<div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/WhEofpD.png)<br/><div align="center"><em>Lilian Tharja</em></div></div>As Lise sat at the bar an older gentleman, likely an ex giggalo if she had to guess, approached while wiping a perfectly clean rag across the perfectly clean bar.<strong>"Evening miss,"</strong>he said,<strong>"Can I interest you in a glass of Dumais '37?  You look like a cultured woman who knows quality vintage.  I just opened a bottle this very evening and only had two pours of it, five gold a glass."</strong>The price seemed somewhat outrageous.  A fine wine, that was not a collectors or somehow special might go for as much as ten gold a bottle at a tavern, or a gold piece a glass.  Lady Lise knew a little about wine from her noble upbringing and the Dumais vineyards did produce good wine, but it certainly wasn't anything extraordinary.  It seemed that the Blooming Rose made it's profit in not just the selling of flesh but the peddling of luxury in any form that it's clientele could afford.  Lise decided to demure and said she'd rather wait in peace, and the bartender nodded and moved off, but not too far off should she change her mind.<br/><br/>After only a minute or two of waiting the prostitute from earlier returned and asked Lise to follow her, saying that Madam Lilian Tharja had consented to meet with her in her office.  Lise followed the woman to the staircase, but instead of going up the stairs, where likely the perfumed pleasure rooms of this bordello lay, she pushed aside a door that was only lightly disguised to blend in with the wall.  Just enough to make the eye skip over it, but not really hidden particularly.  Opening the door she led Lise down stairs to a wood walled hallway and to the first door at the bottom of the stairs.  She opened the door and gestured for Lise to enter before shutting the door and heading back upstairs herself, leaving Lise in the room with the woman she'd come to see.<br/><br/>The room itself was smaller than her own office at the barracks, and two of the four walls contained bookshelves that stretched from floor to the ceiling a few feet above Lise's head.  The furniture was all heavy solid wood, but most of it nicely padded with thick fabrics and seemed soft and luxurious despite the stout wooden frames.  Standing and leaning with her buttocks against the desk was, Lise assumed, the woman she'd come to see.  The raven haired woman looked to be in her early twenties, but there was something about the woman's eyes that spoke of at least several decades more experience then that.  Of course Lise knew that spells and potions of youth existed, but they were insanely expensive.  The black haired woman had pale creamy skin and stood just an inch or so shorter than Lise.  Her garment was all black and purple, with gold accents.  A sheer black body stocking seemed to extend from her toes to her breasts and run down her arms to her hands.  A black silk bustier lifted and proudly displayed a generous bust while the wide banded loincloth that rode on her hips and trailed all the way down to her ankles gave a tantalizing view of her legs all the way up, and suggested that if she shifted that cloth to the side, one might glimpse her womanhood beneath the translucent body stocking.  She bore a smile that didn't seem to reach her eyes, which were cool and calculating, sizing the paladin up.<br/><br/><strong>"Ahhhh Lady De Durandier,"</strong>she said as she took in the redheaded paladin thoughtfully, the way a butcher might appraise livestock,<strong>"I must admit, I never would have expected that you would ever set foot in my humble establishment.  When I had a premonition that I'd receive a special guest tonight, never in all my years would I have guessed that it would have been a holy paladin of Lihrit, the woman who has come to clear the debauchery out of our duchy's militia."</strong><br/><br/><strong><br/>"I am Madam Lilian Tharja, owner of the Blossiming Rose,"</strong>She extended a hand, palm face down, knuckles presented outwards to the paladin. The obvious response would be to take the woman's hand and kiss the knuckles as a greeting.  But to do so would be subservient, a position of already acknowledging the woman's superiority.  Though in fairness, this was her establishment, and Lise had come here to ask her questions, so it would be right to do so.  But Lise sensed something inherently evil in this woman.  So she might choose not too, to defy even that formal greeting.  "Tell me Lady paladin," Lilian would say regardless of how Lise chose to greet her,<strong>"What brings you to the Blooming Rose, and to my office, this night?"</strong>