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Or,said a sarcastic voice inside my head,you’re completely imagining that, because you’re desperate to hold onto something, when here on this horrible planet you will never be more than a bed girl.
I lowered my eyes with a tiny sob that I hoped none of the other girls or any of the passersby could hear. I hadn’t seen anything: just the crowd of gorgeous robes of nobility and fine clothing, with a few of the gray mistresses’ dresses here and there.
A bed girl. And I don’t even know what it really means.
Somewhere a bell sounded. A voice boomed from the loudspeakers, its accent just as refined as Baron Gravamir’s.
“If you please, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen, take your seats. The auction will commence in ten minutes.”
The conversations of the crowd grew more animated, though I could catch very little of what they said. I heardSilverstaragain, and felt a strange, embarrassing flare of jealousy in my chest. They had called her Silverstar, and me Wetquim. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could and pushed down the sob that threatened to emerge, even as the tears flowed freely down my cheeks.
My mind went somewhere else, not back to Kamnos, because it hurt too much to remember my home and my family, but outinto the reaches of space, the other side of the galaxy where it seemed a war had begun. Then the voice on the loudspeakers returned.
“Lot one. Heartarse, a lovely, shapely Kamnian girl suitable for the bed of any lord or lady. Shall we start the bidding at thirty thousand credits?”
My heart pounding, I risked another look, desperate to know what was happening. I saw across the platform where the cages stood that a man in a company uniform had stepped onto the raised dais. His back faced us, and he gazed across a wooden rostrum like the one in the plaza of my village on Kamnos, from which the head elder would preside over village meetings. My cage was far enough to his left side that I could see around his upper body and discern a view screen on the rostrum in front of him, where I guessed he could find any necessary detail about the concubine to be sold.
“Thirty thousand, yes. Count Garsin,” he said. My stomach lurched as I realized that the auction had begun, just like that. “Thank you. May I hear thirty-one? Yes, sir… Mr. Bofton. Thank you. Thirty-one to you, my lord count. Thirty-two… Captain… Jacper, for the Imperial Navy, yes?” Then, just as smoothly, in a practiced flow of words that seemed to hypnotize me despite the creeping dread they brought, “Turn around and bend over, Heartarse. Let’s show the captain the sweet backside he’s purchasing for his officers.”
Only then did I realize that she—I couldn’t think of her by the terrible, degrading name, but of course I didn’t know her real name—must be standing in front of the dais, her body hidden from my sight. Then I saw, two cages to my left, that the agent whose gloved hand had explored my pussy to demonstrate mywantonness had just opened another girl’s cage door and stood in front of it, holding something metal in his hands.
A murmur of appreciation traveled through the crowd. I felt my cheeks grow hot and my brow furrow at the thought of the poor girl obeying the auctioneer, but my attention had gone to the young woman emerging from her cage, obviously in response to a command from the agent. To her turning around, taking her hands from her head, thrusting them awkwardly behind her back.
To the agent putting the metal thing—things, I saw now—around her wrists. Two dull metal bands, of the same material it seemed as the cages. Attached to one another, binding the girl’s hands. I swallowed hard. Knowing the cruelty of the Vionians as I already did, having the memory of the horrible punisher too vividly in my mind, I didn’t need an agent to tell me that those metal cuffs could bring the same sort of brutal, instant discipline between my legs.
Then, as the agent started to lead the girl in the direction of the dais, I noticed that another concubine stood, obviously waiting her turn. She, too, had her hands bound behind her in the metal cuffs, and she hung her head, gazing at the planks of the wooden platform. The agent placed the girl he had just taken from her cage behind this other one. He took another pair of the cuffs from a rack just to the side of the queue he had begun to form, and then he turned back towards the cages.
I had to lower my eyes immediately to keep him from noticing that I had dared to raise them. To my dismay, though, I could see the agent’s feet approaching, taking him just a little to my left, to the next cage over, carrying the cuffs in his hand.
The sight of the agent getting us, the lots for sale, out of our cages had distracted me completely from the proceedings at the rostrum. The refined, fluent voice of the auctioneer over the loudspeakers had faded into the background of my mind as I fearfully took in the quickly forming queue of young women like me, their hands restrained behind their backs as if to give as much access as possible to the most intimate parts of their bodies.
A loudbangbrought my focus back to the rostrum though, and I had to struggle not to raise my eyes.
“Sold to Captain Jacper, for the Imperial Navy. Thirty-six thousand credits. I’m sure His Valiance the Emperor thanks you all, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen for your restraint in allowing Heartarse to go to the courageous men of our fleet for so reasonable a price. Heartarse, my dear, I hope they give you a few hours of sleep at least, between rigorous uses of that adorable bottom.”
That brought a ripple of laughter from the crowd. My breath came in ragged pants as I gazed downward, my eyes turned as far up and to the left as I could send them, so as to see the boots of the agent, and the terrifying metal bands in his hand.
I had no idea what the words meant.Rigorous uses… of her… her bottom?The auctioneer’s tone and the sound of the Vionians’ merriment, though, cut through my ignorance. They told me that the meaning could only be degrading and shameful. In association with that part of a girl’s body, the possibilities made my whole body flare with unwelcome heat.
“Lot two. One of the gems of this auction, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen. Silverstar, and as you can see, named for her beauty and her obvious docility. Forty thousand seems inexpensive forsuch a superior addition to an aristocratic household, does it not? Do I have… Baron…”
My heart thudded in my chest. To my horror, I found that I didn’t want the auctioneer to say the name of the only baron I knew of, in the entire galaxy—the one who had walked away from my cage after watching the company agent shame me with his gloved fingers, the one whose face I hadn’t even seen but whose voice had, impossibly, made me feel valuable.
The agent had led away the girl in the cage next to mine. I had managed to watch it all while keeping my face lowered. He hadn’t even had to give her a command: he had touched the door of the cage, and it had opened. She had emerged, and turned around without being told, putting her hands behind her, emitting a little sound that might have been a whimper of discomfort or of shame. The agent had encircled her wrists in the metal bands, then turned her around and led her away, out of my field of view.
I’m next,I thought, my stomach churning.
“Baron…” the auctioneer said, his tone still smooth despite his clearly needing someone to identify this bidder for him. “Ah… Baron Resbolin. Yes. May I hear Forty-one?”
I bit my lip to hold down a sob.
I’m next.
CHAPTER 13
Baron Gravamir
Silverstar, one of the most uninteresting Kamnian girls—if also one of the most beautiful—I had ever seen, went for sixty-seven thousand. Lady Bresil, who doted on the worthless Joslin Wea—Bresil, now, I corrected myself, since she had ennobled him by marriage—bought the girl as a marital aid. I imagined Silverstar would serve the purpose admirably, and probably even without a need for excessive discipline.
