by Jean Johnson
Krais frowned in confusion. All his life, he had seen his father picking up submissives from the courtyard and putting them to work in and around the house, whether it had been their family home in the city before his elevation or at the manor here on the Temple grounds. It was seen as a badge of honor to be picked for service by the Elder Disciplinarian, and his mother, Karei, flat-out delighted in ordering them all about. Despite being a mid-ranked librarian, she had learned many Disciplinarian tricks, and handed out praises to the worthy and punishments to the needy with a deft, experienced hand.
It was in that vein of confusion that he asked, “But . . . isn’t that why you became a Disciplinarian? To have control over others?”
“Ugh.” She lifted her foot and pushed it at his face. Krais swayed back before he could touch him. A good thing, too; her silver-and-black cat mrraurred and reared up, hooking his paws around her ankle to drag her toes back into comfortable sniffing range. Obliging, Pelai lowered her foot, letting her cat continue to rub and purr, and explained her disdain. “You have learned some very bad perceptions from your father of who and what a Disciplinarian is. He likes the power games. So does your mother, and definitely your youngest brother. I’m not sure about Foren.”
“He follows in their footsteps,” Krais said, shrugging. “They both . . . all three of us . . . sought to please Father by echoing his words and mirroring his moves. Gayn looks the most like him, stout-bodied, medium brown eyes, wavy hair that’s dark brown instead of black, and he certainly acts the most like him. Foren looks the most like our mother, lean body with a very round face, straight black hair, so he was favored by her, though our father rules the household. I fall somewhere between the two in looks . . . but I tried to please my parents for far too long.”
“Hmm. And now?” Pelai asked, her cat still rubbing his face against her toes, still purring, acting like a subservient happy to please and honor his doma.
“I finally see what I have been doing wrong. What . . . Father . . . has been doing wrong.” He started to say something more, then closed his mouth.
“ . . . What?” Pelai asked.
Krais shook his head.
Sitting forward, she scooped up her cat and cuddled him on her lap, giving his chin the scritchies he could no longer get from her toenails. “Whatever you tell me will be held secret, under the sacred bounds of the confession. I am a Disciplinarian, even as I become the next Guardian.”
Still, he hesitated. She didn’t press him, just gave him time, and gave her pet loving attention. Finally, Krais spoke. “I feel . . . betrayed. By my father.”
“How so?” Pelai asked softly, stroking Purrsus. The cat blinked sleepily, studying him more directly than his mistress, who studied her cat. That indirectness gave him the room to speak.
“He’s led me—my brothers and me—down a path that . . . included accepting a contract to kill someone. We didn’t . . . by the grace of the gods . . . and . . .”
“And . . . ?” Pelai prompted after a few moments of silence.
“She spoke to me.” When Pelai glanced at him, seeking clarification on who and about what, Krais cleared his throat. “We were . . . contacted by an official of the Katani government who wanted the incipient Queen of Nightfall killed. Offers of immense wealth, entire trading ships filled with exotic goods . . . Gayn said yes right away, and I agreed right on his heels. Foren was the only one who hesitated, but only for a moment—what kind of a father teaches his sons it’s okay to barely even hesitate about committing a murder?”
Pelai didn’t speak, but she did make a soft, sympathetic sound as the words tumbled out of him. A confession of hard thoughts he hadn’t been able to voice around his brothers, who were still too enamored of trying to win their father’s pride and love by obeying without much thought.
“Yes, she was our enemy, she had the Living Host in her care, she was going to reopen the Convocation of Gods and Man, and make her tiny little island kingdom first among all nations . . . but these things would not have harmed Mendhi. We would be no worse off even if we were no better off.” Krais sighed and rubbed at his eyes, tired down to his soul. “Your mother and father need to teach you that lying and cheating and stealing and harming others just for personal gain are wrong . . . but he didn’t teach us that, and Mother didn’t stop him from teaching the wrong lessons, either. She’s reveled too much in her power over the subservients he brings home.”
That narrowed her eyes. “Has your mother been abusing them?”
Krais shook his head quickly. “No. Everything they do at home is within the letter of the law.”
“But not the spirit?” Pelai asked perceptively.
Her question made him hesitate, and review his memories. “ . . . Nothing that could be acted upon. My parents have always been good at treading on that line.”
“Treading, but not crossing it.”
Krais cleared his throat. “I didn’t say that . . . but I’m not going to bother refuting it, either.”
Brows quirking, Pelai studied him. “ . . . You really have changed, Krais. Nine months ago, when you left, you’d never have said any of this to anyone. Let alone to me.”
“We didn’t exactly like each other, so no,” he admitted candidly. “But . . . I think much of my disdain for you was merely a reflection of my father’s disdain for you. Which is an odd thing when I think about it.”
“How so?” Pelai asked.
Krais gestured at her. “He disdains your plebian parentage, daughter of a baker and a stasis mage, yet admires your skills as a high-ranked Disciplinarian . . . and has always ranted at his sons for not being better than you.”
“Oh. That,” she said dismissively.
“You sound like you know the reason why,” Krais murmured, eyeing her warily. “Did he tell you?
“No, but do you realize you just answered your own question?” Pelai asked him. At his puzzled look, she said, “He’s envious of me, and disappointed in you. Since he can only castigate his own sons so much, he has had to find ways to attack me, to lower my ranking and diminish my accomplishments in your eyes.”
“Ah. I hadn’t considered that,” Krais murmured. “I should have. I’ve been thinking for six months straight . . . “
“You’ve had a lot on your mind,” Pelai soothed.
Apparently annoyed by the absentminded attention given by his mistress, the cat on her lap squawked a little and ducked out from beneath her grip. Escaping with a lithe squirm that ended with a thump on the floor, Purrsus padded over to Krais and sniffed at his kilt-covered knee. Since he liked cats—Gayn preferred birds as pets, and Foren had no preference so long as it was friendly—Krais lifted his hand to pet the animal. He hesitated before actually touching her pet. The feline quickly sniffed at his fingertips, taking advantage of their stillness to investigate his scent.
“Go on,” Pelai told him, granting permission. “You may pet him. We may not have agreed in the past, but you’re not a bad man, Puhon Krais. I trust you with Purrsus.”
“Thank you.” Gently petting the cat, Krais enjoyed the soft, sleek feel of the feline’s fur. “I will not betray that trust.”
“Good. Because cleaning his sandbox will be your chore from now on—your father would expect me to punish you with menial tasks, but even you should know a spell or two for cleaning droppings out of sand.”
He slanted a look up at her, barefooted and relaxed on her couch, though she still wore her working leathers. “Considering I cannot access my magic right now . . . ?”
It was her turn to blink and feel abashed, given the way she blushed under her tattoos. “Oh. Right. Well, I do have an old hand-sieve for the lumps. I’ll just clean the rest of it with a spell—I hated doing it without the help of magic as a child, since my parents made my siblings and me scrub the sand with soap and water down by the river, but I don’t think you deserve that level of punishment.
“Unless your father asks . . .” She nibbled on her fingernail for a moment, thinking, then tapped her bottom lip. “Actually, that brings up a question. Would your father interrogate you via truthstone to see how you’re being punished?”
Krais blanched a little, remembering prior punishments. Clearing his throat, he admitted, “That is a distinct possibility. Mother, at the very least, would use a truthstone on us to see if we’d behaved whenever she thought we’d damaged something at home, or hadn’t been paying attention to our lessons.
“She hasn’t used it in a few years . . . but mostly because we’ve been gone nine months. That, and Gayn finally grew up enough that he stopped tripping over furniture and breaking things—all of us had clumsy stages,” he found himself adding honestly, gently scratching her cat under that black and silver chin. At her raised brows, he clarified, “I had an awkward burst of magic in my early teens that knocked over the spirit-tree stand, when we had a small house in the city, before Father’s elevation to the Hierarchy. Broke the pot the miniature tree was in.”
Pelai sat forward, forearm braced on her knees, and reached down to pet her cat. “How did your father punish you?”
“The same way as always, extra lessons in magic, removing all my free time for weeks or even months, and physical exercises, like running down to the arena, buying one of the sugar-wheels they sell, and running back before an hourglass ran out. And then he’d break up the sugar-wheel and give it to my brothers and I’d get none . . . or I’d be the one to get some and one of the others would be punished by having none.” He confessed it matter-of-factly. “That particular time with the spirit tree, it was Mother who punished me, as well as Father by setting me to run places and move stuff. She made me buy a new pot and tend the spirit-tree personally until it recovered. I nearly killed it before I figured out I needed to go find a gardener to ask for advice.”
“Stubborn and prideful?” she asked as her cat lost interest in both of them and wandered off.
“Stupid and prideful,” he corrected. “After that, I wised up enough to look for experts to advise me, but . . . I realize now that I never really thanked them for their expertise. I assumed my rising knowledge and skill was due to my own diligence, and not to their willingness to share and teach. Stupid and prideful, not stubborn.”
“You really have given your life some thought, haven’t you?” Pelai murmured, bracing both elbows on her knees.
“Six months at sea, sailing from port to port, walking the decks for eight hours at a stretch, using magic to keep the wind in the sails and the rigging sound and true. It’s boring work most of the time,” he confessed, and rubbed at his eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t sleep well. It’s been a long day.”
“Same,” Pelai murmured. “Don’t yawn, or I’ll have to flog you. I still have to figure out . . . wait, you blushed.”
Krais felt his cheeks heat further. This conversation had suddenly turned in a direction he did not want to go. So he lied. “I did not. I flinched.”
“No, no, you blushed. . . . Flogging. No, not just flogging alone . . . something about me flogging you is what upsets you,” she clarified, and peered closely at him. “Why does the thought of being flogged by me upset you?”
“Because it’s flogging?” he retorted defensively. “It’ll hurt?”
“You’re not afraid of pain, Krais. I’ve seen you taking a worse beating while practicing your fighting, and do it without flinching,” Pelai pointed out.
Rolling his eyes, Krais tried to throw her off track by changing the subject slightly. “Are you planning on flogging me to throw my father off the scent? Or are we going to pretend, since you say I don’t really need to be flogged? And if so, how does that work?”
“I said you’ve done penance by other means over the last six months,” Doma Pelai chided him, sitting up again. “I did not say you’ve expiated all your sins.”
Krais opened his mouth to say he didn’t deserve any punishment . . . but while he’d skirted the edges of that by the letter of the law, Menda had been explicit in warning him not to protest his punishments. Demonic invasion. Right. Dammit.
Biting back the urge to protest, he breathed deep and merely said, “ . . . I will not protest bearing bruises and welts or whatever where my father will see them and feel satisfied. But I request that you beat me in private. Not in front of my father. Or anyone else.”
“Why not?” Pelai challenged him.
Jaw tightening, Krais didn’t answer. While they had achieved a sort of accord of understanding between the two of them, he couldn’t bring himself to admit anything quite that personal to her.
“What is it about me beating you in public that you want to avoid?” Pelai asked, sitting forward and peering intently at his face. “Is it the humiliation? The submissiveness of it? . . . No? Do not make me get out a truthstone, Penitent. You know you are to answer my questions fully and honestly. Tell me in full detail why you don’t want me to beat you in front of your father . . . or it will happen.”
Face hot, Krais glared at her. When she merely raised an eyebrow, arching it in silent challenge, he gritted his teeth, breathed deep, and forced himself to explain. “We took some bottles of concentrated lust philtre with us to use on the Living Host, to make her compliant and cooperative with one of us taking control of her Fountain through lovemaking.”
“—Oh that deserves a beating right there,” Pelai snapped, her eyes widening in outrage. “Because that is not lovemaking!”
“It was supposed to be a last resort! And she didn’t get any used on her,” Krais snapped. Feeling discomfort in his legs, he shifted from kneeling to sitting with his calves crossed.
Her stare hard and stern, her voice chilly with lurking threat, Pelai ordered, “What does that mean, Penitent? That she didn’t have any used on her. Did someone use it on you? Without your permission?”
Krais couldn’t blame her for catching on. He’d put the emphasis into his words himself, and she wasn’t oblivious by nature. Clearing his throat, he confessed gruffly, “ . . . During one of the storms we sailed through, the, uh, carrying case got knocked loose . . . and one of the bottles inside broke. I didn’t notice it because a sailor found and put the box back, and when I went to check inventory a little while later, I . . . tucked my hand inside one of the padded slots to pull the bottle out for inspection, cut myself on the glass . . . and got pure lust potion soaked into my blood. Concentrated lust that lasted for over a week.”
She blinked at him, this time frowning in confusion. “ . . . So?”
He rolled his eyes at the ceiling of her family room, silently begging all the Gods for strength and patience. “I had to work it off? To the point my skin turned raw and blistered. That was when I tried flogging myself to try to bury the lust under pain, but . . .”
“ . . . But?” Doma Pelai prodded when he trailed off. “Put it into words, Penitent.”
Shutting his eyes, Krais gritted his geeth and answered. Punishments were always worse when a penitent refused to answer a Disciplinarian. “It . . . it only turned me on more. So don’t flog me in front of my father. He’ll think I’m a submissive—and I am not submissive, even if I am submitting to this stupid, Goddess-insisted punishment!”
Rather than prod at him further on his point about the Goddess insisting on his punishments, Pelai blinked, sat back, and held up her hand in a calming gesture. She questioned him on the other matter, the embarrassing one. “So . . . you’re saying you have discovered you are aroused by pain?”
“Yes! But only because my mind has been messed up by the lust philtre,” he asserted. He needed her to see him as normal. Strong. Dominant. Not submissive and subservient—he would bow to his Goddess, but to no other! “It warped my brain into thinking pain equals pleasure!”
“Krais . . . it doesn’t work that way,” she told him, relaxing and speaking bluntly. At his frown of con
fusion, Pelai explained. “Such things either develop from constant exposure over years, the kind of long-term exposure where increasing amounts of pleasure are openly associated with increasing amounts of pain . . . or it’s simply the way you are born to feel.
“Unless it’s a spell controlling you at that exact moment—which requires constant vigilance on the part of the mage applying it—or a potion you constantly take, you’re not going to find being flogged all that arousing if you don’t already find it arousing by your nature. And the only way that nurturing it would work is if you were constantly exposed to it physically and mentally . . . and even then, you still have to think that it might be appealing, to have the thoughts in your own head acting as the seed from which it all grows. Otherwise, it’s just repulsive,” she finished. “Not everyone finds such things attractive, and not everyone ever will.”
“Well, it didn’t happen before our trip to Nightfall Island!” he shot back. “I was normal before that point.”
“Were you ever actually punished with a mix of pain and pleasure? I don’t mean the times when being disciplined by a family member, which most find inherently unsexy,” Pelai added dryly.
That checked him. Krais blinked, casting his mind back through his younger years. Finally, he had to shake his head. “Not . . . mixed with pleasure, no. Father and Mother did punish us, but . . . not sexually in any way. But ever since the broken bottle,” he muttered, blushing and not meeting her gaze, “any little bit of pain I experience . . .”
“Then you cannot blame him, just as you should not blame yourself,” she murmured. “Dagan’thio has done many things that skirt the line of acceptable behavior, but he hasn’t crossed it. Krais . . . you failed the very first submission test. I was there, I saw it happen.”
“Yes, but . . .” he admitted, trailing off at the memory of that day over a decade ago.
“But, nothing. That simply means you never got far enough into your Disciplinarian training to experiment with those sorts of games. Without personally having been through that mix of pleasure and pain, how could you have known you liked such things?” Pelai challenged him. “Part of it could have been nurtured into the back of your mind from the excitement associated with watching your parents dominate their subservient staff, yes. But I suspect you’ve simply had an undiscovered inclination all along. The lust potion problem awakened your awareness of it, and the mix of pleasure and pain over the week that you spent working the stuff out of your blood firmly mixed the two sensations in your brain. You felt pain during forced pleasure, so now you feel pleasure when you’re forced to endure pain.”