Judgment (7 page)

Master Boyden had made good his threat to be the first to welcome me properly. No sooner had we exited Tane's office, then did he bend me right over his hip and apply that hairbrush until the hall rang with my shouts of fury and pain.

I had kicked and struggled from the first smack to the last, and even afterward had danced about, stomping my feet and frantically rubbing as though I could push the burning ache right off my skin. The motionlessness with which these women accepted their punishments was both horrifying and

... well, impressive.

Shipe stopped only because his switch broke, and the voluptuous, dark-haired beauty that was his victim visibly shuddered in relief, her bottom cheeks jamming together once as Shipe ordered another switch handed to him from Sub-Master Cobb, a thin, blonde man, who attended the master throughout all of his inspections.

My heart felt pity for the next girl in line, a tiny Asian thing, her slender body tensing as she braced herself for agony. Shipe swung forward on his crutch to stand behind her 58

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and held his hand back for the fresh verge Cobb handed him.

He would have started in a-fresh on his new, unmarred target, but for Master Boyden's interrupting hail.

What the men spoke to one another in that foreign language I don't know, but I do know my bottom positively crawled with dread when both masters and the sub-master turned their heads to look at me, their dark, disapproving stares identical to one another.

Without a word, Shipe handed the switch back to Cobb, who stepped up to take his place in the whipping line as the master turned on his crutch and headed right for me. My stomach sank all the way to my toes. Already my buttocks were clenched together, and Boyden's hand at my back was the only thing that kept me standing there long enough for Shipe to catch hold of my ear and drag me with him to the nearest bed. He tossed his crutch down on the mattress, then sat, dragging me right over that stump of his. He caught my legs in a vise-like scissor hold with his other, grabbed each of my arms and pulled them back behind me, securing me firmly by my wrists. Held like this, I couldn't move very well. I couldn't even keep a solid hold on that hairbrush, which he plucked from my grip as easily as if I'd released it to him.

I had not cried for Boyden. I had not cried for the second master either, Master Everard, who oversaw the females assigned to prepare the noon meal, and who had only laid ten crisp smacks to the blushing base of my buttocks, ruffled my hair and said, "You'll be sore enough by the end of the day, I'll wager. Don't worry. I'll have at you soon enough."

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But I did cry for Master Shipe. My wails reached ear piercing decibels when he aimed for the oh-so very tender crease where bottom met thighs, laid the hairbrush into me with a vengeance, and never once wavered from his target.

"Well," Boyden asked. "Is he as miserable as you are right now, do you think?"

Master Grayson was supervising a group of girls in the Crater when we found him. He was the only one who never laid so much as a single swat to my bottom. Bent over and as close to touching my toes as I could get, with my legs spread apart and my muscles protesting this awful position, he blistered the backs of my thighs and the very tender stretches of pale flesh between them.

Master Boyden had to hold me in position after only the first few swats. And I—as the hairbrush slapped higher and higher, stinging up the insides of my thighs—panicked, thinking for sure he would not stop until he'd struck my trembling sex. I kicked up such a cry and fuss I must have attracted the attention of every girl jogging around the exercise field. I also irritated both masters so much that they decided Grayson should start over again from the beginning and welcome me even more warmly. I was in such hurt by the end, I meekly followed Boyden from the Crater, groaning piteously and rubbing the backs of my aching thighs.

My thighs hurt so much I hardly felt either Master Martin's or Master Fortner's swats, though I think they might have taken pity on me and given me only a few of the lightest smacks. Master Deaton, however, was another story entirely.

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Deaton, as I would eventually learn, was Tane's half brother. Though one would not guess it by their names, the family resemblance was uncanny. They had the same height, the same strong breadth of their shoulders and lean, narrow waists. They also had the same zeal for discipline, and they carried their authority to do so like a crown. If forced to be honest with myself, I think I feared him as much as I did the Mountain Lord.

Deaton was one of three masters who took turns throughout the day supervising the daily activities of the Personals—women who lived the whole of their lives permanently ensconced within the mountain fortress, pets to the whims of the masters. They were guarded always, zealously kept separate from the rest of us. We were all Lessers compared to them, and compared to us they lived like goddesses.

The Personals had a large complex of rooms located far above the Pits, which is where the Lessers' sleeping barracks were, as well as the dining and Assembly halls, the Chore Stations, library and hobby rooms, basically any place slaves such as myself were expected to be seen. But the Personals were so far removed from us that one had to walk past each of the masters' private living quarters just to get to the first well-protected room.

I was not permitted inside the Personals' area. Master Boyden left me standing with the two guards standing sentry just outside the large, ornately carved double doors.

"If you move from this spot," he told me, "I will personally give you your first real whipping."

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He even turned me around to face the wall, my hands and that hairbrush clasped behind my back as though I were a penitent child, before stepping through those double doors and closing them softly behind him.

Though I knew I shouldn't, I couldn't help but surreptitiously steal glimpses at the doors when I thought the guards weren't looking. Though there were lights everywhere, being fully enclosed within the mountain left anyplace not fully under a light almost gloomy with shadow. But even without a light directly overhead, from where I stood I was able to pick out certain images in the wood carvings that decorated the doors. Canes were the most prominent feature, but I also saw benches and bonds, the thorned vines of blooming roses twined through the chained links of manacles and collars, and birches applied to bent girls with open, screaming mouths and tightly clenched eyes.

The art work was beautiful, but the depiction horrific, and I shifted nervously as I looked from one distended mouth to another. Along the bottom of both doors, female figures posed in acts of humility that were at once appalling and oddly seductive. The three poses of abasement were there, as well as many positions that I was certain were intended to beckon a master to mount, rather than whip, the supplicant.

The door opened and I quickly snapped around to face the wall again. From behind me, a low voice drawled, "Was that movement I just saw?"

With a hint of amusement, one of the guards replied, "To be fair, she did glance at the wall once or twice."

"That's what I thought."

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My disobedience had not gone unnoticed; my heart sank.

The doors swung closed, and a huge shadow grew up on the wall around me as Master Deaton approached from behind.

Unlike the other masters, who had accepted Boyden's explanation of me and my required interruption of their day without comment, Master Deaton did not take the hairbrush from my hand and simply beat me. What he did was much worse; he talked to me first.

"Why are you here?"

Though the depictions on that door had dwindled my bravado and by now one would think I'd have learned to keep a civil tongue, as I stared at the wall ahead of me, I heard myself say, "Because you're all sadistic."

"No." He loomed over my shoulder, dressed all in black, melding with the shadows. Huge and calm and speaking to me as though he were a lover, not a monster about to hurt me. "You're here because you mouthed off to the wrong man.

And you're doing so again now. Not very wise. Do you know who you are?"

"Callie—"

"No," he interrupted smoothly. "You are nothing. You are New-Comer. You are Red, until we decide to give you something better. Or until we decide you aren't worth the considerable trouble you are making of yourself and we flush you, with the rest of the refuse, from our halls."

He held out his hand. After only the briefest of hesitations, I reluctantly lay the handle of the hairbrush into his palm.

Maybe it was the soreness of my already swollen and battered backside, or the fact that he was only one in a long line of 63

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men assigned to beat me—number seven to be precise, leaving me to endure the cruelties of twelve more devils just like him before it could all be through—but his words were having a horrible effect on my morale.

"This is a gentle punishment reserved for children and Personals," he said, turning the hairbrush over in his hand, looking at it soberly. "Tane must have a soft spot for you to allow so gentle an introduction. Were the choice mine, I would send you to the Black Room and treat you to your first Demerit caning. Our seasoned girls have learned to be stoic under the rod and can sometimes withstand up to four cuts without falling completely apart; we give them six, just to make sure we have their undivided attentions. But for you, a full count of twelve will leave you quickly broken of all this defiance. It would save time in the long run, be well-deserved and an efficient use of force. I'll bet you've never felt such agony in all your life. The first three will likely leave you screaming, but of course we would still have to give the remaining nine strokes. Principles must be maintained."

The hairbrush left my line of sight. I stared so hard at the wall, it seemed to blur before my eyes.

"Step back."

On shaky legs, I took one step away from the wall.

"Feet together," he directed. "Bend forward and put your hands flat on the wall. No, further down."

Bent at the waist with my hands straight out in front of me, I stared at the floor and tried not to panic completely. I watched his feet as he took up a position beside me.

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"Back straight. Stiffen your legs and thrust that disobedient bottom right up for me." His hip pressed to mine and his warm hand settled on the opposite side of my waist, firmly holding me to him. "I will honor Tane's wishes and give you this gentle, child-like punishment. But were I you, I'd pray to never see me again. Don't let me even glimpse you in the halls, little one. Because the next time I have you before me, what I am inclined to do to you will make twelve strokes with the Demerit Cane feel like heaven."

I had yet to so much as glimpse a Demerit Cane, but his use of that hairbrush made me feel that way already. I swear, after Deaton I suffered through the whippings of the other masters hardly feeling a thing. The pain was such, I was numbed by it.

Master Boyden had to help me back to the New-Comer's barracks. I barely managed to walk as far as the nearest empty bed on my own. My poor bottom pulsed and pounded in time with the beating of my heart. I burned from behind, my swollen and darkly bruised buttocks consumed by a dull, deep-penetrating fire.

Our dinner meal was brought to us on trays. Consumed by hurt and despair, I pushed my tray away, wanting to die rather than eat.

"I should write you up for being wasteful," Master Boyden told me when he took it away.

I didn't answer, but buried my face in my pillow and fought hard not to cry again. I had done enough of that today. My eyes and my head both hurt from it.

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Because of my disrespect, as soon as the last dinner tray was removed, my four companions were lined up at the foots of their bed and all were subjected to their first taste of Judgment leather. Master Boyden did not spare them, either.

They received twelve strokes a piece, and he laid into each one with a vengeful energy that made the New-Comers'

barracks ring with shrieks and sobs.

I was the only one not put to the strap. When it was over, my companions looks at me with such fear and anger that I could not meet their eyes. We were all of us in such a state that sleep was impossible any way but on our stomachs.

Still for the longest time, I lay awake. Four women had been beaten because of me, and no matter what I did, morning and night for the next seven days at least, they would be so again. That knowledge felt worse than my wounded hinds, throbbing and aching as they were, so hot and raw that I couldn't barely stand to have the slight touch of the sheet upon me.

Gradually the pain dimmed and dulled to a low, constant ache, and all I felt was a mild, pulsing heat that flamed my brutalized flesh all over. By this time though, the slow, rhythmic breathing of my companions told me they were all sound asleep. One fitfully so for I could hear her tossing restlessly beneath her blanket.

I was just closing my eyes when I heard the door to our barracks open and a shadowed male came into the room. He moved quietly down the column of beds, stopping at Brunette's bed to divest himself of his clothes. She raised her 66

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head when he pulled the blankets back, and he said, "Shh.

Unless you want an audience."

I turned my face away when he lay down beside her, but Brunette made no protest as he parted her legs and settled himself between them. The only sound was the soft, wet noise of gentle kissing, although it wasn't long before that gave way to soft sighs and the creaking of bedsprings.

The door opened again. Two men came in, dividing as they selected different beds. In the bed next to mine, Black sat bolt upright when one touched her shoulder. In the dark of the room, I saw the outline of her chest rising and falling rapidly as he took her hand and pressed something into her palm. Allowing her only a moment to look at it, he lifted her chin and murmured, "Don't force me to whip you."