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I took a quick breath through my nose, once again in search of a way to keep from crying. All of these words—these compliments, really—that might have seemed so welcome from a different voice, in a different tone, took on in Agent Delvik’s cool assessment an air of obscenity. He didn’t mean them for my ears, but for the ears of the Vionians to whom the company intended to sell me.
“More importantly Wetquim’s sexual potential is very high, at least for a buyer who enjoys mastering an innocent but wayward young concubine.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I didn’t know what it meant, and so I felt certain it must have to do with the invasive, much-too-intimate things he had done to me—and implied, in his cryptic words, that I must expect to constitute an important part of my new life. I did know whatsexmeant in one sense—the difference between men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. And I knewthatmust represent an important part of what husbands and wives did in bed at night.
But though I knew about the fact of the difference, I didn’t know what the differencewas. The company’s shaping of traditional Kamnian culture into the regulated lives we lived on Kamnos had seen to that.
“Breasts are of medium size or slightly smaller. Buttocks are small and quite shapely. Pubic hair matches head hair and is quite woolly. Buyer will probably want to trim or remove it, so as to see the vulva more clearly.”
More words I didn’t know, but which somehow carried so much shame, even when delivered as blandly as Agent Delvik did. I felt tears well up, and I had to weave my fingers together in the tight curls of my hair to keep from wiping them away.
“Even with the pubic hair present, though, a pretty, really a positively dainty set of outer labia is relatively visible. Inner labia, in a rather adorable shade of coral-pink, peep out of the cleft of the vulva just a bit, suggesting the girl’s fundamentally lascivious nature, despite her complete ignorance of sexual congress. Needless to say, her hymen is intact and her vagina quite tight. Wetquim will probably experience a good deal of discomfort despite the abundance with which she lubricates, when her master deflowers her.”
I tried to send myself even further away: into another galaxy, another universe. The detachment and the sense of this utter degradation happening to someone else couldn’t seem to take away as much of the impact of these mystifying but mortifying words, and the feeling of utter exposure from having my hands atop my head and my feet spread wide.
The very worst part lay in how that other girl’s body responded to the agent’s clinical evaluation. I could feel it happening again—the thing he seemed, despite his cruelty or perhapsbecauseof it, to have the power to do to me whenever he wished. Between my legs, where I could feel the pressure of his eyes on the places I had always thought belonged only to me, I felt the same shameful stirring his fondling, invading fingers had provoked. To my horror, I felt the wetness start to leak out from betweenthe private lips he had just called, to my dismay,positively dainty.
I closed my eyes, squeezed them hard shut.Please. Please don’t let him see.
But he tsked, his tongue against his teeth, and he chuckled.
“Note that Wetquim is getting wetter as I conduct this assessment. Her cunt juices are honestly about to run down her thighs.”
I let out the sob I had managed to hold back for so long.
“End record.”
I opened my eyes and nearly looked up, only remembering at the last moment to keep my gaze lowered. An initial relief instantly mixed with terrible fear as the agent stood up from his chair.
“Well, Wetquim, I tried to get it out of your system, but it seems your wantonness defeated me. Look at me.”
I blinked, trying for a few seconds to figure out what the order meant, sure that he couldn’t mean it literally. His hand on my chin, though, made it clear that he did: he yanked my face up, and I raised my eyes to find his own gaze narrow and amused. The sight of that satisfied smile drew another sob from my chest, and the tears began to flow freely.
“I’m afraid you’re not going to come again for quite a while, girl. I’ll certainly try to help, in my own way. A severe enough paddling should take care of the problem and put your cunt out of your mind for the time being.”
He turned me around and threw me over the table. He put his left hand on my back, just as before, and his right leg across mycalves. He fetched the paddle from the table, and he started to punish me again.
Over my screams, which began from the very first stroke, he said, calmly, “If I do my job right, your potential masters and mistresses will be able to see a fine example of how your backside shows anyone who cares to look that you’re a bad girl who’s receiving the lessons she requires to mend her ways.”
It went on and on, until my bottom and my upper thighs felt like they could never feel anything but that agony. I struggled, and I stopped struggling. I sobbed, and I wept, and I screamed. It didn’t seem to change anything about the dreadful beating Agent Delvik gave me, for failing to take off my clothes, for wetting myself, for not raising my dress to show how I was wetting myself… for being disobedient, naughty, bad. He merely wanted, it seemed, to make certain I had the bruises that would demonstrate how he had broken me.
CHAPTER 9
Chalondra
When he had finished, he made me walk back to my cage. Every step, hobbled by the pain, brought a wrenching sob, as much from shame as from the terrible burning that remained there from the paddle’s horrid work. When I began that walk, knowing his awful dark eyes surveyed his cruel handiwork, feeling as if I could somehow sense the disturbing, almosthungrysatisfaction he clearly took in punishing me, I thought I would never be able to raise my head again. I might someday have the power to walk without the agony the company agent had caused in my bottom and thighs, but as I started to cross the two meters of dirt floor between the table and the cage, I felt certain he had simply annihilated my spirit.
Somehow, by the third limping step, halfway to the cage’s open door, a spark had reignited in my chest. Anger—at myself, perverse though that might have been, for giving in, but also at the hateful man who had paddled me for no real reason at all—kindled in my mind.
Hateful.Yes, the precisely correct word for Agent Delvik. For the company. For the empire, which my teachers had tried so very hard to persuade me represented the force of all good for Kamnians… even the Kamnians called on to serve elsewhere in the galaxy. Anger and hatred: they brought my spirit back.
I stepped into the cage, unable to restrain the yelp of pain caused by the slightly larger stride I had to take to get there. I closed my watery eyes, squeezed the renewed tears of agony out onto my cheeks.
Yes, hatred,I thought.Hatred… and contempt. What sort of empire feels the need to torment a young woman this way?
A pang of guilt stabbed at me. My mother, who had told me not to let them take my spirit, had also told me—many, many times—to refrain from anger, and from hatred. If I came home from school in tears because an older girl had teased me, and I told my mother I meant to get that girl back, she would always say, “Far better to win through love than through hate, Chalondra. Anger only poisons your spirit, too.”
“Turn around, Wetquim,” I heard Agent Delvik say from behind me.
