Marri's Approach (Brackish Bay) (12 page)

He left the cell. I leaned my head against the walls and pondered. Fortuna? I know a mother's heart. Maybe he doesn't, or maybe he thinks his word will bind her. Either way, I have a feeling she's going to come back.

They brought me breakfast, and I ate, grateful to be a captive with unbound hands for once. I still had cuffs on, but Roy had left them unlinked. I spent the rest of the day listening to the goings on in the town center. There was the hearing of disputes, and I was gratified to know that they were handled as fairly as possible. There were new immigrants to the city, and that was most interesting, to hear their tales of where they were from, and why they would be useful to the city. They were required to demonstrate a skill, and if they had no skill, they were required to take up apprenticeship with one of the trades masters in the outpost.

I noticed more than a few women wearing the same sort of dress Jacqueline had worn, and wondered at the particular style. It was not something I would chose to wear—open at the sides, chest, and leg, belted with chain or leather at the waist. And then I realized all the women wearing it also wore collars of chain or leather around their throats. I called to one, once, when I was bored.

“Slave!” Her step hesitated, and she turned towards me. I cocked my head. “Slave, come here.” She stopped, facing me, and shook her head slowly. “Who do you belong to?”

She lifted her chin. “My master is Jacob. He is the presiding judge of this outpost.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I earned my slavery through my sloth and theft.”

I stood carefully, and then, using all the skill I'd learned while being captive to the flesh traders, I walked in my bound ankles to the bars. She took a step away. I grinned at her.

“Is that so? And did your slavery cure those faults?”

She flushed red. “My faults are not your concern. I have my master to answer to, and his governor, and that is all.”

“Don't you wish, sometimes, that you could be free?” Shut up, Fortuna, I'm busy instigating.

“Of course I do.”

She wasn't young, but she wasn't
that
much older than myself. I could see the discomfort in how she wore the dress, in how she fidgeted with the collar without thinking. Newly a slave, then.

“So what keeps you here? Why do you obey? Why do you yield to punishment, to work not of your choosing?”

“I stay because I must. I would die in the world outside the city.”

I considered her for a moment, the softness on her frame, the way she trembled. I let the cruelest smile I could curl my lips up. “Yes, you would die.”

“So. I must obey.”

“Must you? Would the punishment be so very terrible?” And I watched the gears turning. “Perhaps you could state your case and point out why you should not have to continue to do everything as your master wills. I'm sure you've served penance enough for whatever misdeeds you may have committed.”

She stepped closer, considering my words. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I should talk to him.”

A man I didn't recognize came by then, and his expression was distinctly displeased with the women in front of him. I looked up, all innocence.

“What nonsense is she putting in your head, Candice?” He caught the ring in the front of her collar and forced her face around to his. “Jacob will not appreciate you dawdling between chores. Off with you.”

She scampered away, and I raised a cool eyebrow.

“We were having a most enlightening conversation.”

“I'm sure you were.” He opened the door and came in. I stayed where I was. “Let me check your arms.”

I held them up but out of his reach. He closed the space between us and pressed hard on my still painful cuts. I flinched, but did not cry out, even when tears started in my eyes.

“Your truth?” he said.

“My truth is my own. What do you want from me?”

“I want to know what really happened to William, Amadeus, and Katherine.”

“Let me go free, and I will tell you.”

“No.”

I shrugged as much as I was able in his grip. “Then you'll never know.” It's a dangerous game to play, I
know
, Fortuna.

He stared at me hard for several long minutes, then he set me away from him and slammed the door of my cell as he left. I smirked to myself. What other trouble can I stir up from this space?

It was evening, after supper, after dark, when I was nearly asleep, that Jacqueline came to me. I heard the click of the lock, then felt more than saw her come. I stayed still. Her voice was close to me.

“Devon came to see you, but you did not tell him where they were. I need to know. Please. I'll do anything if you will take me to them.”

A woman after my own heart. “Let me go, and I will find out what happened to them.”

“I can't. I don't have the key to the cuffs.”

“That part doesn't matter. I just need the door to stay open.”

I could feel her rapid heartbeat, her erratic breathing.

“Swear it. Swear on all the gods above and below that you will bring my daughter to me.”

“I swear, on all the gods above and below, that I will bring Katherine to you.”

“Go with god.”

“I go.”

I pushed myself to standing, and walked in the tiny steps permitted by the cuffs to the door. Once there, I didn't hesitate, but kept going, out the cell door, down the hall, and out of the building. I paused just outside the door, wishing I had a longer skirt. I stepped carefully into the back streets until I found laundry still on a line. There I took a skirt, one that covered me to my ankles when I pulled it over the tunic. It would not help me move faster—in fact, it would probably make me even slower—but not being able to see my bound ankles would alleviate a lot of suspicion if someone saw me.

For that matter— I took two kerchiefs; one I tied around my hair, and the other I wrapped over my shoulders, tucking it around my arms to hide both the bandages and the wrist cuffs. Better than nothing. I lowered my head and walked as briskly as I could with the short steps the cuffs forced me into. I alternatively cursed Fortuna for not giving me a way to get them off, and praised her for having given me opportunity to practice walking with my ankles bound before.

I reached the edge of the outpost and encountered a truly beautiful bit of fortune, thank you kindly, Fortuna. There was a horse, tied and unattended, not far from the gate. I could not leap onto her back, but I could lead her to the stairs of a silent building and lean over her back until I could squirm to an upright position, uncomfortably sidesaddle in a regular saddle. She twitched her ears and snuffed at me.

“Come along. Good girl.” I kicked her side, and she began to walk. “Come on. Faster, girl.”

She didn't listen, but it was still faster than I'd been able to walk before. I bowed my head whenever I passed anyone, and came to the gate. Steeling myself, I clicked my tongue at the horse, and she placidly walked through. I concentrated on breathing calmly.

One of the guards called to me in the dark. “Did you find what you were looking for, Anita?”

I answered softly. “Not yet.”

“Pity.” When the light fell fully on me, the man realized I wasn't her. “Hey! Wait! Stop!”

But the horse was accustomed to picking up speed at this point, and I found myself jostled along the back of a cantering horse while men shouted and sounded the alarm behind me. I tucked my knees up against her back and leaned low, holding tight to her mane and the reins.

That was where Fortuna snatched my bit of good fortune out from under me, and I found myself flanked by two soldiers on horseback. One grabbed for my stolen horse's bridle. She seemed to recognize them, and was content to follow as we turned and cantered back to the gate. I was roughly yanked off the horse and bound so tightly with rope I could barely wiggle. I cursed a blue streak while word was sent to Roy. It didn't take him long. Apparently, he'd stayed at the outpost instead of going back to his island.

He crossed his arms and glared at me. “You do realize I was trying to put off giving you a whipping until after your wounds healed me, don't you?”

Still infuriated by my failure to escape, my tone was snippier than perhaps it should have been, given I was trussed like a game bird. “Were you? You didn't say.”

“Is there a
reason
you like to be beaten?”

Waves of hot and cold crashed back and forth over me. Fortuna? How do I answer that question?

I bared my teeth in a snarl. “Is there a
reason
you like to beat people?”

He didn't appear to be accustomed to a woman snarling at him. “We'll have philosophical discussions later. Right now you're getting the whipping you have coming to you.”

He yanked me up, and my cunt clenched. His grip was rough, and somehow that recalled all the best of my memories being a whore for rough men in Aluet. I was shoved over the table in a little room in the guard's building, and then I flinched when his sword scabbard clunked down onto the table inches from my face. Ice water in my veins, I understood exactly what that meant. He doubled up the broad leather sword belt in his fist and whipped it down. I shrieked. He didn't even pause. The leather strap was hard and heavy, and every line of fire was replaced with a throbbing welt.

I groaned and whimpered, and he completely ignored me, the rise and fall of the belt never even hesitating. I began to cry. I kicked my legs as best as I could with them bound so tightly together, and I wiggled my fingers. My chest heaving with sobs, my ass was lit on fire, while my skin prickled with the war inside my body over the desperate arousal every heavy strike engendered. I was limp with submission before he finished with me. My whole body ached, my eyes were full of tears, and my face hurt from jerking my head back and forth, bruising my cheeks on the wooden table each time I banged against it. His big hand gripped my buttock and squeezed hard. I wailed. He is far too strong, Fortuna. I can't bear it. He squeezed the other, the soreness excruciating.

“Jacqueline, come here.”

I blinked rapidly, a hitch in my crying as I realized she was there. Had she been there the whole time? Did she see my whipping? I wondered if it upset her. Turning my face to the right I saw her. She was pale and trembling, and she dropped to her knees.

“Please, master, I beg you, have mercy. My
daughter
is missing.
Katherine
is missing, sir. How would you feel if it was Jillian?”

That name. Jillian. Hm. He didn't speak, and I looked up. Fury and absolute despair clouded his face, and I realized he was close to a breakdown. She shouldn't have mentioned the name. I wasn't sure why, but he was close to either blowing up and destroying her, or destroying himself. I considered attracting his attention. He could beat me harder than he could beat her, I was certain. But I had already taken a hefty dose, and I wasn't sure I wanted to risk taking another on top of it.

As it turned out, I didn't have to. A woman with straight, dark hair stepped in front of Jacqueline. She was the same woman I'd seen on the island and had kissed before I'd run away to hide in the cellar. She wore the same sort of dress, red panels open at the sides and bound by a chain belt, and there was a chain around her throat. She winked at me, and for some reason I felt my lips stretch into a grin. She was a powerful one.

“I opened the door.”

“You did?” He wasn't stupid; he didn't believe her. But he was willing to entertain the possibility. “Why in hell would you do that?”

“I wanted to see what this one would do.” She walked around him, reached out and caressed my damp face. “You are a clever little bitch, aren't you?”

I smiled wider. Oh, Fortuna, I think I like this one. She reminded me of Madame Bon, in how powerful she felt, but while madam didn't seem to personally care for her slaves, the woman in red seemed to have a personal stake in protecting Jacqueline.

Roy slapped my ass hard—a thunderclap of pain—and I grunted, whimpering as it ricocheted against my nerves. “What the hell is she grinning about?”

The woman purred close to my face. “I think we should find out.”

He slapped my ass again, and I gasped. “And how do you propose we do that?”

Already his temper was receding in the face of the curiosity she roused. She leaned close, closer, closest, her red lips brushing mine. I closed my eyes, melting in the tenderness there, and then she bit me, hard. I jerked away as far as I could, given my bonds, and my eyes narrowed at her.

She grinned. “You know more about William than you're letting on.”

“Of course I do. You think I tell everything to one who can't even keep me in prison?”

Ah, Fortuna, save my ass, please. He resumed spanking. The belt still lay on the table, but his hand was nearly as big as one of my ass cheeks, and just as hard, if not harder, than the belt. I wailed.

Inadvertently, I remembered kissing Michala, Madame Bon's little slave, when she was bent over in this position, and the rush of shame that slammed through my chest when the woman in red kissed me nearly took my breath away. Her voice was sweet and cruel.

“Master, I think she just accused you of being negligent with your prisoners.”

The spanks increased in speed and strength, and I decided I might just hate her, after all. Of course, the juncture of my thighs was slick with desire for him and her, both.

Wouldn't you know it, Fortuna? She understood that. I felt her hot breath on my ear, and then her words sent shivers down my spine.

“Would you like for master to fuck you? Would you like my tongue to drive you mad? Don't answer yet, pretty little prisoner. All the attention in the world means only so much torment, if you aren't allowed to come.”

I grunted, and my cunt clenched. There was nothing I'd rather do than feel her tongue, feel his cock, or even his thick fingers. I moaned, wondering what would happen if I begged for it, and deciding that no matter how they tried, they wouldn't be able to keep me from enjoying an orgasm.

“Please, lady?”

How madam would laugh to see me beg now. Bitch. I remembered Aleksei, how he married her without a second glance at me, and found he had faded out of my mind. The woman in red was so much more tempting.