text: Goemon was full of the events of the night. Followed by Jiro, Midori, and Okiku he entered his private apartments in the governor's mansion.
  
  "That was quite satisfactory," he said, taking his place on the cushion. Okiku looked gratified. "We got them all except for the Ito woman, and the whole tangle is undone. The constables caught most of the monks."
  
  He examined the murder weapon critically. "Odd that I had it under my care all this time." Once the secret was undone, Okiku could easily operate the mechanism. The heavy gilt of the sword hilt served to disguise the bulky mechanism inside. "Let's hope there are no more of these around."
  
  "Probably not," Okiku said. "The abbot told me he had another murder committed. The craftsman who made the sword. I don't know the details."
  
  Matsudaira brightened "Of course! The elderly man from the canal! Very well indeed. The only loose end is Ito's wife. I wonder what happened to her. We can't really prove anything against her. Her brother and her lover protected her too well, but from the chance utterance you overheard, Midori, I am convinced she helped the murderer and was also part of the slave trade."
  
  "We'll probably never find her, so why worry? We stopped the thing flat." Jiro said pontifically.
  
  Goemon nodded, then sighed and his square shoulders slumped.
  
  "Still worried about Rosamund?" Okiku asked gently.
  
  He nodded wordlessly and Jiro looked on sympathetically. Okiku leaned forward and stroked Matsudaira's cheek. Jiro smiled. Okiku was displaying depths of tact and warmth he had never seen before. First with him, now with Goemon. Midori, at first shocked by Okiku's familiarity with the Governor of Miyako, looked on with interest.
  
  "She'll be back, once she gets over her snit," Okiku said. "You can be sure about that."
  
  "I am concerned about her," Goemon admitted unwillingly. "There are dangers out there. Something could happen ... Maybe I shouldn't have beaten her ..."
  
  "Maybe you should have beaten her more," a bright, foreign sounding voice uttered behind them as the paper shoji door slid aside. "Look what I've got for us."
  
  Goemon spun around. Rosamund stood at the doorway. She wore a pale kimono decorated with a pattern of susuki grass and sparrows in flight. She moved aside to display her captive. As instructed by her captress, Haruko knelt, her face to the floor, in abject apology. Her hair was made up in a simple knot. She was completely naked.
  
  "Why don't you join us?" Rosamund asked composedly. "This is my new maid."
  
  "Ohei will be extremely jealous," Okiku cautioned.
  
  "All the better. Then she will beat this witch as she deserves." Midori looked on approvingly. "Don't you want to examine her? Thoroughly?" Rosamund prodded her friends.
  
  "I'm going to examine you," said Goemon with a pointed look.
  
  "That too. Later," she answered composedly. "Just now she owes, us, particularly Midori, a few things ..."
  
  Midori licked her lips then shook her head. "No," she said composedly with a confidence she had never before displayed in their presence. "I take delight only in those who take delight in me. But I would be quite content to see her punished by others. Particularly if they know their business," she added as an afterthought.
  
  Rosamund looked at her and glowed gratefully. She knelt by Haruko's side and spread her ass as wide as she could. "Look at her. Lovely ass hole. Nice slit, and the entrance is a bright pink. The hair that frames it is pleasurably soft. Who wants to bid for a first try at this brand new concubine?"
  
  Haruko moved uneasily at the words and Rosamund slapped her resoundingly on one smooth pale bun, then again, harder, on the other. "Shall I investigate her for you?"
  
  Drawn as if by strings the two men and Okiku sat themselves down, ready to enjoy the show.
  
  Rosamund inserted a moistened finger into Haruko's cunt, then another, she frigged the entrance roughly and Haruko complained, only to be slapped to silence by Rosamund. The blonde removed her fingers and Haruko breathed more easily until she felt them probe again at her asshole. The barbarian woman's fingers were now liberally coated with Haruko's internal juices and the muscles slid apart easily.
  
  "Roll over!" Rosamund commanded. Haruko did as she was bid. The slick muscles of her rear entrance slid around Rosamund's finger and she found herself with one leg high in the air, supported by the blonde's shoulder. The finger popped out of her and Rosamund regarded her thin figure with disfavor.
  
  "You are too bony to satisfy me. We will have to fatten you up. Go and undress my friends."
  
  Haruko's lips firmed. For one moment her pride as the cossetted wife of a prominent nobleman surfaced. She started to open her lips as she came to her feet. A stinging blow on her thin buttocks brought her back to reality. She tried to escape a second blow, but was caught by Okiku's strong grip. The second blow landed. Her skin jerked in pain and outrage.
  
  "I will have to discipline her. You had better undress, you lot." The two men hastened to comply while Rosamund wielded the thin willow branch taken from the flower arrangement in the tokonoma. Okiku smiled and held Haruko still on her knees. She toyed with Haruko's form freely while Rosamund wielded the switch.
  
  "Enough, oh please enough!" Haruko wailed. Her bottom was a fiery red, striped with light weals.
  
  "Enough? What do you mean enough?" Rosamund snorted, smacking again with the flexible switch.
  
  "Mistress, please stop. I beg of you." Something snapped in Haruko. She was no longer the wielder of discipline, no longer the owner of whims but subject to them. She stopped struggling against Okiku's hold, offering whatever part of her the slim girl wanted to fondle meekly for use. Okiku nodded at Rosamund who stopped the beating. The two men were ready. Rosamund led Haruko to them. Following instructions, the erstwhile noblewoman accepted the rampant pricks into her mouth. They spewed their juices into her moving sucking cavern and she swallowed the effluvia with complete detachment, licking the tip of each cock hungrily until not a drop remained. To her delight and surprise she found that both men maintained their erections even after they had come for the first time. She knelt then before Okiku and repeatedly laved her sweet-smelling cunt with her tongue. Okiku held her head, urging the untutored digit deeper into herself. Uninstructed Haruko found the slim woman's clitoris and sucked at the tiny pearly button hungrily until her mouth was flooded with Okiku's juice and the naked shinobi danced on the tip of the noblewoman's tongue. Rosamund replaced Okiku. Her smell was stronger, more animal-like. The hair at the juncture of her legs was a dark golden cloud. Haruko paused before she sunk herself into the waiting cunt. The beautiful pink lips were decorated with an exquisitely done rose. Bright red, it grew out of the demanding heavy-scented hole of her mistress to flower to glory on her thigh. Rosamund allowed her a brief glimpse, and then her large claw-like clitoris was shoved between her new servant's lips.
  
  Haruko's mouth was flooded with the essence of her future life, and she sucked obediently at the delicate demanding morsel while the others crowded around her subservient body, ready to make use of it as they would.