No Demons But Us

by A. S. Etaski

  Thena had scrambled to her feet while Panagan and Moria positioned behind her, but Suna was still coming awake on the floor. I shook so badly I would have fallen had not Gaelan pulled my good arm across her shoulders and supported my weight. My throat felt worse after all the screaming, and I pressed my aching wrist to my middle, glaring at them all without blinking. Even then, I hoped in private desperation that this rescue wasn’t another game, not a slight of hand to trick me into giving something away.

  I wanted it to be what it appeared to be. I wanted to go with Jaunda and Gaelan and be safe. I didn’t want to stay here.

  Thena spat, her face still bleeding. “Makes sense little Gael would have to get you to help feed her some scraps, Lead. Take the novice. After this long, she’s all loose and used up, anyway.”

  Jaunda heard Thena acquiesce as I did; I was relieved when she took no umbrage and briskly nodded her acceptance. She motioned Gaelan and me toward the door while she guarded our backs against the grumbling predators. The short-haired Davrin didn’t bother with any verbal shot to the Corpora, but she did close the door in the middle of Thena’s parting remark. I didn’t care whatever it was that Thena said, either.

  I limped with them to the wing where I’d been some time ago. Jaunda and Gaelan’s barracks were not too far from each other, and I wondered at first if we’d go to the Lead’s room for extra protection, but we returned to Gaelan’s room. There, she placed me down on her pallet where I curled on up on my side, crossing my arms over my chest. Jaunda dragged the single chair over to sit at the door after it was closed and secured. The Lead then sat and leaned back, pulling a blade to hone while Gaelan stripped down and settled behind me, spooning my body and putting her clean arms around me despite the dirt, saliva, and sweat covering me.

  “I don’t…want to,” I murmured to her, even aware she wasn’t wearing her Feldeu.

  “Won’t force you,” the young mage returned softly, combing some hair at my temple.

  I snorted. “Everyone else has been.”

  “That so?” Jaunda asked curiously, her blade touched up enough to return to its sheath. “You seemed willing most of this span, Sirana, up until now. For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen any novice take us all on for this long before cracking. What I understand, that was the first time you said no and, no matter what, you made an impression among the Sisters.”

  She might have been right about most of that, but a lot was just mist in my mind. I shrugged, arms still crossed, feeling Gaelan’s warmth and soft skin as she cradled me. I exhaled and tried to ease my tense muscles.

  “I didn’t have a choice. I make it here, or my life is over.”

  “True for the most part,” Jaunda said. “But there’s a limit for those who’ve held on strong as you have. Thena and her crew just hit it. But if you’d actually crippled or killed one of them? Yeah, the Prime alone would decide whether to keep you or not. We wouldn’t see you until she declared that to us, and you’d only see her in between.”

  I struggled with my bladder for a few moments. Fuck. “That why you barged in?”

  Jaunda grunted, “Yeah. The Prime’s killed the last three recruits handed over to her for going feral on a Sister. If she’s kept any, it was before my time. But then, she thinks we’re getting soft.”

  “While our Elders constantly remind her,” Gaelan added, her breath soft on my neck, “that we need to keep some to have a Sisterhood. There must be some standard to pass.”

  Jaunda nodded in agreement, her smile dry when she and I made eye contact. She still looked at me like she had at Court, like I was worth something, even after being stripped of both clothes and all control.

  “We’ll teach you how to get out from under a Sister’s Feldeu if you really don’t want to take it, Sirana. There are ways, and you don’t have to take everybody who asks or demands it.”

  I blinked, and my heart surged. “I don’t?”

  She grinned and shook her head. “Nope. Though take my advice and pick at least five to make part of your regular appetite, once you’re back to normal. It’s never gone well for a novice who tried to snub everybody, and no one here is exclusive. One or two is too few. Five seems enough to build the bonds you need to survive.”

  Given her estimated age, I thought Jaunda had some room to talk about that. I wondered about her five. Or ten. I wondered if I could be another one added to her “regular appetite.”

  Which seems substantial. I nodded. “Got it, Lead.”

  “Good. Better see to her wrist, Gaelan.”

  Jaunda tilted her head at me, her boots crossed at the ankles and her hands folded over her middle, cloak draping along the floor as Gaelan got up to get something from her chest.

  “So,” the Lead said, “has the ritual worn off? Finally? That why you erupted like a hotspot on Thena?”

  Cautiously, I reached down with my good hand, lightly caressing my netherlips. I did not feel the instant sizzle as I had for the last eight or ten cycles. It was so strange, both lacking but also as if I’d just come down from a high fever and rounded the bend, coming out of a lengthy illness. I felt weak but hungry for food, water, and a chance to walk around and do something other than fuck in bed. Preferably something that allowed wearing clothes. I’d worn nothing at all since handing over my dinner gown and slippers in the candle chamber.

  Once you’re back to normal.

  “I think so,” I said. “Probably.”

  Gaelan lay back down behind me, offering a small vial over my shoulder. She had a smile in her voice. “Here, drink this. Elder D’Shea will be pleased, although you have one more Sister to get to know before we take you to her.”

  “Who?”

  “Lead Qivni,” Jaunda replied, watching me with a devious grin, and I swigged the bitter tonic. “She wasn’t gonna be anywhere near you stuffed full of Priestess juice. You’re off it at last. You take a Reverie, bounce back from Thena and her gang. By the time you wake up, she’ll know it’s her turn.”

  I let that sink in alongside the healing potion, recalling how Qivni had commanded the Sathoet, how she’d spoken that grinding language with ease. How she seemed to know the lines I was tempted to cross with the Priestesses and gave me dire warnings. How she’d resentfully tickled my anus with the tip of her tongue, for a reason known only to D’Shea.

  Out in the wilderness, I had been curious to discover more about that. About her. Now I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to make it worthwhile.

  My Collector. Joy.

  One Lead passed me off directly to the other when we met in the hallway. I was still naked and barefoot but bathed. Qivni sighed, standing at the door to her room, not having entered it herself since coming back.

  “Now?”

  “Now,” Jaunda replied, smiling at the grim expression on her peer’s face. “Sirana’s sobered up. She’s clean and everything. Almost done. Unless she tries to kill you,” my Lead winked at me, “or you find some terrible flaw, I think we’ll have a new Sister soon.”

  I thought it was clear that Qivni would rather skip this part; perhaps she would give Jaunda her way than touch me. This was an obligation or tradition; even though a crowd of Sisters wasn’t watching her right now, there was still pressure for her to perform. With a slight curl to her mouth, Qivni took my arm. Her grip was not nearly as harsh as on the balcony, on my last eve as a Noble.

  “I’ll be back for her after your Reverie, Qiv,” Jaunda said and excused herself without waiting for dismissal.

  Like the Elders, there were only two Leads in the Sisterhood: Jaunda and Qivni. One was a warrior, the other a mage, and they were swapped in their apparent loyalty: Jaunda with the Sorceress, and Qivni with the General. I wasn’t sure if that was as the Prime and Elders had wanted it or if, like me with Qivni now, they were required to accept the assignment.

  I knew as well that there were four Lunents—two each under a Lead—but would have to recount Corporas now that I was “sober.�
� I thought I had known eight, being passed from one to another, and except for the Prime, the rankings seemed to prefer even numbers and multiples of four. All others beneath the Corpora were simply “Sisters,” ranked according to seniority and divided up four to eight per Corpora.

  Meanwhile, a recruit changed to “novice” before she became a Red Sister. Still, even some higher-ranked females were still called “Sister” by their peers, if more casually. Probably not formally. Everyone started as a novice, then a Sister; from all their talk above my head, my ass, or my slit, I had already gathered that there wasn’t a way to buy or bribe oneself up a few ranks.

  Everyone started at the bottom. Even Elders Rausery and D’Shea, centuries ago.

  The door closed behind me, and Lead Qivni disarmed herself, putting all things in their place before carefully removing each piece of armor. If she had wanted to command me to serve her, she didn’t show it, and she probably didn’t trust me competently to remove her gear without damaging it. Her tight bun looked disheveled, and I wondered what she’d been doing before she got here to have me thrust into her space. I sniffed the room and realized hers was the only room so far that held a lingering scent of incense which reminded me of the Sanctuary.

  “Can’t remember the last time we had to rut a needy cait for so long before making a decision,” she muttered, now removing her boots and shirt.

  “That wasn’t my doing, Lead,” I said. “I’d have fought the Priestess harder if I’d known how long it would last.”

  “Then you’d be dead now,” she stated, turning her head sharply to glare at me. “And did I tell you to justify it to me? No. Be silent while I dress down and relax.”

  I was not in the mood for this attitude, and neither was she in the mood for me, but I held close what Jaunda said: one more Sister, and I was in. I managed to wrap one lip over the other and keep my thoughts to myself for the time it took Qivni to strip down. This wasn’t going to be as easy without the breeding urge from the ritual, but I hoped it wasn’t a slog.

  “May I ask a question, Lead?” I ventured, looking at the simple dresser with the full-length mirror beside it, both comb and brush resting on the mirror’s side of the dresser’s top.

  Qivni exhaled in sufferance. “Ask.”

  “Lead Jaunda said you wouldn’t accept me while I was still under the Priestess’s ritual effects. Is that true? If so, why?”

  The Lead pulled a few pins and a tie from her hair, letting it down, and I stared to see it was longer than it had seemed, falling just below her shoulder blades. She was nude and brushing out the very minor tangles without looking in the mirror. Her face was set either in a scowl, or that was her thinking expression.

  “True, and I’m sensitive to divine magic,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to evaluate you properly on my terms.”

  Why, for Pit’s sake, would they place a mage-adapt like that in the Sisterhood, not the Sanctuary?

  “Were you a novice Priestess before you were a Sister?” I guessed.

  Wrong tactic, I could see.

  Jaunda would have punched me. D’Shea would have silenced me with a look. Qivni did a mixture of both as she stalked forward, probably in favor of casting something under temper. I was glad that she’d taken off her boots when her bare heel swept up and hit me on the side of my head. My ears were ringing as I pushed back up to sit, but I didn’t feel much of a bump rising yet.

  “You may ask no more questions about me, Sirana. Ever. Understand?”

  “Yes, Lead.”

  Qivni looked down at me while I looked up. Our eyes locked, stress and emotion powered by the resistance we both felt. We could be equally stubborn, I was sure, but I wasn’t in a position to challenge her. I looked down for my own good, but if she had wanted to make it so that I promised myself right there on her floor I would find answers even if I asked no questions—

  “You’re too curious,” she remarked as if reading my mind. The Lead mage returned to her stand, tying up her hair again after smoothing it down. “You can’t resist, can you? That tendency shall get you killed too soon.”

  I scowled at her back, and she might have seen me in her mirror. Better than being stupid like Kaltra. As if the only way to think is like you?

  By the Void, this Davrin could remind me of everything I hated about the Sanctuary watching them up close for fifteen turns, of everything my sisters had admired about them from afar. The Sanctuary link in Qivni was evident to me, and I’d be a fool to dismiss it, but I’d been an idiot in following up the hunch without patience. I also couldn’t forget there were only three Red Sisters above her; I knew she was barely older than Jaunda. Former Priestess or not, Qivni already had the skills I wanted and further talents I could never claim.

  Yet she was so sour. How was I to even eat her, much less learn from her? I breathed out, closed my eyes. No demons but us. Home is here, or nowhere. Jilrina has no power to drag me down or hold me back, ever again.

  “If you don’t want me, Lead,” I said, allowing a small smile, “why are we required to do this, again?”

  “Everyone learns the new Sister in some way,” she replied, sounding dutiful.

  “It seems you’ve already learned what you want to know about me, and I’m not to ask about you.”

  “Quiet.”

  Her bun was perfect again.

  “Could I ask about me?”

  “What?”

  I felt my mood lighten. “Could I ask about me? You seem like you’d know the most about what happened to me on the Altar.”

  She glanced my way and arched an elegant brow. Qivni was stern, but she wasn’t ugly; she had the air that she could have been at ease wearing the Sanctuary robes.

  So why aren’t you wearing them?

  “It is always about you, isn’t it, Sirana?” she said, and it wasn’t really a question.

  I shook my head. “None of us survive older siblings if it isn’t, somewhere in our heads.”

  She went still for a moment, but despite my expecting another coy suggestion that I’d killed Jilrina and had gotten away with it, Qivni asked me nothing about my House.

  Maybe she doesn’t understand, I thought. Perhaps she was either an eldest or an only child from somewhere.

  Qivni snapped her fingers at me. “On the pallet. I want to check you over.”

  I crawled over to the bedding and thick mat, glad to be off the bare stone. No one but Elder D’Shea had an actual bed risen off of the floor that I knew about, although I hadn’t seen Elder Rausery’s quarters and didn’t want to see the Prime’s. Taken as a whole, the Cloister was austere to an extreme compared to the Palace.

  This was one area where Qivni suited the Sisterhood to perfection; the incense I detected wasn’t a luxury, I wagered, but necessary to perform her function. Elder D’Shea fit far better among the decorative trappings of the Palace, wearing that silk robe and drinking a glass of wine when I had kneeled on her bare floor. The Sorceress was also the only one so far with a generous collection of scrolls and books, boxes, potions, and gems on several shelves. Even this Lead, claiming to be “sensitive” to the divine magic of the Priestesses, didn’t have more than a few written pieces, far above the floor and near her weapons.

  “On your stomach,” Qivni commanded.

  Bah.

  I settled down, rested my chin on my arms, and kept my legs together; I consciously resisted turning to look at her and kept my eyes forward. We were both nude as she touched me, but her fingers and hands across my back weren’t sensual or massaging. She prodded and traced my muscle and bone as if trying to see under the skin; she studied me though I knew not for what. Not long ago, even this might have aroused me, particularly when she reached my buttocks, but now it didn’t. She didn’t demand I open my legs.

  “Turn over.”

  Pursing my lips to hold in the sigh, I did. Qivni studied me with only her eyes at first, forehead to toes; she wasn’t interested in my breasts or fur or
netherlips. She whispered something quiet, and I wasn’t too surprised when she focused on my womb; her hands covered that spot first.

  “First a Sathoet, then a Consort,” she said, disapproving although I wasn’t sure of what.

  “And a wizard and a fighter, Lead,” I added. “And almost every Red Sister here.”

  Qivni huffed with a shake of her head. “Are you tired of sex, yet?”

  “Almost. But only because no one can fuck forever.”

  “Oh? You haven’t found some limits to your tastes?”

  “Seems better for a Red Sister, my Lead, if there are as few limits as possible.”

  She didn’t disagree, although I wondered how she had made it where she was now with a few of her own limits in place. Or maybe those had developed as she gained status and her tastes hadn’t started out that way.

  She asked, “Did the Royal Consort say anything to you?”

  “He tried to tell me who his Mistress was. I stuffed a root in his mouth.”

  “You didn’t see his circlet?”

  “No, Lead. I was fuck-blind.”

  “Indeed. Well said.” Qivni was pleased with that admission; she actually smirked a bit. It was smug. “Did you enjoy him?”

  “What I got to do on him, yes. We were interrupted.”

  “Fortunate for you.”

  “So I’ve been told, Lead, many times.”

  Her hand still covered my womb. Her red-brown eyes were unfocused. I wasn’t sure if I felt any magic or not, but I was sure nothing intangible lingered from that conflict, such as D’Shea could see when I first got here.

  “Did it feel at any point as though he got beneath your skin?” she asked.

  I hesitated. “I don’t understand the question, Lead.”

  Her other hand covered my heart. “You’re not mage-born, so I’m not surprised. But I think you’d recognize the sensation all the same.”

  Maybe.

  “Are you saying it isn’t just the Priestess ritual to which you were sensitive?” I asked. “Was it the Consort, too?”