“Are there any questions? Good, then go enjoy yourselves. You’ve earned it.”
The exhaustion of a moment before was immediately thrown free as trainees whooped in glee and scattered about the courtyard. The quicker-witted ones, including Danner and his friends, made immediately for their bunks to drop off their gear and get ready to go out into the city.
They packed their meager belongings in small bags and quickly made their way to the gates of the courtyard. On their way out, they passed a group of a dozen paladins who had just arrived through the gate. Their pack horses were heavily laden, as were the dakkans they rode.
“Is it just me, or have there been an awful lot of paladins arriving lately?” Flasch asked once the older men were out of earshot.
“It’s not you,” Marc said. “This place is filling up faster than a collection plate at tithing.”
“Any ideas as to why?” Michael asked him.
“Nope, and right now, I really don’t care,” Marc replied with a shrug. “We’ve got more important things to think about. Come on!”
A Blue paladin Marc identified as a distant older cousin of his was waiting at the gates to see them out, and he smiled at their eager expressions.
“You’ll be staying here in the city then, boys?”
Marc nodded at his cousin.
“Yes, sir. I’ve an aunt here in town who makes the best pies you ever sank your teeth into, sir,” he said with a wink, “and a couple places around I’d like to show some of these out-of-towners.”
The paladin nodded knowingly. “Just be sure you remember who and what you are, youngster. I’ll not be hearing stories from my mother, will I?”
“Of course not, Chris,” Marc said with studied innocence. “The ladies will be happy to see us, and we’ll be so well-behaved.”
“Aye, and I’ll believe that when dwarves fly.”
They all laughed and followed Marc into the city. Danner had seen some little bit of the city on his way to and from Faldergash’s house, but Marc led them through a part that was completely unfamiliar to him. Along the way, he started to ask them questions.
“Trebor, Michael, you guys don’t have girlfriends, do you?” he eventually asked. When he received two negative replies, Marc smiled. Garnet groaned.
“You mean tonight? Are you still that hung up on that place? Or rather, on her?” Garnet rumbled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marc said loftily. “I just want to show our friends a good time in this city. We’ve only got three days, and I know the perfect place to start.”
Garnet rolled his eyes.
“Flasch, I know you’ll be game,” Marc said with a wink. “Danner, you? Is there a woman in your life?”
Marc’s comment was innocent and light, but he nearly stopped dead when Danner didn’t answer right away. He turned around slowly and regarded him.
“Is there?” he asked, his curiosity piqued. “There is, isn’t there?”
Danner cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“Well, I mean, not really,” he mumbled. “Just someone I met in an inn up in…”
“Oh, a buxom young barmaid, eh?” Marc laughed. “Well, no worries, my sister’s a barmaid, too, so I know there are at least a couple good ones out there. But just so long as you’re not attached, and if you stay relaxed, you’ll do fine.”
Danner stared at him suspiciously. “Where are we going?”
“To Aunt Delia’s place,” Garnet grunted. “Though I think we should drop off our gear first at Marc’s family’s house,” he added pointedly. Marc nodded amiably.
“But, isn’t this Aunt Delia his family? I thought we were going to her place for some pie,” Michael said in confusion.
Marc laughed uproariously, and Garnet chuckled behind him before answering.
“Marc’s aunt is named Felicia, and we’ll be sleeping there tonight, I imagine,” Garnet said with a smile. “But Aunt Delia’s… well, you’ll see for yourself. And yes, the pie there is excellent.”
- 2 -
As Michael and the others soon found out, “Aunt Delia’s” was the name of a well-run men’s club tucked away discreetly behind an expensive inn and a food market that was under repair. When they walked in, Michael stopped in amazement. He’d never seen so much bare flesh in his life.
“It’s a skin bar,” Flasch whispered almost reverently.
Women, mostly young and attractive ones, wandered about the floor or danced on four stages in a large common room, gyrating sensuously around various polished-wood poles and railings. A band was tucked away in one corner of the room, providing a constant stream of rhythmic music to which the women could dance. The main stage was currently occupied by a brunette wearing only a bright-red thong that covered little more than her most private area. Her bare breasts were dancing only inches away from a man who stood raptly on a set of low stairs leading up to the stage. His hands were clasped on either side around the smooth, wooden bar of a railing, since – as Marc explained – it was against house rules to touch the women when they were on stage dancing. Violators were warned sternly, and repeat offenders were violently removed from the building and denied access from that day forward.
Michael stared in fascination at one woman whose breasts were nearly the size of a child’s head. She was as scantily clad as any other woman in the room, but her over-large chest was practically falling out of her garment. Michael turned away, blushing, only to come face-to-face with a buxom redhead who was walking toward them with a tray of empty glasses. An all-but see-through blouse covered her ample bosom, which bobbed hypnotically above the tray.
“Ahem, don’t embarrass me too much here,” Marc said in an aside after elbowing Michael, who was too stunned to do more than nod. Marc looked at Michael again and added in wonder, “You really are one of those innocent country bumpkins at heart, aren’t you?”
As for the rest of them, Flasch was staring like a fox who has just found himself locked in a henhouse. He grinned wolfishly at two young women, who smiled back pleasantly.
“Why haven’t you brought me here before?” Flasch asked in a low whisper to Marc, who looked at his friend and sighed.
“That’s why,” Marc replied, and didn’t bother to explain.
Trebor was masking his nervousness well, but Michael could still see it in him. Danner was similarly hiding his reaction, but he didn’t seem quite as nervous as Trebor. Garnet had been here several times before and was used to the place, and Marc was, of course, grinning broadly as he watched his friends’ reactions. Normally their brown-skinned friend held back and occasionally got lost in the background as he observed, but now he was strutting like a peacock. It was a side of him Michael had never seen before.
“Welcome to Aunt Delia’s, gentlemen,” the redhead said, appearing almost directly in front of Michael. She had apparently divested herself of the glasses on her tray, or else held a new, empty one. Her chest was now even more visible without the glasses to block the way, and Michael fought between staring and trying not to.
“First-timers, huh? Oh, Marc, it’s you,” she said, genuinely pleased to see him. “And Garnet. Cherry and Moonshine will be happy to see you two again. Are these your friends?”
“Yeah, they’re in training like Garnet and me,” Marc answered. “They’re like my brothers. Guys, this is Amber Lynn, sometimes called Angel.”
She smiled brilliantly. “You guys are lucky to come here with Marc. The ladies all know him and treat him like royalty. We’ve all got a soft spot for him… and Garnet, too.”
Garnet blushed slightly, but Marc just smiled and gave her a friendly hug. “Aw, she’s such a sweetheart. Alright then, let’s go have a seat.”
Marc led the way to a series of small tables he pushed together to form one long table facing length-wise from the center stage. The brunette had been replaced by a blonde who didn’t really catch Michael’s interest. Instead, he stared in amazement at Marc.
“I take it you’re a r
egular here.”
“Well, off and on,” Marc said with a shrug. “I first met a girl who danced here, and after a while she told me about it and invited me to come. We broke up a couple weeks later and she left town, but since then I come by whenever I get the chance. The women here are really very sweet, and most of them appreciate a guy who’s not just here looking for a cheap… well, actually a not-so-cheap grope. This place is quite a bit more upscale than most, with strict rules about the age limit on the girls and customers alike, but that’s the way of it. Your average soldier or sailor goes for the cheap, rundown places, but we’re to be paladins, and so have an image to maintain. Nothing but the most upscale club for us.”
Marc sounded so serious when he said it they were all forced to laugh. Strangely enough, Michael realized Marc was right. Paladins were generally regarded as being a cut above the common man, but they were still men with men’s urges. They were not celibate, like many of the non-militant orders who devoted their lives to God in the church, but neither were they permitted the run of brothels and other such places. Or perhaps, “not permitted” was the wrong term, since the Prismatic Order officially placed no such restrictions. The natural imprint left on all paladins during their training gave them a level of virtue often envied in even the most devoted of religious sects. Paladins didn’t frequent such places simply because they were paladins.
As Marc explained to them, a club such as this was within their scope because the women were there for strictly vertical entertainment, not the horizontal form favored in less-reputable places. According to Marc, men of all stations in life came here if they could afford it mainly to relax in the company of a beautiful woman. For a small price, they could be with someone who treated them as the center of the world for a short period of time without cheapening the experience by devolving into wanton sex with a stranger. Some men also came for the sheer appreciation of the female form, or at least that’s what Marc said as he proudly proclaimed himself a part of this group.
“It’s not that I’m gawking or getting some cheap thrill out of this, I just appreciate a well-formed woman, and since I’m essentially unattached there’s nothing to stop me from looking,” he rationalized. “I’ve just got a more, um, intimate view than your average guy walking down the street looking at pretty faces.”
Michael wasn’t sure about the logic and truth behind everything Marc was saying, but he had to admit that as the night continued, he did feel more relaxed. Women danced on the stage in a never-ending cycle of blonde, brunette, and red hair ─ and at least one woman with her hair dyed violet ─ atop beautiful, soft flesh. Any reservations Michael had about being in a club of this sort slowly faded away. But then, Michael was a young man, and the surging blood inside of him made it easy for him to accept almost anything in a situation like this.
One woman in particular caught Michael’s eye, a trim brunette, and he found himself staring raptly as she started dancing on the central stage. After a minute, he moved to take his place in the short line at the railing. When it was his turn, though, the music died before she could dance in front of him. Michael shrugged lightly as she apologized to him, then he smiled and returned to his seat.
After that, he followed her with his eyes from stage to stage until she reached the one closest to him. He was third in line to watch her now, and when it was his turn, she smiled up at him in recognition. The dance lasted only a minute or so, and when it was finished Michael slid a piece of paper in a garter belt on her leg. He let his fingers trail lightly against her skin and was amazed at the softness. The brunette leaned forward and kissed his cheek, then smiled and turned slowly to her next customer. As he was walking away, he saw her steal a quick glance his way.
The piece of paper Michael had slipped to her was the equivalent of a small silver penny. Marc had collected whatever free coins they had and traded them in with a waitress he introduced as Laretta, who brought back a stack of papers much higher than their few coins should have purchased. Courtesy of their association with Marc, of course. The papers were easier for the women to collect as tips while dancing, and at the end of the night they cashed them in with the teller for cold hard coins as their wages.
“You know, they could practically create a monetary system out of these things, if they got it wide-spread enough,” Flasch was saying as Michael reached their seats. The table was littered with crumbs from the hand-held tubular pies the trainees had already consumed. Michael had to admit, they were the best pies he’d ever had.
Flasch continued, “I mean, if there were banks or something that stored your gold and silver and other valuables and gave you these paper equivalents, stamped with an official seal or something, it would make life a lot easier. These are a Hell of a lot lighter to carry than a sack of coins, and more easily hidden, too.”
“They’re a pickpocket’sh nightmare,” Danner complained. He was listing slightly to one side in his chair, his speech was slurred, and his face appeared deformed at times as he spoke. Marc had given him a drink called a Dakkan’s Heart, with the introduction, “You’ll be talking stupid inside of fifteen minutes.” Ten minutes later, Danner was well on his way.
“There’sh no way to tell ifh a guy hash a lotta paper on her… him, so how’d do you pick yer mark?”
“I’m not thinking like a pickpocket right now, Danner,” Flasch said. “That’s for after I convince the government to switch to an easily-counterfeited mode of currency. All we’d have to do is fake the stamp for a bank, or else make our own and pass it off as one from another nation, and we’d have unlimited funds.”
“You’re to be a paladin,” said Garnet, who seemed totally sober for all that he’d had a Dakkan’s Heart and a half-dozen other drinks of varying potency. “Paladins don’t have to pay for much, you know. People will pretty much provide you anything you need if you but ask, and if they don’t, the Order will always provide you with money when you need it.”
Flasch grimaced. “You’re taking all the fun out of this.”
“Yeah, all the funk out thish,” Danner proclaimed loudly, lifting a glass in a toast only he knew. “I shay we have llllots of funk.” He tipped the glass, which turned out to be empty, to his lips and left it there as his head tilted all the way back. A full minute later, Michael heard soft snores echoing out of the precariously balanced glass.
“Where’s Marc?” Michael asked, realizing the other was absent.
“Some blonde came and dragged him off to a couch over there,” Trebor said, waving indistinctly.
“That was Janice, or Cherry as she’s known here,” Garnet supplied. “Marc has… well, he can explain it sometime.”
Michael would have asked more, but he was distracted by a soft tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw the brunette who’d danced for him standing at his side, wearing a gossamer blouse that came down to her waist. The see-through cover had coin-sized flowers sewn over her breasts that occasionally let slip a peek of what lay beneath.
“Would you like a dance?” she asked. Michael nodded and started to stand, but she stopped him with a hand and instead flowed smoothly onto his lap. The others gaped, then suddenly found something of interest in their glasses, on the other side of the room, on the stage… anywhere but where Michael sat. For his part, Michael was too astonished to do more than allow her to slide his arm around her and place his hand on her leg. Almost of their own volition, his fingers started to caress her smooth skin.
How can anything be that soft? he thought.
“I take care of myself, and there are special lotions to use,” she answered, and it wasn’t until then he realized he’d spoken aloud. From there, Michael suddenly found himself talking to her and was not at all uncomfortable that she sat in his lap wearing almost nothing. He looked into her eyes more than at her body, and she seemed to respond to his attention. Michael couldn’t know it, but she was intrigued by a man who didn’t spend his every moment slavering over her body and lusting after it with his eyes and hands. Michae
l was too innocent to be devious, and his attention and interest in their conversation was genuine.
As Marc would later explain, the women who worked at Aunt Delia’s suffered the same stigma as did women who worked at brothels and other less reputable locales. Most of them worked there out of necessity rather than from some desire to display their flesh for an endless stream of grasping men, and when a man found out a woman worked at Aunt Delia’s, he automatically judged her and ranked her on the social ladder, and then generally tried to get her into his bed. Michael’s guilelessness and lack of judgment and condemnation were the equivalent of a knight in shining armor arriving to carry a dreamy young woman off to his castle as a princess.
When the time for his dance came, Michael discovered it wasn’t a stage dance, but one in his lap! The others had by now either moved on or, in Danner’s case, were completely oblivious to the rest of the world (the glass had long since slipped from his hand and thudded to the floor), and so Michael was free of distractions as she moved from his lap to his chest and back again. She flowed silkily to the steady rhythm of the music, and without knowing when it happened, Michael found her bare-chested in his lap.
He was still uncertain about himself, but she took the matter out of ─ or into ─ his hands when she placed his fingers on her chest. Michael responded automatically, but was surprised because earlier he’d seen her repeatedly moving a man’s hands away from her chest and buttocks.
The dance continued for the rest of the song and into the next. When it was finished, she slid back to his knee but didn’t replace her top right away.
They chatted for a while longer, and by the time she had to leave, Ruby ─ that was actually her real name ─ had given him a few kisses on the cheek for his sweet comments and even a brush on the lips.
“You’re very charming,” she said to him at one point.
Hunting The Three (The Barrier War) Page 30