2.

	Once Megan had calmed down and Jess had made the girl presentable again, she decided that the first thing they had to do was to go up and see their new quarters.  Most girls felt better once they had settled in, and once knew they had a place to go where they would be safe.  More importantly, she wouldn’t have to worry about disturbing the tranquility of the House.  The more attention Megan drew to herself, the harder it would be for Jess to help her.
	She led the girl up the stairs, walking on her toes to keep from making too much noise.  Megan held her hand all the way up, unwilling to let go, and stepped on her heels all the way up.  There wasn’t any need to sneak, except that the rest of the House girls would be curious and Jess wanted to keep them from  flocking around the new girl as long as she could.  Some of the girls in Silver Street could be as grabby as any male, and they had less shame about it.
	Jess had been up to the top floor of the House once before, but she hadn’t gone further than the half-sized ante-chamber at the top of the stairs, reserved for servants and visitors.  That room itself was much nicer than anything she was used to in her daily life.  It had oak panelled walls and heavy, padded benches with silver coat hooks across from them.  The door was solid cherry with a brass lock and a gold name plate, as if anyone who made it this far wouldn’t know who they were coming to see.  It opened silently when she turned the key and it swung open with only a little push until it bumped into the wall behind it.  When they went in, Megan’s grip tightened on her hand until the tips of Jess's fingers tingled.
	Elizabeth’s room took up the rest of the floor.  There was a thick black carpet on the floor and heavy wine-red drapes on all the windows, each currently pulled open to let in what light there was with the rain still falling.  There was a large stone fireplace in the middle of the room with a fire already burning in it.  Across from it, on the opposite wall, was an even larger bed.  It had black silk sheets and overstuffed pillows, and it looked like it was large enough for several people to sleep in it at once.
	“It’s beautiful.  I used to dream about having a room like this when I lived at home,” Megan said.
	“Rule number two, don’t fall in love.  Not with possessions, and especially not with people.  Anything you get attached to can be used to hurt you, and there is always someone who will try,” Jess said.
	“I thought it was against the law to hurt a House girl.  That’s the one thing everyone knows about these places, isn’t it?” Megan said.
	“They’re not allowed to injure us, that’s damaging city property.  Nobody cares about your heart, though.  Wounds that don’t show up on the body are perfectly fine,” said Jess.
	Megan’s tail curled around one leg and she shrank in on herself.  Jess felt a pang of sympathy, but she left the child standing in the door and went to inspect the rest of the room.  It wouldn't do to contradict herself so early in the game.  The girl followed her and caught up to her in front of the bed.  Megan grabbed for her shoulder but Jess ducked away from her hand and ran her hands over the silk sheets.
	“You’re afraid of getting your feelings hurt?  That’s all?  I always knew that House girls had it soft, but I didn’t think you were spineless.  Who cares what somebody else thinks of you?” Megan said.
	“Sneer all you want, but keep what I tell you in mind.  Things aren’t the same in here,” Jess said. 
	Except for a few ragged books stacked up beside the bed, the room was empty.  There weren’t any pictures on the walls, and the corners were thick with dust.  The sparseness of it made Jess miss her own room.  She owned next to nothing, but the smallness of the room made it easier to forget.  Jess checked under the bed, in the hopes that Elizabeth had left some of her spare clothes behind.  The House Mistress had been pretty tall herself, before age had shrunk her, and she never threw anything away.  A quick glance showed that there wasn’t anything but more dust on the floor.  It was disappointing, but possibly for the best.  Girls in the private harems weren't allowed to own anything, and some of them weren't even allowed to wear clothes at all.  It kept them dependent on their masters and stopped them from running away.
	“I’m damned if I’m going to wash even one set of clothes every night, just because our fine President is too cheap to buy you a pair of pants.  Now that you know where you’re going to sleep, I think it’s time for a trip downtown,” Jess said.
	“Do you?  I think I’d rather go naked.  Nobody has given me anything since I was old enough to work for it, and I’m not going to take anybody’s charity now.  Especially not from a sly little weasel like you,” Megan said.
	Jess clamped her hands over her muzzle, and Megan smiled.
	“Did you think that I wouldn’t notice?  I still don’t trust you, not when you can’t even be honest about what you are,” she said.
	“Nobody has ever cared before.  Everyone who rents time with me wants a mouse, so that’s what I give them.  If they’ve noticed the other half of me, they’ve never mentioned it,” Jess said, through her fingers.
	“You can't trust hybrids.  They can look like ordinary people and they always lie,” Megan said.
	“Can you blame us, with the way we get treated?  But if you’ll promise to think of me as a person, I promise that I’ll do the same for you,” Jess said.
	“Just like that?  What if I don't believe you?” Megan said.
	“That's up to you. Would you like to go ask Marcus Keppler for a new teacher because you don’t like the one he gave you?” Jess said.
	Jess opened the clothing bag that Elizabeth had brought up for her and dug, showering the floor with her underwear, until she found her pouch of carefully hoarded coins.  She only had two hundred dollars left, and she had been planning to put most it toward buying her way out of the House, but she only paused for a moment before she stuffed the money into her pocket.
	“I’ve never owed anybody for anything in my life,” Megan said.
	“Attitudes like that don’t last very long in here.  But fine.  How about I buy the clothes and you can pay me back for them later, if your new master gives you any money to spend on yourself,” said Jess.
	She shoved the rest of her things back into the bag, then hestitated when her fingers brushed a strip of worn leather that she didn’t recognize.  It was a House collar, with the Silver Street crest on it, and it looked like it was big enough to fit Megan.  Elizabeth had almost certainly slipped it into her bag, but Jess couldn't imagine why the old fox hadn't said anything to her about it.
	Megan turned away and went to stand so close to the fire that Jess was afraid she would singe the poor, ragged clothes she had on.  The girl wasn’t really dressed for the weather, and the top floor of the House wasn't as warm as the lobby.  Megan's jacket was too light, there were holes in the knees of her pants and all she had on her feet were light, open sandals.
	“Can you really just go out like this?  You don’t have to ask for permission, or tell anyone where you’re going?” Megan said.
	“As long as we don’t leave the city, and take care of our customers, nobody cares what we do in our free time.  Put this on, and let’s go,” Jess said.
	 She threw the collar across the room, and the girl caught it and tossed it on the floor with a sneer of distaste.
	“You want me to wear a collar?  I’m not anybody's pet.  Yet,” Megan said.
	“It will keep you safe.  Don’t you think that every city guard knows who you are by now?  Do you know what they’ll do if they even think you’re trying to run away?  Put the collar on and cover it with your coat, if you’re so shy about it,” Jess said.
	Megan picked the collar up again and looped it around her neck.  But the clasp was small and difficult to close if you weren’t used to it, and after a few seconds of trying she snarled and drew her hand back to throw it away again.  Jess caught her arm before she could and stood up on her toes to latch the collar properly.  Close to, Megan had a pleasant, spicy smell that reminded her of the hot cider her mother had made in the winter.  She could feel the bones in Megan’s neck and shoulders, even through her fur, and she wondered when the girl had last had a solid meal.  When the collar was fastened, Megan worried at it, trying to get it comfortable, until Jess stopped her.
	“Leave it be.  I’ve left it as loose as it will go, but it isn’t going to feel any better until you learn to ignore it.  They want you to remember that it’s on you all the time,” she said.
	“Designed by a male, no doubt.  None of them have any subtlety in their souls,”  Megan said.
	“They don’t need any.  They’ve got brute force on their side,” Jess said.
	She  damped down the fire, but not all the way so the room would still be warm when they got back.  Then they went back downstairs.
	Jess walked in front, to keep Megan from bolting.  New girls were known to panic, sometimes, and there was no way she could catch Megan if the girl decided to run.  The last thing she needed was for seventeen years of flawless service to be wrecked by some foolish girl, however much right she had to be frightened.  Jess took hold of Megan’s hand as they went down the second floor hallway and she felt the girl stiffen as they went past the room where they’d met.  It was still empty, and the curtain was still hanging half off its rail, but the rooms on either side of it had their curtains closed, and Jess could tell from the look that flashed across Megan’s face, that she didn’t have to explain what that meant.  In any case, the smell of sex was ground into the walls by now so that it was impossible for anyone with a nose to not know where they were.
	They both relaxed a little when they reached the lobby.  There were actually a few people around the bar now, all hunched up in their coats or warming their hands on mugs of something hot and alcoholic.  Samantha looked more cheerful than she had in weeks, and she flashed them a quick smile as they passed.  Jess wondered what had brought about the change in fortunes, but there was no time to ask now.
	Outside, the rain had turned into a wet, sticky snow that had already coated the sidewalks and made them slippery.  Jess paused at the door to wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser to wait until tomorrow, but Megan opened the door herself and walked outside without stopping
	“This was your idea, Miss Mousie.  Let’s go, before it gets even colder,” Megan said.
	Jess took a deep breath to brace herself and they plunged out into the snow and the crowded street together.  After a moment of confusion, where they both started to go a different way, they settled on east toward the center of the city.  The best shops were that way and Jess hoped that keeping away from the edges of the city would cut down on any temptation to run.  She kept her hold on Megan’s hand so they wouldn’t get seperated, and because Megan was too busy staring at the city to pay much attention to the crowd.
	“Eyes down, please.  It’s not nearly as nice as it looks, and you don’t want to stand out here.  The collars help, but strangers are an easy target,” said Jess.
	“So much for wearing the collar, then,” Megan said.
	“I told you.  Nobody will hurt you, but that won't stop them trying to swindle you out of your last penny,” Jess said.
	Even so, she couldn't blame the girl for looking around.  Jaspertree was home to thousands of people and thousands more came in on ships from all over the world.  Most of them went home again, but enough had elected to stay that it had changed the face of the city in recent years.  There were mosques and temples from countries far to the east, open-air markets from Viridis, and an ear-jangling mix of languages on the street.  To a child who had probably grown up in a village of maybe a hundred people it had to seem like something out of a fairy tale.  Jess just hoped she could keep the child away from the nightmare that lay underneath the glitter for as long as possible.
	Silver Street was in the heart of the oldest part of the city, only a street away from the docks, and all of the most expensive shops were lined up here.  You could buy everything from girls to gold, and every brick storefront advertised with painted signs or brass plaques hung over the doors.
	“Five hundred years ago, there wasn’t anything here but a little fishing village.  Then a strange fox moved in.  She was just a little yellow vixen with a lot of scars and some new ideas, and here we are now, the richest city in the world,” said Jess.
	“She must have been mad.  What kind of vixen would want to set up the Houses?  How could she sit by and watch that happen to other females?” said Megan.
	The wolf yanked her hand out of Jess’s grasp and rounded on her, ears flat.  Several people turned to look at them, and Jess, embarrassed, held up her hands to calm the child down.
	“She didn’t.  All that came in centuries later, after the Church was established.  Deirdre was a fighter.  I think she would be disgusted to see what had happened to her little town,” said Jess.
	At the corner of the street, they stopped in front of an open-air vendor’s shack to buy paper cups of hot chocolate laced with rum from a skinny lioness with decorative scars on the backs of her hands.  Jess bought a pack of cigarettes, too, ignoring the way Megan’s mouth twisted with disgust at the sight of them.  She didn’t smoke that much anymore, but with the cold and her jittery nerves the temptation was too much to bear.  She tore the package open and accepted a light from the lioness before they went on, but she just let the cigarette hang from the corner of her mouth.
	“Why don’t you run away?” Megan said.
	“Someone tries, every now and again.  They're usually a young girl like you, who comes from outside the city.  They always get caught,” said Jess.
	“But if you knew what you were doing--”
	“There aren’t many places to go.  Even if you make it to one of the surrounding villages, Marcus will have someone waiting for you and you'll be sent right back.  Ships get searched top to bottom before they leave port, and that’s only if you don’t get put off by the crew.  No captain who wants to come back to Jaspertree in the future will risk the President’s good will for a stowaway,” Jess said.
	She sucked hard at her cigarette and blew a steam of smoke up at the sky.  Above them, a team of coyotes on spindly ladders were lighting the gas lamps around the street.  Every time she saw them, Jess felt a little pang of envy for their chance to rise above the level of everyone around them.
	“That’s no reason not to try.  How do they know, anyway?  There are supposed to be dozens of Houses, and God only knows how many girls there are altogether.  If you take your collar off, how are they going to know who you are?” Megan said.
	“That’s easy.  Your House Mistress knows who you are, and all they have to do to find you is talk to each one in turn until they discover which House is missing a girl.  It can take some time, but they aren’t just going to let thousands of dollars walk out the door,” Jess said.
	“But if you had a Mistress who would lie for you...”
	Jess snorted and shook her head.
	“That happened once.  The Mistress and every girl in the House was put to death when they were found out,” Jess said.
	Three blocks away from where they had bought the drinks, they stopped in front of a tall limestone building that was even more impressive to look at than the House.  It was only two stories tall, but the front was so thick with with pillars and carved friezes it was easy to think it was much larger.  The effect was somewhat spoiled by the large plate glass windows that flanked the door to show off a few modest cotton dresses on silver stands.  There weren’t any signs or even a name over the door, just a street number scrawled on one window in flaking blue paint.  Everyone in the city knew it as Ophelia’s, though nobody knew who Ophelia had been.  Jess bought all of her clothes from the shop, and was so well known to the old bobcat who ran the place that he had all of her measurements memorized.
	There was a small brass bell over the door that rang when she pushed it open, and they went in out of the cold and into the warmth of the shop keeper's smile.