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House Arilon’s matriarch arrived on Arile Secundus shortly before noon on what was forecast to be the hottest day of the year. It was a calculated decision, planned months in advance and intended to display her dominance over the planet’s sub-matriarch. As soon as notice of Gaito Arilon’s coming was received a steel whipping post was erected at the centre of the wide parade ground on the flats outside Castle Arile. . In accordance with that noble house’s traditions the vassal would be ritually flogged upon receiving her overlord and shackled for the duration of the visit. The post was seven feet tall, with a horizontal crossbar from which hung a chain ending in a latched hook. It had been produced in the castle’s machine shop especially for the occasion, and would be melted down once the matriarch departed. There was some initial confusion over whether the event would be televised planetwide, but a pleading private communication between the sub-matriarch and her lady mother brought blessed relief on that particular count. No one in Eloi Arilon’s court would dispute that the display of obeisance was necessary and proper, but most agreed that to broadcast her naked humiliation to the peasantry risked undermining her authority as the planet’s dictator. When pressed many courtiers would also admit that to make her take her lashes under the hot midday sun was a petty cruelty that did not reflect well on the matriarch’s character. Of course they would hastily qualify that the Lady Gaito, wise and beneficent ruler of six worlds and a dozen off world settlements in the name of the celestial empire might well know something about her daughter’s conduct that they did not.
The one doing the pressing didn’t care much what her mother’s servitors thought of her grandmother’s motives, although she did enjoy watching them squirm. For twenty years Bellona Arilon had lived in the narrow confines of Arile Secundus under the sub-matriarch’s thumb. The relationship between mother and daughter was fraught at best. A week before the ceremony Eloi had refused Bellona’s request to enlist in the imperial navy for the third time in two years. She’d declared to Bellona’s face that her place as the second daughter of a second daughter was to be wed to a second son on some backwater provincial world, that she’d hear no more talk of leaving or of independence and that Bellona was lucky not be punished for her repeated insolence. They hadn’t spoken since. Bellona had never met her grandmother before, but had heard lurid rumours of the old woman’s unmatched greed and imperial ambitions. The thought of seeing the tyrant of her limited universe humbled by someone even more fearsome thrilled her and the matriarch’s decision to twist the knife further inclined her to think well of the old woman.
On the day of her arrival they waited on the parade ground as the matriarch’s motorcade approached across the fifty miles of yellow flatland between Castle Arile’s monumental gates and the planetary spaceport, Serpent’s Gate. Arile Secundus was a poor world, mostly mountain and desert, not the least important of House Arilon’s holdings but getting there. The normally dark blue sky above the castle was bleached white by its impenetrable void shield. As much as she might have wanted one sub-matriarch Eloi didn’t anticipate a sudden planetary bombardment. The shield was being run at great expense purely to prove that her fief’s defences were in full working order. Likewise the castle’s garrison of clone soldiers were assembled in parade formation. There were thousands of them, row upon row of identical men in identical grey uniforms armed with silver rayguns and cutlases. A company of black military vehicles and squat artillery pieces were present as well and above them all, flying in lazy circles around the concrete bulk of the castle, was one of House Arilon’s efreeti. The voidspawned creature currently resembled a terrestrial centipede made of translucent red jelly, twenty feet long with a mass of delicate feelers for a head and a hundred twitching tentacles hanging from its underbelly. Its transdimensional matter warped the fabric of normal space as it moved, creating a fiery corona around it and a smouldering black trail in its wake.
If she reached out with her mind’s eye Bellona could feel the psychic connection between her mother and the creature, a taunt invisible wire running between the mammalian brain and the efreet’s uncentred consciousness. Another smaller jinn crouched at Bellona’s own heel like a hound, five compound eyes twitching this way and that. She stroked the little creature’s mind to calm it, feeling alien emotions caress her ganglia in return.
Bellona wore the grey uniform of a one star house guard general. Elaborate red- and-white epaulets burdened her shoulders, a row of meaningless medals decorated her chest and a useless ornamental rapier hung at her side. Oh! for an imperial navy lieutenant’s blue fatigues and a weapon that wasn’t bolted in to its sheath. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck and she was very glad of her white peaked cap. She stood next to her mother, holding a parasol which gave shade to the tyrant but not to her. The sub-matriarch wore a grey swimsuit and sandals. Eloi’s tanned skin glistened with antiseptic sun oil and her flinty blue eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. Her hair was tied up in a bun so it wouldn’t get in the way of the whip. Her face wore an expression of barely supressed anger, red lips curled back from her gilded teeth. Would a taste of the lash be enough to break through that arrogance, Bellona wondered? Would the tyrant cry? She doubted that even the great Lady Gaito could make that happen, but it was a tantalising possibility. The whipping post stood ready to receive her just a hundred feet away, almost indistinguishable from a gallows at first glance.
Behind the two noblewomen a gaggle of court functionaries were assembled, weapon master and spy master and chamberlain and chaplain, all just as tense as their sub-matriarch. Eloi Arilon was as despotic to her minions as she was to her daughter and Bellona was sure that most of them were going to take the same satisfaction from the ceremony that she was. It was they and not Bellona who’d bear the brunt of Eloi’s attempts to reassert herself when her overlord was gone however. Some planetary governors took great care to assemble a team of dedicated and efficient underlings, but in the tyrant’s eyes ministers were cattle there to execute her whims and shoulder her anger.
The motorcade came to a stop on the burning tarmac, the white limousine flanked by ten armoured vehicles and a swarm of motorcycle outriders. As the matriarch stepped out of her car the entire assembled garrison came to attention as one, the crash of their boots as loud as thunder. In the same instant Bellona felt a tugging sensation in her spine as Gaito Arilon reached out for control of the little jinn beside her. The strange feeling vanished just as suddenly. The old woman wasn’t interested in that one. A second more subtle shiver ran through her as control of the big efreet was passed from her mother to her grandmother. Above them the sky returned to its normal blue as the void shield powered down.
With her head held high Eloi Arilon handed her sunglasses to a nearby servant and started to walk forward. Bellona followed after her, handing him the parasol as she did. The matriarch and her party came forward to meet them at the whipping post, six soldiers in white, six lickspittle courtiers in torturously heavy black suits and the overlord herself. A way behind them stood another pair of clones keeping watch over a towering barbarian slave. The slave was copper skinned and muscled like a demigod, with a mane of scarlet hair that tumbled down his broad back in thick dreadlocks. He wore a golden muzzle on his face, gold chains on his limbs and a golden cage on his cock. Despite his nakedness and bonds he held himself with dignity, alert eyes scanning his surroundings. On any other day Bellona would have been entranced by the strange prisoner, but right then she only had eyes for the matriarch.
She found to her delight that she and her grandmother were almost identical bar the difference in age. At eighty five Gaito Arilon was strong and beautiful in the way Bellona had always hoped to be. Her hair was grey and worn lose to her shoulders while Bellona’s was midnight black and tied back in a ponytail, but they had the same blue eyes, the same clever features and the same athletic build. Gaito’s oval face was smooth, barely showing a year past forty, and her eyes were alight with malicious cleverness. Like Bellona the matriarch wore a uniform that dripped with ornamentation, medals from the emperor shining on her breast. Her psychic presence was so strong as to be palpable. The little guard jinn cowered as she approached, scampering around Bellona to hide behind her.
“Welcome to Arile Secundus, matriarch” said Eloi Arilon. Her voice was measured and emotionless. “It’s an honour to be your host and a pleasure to see you again.”
“A pleasure to see you too,” said her mother. Her accent was strange, the soft Arileian tongue mixed with the harsher forms of the throne world Terra. “You may undress.”
Without ceremony Eloi Arilon stripped out of her skimpy garment. Bellona struggled to supress her grin as two of the blank-faced soldiers stepped forward. Eloi stood a head taller than either her mother or daughter but looked tiny compared to the hulking clones. One of the pair held three lengths of thick chain in a massive fist, while the other carried a steel collar and accompanying cuffs for the sub-matriarch’s wrists and ankles. They snapped the bonds around her neck and limbs, chaining hand to hand and foot to foot. The last chain served as a leash and with it they roughly marched her to the whipping post. The leash was removed and the chain connecting her wrists hooked to the one handing from the crosspiece. The soldiers stepped back and there the sub-matriarch stood, naked and voluptuous, her fat tits and fatter ass on display for everyone to see, just barely able to stand with the flats of her feet on the ground.
“You may begin when ready captain,” said Gaito Arilon to the third solider accompanying her. He had an officer’s pips on his shoulder and carried the heavy black cat-of-nine. The clone walked briskly towards the post and as he did Bellona saw the barbarian prisoner take a half-step forward in the corner of her eye. The half of his face not covered by the muzzle was contorted in disgust, as though he wanted to rush in and save the manacled woman.
“Hold!” Gaito called out to the captain.“Bring him here!” to the clones flanking the barbarian. The prisoner’s eye blazed as they marched him forward and pushed him to his knees beside the matriarch. He was so tall that even kneeling his head was at the old woman’s shoulder. “Is there a stimulant in the carrier’s interrogation kit,” she said to one of the clones. He nodded the affirmative. “Fetch it.” A carry-case was quickly fetched from one of the armoured vehicles and a syringe of clear liquid produced. Gaito injected it into the barbarian’s chest, then knelt down and unlocked his cage with a tiny golden key which she produced from around her neck. Immediately his cock stiffened. It was bigger than any man’s Bellona had ever seen, darker than the rest of him, circumcised as befitted a barbarian and shaved as befitted a slave. The matriarch ran a long, manicured fingernail along its length and the man shuddered visibly. His cheeks were flushed and Bellona knew that despite his horror the drug was forcing him to enjoy the contact, compelling him to crave more.
“I could make you grind this against the hot asphalt,” Gaito crooned. “But luckily for you we will need it later.” Again she reached out for the little djinn at Bellona’s feet, plucking control of the voidspawn from her brain and calling it to heel in front of the prisoner. As it scampered towards him the djinn’s flesh melted and flowed like oil in water. What had been hiding behind Bellona was a hound with five eyes and six pairs of wings. What knelt on all floors on the asphalt in front of the barbarian was a human woman, dark and muscular like he was, with the same red hair and sharp features. The prisoner groaned in despair behind his gag and sank forward to mount her. A wife, a sister, a mother or a daughter, Bellona wondered? Or just an everywoman of his savage race? Whoever she was the man was going to fuck her while they watched the tyrant being thrashed and there was nothing he could do to stop himself. The barbarian held the djinn’s hips in his shackled hands, his iron-hard cock resting against her cunt, his body trembling as his will fought a hopeless rearguard against the chemical pulsing through his veins. Who was he, Bellona thought, and what might her grandmother have planned for the two of them?
“Resume the flogging” said Gaito to the clone captain. The officer raised his arm and brought the nine-tailed whip down on his commander-in-chief’s daughter’s bare back with all the strength that laboratory engineered muscles could muster. The sub-matriarch grunted in pain and Bellona flinched despite herself. Beside her the slave thrust roughly into the djinn with an equally agonised noise. Nine bloody gashes had marked her mother where the whip had struck, but even as the clone raised it for another blow the wounds had already vanished. Just like their underlings the noble line of House Arilon had been carefully bred and modified for generations under the watchful eyes of its matriarchs. It would take a great deal more than the bite of leather thongs to do the woman on the post any permanent harm, but she felt every one of the hundred strokes she received as keenly as a peasant woman would.
Bellona forgot all about the midday heat as she watched her mother slowly succumb to the pain and humiliation that piled up upon her. After the first blow she kept her composure until the fifty-third, then stroke by stroke she began to crack. First came the grunts, then the moans, and finally screams even louder than the first one. By the time the flogging was done her face was scarlet and drenched with tears, her white back and plump behind glowing pink where the blows had begun to overwhelm her healing factor. How Bellona wished that she could be the one holding the cat. The sub-matriarch’s pain was a sweet and exhilarating sight, tempered by the knowledge that someday in the future it might be her standing there while the tyrant looked on. They let Eloi Arilon hang there for several minutes, a picture of defeat matched by the barbarian slave who lay spent on top of the djnn.
Finally the soldiers unchained her from the post and led her, trembling and unsteady, to where her overlord stood. The old woman took her daughter’s leash and kissed her gently on the mouth, then turned to look at Bellona for the first time. Eloi sank to her knees beside her.
“You must be granddaughter number five,” said Gaito. Bellona saluted automatically. “Did you enjoy watching that?”
“Very much so my lady,” said Bellona. “It is a comfort to know that we are a united house.”
“An admirable response,” said her grandmother. “Come here and give your grandmama a kiss.”
Her lips were very soft and her perfume was like nothing Bellona had every smelled before, a flower from a distant world or the musk of some creature from the edge of imagination. There might have been a drug in it, because Bellona felt suddenly light-headed as her grandmother released her from her tight embrace.
“Captain,” said her grandmother. “The other collar please.”
Bellona’s eyes widened in surprise as the clone took another steel ring from his belt and handed it to Gaito. The old woman slipped the collar around her throat and clipped a light silver leash to it, then used it to pull her forward into another, fiercer kiss.
“I am your matriarch and you are my granddaughter,” she whispered into Bellona’s ear. Her voice was soft and tantalising, the kind of voice only lovers used. “You are mine to use as I please, do you understand that girl?”
“Yes my lady,” said Bellona, suddenly terrified that she was about to take a turn on the post much sooner than expected. Her fear must have shown on her face, because her grandmother smiled indulgently and spoke again.
“Don’t worry my dear,” she said. “You’ll get your chance to show how loyal you are, but not here and not so harshly. Follow me, we’ll drive the rest of the way.”
With a tug on their leashes Gaito Arilon turned and strode back towards the shining limousine, daughter and granddaughter hurrying along behind her. As they climbed into the car Bellona saw the barbarian being led into one of the escort vehicles by the captain. For a moment their eyes met across the empty space and she felt a near telepathic frisson pass between them. There was hatred in the man’s eyes, for her and for House Arilon and for the galactic empire itself. But there was curiosity there as well, and sympathy for the chain around her throat if nothing else. Then he vanished into the armoured truck and Bellona followed her mother into the limousine, the little djiin scampering up to sit on her lap.