"Loud!"
"Ooooooaaaagggaaaa!"
"Good. Now, fast pants, moans, and then orgasm gasp..."
"Ah, ah, ah, ooooo... ooo... ooooh, AAAAAH! Oh, my God!"
"Good. You're good at faking it."
Karie suddenly lashed out a leg and tried to sweep Megan's out from under her. Megan jumped lightly over the leg and landed with both knees in the girl's back, driving the wind out of her lungs. Then she hit nerve points a couple more times, lightly, to get the point across. With each strike the woman let out a moan of pain. Close enough to pleasure for anyone listening in the hall.
"You can't beat me, you can't sneak up on me, and all of you together if I was asleep and stone drunk couldn't take me," Megan said in a feral whisper. "Now get on your feet, be a good little bitch and I'll quit hurting you."
As Karie stumbled up Megan drove her heel into the girl's stomach.
"That was for calling me pathetic." Megan smiled broadly. "Now you can really get up. And, remember, big smile. Oh, I almost forgot." She stood still for a moment and then slapped herself as hard as she could, once on each cheek.
"You hit in the face?" she asked Karie.
"No," the girl said, looking at her wide-eyed. "No bruises."
"Nothing Paul might not like, right?" Megan snarled, working her jaw from the slaps. "Who's the best bitch?"
"You are, Megan," Karie said.
"And who's Megan's bitch?"
"I am," Karie said in a defeated voice. She wouldn't meet Megan's eye. "I'm gonna piss blood."
"Too bad," Megan said coldly. "I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed the recovery from what you were going to do. And this is just between us, right?"
"Yeah."
"And leave Shanea alone," Megan added. "She's my friend."
Megan got down on her hands and knees and headed for the door.
"Big smile. Big shit-eating smile."
"I am," Karie said. "Ashly's gonna eat you alive, though."
"Ashly's got no idea who she is fucking with," Megan replied, then opened the door.
* * *
"Are you okay?" Shanea said when she crawled over and sat down.
"Fine," Megan replied quietly. She looked over at Mirta who was staring at her somberly. The girl continued to stare and then raised one eyebrow. On an impulse, Megan winked. Mirta looked over to where Karie was clearly regaling the other girls with her tale of the rape of the new girl and then frowned and looked back at Megan. Megan just smiled, her eyes cold, and turned away.
"I managed to salvage some of it," Shanea said.
"Well, I think Karie got her mad out," Megan replied, smiling sadly. "So maybe she'll leave us alone for a while."
"Maybe," Shanea said. "But sometimes she decides we need extra training." Shanea looked sadly at the scraps in her lap. "I don't like that."
"Maybe she'll concentrate on me," Megan replied. "I can survive it."
* * *
She'd gotten another piece of cloth and pinned it when Shanea nudged her.
"Time for baths," the girl said. "Almost lights out."
The sun had set long before and the lamps had come on. They were clearly powered but instead of the normal diffuse lighting of pre-Fall these were globes, some of them colored, hanging from sconces set in the walls. They illuminated the area, but not brightly, and Megan had discovered why Mirta sat in the same place all the time; it was where the light of three lamps fell and just about the most brightly lit place in the room. The brightest spot was Ashly's seat and the girl, who had continued to play one game of backgammon after another, glowed in the light.
"I had a bath," Megan said.
"You take one every night," Shanea replied.
"I think I'll put this stuff in my room," Megan said with a shrug, picking up the sewing.
"No locks, it won't help," Shanea pointed out. "But I don't think they'll cut it up again. Christel doesn't like us wasting cloth. I don't know why; there's enough of it and more."
Megan took the pile of sewing to her room and set it on the bed, then headed for the bathroom. Most of the girls were in there and the vast majority had already climbed into the long, low bath. Warm water flowed in at one end and out at the other and the pecking order remained; Ashly was having her hair washed by one of the other girls while the far end, which was already filled with oils and soap scum from the upper end, was reserved for Shanea and Amber.
"I think I'll take a shower," Megan said with a grimace.
"I sometimes do after the bath," Shanea whispered. "But you don't want to stand out."
"I think, this time, I'll stand out," Megan replied, glancing over at Ashly. Mirta had just finished washing her hair and gave her a long, considering, look as Megan strode to the showers.
Except for relaxation, she'd never been much of a bather. She much preferred showers; she just ended up feeling cleaner. And since she'd already had one she did a sketchy wash of her pits, toweled off, grabbed a new robe and was out of the room before most of the girls had gotten done with their careful soaping.
When she reached her room she considered it carefully, then dragged the desk across until it was in front of the door. It wouldn't stop a concerted assault, but it would wake her up if and when.
She lay down and considered the day. It had been a long one. And there were probably going to be more long ones in the future. Right now, though, she was very tired. Before the lights dimmed she had closed her eyes and breathed into sleep.
Shortly afterwards, however, her eyes sprung open as the desk scraped on the floor.
She rolled to her feet in a defensive crouch but the movement had stopped.
"Megan?" Shanea whispered.
The lights were down and she was pretty sure the girl wasn't supposed to be walking around.
"What?" Megan said. She stepped over to the door and it was open enough to see that it, apparently, was just Shanea.
"I wondered... sometimes when bad things happen I have nightmares," Shanea said, uncertainly. "Would you like somebody to sleep with?"
"Is that okay?" Megan whispered.
"Christel doesn't care," Shanea said, "as long as it doesn't..."
"... bother Paul." Megan sighed. She really wanted nothing more than a good night's sleep and there weren't enough pillows for that. They'd have to be constantly in contact. On the other hand, she rather doubted that Shanea was there for Megan's comfort. After a moment's thought, Megan pulled the low desk out of the way and led the girl inside.
"The active term here is 'sleep,' " Megan muttered as she pushed the desk back into place.
"I know," Shanea said settling down with her back to the wall and Megan on the outside. The girl laid her head on Megan's shoulder and put one leg across her thighs. "I... just like someone to hold at night."
"Remind me, if I ever learn how to sew, to make you a teddy bear," Megan said, shaking her head.
In remarkably short order, Shanea was snoring very faintly. It was unpleasantly regular but Megan put it out of her mind and mentally composed herself for sleep.
I have got to get out of this place.
* * *
After the events of the first day, things mostly settled down. Their sewing project was not disturbed and the clique around Ashly seemed to have decided to ignore them for the time being. Megan slowly learned to sew and as the days passed discovered the true horror of the harem: boredom.
There was nothing to do and, of course, nowhere to go. Their day was a regular, monotonous routine. Get up in the morning, clean themselves and their rooms, have breakfast, which was usually very tasty, flaky rolls with fruit, fruit juice and milk, play games, talk or work on sewing projects all morning, lunch, generally light, more killing time in the afternoon, dinner, more killing time, bathing, lights out.
She found herself unable to sleep at night after the stresses of the first few days wore off. More often than not Shanea came by, scratching at her door. She'd at first expected the clique around Ashly to attack her in the middle o
f the night. Then she'd dreaded it. Then she'd anticipated it as something to break up the monotonous routine.
Christel left the harem to more or less run on its own. She spent all her time in the inner sanctum. Which left Ashly to run things. Badly.
Megan had taken to leaving the main room for most of the day, although Shanea was aghast at that as well. It Just Wasn't Done. But Megan had to get some exercise. She retreated to her room and would spend hours in there, first limbering up, then doing katas, which segued into dance. Snatches of tunes would come to her mind and she danced to all of them, running one into the other as they could be recalled. She didn't sing, she didn't hum, she just danced, sometimes furiously, for hours.
She was getting to be in the best shape of her life. And she still was bored out of her gourd.
* * *
From time to time there had been verbal jabs from the girls around Ashly but since the incident with Karie nothing more. Then, at the end of the second week, when she had finished her sewing project, she returned to her room one afternoon, planning on getting in some solid exercise, to find that someone had placed the skirt and top on her pillows and then peed all over it and them.
She was pretty sure it wasn't Karie. The girl was a bully of the first order and unlikely to want to brave her wrath again. But it meant it was probably one of the girls in Ashly's little clique. And the way to deal with that was to kill the rot at the source.
She picked up all the material and walked through the main room to the baths with a sad expression of woeful misery on her face. Once in the bathroom she attacked the material, cleaning it as well as she could. The silks were too stained to be worth using, though, and all her work was ruined. She also couldn't get the smell of pee entirely out of the pillows. It infuriated her that she'd have to live with that smell for who knew how long.
Somebody was gonna pay.
CHAPTER FOUR
Megan waited a few days until the others had decided she'd decided to take the injury lying down. She had started work on another outfit and planned on making sure that this one was wearable. Then, one day, she noticed that Ashly was getting a bit squirmy and casually got to her feet, headed for the toilet.
The toilet was just off the bathroom and just as well appointed. There were more vanities inside as well as four stalls with doors so the girls could have some privacy. Megan waited in her stall until she heard someone come in and then walked out. When Ashly emerged from her stall, still adjusting her panties, Megan looked at her with eyes wide with sadness.
"Ashly, I know I'm not your friend, but it wasn't nice for somebody to pee all over my bedding," Megan said in her meekest little-girl voice.
"Well, I guess some of us just don't like you," the girl said dismissively. She was a head taller than Megan and carried herself with assurance.
"I was just hoping that maybe we could be friends," Megan said. "I'd like for us to be friends."
"Why would I want to be friends with a little turd like you?" Ashly said, brushing past her.
Megan waited until she was almost past and then drove a knuckled fist into the other girl's solar plexus. When Ashly doubled up, choking, Megan lifted her by one shoulder and drove her fist into the girl's stomach twice more.
"Well," Megan said, neutrally, as she grabbed the girl by her long, blond hair and drove a knuckle into her kidney. "For one reason, I wouldn't beat the shit out of you."
Ashly fell to her knees and whimpered.
"Christel's gonna..." the girl started to say, just as Megan grasped the base of the girl's nose and pinched, hard. There was a very sensitive nerve juncture there and clamping down on it effectively ended rational thought for Ashly.
"Christel is going to what?" Megan said, sweetly. "I don't think Christel is going to hear about this at all. Because if she does, you're going to find out that this is love taps. Now, you're going to talk to all of your friends. And you're going to explain that the little games are stopping, aren't you? Because if you don't, we'll have to... talk again. You might think that you can gang up on me, but if you do that it will be obvious. Besides, you might want to have a quiet chat with Karie about what happens when I get really angry. And then Christel is going to know. And then she'd better mind-wipe me. Because otherwise, you're not going to be good for anything but a kitchen slut. Do I make myself clear?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She just pinched the nerve point so hard the girl must have thought she'd been hit by a neural lash and then walked out, twitching her robe into place.
She didn't know if the girl would take it lying down or not. But when she got back to the main room she gave Karie a significant nod and then strode over to Mirta.
"Hi," she said, squatting down in front of the seamstress.
"Hi," Mirta replied neutrally. "Could you move over, you're in my light."
"Sure," Megan replied, moving over. "What do I have to do to get you to make me something?"
"Oh, I think you've already done it," Mirta replied, lightly. She was hand-embroidering the edge of a bra that was made of silk so transparent it was like glass. "I've been waiting for months for someone to take down that arrogant bitch."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Megan said with a broad smile.
"Yes, you do," Mirta replied. "I wasn't sure at first, but Karie steps aside when you walk past. And she never gives just one lesson to the new girls. She didn't give me just one lesson," the woman said in a low but fierce tone. "And I notice that Ashly seems to be taking a long time in her toilet. But she only went in there to pee. She'd have been out at least two minutes ago."
"You notice a lot," Megan said, sitting down.
"I notice that you spend a lot of time in your room," Mirta replied. "That when you come out you usually go to the shower because you need it. I notice that you don't walk quite like a dancer, either. You walk more like some martial artists I've known. You walk like a panther, except when you play that meek little girl role. I notice that you watch all the time, too." She looked up and pinned the girl with her eye, tying off a section of the embroidery and picking up the next color without looking down. "And your hands have calluses. But not from sewing."
"How old are you?" Megan asked.
"Me?" Mirta squeaked. "I'm just like you, just a little girl, not even twenty! And some man picked me up by the side of a stream and then... oh, it was So! Terrible!" The entire performance was delivered in a frightened little voice while cold eyes stared back at Megan.
"Yes, it is so terrible," Megan replied neutrally. "Will you help me?"
"With sewing?" Mirta replied, finally looking down. "Happily." She had been stitching the embroidery, tiny stitch after tiny stitch, without looking at what she was doing. And doing it perfectly.
"You do it so well," Megan pressed.
"Most of my life," Mirta replied. "My parents were reenactors. You know what that means?"
"Yes, people who had a hobby of doing stuff the old ways," Megan said. "The town elders where I... was... were sort of like that. At least, they lived in an old house and had some stuff that they used from time to time."
"My mother taught me to sew when I was very young," Mirta said. "We'd make stuff and then take it to Faires." Her face cleared of the cold lines it normally had and she smiled. "I used to love to go to Faire."
"I hope we all can some day again," Megan said.
"Don't talk that way," Mirta said carefully. "We are Paul's servants. That is all that we are or ever will be."
"Doesn't mean he can't take us." Megan grinned.
"Hmmph," Mirta grunted, but she smiled as she did. "So what do you want?"
"I really don't know," Megan replied. "Some simple panties, for God's sake. I'm just too clumsy with a needle to get the fine sewing for them."
"Easily done," Mirta said, then looked at her. "I saw what you were trying to do with the other outfit. I have some ideas. I don't know if you'll like them."
"As long as it..."
"Pleases Paul."
Mirta grinned evilly. "Yes, I think it will. Do you want me to do it?"
"Please," Megan said. "How do I repay you?"
"Oh, you already have," Mirta replied calmly. "Although breaking the bitch's neck and boiling her in oil would have been preferable."
"Once you break the neck, they don't feel the oil," Megan pointed out. "Details. You have to decide."
Mirta shrugged. "Okay, just lowering her into a vat of acid."
"What?" Megan said, frozen.
"I said..."
"Yeah, okay," Megan replied, her mind racing. "I guess I'll get them in a few days?"
John Ringo - Council Wars 02 - Emerald Sea Page 46
