Innocent (9 page)

In no time Babalyn was crying for mercy, begging for them to stop as her flesh twitched and shivered against Cianna's. Their tormentors took no notice, save for those who had hoped Babalyn would hold out longer to curse and apply fresh, harder blows to the black girl's quivering buttocks. Still Cianna held herself, shaking her head in her pain, writhing in her bonds, with the burning pain of the wax and agonising snaps of the whip coming again and again.

Her defiance only drove them to beat her harder, three of them lashing at her bottom and legs. Others took new candles, dripping the hot wax over her buttocks and legs, Babalyn's too, until both where squirming their sweaty bodies on the table, screaming and gasping. Somebody began to whip Cianna's sex, smacking the tip of the quirt down, over and over, full onto her clitoris. She screamed, cursing them, but unable to hold herself back, and she was coming, sticking her bottom high in tortured ecstasy.

‘Oh do look!' a woman called. ‘She's had a climax, how funny!'

‘A typical slut!'

‘Make the other one come too! Oh they are amusing!'

Cianna heard Babalyn's grunt of pain and frustration as the attention was turned to her. She was near exhaustion, her skin wet with sweat, every welt a line of fire on her skin, but all that she could think of was that she'd never begged for mercy, even when they'd whipped her tuppenny. Squeezing her anus, she pushed out the candle, which was quickly snatched away by one of the older slave girls.

Babalyn had started to come, whimpering and mewling, her flesh squirming on Cianna's as she was masturbated and whipped at the same time. She had been begging for mercy, pleading with them to stop, only to suddenly cry out in helpless ecstasy as her sex responded, and Cianna knew she too had been brought to climax.

‘I shall have the pale one lick me, I think,' a fat woman in a brilliant green robe announced. ‘If I might, Assivetes darling?'

‘Naturally, my dear,' the Admiral, ‘everybody must enjoy them just as they please. That is, after all, what they're for.'

There was a burst of laughter and hands began to pull at Cianna's bonds, Babalyn's also. She was dragged from the table, down onto the floor. Immediately she was mounted, some man holding her up under her bottom as he pushed the full length of his erection into her sex. She saw Babalyn fucked, rolled up on her back and held by the ankles, with the man watching as his penis filled her hole. Then the scene had been blotted beneath the fat woman's robes as a plump thigh was swung over her body. For a moment she saw a huge bottom poised over her head, green within the emerald robe, and then it was in her face, the big, soft buttocks spread wide, the sex on her mouth, her nose up the anus. Helpless, she began to lick.

They took turns with her, one by one, using her without the slightest thought for her needs. She was fucked repeatedly, in a dozen different positions, buggered again and again, and more than once made to suck cocks that had been up her bottom. They made her drink wine, and some stinging spirit, twice pouring it up her sex before plunging a fat cock into her wet hole. She was made to lick Babalyn, anally, with the onlookers clapping in delight as they watched her tongue wriggle into the fleshy, brown bottom hole.

Not long after that, Babalyn simply collapsed, with a cock up her bottom and another in her mouth at the time. Both men finished off in her unconcious body, and Cianna was made to lick up the sperm that bubbled and spurted from her friend's anus, before two of the older slave girls helped her away. From then the orgy began to calm down, until Cianna at last found herself unattended, lying over a stupefied man's lap with his fingers still up her sex.

She freed herself, rising unsteadily to her feet. Her head was swimming with drink, and she was sore all over, with sperm coating her face and breasts and dribbling from her tuppenny and bottom ring. Nobody was paying attention to her, the guests spent. Assivetes was still awake, boasting drunkenly of his exploits to the fat woman who had sat on Cianna's face. The woman who Babalyn had chosen was not, but lay sprawled on a couch, face down, a goblet still clutched in her nerveless fingers. Cianna risked a gentle kick at one slim buttock, just enough to bruise.

Exhausted, Cianna let herself be led back to part of the house where the slaves slept. It was a single room, illuminated with one smoking candle. She was shown a threadbare blanket, and collapsed onto it immediately, face down for the comfort of her sore bottom. The candle was extinguished and she was left in darkness. They had punished her, and tortured her for their sexual amusement. She had submitted to it, and even come, an act of shameful wantonness, yet it was impossible not to feel some restoration of her hurt pride. She had taken it, all of it, never once begging for mercy, unlike Babalyn.

To have been defeated by a dozen men and nearly as many women was no disgrace. What mattered was that she was unbroken, not snivelling and whimpering on the floor. It felt good, and she wondered if that was what Sulitea had meant about chains not being important.

Thinking of Sulitea reminded her of how the woman had threatened Babalyn, with being sent to somewhere called the powdermills. From what Babalyn had said before, it seemed likely to be where the black powder was made. It also seemed to be where the worst girls were sent, the ones who never learnt, the ones who, ultimately, could never be slaves in their own minds. To try and be sent there was what Sulitea would have expected of her, and it also let her keep her pride. She nodded to herself in the darkness, smiling.

Unfortunately Assivetes proved an indulgent master, content as long as she did more or less what she was told. His own preference lay in watching her, generally tied up, as the fat steward or one of the two male Makean slaves fucked her. When they were done, and she was lying trussed and helpless with sperm dribbling out of one orifice or another, he would put the tip of his erect cock in her mouth, vagina or bottom hole, to finish himself off by hand. It was a technique that gave her little scope for disobedience.

It was also difficult to know what to do about Babalyn. The two of them had become closer and closer, until they were sleeping together and having sex by choice as often as to entertain guests. This seemed to be taken for granted, and Cianna quickly found herself getting over her embarrassment at public sex, as she had over public nudity. Nor where Babalyn's fears of jealousy realised, with the other three female slaves all quite happy to go about their domestic chores and with no urge to try and enforce their seniority.

There was also the possibility of getting the knowledge she wanted directly from Assivetes. Asking him directly was certain to seem strange, yet when there were no guests he was more than happy to boast of his achievements as she and Babalyn knelt at his feet after the evening meal. Most of these involved battle, and the interminable conflict that existed between the Makeans and the Vendjomois on the mainland of Apraya. Eventually she was sure she would find an opening so that she could ask how the black powder was made. Her chance came on the evening of the tenth day, as she listened to his account of the defence of a coastal fort.

‘We were nearly out of powder,' he was saying, ‘ball also, with three of their ships lying off, each with some two hundred men. We might have sunk one as they came in, perhaps, two, but never all three, when I lit on the idea of heating our ball to incandescence…'

‘Could you not have made more powder?' Cianna asked. ‘And used rocks for ball?'

‘No,' Assivetes laughed, ‘ball must fit the mouth of the bombard, almost exactly. Rocks would be likely to jam, and kill us all. As to the powder, it is not so easily made.'

‘It is made from dung, I thought,' Cianna said, ‘by some process.'

‘In part,' Assivetes answered, ‘but not solely. Yet with the right ingredients it is remarkably simple to make, which is why it is not suitable knowledge for slaves. Not that I think for a moment you would attempt a revolt, little Cianna, yet knowledge spreads. Even at the powdermills each component is kept strictly separate, with the slaves never meeting. The actual mixing is done by citizens. But as I was saying…'

He went on, describing how he had forced the Vendjomois to retreat with their sails blazing. Cianna had begun to play with her necklace, feeling frustrated, but sure that it would be unwise to press the point. Babalyn returned, with the flagon of wine she had been sent for, the fat steward immediately behind her, bowing unctuously to Assivetes before speaking.

‘The Elite Lady Lai-Kasae is here, Elite,' he announced.

‘Indeed? Show her in then,' Assivetes answered immediately.

Even as he spoke a woman appeared in the doorway, the one Babalyn had chosen to flirt with. She was in a robe of gold and scarlet, her hair set with jewels, and clearly drunk, resting on the arm of a muscular male slave.

‘Lai-Kasae, my dear,' Assivetes greeted her. ‘What brings you here? Do sit. Babalyn, a fresh goblet, wine for the Elite.'

Babalyn hurried to obey, Lai-Kasae allowing the male slave to help her down onto a couch.

‘I came for a favour,' she asked, ‘just a little thing, which I'm sure you won't deny me, dearest.'

‘As you know, I can never refuse you,' Assivetes answered.

‘I had hoped you would let me play with your pretty new slaves,' she went on. ‘We had such fun the other night, and my own girls seem so dull. They have no spirit, and I do so want to hear that fat bottomed Aprinian slut howl again. The pale savage too. I want to break her. Just let me have them for the night, and I'll send over three of my little nut coloured Vendjomois bitches to keep you amused.'

‘They are yours,' Assivetes answered casually, gesturing to Cianna. ‘I ask only that they are sent back with their skin intact.'

‘Oh I shan't hurt them, dearest,' Lai-Kasae went on. ‘No more than a little, anyway. I don't suppose their bottoms are even healed yet, after all.'

‘Not entirely,' Assivetes admitted, reaching down to smack at Cianna's thigh.

Cianna moved, showing her bottom, and the back of her thighs, which were still welted, with fading bruising covering much of her skin.

‘It does show up on such pale flesh,' Lai-Kasae remarked. ‘No matter, she can take a little more I dare say, and her breasts are quite fresh.'

Babalyn came back, to pour wine, which Lai-Kasae swallowed at a gulp, holding out her goblet for more.

‘You're coming home with me,' Lai-Kasae announced. ‘Your savage friend too. Aren't you lucky little things?'

‘Yes, Elite Mistress,' Babalyn answered, failing to hide the tremor in her voice.

‘She is already scared,' Lai-Kasae laughed. ‘How wonderful! Does anyone train a slave girl quite like me, Assivetes dearest?'

‘You have a knack, certainly,' Assivetes admitted.

‘I do,' Lai-Kasae admitted, then gestured to her male slave. ‘Now, this big ox here will help me home, and come back with my girls. He can fuck them for you too. I know you like that, don't you, dearest?'

Assivetes nodded as Lai-Kasae made to rise, leaning heavily on her slave. Cianna exchanged a look with Babalyn, who seemed to be on the verge of tears, but followed obediently as the woman they had been given to for the night lurched from the room.

Walking behind Lai-Kasae, they left the house, making their way through the warm, sticky Makean night, to a door in a wall, much like the one which led into the garden of Assivetes. Inside was a small courtyard, with twin cressets throwing black shadow and red light from trees and bushes. Cianna took Babalyn's hand, finding it trembling and wet with sweat.

Three of the small brown skinned Vendjomois girls sat on the grass beneath the cresset. At the approach of their mistress they put their faces to the ground, to be dismissed at a word, following the Makean from the courtyard. Cianna and Babalyn followed Lai-Kasae into the house, which was oddly silent. They climbed the stairs, into a wide chamber illuminated by a dozen candles, with the arches that normally gave onto the outside hidden behind drapes.

‘We are alone,' Lai-Kasae stated, ‘and we shall remain alone until the morning. Pour wine.'

Babalyn moved to where a tray stood on a table, with a jug and three goblets. Pouring one, she brought it to Lai-Kasae.

‘You also,' Lai-Kasae said. ‘Both of you.'

Babalyn obeyed, pouring a second goblet with a shaking hand, then a third. Cianna took hers, sipping at the rich red wine.

‘Have you tasted such wine before?' Lai-Kasae asked.

Cianna shook her head.

‘Yes, Elite Lady,' Babalyn answered quietly.

‘When you were free, I suspect you often drank vintages as fine,' Lai-Kasae went on.

Babalyn nodded.

‘You were as high, perhaps, as I,' Lai-Kasae said. ‘How does it feel, to have been made a slave?'

Babalyn cast Cianna a worried look, mumbling something incoherent.

‘You need not be afraid, little one,' Lai-Kasae went on. ‘Answer me.'

‘Terrible,' Babalyn answered quietly.

‘Still unbroken then,' Lai-Kasae said thoughtfully. ‘My little Vendjomois girls welcome their role. They understand that it is their nature. Some of us are free, little Babalyn, some slave. You, I think, are truly slave. You, Cianna, I am less certain of. Perhaps we shall discover? Now, we shall play dice, and on each throw, she who looses will be punished. First then, for a breast whipping. Kneel on the floor.'

As Cianna and Babalyn knelt, Lai-Kasae walked quickly to a trunk, opening it to extract a horn cup and three six sided dice. Cianna took another swallow of her wine, her determination not to be broken rising inside her. Dipping further into the trunk, Lai-Kasae pulled out a short quirt, then a hank of red silk cord, the sight drawing a little whimpering noise from Babalyn.

‘To add spice,' Lai-Kasae said as she returned to them, ‘I must exceed your score if I am to punish you. Now, Babalyn, throw.'