One thing she had soon discovered in Zhao’s service was that it was impossible for a girl to be so perfectly obedient that he would not punish her. Whipping, spanking, pinching, burning, suspension and all the rest were as much part of attending Zhao as more overtly sexual activities. Some sort of “correction” or “discipline” invariably preceded intercourse.
In this instance, Bo Lien’s sweet breasts were to be the target of his whip. Today, the pretext for the punishment was her lack of effort when she had corrected one of the maids that morning. There was actually some basis for this charge, for Bo Lien had not applied all her strength to the assignment. It was this type of command that she found hardest to obey, that is, the ones that demanded she hurt someone else.
The maid was young and innocent, the simple daughter of a country blacksmith, new to the House of Sighs, and she practically worshipped Bo Lien, who had befriended her. She had been hung naked, upside down between two poles, her elbows tied together behind her back, her legs spread wide. Bo Lien was ordered to administer fifteen strokes with a whip, consisting of a dozen thin leather thongs on a long handle, on the erring domestic’s sex.
The girl had looked up at Bo Lien, her wide, brown eyes filled with tears, and said, “Please dear Lotus, do not hurt me. I am truly sorry for my fault…” (the draconian punishment was for breaking a tea cup) “…and I promise I will never do it again.”
Bo Lien’s heart nearly broke as she regarded the trusting girl. She said, “No, Nuan Lui…” (Affectionate Willow) “…so grievous an error must be severely punished, for such foolishness and clumsiness brings dishonor on the house of your master, Zhao Hua.” She looked at Zhao and saw him nod in approval. Then she gritted her teeth and did her best to harden her heart as she swung the whip overhead and down to snap into the tender flesh of the girl’s thighs and on her virgin sex.
Nuan Lui screamed in pain, and twisted uselessly in her bonds. “Eeeee! Eeeeee! I am sorry, dear Lotus, I am sorry! Please forgive me, Bo Lien, and I swear never to break another cup! I love you, Bo Lien. Will you not give me another chance?”
The girl did not understand that Bo Lien was as much a slave in the house as she, or that Bo Lien had no power to help her in the least way. She hardened her heart and completed the correction. When she was finished, the flesh at the junction of the maid’s thighs was a mass of thin welts and the victim was whimpering incoherently. Bo Lien herself was weeping as she regarded what she had done to the trusting, lovable Willow.
Zhao was less than pleased. He inspected the girl’s body and commanded, “Look at me, Bo Lien.” When she raised her eyes to meet his, he said, “You did not apply the full strength of your arm when you corrected her, did you?”
Bo Lien had never learned to lie, and in any case when she was a captive under Zhao’s gaze her will fled. She could no more resist him than a puppet could withstand the holder of its strings.
“No, Master, I did not,” she said dully. “I held back because she is my friend, and I have failed you.”
He nodded. “You have failed me indeed, and there will be two results. First, I will this night personally discipline you in my chambers, and then, tomorrow morning, this correction will be repeated, except that this time, I will administer the strokes and you will watch this foolish girl suffer the consequences of your poor obedience. Do you not agree that this is just and proper?”
One of Zhao’s cruelest tricks was to force Bo Lien to agree to the fairness of his outrageous sentences. Of course, she knew the consequences if she failed to endorse his judgments.
It felt as though he had crushed something in her chest. “As ever, you are the soul of justice, Master Zhao,” Bo Lien made herself say, as she contemplated Nuan Lui being whipped again on the same part of her body by Zhao.
The maid’s punishment was in the future, however, and crouching on the floor of the bedroom, bound and helpless, Bo Lien had enough in the present to occupy her mind. Zhao was approaching, with the instrument of her punishment in his hand.
He carried a length of bamboo, with one end frayed into numerous, irregular strands. He held the rod before her eyes and shook it, producing a hollow, rattling sound.
“This is another idea I have borrowed from the dwarf bandits of Wo,” he said. “They are especially fond of correcting the tits…” He reached down and almost playfully flipped the ends of the rod into the underside of Bo Lien’s mounds. She drew in a sharp breath when she felt the way the split ends of the rod scraped her flesh, even when applied so lightly. “…and they have come up with a marvelous variety of ways to take advantage of female weakness in this area.”
As this did not seem to call for a reply, Bo Lien remained silent. “Rather than assigning a fixed number of strokes as a correction, I will allow you to determine the length of the punishment,” he continued. “I will punish your breasts with this bamboo while we discuss the matter, and it will end when you are able to explain the significance of your failure to obey me this morning, and persuade me that you understand what is required. Thus, if your wits are quick, you may only need to undergo a handful of strokes, but if they are slow, you have a very trying evening ahead of you. Now, I will admit that this is something of a novel approach for me, but I have decided that you may be intelligent enough to be able to participate in correcting your own errors, Bo Lien. If you are not comfortable with this procedure, then I will instead apply a fixed number of strokes, say twenty-five, and I will explain proper behavior to you, rather than the converse. The choice is entirely yours. I advise you to take as much time as you deem necessary to consider your options, as this is not a decision you should make in haste.”
Bo Lien was very glad he had given this final bit of advice, for she needed time to ponder this speech, which contained much that was strange and unexpected. First of all, she was taken aback by the rare compliment; it was far from ordinary for Zhao to refer to anyone else as “intelligent”. Then again, the Zhao she was familiar with was normally an impatient man, especially when it came to satisfying his personal desires, so his admonition to use as much time as she needed was even more out of character than the compliment.
She considered the possibility that this was some new kind of trick, but if it was she could not think what the point might be. He could administer as many strokes as he wished. Indeed, even if he did state a fixed number, there was nothing to keep him from continuing to punish her even after that number had been reached. Also, although perhaps this was only her hopeful imagination, Bo Lien thought she detected a note of something… could it be pleading? It seemed as if he truly wanted to communicate with her, to discuss the punishment of poor Nuan Lui, but also something more.
When she made up her mind, she looked at Zhao, who was crouching in front of her, patiently awaiting her decision. “I will accept your offer, Master Zhao. Let us discuss the matter together, and with your guidance, perhaps some degree of enlightenment will come to me and I will fully understand the nature of my failure.”
He nodded. “I believe you will not regret this decision, Bo Lien.” He raised the arm holding the frayed bamboo rod. “But before we begin to converse, you must have a better idea of what is at stake.” The ends of the rod made the rattling sound again as he swept it down to catch the underside of Bo Lien’s left breast, then brought it back again without pause to strike the right.
The pain was of a new kind for her, and extraordinarily harsh. The stiff fibers of broken ends of the bamboo were like a hundred sharp needles abrading her flesh, so that it felt as if broad swathes of skin were being filed or sanded from her body. It was somewhat like the sting of the fiery branch, but spread over a wider area and slower to fade.
Bo Lien screamed and contorted her body in her bonds, screamed until her lungs were completely emptied, then drew a deep breath and screamed some more. It was not until she had finished a third ear-piercing shriek that she was finally able to control herself enough to be able to merely gasp, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” and finally fall silent
, panting heavily. Her first cogent thought was that twenty-five such strokes would peel all the skin from her breasts.
“Now that you have a better idea of what you risk, let us begin,” Zhao said. “First, I will tell you something of my history, so that you may better understand my mind.”
It seemed that Zhao was full of surprises tonight. He had never before offered the least personal revelation to Bo Lien. Trying to ignore the throbbing from her breasts, she concentrated on his words.
“You should understand that the stories about my ancestry, or perhaps I should say the lack of it, are no less than the truth,” he said. “I am the son of a poor fisherman, and everything I have, everything I am, I have made through my own efforts. My knighthood was a reward for a particular service I performed for one of the Emperor’s nephews, and this house and everything in it, including you and Chao-Xing, are mine through the dint of much labor and sacrifice. I have become a wealthy man from trade, a profession that requires much travel. Knowing what you do of me, what do you think is my greatest concern when I am far away from the House of Sighs on business, Bo Lien?”
She considered the matter, her eyes closely monitoring the bamboo rod. “I would say that you would want all things here to remain as you have ordered them,” she said carefully. “When you come home at last, there should be no slackening of discipline among the servants in your absence.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I must endure great hardships in my travels, with my only recompense that all will be as I wish when I return at last to me home. Say on, Bo Lien.”
“You then must needs have a majordomo, a strong man who you can trust to keep all things as you desire them for your return,” she suggested. “But I know of no such person in this house.”
“Again, you speak no less than the truth,” Zhao said. To her horror, he raised the bamboo rod again, and said, “Now you must tell me why I do not employ such a one.”
Bo Lien closed her eyes and began to scream even before the jagged bamboo ripped at the softness on the summits of her perfect little globes. Without being aware of it, she tried to fling herself across the room, nearly strangling herself in her agony. Eventually, after what seemed like a very long time to her, the fires abated somewhat and Bo Lien was able to attend to something other than her suffering.
Again Zhao waited, studying her face. “Well, Bo Lien, do you need more time to answer?”
She stared at him, trying to remember what he was talking about. Suddenly she remembered the original question, and an answer came to her at the same moment. “No, no, I am ready. If your man was not strong enough, the discipline in the house would suffer, but if he was too strong, he might undermine your own position so that your servants might begin to believe they served two masters instead of only one.”
“You have put your finger on a sad truth, Lotus, for I have tried both sorts of men, with the results you have well described,” Zhao said. “Now we near the heart of the matter. Know that, although you used less than your full strength on the girl this morning, she was still sufficiently punished for her mistake. You should also understand that I was well aware of your particular friendship with this maid. Given this information, if you can now explain the true reason for this correction and what I expect of you in the future, this talk will have accomplished all I could wish. Will you require another stroke to stimulate your thought process, Bo Lien?” he inquired, raising the instrument overhead.
“Awk! I mean… no, uh… no, thank you, Master Zhao,” she replied hastily. “Pray do not trouble yourself further. I need but a moment to contemplate the matter.”
She closed her eyes and thought furiously. If he admitted he was satisfied with the little maid’s correction, why then was she kneeling here while he punished her in this terrible manner that felt as though it would flay the flesh from her breasts? And why did he bring up the matter of the majordomo, or rather the lack of one, which was unusual for an establishment of this size, to say the least? Then she had it.
“You cannot put your trust in a man…” she said, watching his reaction, “but you might do so in a woman, or more precisely, in your… wife.” When she saw him nod in approval, she went on, hardly believing her daring. “You want me to manage your estate when you are away?”
“I see I have made no mistake in placing my trust in your insight,” Zhao said. “Now you need only explain why Nuan Lui must undergo another correction, and we will be done.”
Bo Lien tried to look at the situation from Zhao’s point of view. “My mistake was to befriend her. You believe that I cannot be a friend to the servants and still maintain the strict order you require,” she suggested.
“Correct, although I might make an exception for Chao-Xing. When I left for Yu, she was a sorry, bedraggled creature, nothing like the proud daughter of a Count she was when I first came to own her. She has found new life since you came here, and I must believe that you are the reason. As she is smitten with you, and you do not seem to dislike her company, you may excuse her from the strict rule I would expect you to enforce upon the others,” Zhao said. “As this is the day when you must learn the art of swallowing the dragon, I will ask if you feel yourself competent to take up the duties we have been discussing, after we have finished the lesson.”
He tossed the bamboo rod aside, and spread open his robe. “You will begin by using your mouth and tongue to bring me to a stand, as you have been taught.”
Bo Lien was by now, after much practice, expert at this task. She drew his stones into her mouth, gently massaging them with her tongue, then freed them so that she could swab his rapidly stiffening shaft from top to base and around its circumference. When she was finished, she held the head of Zhao’s now rigid pole in her soft lips, drawing it slowly in and out of her mouth.
“That was properly done,” he said. “Now you must master the skill of engrossing the whole length.” This was a moment Bo Lien had not been looking forward to. She had already watched when he had forced himself down Morning Star’s throat, and at the time, the thought of having to endure such treatment herself had been distressing.
But that was weeks before, a lifetime ago in her service to Zhao Hua, and she was no longer the same person. He can do no more than kill me, she told herself, and if I die, I will do so while still striving to be the best slave I can be.
She relaxed her throat to the extent she could, tilted her head to the best possible angle to receive him, and concentrated her entire being on opening her throat to allow him to fill her.
When he reached the back of her throat, Zhao captured Bo Lien’s head in his hands and slowly, implacably, forced himself deeper. She moved her head just enough to direct his ramrod away from her trachea to her esophagus, then fought down the powerful urge to vomit that rose from her midsection.
On came Zhao, forcing the entrance to her esophagus to stretch itself around his thickness. Her windpipe had closed up, in her body’s instinctive attempt to protect itself from the foreign object, and she was coming close to suffocating.
She heard a voice, sounding as though it was coming from far away. “Relax and breathe through your nose, Lotus,” it said.
She was so far gone by then that she was only barely able to comprehend this advice. Her choice was to either give in to the encroaching blackness of unconsciousness and thereby relieve the terrible pressure on her chest, which felt as if it was being crushed by iron bars, or to gather the last of her will and fight to get air into her lungs. The first course was the easier one, as it meant an end to her suffering, and perhaps she would have made this choice when she first came to the House of Sighs.
But the new Bo Lien did not give up on any task as long as life remained. She commanded her foolish windpipe to ignore the invader, to open and to allow her to breathe. She drew in a shallow breath, not a complete respiration, but enough to hold back the advancing circle of darkness that threatened to close around her brain. As Zhao moved his jade stalk in and out of her throat, Bo Lien learned to exh
ale and inhale in slow, shallow breaths that provided enough oxygen for her to remain conscious, if uncomfortable. By the time he drew himself out, to spatter her face and breasts, she knew that she had successfully negotiated another test, and she knew what answer she would make to his offer.
There was a period of silence while both parties gasped for air, her from its lack, him due to exertion. “You are full of surprises, are you not, Lotus?” he asked at length. “Do you now need more time to ponder my offer?”
She shook her head. “No, Master Zhao, I can give you your answer immediately. I will be your majordomo, your manager, your chamberlain, and keep your servants and all things in your home exactly as you would have them, but I have one condition.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Such boldness, little one, to negotiate terms with me. Shall I not punish such effrontery? State your condition then, and we shall see.”
The Duke of Yu's Daughter Page 9
