Innocent Read online

  ‘Yes, although I would rather not be spanked by hand if it is avoidable.’

  ‘Good, I’ll suggest a cane or quirt. That they will enjoy, and while we have to tell Assivetes and the others of his household, the guests can think it is all genuine, which they will enjoy all the more. We will do well here, you’ll see.’

  Cianna bent, pouring the rich red drink, wine, into the goblet held out by Admiral Assivetes. As before, she was naked, but she and Babalyn had been washed and scented before the meal, by other, older female slaves. As Babalyn had predicted, there had been a touch of jealousy, but the women had seemed wary of her as well. Once fully clean, her hair had been combed out and tied up with a cloth in the gold and dark blue of the Admiral’s household. Slippers had also been provided, again in blue and gold, but nothing more.

  Since then, she and Babalyn had been serving, pouring wine and offering sweetmeats to guests, running minor errands, such as fetching cushions, and bringing fresh supplies from the kitchens. There was also a great deal of fondling, with both the men and the women quite casually stroking the girls’ bodies, also commenting on them, especially Cianna’s skin. It was done in the same casual way she might have petted and praised a dog, making Cianna blush, until she had followed Babalyn’s advice and simply blocked it from her mind.

  Assivetes had approved their plan for the entertainment, and Babalyn had chosen who to flirt with. This was a woman of late middle age, dressed in flowing gown of gold cloth set with jewels. From the first she had seemed interested in Babalyn, tickling her under the chin and making her hold up her breasts for inspection. Babalyn had begun to flirt in response, mildly at first, then more openly, attending to the woman in preference to the others, and kneeling beside her chair to wait for instructions.

  That left Cianna with most of the work, making it easier to cast jealous glances in Babalyn’s direction. Cianna waited her moment, until she was in the little room from which they were serving the drink at the same time as Babalyn. Catching Babalyn’s eye, she nodded, getting a wry smile in return.

  ‘It is enough!’ Cianna spat. ‘I’ll teach you to shirk!’

  She stepped forward, grabbing Babalyn by the ear. Babalyn squeaked, in genuine pain, then again and she was pulled roughly down across Cianna’s lap. They went down on a bench by the door, Babalyn’s plush bottom stuck up in full view of the main room. A man saw, grinning as Cianna twisted Babalyn’s arm tight up. Babalyn squealed, kicking her legs apart to give them a fine view of plump brown sex, and Cianna had started to spank, smacking the fleshy cheeks hard.

  Babalyn was squealing immediately, for real, her chubby brown bottom dancing and wobbling under the punishment. Cianna kept on as the guests came to gather at the door, watching Babalyn punished with open delight, laughing and calling encouragement to Cianna. Soon Babalyn had lost all control, kicking and bucking her bottom up to show off her anus as well as her sex, to the yet greater amusement of the onlookers. The big buttocks began to take on a purple flush, goose pimples rising all over the well smacked surfaces, while Cianna could feel Babalyn’s body shaking. Deciding that the punishment was sufficiently convincing, she delivered a last hard slap to the crest of each cheek, Cianna stopped, rolling Babalyn off her lap to sit down hard on the floor.

  Her mouth wide, and with the first hint of tears in her eyes, Babalyn rose, rubbing at her sore bottom. Throwing Cianna a quick look of genuine admonishment, she scampered over to the woman she had been flirting with, falling to her knees. The woman looked down, smiling.

  ‘Have her beaten, Elite Mistress!’ Babalyn squeaked. ‘Not for what she did to me, but for presumption.’

  ‘Presumption, child?’ the woman laughed. ‘It what way is it presumptuous to spank a slave girl?’

  ‘I mean her presumption in punishing me for showing favour to you, Elite Mistress,’ Babalyn went on.

  ‘Showing favour? To me?’ the woman laughed. ‘Oh you funny little thing! You do as I please, girl, do not forget that, you do not show favour. Assivetes, dearest, I fear you have an arrogant one here.’

  ‘Aprinian,’ Assivetes answered. ‘Much of it has already been beaten out of her, but clearly not all.’

  The woman nodded, then reached down, placing a finger under Babalyn’s chin to tilt it up.

  ‘How many times have you been sold, child?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten,’ Babalyn admitted.

  ‘Ten?’ the woman answered. ‘Then you are lucky still be in a worthy household. Let me explain to you what happens to girls who fail to learn proper respect, and perhaps you will be less conceited in future. They are sold, from place to place, and after a while they gain a reputation. At length it becomes clear that they are of no use whatever to anybody of taste and intelligence, and they start to be sold more cheaply, to lesser establishments. You wouldn’t be lolling in a garden all day in that sort of household, let me assure you. No, you would be hard at work, scrubbing the floor with your ridiculous fat bottom wobbling behind you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Elite Mistress,’ Babalyn answered.

  ‘And then,’ the woman continued, ‘if you still failed to please, you would be sold down, always for less, ever lower, and do you know where you will end up?’

  Babalyn nodded her head, her eyes wide with fright.

  ‘You will end up in the powdermills,’ the woman went on, ‘up to your knees in other peoples excrement by day, and what do you think the male slaves there will do to you? I’ll tell you. They’ll fuck you, they’ll use your mouth, your fat tits, your bottom, all night, every night, at the bottom of a dark, stinking hole. Now are you going to behave?’

  Babalyn nodded frantically.

  ‘Good girl,’ the woman said, straightening up. ‘She is beginning to understand, Assivetes, dearest. I have a special touch with these things. Now the other. I think she should be punished. Why not, after all?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Assivetes agreed. ‘In fact I think the pair of them need a lesson in obedience. Both of you, in here.’

  Cianna went, into the main room where they been serving. A group of men had gathered around the central table. One beckoned to her, grinning and patting the table. She stepped forward and strong hands took her, spreading her out on the table top, legs and arms wide. She was held, hard, as cords were twisted around her wrists and ankles, then tied to the table legs, leaving her spread-eagled, helpless. Looking back, she could see them, grinning and making comments as they inspected her naked sex. She was blushing, and she could feel her tuppenny twitching in anticipation, her bottom hole too. A man noticed, and laughed, pointing. At that the woman Babalyn had been flirting with gave a lewd chuckle and stepped back, pulling a stubby candle from its holder.

  ‘Hold her wide,’ she said, ‘this should do her some good.’

  Cianna could do nothing as they laid hold of her bottom, pulling her cheeks wide to stretch out her anus. A man spat on her, full between her cheeks, and put a finger to her bottom ring, rubbing the spittle in before penetrating her. She gasped as she felt the finger slide up her bottom, then again as it was pulled out, to be replaced by the base of the candle, hurting as it went up, to wedge in her anus. She shut her eyes, her body trembling, waiting for the pain of the wax. It came, a sharp sting on the sensitive flesh of her straining bottom ring, making her cry out. They laughed at her response, and somebody slapped her bottom, sending fresh wax spraying across her cheeks and over her sex. She cried out again, drawing fresh laughter, and more slaps on her bottom and legs.

  ‘Get the fat bottomed Aprinian slut up on this one’s back,’ somebody called.

  ‘Fine,’ another answered, ‘and with a candle in her arsehole too. Let’s see who begs for mercy first!’

  ‘And whip them while the candles burn,’ a third suggested. ‘Hoy, you, fetch quirts’

  Cianna saw the girl he had addressed run from the room, then turned her head at a touch, to find Babalyn crawling up onto the table, assisted by eager hands. Babalyn was laid down across Cianna, who felt
the sweat on her friend’s skin and the shivering of her flesh. Babalyn was lashed in place, whimpering as her hands and feet were tied down, then crying out as a thick candle was pushed up her bottom hole. The slave had returned, handing out quirts, and immediately they began to beat Cianna, Babalyn also, calling out their bets as they struck. The cuts stung, a sharp, biting pain, delivered across her bottom and thighs, as often as not sending a splash of hot wax onto her tortured skin. She held back, her teeth gritted, trying to ignore the pain and also the rising, shameful heat in her sex.

  In no time Babalyn was crying for mercy, begging for them to stop as her flesh twitched and shivered against Cianna’s. Their tormentors took no notice, save for those who had hoped Babalyn would hold out longer to curse and apply fresh, harder blows to the black girl’s quivering buttocks. Still Cianna held herself, shaking her head in her pain, writhing in her bonds, with the burning pain of the wax and agonising snaps of the whip coming again and again.

  Her defiance only drove them to beat her harder, three of them lashing at her bottom and legs. Others took new candles, dripping the hot wax over her buttocks and legs, Babalyn’s too, until both where squirming their sweaty bodies on the table, screaming and gasping. Somebody began to whip Cianna’s sex, smacking the tip of the quirt down, over and over, full onto her clitoris. She screamed, cursing them, but unable to hold herself back, and she was coming, sticking her bottom high in tortured ecstasy.

  ‘Oh do look!’ a woman called. ‘She’s had a climax, how funny!’

  ‘A typical slut!’

  ‘Make the other one come too! Oh they are amusing!’

  Cianna heard Babalyn’s grunt of pain and frustration as the attention was turned to her. She was near exhaustion, her skin wet with sweat, every welt a line of fire on her skin, but all that she could think of was that she’d never begged for mercy, even when they’d whipped her tuppenny. Squeezing her anus, she pushed out the candle, which was quickly snatched away by one of the older slave girls.

  Babalyn had started to come, whimpering and mewling, her flesh squirming on Cianna’s as she was masturbated and whipped at the same time. She had been begging for mercy, pleading with them to stop, only to suddenly cry out in helpless ecstasy as her sex responded, and Cianna knew she too had been brought to climax.

  ‘I shall have the pale one lick me, I think,’ a fat woman in a brilliant green robe announced. ‘If I might, Assivetes darling?’

  ‘Naturally, my dear,’ the Admiral, ‘everybody must enjoy them just as they please. That is, after all, what they’re for.’

  There was a burst of laughter and hands began to pull at Cianna’s bonds, Babalyn’s also. She was dragged from the table, down onto the floor. Immediately she was mounted, some man holding her up under her bottom as he pushed the full length of his erection into her sex. She saw Babalyn fucked, rolled up on her back and held by the ankles, with the man watching as his penis filled her hole. Then the scene had been blotted beneath the fat woman’s robes as a plump thigh was swung over her body. For a moment she saw a huge bottom poised over her head, green within the emerald robe, and then it was in her face, the big, soft buttocks spread wide, the sex on her mouth, her nose up the anus. Helpless, she began to lick.

  They took turns with her, one by one, using her without the slightest thought for her needs. She was fucked repeatedly, in a dozen different positions, buggered again and again, and more than once made to suck cocks that had been up her bottom. They made her drink wine, and some stinging spirit, twice pouring it up her sex before plunging a fat cock into her wet hole. She was made to lick Babalyn, anally, with the onlookers clapping in delight as they watched her tongue wriggle into the fleshy, brown bottom hole.

  Not long after that, Babalyn simply collapsed, with a cock up her bottom and another in her mouth at the time. Both men finished off in her unconcious body, and Cianna was made to lick up the sperm that bubbled and spurted from her friend’s anus, before two of the older slave girls helped her away. From then the orgy began to calm down, until Cianna at last found herself unattended, lying over a stupefied man’s lap with his fingers still up her sex.

  She freed herself, rising unsteadily to her feet. Her head was swimming with drink, and she was sore all over, with sperm coating her face and breasts and dribbling from her tuppenny and bottom ring. Nobody was paying attention to her, the guests spent. Assivetes was still awake, boasting drunkenly of his exploits to the fat woman who had sat on Cianna’s face. The woman who Babalyn had chosen was not, but lay sprawled on a couch, face down, a goblet still clutched in her nerveless fingers. Cianna risked a gentle kick at one slim buttock, just enough to bruise.

  Exhausted, Cianna let herself be led back to part of the house where the slaves slept. It was a single room, illuminated with one smoking candle. She was shown a threadbare blanket, and collapsed onto it immediately, face down for the comfort of her sore bottom. The candle was extinguished and she was left in darkness. They had punished her, and tortured her for their sexual amusement. She had submitted to it, and even come, an act of shameful wantonness, yet it was impossible not to feel some restoration of her hurt pride. She had taken it, all of it, never once begging for mercy, unlike Babalyn.

  To have been defeated by a dozen men and nearly as many women was no disgrace. What mattered was that she was unbroken, not snivelling and whimpering on the floor. It felt good, and she wondered if that was what Sulitea had meant about chains not being important.

  Thinking of Sulitea reminded her of how the woman had threatened Babalyn, with being sent to somewhere called the powdermills. From what Babalyn had said before, it seemed likely to be where the black powder was made. It also seemed to be where the worst girls were sent, the ones who never learnt, the ones who, ultimately, could never be slaves in their own minds. To try and be sent there was what Sulitea would have expected of her, and it also let her keep her pride. She nodded to herself in the darkness, smiling.

  Unfortunately Assivetes proved an indulgent master, content as long as she did more or less what she was told. His own preference lay in watching her, generally tied up, as the fat steward or one of the two male Makean slaves fucked her. When they were done, and she was lying trussed and helpless with sperm dribbling out of one orifice or another, he would put the tip of his erect cock in her mouth, vagina or bottom hole, to finish himself off by hand. It was a technique that gave her little scope for disobedience.

  It was also difficult to know what to do about Babalyn. The two of them had become closer and closer, until they were sleeping together and having sex by choice as often as to entertain guests. This seemed to be taken for granted, and Cianna quickly found herself getting over her embarrassment at public sex, as she had over public nudity. Nor where Babalyn’s fears of jealousy realised, with the other three female slaves all quite happy to go about their domestic chores and with no urge to try and enforce their seniority.

  There was also the possibility of getting the knowledge she wanted directly from Assivetes. Asking him directly was certain to seem strange, yet when there were no guests he was more than happy to boast of his achievements as she and Babalyn knelt at his feet after the evening meal. Most of these involved battle, and the interminable conflict that existed between the Makeans and the Vendjomois on the mainland of Apraya. Eventually she was sure she would find an opening so that she could ask how the black powder was made. Her chance came on the evening of the tenth day, as she listened to his account of the defence of a coastal fort.

  ‘We were nearly out of powder,’ he was saying, ‘ball also, with three of their ships lying off, each with some two hundred men. We might have sunk one as they came in, perhaps, two, but never all three, when I lit on the idea of heating our ball to incandescence…’

  ‘Could you not have made more powder?’ Cianna asked. ‘And used rocks for ball?’

  ‘No,’ Assivetes laughed, ‘ball must fit the mouth of the bombard, almost exactly. Rocks would be likely to jam, and kill us all. As to the
powder, it is not so easily made.’

  ‘It is made from dung, I thought,’ Cianna said, ‘by some process.’

  ‘In part,’ Assivetes answered, ‘but not solely. Yet with the right ingredients it is remarkably simple to make, which is why it is not suitable knowledge for slaves. Not that I think for a moment you would attempt a revolt, little Cianna, yet knowledge spreads. Even at the powdermills each component is kept strictly separate, with the slaves never meeting. The actual mixing is done by citizens. But as I was saying…’

  He went on, describing how he had forced the Vendjomois to retreat with their sails blazing. Cianna had begun to play with her necklace, feeling frustrated, but sure that it would be unwise to press the point. Babalyn returned, with the flagon of wine she had been sent for, the fat steward immediately behind her, bowing unctuously to Assivetes before speaking.

  ‘The Elite Lady Lai-Kasae is here, Elite,’ he announced.

  ‘Indeed? Show her in then,’ Assivetes answered immediately.

  Even as he spoke a woman appeared in the doorway, the one Babalyn had chosen to flirt with. She was in a robe of gold and scarlet, her hair set with jewels, and clearly drunk, resting on the arm of a muscular male slave.

  ‘Lai-Kasae, my dear,’ Assivetes greeted her. ‘What brings you here? Do sit. Babalyn, a fresh goblet, wine for the Elite.’

  Babalyn hurried to obey, Lai-Kasae allowing the male slave to help her down onto a couch.

  ‘I came for a favour,’ she asked, ‘just a little thing, which I’m sure you won’t deny me, dearest.’

  ‘As you know, I can never refuse you,’ Assivetes answered.