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TheGravamir’s Joygot very big in the window, and then, abruptly, it fell completely away.
Had we landed atop it? I could only see the stars and a few distant ships of a similar size, I guessed, to the yacht, but very far away. Then a bell sounded, and the stars changed completely, as if they were actually just a curtain, and someone had lowered a different curtain, so fast I couldn’t even see it happen.
The bell went off again. The stars changed again.
“A little anticlimactic, I suppose,” said my master, turning to me. “But we’ve just escaped from the empire. Let’s get aboard theJoyand…” His mouth twisted up to the side in a way that suddenly made my heart ache. “Well, find some joy of our own.”
CHAPTER 28
Baron Gravamir
TheJoyhad concubines’ quarters, of course, since it had belonged to my grandfather—a whole deck of the vessel, in fact. To be sure, the gravitic transformer that had rendered the mass bomb completely harmless represented my own modification, as did the current grav drive. My grandfather, though, had added most of theJoy’s sumptuous decor when he had converted a decommissioned light cruiser for his personal use.
In keeping with his particular style of dominance, he had kept the concubines’ deck in almost its original, spartan state. Only the suite he had refurnished for his Mistress of Concubines featured anything like the luxury to be found throughout the rest of theJoy.After I had shown Chalondra and Franla the stunning bridge and the stately dining room, I brought them there.
We had begun what would be a day-long sub-light-velocity cruise from the gravitic node to which we had jumped, through the gorgeous blue light of the Sheliak binary system. With thehelp of theJoy, I had decided on a heading that would bring us to a volume of space in the shadow of a small moon of a barren planet of Sheliak’s twin suns.
There, even my enormous yacht would easily evade detection by anyone jumping to the same node. We had already moved far enough away that an observer who jumped there would have to have extraordinary luck to spot us moving briskly away at ninety-nine percent of lightspeed, and our double jump meant that they would already have had to be very fortunate—on the order of one in several billion—to have chanced on our node at all. The Zeta Five Orbital had certainly vectored our first jump, but only an observer at that node, one of an estimated seven million reachable from the Vion system—could have tracked our second.
Really, it would have been unheard of to try to follow theJoyat all, but I hadn’t survived the uncertainties of what I supposed we would now call the Late Imperial Period by taking any risk at all unless absolutely necessary. So we would find our way to the back of the unnamed moon, and then we would see what we could determine about the current political state of the galaxy.
An unnamed moon,I mused to myself as I watched Chalondra take in the furnishings of the suite, her attention of course fixed not on the lovely rose covered fabric on the walls but on the enormous picture window. She had what even I had to call a rather remarkable view: the twin stars humans had called Sheliak before astronomers had had telescopes powerful enough to understand that there were two suns there rather than one.A honeymoon?
I felt the corner of my mouth twist up in an involuntary smile, and then I didn’t know whether to blame myself for thesappiness of the thought and of smiling at it—or to blame myself for blaming myself for it.
“These will be your quarters, Chalondra,” I told her, taking the two steps necessary so that I could lay my hand on her shoulder, and acknowledging to myself just how badly I felt the need to touch my gorgeous blue-haired bed girl, my companion in flight and exile.
I turned to Franla.
“You’ll have the captain’s suite, if that suits you? This yacht really never needed much crew, but my grandfather fit it out to travel in style, with all the traditional Earth-legacy trappings of nobility.”
Chalondra
I glanced over at Mistress Franla and had the surprising pleasure of seeing my mistress smile despite herself. I thought I could see in her face that the events of the last—could it really have taken so short a time to come who-knew-how-far across the galaxy?—hour or so had disoriented her almost as much as they had stunned me. Something in her, I perceived, didn’t enjoy having come into the baron’s power nearly as thoroughly as I had: his lordship had purchased me, but here in the Sheliak system, he might as well have owned Mistress Franla as well.
“Thank you, My Lord,” she said, bowing her head gracefully.
I looked from my mistress’ face to my master’s, and I felt suddenly as if her acceptance of the baron’s offer, with thesymbolism it conveyed, meant a great deal more than a simple decision as to where she would sleep aboard theGravamir’s Joy. The captain of a ship had absolute power aboard their vessel, didn’t they? All the adventure stories seemed to agree on that point. In Mistress Franla’s blue eyes, I thought I saw something I understood from my own internal struggles: independence… self-reliance…spirit.
But my mistress’ spirit had at the same time an essential element quite different from my own. I found that I couldn’t name it, just then—but I also felt that if I had the chance to think it through, the idea might help me understand myself better. I sensed it might even help quiet my inner turmoil.
I didn’t have that opportunity, though. My master’s hand tightened a little on my shoulder, and that slight pressure, in a place I would never have thought had a connection to the wayward little nub between my thighs, awakened those same urgent, troubling, delicious sensations once again. A moment before, I had had the capacity for logical thought: at the mere squeeze of my shoulder, though, all I could find in my head were hot, shameful images of what his lordship had promised to do to me but had not yet done.
“Let’s go there now,” my master said. “Chalondra, your mistress will help you freshen up a little, and then bring you to my stateroom. I know it’s already been a long day, but I find I need to have you now even more than I did an hour ago, before the entire galaxy changed around us.”
At some point, very much to my surprise, I had stopped paying attention to my near nakedness, or the contrast between it andthe clothing of his lordship and Mistress Franla. Indeed, I only realized that I had forgotten to notice it when my mistress led me into my master’s stateroom and I saw that it was an exact replica of his grand bedchamber in Gravamir House—with one striking, stunning exception. One entire wall of the room was a window, out of which I could see those beautiful twin suns, blue like my hair, and all the tiny glowing stars, overwhelming in their number though I knew I could see only the tiniest fraction of the galaxy.
My first sight of the bed told me that it had a very strong similarity to the one in the baron’s bedchamber. The very thought of that one, and of what I had done with it—on it—sent the heat rushing to my face. Then that pink blush blazed up even higher, because as Mistress Franla led me to it, I saw that in fact this bed aboard his yacht was clearly identical to that one in his palace: it had the hook on the post, to which my mistress fastened me.
It had the outlines of a young woman’s hands, for me to grasp and hold onto.
It had the shameful knob, below. Mistress Franla said, clearly noticing how I looked down at it with my brow furrowed and my lip between my teeth, “I hope his lordship doesn’t keep you waiting long, Wetquim, or I fear you’ll steal his pleasure from your little cunny.”
The way she said it brought a tiny whine from my nose: suddenly she had become the exacting mistress once again—the wise older woman who had no intention of letting the baron’s new pleasure girl get away with any misbehavior… the mistress who had whipped my pussy with the terrible barbarian cunt paddle.
Standing there with my hands around the bedpost, my wrists bound to the hook, my already mortifyingly damp panties only a centimeter from the terrible knob that I knew could provide some relief from the need between my thighs, I looked beseechingly into her eyes. I saw it then. I had thought it would require a moment free from the dark, distressing thoughts and feelings that the idea of my master’s arrival provoked. In fact, it came to me in the very midst of those feelings, thanks to the light I saw in my mistress’ eyes, the way she studied me not to oppress me or to take away my spirit, but to help me find it.
“You…” I started, and swallowed hard as Mistress Franla’s left eyebrow went up, conveying a warning with that tiniest movement. “Mistress, you… I… I mean, may I… may I please ask you something?”
