“There’s no point in putting her up as a sacrifice again.” The hairless woman frowned, regarding Lizzy as though she was a terrible inconvenience.
“Do you want to send her to the feeder pens?” the second woman asked.
The first frowned even more. “She’s completely useless to me then. I still want my twelve gold out of her.” The bald woman turned away. “Put her in the harem.”
“Yes, mistress.”
While the second woman groveled, bowing deeply, the bald woman looked in at Lizzy one last time before she left. Lizzy shrank into the corner, wondering what was going to happen to her now.
They cleaned her. Lizzy had been washed for her aborted death sentence, but now she was bathed in scented water, her hair shampooed and combed before being curled into ringlets all around her head. The servants who did this tutted about her skin tones and spent hours scrambling for light enough makeup for her to wear. Then she was dressed in a gown made of she didn’t know what kind of material, which was pale green and completely translucent.
They hadn’t needed any makeup, she decided. She was too red in the face for any of it to show.
“You can’t be serious,” she gasped, seeing a mirror on the wall. She tried to cover herself, but she wore fine chains on her wrists and the guards kept pulling her hands away from her body.
“She’s too thin,” decided the woman who’d directed her transformation. The other women who held her chains, and therefore her hands away from herself, sniggered in agreement. Lizzy closed her eyes, not wanting to see them laughing at her.
“Are you a virgin? Girl!” Lizzy’s eyes opened after a sudden slap. “Are you a virgin?”
“Y-yes.”
“At least they’ll like that.” The woman sighed. “If Eighty-nine goes for her first, though, just pull her out. I don’t want him killing another girl.”
“You can’t do this!” Lizzy gasped. They started to haul her forward and she balked, trying to brace her bare feet on the slippery floor. “I won’t go!”
“Shut it, girl!” the woman snapped. “The only reason you keep your tongue in there is because some of the battlers like the screaming.”
Lizzy fought them all the way down the hall and up a short flight of stairs. There were no windows, but there was light coming from somewhere, shining down through vents in the ceiling. The floor and walls were the same pale, adobe color, but the door ahead was pure ebony wood and heavily carved. Two women with spears guarded it. Any hope Lizzy might have had about getting away were dashed. Any one of the five women looked stronger than she, and there was nowhere to go but back the way she’d come.
Only one of them needed to hold her, despite her struggles, while the others opened the door. Perfume and screams wafted out. “Oh gods,” Lizzy whispered, just before they yanked her inside.
Within was a massive room, well lit and soft, the ceiling held up by columns that were draped with gauzy silk. The floor was covered with pillows, and on many of them lounged women dressed no better than Lizzy, providing they were dressed at all. Others were dancing or playing music. The room was fifty feet wide but hundreds of feet long, stretching away from them. A smaller door could be seen distantly at the other end.
The long walls held dozens of small archways covered by gauzy curtains. From many of them came moans, and right in the middle of the floor, she saw with her first startled glimpse, a man had a woman on her hands and knees, backside hiked high as he pumped furiously into her. Lizzy went even redder than before and made a strangled sound.
“Welcome to the battler sex pit,” one of the female guards laughed, undoing her chains. Putting a hand on Lizzy’s back, she pushed. Lizzy went sprawling into the room. The door shut behind her.
Immediately, the battler in the middle of the room looked up at her, even as he continued to—Lizzy couldn’t even think of a term crude enough for what he was doing. He was big and bulky, his skin an olive shade and his legs bending backward at the knee, his feet and hands long and clawed. His eyes and nose were normal, but his chin was absurdly long and he had no mouth. Bare skin stretched over where it should have been. On his chest, the number 408 had been tattooed.
Four-oh-eight looked at her speculatively, then down at the woman he was with. Then back at her, as if trying to make up his mind whether to finish with his current lover or switch immediately.
Lizzy scrambled to her feet and bolted for the closest wall, right through one of the doorways and into an alcove…where she found a different battler with a woman underneath him. He snatched at Lizzy halfheartedly, not really interested, and she backed out, retreating and instead moving up the length of the main room.
The chamber was nearly three times the size of the market back home, large enough that the hundred or more women she guessed were here had room to stretch out, or to retreat into a corner with whichever battler expressed an interest. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to retreat from the battlers to, though, other than several bathrooms. These were placed after every tenth alcove, and Lizzy quickly locked herself into one.
A knock came at the door. “Are you going to come out?” a female voice asked.
“No,” Lizzy gasped. She knew how battlers felt about sex. There was no way she was going out there.
The female voice sighed. “Look, if you stay in there, the guards will take you away, and it’s much worse to be a feeder. Besides, that’s the only bathroom where the shower gets really hot. The rest of them are lukewarm.”
“I don’t want to come out,” Lizzy said.
“They’ll make you a feeder instead.”
“What’s a feeder?”
“Tongueless slaves who spend their lives getting their energy sucked out by sylphs. At least here you can talk.”
Lizzy shuddered and slowly reached to open the door. Outside, a woman older than herself with long black hair and tan skin looked at her curiously. She was dressed in a translucent silk gown even sheerer than Lizzy’s. “What bizarre hair,” she said.
“Is it safe?” Lizzy whispered, looking around. A group of women were playing cards nearby, acknowledging her quizzically, but the curtains around an alcove close by were shaking and she could hear a woman screaming hysterically from the other side. “Is—is she okay?”
The black-haired woman glanced over her shoulder. “Who, Ap? Sure. She always screams like that. They love it. She’s been here nearly longer than anyone.” She regarded Lizzy again. “My name is Eapha. What’s yours?”
“Lizzy. Is there any way out of here?”
“No. There’s only the one door out, and the battlers come in through passages in the ceiling. A human can’t fit through. I know a couple of girls who tried.” Eapha ran a hand through her hair. “Look, you may as well make the best of it. Battlers are fantastic lovers.”
So Lizzy had been hearing for the last six years of her life. She didn’t care. “I don’t want to!” she wailed, and the other women clucked sympathetically, though a few laughed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Eapha told her. “Even if you want to say no, they pour so much lust into you, you lose control. Trust me. It sinks into your bones. After the first time, you’ll wonder what you were ever frightened of.”
Lizzy shook her head, backing away. This was insane. She did not want to spend the rest of her life as some sort of sex toy to keep a bunch of battlers happy.
Behind Eapha, Ap’s screams finally died out in a sated moan. The curtains moved and another battler exited. He was shaped exactly like the first two, with the olive skin and backward legs. Strangest of all was his mouthless face. He padded out, his erection bobbing in front of him. The number 391 was tattooed on his chest. He looked in their direction briefly, then went wandering up the length of the room until a plump woman beckoned lovingly and wandered into an alcove. Three-ninety-one followed.
“He’s usually good for two or three gos,” Eapha told Lizzy. “You wouldn’t know it from Ap, but he’s very gentle. Most of them are.”
Li
zzy noticed the way she’d stressed the word most. “Is this all they do?” she asked miserably.
“Sure. This is where they come to relax. Our job’s to keep them happy.” Eapha sighed and took Lizzy’s hand. “Come on.” When Lizzy balked again, afraid of where she’d take her, the woman smiled. “I’m not going to throw you at one of them.”
Reluctantly, Lizzy let her lead. Eapha took her past the alcove Three-ninety-one had gone into and down to the far end of the room, passing more distracted battlers watching a trio of women dance. To her horror, Lizzy counted fifteen of the creatures.
“How many are there?”
“Battlers? Hundreds. You saw the numbers on their chests. I think the highest number I ever saw was seven hundred and two.”
“And how many women?”
“Lots. We have about a hundred in here, and there are two or three other harems I’ve never been in. The battlers are only allowed in one specific harem so that there are enough to go around. They share us, but they don’t much like it.”
“So I might not have to sleep with any of them, if there are a hundred of us to pick from.” Lizzy sagged in relief.
Eapha looked at her sympathetically. “Don’t get your hopes up. The average is five women a visit. I’ve even seen a few who’ll cycle through twenty or more.” Lizzy felt ill again.
“Here we are.” Eapha opened a normal-looking door at the back of the chamber and led Lizzy into a spartan room lined with bunk beds stacked three high. There were at least fifty. “The guards check that no one is hiding in here, but the battlers usually stay out. This is where we sleep, though if someone isn’t outside all the time, the battlers come looking for us. There aren’t enough bunks for all of us at one time anyway. Why don’t you try and get some sleep?”
Lizzy headed for one of the unoccupied beds, shaking with nervous exhaustion. She didn’t even manage to say thank you before she crawled in, pulling the scratchy blanket up around her and putting her head on the pillow. She was asleep in seconds.
Eapha shook her head and headed back out. She knew how Lizzy felt. It wasn’t so long since she’d been the terrified newcomer. She’d got over it soon enough, though. Surely the new girl would be the same.
Chapter Ten
Sylph Valley had observed the Harvest Festival since the town was established. The first few celebrations were sparse, the harvests small. The Community wasn’t starving then, not quite, but everyone’s belt was tight. Then the harvests became good, and the dancing and celebrating went on long into the night. Lizzy loved each and every festival as much as she was able. As the oldest, she had to take care of her sisters, staying home to care for them in the evening while other girls went to the late-night dance.
At sixteen, she was horrified to discover her parents’ expectations hadn’t changed. “That’s not fair!” she wailed at the breakfast table, trying to show in her eyes the torment through which they were putting her. It didn’t help. Her father sipped his cofi, looking unimpressed, while her mother regarded her with annoyance.
“Life isn’t fair,” was Betha’s response. “It’s your job to take care of the little ones.”
“Yeah,” Cara added. Her father tapped her on the head and she went back to drinking her milk.
Lizzy ignored her sister. “What about after they go to bed? That’s when the dance starts. I want to go to the dance.”
“I’m not letting you go on your own to a dance where there are boys.”
Lizzy stared in desperation at her mother. It was the best dance of the year, and everyone her age went. To not go would be horrific.
“Maybe I can chaperon her,” Leon suggested. When his wife shot him a look, he shrugged.
Such a solution was worse than horrific. No one would pay any attention to her with her father there! Lizzy looked at the chair next to her, where Ril sat, the one-year-old Mia in his lap. He was patiently feeding her some mashed turnips, ignoring the family conversation.
Impulsively, Lizzy threw her arms around his neck and he flinched, nearly dropping both the spoon and the baby. “Ril can take me!” she begged. “He’ll protect me.” She pressed her cheek against his, her arms tightening around his neck. He smelled like the wind in tall grass. “Please, Ril,” she whispered, and he shivered. The feel of it made her heart start to pound. He was very warm, she realized. He also seemed to have stopped breathing.
“What do you say, Ril?” Leon asked.
The battler hesitated.
“Please,” Lizzy begged again, pressing herself against him as she tightened the hug. “Please!”
“Okay,” he mumbled.
“Get off the poor man,” her mother snapped. “You’ll smother him.”
Lizzy let go of the sylph, beaming at him, a flush on her face. Ril in turn gazed back, seemingly uncertain, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because of her that his eyes were so wide.
Ril had been her father’s battler for longer than Lizzy was alive. For most of that time he’d been a bird, communicating with her by spelling out words on a set of blocks. She’d lost those blocks when they left Eferem’s capital, along with all of her toys, but she hadn’t noticed in the wonder of seeing Ril as a man. She’d loved him as a bird. She’d loved him even more as a human, with all the passion of her twelve-year-old heart. He hadn’t returned that love, though. He did cherish her, she knew, but he cherished Cara, Nali, Ralad, and Mia, too. When she was thirteen, he’d broken her heart completely. By sixteen, she was over him.
Yet when she went with him to the dance, she in her best dress and Ril in his blue and gold uniform, she wondered if some of that passion was coming back. At sixteen she knew she was too old for silly crushes, but it felt good to pretend she’d come with him. So she hung on his arm, giggling and waving at her friends and dragging the battler wherever she went. Ril let her, saying nothing as they headed around the tables set up in the harvested field, Lizzy laughing, tasting the food, and smiling tauntingly at the boys. She had no idea how he felt about any of it, and didn’t ask.
The battler on her arm, she discovered, brought her more attention from the boys than she ever would have received on her own. Pumped up on sugared punch and youthful hormones, they challenged the battler by talking to Lizzy, pretending he didn’t frighten them at all. That excited her even more.
“Don’t you scare them off,” Lizzy warned Ril, watching as a group of boys sauntered toward her, Trel Mils and Justin Porter among them. They were both a year older. The attention made her heart pound.
Ril sighed. “Leon doesn’t want you to do anything.”
“Did he order you to stop me?” she snapped. “He didn’t, did he?” Her father never gave Ril orders. “Just because you don’t like girls doesn’t mean no one else does.”
“Lizzy…”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” she assured him. “I just want to have some fun. And don’t you dare tell Father!”
Ril didn’t answer.
The boys came up then, and she forgot him along with her long-ago crush. Giggling, she let Trel and Justin bring her a glass of punch and some snacks, reveling in the envy of the other girls as much as in the direct attention. She was a pretty girl, she knew that, and for once she wasn’t saddled with three little sisters who liked to cause her trouble. When the band started to play—enthusiastically if not well—she let herself be led again and again out onto the patch of earth they were using as their dance floor. It seemed all of the boys wanted to take turns.
Ril stood on the sidelines, watching without expression…which bothered her, oddly, even while she had what was surely the best time of her life. He was a battler—an asexual, broken one as well. He’d rejected her! No, he’d done less than that. He’d ignored her until she gave up hope. Why did she feel guilty?
Almost, Lizzy heard his voice in her mind. He seemed to be telling her that the boys only wanted to dance with her to show bravado. They wanted to tell their friends that they’d danced with her despite her guardian—but sh
e rejected this furiously. The boys liked her. She glared at Ril and turned her back on him, turning her attention on the boy with whom she was currently dancing.
Justin Porter seemed almost afraid of his hand on her hip as he led her stumblingly through the steps of the dance. He was tall and skinny, his Adam’s apple jiggling up and down. He had acne on his face, and his hair needed to be cut. His shirtsleeves were also too short. Lizzy regarded him seriously, appraising. He was someone she knew only a little bit, but he’d always been nice, and he was older. For her, older was better. He wasn’t as bloody old as Ril, though, who had no idea how many centuries he’d been alive.
The battler was still watching her, she knew, disapproving. On impulse, Lizzy lifted onto her toes and pressed her lips to Justin’s.
It was her first kiss. Justin’s mouth was wet, his lips thin, and he started in shock at the touch. Physically, it felt a little like kissing a slab of warm meat, but the moment she acted, she heard shouts and clapping. Everyone had seen and was cheering. Lizzy flushed red.
An instant later, Ril had her by the arm. He snarled at Justin, who barely even realized the battler was there. The boy just stared at Lizzy with a look of sudden love on his face. Then her father’s battler yanked Lizzy off the dance floor, dragging her despite her protests through the crowd and away.
“Stop it!” Lizzy shouted as he hauled her through a dark and barren cornfield back toward town. “Let me go!”
Ril did so, turning to eye her in the darkness. She could barely see his face, but she could feel his anger.
“What’s wrong with you?” she yelled.
“What’s wrong with you?” he retorted. “I could feel those boys. All they wanted was to show how brave they were, dancing with the battler’s girl.” He pointed at her. “They didn’t love you!”
Her cheeks burned, and she was glad he couldn’t see them in the darkness. “Maybe I don’t care! Did you think of that?”
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