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Floating brothels are tremendously profitable enterprises. There’s the obvious reason, of course: selling someone else’s body for a night almost always earns you more coin than it costs to keep them fed and clothed. This is especially true when the clothes are optional. But regular brothels have to deal with the vagaries of the marketplace. For example, let’s sayyourbordello starts earning a little too much money. Business is booming and everyone for a hundred miles takes notice. One of three things will happen: a competitor will build their own whorehouse next door and undercut your prices, a local gang will start offering ‘protective services’ whose primary feature is protecting you fromthem, or someone of high moral purpose will come along and burn your building down– usually with you and your employees inside.
Or what if your town has a few too many bad harvests and no one can afford your services? Or war breaks out in your region and armies run roughshod through the territory? Contrary to what some gullible fools might think, soldiers do not make good customers. They rarely get paid on time, and when their commanders fail to deliver their wages, an easy way to keep them happy is to simply let them have their way with the local prostitutes without paying a cent.
A floating brothel, on the other hand, can travel to wherever the money flows best. Too much local competition? Head on down the river. Local thugs want protection money? Set sail for more welcoming waters. As an added bonus, you can keep your prices high because patrons don’t have time to get bored with your employees. Even better? The atmosphere of luxury and adventure aboard a beautiful red-sailed ship makes recruiting comely young men and women to your enterprise as easy as waving them aboard before you leave the dock the next morning.
Pirates won’t attack pleasure barges becauseotherpirates would retaliate for ruining the only fun available on the high seas. Naval commanders don’t attack them because all it takes is for the proprietor to offer the crew a free ride to set off a mutiny that ends with our noble captain hanging from a yardarm – while his sailors toast his health as they enthusiastically sample the pleasures of clean, lovely young men and women his prudishness won them for free.
Seriously, if you’re ever in possession of a small fortune, invest in a floating bordello. It’s a growth industry.
‘Can’t believe a fucking prince would own a whoreship,’ Corrigan complained, tugging at the collar of his long purple velvet coat, then stroking the satin sleeves inlaid with black bolts of lightning. He’d paid a small fortune for the coat, but whenever he wore it, I thought he looked like a homicidal carnival barker.
My own long blue and silver brocaded coat was more subtle and, in my opinion, more elegant. I’d likely paid three times as much as Corrigan had for his, but that was during better days, when I was still fooling myself that this might be a noble profession, one for which I’d want to look my best when performing heroic deeds. One always wants to dress appropriately for one’s portraits, after all.
The more practical reality was that while wonderists typically wear some form of protective leather armour to avoid the embarrassment of getting knifed in the back before we get a spell off, the nature of this business is such that our clients– like those of high-end prostitutes aboard floating brothels– tend to be obscenely wealthy and prefer us to dress magnificently in their presence.
‘Damn, but I forgot how much these things itch,’ Corrigan groaned, tugging at the back of his striped velvet pantaloons. ‘I did wonder why you showed up at our rendezvous dressed like a fop, Aradeus,’ he complained to the rat mage. ‘This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?’
Normally a quartet of wonderists wandering about without the benefit of a patron’s army at their backs would dress inconspicuously, to avoid encouraging some local thug or two to make their bones by attempting to kill a war mage. In this instance, however, the only way we were going to be allowed on board a prince’s brothel would be by making an impression. And trust me, when you see a thunderer, an Infernalist, a rat mage and a woman in a sublime’s silver-white gown with blood-red hair, you are certainly going to leave an impression.
‘Silords, you honour us with your presence,’ the major domo said, waving an arm as if to point out the assortment of beautiful men and women brought out for our appraisal, currently bathed in dancing coloured lights from the bejewelled lanterns swinging from the massive barge’s gleaming masts. Moans of pleasure were seeping up from the floors below, punctuated by a great deal of creaking. ‘The Serenity Divine welcomes you.’
‘Stupid name,’ Corrigan grumbled.
Aradeus shot him a look, but the tall, slender and exquisitely dressed major domo only laughed lightly before walking over and bowing as deeply as he might to any prince. ‘The reputation of the great Corrigan Blight precedes him.’
‘Does my reputation mention anything about what I like to do with fawning sycophants?’
The major domo chuckled as if the two were old acquaintances sharing a joke, then gave me an apologetic look. ‘Forgive me, Silord, that unlearned as I am, I must ask your name?’
‘Cade Ombra,’ Aradeus said, as though the name should inspire awe, or at least mild panic. ‘The Wonderist Supreme: Mage Sovereign of a thousand campaigns, Slayer of Seven Devilish, Keeper of the Lore of the Asters. I present to you the man, the hero, the legend.’
I was literally none of those things, and I was pretty sure he’d invented every single one of those titles on the spot. The major domo, however, made a show of being tremendously impressed, as with a subtle twitch of his fingers, he induced a cadre of beautiful male, female and less conventionally gendered prostitutes to make appreciativeoohsandahhs, their lashes fluttering and their fingers drifting to their nether regions as if my mere presence had induced them all to mass orgasm.
The major domo turned to Aradeus with significantly less enthusiasm. ‘Silord Mozen, I was under the impression you did not approve of our presence in these waters.’
‘Really?’ the rat mage asked, his neatly trimmed eyebrows rising. ‘Whatever gave you that impression, Major Domo?’
The slender man gestured to the rapier at Aradeus’ side. ‘I believe it was when you challenged Prince Stercus to a duel.’
‘A duel which the prince refused.’
‘As was his privilege.’
‘Yes, but you see, I had been told he was a fencer of surpassing skill. You can imagine my disappointment.’
The major domo spread his long-fingered hands wide as the youthful prostitutes in their beautifully made see-through garments shifted from one seductive pose to the next, just for our benefit. ‘Only you, Silord Mozen, could stand upon this deck and speak of disappointment.’
‘He makes a convincing argument,’ Corrigan whispered to me. He’d already caught the eye of one fetching lass, a grown woman with wide hips and full bosom who was matching him leer for leer.
Is it perverse to say I loved Corrigan Blight for the fact that among this display of barely developed nubile flesh, among whose number Galass would have been considered mature, the big brute had eyes only for the eldest and most confident woman? Monsters, it seems to me, come in all degrees, and however hypocritical it was of me, I took consolation in the fact that the man whose dubious friendship was the last thing of value I possessed was far from the worst of them.
Aradeus spread his hands in surrender. ‘I will concede that the pleasures of the flesh are sometimes on a par with those of testing one’s skill against a self-styled master of the sword. Further, mages of my speciality are known above all else for our practicality, and this veil of tears in which we live grants the powerful the means to escape the judgement of their betters.’
‘Why, Silord Mozen,’ the major domo said, ‘I do believe that is as near an apology as has ever escaped your notoriously scathing tongue.’
Aradeus bowed. ‘It is certainly as close to an apology as the prince will receive from me, Major Domo.’
The man gestured once again to the preening young courtesans, several of whom had accidentally slipped out of their garments. ‘And in recognition of such courtesy on your part, the prince has instructed me to offer you and your company the pleasures of our hospitality within our ruby cabins below.’
