Unruly Things

       It was a perfect day for unruliness. The city had been pressure-cooking in the cauldron of an unprecedented spring heat wave for a hand-and-a-half, and the hideous weather showed no sign of abating. Although it was only the third day of the Second Passage, the temperature was more fitted to En’Var. To make things worse, this was not a dry heat that could be escaped by fanning oneself or misting one’s robes with water. This was a soggy, stinking, tropical heat that weighed upon one’s shoulders like lead veils and made the atmosphere seem more water than air. Even in the garden-enclosed villas on the noble end of town it was possible to catch the stench of heat-rotted fish from the markets near the Vosk and the brutal reek of the tanner’s vats seething under the haze-obscured sun.

       Lady Tismyna, Companion of Lord Atmiros, Senator of Ar, slumped miserably on her brocade couch. Of the eight veils she wore, the three nearest to her skin were utterly sodden. No amount of fanning under her mouth-flap with her gold-and-black fan of winged-tharlarion hide could even come close to relieving the torment. She wished that she could have unveiled, but there were male slaves in the house who might enter the zenana to deliver a message, and a lady would never allow her face to be even accidentally seen by an unrelated man.

       Tismyna looked with envy at the three half-naked female slaves, clad only in their color-coded leather collars and the light silk camisks which matched their collars and covered only their nipples, midriffs and pudenda, stopping at the uppermost thigh. Although the visible portions of their breasts shone with sweat, they were energetic and cheerful, chattering happily amongst themselves as they replaced the many flower-arrangements, swept the mosaic tiles, re-perfumed the embroidered hangings, and otherwise performed the many offices required to maintain milady’s chambers.

       Lucky things. Look at them gambol about, as though it wasn’t any hotter than usual for this time of year. If they weren’t such licentious, undignified little animals I could almost wish to feel the air on my skin. No, that’s a stupid thought. A lady is elevated. She is above the animal comforts of the kajira; the slavery to both man and body. And anyhow, it can’t be more than three ahn before Atmiros comes home, so I could bathe anytime I please and still be clean for his arrival.

       She had already bathed today, but she certainly must bathe again if she did not want to smell like sweaty woman when she greeted her Companion at the door to the zenana. She stood wearily and snapped her fingers. “Girl! I desire a bath.” “Girl” could refer to any of the kajirae, so all stopped their work and knelt, knees together as was proper in the presence of a Free Woman.

       “Yes, Milady?” came the timid chorus. The Lady scanned the group coldly, then gestured to a rather plain redhead in a green kamisk, or at least plain by the standards of a kajira. By objective standards, the woman would have been quite beautiful, although not quite so ravishing as the others. Her hair was flame-red, her lushly voluptuous body middling in height, and her eyes large and emerald-green in their heart-shaped face. The major flaw in her appearance, other than a nose that was slightly too long to be strictly beautiful, was the plethora of freckles that overspread her milk-white skin. Tismyna preferred to be bathed by a plain slave, as the sight of a pretty slave inspired in her disgust and scorn. The idea that these idiotic sluts would allow their beauty, which should rightly be concealed as a rare flower is protected from the common view and sheltered from inclement weather and coarse human hands, to be available for public display and indiscriminate use, made her positively sick.

       “You! Orange-haired one! With me to the bath. The two others will bring the water.” She did not address the kajirae by their names. That was a privilege reserved to their Master, to whom they actually belonged. As a woman, who by law could not own property, Tismyna’s chamber-slaves were effectively on rent from her Free Companion or nearest male relative. With the permission of Companions or male relatives, some Ladies kept kajiri, effeminate male slaves, as jesters or servers of food and wine, but even these could be taken away by their Companions, brothers, fathers or sons as punishment or simply on a whim.

       The slaves rose to their feet, eyes cast down. “This girl obeys, Milady,” they said in unison. Kajirae were not allowed to refer to themselves in the first person, and usually referred to themselves as “this girl” unless given express permission from their Masters to refer to themselves by their name. As a Lady, it would have been highly unconventional, even scandalous, for Tismyna to address a kajira by her name. Kajiri, as men (albeit despised and effete men), had rather more rights, and could indiscriminately be addressed by name or as “boy” by their mistresses. A kajirus also generally referred to himself in by his own name. However, like their female counterparts, they could never refer to themselves in the first person.

       Lady Tismyna snapped her fingers, and the ginger girl followed her with quick, short slave-steps through the curtained screen that separated milady’s bath from her bedchamber. The others tripped obediently out the door of milady’s bedchamber and into the foyer of the zenana, which contained the zenana’s private well.

       The slave drew aside the curtain and unrolled the hogarthe-wood screen, and Tismyna stepped regally through, veiled head held high. The slave shut both curtain and screen behind her, took a pair of broad-tharlarion-hide gloves from a shelf reserved for that purpose, and knelt at the her mistress’s feet, lifting the floor-length robes of concealment to remove her gold-embroidered black slippers. The gloves were necessary to protect the slave from the poisoned pins which every Free Woman inserted into her clothing to prevent rape should the zenana be attacked. After the slippers were removed and the Lady stood in her thick, thigh-high cloth-of-gold stockings, the fire-haired girl stood and slipped Tismyna’s gold-embroidered black gloves from her delicate, long-fingered, olive-skinned hands. She then turned her attention to the Lady’s veils. The first veil was a heavy, gold-embroidered black work of art to match the gloves and slippers. Tismyna had forty-one veils in her possession, five of each layer plus one midnight-purple brocade concoction embroidered in silver and gold with a stylized impression of the solar system and every known constellation that she had worn at her Ceremony of Free Companionship, and now wore as a top layer at major public appearances. This priceless garment had cost two gold tarns, and was kept locked in an iron safe when it was not being worn.

       The next veils were bright purple with silver embroidery of moons and stars, sea-blue with copper embroidery of ocean scenes, leaf-green with copper embroidery of jungle scenes, golden-yellow with black embroidery of a desert scene, vibrant orange with black embroidery of a banquet, blood-red with black embroidery of teriotrope, and finally a sweat-stained white embroidered with golden-yellow tor flowers, symbol of the purity and light of a noble Free Woman like Tismyna. The poisoned pins that were concealed in the top two veils were carefully removed by the slave and placed in a wooden box meant specifically for that purpose.

       Tismyna took a breath and shook back one of the black strands that had come loose from the elaborate braids that were wrapped around her head like a crown, then coiled into a figure-eight-shaped bun at the back of her head. These braids were held in place by black-and-yellow enamel pins, and the center of the figure-eight was tightly clamped with a comb of silver-filigreed tortoiseshell. The whole assemblage could take up to an hour to arrange, even with the help of a slave; thus it was only washed once a day, even such weather as this heat wave, when Tismyna washed her body three or four times a day.

       The slave next began to undo the gilded closures that fastened the tight, chin-high collar of Tismyna’s first robe of concealment. The first robe was heavy and matched her first veil. She had a set of robes (robes were worn in layers of two or three depending on the weather) to match each upper veil, although the exquisite midnight-purple veil was worn with a much less expensive counterfeit as top robe. These frogs only extended to the collarbone, of course. The front of a lady’s robe below the veils should never be seen to have any method of unfastening. Unfastening implied unchastity. Before the top robe was removed, more poisoned pins were removed and set aside in the box. Inside the cuff of the outer robe, its point facing inward, was sheathed a small dagger the length of a woman’s palm; also an anti-rape device. This was duly removed by the ginger slave and set carefully on a shelf near the bath.

       Tismyna stood perfectly still, arms over her head, as the slave pulled the garment over her head. The second robe was purple like the second veil, but instead of silver embroidery it had the much less expensive white, as it sat closer to her sweaty skin. When the last robe was removed and the Lady stood only in her stockings and the calf-length white rep shift that covered her underclothes, she shooed the redheaded slave with a gesture. The girl scurried to the corner of the bath chamber and stood against the wall, eyes cast down. Tismyna first rolled down the stockings, then drew the light garment over her head and cast both articles into the corner, where they were snatched up by the slave and folded with her veils and robes at the slave’s feet.

       Now Lady Tismyna stood in what was as close to nakedness as a lady was permitted to be in the presence of any human being other than her Companion. The undergarments of a upper-caste Free Woman consisted of a white, tube-like rep garment with a fastening in back that flattened and concealed her breasts above, and below a pair of white rep shorts that fell to the upper thigh. Tismyna shivered at the cool air on her skin, but was careful to conceal any signs of pleasure from a slave, who might presume that a lady who enjoyed physical sensation was of her detestably sensuous ilk. Nevertheless, it was fortunate that the upper garment was tight enough to hold the Lady’s erect nipples flat.

       Tismyna tapped her foot impatiently and eyed the door. Where ARE those lazy girls? A few minutes more and I swear I shall complain to Atmiros about their tardiness! She was about to make a snappish remark to the ginger girl about her negligent sisters when there came a knock at the screen. The Lady gestured to the redhead to answer it, and the slave rolled back the screen and drew aside the curtain to reveal two nervous kajirae, each carrying a ten-gill iron bucket of water in which some teriotrope were floating. One of the kajirae, a tall, statuesque, heavy-hipped and-breasted Tahari in orange with jet-black skin, bushy ringlets pulled into a slave-knot, and a heart-shaped face with sharp cheekbones furtively licked a white liquid off her thick lips and looked down at her feet in shame. The other, a petite, wavy-haired white-blonde in sky-blue with a lush, compact hourglass figure and a perfectly oval face dominated by her doe-like, ice-blue eyes that were nearly devoid of eyebrows and lashes shot a pained glance at her sister and flushed beet-red. The Tahari no doubt was blushing as well, but the melanin in her mirror-like skin masked that particular sign of embarrassment.

       “These girls are sorry,” stammered the blonde, “But we-”

       The Lady cut her off with an impatient gesture. “I know what you have been doing. I do not need to hear it from your besmirched lips. But there is no use in me complaining. I know what you do, and I know what you are for. Now pour the water in the bath and begone with you all.”

       The guilty girls murmured their thanks and assent, hauled the buckets over to the bath, and poured the water into the ten-foot-wide, circular marble bath. The redhead scooted over and placed a bar of plain white soap upon the edge of the bath, then both slaves fled as quickly as tiny-stepped slave-running could carry them. They shut and curtained the screen behind them, but the sound of whispering was heard outside for several minutes as the two water-carrying girls related their experience to the dressing-girl.

       Tismyna ignored the slaves’ gossip. Of course she knew what had happened. In fact, she should have guessed the cause of the girls’ delay in the first place. The guards of the zenana had seen the beautiful, voluptuous kajirae passing and, mindful of milady’s precious time, had bid the girls quickly pleasure them orally. No doubt there were two very satisfied guards exchanging grins and shoulder-slaps over the event. Nevertheless, there was no use thinking about it. Kajirae were made for the service of men before all else, and even the Lady of the House could not change that fact. Besides, why would she want to? The more men, including her Companion, were satisfied by the little animals, the safer she herself was from the irritating attentions of Atmiros and the prospect of frightful depredations by guards or other low-caste men.

       With a sigh, she removed first her top undergarment, then her bottom. Lady Tismyna was undoubtedly a striking-looking woman, fully as attractive as the slaves. She was below the average height, slender-waisted, and very shapely, with a firm, flat middle, smoothly curved hips, perky buttocks, and high, plump breasts that were rather large for a woman of her size. Her skin was clear and pale-olive in color, her large eyes in their solemn, straight-nosed oval face as black as her fine, pin-straight hair. At twenty-two, she was at her physical peak. She had only been joined to Atmiros for a year, and had not yet borne any children, so not a hort of her body was lax with the ravages of pregnancy and suckling. The only imperfection on the gorgeous flesh was her pudenda, which had been depilated to the smoothness of a ten-year-old girl. This was done by every Free Woman without fail, except for the peasants who had neither time nor tools for the job. Peasant Free Women instead cut their womanly hair with a curved knife until it was merely stubble. As a Free Woman and a lady, it was essential that Lady Tismyna de-emphasize her womanhood and make herself as asexual as possible. Thus she wore no cosmetics on her veiled face, used no perfume other than the fresh scent of white soap, and made her pudenda resemble an unappetizing, childish wasteland.

       The Lady tested the cool water with her toe. The air on her skin had cooled her somewhat, but she still wished to wash the sweat from her body. Her hair had been washed this morning, so there was really no reason to go through the trouble of re-washing and styling the buttock-length black tresses. With a sigh, she submerged herself in the water to the neck and leaned her head back against the rim of the bath. She looked up at the domed marble ceiling of the zenana, decorated with geometric carvings and hung with pots of flaminium, teriotrope, and veminium. A dwarfed flower-tree stood in a corner near the shelves that held spare ovoids of soap, hairpins and bathing-flannels, its artfully twisted branches drooping with massive bouquets of multicolored flowers that shed fragrant petals in such numbers that the redheaded slave need sweep the floor with a rence-stalk broom at least twice a day.

       Strange thoughts came unbidden to Tismyna’s mind as she basked in the cool water. Kajirae. I really don’t know what to think of them. So base, so lascivious, yet so helpless and-dare I say it-to be pitied. They have a hard lot, although these girls haven’t nearly as hard a lot as paga sluts, bath girls or coin girls. In fact, Atmiros has always been soft with his slaves. I’ve only twice seen him beat one, and in one of those instances it was a male messenger slave who had been found guilty of theft. The other slave, a girl of the Wagon People who was sold six months after my Joining to Atmiros, had poisoned a miniature sleen kit for knocking over a vessel of wine as it ran about the kitchen. Serious offenses all, for which they might have been killed in the house of a harsh master like the Advisor Icaronus. I’ve never seen a slave of Icaronus who did not carry a black eye and a limp. Of course Atmiros must have given his girls an inaugural beating when he took them into the house, but not in my sight, and probably not very severely, as I’ve never seen any of his new kajirae limp.

       But they do not seem to care. In fact, the kajirae of the House seem quite happy. They laugh, they smile, they chat among themselves. When Atmiros pats their bottom as they walk by they giggle and blush. They do not weep when it is clear that the guards have recently used them, but take it with good grace and go back to their chores with a lighthearted mien. They never enter a room in sadness, but look at their master with adoration and at me with cheerful demureness. If it wasn’t an oxymoron, I could say that they are free in slavery.

       Nevertheless, rigidity and coldness are minor sacrifices for the dignity and nobility of a Free Woman, and especially a lady. For me to be free of the yoke of slavery, I must be free of emotion and sensuality. Surely respect is worth the effort of self-control. And is it not worthy of a lady, elevated and intellectual, to leave the base animal nature aside and aspire to something higher? Without a doubt. No, I would surely commit suicide before I would submit to the lowly, filthy station of the collar. I am a Lady, high and noble. I am the helpmeet and counterpart of a Master, the mistress of all except men of my station; and I would not give up the pride of this privilege for the world.

       She shook off these thoughts and busied herself with bathing. There was neither use nor seemliness in even allowing these thoughts into her head. She drew herself up from the side of the tub and sat on her knees, chest-deep in the water with her thighs pressed firmly together. She had never allowed herself to look at her pudenda, even in privacy. Even in depilating, she did so mostly by feel, with her eyes half-closed. Taking the soap and flannel from where it rested on the rim of the bath, she began to firmly wash her body without looking down. Her pudenda had been depilated that morning, so fortunately she had no need to observe that ugly flesh.

       But as she washed her breasts, the unfamiliar, unexpected unruliness came upon her. Almost as a reflex, she looked down at her breasts. She was shocked and ashamed, but she could not look away. The plump, white-gold young globes, their pale-pink nipples erect from the cool water, floated on the surface by virtue of their high fat content that had never been attenuated by a child’s suckling. Like the air-filled bosk bladders that were used as buoys in Ar’s harbour, they bobbed obscenely, taunting her pride and taunting-Oh, gods forbid, this could not be right!-men. Or a man, her Companion.        Atmiros often played with and suckled the dreadful things when he took her body once a day during the week of her ovulation, as she lay like a dead fish under him, her eyes turned to the side and an impassive expression on her face. Fortunately, he had not touched her pudenda with his hands since the night of their Joining, as he did not like the feeling of a dry, hairless cleft that simply refused to respond to his touch. Their couplings were brief, and painful to Tismyna, although she had cried out but once, when he shed her virgin blood the first night, first with his finger and then with his rod. He enjoyed her breasts immensely, and loved to kiss and lick the taut, jiggly globes as he gently grasped her buttocks to deepen penetration. It was though he was fascinated with them. Still, she had never moved or responded.

       Still in a trancelike state, she ran her right hand over the corresponding breast, and felt a strange shiver in her belly as her hand touched the nipple. Like a flash of lightning, there came a hallucination. The hand that touched her was not the slender, soft, delicate hand of a woman, but the strong, blunt-fingered, sword-callused and dark golden-brown hand of Atmiros. The wrist was no longer a tiny hort-and-a quarter in width and smooth as a child’s, but at least twice that diameter and sprinkled with the fine black hairs she knew so well. It stroked first one nipple, then the other, and pinched the tips gently between the thumb and index finger.

       Tismyna shivered and let out a quiet moan. Fire rushed into her pudenda, and she felt a pulsing, both in the little bead that hid in the apex of her folds and deep inside, near her womb. She had never felt this feeling, even in dreams. She felt an openness at the orifice, and her thighs spread involuntarily, wider and wider until the pink flower was fully open. Her eyes were cast down now, and she could see all of herself; the lips, which seemed abnormally swollen and redder in color, the bead, which had become red and seemed different, how she didn’t know. And then there was the orifice. It no longer folded itself into a slit, but was open, almost round, and red around the edges. The opening moved in and out, gently contracting and expanding like the toothless mouth of a baby seeking milk. It wanted something, something unseemly, that her mind did not.

       The hand that in her deranged state was that of Atmiros drifted down her belly to the changed pudenda. Its thumb played with the bead, lighting a fire in the sa-tarna-grain-sized organ and sending a sliver of fire down the lips, into the opening, and up into the womb. She shivered and made a mewling sound like a giani kitten. She now noticed a threadlike strand of something faintly translucent, like the white of an egg, coming from her reddened opening.

       Then, suddenly and spectacularly, first one of her hallucinated Companion’s fingers, then two, slid into her burning orifice. Unlike their monthly coupling, there was no pain, but a throbbing pleasure that made her walls involuntarily grasp the fingers.  On the fingers that invaded her so easily was a slipperiness that was not soap. The fingers worked themselves deeper and deeper, the thumb still flicking the bead that was now as hard as a pebble. Soon she felt the middle finger hit the neck of her womb and gently swirl around the little dimple there. The index finger found a raised, slightly rough spot perhaps a third of a hort long on the anterior wall of her channel. A deep, delicious burning proceeded from this spot and set both walls and womb on fire.

       Atmiros’s imaginary fingers became rougher in their manipulation, eliciting a hoarse gasp from the newly-awakened Lady in the grip of her solitary ecstasy. The triple pleasure of the devious fingers incited a storm inside Tismyna, which became ever stronger, like peals of thunder before lightning strikes. Her head sank down upon her breast in the weakness of passion, and her half-open eyes saw something horrible, something that should never, ever be seen on one’s neck. A collar! It was of burgundy leather and engraved with a familiar name, the name of the one who now stroked her in fantasy. But instead of killing her desire, the sight of the hideous, demeaning thing built the ominous thunder of her lust to deafening pitch, until-

       The lightning struck, the terrible white bolt that pierced her womb, tore through her and ripped a wailing cry from her throat, a cry of ultimate submission to the unruliness. Her walls contracted violently, and she felt a burst of the slippery substance rush over her, or rather Atmiros’s, fingers and into the water.

       She was helpless before the pleasure, and her head sank back against the rim of the bath in the vulnerability of fulfilled need. Her eyes were closed, but she saw her Companion smiling down in triumph at the helpmeet that was now his emotional, if not his actual, slave. You are mine. I have taken you. You belong to me! And she did.    

       Tismyna woke with a gasp from her daydream, feeling her neck for the collar. She sighed in relief, but then realized with a twinge of fear that there was something in her pudenda. She looked down at her body, praying that it was not so, but she saw with a sinking heart that her index and middle finger were sheathed to the third knuckle in her opening. She withdrew them with a shudder and reached frantically for the soap and flannel, scrubbing her body, especially the fingers and pudenda, until it shone red.

       Blushing with shame, she reached for the triple-weave brushed rep-and-rence   towel and dried herself vigorously. When her reddened body was dry, she donned her undergarments, shift and stockings with shaking hands, then tapped the gong that hung on a silken cord next to the screen to summon her slave.

       After a few impatient minutes, a rap came at the door. “This girl is at Your service, Milady,” announced the sultry alto of the Tahari slave, Tismyna’s usual second choice for a dressing-girl.

       “Where is the orange-haired one?” inquired the Lady (or perhaps Lady no longer?) in an irritated tone.

       “That girl is busy, Milady.”

       “Very well. Enter.” Tismyna was painfully aware of what the ginger girl’s business likely was, and shuddered at the thought.

       The kajira drew back the screen and curtain and placed her back against the doorframe, waiting for instructions.

       “Robe me,” commanded Tismyna dispassionately. The slave entered the room with eyes down and selected the innermost robe. Her mistress stared into space as the two robes, then the eight veils seeded with pins, then the gloves, the dagger and finally the shoes were applied in their proper order.

       yula, the Tahari slave, covertly regarded milady’s flushed cheeks and nervous eyes with not quite so much curiosity as one would think. The Free Woman’s face, to a kajira who had been a princess in her own land before her kidnap by an invading army, was an open book when in this state. The fear and shame on the Lady’s face was the fear of a formerly independent woman who had experienced an awakening, and who was now walking further and further out into waters that would soon be too deep for her to keep afloat. yula had found her awakening in the collar of her now-deceased first Master rather than in the zenana of noble Atmiros, but the slope down which Tismyna was sliding would soon put the leather just as surely about her noble neck as it was about the neck of she who was formerly Princess Yulania. Tread carefully, Milady, and be sure to pause on your way. Realize what this means, and whether this is truly what you want, before you give in.