Assassin from Abyss

At the center of Redweed stood a long tunnel-shaped reed building with five smaller tunnels branching off each side — from above, a giant tubular red centipede.

It was the largest building in the village, and it served as a brothel and an inn, and it served nobles only — nobles who came down to Redweed to hone themselves against the things in the Black Bowels marshes, or to indulge the other appetites the village catered to. The main tunnel was the inn and the reception; the branching tunnels were partitioned into medium guestrooms, luxuriously furnished, rented by the hour.

It was called the Lustrum, and it belonged to House Ziglai, of the merchant guild.

No commoner entered the Lustrum alone. Only in a noble’s company.

There was another inn in Redweed — a medium two-storey reed building, poorer by far than the Lustrum. The Fellow Mire Inn, for commoners. It was run by commoners, but registered under the noble merchant guild, and paid a share of its takings up to the guild each month.

The door of the Fellow Mire opened, and a hooded figure came in — grey, cloaked, vested. He crossed past the tables where drunken commoner males hurled profanity at the waitresses, and came to the counter where the innkeeper sat.

" Hello. Need something, cully? " Reben, the innkeeper, asked.

The hooded figure swept a hand, and a small pouch appeared on the counter. Reben opened it and found a hundred ditoso inside — black pearls.

His manner changed at once.

" Mister — come up to the first floor, away from this riffraff and this noise. We keep reserved rooms upstairs, where you may drink at your leisure, and I will send a waitress to attend you. "

The grey figure nodded and followed him up.

---

From one of the Lustrum’s guestrooms came loud sounds of a man and a woman at their pleasure — the low incessant grunts and groans of the male, the high squeals and moans of the female, carrying clear through walls that were far from soundproof, out into the hall for anyone to hear.

Lady Amilja of House Ziglai, the patroness of the Lustrum, paid it no mind. She was counting the day’s profits.

*Excellent, today. And it holds like this a week or two yet.*

She looked over the full guestrooms, all of them rented by the hour, and at the clusters of adolescent noble males drinking surah around the tables, their eyes all but crawling over the adult commoner escorts and waitresses who moved among them in apparel that hid almost nothing.

*All thanks to the awakening. These young nobles come out of it high on their own blood and cannot keep their trousers on. Good for business.*

She gestured, and one of the busty young escorts read the order and went to a table of expensively dressed adolescents. Five minutes on, the escort came back to the counter with two of the young nobles, who paid Amilja four thousand droqdo and followed her into a guestroom and locked the door behind them.

*Money feels good.*

She looked at the other adolescent nobles, the ones hanging back, hesitant to approach the older escorts.

*I need to bring in some younger women from the village.* She made the note in her head.

Just then the sounds from that one guestroom stopped. A minute later, the door opened.

A tall, heavily muscled male Rakshasa stepped out, chiseled and bare to the waist, his torso running with sweat, and every eye in the inn went to him. He walked a few steps — and then dropped, and fell unconscious on the floor, spent past standing.

" Ha. Males these days have so little stamina. "

A woman’s voice, from inside the room. And out of it came an elegant, graceful older female Rakshasa — greyish-white skin, an hourglass figure poured into a skin-tight green — stepping over the unconscious man on her way to Lady Amilja, unhurried, entirely unbothered, the picture of a woman who had not yet had her fill.

*This cougar is insatiable.* Amilja watched her come. *And if she is in Redweed on business, then someone here is about to die.*

She was looking at Madam Butterfly. A mercenary of the Order of Mercy.