No Demons But Us

by A. S. Etaski

  So be it. Don’t fight. Don’t offer a reason to kill me if she wasn’t sent for that.

  The Red Sister finished claiming her kiss from me and lifted herself off, next slapping my cheek open-handed. Its strength was somewhere between an insulting tap and a bone-cracking backhand. I stared up at her, unblinking, frozen, and unable to move.

  “Rest well, Blue Eyes,” she said, grinning as her eyes trailed over me one more time. “Dream of me instead of those lucky fucks who broke in that tight ass for you.”

  The Red Sister stood up, collected her helm, gloves, and cloak, and left the Thalluen quarters of the Palace, snuffing the candles she’d lit on arriving. Stunned several long moments, waiting in the dark and fearful of her to return, I crawled beneath the blankets when she never reappeared.

  My throbbing head was so confused. I felt fortunate to be given the reprieve, and yet I felt condemned to bear the specific attention of a Red Sister who looked at me like a tasty morsel.

  Probably the intended effect.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Red Sister’s laugh returned to me most as I waited in vain for her to arrive at my quarters again. That braying, uninhibited bellow such as I’d never heard from the often-solemn, stone-faced enforcers of any ilk inside the Palace or Sanctuary. I recalled the way her eyes twinkled in candlelight when she smiled at me as if there was something in me to want. Or admire.

  When had I ever heard or seen that before? Not at the quiet, sullen plantation of my birth. If someone laughed like that—a servant or a soldier—they didn’t do it where their Nobles could hear them. At Court?

  Hah. All the laughter here has a double-edge to it. To cover fear, to carry insult or anger. To wear a mask.

  The first turn since that orgy ritual wore on past its first quarter and then its second, and I remained unmolested by leather-clad females in my empty quarters. I was alone unless I invited my own male companionship. I dared to wonder if that Red Sister hadn’t been showing me a mask. Was that how she was? Did Red Sisters, in their power, have that luxury to strut about however they pleased, to laugh when and how they liked?

  Why not? How can any of us manipulate it for our own ends, if there is no shame exploit? I snorted to imagine a Noble attempt some judgment or insult for it. No judging.

  That was the other thing. I’d just been used by multiple buas—Noble Sons who now avoided me for fear of what I might do in retaliation. I hadn’t gone looking for them yet, and I hadn’t even decided what I would do if I caught one of the four again. There would also be others whose names and faces I didn’t know, yet he might remember knowing my holes well, and it could be his secret pleasure to enjoy that memory without consequence.

  It wasn’t unheard of for a Noble female to “submit” herself to receive that much service at once, but she “directed from the center,” as the saying went. Anyone watching that orgy—and I was sure the Red Sister had been, and she had focused on me—would know I hadn’t been in control of them.

  They used me under the influence of Priestess magic. Afterward the Red Sister… looked at me as though standing so filthy and defiled made me desirable to her.

  Desirable. Not contemptible. Weird.

  Her first question after I’d shown her my swollen and sticky nethers stuck in my head. “Was that your first time, taking three at once?” Why would she ask me that?

  A first time implied a second—a time where some skill could be honed. It suggested she wanted to see me do it again and be proud of it. I wasn’t sure that I could. Wouldn’t I just be like a meek male then, getting on my knees waiting to be done to, not taking what I wanted?

  Maybe she’s only aroused by females who act like males.

  There weren’t that many of those types of females at Court—or anywhere, as far as I knew. Given how such Nobles were treated by everyone—mocked, disrespected, making even the males bold around her—I didn’t want to become one of them.

  The Red Sister had left my quarters with a clear directive, however: write a letter to my Matron asking for formal martial training at Court. I did not ignore that suggestion, and doing it even made me feel less like the kind of female who would crawl in front of a male and ask to be used and humiliated.

  Jilrina is dead. I am not an Heir. Nothing holds me back from taking up a sword and training to fight. I was desperate to learn when she was alive.

  Although the males at Court and their female relatives had distracted me for my first five turns in taking all of my focus, I knew I could do better for myself. I would do better.

  My Matron responded quickly to my letter, and I had what I needed to request a formal apprenticeship from among the Palace Guard. The approval, I was told, ultimately came from the Valsharess but I never saw Her in the process. I also doubted the Queen looked that carefully at every Noble application. At first, I spoke only with bored, older administrators sitting behind large desks with quill in hand, wearing the blue and purple uniforms of their station. In almost three spans, before the full quad-span had passed, I started novice training with some other Noble Daughters.

  The Guards who could genuinely teach us something wore blue, purple, and a stripe of orange. Most tutored in the way of enjoying the opportunity to floor a Noble now and then, just short of the humiliation which would invite vindictive responses from a House. They always pulled their hardest strikes, though sometimes, with me, I wished they wouldn’t.

  Once my first half-turn of training was complete, I had moved beyond the group lessons to regular one-on-one with three different veteran Guards. I managed a better balance between the sex, the intrigue, and sparring, and I gained in the martial skill I’d always wanted. My confidence rose with it; so did my laughter, which sometimes filled and bounced off the high walls of the practice chambers.

  “Braying Uroan,” Wixara of the Sixth House said once at dinner, though I’d never seen her in a match, only as a pillow-sitting spectator.

  “So knock my wind out,” I challenged with nonchalance, “if you can.”

  She tried to make me regret saying that. I almost did a few times.

  This ill-considered taunt began another source of welcome entertainment to pass the time at Court. I received challenges on behalf of lazy Nobles like Wixara, fulfilled not by them but by relatives and servants who could display their skill. I got the wind kicked out of me more than once by fighter females, and the observing Noble would smirk and snicker, rewarding her chosen champion in various ways.

  “There,” she’d said. “Now we shall have some blessed silence from the Twelfth House during the next practice, hm?”

  Not likely.

  I lost plenty of those matches, but I also got better. I learned from them, whether they meant to teach me or not. I always got back up and would accept another challenge a quad-span or so later, or issue one myself, if only because it irritated the fuck out of some of my fellow Nobles. Even one ill-advised sparring against two House Guards at once didn’t see me stop fighting, despite injuries which kept me in my quarters once for eight cycles.

  “Prideful Sareci,” a Noble sniffed at my birth order. “She needs an elder female to remind her of her place at Court.”

  That isn’t ever going to happen.

  I enjoyed sparring whether I won or lost; the effects of each, whether high or low, were as temporary and resistible as any time Jilrina and Kaltra had tormented me in the past. Like sex, the fighting was never truly over; like the Red Sister of several turns ago, I found it became easier to laugh in victory or defeat.

  My attitude and skill growing together also drew more Noble males to the practice rooms, wanting to watch me do both. Even Micraen and Tohni eventually approached me again, and after a close and well-earned victory, I decided, still sweating and panting, to take both of their young staffs at once in the privacy of my quarters.

  “This time,” I told them, peeling Micraen’s shirt open to caress his nipples, staring each Davrin in the eye, “no potions. Al
l my way. Understand?”

  They grinned and cooperated. Word would make it out as the males gossiped, and I would eventually see Reaf again as well. When I next fucked three young poles at once, it was while I was sober and in control.

  I liked it better the second time.

  I enjoyed the next decade at Court much more than my first half-a-one. I was ninety-nine turns old, approaching my hundredth birth-cycle with a reputation as a decent fighter with a stubborn streak and an entourage of male admirers at Court.

  The first century was a significant marker, one by which most children of the Nobles had found their place and purpose within their family. Unless Mother allowed me to join the Barracks, I doubted I would ever find mine back at House Thalluen. This would not keep me from searching for a place of my own, limited as those options might be. I would never have to think about providing for children of my own or begging my Matron for help and support; as a lone fighter, I could be hired and live on simple necessities if I was ever ousted from Court.

  Perhaps I could even find a service in the city. Or join the Palace Guard.

  That last one felt like the path of least resistance, given that they had trained me. I wasn’t sure where else to aim, though, and saw no reason they wouldn’t take me. Nobles didn’t have as many choices as it seemed to those commoners staring up at us in our comforts.

  I hadn’t been called to participate in a Priestess ritual again, thank the Spider Queen, but it was only a matter of time as I puttered around the royal grounds, pretending I was anything more than a useless Third Daughter.

  A Daughter who, sooner or later, will be whispered to be infertile.

  I couldn’t indulge in buas forever without catching if I claimed to have a working womb. The other females would notice in time. Following the Priestess initiation ritual—where it was widely assumed by now that I’d taken half the males in the chamber up my backside and sucked their dirty cocks afterward—I was still playing that card for what it was worth.

  I only took seed in my mouth or my ass now, ostensibly to delay having a child, and I bragged about it. This might give me another few decades rumor-free, but any Noble Daughter who hadn’t proven her fertility one way or another by one-hundred-fifty invited comments about what was wrong with her. I had heard rumors about some Noble females gaining children in secret, trading for robust infants from among the commoners, but that was far from proven. If I did that, of course, then I had to think about how to take care of a baby, which would in time force me to return home.

  Maybe I’ll figure something else out by then.

  One eve after another Nobles’ party, I risked standing on one of the Court’s balconies alone, looking out over our Deepearth City. There wasn’t much of a view, only noise and movement I sensed in my bones and along my nerves, to remain distant and immaterial until it came close enough to be a threat in the dark. There were clusters of lights here and there; bright points out in the massive Great Cavern, of which I had never made out the ceiling even from up here. Fire torches or magical light flickered and blinked along the streets and outskirts, because sometimes the other senses weren’t enough.

  I often wondered about that. If the Davrin were born and would die in a place with no light if we could see in the dark as well as any creature around us, why did we still insist on indulging our eyes with colors?

  Our eyes were part of our overall beauty as Elves, I knew, as we possessed a variety of beautiful faces. Perhaps it was our eyes coupled with our written languages of material and magic which set us apart from and above the other races of the Deepearth. All of the others—often squat, moist, and dirty in their own settlements—possessed poorer eyesight in the light of fire or magic; they often could not discern the nuance of color. They struggled to learn how to read, and they archived none of their own histories and spellcraft as we did.

  Our mages, our spellcasters, and potion brewers set our race above all others. We studied and used magic more than any other kind. I was not a mage, but I owed much of my convenience and comfort to them. I also owed to them much of my early torment as well, for it was a mage who had created that compulsion potion Jilrina had purchased, dooming me to silence beneath her cruel hands until she died.

  My silent suffering could have lasted for much longer than three and a half decades. As aimless as I felt now, I was still free of that, at least. I didn’t know what I might do if I should ever find the brewer who had given that potion to Jilrina.

  She’s probably already dead, I thought.

  I had since learned permanent compulsions like what I had been given were forbidden magic. In my mind, it was extremely likely the Sorceress Elder who had questioned me about it had since gone to find the mage making those vials for Nobles to use on each other.

  The Valsharess forbids it. The Red Sisters enforce it.

  And I could see why. The Noble Davrin often couldn’t control our indulgences when there were no rules or, like Jilrina, some thought the rules didn’t apply to them.

  From where I stood on the balcony, I could see the Web Garden directly below me. The glittering strands of spider silk managed to absorb and reflect the pale blue and green fluorescence of cave lichen growing in tended patches along dressed stone pathways, benches, and sculptures. Spiders specially bred for the Valsharess had made those designs, their tiny minds just magical enough to understand they couldn’t make the same web twice. One could become lost studying those intricate patterns.

  Engaged as I was, I still heard a boot scrape against the stone behind me, and I whirled around. A Red Sister stood there, watching me sternly.

  “Sirana Thalluensareci,” she said.

  She gave me that warning on purpose. I kept my stomach firmly in place as I curtsied. “I am, Red Sister.”

  She wasn’t the short-haired warrior of before. This one was new to me. She was not quite as tall or as broad in the shoulders, and her face also appeared as though it might crack if she so much as smiled, much less laughed. She did not wear a helm, and her hood was down; her hair was in a tight bun without a strand free to flutter in a draft. Her features were sharp, her eyes a very dark shade which seemed black in the colorlessness of my Dark Sight. Her cloak was open, and I could see her weapons belt holding two daggers, a hand crossbow, five or six pouches, and a selection of slim, stoppered vials.

  “Um, what may I do for you?” I asked, thinking back over the last handful of spans in case there was a misstep which might warrant this attention now. I couldn’t think of anything.

  “You may come with me.”

  Abruptly I stood as I had before on the cusp of the Priestess ritual. My escort had arrived with little warning, and I had an instant to comply with her instructions and step forward. I wasn’t part of a larger group this time, but at least I wasn’t being asked to swallow an unknown potion.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I approached the leather-clad warrior in my flimsy evening gown and slippers, breathing normally up until the point she gripped my upper arm in a painful hold and snapped the fingers of her free hand before my eyes.

  Everything was black. I couldn’t see.

  Braqth’s Tits, she’s a mage.

  My heart tripped like my feet, and I forgot to breathe as the Red Sister dragged me from the balcony. I couldn’t be sure if her spell only affected my eyes, or if we were cloaked together in magical shadow to avoid being seen. Either way I trembled, first expecting a poisoned dagger to enter my back before my mind seized on the possibility that I was being taken to the dungeon instead.

  What have I done? It can’t be Jilrina’s death again. Why wait for fifteen turns to punish me for an accident?

  Let it be something else.

  Getting my feet under me, I matched the brisk pace of my collector exactly. I counted my footfalls in my head, mapping the hallway to try for a sense of where I was going. Somehow the Red Sister could tell what I was doing, and she didn’t like it.

  “Stop that
,” she hissed, drawing something from her belt and striking the back of my head.

  I stumbled, swallowing my cry as she hauled me around several times in a circle then forcibly pushed me until I fell. Disoriented, I felt her take my bare ankle in hard fingers and start dragging me. My dining gown went over my legs, nearly passed my hips; if the blindness was mine alone, then the Red Sister likely saw I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

  That didn’t concern me, however; nor did any possibility of my dress tearing or my hairstyle being mussed. I was much more concerned to be skidding and struggling on the polished stone with no indication that she would stop any time soon. The bruises would quickly turn to open cuts and abrasions, and I remained blind and dizzy.

  “Let me up!” I blurted. “Please, you’ve done well, Red Sister, I’ve lost where we are!”

  She released my ankle as she stood over me for a tick before dropping her knee right into my stomach. My breath was hurled to a forceful stop.

  “Presume not to command or assuage me, little Noble. I’ll sever your calf through and leave you here to bleed out. You’ll miss your chance.”

  Her voice was only a hiss, but in the absolute darkness, it seemed louder, penetrating. I shuddered, sucking hard for breath as I curled up to protect that calf.

  Miss my…chance?

  “I apologize, Sister,” I gasped. “Please let me walk again.”

  She hauled me up by one arm, and at first, my other senses were rattled and useless to me; I needed her strict, guiding arm as we continued walking forward, or backward, in darkness. By the time I walked with my escort without support, I had become aware of the door in front of my nose just in time to not hit it.

  “Ur’nithel,” the Sister murmured in rich, mage’s pronunciation, motioning and touching something with her gloved hand.

  The door smelled of stone and tasted of magic, hardly making a noise as it moved to the side. I imagined that I might be disappearing into the very walls and may never be seen again.