Master of Babylon Ch. 04

The hardest part of a celebrity death is figuring out how to break the news, as well as breaking it before the tabloids find out. Amata failed at the second, but only because she didn't want to issue a statement on my behalf before I even knew I was free. The statement was prepared by my publicist, who called in from his vacation in an unbuttoned floral shirt, with a twink in a pearly white collar, golden jewellery and nothing else drifting in and out of the shot.

The statement itself was a sober acknowledgement of the facts; declaring that Thomas Blackthorne passed away peacefully in the night and that all his worldly possessions have passed to his emancipated and legitimised heir, without actually saying anything about who I am beyond my name.

My publicist made it clear that this would cause a 'complete clusterfuck' in the press and that he'd already dispatched someone from Babylon's namesake publication to come and write up a sanitised version of my life story to go up on the website after lunch and in print in the next edition.

The journalist who arrived was the first free woman I've ever met, and also the most casually dressed. I had very little input on the article she wrote, beyond brief answers to her questions about my past. Amata already had a spin in mind and, since I own the Babylon magazine as well as the estate, that spin was accepted without question.

The end result was a careful balancing act between truth and deception. The reputation of few slave owners can survive being seen as soft on their property, so my father was protected by emphasising that I had been worked as hard as any other slave in Babylon, even as I was educated as a possible successor. That was even mostly true, especially compared to the outright lie that my father had loved me and always intended for me to inherit.

It feels strange reading an article about myself on a smartphone I didn't have five minutes ago and need Sabah's help to use, published on a website I now own that's full of personal interest articles and erotic photoshoots of all the girls I know.

My sister has a profile on there and six different social media sites, apparently all run by a maid who acts as the manager for four of the girls. There are no men in any of the pictures, just more of the same philosophy seen in Babylon's art; girls frolicking in paradise even as they yearn for the company of whatever man happens to be on the other side of the screen.

It feels stranger to eat lunch in a sunroom on the ground floor of the mansion, with white tablecloths and a bunny acting as a waitress. I take my time as I work my way through a Ceaser Salad, which I ordered before realising the verbal ammunition it would give Julia, enjoying the chance to actually eat lunch rather than two unnamed half-meals at about eleven and three, depending on how busy we were.

Julia and Sabah have meals of their own, little more than side dishes for them to pick at while focusing their attention on their guest. There's a whole second menu for them, and we'd always put in just as much effort as for the paying customers. The conversation is welcomingly light, Julia and I taking turns to share stories with Sabah, who responds with anecdotes of her own. I could almost pretend we're all equals again, but Sabah seems far too effortlessly easy in my company given that we never really knew each other before.

Julia seems to spot it as well, looking at Sabah in a new light before deciding to address the unspoken omission in our conversation.

"So, how long are you assigned to my brother?"

"I'm not really sure," Sabah admits. "Mom's been fudging the rota for a week to keep me on floating shifts until our Master -- sorry, our late Master -- passed."

"That's pretty transparent," Julia drawls, flashing me a worried look. "Desperate to get her hooks in the new boss?"

Sabah shrugs, glancing down for a moment before she hides her sudden nerves beneath a mask.

"I think she just wants to make sure I don't lose out, but I don't really know? I always got the feeling she hoped to persuade Master Thomas to will this place to her when he died. Still, she was actually glad when he started showing an interest in you, Master, because before then she didn't really know what would happen to us."

"Well," I say, giving her my best reassuring smile, "I need Amata on my side. Sleeping with her daughter is a weird price to set on her consent, but it's one I'm prepared to pay."

"Aww, that's sweet," my sister drawls. "Don't forget to swap her out, though, or round up some others to join in. Babylon's all about sharing the love."

Sabah nods sagely, then takes up her knife and fork to finish her slow dissection of a fillet of salmon.

"So, what's next, Master? I can set up whatever you want."

"Actually, if it's alright I was thinking Julia and I could explore the grounds. You can come and join me when she has to get ready for her next guest; I'm sure Amata doesn't want me to go without a girl on my arm. It might hurt my image."

"Of course it's alright, Master. You two have fun; I'll see you later."

Sabah rises, gives me a deep bow and strolls out of the room. I let myself indulge in the sight of her ass in her leotard as she sways her hips, my sister mercifully not saying anything. I suppose our promises go both ways now.

The sunroom's floor to ceiling glass windows look out onto the immaculate lawn out the side of the mansion, an uncharacteristically open space walled in on three sides by tall hedges. It's mostly used for games of soccer among the workforce, with four statues of naked ballerinas serving as the goals. I linger at the French doors, but I can't see any guests out there

"Hey," Julia says, putting her hand on my shoulder. "Remember what we talked about, okay? The girls out there are going to want to see that you're at least content. You're kinda like a human weathervane."

"I can handle it," I tell her, pushing open the door and feeling the heat wash over me. "After all, you have."

"Sure, but that's why I get paid the big bucks," Julia says as she follows me out, taking a moment to bask in the sun, her face lighting up as she smiles. "Four hundred a month can be pretty motivating."

"Four hundred?" I ask, shocked. "Didn't feel like sharing any of that with your poor brother? I only got eighty."

"And that's before bonuses, but I get the feeling your sense of scale is going to take a few hits over the next few days," Julia drawls as she hooks her arm around mine. "I don't want to know how much I go for, by the way. At least not until I start shadowing Miss Amata, if that even happens."

"Is that what you want?" I ask, before almost stopping short at the sight of a guest, which would have led to a stint in solitary if I'd seen him just a few hours earlier. At the end of the lawn, just beyond the edge of the hedgerow, is the chain-link fence of a badminton court. Inside, barely visible, a pale figure shuffles from side to side in a white polo shirt and shorts, his arm swinging as he returns a serve to his unseen partner.

"Julia, what's the etiquette here?" I ask in a rush, cutting off her answer to my last question. "What do I say if I run into one of them?"

"People come here for privacy," she answers after a moment's consideration, walking me through an archway in the hedgerow and around a corner to the rear of the house, where wide steps descend down to a court built around an immense fountain girded with frolicking nymphs.

"If you walk in on someone," she continues, "it's up to them where the conversation goes. If they don't share their name, you don't have to share yours. If they're not interested in talking, the polite thing to do is just move on. There's plenty of space for everyone."

I walk slowly towards the fountain, along a wide flagstone path bordered on either side by immaculate patches of grass and take a seat next to a stone woman frozen in the act of pouring water from a jug. The mansion looms over me, three floors of white stone and narrow windows criss-crossed by metal lattices. I can't see it all from here, just the boxy keep of the main court. It continues on off to the right, where the old children's rooms blurred into the expansive servants' quarters, both renovated and repurposed half a hundred times since my father bought the place.

"It hasn't sunk in yet, has it?" Julia asks, taking a seat next to me. "Everything you see is yours."

The doors to the mansion open, three girls strolling down the stairs in nothing but swimsuits, sandals and their ears. I can name them all; the twins, Vesta and Valeria, in matching black bikinis, and Anat in a kind of mostly mesh one-piece that almost seems to disappear against her dark skin.

They're all older than us. When Anat had been on her way out of our Montessori school and into the more formal training and mentorship curriculum all the girls went through before their debut, Julia and I had been at just the right age to see her as the wisest person in the world. More to the point, when we were all a few years older Anat was my first sexual experience. I'd thought I was the luckiest guy in the world at the time, but I later heard from Julia that her last guest had a thing for orgasm denial and had kept her on edge for days.

They don't seem to see me as anything other than another guest at first, their eyes glancing at me briefly before continuing on, maybe putting a little more effort into their walk. Vesta is the first to recognise me, unless she's swapped her asymmetrical hairstyle with her sister again, elbowing Valeria and nodding in my direction.

I stand up and the three of them take it as an order to approach, walking towards me like skittish deer.

"Hey girls, where are you off to?"

"We're a beach volleyball team, Master," Anat says, sounding less comfortable with the word than Julia and Sabah had. "Us against a guest and his escort."

"Is it a fair fight?"

"Absolutely not, Master," Valeria says, grinning. "He set a new world record in the high jump a couple months ago. Apparently the old- Master Hawthorne was watching and offered him a comped weekend."

"We're going to get hammered," Vesta says, trying to cover for her sister's mistake, "and then we're going to get hammered."

"Try not to lose too badly," Julia interjects. "You've gotta rep the side."

"Must be weird for you, Jules," Anat muses, putting a hand on her hip and looking me up and down with an almost smug grin, maybe still picturing me as the gormless teenager she talked into eating her out in a closet full of cleaning products, leaving me unfinished in an act of retaliation against my sex.

"It's weird for all of us," I answer for my sister. "But life goes on and so does Babylon. You're looking good, Anat. Turn around for me."

She blinks, gears turning in her head as she tries to move me from one part of her world to another. Finally, she gives me a confident and eager smile she probably practices in the mirror for all her guests and slowly turns in place, cocking her hips to flaunt the bare back of her suit, a line of stitching pulling the mesh tight over her ass. Then she turns again and spreads her arms, as though inviting me to drink in the sight of her.

"With pleasure, Master. How do I look?"

I step forward, Anat holding the pose as I let my eyes linger on her tits, finally meeting her gaze right as I reach down and grab her pussy, digging my thumb into her suit.

"Good enough to eat," I drawl, withdrawing my hand and squeezing her shoulder. "Make the guy work for it, okay?"

"Don't worry, Master," Valeria says with a nod. "We'll put up a good fight."

The three of them head on their way, Anat giving me one last look over her shoulder.

"You handled that well," Julia says, once they're out of sight. "It's going to be hard for some people to adjust, but they need to."

I sigh. "It's just starting to settle in that I'm losing all my friends. I can't exactly invite myself to the soccer games on non-working days, because then they'll become work. And I've got to make them work, or Babylon fails."

Julia shrugs. "Miss Amata scares everyone, but the old man was basically well liked even though he's the reason for all of this. Not many of us would choose to be here, but here's where we are and everywhere else is worse."

"What do you mean?"

"When they started training us for our debut, they showed us a lot of stuff about how things work in other resorts. Not something I'm keen to talk about, if that's okay."

"Of course," I say, then force a smile. "Besides, why would I care about other resorts when I have my own to explore? You must have a favourite spot."

Julia pauses for a moment, turning on her heels as she looks at the paths around us.

"Yeah, I know a place."

She takes my hand, linking our fingers together as she leads me through a gap in the hedgerow into a grotto laden with cushioned benches for guests to recline as they dine Roman-style from long tables, then into another centred around a bubbling hot tub, then a space filled with ominous bamboo posts and frames, then another and another.

Each is like its own little world, some leading right into the next while others open onto winding pathways that clearly skirt the edge of other grottos, or over stone bridges that cross the lazy river flowing from one pool to another. In one grotto we pass a guest reclining fully nude on a deckchair. He's old, overweight, and has apparently drifted off to sleep as he sunbathed. One of his two attendants is sitting on the plinth of a statue, bowing her head to me as we pass. The other kneels on a cushion next to the chair, leaning against the frame as she warms her guest's cock.

"They swap out, right?" I ask Julia, getting a nod in return.

It takes me a while to orient myself, all the times Amata forced me to memorise Babylon's layout suddenly paying off. I can't imagine how the guests find their way around without a guide, but perhaps that's the point?

Then Julia doubles back after we pass through one archway, leading me to a hidden path between a hedge and the faded wall of some structure, with a trellised wooden canopy hiding us from anyone above. The passage is narrow and sparsely paved with occasional flagstones, ending at a set of stairs that descend down into the earth.

Beyond a fire safe door is a little room with a utilitarian shower, toilet and sink next to an extremely expensive make-up station, with a tall mirror ringed by lights. A pair of sign-in sheets have been pinned to a corkboard, one for the cleaning crew and the other for whoever works here. Next to it, resting like a trophy on two screws part-driven into the wall, is a pair of rabbit ears. White with a pink liner.

"Not the most scenic spot," I remark, getting a punch in the arm for my snark before Julia puts a finger to her lips.

She leads me through another door in the far wall, this one painted grey and opening almost soundlessly. Julia leans through, then waves me forward into a tight, dark passageway with smooth walls that give way to concrete sculpted to look like stone. It feels like descending into a cave, and that's exactly where we end up.

The staff exit is hidden behind an Ancient Greek column that seems to have got lost underground, one of a dozen ringing the almost circular chamber of the hidden grotto. The illusion is almost perfect, the shaped concrete of the cave looking like stone in the dim light of the chamber and painted as though mossy or lichenous. The water passing through the edge of the space is lit from below by fluorescent white bulbs that only heighten the contrast to the faux torchlight of the grotto.

At the centre of the chamber is a white stone plinth supporting a circle of broken columns like splintered fingers reaching for the ceiling of the cave. Stone benches have been arranged around the cave for the audience to the show. On one of them, the closest to the water, a woman sits with a brown blanket draped over her shoulders and her attention firmly fixed on an e-reader.

Julia coughs, the woman springing up as the blanket cascades from her shoulders to reveal her naked body. Her forehead has been painted entirely white, the make-up covering her eyes and swooping down to flared spades on her cheeks. That white canvas is broken by a blue triangle in the centre of her forehead and two inverted teardrops in the spades.

The pattern continues down her body; her throat painted blue, her shoulders highlighted by swooping white shapes, with more highlights on the sides of her hips and a pattern like a stylised womb above her own. Her chest faintly glitters in the light, her nipples dusted with silver, the paint and glitter standing out against her heavily freckled skin.

"Julia?" she says, startled. "Why've you... ah. Welcome, Master."

She curtseys with an imaginary skirt, then steps into the light so I can see her more clearly. Her hair beams in the false torchlight, so ginger I wonder if a dye job has been used to enhance her natural colour.

"I'm sorry I'm out of place," she continues, gesturing to the raised circle of stone. "With the water I can always hear guests coming."

"I understand. It's Niobe, isn't it?"

She blinks. "I'm surprised you know it, Master. I don't know if we've ever properly met."

"Growing up, Amata had me memorise all the girls," I tell her, rubbing my neck. "I'm starting to understand why."

"Master Julius asked me to show him my favourite spot," Julia says, stepping up and taking my hand again. "I thought of here."

Niobe beams, her teeth showing white in the gloom.

"That's so sweet!" she exclaims. "So, this is the Secret Temple, Master. Apart from the staff entrance, people can only get in through the pools."

"How long are you down here?" I ask, peering around the sparse chamber.

"It's twelve-hour shifts. Dione and I swap times every non-working day. Nights are a little busier, but you can nap between guests. Midnight's always popular. It's like a ritual for the regulars."

"But what do you do here?"

Dione face shifts, a mask sliding on as she gives me an enigmatic smile, something inhuman entering her posture. Like a fae creature in her domain.

"Please, honoured Master, rest here a while," she says. The susurration of her words is caught and amplified by the chamber, which must have been carved to create that acoustic effect. Niobe strides close, her breasts trembling slightly as she almost glides across the room. Julia lets go of my hand right as Niobe reaches me, cupping my cheek and leading me to a stone bench across from the water, next to a little alcove in the stone where a heap of blankets has been laid out as bedding.

Julia sits beside me, leaning against my shoulder as she rests a hand on my thigh. I place my own on top of it, the pair of us watching as Niobe drifts languidly back to her temple, her hips rolling as she steps up onto the dais, stands in the centre and turns to face me, one hand splayed on her sternum, the other just below her crotch as though suggesting modesty while hiding nothing.

"Botticelli's Venus," Julia whispers in my ear before squirming eagerly against my side as a sudden light blooms into life in the roof of the cavern, directly above Niobe. It's as pale as moonlight, her white and blue bodypaint glowing under its illumination as Niobe starts to move.

Her dance is graceful, almost balletic, her hair like tongues of fire wreathing her head. It would be hypnotising enough on its own, but then she starts to sing. I can't make out the words, don't even know the language, but it seems to fill all the world as it echoes across the cave. Without music, there's nothing else to focus on but her voice and her body, even Julia's weight on my side seeming to fade as I simply let myself fall into the moment.

She never leaves the circle of broken columns, her performance framed by them as though it's happening through a window to another world. I wonder how many times this beautiful song has been cut short by thoughtless guests storming her temple and raping its priestess like the Sack of Troy. It's beauty and grace and art, and I understand completely why Julia chose to take me here.

Niobe ends her dance by sinking to her knees, her legs splayed like a fertility goddess as she leans back on her hands, her breasts heaving with every panting breath. I couldn't ask for a more blatant invitation.

"Not today," I say, reaching up to pat Julia's head, "but I'll be back, Niobe. That was beautiful."

She nods, then rolls forwards until her forehead touches the stone of her temple, her palms pressed against the floor.

"I'll be waiting, Master," she whispers, holding that pose until I help Julia to her feet and lead us both out.

"Well?" Julia asks once we're back outside, her eyes alive with joy as she beams up at me.

I just blink, feeling an idiot smile fixed on my face. Julia looks down at my crotch and I feel myself flush with embarrassment, but she just snorts and slams her palm against my chest.

"You're such a dog, Julius. Go on then, get back in there. It's your playground."