Work Text:
They teach her cards in the brothel -- to improve her value, for they note that she has none. Many guests in Doma are Garlean, and Garlemand populates their ranks with every land they conquer. Snatched from countries across the ocean, from swells of snow and sand, these foreigners are clothed in identical uniforms and dumped unceremoniously on Doma's shores. Amidst their meager possessions, a few soldiers manage to smuggle their games -- battered cards and dice whispering to them of homes long-stripped away -- and the yearning for a taste of something familiar.
Such illusions of comfort are what the brothel provides. It is what their customers pay for, regardless of the finer details. Yotsuyu's features lure them in, particularly when she is painted well and dressed in the brothel's finer kimono, but she falls short in every other way.
Though her body is still young, there is nothing of the freshness of naivete about her. She does not smile enough when her customers touch her. She does not cry out enough whenever they enter her, through whichever part of her body they desire -- or rather, she cries out in the wrong ways, too flat and toneless, an indifferent recitation like a bird taught to warble only one note.
Pain does nothing to alter this melody. All of Yotsuyu's responses are dull. Her eyes remain distant, staring at some point far away past the ceiling. She turns her face away; her arms and legs go limp.
She never sounds passionate enough, even when her mouth is not full.
The senior courtesans all roll their eyes in disgust. A girl who cannot bring in coin does not deserve the rice in her bowl, they tut. So many of the brothel's new acquisitions are like this: spoiled, whining, convinced that if they simply sulk like a piece of dead meat on the ground, they will eventually be allowed to do whatever they wish once people give up on them. The new girl is a waste.
Yotsuyu is, after all, less than attractive when she laughs. Ungainly when she dances, too tightly-pitched when she sings. Incompetent. Pretty -- but lifeless. It will take forever for her to earn enough to pay off her husband's debt, and in the meantime, she will accrue even more for herself in being housed, clothed and fed.
There is no appeal in her as she is now. She is merely the widow of Sashihai: useless.
All she does is disappoint.
In order to help entertain their guests, the brothel teaches Yotsuyu cards as a substitute for the winsome smiles that she lacks, the conversations that she cannot make. These games are nothing like the flower cards she remembers seeing others play with in her youth. There are circular tokens from the desert, rectangular decks adapted from mystics in Sharlayan. Some of the designs are painted on, painstakingly drawn out with brushstrokes no thicker than a few hairs wide. Others have been stamped, inked in symmetrical geometric patterns or scrawled with crosshatch lines to simulate shadows and light.
The customs of each region vary, the scoring combinations contradict -- but as Yotsuyu studies the names and illustrations on each card, she sees the common thread linking them all. No two games follow identical rules, but the principles of winning and losing never change. The same cards always end up on top: kings, gods and emperors, all dominating the ones below.
Merchant beats Beggar. Samurai claims Hamlet. Knight seizes Page.
Nobleman takes Young Girl.
She learns how to play Lover's Quarrel, Jesters High, Kitten on the Roof. She does well. Very well. There is a subterfuge about cards which Yotsuyu seizes upon hungrily, instinctively; they show her the value of a well-crafted deceit, which the other courtesans have not managed to convince her of before. Here, when Yotsuyu lies, she succeeds. She is spared. Before the brothel, her only prize had been a beating, whether or not she had spoken the truth.
It is the first thing she has shown interest in since being sold, and it is the first thing that does not hurt her for liking it.
But the guards snap and scold her whenever Yotsuyu ends up the victor too frequently. It is not her business to rout her customers; she is here to make them feel good, to fill them with the glow of satisfaction so they can be convinced to fill her in turn. Her entire purpose for playing is to give them something to beat.
A whore is not supposed to win, they remind her. Often.
Despite her sluggish beginnings, Yotsuyu gradually improves. Punishment is a tool that she recognizes in all its myriad forms; it kindles fresh life in the ashes of her body, pairing the urge to eat with the mechanisms of performance. Her fingers no longer resemble wooden sticks as she arches them coyly beside her chin. Her face softens around her lies. She shuffles her smiles along with the cards, pulling out a fresh one for each patron lumbering through her door, and embraces her bluffs more fervently than any flesh in her arms.
After each customer's time is up, she helps sweep up the table and bids them farewell as she hands the playing decks back. No one notices whenever she manages to slip one or two cards away for herself, smuggling them into her sleeves.
Captured, they serve as her victory trophies. Paintings of places she will never be free enough to flee to. Games for people who are as much prisoners as she is, save that it is not their own kinsmen and country who hold them enslaved.
In the evenings -- or the mornings, if she is paid for the entire night -- Yotsuyu shakes out her kimono carefully, pinching the silks between her fingers. Cards tumble free to the tatami with a soft patter. They splash against the fibers like rain on wet autumn leaves, droplets soaking into barren earth.
She knows better than to keep them for herself. The brothel guards will hurt her if they discover that she is stealing from their guests. Those stained, worn card decks that have been carried so carefully by Garlean soldiers -- the last keepsakes, in some cases, of a home that no longer stands -- have been made forever incomplete by her thefts.
In the light of each fresh sun, Yotsuyu studies the illustrations carefully. Then, one by one, she rips each card in half. Then into quarters. Her fingers vivisect each painted face. Her lacquered nails violate the bodies of emperors. She tears through intricately colored forests, shredding towers and suns, killing kings with a touch.
Then she carefully gathers the scraps and dumps them in the midden, for the shit and piss to keep.
The cards the soldiers bring to the brothel all have different rules. The courtesans add their own complications on top of that: never score too many points, never make your customer feel like a fool. Always smile. Always deceive.
They teach Yotsuyu how to bet and tease and coax, manipulating her way through narrow enough margins that her customers stay eager for more. They show her how to shuffle the deck while showing off the slenderness of her wrists, how to dote upon her lover of the moment and profess to ignorance.
Most of all, they teach her how to lose.
She never lets herself forget.