A Princess for Auction

A Princess For Auction: Chapter 4, The Soft District

The sun had finally set beneath the horizon, across the perimeter desert beyond the walls of the city, casting the streets in long shadows and dark alleys.

My entire body felt tense and stiff from huddling my cape around me and swiftly walking from streetlight to streetlight. There were less people about, and more rowdy crowds of orcs. And for every corner I rounded it felt like they were getting more and more drunk.

After asking about where I could find the lounge known as The Swallow, from any decent-looking fellow in my way, I had learned that most of such places where all located in the Soft District. And I had learned that it was highly unusual for women to go there.

It was another place I had never been allowed to go. In fact, it was a place I had never even heard of.

Most of the people who walked the streets here were male, with only a few women standing outside of shop entrances that lined the cobblestoned walkways. They held up signs, and were all dressed in outrageous strips of clothing, displaying more skin than not.

I got more unwelcome compliments that evening than I had through my entire life.

"Ought to be down the street over there. Think they've got one of those birds on their crest, like a blue one." The man I had asked for directions gave me a curious look, studying my figure where I stood in the dim light from one of the oil-fueled lamps that hung above us. It waved slightly in the warm east-borne wind. "You starting work there tonight, cutie? I... suppose you might need clients?"

I stammered a short thank you and walked away without any more explanation. It was insulting enough that people might think I worked at such a seedy place. But to have a strange leering at my body at the same time was more than I knew how to handle.

It took effort to still my hands, which were shaking beneath my black cloak.

This is insane... I tried to convince myself that it wasn't. There's no way to help that girl, even if I do find her. Am I just going to walk in there and break open her chains? You going to fight the owner while you're at it?

I had considered every option, even down to revealing who I was and demanding her release and recompense. But the truth was that I didn't know if I could help her that way. I knew nothing of contracts like the one she had signed. And if I returned to the castle I would be spending weeks locked away in my room as punishment for running away. Weeks that the poor girl would have to spend in service, and perhaps disappear from my reach forever.

It was my first time interacting with anything in the city, so I wasn't actually sure if I had any reach whatsoever. But father had always said I was going to become the most powerful person in the duchy.

My stomach dropped as I walked past a group of orcs harassing one of the women outside of one of the many lounges, this one seemingly specializing in some kind of soaps or baths. It was called The Foamy Patron Inn.

Something about the name seemed familiar.

"What do you mean you ain't on the menu, bitch? You think your owner's gonna deny me if I go in there and put money on the table?"

"...I'm sorry, Sir... Please... I just hold the sign out here, I don't know-" The woman stammered as she looked with fearful eyes up at the face of the intimidating customer.

"'Course you don't know shit, slave! Now, get your ass in there and find us a room. I'll be in to fill your cunny once I've paid for it!"

I walked faster, trying to get away from the jeering laughs of the orc's comrades, and the crying woman who was doing her best to explain why she couldn't do as she was told.

I froze in my tracks as I suddenly spotted it. A hand-painted, wooden sign with a blue bird sitting on a field of red, swinging lazily on brass hinges above a set of stairs heading down beneath a huge, stone building. It seemed like this lounge - as they called it - was in some sort of cellar.

There seemed to be a steady flow of orcs coming and going, most of them in commoners clothes though some where humans in better finery. But they all seemed to be customers or patrons. There were no women in sight, despite my impression that there were many of them working the lounge. And no goods and deliveries seemed to be made, at least not to this entrance.

After circling the building I quickly found that it wasn't the only one.

Another cellar door, without any signs or markings sat between two doorways to the main floor, each of them with their own wood signboards.

The Broken Mare. My eyebrows arched in surprise as I saw the sign of the first one had a painted woman on it, bending forward on the ground in a pose of submissiveness. The other sign simply said 'Cheap young girls'. I wasn't sure what that meant. Were they selling them as workers?

I started to think that perhaps some of my handmaidens had started in a place like this, before coming to a better life in the castle.

"The crates go in the pantry and the sacks are for storage. Just make sure it all goes inside and that I don't find any of it sitting out in the rain like last time." A gruff, heavily built man with a salt-and-pepper beard barked at one his servants who immediately started directing workers to bring in goods from a nearby wagon. All of it seemed to go down the stairs to The Swallow.

I started to walk briskly, and pulled up the hood of my cloak to mask my face and golden tresses, rounded the wagon and picked up a sack of what felt like hard vegetables.

"Gods..." I huffed under my breath as I laboriously slung it up on my slender shoulder. It was the first time I had done anything like it. But I had seen plenty of workers carry things that way. Then I walked in after the others, making my way down into a dim hallway.