by Sharon Green
By the time they actually reached the gates and the guards were up to them, Elissia found that they didn’t even rate a glance. The guards gestured them through the gate with heavy impatience, all their attention on the riders who were in line behind the buggy. She used the reins to urge the horses ahead and away from the crowded gate area, at the same time glancing at the savage. He sat with a crumpled lace handkerchief in his hand which he tried to fan himself with, looking as though he were about to faint. It wasn’t likely that he was going to faint, but Elissia decided to make sure.
“Are you all right?” she asked in the lowest tone possible in the midst of all the noise of the city. “Do you want me to pull over somewhere where the air might be easier to breathe?”
“I’m not having trouble breathing, I’m signaling,” was the equally low answer. “Do you see that rider up ahead, the one on the pinto? Since he looks like he’s about to start choking, he must have finally recognized me. He’ll lead us to where our new house is.”
“Oh, yes, I see him,” Elissia said, feeling foolish for having been concerned. “I’m supposed to follow him without making it look as if I’m following him, I take it?”
The savage’s nod was clear, so Elissia flicked the reins to make the horses move a bit faster. The man on the pinto had moved to the side street on the right between him and them and had turned into it, so Elissia did the same while looking around as though trying to follow memorized directions. She’d visited Ramsond a number of times, but never alone and only knew the area around the palace.
Just inside the gate had been an area of warehouses, and now they followed their guide past more of the same until houses began to replace storage structures. People in the streets either glanced at them and their buggy or ignored them entirely, except for the beggars. That group tried to come up with hands outstretched, so Elissia just pretended they weren’t there. People like the ones she and the savage were pretending to be wouldn’t have had the extra copper to give handouts, and that seemed finally to become clear. The beggars stopped pushing forward, and soon there were fewer of them to be seen.
The neighborhood they were led to at last was far from being upscale, but at least it wasn’t filthy or falling down. The man on the pinto, who had been looking straight ahead the entire time, now stared at a blue house on the left as he passed it slowly. Once it was past easy seeing he turned his head away from it, and then he was moving a good deal faster than he’d been doing.
“Pull up to that blue house on the left,” the savage directed her suddenly in a murmur. “That has to be the one that’s ours, and you’ll need to carry our luggage up the steps and inside. Then you’ll come back out and stable our horses and buggy half a block back, in that public stable we passed.”
Elissia nodded and directed the horses over to the curb, then she sat for a moment to study “their” house. It was a narrow two-story structure whose blue paint was rather faded and beginning to peel, and it stood awfully close to the houses on either side. A small stretch of dying grass in front of it was probably supposed to be a lawn, and the wooden steps leading up to the tiny porch and front door looked splintery rather than smooth.
“Home at last,” the savage said in his “woman’s” voice, adding a very obvious sigh. “Lodris, dear, get our luggage from the back while I see about unlocking the door. Your father sent me this key, and if it’s the right house it should work.”
The savage had produced a key from the green cloth “handbag” he’d taken from his grip before getting into the buggy, and then he began the process of getting out. Elissia wondered if she was supposed to help him, then dismissed the idea as she tied off the reins and also got out. If a “woman” the savage’s size needed a “boy” of her size to do any catching in case of an accidental fall, she’d end up squashed flat. Better to just see to the luggage and forget about being a gentleman.
Her grip felt heavier than her saddlebags had been, and the savage’s grip was even worse. Elissia tried not to show her struggle to carry them both as she followed the savage up the steps, but the savage moved slowly with his skirts held up and away from the splinters. For that reason she had to rest the grips on a step before moving them higher to the next one, but eventually they were on the tiny porch and the savage was fitting the key into the door. A moment later the door swung wide, and she was able to drag the grips the final few steps into what seemed to be a miniature sitting room.
“Thank you, dear,” the savage said in that mellow voice, making no effort to keep it down. “Now take the buggy and get the horses stabled.”
Elissia wiped the sweat from her face before accepting the silver coin the savage held out, and then she went back to the buggy. Being a “boy” was proving to be something of a revelation, and one she didn’t much care for. She liked it better when it was someone else doing the carrying and caring for the horses, preferably someone male. For people who were useless, women seemed to have the better position in life
The man in the stable accepted her silver and then led the horses away to where the buggy would be put, so Elissia was able to walk back to the blue house. The front door was closed but not locked, and after letting herself in she stopped to take a better look around. The tiny sitting room had frayed and dusty furniture standing in it, and not even much of that. Faded drapes that had been cheap when new still hung closed over the windows, and that was something of a surprise. The air in the house was musty and stale, and could have used freshening.
“I’m back here, dear,” the savage’s voice called from the rear of the house. “If you’ll come through the hall, I’ll show you where your room is.”
Her “room.” Elissia sighed as she walked through the arched opening into the narrow corridor that had to be the hall. Having a single room to live in was acceptable in a cabin in the woods, but a house in the city shouldn’t have provided almost as little. It was difficult to understand how people lived like that all the time, rather than only for a short while during an emergency. Elissia wouldn’t have been able to stand it, not for any real length of time
The savage made the narrow corridor even smaller by standing at the end of it. When Elissia got close enough, he held up a cautioning hand.
“I had to open the windows in the kitchen, so watch what you say,” he told her in a very soft voice.
“Sound carries easily from one of these houses to the next, and we don’t need to have everyone knowing what we’re in the middle of. Lunch has been left for us, so let’s go eat it.”
“Lunch that doesn’t have to be cooked,” Elissia said just as softly with a nod. “Yes, that would make people suspicious. If anyone had come in with us and seen it, we would have had something of a hard time explaining it away. Are your people afraid you’ll starve if they don’t constantly provide your meals?”
“It’s one of those things a king’s followers feel they have to do for him,” the savage answered, now looking somewhat annoyed. “And if anyone else had come in here with us, the game would have probably been lost even before that.”
“If you say so,” Elissia conceded, actually conceding nothing – which the savage noticed at once. His jaw tightened as he turned away, but he made no effort to speak as he led the way into the “kitchen.”
The room Elissia found herself in was only a bit larger than the front room of the cabins in the woods. On the right it had an unlit hearth, dirty pots and pans hanging on the wall near the hearth, and a number of low, closed cabinets lined up along the floor. To the left was a table and chairs almost as crude as the ones in the cabin had been, and they, too, had seen better days. A closed door stood in the wall straight ahead, and behind the table and chairs to the left were two dirty but opened windows. The air coming in through them wasn’t particularly fresh, but it was better than what the front room – and probably the kitchen itself - had offered.
The savage smoothed his skirts before sitting in one of the chairs, but Elissia just sat down and reached for the skin stand
ing next to the wrapped package of whatever they’d been given for lunch. The skin contained the tea she’d been hoping for, so she took a good long drink before replacing it in the center of the table. Carrying luggage and taking care of horses was thirsty work.
“So what are we going to be doing next?” Elissia asked in a murmur as the savage opened the package of bread and cheese and meat and began to give her some. “And what’s become of the father and sister you told me I had?”
“Your father and sister are currently hanging upstairs in two of the bedchambers,” the savage replied in the same murmur. “Your father consists of a set of cheap, badly cut clothes for a rather heavy man, along with graying hair and a thick, graying beard. Your sister is a worn dress and shawl and crudely cobbled shoes, and since she’s your twin the items ought to fit you perfectly. The two will be going out tomorrow, just to show the neighbors that they really do exist.”
“And between then and now?” Elissia persisted after taking a bite of the cheese. “What will the two current members of the family be doing?”
“After lunch your mother will be going to the neighborhood temple of Kalifar to give her thanks for a safe arrival,” was the answer, muffled by a large bite of meat and cheese together. “While she’s there she may very well learn if anything of interest has come to various peoples’ attention. If not, it will be time to think of one or two ways to make something of interest happen.”
“What will my mother’s son be doing while she’s so well engaged?” Elissia put next, well on the way to being really annoyed. “Sit here and twiddle her thumbs? There’s no reason why my mother has to go to the temple alone, so she won’t be going alone.”
“There’s one reason for her to go alone,” the savage corrected, the words still a murmur but the look in his dark eyes suddenly hard. “Her son hasn’t been showing her anything like the proper respect, a topic which the two of them will discuss once lunch is over.”
“I’m sorry you think I haven’t been giving you the respect you deserve, but we’re beyond that kind of foolishness now,” Elissia pointed out, finding it hard to keep her voice down. “We’ve come here together for only one reason, and it’s more than time we concentrated on that and left the nonsense for another time and place. I’ll be coming with you to the temple, so there’s nothing for us to discuss.”
And with that she gave all her attention to eating, making no effort to look at the savage again. While she ate she thought about the meals served in her father’s palace, but only briefly. The comparison to what she’d been given lately was much too painful to dwell on for long.
Once she’d stuffed down as much as she could, Elissia drank more tea to rid her mouth of the taste of the “meal.” She seemed to be rapidly reaching a point where hunger would be a better choice than eating what was given her. Throwing up could not be considered fun, but that was what might happen if she had to put up with much more of the “delicacies” the savage’s men kept providing. She’d never considered herself picky when it came to food, but that trip was providing insights into more than one area.
“Your possessions are upstairs, so come and see where I’ve put them,” the savage murmured, then rose from the table. As usual he’d finished a number of minutes before she had, so Elissia simply got up and followed him. If she was very lucky, the rest of her “meal” would be gone when she came back down again
The stairs leading to the second story were narrow and creaky, and the savage moved up them carefully, his skirts held high to make certain he didn’t trip on them. When he reached the top he turned left, back toward the rear of the house, and then to the door at the very end of the hall. It opened with a groan of complaint from its hinges, and when Elissia took her turn at entering she found herself surprised.
The two windows in the far wall of the fairly large room stood open, and the musty smell was almost gone. The room contained a decently large bed to the right, a hearth to the left, two plain chairs standing in front of the hearth, and a large wardrobe in the corner to the right of the windows. There was also a small table with a pitcher and basin not far from the door on the left, but Elissia ignored it to walk to the windows. The room might be large when compared to the rest of the house, but Elissia still felt a need for the sight of more open space than the chamber provided.
But looking out the window didn’t do the good she’d hoped it would. The back of the house looked like a copy of the front, with a small amount of dying grass surrounded by a head-high, rickety wooden fence. The same amount of space seemed to be on the far side of the fence, with another house standing beyond it. That house was just as close to the ones to either side of it as the one she stood in was to its neighbors, and four of the six fenced-in areas she could see had small children playing in them. There were also adults talking through openings in some of the fencing, and a muted din drifted up to where she stood. How did they all stand living in each other’s laps?
A big arm suddenly circled her waist and pulled her away from the window, but when she parted her lips to complain about being treated like that the words were interrupted in a shocking way. Cloth wadding of some kind was thrust into her mouth, and her cap was pulled off and tossed away. The next thing she knew she was face down on the bed with the savage straddling her and holding her in place.
“In another minute we’ll be able to have our discussion,” the savage murmured as he unbelievably began to tie her wrists together behind her. “I think you’ll need help in keeping our discussion private, so I’ve given it to you.”
Elissia tried to demand to know what he thought he was doing, but the wadding muffled her words down to nothing but tiny noises. The savage ignored the noises as he finished with tying her wrists, and then she was picked up and carried with him to one of the chairs.
“I noticed that you thought our arrangement was just for when we were in the woods,” he said softly as he draped her over his skirted lap. “It wasn’t, and now you’ll be taught that the hard way. After this, I think you’ll be anxious not to make the same mistake again.”
But we don’t have the time for this! Elissia tried to shout as he began to undo her trousers in order to take them down. And that arrangement was just for the woods!
“It isn’t possible for me to know what you’re trying to say, and in point of fact I’m not interested in knowing,” the savage pointed out as he next reached for her drawers. “There’s no excuse for the way you’ve been behaving, there’s only the punishment you’ve earned. I hope you enjoyed yourself during the time, because now I intend to enjoy myself.”
His hand caressed her now-bare bottom the way it usually did, but the spanking didn’t start right after that as Elissia expected. There was something of a pause, and then she choked as she tried to scream and fight. That device was being put in her again, the device she’d thought she was rid of for good! Struggling proved just as useless as it had in the past, and when the thing was fully inserted the savage chuckled.
“Yes, I do know how much you dislike having that in you,” he murmured, stroking her bottom again. “At least as much as I disliked the way you spoke to me. And please remind me to thank you for bringing along a plain wooden hairbrush. A decorated one just wouldn’t have been the same.”
Elissia was startled by that comment, and tried to turn her head to see what he was talking about. When she did she noticed a movement across the room, which turned out to be her reflection and the savage’s in a long mirror in its stand beside the wardrobe. She could see the two of them clearly, and what she saw in the savage’s hand made her heart pound harder. He held her hairbrush, just as though he really meant to use it on her –
Elissia tried to howl at the first stroke of that brush on her bottom, but the wadding muffled the sound to a tiny grunt. The wood of the brush was hard, and what it made the device do to her was worse than anything the savage’s hand had ever achieved. The second smack was just as bad, but the third, unbelievably, was worse. And she could see her
self being spanked in the mirror as well as feel the strokes as they landed, which made the entire episode completely unbearable!
But bear it she did, because she was given no other choice. The savage kept spanking her with that hairbrush, and in no time at all the tears flowed freely out of her eyes. She would have begged him to stop if she could have, and that was probably one of the reasons she was gagged. The savage didn’t want his enjoyment interrupted, not until he was completely satisfied.
The mirror showed Elissia a flaming red bottom before that satisfaction came to him, and she couldn’t control the writhing of her body. He’d kept spanking, spanking, spanking, until she knew it would be forever before she was able to sit down again, and on top of that she also wanted the savage desperately. It would be really painful when he finally got around to using her, but Elissia couldn’t make herself care. Even that hairbrushing was a small price to pay for having him again, or at least not too large a price.
“I think that will do it for the moment,” the savage finally said, his voice now sounding lighthearted.
“Later will be another matter, of course, when the time comes for you to ask to be spanked. And I have to be going anyway. I have an appointment with the god Kalifar at his temple, not to mention a few people as well. You will be good while I’m gone, won’t you?”
Elissia couldn’t believe he’d said what he had even when he stood and carried her to the bed. He put her face down, checked the leather he’d tied her wrists with, then patted her aching bottom before leaving the room. When she heard the door being closed, it was no longer possible to think he was only teasing her. He really was leaving without making any attempt to use her.