Force Majeure by Daniel O'Mahoney Read Free Book Online Page A

breaths, she turned. Her painted face showed a random constellation of stars, the brightest splashed in purple over her eye. Quint-the-Jester was gone for the present. She spoke with her full voice, at room-volume.
    ‘There are very few locked doors in the house of dragons, but many closed ones. They’re closed for a reason. You need to be careful of who you might disturb. Did you see the Mystery?’
    Through the glass I saw rutting human bodies in all conceivable combinations.
    ‘This is a knocking-shop,’ she said, flatly.
    ‘Do you have to go for the most sordid description? This is a school .’
    ‘I feel sick.’
    ‘Never been in a brothel before? For sure, I’m disappointed. Luna will be disappointed.’
    Don’t.
    ‘And I’m supposed to clean up after you?’
    ‘Oh all the spunk and shit and spent condoms, oh yes. Or you might end up on the perimeter, trying to stop the city boys breaking in before their time. They don’t get anywhere, but they’re persistent sods. Or in the kitchens, where we do food not sex, which is the next level down. Or in the library, where we do words not sex, which is the next level up. Whatever turns you on, you’ll be amazed what you can do with a vacuum cleaner.’
    ‘You’re a whore.’
    ‘And Luna. Sex-warriors. Look at my fingernails’ – she held them out, they were red and unmarked – ‘filthy because I went back-stage where I shouldn’t go. I have to wear masks. You don’t. Think on that.’
    ‘And Azure, is she a whore?’
    Quint cocked her head, trying to place the name. ‘No. She’s a voladora -to-be. She’s the biggest Mystery; no, I lie, the second biggest. She’s becoming a bird.’
    Kay had more questions. They waited unspoken, and instead she joined Quint in leaning over the parapet, gazing down at the people tracking back and forth across the bridge, the whores and the punters, the scholars and the supplicants, the tricksters and their tricks. Aiming her head away from the passers-by as best she could, she vomited violently into the moat.
    Quint let out a sigh and patted her gently on the back until she stopped retching.
    I am no longer in command of my life.
    The first three weeks weren’t the worst. She hoped fervently that they would be and that she would come to accept it, but Kay didn’t grow accustomed to the drudgery of putting on the tabard, never got any better at the tasks she was set, failed to conquer her distaste at the Mystery of the house. The walls whispered of heartless copulation. The baroque front-stage chambers and bedrooms were misted with a perfume that made her gag. She stumbled occasionally into compromising scenes; after a while, they became preferable to those she conjured up when she closed her eyes.
    ‘You’re a prude,’ Azure joked, pouring tea one evening.
    ‘I’m not a prude,’ Kay retorted. ‘It’s culture shock. It’s everywhere, and I don’t want to drown in it. It’s like living in the Internet.’ She realised she’d spoken for at least a second too long to sound plausible, and fell silent before Azure’s thin-lipped smile.
    Azure did indeed bring strays home, on her own time, and for those nights Kay decided to sleep in the bath tub and, on one occasion, the passageway.
    No, these weren’t her worst weeks in Candida. They were the simplest. Prospero remained a lingering possibility out of reach, and there was no reply to her letters. Even Esteban seemed to have forgotten her, though Azure’s bike remained unrepaired and its rider took out her frequent moments of frustration on the walls. Kay’s undetailed silhouette-portrait filled day-by-day with red chalk, coming slowly into focus. Nine times out of ten she got to bed in the evening exhausted and incapable of thought. Nine times out of ten she woke aching and unwilling to rise, and there was no sign of the gargoyle-dragon who’d watched over her on her first night. She found she understood more of the local languages and dialects as time