was around his neck and a large diamond ring glinted off his
finger. Gideon felt his body wake up, a tingle of excitement
electrifying the nerves down his spine. He forced himself not to
stare too hard. The man was followed closely by a woman of a very
particular beauty. Her beauty was all in her hips and her breasts,
they were round and firm enough to make up for the rest of her. She
walked like the whole room was watching her, her hips jutting to one
side and then another, her blonde hair falling into her eyes. The
man held on to her with one hand, as though if he were to let her go
for one instant she would fall away from him. He stood tall, his
chest thrust out, his eyes moving swiftly from face to face around
the room.

The pair spoke in whispers but
smiled and touched each other constantly. She rubbed her legs
together whenever they held hands. He paid for everything they had,
her hand only dipped into her purse for a compact mirror when the
man went to the bathroom. When the man sat back down he wiped at
his nose frequently, his eyes a little more excited than they were
before. He leaned over the table and whispered something in her ear
that caused her to blush and, after a moment, nod. They looked
around, drained their drinks, and then walked off into the street.

...

When Akem heard the description
of the woman that the red haired man was with he never even batted
an eye, simply sitting and absorbing the information. Afterward he
immediately told Gideon what he needed to know.

“
Rolanda's original owner
has already sold her. I cannot say as to her treatment as, frankly,
I don't care. The transaction was the result of a poor bet on a bad
hand of cards.”

They were in Akem's office
again, the dogs sitting by his desk rather than growling in Gideon's
lap this time. Akem was wearing a bathrobe that showed a pale and
hairy chest peaking out from between the flaps. “Has she been
violated?” Gideon asked. His entire body was trembling.

Akem looked him in the eye. “I
told you, I don't care, so I don't know. The current owner is a
trader who moved on to Silver Springs more than a week ago. I will
tell you that her price has probably not been met.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
First rights tend to
fetch quite a high price. The smart trader would not season a girl
immediately unless she became a problem, most likely punishing the
other girls in the stable if he had a problem with your Rolanda.
I'm guessing she remains a virgin.”

Akem wrote down the pertinent
information on the man that she had been sold to and gave it to
Gideon. He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a small
silver ring with a dragon inscribed in it. “You'll need a few
things that I can provide for you. Clothes, money, all that. Will
you accept my help?” Gideon nodded without even thinking
about it. He needed all the help he could get. “Good, then
wear this ring, if you get into a spot of trouble it may be useful
in getting you out, it will tell people that you are in my debt.”

...

Gideon walked away from Akem's
house with a surreal cocktail of emotions inside of him. He was
afraid, sure, with a healthy dash of the anger that had been fueling
him for months, but there was something new there. An inkling of
hope was mixed in.

...

Though he left for Silver
Springs immediately, he was unable to get more than a few miles
before he had to park for the night. The idea of stopping grated on
him, but he knew that if he had an accident out here Rolanda would
be doomed, there was no one else alive to go after her. The valley
around him had mountains that rose up like giants all around him,
and he felt very small as he pitched his tent under a grey and
leafless tree.

Sleep didn't come to him that
night, for the first time in months he allowed himself the slimmest
daydream of finding Rolanda whole. It kept his eyes open and for
once, he didn't mind.

When the sun began to rise
Gideon stood. He was exhausted but ready to ride, throwing aside
the flaps of the tent and stepping outside. When he did his blood
froze like ice in his veins and a shiver ran through him.

In the night, without him ever
hearing, someone had strung up two dead bodies outside his tent.
Their faces were bloated and purple, the color of a rotting
strawberry, but Gideon knew who they were. One had red hair, and
one had blonde, and someone had tied their hands together so their
corpses looked like young lovers, even in death.

Gideon packed quietly and
quickly, trying to understand why Akem would place them there. Was
it a show of strength? A warning? He didn't know, but he did know
that it would be good to get to Silver Springs as quickly as
possible.

...

The bubble over Silver Springs
was expansively large, coming into view suddenly as Gideon peaked
over a mountain pass. Even before parking his bike and exchanging
his money Gideon had to stop and marvel at the tremendous nature of
the bubble. It was exponentially larger in every sense than all the
others that he had been to. The glass dwarfed him, and as he
entered he felt a sense of solitude and isolation, a curious sort of
freedom, and he knew that there was no way he could be noticed in a
place like this.

Within the bubble the city of
Silver Springs had created a world unlike any that Gideon had known.
Most other bubbles restricted their greenery to the subsistence
farming that fed their populace, not so with Silver Springs. Even
in Kitswitch they kept their greenery to little flower pots around
the front of their houses. Not here. Trees and flowers sprang up
along every street corner, the air smelled fertile and warm,
Gideon's senses sharpened as he felt every nerve in his body come
alive in that place. A few clouds hovered overhead within the
bubble, obscuring the view of the sky.

As he made his way to the
address that Akem had given him he felt a few drops of water land on
his neck. He immediately jumped under the overhang of a nearby
building.

“
It's not like outside,”
a voice from behind him said. Gideon turned, an old doorman smiled
at him. “Go ahead, you can touch it, it's clean.”

Gideon extended a tentative hand
out to the raindrops, now a steady stream, and laughed with delight
as the water ran over him with no sense of burning. He stepped out
and felt it trickling through his hair and down his back, smiling
back at the doorman before continuing.

Akem's voice repeated itself as
he walked through the rain towards his destination. “Lock
everything away in a little box in the corner of your mind,”
he had said. “Even if she is in the room servicing a man,
lock it all away until you get her out of there. These people will
be incredibly dangerous, and if you can't get them to agree to give
you her, she will live and die as a whore. You have no option of
forcing or sneaking her out. You'll have to play the part of buyer,
you'll have to play the part of scum, you'll have to out filth the
lot of them. You'll do things you won't look at yourself the same
for, but by the end, you'll have your Rolanda.”

The plan then was to buy her.
Akem had been remarkably generous on that front. He had given him
money and provided a well tailored suit for Gideon to wear. When
Gideon asked him how he could ever hope to pay back such a large
sum, Akem had simply smiled and tapped on the silver ring, reminding
him that he would keep track of the debt. Gideon shuddered when he
thought of the couple that had swung like rotting fruit, but he put
that thought in the little box and shut it away.

He triple checked the address
before ringing the bell. It was a large house, certainly, but it
was on a quiet street with little traffic. The house itself was
muted and dull on the outside, no opulence nor flash. There were no
statues nor fountains, no extravagant displays of wealth or status,
just a neatly trimmed yard and a little brick path up to the front
door. Trees formed the perimeter, blocking the rest of the
neighborhood from view.

The suit he wore was well made,
surely, but it restricted the movement in his arms and the tightness
around his neck was irritating. Ties were a thing altogether
foreign to him, they were a rich person's noose that he had
willingly slipped in to, he never would have worn one back in
Cormac. A pair of golden cufflinks jangled at his wrists loudly.
They were more of Akem's jewelery and were stamped with a picture of
a dragon.

A mountain of a man opened the
door and stood towering over Gideon, his jaw looking hard as
concrete, muscles rippling in waves as he moved. His head was
shaved bald, a boulder perched on top of the mountain, and his
eyelids heavily hooded his eyes, giving him a bored and somewhat
disinterested look.

“
Abraham are you a big
'un,” Gideon smiled as he placed his fear and his anxiety in
that little box. “Be a chap and let Daniel know that I'd like
to do a bit of shopping, eh?”

The man didn't move, he kept his
arms crossed, barring the door, saying nothing. Gideon was very
conscious of a small bead of sweat that had formed at the peak of
his hairline. Though it itched him, he fought the desire to wipe it
away. “My mate Akem directed me here, he said that Daniel
would take care of me.”

The mountain held up a single
finger and closed the door. Gideon wiped at his brow now that he
was alone and took a few deep breaths. The door opened again and
the mountain stood to one side, motioning for him to come in.
Gideon affected a swagger, hoping it looked confident and genuine.

Inside the house met all the
expectations that the outside had failed to meet. There were golden
statues in the corners of nude men and women in various states of
copulation and a fountain in the center of a great main hallway. A
golden elevator operated in the corner of the building and the floor
was marble that was polished to a sheen so clear Gideon could see
his own reflection standing under him. Women in thin outfits walked
around the place, some talking with men, others sipping champagne or
eating little snacks. Music played from some unseen corner, there
seemed to be a party going on.

Out of the crowd a man sauntered
towards him, his hands in his pockets and a wry smirk on his face.
He had an oily sort of shine to him, his teeth nicotine yellow and
his eyes small and hard. The front of his suit bulged, he obviously
led a comfortable life and had put on a few pounds because of it.
“I hear you're looking for me,” he said to Gideon when
he got close enough.