Chapter Text
Simone liked this moment best-- all eyes on her, all their focus borne on her body, on the gracefulness of her motion, of the clear-bell clarity of her voice. There was no real worry, then, that they would touch her, which is where the trouble always started. Mistress Lucienne could, of course. Mistress Lucienne, who kept her on as tight a leash as she could, barely three lengths of chain between collar and handle, could always touch her property— but she wouldn't. Her interests lay elsewhere.
And nobody else, none of the dozens of sets of eyes who desired her beauty or the slimness of her body, could have her.
The moment passed, as it inevitably would. Simone returned to herself, the austere white marble and the rich brown wood of the ballroom asserting itself. She realized with a start that she had been gazing out at the crowd with level eyes to see the reaction to her entrance, as though she were a free woman. She stared at her feet, instead, but then that hardly mattered because Mistress Lucienne was dragging her to a knot of dolled-up Court ladies and their slaves.
"My friends, dove," she whispered low as they approached, as though Simone were stupid enough to need the detail.
As if Simone was as stupid as her Mistress—
Simone swallowed that thought down, ground it into dust in her throat, and let it and all its danger disappear.
She looked at Mistress Lucienne's friends, or what she could see of them while keeping her head respectfully bowed and her gaze lowered. They were each dolled up in so many layers of robes and drapes and skirts it was impossible to tell whether or not there was a woman under all that silk. Their bodies were simply the fastening pins on the piles of beautiful and luxurious things they owned—
Which of course brought Simone to the slaves. These she could look in the eyes, and she did, enjoying even their attentions, the way they oggled here, the jealousy they so clearly held for the confidence she projected. They were as varied as their mistresses weren't, but uniform in their beauty: a gorgeously androgynous blonde boy, a young woman with a spattering of freckles who flushed scarlet when Simone smiled at her, and a well-muscled older man with a thin layer of stubble.
In the corner of Simone's eye, Mistress Lucienne was admiring the virile, muscular slave. Because of course she was.
Simone returned her gaze to her feet as she pondered the interminable; why did a woman so demonstrably uninterested in other women buy Simone as her court slave? Simone had asked, and Mistress had pierced her skin with a needle for the asking. Still... she had her theories.
"What a pretty little thing!" cooed one of the ladies-- the owner of the little twink. It only followed that she'd find Simone attractive if she favored a boy like hers. He could almost be Simone's brother--
Who, she thought through grit teeth, she should not think about. It would only cause pain.
A hand reached towards her face, but Mistress Lucienne knocked it out of the way with a decorum she would never show Simone. "My apologies-- may I touch her?" asked that hand's owner, the lady who owned the girl with the freckles. Simone could have sworn she heard Mistress Lucienne smile.
"Gentle, now. I've broken her well enough, but... they do get skittish at their debut, don't they?" Mistress Lucienne said, with an affectionate rustle of Simone's hair. Simone felt her stomach tighten up, beside herself. This part-- where the chase, the dance of eyes and desire, ended, and the touching began...
This part, Simone did not like much at all. She must have pulled back without meaning to because instantly Mistress Lucienne had her tight by the lead and was driving the needle-tip of her signet ring into the soft, exposed flesh of her shoulder. The needle's kiss was at this point familiar to her, biting cold and hot into her like glass. She grit her teeth and bore the pain without crying out.
Nobody must see her cry out, Mistress Lucienne had told her. It would make Mistress look incompetent, and Simone undisciplined. The consequences were implicit, but they hung over her all the same—
There are worse things to be than a court slave. Worse fates that could befall her.
Strange hands were in her hair, lifting it and letting it trickle down like fine silk. "However did you get it this pale, Lucienne? You must say," asked the lady who owned the girl.
"Oh, I'm told it's natural— an accident of her birth. The trainer attested as much, at the very least, and it's not as though she's grown roots!"
Appreciative murmurs. More hands in her hair, fingers eager and brutish, the decorum of the court abandoned in their lust for the strange and unfamiliar. One of the hands pulled a hair out by the root, as though to verify Mistress Lucienne's claims. It hurt much less than the Mistress' needle, but a ball of bile still rose up in her throat. Her body wasn't her own. It was the Mistress', and she would sell it piece by piece for clout. Until nothing was left at all.
It was the owner of the muscular slave that first wanted more than her hair, surprisingly enough. She leaned in conspiratorially. "Might I," she asked, "take my pleasure?"
Mistress Lucienne laughed wry and reedy. "Of course! Mind the teeth."
When the hands were on her, she retreated deep into herself. She knew she shouldn't. She should be making herself valuable and available to whoever Mistress Lucienne decided she was to be available to. But the Mistress was disinclined to intimately train a female slave, and so her inner redoubt remained.
They grasped and pinched at her rear, her chest, her thighs, giggling. Like children. Like it was a game. Her eyes stayed pressed open, to avoid offending the ladies, but she met none of their gazes and saw none of their hands.
Mistress Lucienne lifted her skirt, and the lady who owned the girl with the freckles had her fingers in Simone's cunt. She was tight, as she should be, and she squeezed and shuddered as her body told her to, but her eyes watched the party. She counted figures. Fifty-three nobles, fifty-eight slaves, and a handful of gentle or even low-born ministers, all arrayed around this hollow banquet hall, and the empty throne whose power held them together.
The Prince had not yet arrived, or he was not intending to arrive, and in any event, he was not here. But he was here. The weight of his personality pressed down on the room, and that was why so many of the fifty-eight slaves were tall women with long hair. Women like Simone.
The style he preferred.
The lady's thumb brushed over Simone's clit and she felt her breath hitch, her muscles tighten— they took pleasure from her as easily as they took pain— She watched the throne. Where was the Prince? This was her world now, and he the central figure— never mind the Mistress. And yet she did not know where he could be, or the slightest thing about him, except what she knew before she was taken. He was Prince of Rancet, he was a man of considerable sexual appetite, he had breathed new life into the noble slave culture, he was a terrible stateman and would drive the country to ruin, only...
Lucienne's needle was in her again, and she clenched hard around the lady's intruding digits. The ladies all giggled at her reaction, at the way the pain made her back arc with delicious, sinful thunder. Pain and pleasure mixed recklessly inside Simone's body, loud, insistent, demanding, the beat of a drum, filling her up like fire. What had she been thinking of? The lady's fingers were deep inside her, so hard and rough despite what they might look like, and the needle kissed the soft skin of her thigh, and Mistress Lucienne had her lead pulled tight, collar digging into her neck, and she was there, in that moment, consumed.
She had been thinking about the Prince.
"Excuse me," an unfamiliar voice said, and for a moment Simone thought it might be the Prince she had been dreaming of, but, of course, it wasn't. The Prince wasn't there. It belonged to an older woman, a touch gray in the hair, who wore the robes of a lowborn minister.
"Minister Compere," Mistress Lucienne greeted her, brushing her friend's hands off of her slave. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
"I saw your new slave," said the Minister. Her voice was rough and dry, as though she was a foreman made weary by a lifetime of shouting. "May I borrow her?"
The ladies murmured amongst themselves, but Simone could barely hear them over the blood that rushed to her ears. She stole a single, sinful glance at the tall, stately woman who was attempting to have her. Mistress was a known quantity-- this woman was distinctly not.
"Of course, Your Excellency. I shall take only a moment to prepare her for you."
Mistress Lucienne pulled Simone down to her level with the lead, her ear pressed against her Mistress' mouth.
"This is the Minister of Finance, Rosalie Compere. You will call her 'Your Excellency' until and unless she tells you otherwise, and do whatever she says, however she says it. Do. Not. Embarrass. Me. If you do, I'll have you sleeping on needles."
And, like that, Mistress Lucienne handed the lead off to Minister Rosalie. "Do try not to kill her."
* * *
A: Did you hear? Minister Compere's taken a fancy for Countess du Palais' new toy!
B: Hasn't everyone?
A: Of course, but the last time Rosalie fancied a slave...
B: That was ages ago. The Prince will keep a handle on any game she decides to play, this time.
A: Such a royalist! How does the Prince intend to handle a situation he wasn't there to see?
B: He sees more than you give him credit for.
A: I'm not convinced.
B: He wasn't at the ball... but his third eye certainly was.
A: Ah, I see. I wonder if that third eye saw that slave making eyes at her betters?
* * *
The Minister took Simone down richly-appointed halls to a small office space, lit by gaslamp and floored with imported carpeting. The door, a heavy oak thing, swung shut behind them, and they were well and truly isolated.
"Kneel," the Minister said, letting go of the lead. Simone did, the texture of the carpet biting into her knobbly knees. She kept her eyes trained on the floor as the Minister stalked about the room. The sound of leather creaking filled the room, making Simone's pulse quicken.
It's just pain.
But no pain came. The door opened again, and shut. Some sort of anticipation game, then. Simone took a deep breath. That was fine. It meant less time for the Minister to consume her if she insisted on spending some of it with head games. If she was not being touched, she was in control.
Simone passed the time trying to think of what she knew of the Minister but came up with very little. She was tall, she was brushing up on fifty. Mistress Lucienne treated her like a high lady despite her being a commoner. Only the things she had learned in the last...
She shifted against the carpet. Fifteen minutes? Maybe? She hadn't had a very good sense of time, not since—
Not for a while. She started counting heartbeats. At three hundred and eighteen, she lost track. She shifted against the carpet, but it didn't much help-- it was starting to burn. She couldn't make out the pattern from where she knelt; it was just an abstract tiling knot of bright, rich, primary colors. She imagined the little threads, green and red and blue, worming their way into the flesh of her knees like parasites.
She stopped looking at the rug and closed her eyes. This was the game, then— making her weight her enemy. It was, she reflected, significantly more tolerable than needles or whips. It had been twenty minutes. She took a deep breath. It was better not to keep count, not to anticipate— just relax and take each moment on its own terms. She shifted against the carpet. Count to ten, Simone. Ten seconds. She shifted against the carpet. Ten more seconds.
The door opened. More leather noises, footsteps, the ruffling of pages. She didn't think about them. Instead, she thought about her aching legs, the fire that lapped at them.
It would be easy to sit down, she thought. It was, in fact, the easiest thing to do— the muscles in her legs tightened, threatened to do this thing without her permission, only—
If she embarrassed Mistress Lucienne, that would be the end of days where the worst thing to worry about was the itching, burning feeling in her knees and the threads she felt so strongly, irrationally but incessantly, would be working their way into her skin. Mistress Lucienne was capable of so much worse, and even she was a relative mercy for a slave like Simone.
She felt the rug squirm under her, felt the phantom touch of the threads weaving it into her, and wondered if, when she was allowed to stand, the motion would pull away her skin like a snake's.
Suddenly, there was a hand on her shoulder, lifting her up. She bit her lip to stop from shouting, but the thing she feared was, of course, just in her mind. It hadn't even broken skin, just left deep red welts, crisscrossing her knees in an abstract knot.
"You're in pain," the Minister remarked, calmly, matter-of-fact. Simone nodded, not trusting herself to speak without making a scene, which she was not to do. Minister Rosalie made a sort of ambiguous grunt in the back of her throat and guided a shakey-legged Simone over to a beautiful leather sofa only a few paces away. She allowed Simone to collapse, there, into a mildly grateful puddle.
"I should have given you a cushion, girl. You're all burned up," Minister Rosalie said. "Rest for a bit. Let the worst of it pass."
"I can—"
Minister Rosalie's reprimand was gentle but immediate, her thumb on Simone's lips, pressing them shut. "Rest, slave. That is an order." She was all hard lines and tossed hair and eyes like the wind. Simone swallowed.
"Yes, Your Excellency, as you wish," she said, lips trembling against the Minister's hand. Minister Rosalie smiled down at her, thumb gliding away from her mouth to run affectionate lines over her cheekbones, making Simone shiver from the stimulation, driving her aching legs out of her mind. A shadow passed over the Minister's face, then, and she withdrew her hand, leaving Simone feeling curiously cold.
"I should...." she said before trailing off. She cleared her throat, tried again. "Do you want me to stay here while you rest? Please answer honestly. I hate liars."
Simone began to answer automatically, with the affirmative, but she was asked for honesty. She swallowed, silence hanging over the room.
Customarily, it didn't matter what Simone wanted. As far as she was concerned, she wanted what was wanted of her. She "wanted" to be gracious and useful and available for consumption. That was what was correct.
She looked up at the kindly Minister, at the slight redness in her cheeks, and she...
Couldn't decide. She shook her head. "If you would like, Your Excellency."
The Minister raised an eyebrow. "And would you like?"
Simone blinked, as though doing so would dispel her confusion. "Please forgive me, Your Excellency—"
Minister Rosalie waved a dismissive hand. "I am tired of court titles. 'Madame' will do."
Her hand was on Simone's shoulder, pressing her into the sofa, Simone's thin body shadowed by the Madame's. Her expression was impossible. She was hungry for Simone, of course, that was why she'd brought her, but she was also curiously restrained, the tendons in her neck tight. And, above it all...
She seemed very tired.
"Do you need to rest, Madame?" Simone found herself asking without quite meaning to. Her legs began to feel heavy and full of pins, and she found herself regretting asking, because if the Madame said "no", and pounced on her, and pressed her weight into her—
The Madame lay back with a sigh. "I do. But I only have you for two hours, and we have work to do. I'll sleep when I'm dead."
"Work?"
Wanting to be useful, wanting to be available, Simone spread her legs apart—
Madame Rosalie closed them, a dismissive push against Simone's chafed and bloodied knee. "Different work. You're smart, you'll like it."
Simone's mouth tasted sour and chalky. She had thought herself prepared! She had allowed herself to sink into the comforting fantasy, the idea that she might enjoy being put to use this time. All the same, she'd been prepared for atavism, rape, pain. She was always prepared for such things. She didn't...
"I'm smart?"
The Madame snorted. "You're smart, girl. There is... fire. In your eyes. And you are always looking. Possibly my impression is incorrect, but I have a good eye."
Simone shook her head, eyes closed, dangerous, venomous, thoughts biting her. They could tell she was smart. Was she smart? She was told she was smart. Should she be smart? Madame seems to like it. It makes her valuable to Madame. She was already valuable. Valuable was the problem, valuable was why they took her and made her as she was. But smart makes her good for something other than spreading her legs--
She blinked tears out of her eyes, tears the Madame did not deign to acknowledge. Instead, she pulled away from Simone, creating an impenetrable quarter-inch of distance.
Minutes passed. Simone curled her legs in, gently rubbing the feeling of pins out of herself. The Madame watched, quietly, keeping that cushion of space intact. At length, she cleared her throat.
"Do you... I need your name, girl."
"Simone, if it pleases you." The response was rote. The Madame nodded her approval. Her finger was under Simone's chin, pulling it up, making Simone look at her. Her face was so kind. The dangerous poison hope bubbled up within Simone's mind, whispering to her that this time might be nice.
"Simone. From the Marches?"
"From... yes, Madame," Simone said, nationalism warring with pragmatism for control of her tongue. The Marches were what the Rancettians called the place she was from, and that made it the correct name. She swallowed down her protest.
"A pretty name. I'm glad they let you keep it," Madame Rosalie said. "Simone, I'm writing a book. An accounting of Rancettian court slaves in the current historical moment. For posterity. I need... I want your perspective."
Just her perspective.
Simone found her brow furrowing. "Please," she ventured, "take what you want."
This made the Madame laugh, a quiet and sonorous sound she kept bottled up behind a tight smile. "I will, Simone, don't worry. But I need you actively engaged. I saw... earlier, when they were... well. I saw the way you were looking when I decided to bother your Mistress for you."
Simone's heart fell into her stomach. It wasn't supposed to be visible when she drew inside herself. "I beg your forgiveness, Madame."
Madame Rosalie brushed her thumb against Simone's cheek, the gentleness and warmth soaking into her bones. "I forgive you. In truth, how you conduct yourself with that crowd is none of my concern."
Her thumbnail cut into Simone, just a touch, barely enough to scratch, not enough to mark someone else's property, but—
"You will be better here. Eyes on me." The Madame's voice was loud, firm, and immediate, and Simone caught the stark gray of her eyes. The corner of her mouth turned into a small smile, one that told Simone all she needed to know about Minister of Finance Rosalie Compere.
She began to think about the Prince again.
"Eyes, Simone."
She forced herself to refocus, her eyes drinking in the sight of Madame Rosalie. A short curl of gray hair shot away from her brow. She wore no cosmetics. She smiled at Simone. By the standards of Court, by the standards Simone would be judged under, the Madame was far from beautiful, but there was a quiet, dignified, laborers sort of handsomeness to her.
Her hands were so strong, her skin rough but her motion gentle. Simone's heart fluttered for a moment.
"Doing better. Eyes on me."
Simone blinked phosphenes out of her eyes, her mouth suddenly so dry. Three times was entirely too many to hear a command without obeying. Surely she would be punished, except... if this bothered the Madame she gave no sign of it. She smiled softly at Simone instead, her eyes firm and intense. She was very kind, perhaps irresponsibly kind, but surely she had a limit. Three times! If she was not planning on pushing the punishment off to Mistress Lucienne, then she was sure to pierce through Simone's skin with the needle, or hit her with the crop, or raise those strong, rough hands against her—
She spread her legs again, and the Madame again closed them. She tossed fingers through Simone's hair. "Well done," she said very quietly.
Then, more confidently: "If I catch you drifting off, we will repeat this little exercise. Do not waste too much of my time, but... I can't fault you for your Mistress' failure to train you."
Simone's throat tightened, her eyes falling off of the Madame's face. "No-- no, Madame, please, I... Mistress has been so rigorous, any fault is my own, I beg—"
A crook of Madame Rosalie's finger closed Simone's jaw for her. Her eyes widened in terror-- she existed to bring respect and attention to her Mistress, since her Mistress certainly had no plans to avail her of her body. Even though the Madame was so kind—
"Simone," she said, and did not seem particularly kind at all, instead firm and demanding. "I hate liars. If you lie to me again, you will find your time with me exceedingly unpleasant. Do you understand?"
Simone nodded.
"Did you actually receive training to address your focus problem?"
Simone shook her head.
"Speak." The Madame relaxed her hold on Simone's jaw.
"No, Madame."
"Then why did you insinuate otherwise?"
Simone swallowed, the Madame's nails still scratching against her skin. "I-I apologize, Madame."
The pain was instant and severe, worse than Simone imagined anyone could inflict with mere fingers and nails, thin scratches blossoming against her skin. She grabbed Simone's jaw in her hand, dug her nails against the soft flesh of Simone's cheek, her blood staining the Madame's hand a blotchy brown. "Answer me."
"Because I should have been."
The answer unseated the Madame-- whatever she expected to hear, it must not have been that. She pulled her hand away from Simone's face, busied herself taking notes with a slate in her lap and a lump of charcoal staining her fingers. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was her scratching.
"Do you always lie to protect your Mistress?"
This time it was Simone's turn to become unseated. Blood rose to her cheeks, indignant, and she took a moment to bite her lip and still herself. The Madame flickered her steel gaze over to her, catching her eyes for a moment before she turned to stare at the rug.
"Answer, Simone," the Madame said, a note of impatience rising in her voice.
"I try to be in situations where Mistress is best protected by the truth." Simone dearly hoped this would satisfy the Madame, who made a decidedly unrefined snorting noise in reply.
"But if made to choose?"
"I am not supposed to choose," Simone said carefully. "I am supposed to obey."
This got a glint of interest in the Madame's eyes, which Simone realized with a start she was again staring into without permission. The Madame trailed a finger down the length of her pale hair, twisting a lock of it against her finger.
"Who is doing the 'supposing' in that sentence, Simone? Who lays out what your essential nature ought to be?"
Simone knew she ought to demure. There was no good answer to the question, so she should feign confusion or apathy. Her trainers had called her an excellent conversationalist.
"...The Prince, right?" She said instead. Her trainers had also called her an arrogant little brat before they—
Don't think about it.
That answer captivated the Madame, whose left hand reached out to brush her cheek even as her right continued to scrawl notes against parchment. "How do you suppose?" the Madame asked. Her fingers splayed, she held Simone's face in her hand, her gaze in her eyes, scrutinizing her, not as an object of consumption but as an object of fascination.
Simone figured that was a better kind of object to be.
"Well," she began. "I am not born differently from any other woman of the Marches. I was born free. I was not made the way I am by the hand of Sol Invicta."
The Madame seemed nonplussed by what Simone assumed was probably a damnable heresy. She tipped her head, indicating to Simone to continue.
"So, then, I was... my nature, what I ought to be, was inscribed when I was made a slave, according to my trainers. But it isn't as though my trainers had some personal desire for me to," and she faltered here because there were so many things she was expected to be, "to be the way I am. They trained me for sale— to exact as high a price from Mistress Lucienne as possible. Except that the way I am is not Mistress' immediate personal desire, either."
"Why do you think that?" the Madame asked. She still held Simone, gently, not even bothering to look at her note slate which had assuredly become completely illegible.
Because she was disgusted by Simone's body. Because the only joy she took in it was in causing her pain, and maybe not even then. "Because she's heterosexual, Madame."
The Madame's laugh creaked like a ship in the wind. "Is she now? I thought since she and her husband..."
Mistress Lucienne and her husband, Count Emile, had not seen each other once in the three months Simone had been in her possession. He was old, his health spent, and was by the Mistress' account wasting away in a hospice somewhere in the plains. She did not much seem to care, but not because she didn't like men. Simone guessed, rather, that she didn't like men she couldn't hurt.
"It would not be right to gossip, Madame," she said instead. The Madame narrowed her eyes, pressed the tips of her fingers a little harder against Simone's face, but didn't press any further.
"Of course. You were saying?"
"Mistress values me because I can win her affection and respect and honor. Because my body is..."
"Eyes," the Madame said. Simone obeyed. It wasn't very hard to obey, to center herself on the Madame's steel-gray eyes, take a deep breath, and continue.
"Because I am pleasing. Desirable, physically, if you understand."
The Madame was close to her now, lips centimeters from hers, the heat of her breath warm against her cheeks. "You are," she said. "So perhaps, in a roundabout way, Invicta did make you the way you are."
"Perhaps," Simone said quietly, automatically, though she didn't really think it was so. "But perhaps... perhaps it is more that I am..."
"Eyes," the Madame said. They were close enough to kiss, but the Madame wouldn't. She just looked at her and smiled, like she was hearing a concerto just listening to Simone's thoughts.
"I appeal to a certain taste," Simone continued. "To his taste. Because he is... the center. The pin that holds the social world together. If he liked strong-willed, opinionated slaves, I would be. But he does not, so I am not. "
"You think about this a lot."
Simone did. She felt him, his presence, the weight of his desire, pressing against her body. She felt it even when she was being trained by men too low and filthy to ever lay eyes on the Prince, the inarguable penumbra of royalty that bends men to his will without him lifting a finger or uttering a word. Even here, he could be felt, echoes of his will reverberating through his servant like the note in a tuning fork.
"Eyes."
The Madame scowled at her and pulled away. She found herself cold again. Then she was scribbling at her slate again and scowling at that.
"You're fascinating, Simone, did you know that?" the Madame said. Simone swallowed. It was a trick question, with no good answer; the sort her Mistress asked when she wanted an excuse to put the needle into her.
"As the Madame says," she said, only for the Madame to scowl harder. Humility wasn't always enough, of course, to spare her the needle, but it usually helped.
The Madame was quiet, and Simone took to counting her heartbeats again. Without the distraction of conversation, the stinging in her knees returned. She had counted up to two-hundred and four when the Madame spoke.
"Can you read and write?"
"Yes, Madame."
"In Rancettian?"
"Yes, Madame."
She thrust her slate into Simone's lap. "Can you read this?"
The writing on the slate was an absolute mess of scribbles, some kind of clerk's shorthand that curved down the margins, symbols smearing into each other like bad makeup. She could make out a few words, here and there, her name, "girl", "slave", "interesting." Simone swallowed.
"I don't think I can, Madame."
The Madame smiled at this. "I'll teach you the symbols if you want, so you can keep the notes next time I can borrow you from your Mistress."
She was very close again. Simone felt her heartbeat in the fingertips on her chin. Simone nodded, just a touch, unwilling to break contact. "If that pleases you, Madame."
"It pleases me greatly."