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Then I got a good look at the expression on his face, and on my mistress’. In their eyes I could see some element of the response I had expected to their discovering me doing precisely what she had commanded me not to do: shamelessly trying to pleasure myself despite the binding of my hands to the bedpost. Mistress Franla’s face seemed to display a sort of knowing disappointment, and the baron’s eyes blazed with the same sort of stomach-twisting hunger I had seen in them before he had spanked me in the study.
But I could also see in those expressions a different, much more urgent element: as if, though my master would certainly have whipped me for masturbating if the night had continued according to his plans, the night would most definitely not continue that way. Something had happened: I could see that above all in their faces. When his lordship had said “Stop that right now,” his tone had definitely conveyed the promise that in good time, if the current emergency receded, I would feel his justice across my bare backside. It had also, and more importantly, told me that I must stop so that all three of us could… do something—something absolutely vital.
With widening eyes and growing confusion, I watched him turn away towards the wall of the bedchamber while Mistress Franla came to my side to unfasten my wrists. My body still trembled from the almost-climax that had shaken me just before her and my master’s entrance. I looked a plea for more information into her blue eyes.
“We are leaving,” she said simply.
At the same time, I heard from where my master had gone, apparently to face a blank section of wall, a metallic click, and then a groaning and creaking, mingled noises of wood and metal, as if some very old piece of machinery were being activated. The baron grunted, and I could see that he had begun to push hard at something, and that that part of the wall had started to move backwards.
A noise of tearing added itself to the sounds of the creaking machinery, and I watched in alarm as the seamless fabric that had covered the wall ripped in a rectangular pattern. The shape of a small door appeared, corresponding to the part of the wall that seemed suddenly to move more freely, until it had swung all the way inward.
My master turned to face us. “There are more elegant escape tunnels—less destructive and obvious, anyway—but this is the only one not on the blueprints. They’ll know I’ve fled, of course, but presumably that’s going to be obvious from the unauthorized launch we’re about to make through the palace roof.”
As my mistress hurried me forward towards the door, I tried to sort out at least some small number of my thoughts and feelings. To my dismay, the only one that seemed to shine clearly, like a beacon in my chest, was that feeling that I wanted to keep looking at the smile on my master’s face. Very belatedly I realized that by seeing that expression, by learning how very handsome he could look when he had just done something decisive and intelligent, I had misbehaved. With a lurch of my stomach, though, I realized that the thought that he had another reason to take me over his knee only made the beacon shine brighter. I felt my brow furrow hard, and I bit my lip, and I did lower my eyes as my mistress led me into the dusty tunnel revealed by the hidden door. How could Iwantto be back over his lordship’s knee, with my panties down?
I love him.I swallowed very hard, feeling grateful that the baron was bringing up the rear of our little party as we rushed along the tunnel. Even I had to stoop to keep from bumping my head against the low ceiling, and I knew my master must nearly be crouching.I love him, I thought again, helplessly, picturing it, how the tension in his athletic build must make him look like a coiled spring.
How can I? How can I even think that?
We climbed a flight of stairs, the ceiling opening up so that I could see we were approaching the rafters of the palace, mighty wooden beams that looked as if they had supported the roofof House Gravamir for hundreds of years. The launch pad lay at the top of the steps, and on it sat a small craft, just as dusty as the rest of these secret spaces. As we approached, its smooth, apparently featureless surface lit up here and there, and I realized those sections of the fuselage must be windows, or portholes, or whatever they called them in the adventure stories.
A ramp folded down from the fuselage, then—just like in the stories, I couldn’t help thinking, when the hero or heroine went off into space to do glorious deeds.
“Well, Chalondra,” I heard my master say, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. “I know they don’t let you see the stars when you travel with the company. With any luck, you’re going to see them in a few moments, though.”
I love him.The rational part of me pleaded with my spirit, with my heart, with the beacon his lordship had somehow put in my chest. I had no argument to make in reply: I had enough intelligence to understand that the emotion represented the kind of love they often called infatuation in books. And I hadn’t stopped fearing my master, either. But the warmth in his voice, the clear genuineness of his wish that I should see outer space—they only made my affection stronger.
“Franla,” he said, “please get yourself and Chalondra on board. I have some things to check before we launch.”
The ship—I didn’t know what else to call it, even though it seemed much too small to deserve the same name as the spacefaring vessels I had still only seen in pictures—had four seats, and no space for anything else except what could only be the craft’s controls. The windows I had seen light up looked very small from the inside, even the one above the panel with the blinking lights, under which I could see what had to be thesteering device—the “stick” or perhaps the “yoke”? I couldn’t remember what they had called it in the stories, when they flew off on their missions.
I waited for Mistress Franla to take one of the two front seats, but though she had gotten in first, she stood aside in the narrow companionway.
“Your master will want you beside him, my dear,” she said, her words making me blink in confusion. My heart beat faster, but it seemed such a strange idea that I stopped in my tracks and looked into my mistress’ eyes. She smiled, the right side of her mouth ascending a little higher than the left, as if she hadn’t meant to show me her pleasure at my puzzlement.
“It may be quite a while, Chalondra,” she said, her voice low and confiding, “before you understand what a remarkable thing his lordship is doing, taking us with him. For the moment, perhaps you should concentrate on the pleasant idea that he wants to show you the stars of Vion.”
I blinked again. “But—” I started, but Mistress Franla interrupted me.
“Do as I’ve said, and sit in the seat on the right, there. We don’t have time for more now.”
Her face had gone stern, and a shiver went through me as I thought of how firm a hand she had used, when training me. I turned and went the rest of the way into the little ship, squeezing myself into the cramped space between the seats to reach the one to which my mistress had pointed.
It had a complicated safety harness attached to it that I couldn’t begin to figure out. I almost asked Mistress Franla for help, but as soon as I had sat down, my near nakedness feeling verystrange against the cool, smooth surface of the seat, the straps of the harness closed around me.
I let out a little cry of surprise and alarm, remembering how my mistress had bound me to the training chair just a few hours earlier. The seat’s programming, though, restrained me much more gently than Mistress Franla had, holding me in at waist and shoulders.
The memories of my training, my preparation for my master’s bed, my kneeling service—everything that had happened to me on Vion prime—came flooding into my mind. It seemed impossible that I hadn’t even spent a day on the capital planet of the empire, and just as unlikely that it seemed in the end I wouldn’t: my time on Vion prime would finally be measured not in days but in hours.
“Everything looks good,” the baron’s voice said from behind us, and then his big, powerful body had somehow squeezed its way through the gap between the seats and he had sat down next to me. I looked over at him forgetting the rules once again, and when I saw his dark eyes gazing back at me, I lowered mine, my heart skipping a beat—not so much in fear of punishment as in confusion at the new wave of affection that had risen in my chest.
“No, Chalondra,” he said softly. “Do look at me. You may—and…” I thought I could hear the smile in his voice as he continued, “you must. If you don’t look at me right now, I’ll take you over my knee again as soon as we get somewhere a little safer.”
Still looking down at my hands, which I’d folded in my lap after the safety harness had fastened itself around me, I felt my eyes widen.A little safer?!Were we in danger?
I obeyed: I raised my eyes and saw that, yes, my master had a warm smile on his face. To my astonishment, he reached over to take hold of my hand, as if he could see my anxiety, written on my face.
“There we go,” he said. “We’ll?—”
