Kumi can't keep the distaste off her face. "We're going to have to hire an exterminator, in any case. Or perhaps a druid through the Church of Shelyn. All the bedding will have to be burned with precautions as well, none of it is sanitary at all."

"I have seen worse. It is repairable."

"I do not want to know." 

Kumi passes down along the hallway and comes to the room at the end, which is... An office. 

It's free of smoke stains, free of water damage, and has a quite imposing desk with a glass top and a leather chair that seems to be intact as well. There's filing cabinets that look to be mahogany. 

"Of course the fucker who ran the place kept his area clean, intact and well-appointed." Kumi snarls the words and has to clench her claws into the edges of her hand. "Fucking bastard."

"It is the way it always is."

"Bastard," Rose echoes.

Kumi takes a slow breath out. "Still, it's a small windfall. This office would be usable almost as-is. It'd be a start."

"Yes. It would be."

"All in all it is less good than I hoped but less bad than I feared."

"The bones are mostly intact. It will serve, with enough work put into it. We'll have to rip out the bar and all the furniture." 

She takes a long breath. "We'll heal this place."

Rose nods firmly. 

"We will," she says. "We will."

One week later...

Kumi wakes in the back room of the under-renovation brothel, where the former owner once slept. Her familiar bed is comfortable, but she's still getting used to the noise of the docks at night. 

She gets up and paces over to the old desk and her new papers, flipping through them out of habit. Most of them are invoices and bills of sale; she's spent a little over half a thousand gold so far, mostly on the roof. 

It's a lot to deal with. She wishes that Ember and Rose would have agreed to sleep in the brothel with her, but neither of them wanted to have to listen to the construction noises all day. At night she's alone bar the pair of night watchmen Pen hired for them through the Firebrands. 

She goes over to her room closet and shrugs on her priestess' robes, then kneels at the impromptu shrine she's set up in the back and prays to the Sinflower in its small pot. Small pieces of coral and glinting glass ring it, little treasures bought from Jossie Slimfin's stall.

She uses Ishaza's catechism, with a few of her own additions.

Sunaira, guide me with your kindly touch. Let me be kind, caring, beautiful and whole. Let me bear for others what they cannot bear themselves. Let me make the world a brighter place and bring joy to those who know me. Let me delight in everything the world has to offer, but never forget that the best thing is to share that with another.

May all those who have suffered learn joy.

She answers with the familiar surge of power. 

I am here, she means. I am listening.

Kumi checks through her spells. Nothing unusual today.

Thank you, Goddess.

She gets up and goes out to the common room to survey the status of the work. The roof's intact now, and seems to have held against the rain that happened overnight. A wide pit yawns beneath it, cordoned off by an improvised barrier; one of the floor joists above the basement was rotten through and needs to be replaced. 

There's no furniture in the front room anymore, or indeed in the whole building outside Kumi's room. Kumi saw to the burning of the old mattresses and bedsheets personally, checking the workers with Detect Disease to make sure they didn't contract anything from the filthy remains of the old brothel. The old carpet in the back rooms still needs replacing, but fortunately none of it detects as infected when she sweeps it. The building still smells of qat residue and smoke and is nowhere near presentable, but it is at least safe for her to stay in while repairs proceed. 

Rose and Ember should arrive in a few minutes to discuss the plans for the front room. She hopes they'll be able to reach an agreement today; the work on the joist is going to be done soon.

The night watchman posted in the front room nods to her, his fingers drumming on the hilt of his rapier. "Good morning, Ma'am," he says, with a deferential nod of his head.

"Good morning, Leo." She nods to him and passes out through the front doorway.

The harbor is still just as beautiful in the early morning. She can watch the sun rise over the Precipice Quarter and not have to think overmuch on the conditions inside it. 

She looks up and down the docks for any sign of Rose or Ember.

And here they both are, dismounting from a camel taxi a dozen paces down the dock.

Ember's still wearing the pewter ring she won, and is serving as Rose's bodyguard with a hand on a dagger at her hip.

She doesn't walk the few strides to join them. There'll be an urchin with some diversion. You just don't go anywhere alone on the Docks. 

"Good to see you two!" she calls instead.

"Good to see you as well!" Rose calls back. She smiles, and hastens her pace. 

A few moments later she ducks in underneath the eaves of the building. 

"So, night owl," she says. "Get anything useful done?"

"We can discuss that inside." Kumi smiles and gestures for Rose to join her.

Rose enters the brothel, trailing Ember behind her.

"Mind the hole in the floor." Kumi takes a wide path around the opening into the basement, and goes into her back office.

Rose and Ember come in and stand before Kumi's desk. 

"So," Rose says. "Catechism."

"Catechism," Ember echoes. "And the front room."