Bordello della Libertà (Aethertales Book 2) (2 page)

He
handed her the time sheets; she quickly noticed that one of her male employees,
Sargon, was uncharacteristically late. “I’m sure he has a good reason for it,”
Jhovern said, and Lucia was inclined to agree. “It’s odd, given that he has an
appointment with a client this morning, and he’s well-known for his
punctuality. I just wish he’d given me a courtesy call first.”

“I’ll
phone him,” Lucia replied, ushering the manager out of the room. “Go get some
sleep. It’s Friday, and I’m sure we’re in for a busy night later.”

All
of a sudden, Sargon burst into the room, with sweat beading on his brow and a
terrified look in his eye. “You’ve got to do something,” he pleaded, pointing
out the front door toward the street. “You can’t let them in!”

“Calm
down, Sargon,” Lucia urged, offering him a piece of warm bread dipped in herbs
and olive oil. “Who shouldn’t I let in?”

“I
don’t know who they are,” he panted, taking a sip from the glass of ice water
she placed before him. “But they’re dressed like off-worlders, I can tell you
that. Strange masks and everything—I couldn’t get a good look at them with
their faces covered up.”

Lucia
scowled—she had her suspicions as to the men’s identities, and if she was
right, then they had only trouble headed their way. So far as she knew, the
Shatarins didn’t have a significant presence on Talpretta, and for this she was
thankful: whenever they graced a planet with their genocidal, parasitic
presence, they brought only discord, intolerance and slaughter. And when Sargon
repeated their insults—“A hot little whore in heat,” they’d called him with
their heavy accents—and described their demands that he perform fellatio as
punishment for his sins, she concluded that they could be none other than
Shatarins. Talpretta once seemed safe from their religious fanaticism and their
hatred for all infidels, who, as it so happened, were the entire population of
the universe other than the Shatarins themselves.

It
was offensive that Sargon not only practiced another faith, but that he refused
to offer free services to the Shatarin men who were given a divine mandate over
the bodies and lives of the heathens that poisoned the galaxy with their
disbelief. Lucia herself was one such sower of sin among men, in their eyes.
She made no apologies for it, and swore to herself that she’d never change her
way of life to accommodate the barbarism of Shatarin culture. Lucia decided
she’d ask for a heavier police presence outside the
Bordello della Libertà
,
but as history would have it, they would likely be accused of intolerance and
racism when they decided to enforce a single law, and Lucia would receive the
same label. Sadly, it was the kind of publicity she’d always tried her best to
avoid.

••

S
UDIKA

After
she’d finished satisfying a client, Sudika made it a point to provide him with
a fifteen-minute opportunity to bask in the afterglow, and to make light
conversation if he so desired. That day, she lay in bed with a man of forty or
so years named Kyrond, who poured his heart out to her after each session
beneath the sheets. Nine months ago, his wife had passed away tragically and
unexpectedly; the tenderness of a woman’s touch was what he desperately needed,
and Sudika was happy to provide him with such a service, satisfying both his
sexual needs—he was a man, after all—and helping him along his path to
psychological recovery. Many people didn’t understand the role she played in
these men’s lives, and that, more often than not, they sought her company not
just for pleasure, but for the kind of healing that only a woman with open
ears, not open legs, could offer.

Over
the past weeks she’d come to know him quite well, and she felt comfortable
enough to present him with a necklace of turquoise stone, slipping it into his
open hand. “For your daughter,” she told him, and reminded him that he’d once
told her that turquoise was her favorite, as it brought out the sapphire blue
of her eyes. She knew that his daughter would be coming home soon at the end of
her semester, and that she hadn’t fully moved on from the loss of her mother.
Obviously, Sudika couldn’t offer her the same kind of comfort she offered the
girl’s grieving father, but she was happy to do what she could, even if it
meant sparing a little money for the sake of a girl she’d never met, but felt
she knew closely just from a father’s heartfelt stories.

She
escorted him to the door and embraced him, but he had trouble departing from
her company—not out of loneliness or attachment, but because of the three
hulking figures that stood in the doorway, blocking his exit. Kyrond tried to
pass between them, but they simply glared judgmentally, their eyes being their
only visible feature, as they covered their faces with triangular masks that
left their breathing hoarse. Lucia had warned her of the possibility of their
arrival at the brothel’s door. These were the men who threatened Sargon, and
whom Lucia urged her employees to be on the watch for. Looking to the kitchen,
Sudika cried out for her madam, and, smelling her fear, the masked men stepped
into the bordello with nothing but ill intent.

••

L
UCIA

Lucia had
just finished stirring pickled capers into her puttanesca when she heard
Sudika’s startled shouts through the open doorway. With one quick glance, her suspicions
were unfortunately confirmed: the Shatarins had come, inevitably, as they
always did to all ends of the galaxy like a swarm of zealous locusts. She
commanded them to address her and not a helpless employee, as she was in no
mood to subject Sudika to their savagery, or to step away from her bubbling pot
of red sauce that she planned to have finished by noontime.

“This
is my house, and you’ll answer to me,” she stated firmly. “And just know that
I’m not about to tolerate the kind of trouble your people too often bring.”

They
demanded that she surrender one of her best employees to be shared by the three
of them, and their leader eyed Sudika with a perverted hunger, insinuating that
she looked well-suited for group sex with interested clients who wouldn’t take
no for an answer. Lucia wasn’t about to humor their unreasonable request, and
cut them off immediately.

“Group
sex is a violation of my brothel’s policies,” she warned, motioning for Sudika
to go off to her room in safety, though the girl seemed too curious to obey.
“You’d best leave now. I will not allow one of my girls to go from providing a
necessary service to allowing men to make her into an object for their use and
disposal.”

Without
warning the first of the three barbarians lunged at Sudika, who didn’t even
have a chance to react. Before she could scream out in horror Lucia reacted
with lightning speed: she snatched her kitchen knife off the counter and flung
it across the room, landing it like an arrow deep in the Shatarin monster’s
chest. He slumped to the floor, blood and globs of fat bursting from between
his ribs, and the walls shook from the sheer weight of his bloated corpse.
Lucia withdrew two stilettos from the bustier that constricted her massive
breasts, each of which found a new home in the remaining Shatarins’ foreheads.
Nonchalantly, she poured herself a glass of Chianti and went back to gently
stirring her puttanesca. She’d have someone clean up the mess. But first, lunch
would be served, and it would have the sweet taste of retribution.

••

S
UDIKA

In less
than an hour the brazen speaker for the Sexual Labor Union of Talpretta arrived
at their door once again, unannounced but expected. He looked down at the
bodies that the whores had yet to dispose of, or report to the police, and
glared at the madam who was putting the finishing touches on the puttanesca
she’d slaved over all morning. Carefully stepping over one of them with a
grimace of disgust, he entered the kitchen and took off his mirrored glasses.

“I
heard about the attack,” he began, glancing back regretfully at the pile of
corpses.

“Funny,”
Sudika quipped, “given that the authorities haven’t even been informed yet.”

“Word
of bigotry travels fast among the tolerant and sensible,” Trygassi said with a
shrug.

Lucia
stepped down from armoring a window and pointed a manicured finger his way.
“I’m on to you,
cazzo
,” she growled. “I know a false
flag operation when I see one.”

The
union representative feigned ignorance of her accusations. “What can I say?” he
sighed, reaching out to dip his greasy sausage finger into the puttanesca to
get a taste. Sudika watched as Lucia slapped his hand away; he recoiled with a
scowl. “If your brothel was a part of the Sexual Labor Union of Talpretta, you
would have the protection you need, and an unfortunate incident like this would
have never had to happen. Perhaps this will change your minds?”

Sudika
couldn’t keep quiet. “You sound more like a mafia,” she noted disdainfully,
“but there’s not much of a difference between organized crime syndicates and
labor unions, is there?”

When
the fat cat union representative realized that she and Lucia had absolutely no
intention of unionizing, he resorted to ad hominem attacks all too typical of a
collectivist, terrorist sympathizer. He drew attention to the bodies, and more
specifically, the masks that marked them as foreign demographic combatants, and
screamed, “They were
Shatarins
, you ignorant whores! How could you have
defended yourselves against them with a clean conscience? After all, it is an
important facet of their belief system that they have an innate right to end
your lives as nonbelievers, because your mere existence is deeply offensive to
them!” Flecks of spittle hit Sudika in the face as his words grew more frenzied
and emphatic. “Clearly, you’re all working in a bottomless pit of ignorance,
bigotry and backwardness! If you continue to
refuse
to unionize, I will
have no choice but to approach the proper authorities and expose your shameless
racism
, which will
not
be taken lightly by the government!”

Sudika
was dumbfounded—how could anyone be so delusional as to rationalize his
enemies’ right to exterminate him? She thought of the stack of Talents she had tucked
away in her room, and the offer letter she kept neatly folded in an envelope as
a reminder of the bright future ahead of her. More than ever, she understood
why Lucia was so persistent in her hope of opening a window of opportunity for
her that led straight to Acadica. There, she wouldn’t be threatened by
lecherous militants or coerced into obedience by the labor unions whose
influence had arisen unexpectedly on Talpretta in recent months. She wiped the
bloated man’s vile saliva from her brow and flicked it off her hand,
splattering his oiled shoes. If it weren’t for the expensive tile floors, she
would have spat at his feet.

“Let
me get this straight,” Lucia began, angrily tossing her wooden spoon into the
sink and cutting the flow of gas to her stovetop. “First, you try to get us to
join your farcical labor union, which would force me to take hours away from
hard-working employees for the sake of hiring lazy, dead-fish girls who
couldn’t even whore themselves out to a dog in heat—” She didn’t even use pot
holders when she picked up the scalding hot saucepan and dumped the whole of
her puttanesca down the drain. “—Then, when we use our right to freedom of
choice and reject your nonsensical demands, you send your Shatarin friends to
pay us an unwelcome visit, as part of a ploy to coerce us into your union as a
protection racket, all while insisting that your union is necessary.” She
smacked the switch alongside the sink and the garbage disposal let out a
rumbling roar, and in a split second all her hard work was consumed by the
sewers. “And
then
you attempt to blackmail us for defending ourselves
when your second attempt at forcing our unionization proved to be a complete
and utter failure.

“And
lastly,” she concluded with hellfire in her eyes, gripping the edges of the
stone countertop with painted nails on the verge of shattering. The smell of
burnt tomato sauce and a woman’s scorn filled the air and stung Sudika’s nostrils;
she cowered in fear on behalf of the union speaker, who clearly had no idea
what he was in for. “Because of you, my puttanesca is ruined—and this is the
most unforgiveable offense of all. You will suffer my wrath, Mr. Trygassi, as
will your gutter-sucking associates. And when I’m through with you, I’ll toss
your tiny, severed
minchia
into a pot and feed you a meat sauce seasoned
with my most merciless revenge.”

••

L
UCIA

Lucia
arose at dawn and applied her makeup like war paint, readying herself for the
long day ahead. She coiffed her hair into luxurious curls that gave her the
look of a classic pinup beauty, complemented by the contrast of her crimson
lipstick and her light, crystalline eyes. With a fur shawl wrapped around her
shoulders and a slender silver box fully stocked with imported cigarettes, she
donned a pair of Padanian sunglasses and slipped several diamond-crusted rings
on her meticulously polished fingers. Sudika was waiting outside, dressed just
as elegantly, holding a handmade leather clutch from Mediolanum that she’d
treated herself to with the tip money she saved up over the past two weeks.
Inside the clutch was a list of brothels that they were set to visit that day,
for the sake of saving the whores of Talpretta from the sinister clutches of
pimps that called themselves union officials.