Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“Acknowledged,” said a pleasant masculine voice, not quite as deep as my master’s but with the same kind of cultured inflection. “Welcome to Gravamir House, Chalondra.”
The voice had seemed to come from everywhere, so I hadn’t known where to look as I answered, “Thank you?” and I found myself looking at my mistress. I had realized that I hadn’t had permission to look her in the face, and I had felt the heat rush to my cheeks, but she had smiled and spoken gently.
“Let’s get those cuffs off you. House, please have luncheon waiting for us in the concubines’ dining room. Soup and salad.”
“Certainly, Mistress Franla,” the voice had replied.
We had ascended in something she had called an elevator, that had seemed to me like a magic flying cabinet from a fairytale. Somehow Mistress Franla had put me at my ease to such an extent that when she had shown me my bare, tiny room—my cell, she had called it—I had felt grateful to know I had a place to sleep. She had shown me the big bathroom, and I had breathed a whimpering sigh of contentment to be able to relieve myself on a toilet, even if she had stood watching as I sat there.
And when we had reached the little dining room, there on the table we had found two places set, and most wondrous of all a cart that moved on its own, with a metal arm that raised the covers from the plates to reveal our food.
I had forgotten, somehow, that I had no clothes on. Mistress Franla hadn’t spoken much during lunch, and I had of course concentrated nearly all my attention on my food, since I hadn’t eaten in what felt like years.
And when she had led me to this room, the training room, with the chair that looked like an examination chair in the doctor’s office at home in my village on Kamnos, I had gotten up into it when she had told me to. I hadn’t even wondered what purpose such a piece of furniture might have in a room dedicated to training young women.
I didn’t even wonder, I thought as the dread filled my belly, because I knew. I had let my mistress’ hands guide first one knee and then the other into the stirrups, spreading me wide and making all of me visible to her knowing eyes. I had managed to fool myself into thinking she would make it all easy for me—that I’d had the incredible, unexpected good fortune to have been sold to a nobleman who meant to do nothing but give me a good home, where the house itself fed me, and a kind woman taught me about my new life in the empire. She would take a look at my body, to make sure I was healthy.
But at the back of my mind, I had remembered everything: how could I not have? And yet Mistress Franla had put me at my ease, had made me feel I could relax, that I had come into her care and she would watch over me.
Nor, I realized as I looked up into her eyes while she fastened the strap above my left knee, did that seem to represent anything other than the truth, even now. My mistress meant to take care of me. The devoted attention she would pay to my training, however, would represent her service not to me but to my master.
Much too late, I started to try to get out of the chair.
“No, Wetquim,” Mistress Franla said, her voice betraying no trace of the gentleness it had seemed to hold only a few moments ago. She put her left hand on my chest, and with startling force she pinned me there while she deftly secured a leather belt around my waist, manipulating the buckle with one hand as if she had done this same terrifying thing to thousands of young women.
I flailed with my arms, even struck her shoulder, but it became terribly clear that my mistress had great skill in “caring for” the concubines she trained: with what seemed utter ease, she plucked each wrist out of the air and secured it in one of the leather cuffs that I felt certain hadn’t even been there an instant ago.
Mistress Franla stepped back and regarded me from a meter away. I had frozen for a moment, once she had gotten all the restraints into place, understanding that I could not get free from the chair. That acknowledgment of defeat and the possibility it presented of obedience and acquiescence flew away when I saw the look in the older woman’s eyes. It certainly didn’t look exactly like the expression of cruel satisfaction I remembered from Agent Delvik’s face, but it bore enough of a resemblance to trigger my flight reflex with irresistible urgency.