Chapter 14 Testimony of Waiting for a High Price It's best to be absolutely certain when keeping a pet...

Aside from the casino and the lodgings of courtesans, Mauro's itinerary only included one uninvestigated location—a cheap brothel in the Castro district of eastern Venice.

Unlike the brothels near the Piazza della Liarto, this place was unregulated, rife with crime, and frequented only by the poorest sailors and most down-on-their-luck merchants. Women, dressed like slaves, stood under streetlights waiting to be sold; dim candlelight illuminated the grosso bills paid by clients to the madam; and on filthy beds, men and women exchanged their most primal desires. For a pure and innocent noblewoman, it was a den of iniquity she would never set foot in.

Therefore, to ensure Lilith's safety and to prevent unnecessary gossip, Heinrich prepared a slightly worn-out men's outfit for her so that she could blend in unnoticed. Although Cecilia strongly objected to this, Cecilia couldn't resist Lilith's eagerness, and could only give her repeated instructions and let her mistress do as she pleased.

As dusk fell, Cecilia stood anxiously in front of the small building's front door, watching Lilith leave accompanied by Heinrich. Her mistress swaggered down the street, mimicking the mannerisms of a street thug, seemingly more on a picnic than investigating a case, clearly in high spirits.

To avoid detection, they didn't take a gondola but walked from west to east all the way to Castro. Heinrich recalled that he had also carried out his assassination mission in this very neighborhood. Poverty and decay permeated the area; it was a breeding ground for crime, but also a haven for the lowly, ant-like people.

Now, the two stood in front of the busiest brothel, looking at the overlapping figures in the window and the ambiguous sounds in the air, and fell into silence.

Is this the place?

Lilith tugged at Heinrich's cloak and asked in a low voice. Even though she was wearing heeled boots, she was still about half a head shorter than Heinrich and had to look up at him.

“Yes.” Heinrich nodded.

"So what should we do next?"

"Uh... I don't know."

"Huh? How could you not know?"

"How would I know? I've never been to a place like this before. You should be more familiar with this kind of place than I am."

“How could I possibly know this place better than you? This is my first time here too!” Lilith glared at him, annoyed and embarrassed.

"You've been to places like slave exchanges many times, haven't you? You bought other slaves before you bought me, right? Every time you went in, you'd complain that 'the last batch wasn't good'..."

"I'm really fed up with you." Lilith rolled her eyes. "You have no idea how terrible the person who bought me last time was. I had Cecilia send him back to me that very night for a refund. To be honest, it was too lenient of them not to make them pay for my emotional distress."

What happened?

“He doesn’t realize his own place in the world. He only sees me as a lonely young widow, forgetting that I paid to buy him as his master. But you know why I bought you. I need slaves who work for me, not slaves who covet me.”

"So the fact that I haven't had any returns yet means I've done a pretty good job, right?"

“It’ll do.” Lilith paused, then suddenly grinned mischievously and whispered in Heinrich’s ear, “I’ll let you in on a secret: Cecilia was actually a female slave brought from the Far East by the Mongols. Her original name was ‘Yin,’ which means ‘hidden,’ which is why I named her Cecilia. She told me many stories about the Far East. One of them was about how there were servants called ‘eunuchs’ in the Chinese imperial palace.”

"What does that mean?"

"It's about castrating men and arranging them to serve women in the palace. It's an absolutely brilliant invention. Actually, I really need that kind of service. It's like merchants using mules to pull goods; they're more docile than donkeys, consume less fodder than horses, and work for longer hours—it's a win-win situation."

"Can you please let me go, considering how hard I've worked?" Heinrich felt a chill run down his spine as he recalled the fierce look Cecilia usually gave him.

"What, what use do you have for keeping it?" Lilith revealed a sly smile and poked Heinrich's chest triumphantly. "Usually, pet dogs need their owner's permission to breed, right? But I won't allow you to go find women. Not men either. Since you're not going to use it, why don't you give it to me to keep for you?"

"..."

Heinrich was at a loss for words. He knew Lilith was deliberately joking to provoke him, but he couldn't laugh at all. Suddenly, a pungent, cheap scent filled his nostrils, and two gaudily dressed women rushed up and grabbed Heinrich's arms, laughing as they led him into the house. Heinrich hurriedly shook them off and discovered that Lilith was receiving the exact same treatment. He could only laugh and cry as he helped her out of the predicament.

“This is our first time here.” Heinrich patted his sleeves somewhat awkwardly and put his arm around Lilith’s shoulder as if he were a brother. “What is the procedure like here?”

"Pay first, charged per session, extra for overnight stays." The madam noticed the newcomer and warily sized up the newcomer's tattered clothes. "One girl costs five grosso."

“Then let’s start with ten,” Lilith said readily, grabbing a handful of coins and spreading them out on the counter.

"So many for the first time?" Even the seasoned madam, who had seen her share of ups and downs, was taken aback. "How about this, I'll arrange for you to go to a private room and bring a few girls for you to choose from."

"Okay, okay. I want the kind... um, the kind that other clients haven't taken good care of..."

"Um, okay, I'll arrange it for you two depending on the situation."

The madam awkwardly led Lilith and Heinrich into the inner room. The corridor was flanked by large, almost open rooms, with beds separated only by tattered cloths, offering no privacy whatsoever. The dark, cramped space was filled with the stench of sweat, painful groans, and vicious insults; a foul-smelling, unidentified liquid lay piled on the floor in the corner. All of this terrified Lilith. Instinctively, she moved closer to Heinrich, almost pressing herself against him.

The madam led them into a fairly clean and spacious room and then left. Heinrich noticed that Lilith was terrified and her face turned ashen.

"Are you alright?" He asked with great concern, helping Lilith to sit down in a chair. "If you're not feeling well, let's go back. It's not like we absolutely have to investigate today."

“If my mother hadn’t been taken away by my father back then…” Lilith clutched her chest and took a deep breath to calm herself down, “I might have been sent to a place like this too.”

"No, it won't happen." Heinrich knelt down in front of her, trying to reassure her. "Such a thing won't happen."

"Sigh." Lilith sighed, "Let's finish the questioning as soon as possible and go home."

Not long after, the madam led about ten young girls into the room one by one. Due to the nature of their profession, they were almost all dressed very revealingly, but a few wore long-sleeved cardigans, as if trying to cover something. Lilith slipped the madam a few more coins and left three timid-looking women in the room. They looked extremely young, perhaps even younger than Lilith, yet each was emaciated and withered.

"Have you served a nobleman in the past week, about my height, with brown curly hair and the same grey-green eyes as me?" Lilith asked bluntly.

The three women looked at each other, unsure whether they should speak or not.

“You don’t need to be afraid.” Lilith suddenly removed the hood of her cloak, revealing her long, red hair piled high. “I am a woman too, and I was once beaten by that guy. I’m here to gather evidence so that one day I can bring the evildoer to justice. If you are willing to cooperate with me and provide me with testimony about his crimes, I can give each of you a tip of twenty grosso right now, and there will be a reward after it’s done.”

The three women seemed hesitant, but the payment was simply too high, equivalent to what they would earn serving seven or eight men. Despite the irregularities, driven by the prospect of profit, one of them spoke first. She was voluptuous with orange hair.

"When he first came, he was filled with resentment and whipped me with a belt, leaving me covered in bruises... The nanny saw how pitiful I was and gave me two days off to rest... Although I had been beaten before, I had never been beaten so badly..."

The orange-haired woman rolled up her sleeves, displaying her two scarred arms to Lilith, and began to weep as she spoke. Lilith pulled a handkerchief that Cecilia had prepared for her from her pocket and handed it to the girl who was wiping away tears with the back of her hand.

“This is the second time I’ve served him,” another girl with long light brown hair said uneasily. “He didn’t hit me. But what I remember most is that guests dressed as well as him rarely come here. If they do come, they usually give a small tip, even if it’s just a few surdi… but he didn’t give a single penny more, and left right after he finished.”

When it was the last girl's turn, the black-haired girl looked around helplessly, her eyes darting around as she said, "I've served customers before, and he hit me too... But our rules here are that you can't disobey a customer's orders..."

"Thank you." Lilith thanked them solemnly, then gestured for Heinrich to take out some money from his pocket. "I have no other questions. You can go now. I'll send someone to invite you next time I need your cooperation. Please keep today's events a secret."

"Thank you, don't worry about it, no problem." The women had never received such a large tip before. They grinned with delight, thanked the money profusely, and then hurried off to continue serving customers.

"Do you think they're telling the truth?" Heinrich asked Lilith in her ear.

“It’s a mix of truth and falsehood,” Lilith said coldly. “The first one is probably true, the second one might be true, and the third one is likely false. After all, it’s just what people say that can be bought off with a few silver coins… take it with a grain of salt. In such a deplorable brothel, it seems that unless a murder occurs, nothing will really make a ripple…”

What do you want to do?

"Never mind. That's not the most important thing right now. Let's keep an eye on his movements. I have more important things to do than getting revenge on him..."

Lilith stood up and led Heinrich toward the main entrance, but they got lost in the winding corridors and accidentally wandered into another room draped with curtains. There she saw a slender, handsome young man with blond curly hair lying seductively on the bed, attracting his male clients into his small cubicle. Lilith was startled and quickly turned back in the other direction, finally managing to escape the intricate brothel.

Finally, they could leave this chaotic place and head home. Once home, she was determined to throw away these dirty clothes and wash herself clean in a fragrant bathroom. So Lilith, holding Heinrich's hand, quickly made her way through the dark alley. Just as she was about to breathe a sigh of relief, she suddenly saw four or five burly men blocking both ends of the alley.

A note from the author:

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This week's chapters are marked in red, so I need to update five chapters. Therefore, I'll update four days straight from Friday this week to Monday next week, and then one more chapter on Wednesday.