Fate

Chapter 2

“That’s him,” Ella whispered to Kat and Stevie, “The one with the long brown coat hanging open, his hands in his pockets, and looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world…”

“Looks like the kinda guy who’d get nicked pretty damned easy ‘round here,” remarked Kat, taking a long drag on her cigarette.

‘Looks like a god,’ was Ella’s thought, but she kept it to herself.

“Stevie, you know what to do,” The boy nodded, and quickly disappeared into the crowd. Ella looked after him for a while, then hugged Kat, “OK girl, let’s get us some cash.”


Stevie was back around midnight. He hung around Kat’s closed door, waiting for Ella to come out. When the door finally opened, the client practically tripped over the young boy.

“Oi! Get out of my way filthy piece of shit!” he yelled. Stevie calmly stepped out of the way. Ella followed out and nodded at the boy, “Be with you in a minute,” She walked the man back out to the street and hailed him a hansom. Just as the man stepped into it, he pulled her and nearly took her again on the street. This was too far. He’d paid her in the room, so she pushed him as hard as possible, yelling to the cabbie, “Go!” as she slammed the door.

“Bitch! Won’t gimme what I want!” yelled the drunk.

Ella rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, “Like you haven’t already had me five times…” as she turned back to Kat’s room to pay Stevie and retrieve her clothes. The blonde had told her a pair of new girls were going to take over Julie’s room, so she had to move.

“Hey Stevie, come in,” Ella said when she saw the boy.

“What was you doing with a drunkard like him?” he asked.

“…no one else,” Ella mumbled. She hated drunkards, they were the worst. At least the sober ones sometimes took her feelings into account. Sometimes. In her short life as a prostitute, she’d already met a variety of men. Yet the one she was starting to yearn for was unattainable. She shook her head distractedly.

“So what’d you come up, Stevie?” she asked.

“He goes to a big house every day. It’s made of red bricks and white columns. Curtains hang in the windows. They don’t flutter, the windows are closed. But this man is wealthy, very wealthy Ella. The house has a garden. And a wall around it. I wanted to follow inside, but I couldn’t. He walks through the town. Why? He’s a noble; he could just take a cab. No, he walks. I think he enjoys walking!” Stevie opened his eyes wide in shock. Ella just smiled, “Anything else?”

“Yes. He met up with a couple at Enya’s. They were older, old enough to be his parents. They were sitting with a young girl, very beautiful,” Ella eyes glimmered, “but you are more beautiful!” Stevie quickly said, “He looked uninterested anyway.”

“Did you notice what roads he took?”

“Some. Enya’s is on Rush, and we’re on Tendri. Kings’, War ’morial, and Geddes is between right?” Ella nodded. “Yeah he went on those. And then there’s the Black Snake territory.” Stevie shuddered, “I damn near thought he was gonna go through it, but even he knew better.”

“Thanks Stevie, here’s your money. Forty dollars.”

“Yeah, see ya ’round Ella,” and he scurried out the door, just as Kat came in.

“Hey Ella, I was hopin’ you’d be gone, sorry,” she said breathlessly, “Sty’s comin’ down with the new girls.”

Ella’s eyes opened wide, and she shoved her coat on. She could hear the big man’s voice down the hall, “Help me Kat!” she whispered.

“Run sweetie, I’ll come by later,” Ella ran.

Only once she was out of the Sty house and in her usual doorway. She spread the matting and snuggled under her coat, too tired to work anymore. But the last image in her mind was the noble, whom she still didn’t know the name.


The next morning, she was up my noon. It was Monday, and so instead of working that evening, she walked a block down, to the junction of Kings’ and Tendri, and begged. Her hair was messed up, her appearance disheveled (she hadn’t bothered to stop in at Kat’s). Her heart beat fast, anxious to see him again. Ella hoped he would see her, perhaps even give her some coins… She sat on the hard and cold sidewalk, nervously peering down the streets for him. When the sun tinted his hair and Ella recognized him, her heart sped up even more, though she tried to keep it under control. On impulse, she began to sing.

Her voice lifted high, she used to sing her younger siblings to sleep. She found that she sung classic melodies, the kind anyone could recognize anywhere. The bustling passerby’s looked at her, and maybe even slowed their step a little, to enjoy her music. She wished she had an instrument of some kind to accompany her. Closer and closer the man came, and her singing rose to a frenzy. He was a mere meter away and…

…walked passed her, slowing his step like everyone else, searching for the source of the voice. Ella reached the end of her song and bowed her head. Coins clinked in the open pouch.

“Thanks, thanks, thanks,” she mumbled. When they’d gone, she knew she had to stay for some more time. Begging was desperate, but desperate she was, if only for some recognition from the man she had fallen in love with from afar.


Many more days passed like this, though she never spent more than four days in the same place. Begging so openly was shameful, yet word spread of the begging girl with the beautiful voice. Four months after the fire, she began to regularly alternate her activities between begging and prostitution. It was obvious with which she could earn more money, but she found that it was worth forsaking a little, just to see him, just to have his eyes settle on her for more than half a second.

Then one afternoon, she decided herself. After she’d given quite a little representation and both coins and bills had landed in her pouch, she stood and followed the man, carefully memorizing the streets they took. Ella darted from between the people, trying to keep a steady pace without making it obvious she was following anybody. Once or twice he turned and she’d ducked, for fear of being recognized as the beggar singer. Finally, the sun was setting when he reached the house. Ella looked in awe at it; Stevie hadn’t done it justice. There were ornate carvings and decorations everywhere, and the shutters were painted white. Painfully, she watched the mysterious man unlock the gate, let himself in, and lock it behind him.

‘So darned careful…I wonder if there’s another way in?’ she thought, ‘perhaps a servants’ entrance?’ Ella walked around the walls, and only found a tangle of vines concealing a slight frame. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’


The morning brought rain, and Ella was soaked before she woke up. She crammed herself in the doorway, shivering and hoping Kat might let her in. She had no such luck: Sty was in a foul mood. When the noble’s habitual time to pass by her doorway came, she had fallen asleep. When she woke, there was a fifty dollar bill tucked between her coat and chest. She looked at it in amazement, her thoughts flying to the mysterious noble. ‘Did he notice me?’ she thought, giddy with excitement.


The next day, she was hurrying down the street to the third-hand store, where she’d bought the coat, to invest on an outfit of her own. Stevie still regularly trailed the noble and brought her news. He had confirmed seeing the noble tucking the bill in her coat.

“And he wasn’t…repulsed by me?”

“What does that mean?”

“Well… he didn’t look like it was unpleasant?”

“Nah, I don’ think so,”

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts; she didn’t notice where she was going until she slammed into someone.

“Oh, oh, excuse me,” she said, before hurrying on. A hand held onto her arm. She turned and looked at who she had run into.

“No please, excuse me,” he smiled, revealing white even teeth. She blushed.

“Have I seen you before?” he frowned slightly, “Your face is familiar,”

“Uh…No sir, we haven’t met, I’m sorry,” her mind was still coming to terms with whom she was speaking. Half of her wanted to bolt, the other wanted to stay.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Ella, sir,”

“No last name?”

“Branson, sir, though I don’t go by it any more,”

“Why not?” His dark eyes, which Ella saw for the first time, were brown.

“I have no family, sir, please I must go,”

He let go of her arm, almost reluctantly.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“What is your name, if I may ask?”

“Sebastian. Sebastian of Dasz.”

She smiled, “Pleased to meet you,” she curtsied slightly. He chuckled, “I’ll remember you,” he said softly, his hand reaching out, almost to caress her cheek.

“I need to go, I’m sorry,” Ella turned and walked down the street to the store, all the while feeling Sebastian’s eyes on her.