Chapter 22
The brothel employees and quite a few clients, including Bast, sat in a large room with a long serving table down the middle and several smaller, circular tables on either side. There were about one hundred people, roughly the same number as in the Church of Hangmen, all with plates piled with roof-grown vegetables and fruits, homemade bread and butter, and spiced kangaroo. Or snake. It was probably best I didn't know.
Laughter and relaxed chatter filled the space. Some women had happily given up their seats to sit on men's laps, the long feathers in their hair flirting with the brims of cowboy hats. Others had dark smudges under their eyes and horrible, barking coughs, both symptoms of the Rift Curse. The brothel obviously didn't see the point of quarantining them, though in all my reading, the Rift Curse didn't appear to be contagious. Witches either had it or they didn't. Dad had always said Mom was quarantined for her safety, and I'd never known what that meant.