The Redhaired Herring

I said we'd take it, along with a bottle of red wine, and the serving girl departed. Diana seemed taken aback.

"A slave girl? What kind of place is this, Willie?"

"You're in Sodom, slavery's legal. The woman serving us is not an employee here, not an indentured servant, but a slave, owned, and probably treated, like a dog."

She rocked in her seat, unspeaking.

I pointed to the far wall. "See the stair the blonde is leading the man in the derby to? There are alcoves up there rented by the hour, like the blonde."

"This is a whorehouse?"

"Whorehouses don't coexist well with slavery. They'd wither and die on the vine from a business slump here in Sodom City."

"What will he do to her?" she wondered, watching them climb the stairs.

"Anything he wants. With a slave girl."

Diana retreated into herself, silent, even after the wine came and through the meal. She imbibed two goblets while we dined. Pouring her third she asked, "What are those alcoves like?"

"Have you been dwelling on them all supper long?"

"No!" she said quickly, face coloring. "Well, to be honest, yes. What are they like?"

"What makes you think I've ever been in one?"

"Tell me! Are there whips and chains?"

The girl had me viewing her in a new light by damned near everything she said and did. "Pretty much what you'd expect, Diana, bondage straps and locks. I wouldn't know about a whip but probably a leather switch at least."

"It sounds so so wicked. A bed?"

"Yeah, or maybe a divan of sorts. Or cushions."

"Do you think we could just peek inside one? For a minute?"

She was making it easy for me, determined to go, but I had a caveat: "Remember the old adage about curiosity and the cat."

"Curiosity killed the cat but," quoted Diana, emphasizing her next word, "satisfaction brought it back."

"Seeking satisfaction, are you?" I quipped dryly, no leer.

"In more ways than you can know," she said earnestly.

I'd made up my mind back at the inn to secure her in one of the tavern's alcoves using the slave chains provided, tend to my business, then return and unchain her. With a little luck I'd also be able to lull her into a trance to blot out the passage of time. By my reckoning I was less than two hours behind my intended schedule. If things went according to plan my mission should be accomplished before dawn. Or I'd be dead.

I feigned reluctance. "Diana, you're positive you want to see an alcove?"

"I said I did. Are you afraid I'll get you alone and be a bad little girl?"

"Atremble with fright. All right then," I acquiesced, "I'll make arrangements with the management."

Diana seemed delighted. Was the poor girl in for a surprise! For someone who resisted the suggestive magic implement I'd used on her she couldn't have played into my hands more than if I'd written her a script. I summoned our serving girl to us, told her what we required and three minutes later Diana and I made our own climb up the carpeted stairs.

"Don't expect anything fancy from the Victorian age of plush whorehouses," I warned her, "like velvet curtains or tables and chairs with scrolled feet."

"This is exciting," she said like a kid at a carnival.

Truly I had never been into this particular tavern's alcoves. The room I'd arranged for proved to be common and shoddy in my eyes; Diana's saw something perhaps new and unique. The walls were bare planks like the floor. A backless couch stained with sweat and Lord knows what else was jammed up against a wall under a pair of chains mounted in brackets in the wood. No window, no transom, just a door keyed the same as the manacle cuffs.

Diana closed the door behind us with a soft click, looking around rapt with fascination. "It smells like sex in here," she said in a sotto voce undertone.

"It would."

Diana told me, "Lie down on the divan."

"What?" I ejaculated, floored.

"Please."

One look at her told me she wasn't jesting. I didn't ask what she meant or what she intended to do or have done to her; I lay down like she asked. A tug at a zipper of her coveralls revealed her splendid rounded breasts. The girl never ceased to amaze me. Diana kicked off her boots and slithered out of her body suit. She deftly freed me after a tug at my own zipper.

Diana was very wet I discovered when she straddled my lap; she commenced to ride. "Will you chain me later if I ask you?" she asked breathlessly.

In my difficulty concentrating I think I said I would.

She did most of the work, hips feverishly gyrating, bouncing, rotating. A prolonged shuddering caused her to stop, her body shivering, racked by sensation. She emitted a long pleasurable groan. I felt her muscles squeezing, milking me where we joined as one. Her squirming and moaning brought the desire flooding out of me. She gripped my wrists in each hand for balance and ground hungrily against my groin. In all honesty I can report she made the world swim before me. With my head still spinning she plucked away the key still clutched in my hand.

I heard her fiddling with the manacles.

"Crazy girl, are you trying to lock yourself up?" I gasped.

"No," she smirked down at me, "I'm locking you up."

Sure enough, a manacle closed on my right wrist before I was fully aware what she'd done. When the other bracelet clicked on my left wrist I realized I'd left it too late.

"I thought you wanted me to chain you?" I said, lamely from the shock of what she'd done.

"That's what I wanted you to think."

She grinned at me to demonstrate how clever she was. She dismounted and began clambering back into her commando gear. My plan wasn't going according to plan. Diana was supposed to be the one remaining chained in the alcove for the evening, not me. "Ta-ta," she said with a little wave of her fingers. Then, to my utter astonishment, she closed and locked the door behind her.

My mind reeled at being shackled in chains alone in the small room and the girl taking the key. The hunted thought he'd been the hunter! How slickly Diana Duffy-Maguire had turned the tables. A lot of people counted on me and now I'd put the mission in jeopardy. And for what? Foolishness. The vanity of a much younger woman expressing physical interest had bowled me over like a rank amateur, the amateur I imagined Diana to be even after I watched her calmly take a man's life. I had to laugh because the joke was on me, and a bloody rich joke it was.

Had to laugh at the bloody irony especially.

Had to bloody get out of here.

What had that girl been thinking? Moreover, what the hell had I been thinking? I'd played the tour guide and resident know-it-all while she waltzed me around like a show pony. No time for recriminations, I had too much at stake. Fortunately Diana decamped without rifling the contents of my longcoat. When I got my thinking cap on I stood on the divan in order to reach the pockets. I fumbled around before finding my ring of skeleton keys, burglar's tools in copper parlance. The third one I tried opened the manacles and the door. I let myself out and rushed down the stairs. Slim chance she lingered in the tavern, she wasn't. I hurried outside, with eyes sweeping the street for her. I'd gathered my wits about me rapidly but she had a three or four minute head start. It was enough, I didn't see a single trace of her. Damnation!

Nothing to do except get to the Fairs and locate Sharak-Fauz ahead of the predatory bloodthirsty Diana, and try to contain the damage. I started ambulating briskly to the Fairs. As I walked I removed one of the gel-masks I carried with me out of a coat pocket, an unadorned black domino. Gel-masks are sold as cheaply as half a bob in plastic sleeves, peel off the waxpaper backing and affix to the face, the thin layer of gel sticks to the skin holding the mask in place without the aid of strings. Away from the train station I wanted to thwart recognition in a more comfortable disguise than the less conspicuous beard. A mask may be more noticeable, true, but not in the context of attending the festival. No one accosted me on the way and fifteen minutes later I arrived at the fairgrounds. The Slave Fairs sprawl the length and breadth of twenty residential blocks and a city park. Vendors' tents had been pitched among mansions with doors flung open to invite merrymakers to join the party. The streets teemed with people. Before I got to my destination I received another pair of panties as a favor, a lady lured to me, she said, by my black mask and clothing. She told me a time and place then undulated away.

A connection of mine in the underworld known as Jack the Lad eyed the silk streaming from my shoulder with amusement as I traipsed across somebody's lawn. Mask or no mask he would recognize me anywhere, plus he expected me. "Just one pair of knickers so far?" he bawled. "Yer must be slippin', Jimmy."

He knew me by my real name, James Shea, but called me by my nickname. For my venture in Sodom City I traveled disguised and under an assumed name at the behest of others involved in my dark enterprise. The gel-mask should foil casual recognition. Although Diana and Jack would be able to pick me out of a crowd at a distance, hopefully Sharak-Fauz would not.

Jack the Lad grinned from ear to ear when I stepped up to his colorful stall in the middle of a sidestreet. He ran a small booth from which he vended trifles when not fencing stolen property or operating a money laundering operation. "I was expectin' yer sooner, guv'ner. From appearances I'd say yer was charming a lady out of 'er knicks."

"For your information it actually occurred the other way round," I said lightly but got serious straightaway. "The coach supposedly meeting me at the Express didn't. Do you know what happened?"

Jack the Lad rolled his eyes a little, not his job.

Fair enough. "Hope I'm not too late," I said.

"Too late? Nah! The fat man only got 'ere an 'our or so ago."

"Where is he now?"

"Either at Gambizzi's or the Oracle," Jack said complacently. "That's what 'e intimated when I sawr 'im. 'e's rented a sedan chair for the night, four big blokes cartin' 'im around."

"Bodyguards?"

"Right, from Master Reggie's stable of goons. They pick 'im up at 'is mansion, guard 'is body at the Fair, then deposit 'im back on 'is doorstep. Four 'undred bob."

Good information, but door-to-door bodyguards like Jack indicated shouldn't be problematic.

"Have you noticed a young redheaded girl in a black jumpsuit and beret scampering about?" I asked, "A large knife on her hip." I held my hands apart like explaining the size of a fish nobody believed I'd caught.

"Can't say as I 'ave. 'Oo is she?"

"Trouble. Let me know if you spot anyone answering to her description please. She's more dangerous than she appears to be," I said glumly.

Jack studied his shoes for a minute not unlike a schoolboy ashamed of a misdeed. "Bleedin' 'ell," he sighed.

I asked him what was wrong.

"Just remembered something the fat man told me when 'e popped round the booth tonight for a pinch of Starch," he said. Starch is a designer drug to overcome penile dysfunction; the fat man would want to test his new slave purchases once he got them home. Jack was saying: "Didn't seem to mean much until what you just said."

"You sound ominous, Jack, don't keep it a secret."

"Before 'e came to see me earlier Blubberguts 'ad put down some pints of tipple at the Bent Dwarf, priming himself for some fresh girls. 'e let slip 'e'd got 'imself a new acquisition a few weeks back. One with red 'air."

My mind careened back on the way Diana comported herself. "Do you mean a slave girl acquisition?" Which would've been illegal at the time, not that that mattered in the overall scheme of things.

"No, not a slave girl, guv," Jack pulled off his newsboy cap and scratched at his greasy head, "but a demon with scarlet 'air were 'is exact words."

"A female demon?"

"That's what the fat man told me."

"A red-haired lady demon?" I weighed the possibility in my head. "Did he say why?"

"For insurance durin' the Slave Fairs, and to smite 'is legion of enemies should one faction or the other try to catch 'im in an ambuscade."

"Curiouser and curiouser," I mumbled.

"What?" asked Jack, puzzled at not knowing my reference.

"He knows he's vulnerable during the festival because he's out of his house," I said more to myself than Jack. That's why we'd chosen this time of season to strike.

"Yer can't blame a man 'oo wants to personally inspect the merchandise," mused Jack.

"He's hired bodyguards from Reggie, and a demon guardian angel who's lurking in the wings or overseeing other interests of his?" I asked.

"That's the way I understood it."

The more I thought about it the more sense it made Diana might've been planted on me, except not by the police, but by Sharak-Fauz. She had had me in her power and let me live. But I'd been circumspect with her about my affairs in town. I might have acted a fool around her, but at least not a namedropping fool. Had I wagged my tongue the way I wagged my cock I might be in my grave this very instant.

Or maybe Diana was a red herring, a cutout sent to glean my plans or divert me. The theory held logic both ways. Either way though my prey would possess the knowledge I was in Sodom's city limits. Time to get cracking.

"Are you able to leave your booth, Jack?"

"I'll round someone up and we'll 'eave to. Are yer nervous?"

"A little," I said, but I didn't tell him about what.

"Only natural. They're all countin' on yer to do well, guv, me too."

Jack's overwhelming confidence cheered me, but he had no idea how badly I'd been suckered. Angrily I told myself to snap out of it, don't allow Diana's cunning victory to undermine the rest of my plans. I vowed not to let her interference put me off my game, but in light of Jack's information I had to consider her

an even bigger threat than I'd previously gauged.

Jack got a scruff installed in his booth shortly and, after some last minute whispered instructions to the lad, off we went. Northwest of the district where Jack had set up shop the slave auctions are held in a massive park. That's where we'd find Gambizzi's and the Oracle. Revelers crammed the walkways and boulevards, the bridges and plazas. A stranger from the crowd, a seductive blonde woman, hugged me and kissed me lightly on the lips. She whispered to me as she stuffed a flimsy pair of red panties in the other epulat at my shoulder before retreating back into the throng.

Jack the Lad howled, "That's my boy," but I kept on walking purposefully.

Sharak-Fauz is a grotesquely fat man. My spies tell me he doesn't get out much nowadays but when he does he cuts a wide swathe wherever he goes. He chooses to drape his rolls of flab in the loudest and brightest silks the tentmakers can procure, from his gaily-turbaned head to his pointy-slippered toes. In the colorful mob he wouldn't stand out like a lone beacon on a black shore, but inside the confines of a slave tent would be another story. Hundreds of tents conducted auctions and not just in the park. Fortunately Jack knew the likely whereabouts of the fat man or we'd be searching at random all night. I hoped that was all Diana could do. She seemed such a neophyte about the ways of Sodom City though she might have been acting.

Maybe she was in the actor's Guild. She's not an actress, fool, she's a bloody demon! Pay attention to the intelligence Jack gathered and clear your head, Shea. Just get on with it. We crossed a stream of people to Gambizzi's enormous scarlet pavilion. Red indicated slave trade. Was it symbolic the demon had red hair? Crikey, Shea, get her out of your mind.

Jack and I paid an exorbitant admission to a ticket taker outside the tent. Inside two or three hundred people lolled about, drinks in hand, gleam in eye, with ample room still for a hundred more. He and I split up before we'd entered, I not wanting to be seen in proximity of Jack by Sharak-Fauz. He'd become immediately suspicious seeing the two of us together.

The slave stock is kept out of sight in holding pens until time of sale. Cages set along the walls of the tent contained one or two girls apiece, a suggested retail price taped to the bars. Two exhibition stages in the rear alternated between females being sold to the highest bidder. On one of them a tattooed slaver stripped a black woman with striking blonde hair to better display her wares. When an audible murmur of approval spread through the crowd, I scanned it for a fat boy. I started with the front row because that's where Sharak-Fauz would stand.

Sprinkled applause issued from the men when the slaver divested the curvaceous beauty of her final article of clothing. With a snap of his pony whip she obediently moved around the stage striking poses. His whip struck her buttocks and the girl flinched, pretty face etched at the intersection of agony and ecstasy. The crowd cheered at her response. When the slaver inserted a rude finger between her thighs and she gasped the crowd went wild.

No sign of Sharak-Fauz. As I headed toward the exit quite a bidding war escalated for the nude slave on the stage. I ducked through the tent flap and Jack soon rejoined me outside.

He spat on the ground, "There's twenty bob wasted, although the sights were worth seein'."

As we cut through the tide of humanity on our way to the Oracle I asked Jack what he thought about purchasing a slave. "You seem to want one, lad. Why not?"

"Storage is one factor, guv, I'm a man on the go, can't be lugging a girl all over creation. Upkeep is another: buying a slave's an important purchase like any major appliance; one's investment should be protected; a girl must be fed and watered and sheltered and clothed, albeit the latter only sometimes."

"I never thought about it like that," I said. But I don't think about it much because I never owned a slave. The concept of owning a human being is reprehensible to me. I understand others do not share my viewpoint. "But, Jack, your objections seem minor to overcome."

"To tell the truth, the little woman would fancy it none too much neither."

"You never told me you had a wife."

Our conversation was cut short by our arrival at the Oracle. Before us loomed a much larger pavilion than Gambizzi's, easily a thousand buyers could cram into the Oracle, a premier slave house. They sold only the youngest and most beautiful slave girls available in the solar system at the highest prices. A line stretched around the side of the tent, big enough to house a circus.

I inspected the serpentine line for fat men and saw none. "Wonder how long the wait to get in is?" I asked.

"No waitin' 'ere, Jimmy, I'm blackmailin' the ticketman," Jack winked. "'ere, follow me."

The man in the sleeve garters at the admission booth waved us through. The first thing I noticed was how much hotter the inside of the Oracle was compared to Gambizzi's. More patrons and better stock. Unlike the other tent this had raised platforms instead of cages here and there against the silk walls. A girl was chained to each, no price tags; if a buyer had to ask how much, he couldn't afford her. Touching is allowed, a prospective buyer's right in any house of slavery. No one thinks twice about squeezing vegetables in the markets for the best commodity in the bunch and the same applied at the Slave Fairs. The Oracle auctioned from one main exhibition stage as opposed to two, it differed little from any other such stage except for the colour of the paint and its decorations. Against one side of the tent were bleachers. I took a seat on a bench near the top. The raised seating supplied a superior vantage point and the people there served as camouflage. I heard bids shouted above the dull roar in the place. Onstage a stunning pair of identical twins posed and preened. The master of ceremonies wore a crimson tuxedo and melodramatically cracked a long bullwhip, never touching the smooth oiled skin of the slave sisters. The gavel knocked down on them for sixty-seven thousand bob.