by Anthology
Pimi loosed the scream in her throat.
Duurir pushed the door back hard against the raider. The raider stepped aside easily. He raised his sword and swung it at Duurir.
Pimi screamed again, covering her eyes before the sword connected, but she heard the meaty slap of the metal as it struck Duurir.
He grunted. A heavy thud followed.
Pimi jerked her hands away from her eyes. Two strides had the man at her side. He grabbed her by the throat, forcing her to look at him.
Nodding once, he lifted his sword again and brought the pommel down on her head.
The Abarine raiders lived in a series of adobe houses built on the side of a cliff. The land on this side of the mountains was dry and barren compared to the tropical coastline of Repp-Virja.
Pimi waited in a small sandstone alcove off a large hallway, deep under the mountain. A hard muzzle bound her jaws shut and something hard and round filled her mouth. Her headscarf had been lost on the mad ride over the mountains to Abar and her naked scalp almost did more to cow her than the manacle that shackled her to the replete's bench. She could forget the manacles if she stayed still, but the constant play of air across her bare skin touched on her vulnerability with every caress.
She had no idea what had happened to the other people at House Imarja. Though the opening of the unadorned alcove was unobstructed, Pimi could see only the wall opposite her. She could not call to see if others were in earshot, because of the muzzle that bound her mouth.
Wheels squeaked down the hall for longer than winter's Deep Night before a vast replete was wheeled past the opening to her alcove. He sagged against his belly, drooling. His fingerless hands drummed a random tattoo against the tight skin of his crop. Pimi could not stop staring at the empty sockets where his eyes had been. The cart stopped in front of her alcove.
If not for the muzzle Pimi would have emptied herself in terror.
The men and woman accompanying the replete all wore the leather garments that the raiders had worn, though without the spiraling metal inlays of her captor. Underneath the leather, they belled outward in a modest crop, but the weight was worn high, trussed up by their criss-crossing sword belts.
The men went to the side of the cart and unrolled a long hose while the woman approached Pimi. "Now then, I am Maja, Keeper of the repletes. You're frightened, poor chickling, I know. But once we know you are trustworthy you won't have to wear this nasty thing." She stroked Pimi's cheek above the hard line of the muzzle.
Gently, as if Pimi were a varamid chick, Maja unhooked the front of the muzzle. A flow of cool air flowed through the hard thing in Pimi's mouth and she realized that it was a tube. Maja took the long hose from one of the men. On the end, it had a notched collar a hand's span from the tip. She threaded it into Pimi's mouth and twisted, locking the collar to the front of Pimi's muzzle.
"Now then, chickling. Disgorge for me, hmm?"
Pimi's muscles, so ready to vomit before, tightened in fear and locked her closed.
Maja stepped to the side so that Pimi had a clear view of the blind replete. "Do not make me ask you twice or you'll wind up like Blind Irvapp. You'll find me more patient than others, because don't I know how scared you are, hmm? But Councilor Hadan won't brook disobedience. You understand me, chickling, hmm?"
Looking at the mindless fluttering of the vast replete's hands, Pimi opened herself and disgorged in a rush. The hose leaped and throbbed in time with the surges from her crop, flowing down the hose and into the replete, until she was empty.
"There's my sweet chickling." Maja unhooked the hose and opened a jar. She poured three capsules into her hand. Gently, she placed them in Pimi's mouth and connected a different hose. "Make certain these go into your crop, or it will go worse for you. These'll help you stretch, but only if they're in the right place and we've not much time to ready you for Deep Harvest. You'll feel some discomfort, but that is a sign of growth, understand me? Growth is good."
She put the tube deep in Pimi's mouth. "I begin now." Maja twisted the spigot.
Cold vinegar flooded down Pimi's throat. Before she could get the sphincter to her crop open, her cheeks bulged from the influx. No gentle flow here, only the frantic rushing of sour liquid as it pushed into her crop. The cold weight dragged her crop down before it began pushing it out. Unlike the warm thick nectar a replete would have given her, this chilled her as it eddied inside her belly.
When she had been young, she had once swallowed glass after glass of water so that she could play bride with her best friend. Then it had taken only eight glasses to fill her. How many now passed her lips?
Something deep inside shifted and her belly violently expanded. Like three tiny explosions, waves of pressure suddenly pushed against the walls of her skin forcing her to five-day belly.
Maja turned off the spigot, but the pressure did not cease. Pimi's skin tingled and burned as it strained to accommodate the fluid. She arched her back, trying to create more space within her body. As she moved, the vinegar sloshed inside as if she were still half empty.
"That's gas from the capsules keeping you tight, chickling. If you show me that you're a sweet girl, then maybe you won't need to wear this and wouldn't that be nice, hmm?"
Nice? Pimi would do anything to get the hard tube out of her mouth and to stop the pain in her belly.
Maja unhooked the hose and put the front back on the mask, sealing Pimi's mouth closed. She stepped back and studied Pimi. "I can see why Councilor Hadan plucked you for his seraglio... He likes those he can feed from and are pretty enough to fuck."
Pimi clenched her jaw under the muzzle. He'd killed Duurir. She would do whatever it took to get to him and if that meant the seraglio, well, that would not be so different from a social season in Arrop-Yraaja.
Filtering through the screened chambers of the seraglio, giggles and murmured conversations played around Pimi as she lay on her side and let Maja rub salve on her distended crop. The cool gel eased the pricking of the constant stretching, though she really only noticed it in the span after a fresh dosing of soda capsules. The initial rush of gas always hurt, but not so much as that first time. And if she contained it, she grew. Growth meant she was one step closer to Hadan.
"Excited that harvest is coming in, chickling?" Maja peaked over the curve of Pimi's belly, only the top of her head visible from where she knelt.
"I'm sorry I am not bigger." The three months since the raid had only given Pimi time to gain a fourteen-day belly and most of the other girls still dwarfed her. Only the three new girls carried stretching fluid instead of nectar, and Pimi counted her blessings that she was, at least, the largest of them. Keria, a servant girl captured in the same raid as Pimi, was always belching to relieve pressure. These Repp-Virja girls had never aspired to a bride belly like Pimi had. Hadn't they noticed that the larger girls weren't required to wear manacles? "Do you think Councilor Hadan will ever call for me?"
"Don't you worry your pretty head. We'll make sure you've got a right tasty mix in your crop so as no one notices your size."
Pimi nodded, feeling embarrassment steal the color from her scalp.
"Speaking of mix, we had to drain blind Irvapp because one of you lot had dairy mixed into your crop."
Pimi paled further, but Maja was capping the jar of salve and did not notice. "Did he get sour crop?"
"Worst case we've had in years. My fault of course. I should have checked to see what the new repletes were carrying. But who would have mixed like that in the first place?"
Pushing against the replete couch, Pimi levered herself into a sitting position. "I hardly know."
With Maja's help, Pimi stood and leaned way back to balance her belly. With slow, mincing steps, she felt her way across the floor into the main room of the seraglio. Amid the pillowed recesses of the main room, the other girls reclined on their couches. Deep under the mountain, the cool rounded chambers reminded her of home. Rich reds and pollen yellows enhanced every hanging cloth. Her own tuni
c had a hem densely embroidered with fine gold thread. Should Ero see her, she would think Pimi very fine indeed.
Maja helped Pimi settle on her couch and slid the shackle around her wrist. It was all but unnoticeable among the bangles that graced her arm.
Leaving Pimi, Maja went to one of larger repletes and pressed her hand deep into the soft bell of Dama's crop. "I'm glad to see you've got space."
"Oh, you know Hadan-min. He was hungry both ways when he called for me." She preened, moistening the skin around her mouth. "Said he had to empty me to make space for his manhood."
Laughter filled the seraglio.
Dama lifted her arm over her head and a new bangle rolled back on her forearm, flashing sparks of red light against her fine green skin. No shackle competed with it. "I should say I pleased him on both counts."
When the laughter faded, Maja said, "Well and good, but you've pleased me as well. Harvest is supposed to be a large one this year. We'll need that space."
Not until they reached the Deep Yard, did Maja have the new girls empty themselves. "No point in wasting a moment of stretch, hmm?"
Pimi flushed with water three times before Maja was satisfied that no soda remained in her crop. When she'd finished her last disgorgement, Pimi looked down to her feet. How long had it been since she had seen them? The long grasping toes seemed as if they belonged to someone else. Pimi wiggled each in turn, delighted when they responded. She bent at the waist to touch her feet. The muscles in her back protested before she came near them, but she was able to feel her calves and shins. Across her thighs lay the flaccid skin of her crop, waiting for the harvest.
At the deep end of the yard, near the stables, a small band of pipe and string players tuned their instruments. Snatches of unfamiliar folk tunes skirted around the edges of conversation.
The room filled with other people. Some replete, some Abarine workers, but all ready for the harvesters to bring in the baskets of dayfruit. Sweet, nutritious and delicate, it would rot if not consumed within a day of picking.
The other new repletes were easy to spot, because they too had folds of empty skin hanging across their laps. The ones from the replete caves wore heavy chains. She owed Maja a great debt for picking her for the seraglio. One more day in the replete caves and her face would have been like theirs, slack and dull from isolation in the sandstone alcoves. One man held his face, rocking, as if the sunlight frightened him. Another woman still wore a muzzle---
The woman was Pimi's mother. Dressed in simple muslin, with naked head and shrunken crop she was almost unrecognizable. She stared at nothing, listless save for the tapping of one hand. Her other hand was wrapped in a bandage; only two fingers emerged from the gauze.
Pimi turned and vomited. Great dry heaves shook her shoulders, leaving the sickness still deep in her body. Behind her, Maja walked down the line of girls from the seraglio and put a hand on Pimi's back. "Are you ill?"
Pimi wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "No. Not at all, I only wanted to be certain that I was truly empty."
"Such a good girl." Maja stroked Pimi's scalp.
Behind her mother's row of repletes, guards paced, checking shackles and muzzle straps. What had her mother done to merit such treatment? A guard connected a web of hoses to each of these repletes' muzzles. The hoses led back to a pulping machine, its coarse iron gears and blades standing in sharp contrast to the civilized world she had left behind.
The band started to play a bouncing tune that begged its listeners to dance. A slender boy, too young to have more than a child's belly, stepped forward on the stage and raised a megaphone to his lips.
When the irarad saw her mate
With a sigh and a hiss she knew,
Oh---she knew that she'd be late.
And when fate showed me your sweet face
With a sigh and a hiss I knew,
Oh---I knew I'd found my place.
As soon as they had finished with harvest, Pimi would sneak out of the seraglio and find her mother. It could not be so hard. She knew where the isolated alcoves were. Likely, her mother had been next to her and she had never known. Pimi craned her neck, looking around the yard. Perhaps Ero was here too.
Though she saw one man that she thought she recognized as a servant from House Imarja, she did not see any of her family besides her mother.
What if the raiders had dealt with them as they had dealt with Duurir? She had put him out of her mind as a way to survive in this place, but now the thought of him filled her like bittersweet nectar. Her pores pulsed with anguish that she had not known him longer, that one so young and fair should have perished.
The first of the laborers came in with carts of dayfruit. Straining under the load, they deposited baskets in front of each waiting replete. The sweet fruit sent a heady fragrance into the air, of musk and honey, with the warm notes of spice tangled in the midst. Pimi took one in her hand, warm from the sun.
As she bit into it, the juice spurted down her throat. Across the room, a guard dumped a basket into the pulping machine and turned the crank. The pulp and fluid coursed down the hoses to her mother and the other muzzled repletes.
Pimi swallowed. The dayfruit slid down her throat and landed heavily in her crop. Mechanically, she ate another piece, transfixed by the sight of her mother, who swallowed without any seeming awareness of her surroundings.
The bulge in her mother's crop grew faster than Pimi could keep pace. She picked up fruit and shoved it into her mouth, barely taking time to chew. Beside her, Keria picked at the fruit daintily, her crop barely showing any growth.
"Are you afraid they will run out of food, Pimi?" Hissing, Keria looked at her crop. "I'd always wondered why you were so anxious to distort yourself like that. Your family must have been starving all the time."
Shocked, Pimi stopped with a dayfruit halfway to her mouth. "What do you mean?"
"Back in Repp-Virja, it was all we could talk about in the kitchens. As if any of us would demean ourselves to carry food around if we could afford not to. And then your family shows up, pretending to be from a Dynasty House across the sea, but it's clearer than the sky in Deep Summer that you aren't. Carrying great big loads like you're thinking you'll never see another meal."
Keria had never spoken to her this way; their couches were on opposite sides of the room to keep the new girls mixed in with the established repletes.
Maja came down the line, bearing a tray of spices. "Here chicklings, here are some fine things to add special flavor to your nectar."
Covering the gold tray, an embroidered cloth held long seedpods, pale grey-green dried leaves, tiny round seeds and bundles of purple blossoms. She glanced at the uneaten dayfruit Pimi still held. "What's the matter, chickling? Is there a borer in your dayfruit?"
Pimi opened her mouth to answer, but words did not come.
"Pimi spotted the Matriarch of her house." Keria popped a dayfruit in her mouth.
Maja showed her tongue to Pimi. "Matriarch? Don't try to tell me that you are from a Deep House. We never harvest nobles, so I'll not believe that, Pimi."
"But she is. Or they claimed they were." Keria patted her belly, which undulated under her touch. "All of them came to a feast at House Imarji, showing their disdain and repleteful like they were better than Matriarch Imji just because they came from the old country. I was serving. I saw them and they were all bigger than any of us."
"You are from Arropp-Yraarja?"
Pimi inclined her head in agreement, but Keria answered for her. "The lot of them."
"And your matriarch is here?"
"Over there." Keria pointed at Pimi's mother.
Maja almost dropped her tray. "That's your matriarch?"
Pimi nodded and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see or hear anything else.
"Ah, poor thing. I'd not have had you discover her like this." Maja brought the tray over to Pimi. "Still and all, you're a sweet girl. You won't give me cause to doubt you, not like her. Now swallow the
se down and show me I'm right to be proud of you."
Her gorge rose in her throat, but Pimi swallowed it down. If she had any hope of seeing her mother she had to stay in Maja's good graces. Tilting her head back, she let Maja place the spices in her mouth.
Chewing each took an eternity, though the band played only one song. Pimi continued to eat dayfruit, no longer tasting it. Maja returned to palpate her belly after Pimi had finished the first basket, mixing the spices with the dayfruit.
Except for the muzzled repletes, the sense of celebration was unbroken. No one, save Pimi and the guards, seemed to notice them. Only the music reached into their corner, as Pimi's mother tapped her hands in time with it.
After her third basket of fruit, Pimi shifted to a reclining position to let her crop hang off the couch and rest on the ground. It was harder to watch her mother from this position but between swallows she stole peeks across the yard.
Salina topped off while Pimi was on her fourth basket. When Maja came to lead Salina back to the seraglio, the girl staggered as she stood. Despair bleached her face of color. She waddled without a hint of grace in her movement.
Pimi would not do that. She would show the other girls the graceful sway she had learned from her mother. Maybe, if she could show Maja how much her mother could teach the girls in the seraglio, they would take the muzzle off.
During the seventh basket, Pimi felt herself close to topping off. Her crop was comfortably full and firm to the touch, but without the harsh pressure of the stretching fluid. Her mother was almost twice the size she had been when they had boarded the Tep-Tep steamship to leave home. If Pimi could contrive to leave the Deep Yard at the same time as her mother, she might have a chance to speak to her in the hallways.
Where before she had raced to keep pace with her mother, Pimi slowed down now, trying to delay the moment when she was taken back to the seraglio.
By the eighth basket, Pimi would only eat a piece of dayfruit when Maja looked at her. With each piece she swallowed, she thought that surely she could not hold any more.