Master of Babylon Ch. 05

Babylon is a place of secrets. Like the temple in the cave, there are those her guests are meant to find. Musicians, dancers and performers wait in hidden alcoves for guests to discover or be guided to by their attendants as though they were initiates in some secret order. Julia shows me one hidden treasure after another, insisting I stay and listen to some while in others I linger only long enough to talk to the performer.

We don't have time to cover everything, and I know Babylon has many more secrets her guests aren't meant to see. I have Julia show those to me as well; the covert pathways and shortcuts used by the staff, the partially concealed phone boxes that the girls can use to call refreshments or entertainment down to any part of the estate.

Along the way, I hear the activity of distant guests. Music and moans and splashing in the pools, one particularly nasal man screaming out eager obscenities loud enough to be distinguishable through the baffling of the layers of hedges. Others are quieter; glimpsed figures walking down a path with their backs to us, a man in a white bathrobe with a bunny on each arm.

Some of the pools and courts have no men at all, just girls on their rare off hours who've taken their meagre pay and used it to rent the space, with guaranteed reimbursement and rescheduling if any of the guests happen upon them and decide to join in the fun. As we cross a bridge over one of the pools a group of them recognise us and shout for me to jump in and join them, one of them throwing off her bikini to wave her tits at me.

I just laugh back and give them a half-hearted promise to come back later if there's time, my mind already wandering to my mental map of Babylon as Julia leads me further down the path.

Sure enough, we soon emerge into a covered and concreted courtyard, camouflaged from above by a scaffold of trellises crawling with plants. Across from us, a pair of immense gates break up the monolithic stone and climbing privacy hedges of the walls of Babylon, their painted green boards backed by a lattice of wrought iron.

I stare up at them, as entranced as I had been by any of the performances in Babylon's walled gardens. I feel faint, each breath harder to take as I stand here at the edge of the world. Julia steps neatly in front of me, facing away from the gates as she looks at me and, in turn, forces me to look at her. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and turn away.

"Some other time, maybe. Let's head back to the mansion."

Our walk back is subdued, neither of us speaking as Julia leads me along the most direct route. Amata and her daughter are waiting by the steps of the manor, both of them immaculately turned out with their hands clasped in front of them, clearly waiting for me.

"Good afternoon, Master," Amata greets us, leading her daughter in a bow. "Sabah was on her way to swap out with Julia, but I felt I should come along. There are two matters that may require your attention."

"'May' require it?"

Amata doesn't move, but her eyes flick down to the ground for the moment. Her daughter is more expressive; unable to quite keep a pensive expression off her face.

"Babylon could be paradise for you, if you want it to be. Whatever your whim, we could make it happen, even if you want to leave. You could live like any trust fund kid, content in your ignorance of how your wealth is earned so long as sign whatever I put in front of you. It would be easier for both of us."

I stare at her. At her ornate costume, all its power and authority suddenly looking like an arrogant parody of what the girls have to wear. At her eyes, hard and pragmatic. Without really understanding what I'm doing or the mental Rubicon it represents, I walk up to her, look her dead in the eyes and slap her.

"Never say that again."

I'm suddenly aware of how still everyone is, as though Julia and Sabah have both simply vanished off the face of the Earth, leaving me alone here with the most powerful person in Babylon, no matter what last name I have.

"Forgive me, Master," Amata says, bowing her head and holding it there. "I had to be sure."

"Sure of what?" I demand. "That I know what I'm getting into? You built quite the paradise for the old man, but I grew up here. I know what Babylon is. I know my sister's here, and so long as that's true you won't hide anything from me."

I step back, gesturing with my arms to take in the gardens and the manor, all the lands in the world.

"Babylon belongs to me, you belong to me, which means you're both my responsibility. What do I need to know?"

Amata finally looks up, meeting my gaze as she tests my resolve. I glare back at her, all too conscious of the two girls at my back.

"Mr Anthony Spencer has expressed an interest in meeting you, Master."

"And who's he?"

It's Julia who answers, striding forwards until she's standing at my side.

"The Brit billionaire, Master Julius. My assigned guest for the next few days."

"Does he know she's my sister?" I ask Amata.

"Nobody does, Master. He may have guessed who her father is, but until this morning nobody knew the 'old man' had any male children."

"He's a regular, right? Any idea what he wants?"

"He was a friend of the old man," Amata answers, apparently fully adopting my nickname for the man she spent most of her life serving. "Your father thought so, at least. Probably he wants to introduce himself."

"He's... pretty alright as guests go," Julia tells me in a hesitant tone, putting her hand on my arm. "Britain's an abolitionist country, so men like him come here because their tabloid press fishes for famous nationals in the bigger resorts. He's been here often enough to develop a few kinks, but the main appeal is still just fucking slaves."

Fucking her, she means.

"You could invite him to the baths, Master?" Sabah interjects. "They're more about the experience than the sex."

"I'd still understand if you said no," Julia says. "It's a bit more than just acceptance."

"What happens if I do refuse?" I ask, turning to Amata. She pauses for a moment, weighing the pros and cons.

"I don't know what he wants, but I suspect he's fishing to see how Babylon will change under your management, and whether those changes pose a threat to him. Your father would always make time for the guests, Master, until he became too infirm to do so."

Julia curls her lip up into a reassuring smile, but I can see the concern in her eyes. I wish I could tell if it was for me or for herself, but in the end Amata has a point.

"The baths," I say, trying to sound certain even though I'm anything but. "I'll take Sabah as my own escort. Julia, don't let him know you're my sister."

"Yes, Master Julius," Julia confirms, seeming almost relieved to have the decision taken out of her hands.

"I've never been to the baths," I muse aloud. "Amata, you said there was something else?"

"There was, Master," Amata begins, "but perhaps you should let Julia go and freshen up?"

Julia doesn't follow the implicit order at once, instead waiting for me to give her a nod before returning to the mansion. Amata watches her go, then turns back to face me, her expression gravely serious.

"We've had an escape attempt."

"Who?"

"Arete, Master," Amata says with a long-suffering sigh.

"Fuck," I snap. I should have realised how she'd take my sudden ascension. "Where is she?"

"Handcuffed to a table in the Interview Room. I'll take you to her."

She leads me through the opulent halls of the mansion, striding fast enough on four-inch heels that I have to hurry to keep up. Sabah follows behind us, easily matching her mother's pace as we duck through a nondescript door into the staff areas of the mansion, the wood-panelled walls and rich red carpets giving way to green painted plaster and laminate flooring.

The staff block was built on the footprint of the original housekeepers wing and the kitchen court, with the original courtyard shrunk down to lightwell at the centre of a three-story residential building. From the outside, where it isn't hidden from view by careful landscaping, it's clad in a way that makes it look as old as the rest of the house, provided you can't tell that half the windows on the ground floor are just plates of glass over black paint.

Where the mansion can be a confusing mess of repurposed rooms and corridors, the staff block is a model of architectural efficiency, with each room positioned exactly where it needs to be, from the kitchen close to the entrance to the girls' dormitories opening right onto the second floor of the mansion itself.

The security hub is in the basement, simply being in that space enough to set my heart racing in my chest. Amata leads me right past the barracks and the Interview Room, where my last visits always ended, then through a fire door into a kind of operations hub, where half a dozen maids sit in front of banks of monitors, each a window into part of the mansion or the grounds.

"You track the guests?" I ask, watching one of the screens, where a client has one of the girls pinned against the front of another, who's pinning her colleague in place and tonguing her ear.

"Always, and everywhere," Amata answers, matter-of-factly. "It's a safety net, and a way to tell which areas are about to be in use. You saw it yourself; when Niobe struck the pose for the start of her routine, it was a maid in here who turned up the lights. We also have motion trackers, in case anyone collapses in the pools."

I frown. "How long has someone been watching me?"

"You've been on the list since I dropped you off at your guest suite, Master. If you're uncomfortable you could of course order us to stop tracking you, but it's only us slaves down here. Are their eyes so different to Sabah's, or Niobe's, just because they were participating?"

Heat flushes into my cheeks.

"Amata, did you watch me sleep with your daughter?"

"Yes," Amata confesses, a little awkwardly. "I wanted to see if she'd perform well."

"I had one complaint..." Sabah murmurs, wounded. "A month ago."

"And until you make it two without one," Amata chides, "you're still under review."

I take one last look at the screens, shrug my shoulders and return to the matter at hand.

"Tell me about Arete."

"She made the attempt shortly after news of your inheritance became public," Amata explains. "Arete stole a keycard from the security office while she was cleaning, then snuck into Sabah's quarters and took some of her clothes, including a hijab."

"How far did she get?"

"The garage, Master. She was unfamiliar with the search procedures, and all our guards know Sabah's face. It was sloppy."

"It was panic," I remark. "I assume you know why?"

"Yes, Master. A sudden reversal in power."

Down the hall, the barracks door opens as a hulking woman steps out. She's one of the security staff, all of them intimidating Amazons bought, so the rumours said, for their height and their bloodlust. Their uniform is among the least sexualised of all Babylon's staff, just a pair of black pants, steel-toed boots and a crisp white shirt with black epaulettes bearing the same monogrammed B as the bathrobes.

The tools of her trade hang off her heavy belt -- a pair of handcuffs, a yellow taser and a collapsable baton -- while the plastic clasp of her black collar looks like it's designed to snap open if anyone tries to choke her with it. Her skin is dark, her hair in cornrows tied back into a long ponytail, and her eyes look like they've seen a thousand years even though she can't be older than twenty-five. As always, the sight sends a stab of unease up my spine.

"Cupcake," Amata greets the guard, as I glare at her in shock. "This is Master Julius Hawthorne."

The guard -- Cupcake, apparently -- drops to one knee in front of me, her head bowed.

"I'm sorry, what?" I ask Amata.

"All our security guards are failed pony stock," Amata explains. "I tend to go for behavioural issues, because they usually clear up once you give them some clothes and a bed. It also helps to have reminders around of how much worse things are elsewhere."

"But you kept her name?"

"I kept it, Master," Cupcake says, each word slow and deliberate. "So I don't forget."

"Right," I say, still off balance. "Stand up... Cupcake. How's Arete?"

"Quiet now," the guard reports, rising to her feet like a landslide in reverse. "She's cried herself out."

"She awaits your judgement, Master," Amata says. "Normally I handle disciplinary matters myself, but I thought you'd want to take this one."

These things always go the same way, even if I've only ever experienced them from the other side of the table. You wait there, gagged and cuffed to the desk, for what feels like hours before Amata comes to see you. The guard enters first, checking to make sure the subject of the interview hasn't slipped out of her handcuffs, their chain looped around a metal anchor point that's been welded to the table.

Amata comes in as soon as she gets the nod, looking down at her victim with an expression that's simultaneously furious and disappointed. She pulls out the chair across from the subject and it's at this point when she'd normally sit down and begin listing off their crimes. Instead, she holds out the chair for me.

Arete looks terrible, still wearing the same stolen clothing she was found in, Sabah's shirt ripped halfway open and her hijab dishevelled by some scuffle in her capture. Her teeth are clenching down on her ball gag, her eyes dead with despair only to flash back into terrified life as she sees me and immediately begins trying to pull the handcuffs free from the desk, her chest heaving as she hyperventilates.

"Stop that," Amata snaps from above my shoulder as Cupcake awkwardly steps around the table until she's looming behind Arete, seeming somehow even larger in the cramped space. There's a mirror built into the wall on my right, which makes me wonder if Sabah is watching on the other side.

"It's time we talked, Arete," I say, trying to channel Amata's tone as Arete finds a strange kind of calm in her fear, staring across the table at me with naked loathing in her eyes. "I can guess why you did this. You heard the news and thought I'd come running for revenge. The truth is, I haven't thought about you all day."

She can't answer, but her face looks torn between terror and rage.

"Last night feels like another lifetime," I continue. "Everything that happened before, happened to another man. You made his life miserable in large ways and small, for no other reason than misplaced anger. I could ask you to apologize and you would, even if you had to be forced, but I'd rather just put all that behind us."

I can feel Amata's presence behind over my shoulder. She would have handled this herself, I know, if this hadn't been a chance for her to test my character. To see if I have what it takes to accept all of Babylon.

"The problem," I continue, tilting my head up a little, "is that I don't think you can. The problem is that Babylon is mine, so the easiest way for you to hurt me is to hurt Babylon. Spit in a few meals and you could create a catastrophe that would bury me beneath Babylon's wreckage."

Arete's reaction is nothing short of blind panic, her hands pulling back in a futile attempt to escape her cuffs while she strains to try and form words around the gag.

"I see you understand. It's one thing to hold a grudge against a cook. It's something else entirely to hate the man who owns you. So, here's the way out. You're going to take whatever punishment Amata gives you for this attempt, and you're going to be taken off any role that involves handling food for the next six months. In a second that gags's going to come off and you're going to apologize for running, but that's all. Everything else stays in the past."

I look up and give Cupcake a nod, the Amazon grabbing the back of Arete's head with one hand while the other works at the buckle of the gag before tossing it onto the table.

Once freed, Arete doesn't answer at first, instead taking in rapid breaths of air until she's calm enough for speech.

"I'm sorry, Master," she says, the words desperate and pleading. "I panicked- I wasn't thinking straight."

"I know," I answer, knowing that nothing I can say will reassure her. "Amata?"

"Seventy-four hours in Isolation," Amata pronounces, her tone icy and severe. "Three months in fetters and one in a muzzle, since it's your mouth that's got you into this mess."

"Thank you, Miss," Arete stammers before Cupcake forces the gag back into her mouth, then extricates Arete's cuffs from the table only to re-shackle her hands behind her back. She's frogmarched out into the hall as I follow behind Amata, lost in uncomfortable memories of my own times in solitary. Amata handed down those sentences too, but I meant what I said to Arete. The past has to stay in the past, or I'll go mad.

Still, it's strange seeing the procedure from the outside. Cupcake frogmarches Arete down the hall, her hand on the shorter woman's neck so that she has to walk almost bent double. The Isolation Suite is next door to the security hub, a whitewashed concrete box of a room with a cheap couch in one corner for guests on the 'behind the scenes' tour. The cells are presented for their viewing pleasure through five thick plexiglass doors that are only as wide as the space behind them.

There's a hatch for food at the base of the door, though the maids who deliver it are under strict orders not to interact with the occupants. The cell itself would be just long enough for a person to lie flat on their back, if it weren't for the single unit toilet and sink at the far end. Instead, you curl up on the padded floor with a sweat-stained pillow each time the lights dim for night.

Cupcake strips Amata down in the middle of the room, in full view of the one other occupied cell, where a naked man from the grounds team watches us with a glassy-eyed stare. Amata unlocks Arete's chastity belt herself, then does the same for her collar before Cupcake unlocks a cell and holds it open.

You have to take those last steps yourself. It's symbolic, apparently. It shows that you accept that you've done something wrong and that taking your punishment is the only way to make it right. Arete almost rushes in, Cupcake closing the door behind her and setting a digital timer for seventy-two hours, the display on the outside of the cell so the occupant can't see it.

I leave her there, disgusted at myself. On the way out, Amata puts a hand on my shoulder and gives me a reassuring nod.

"It gets easier, Master," she tells me. It's the worst thing she could have said.