Rogue's Pawn

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Scourge’s whip cracked on my back. Agony seared through me. I cried out and the whip landed again. I choked back my scream.

  “No sounds. No hands,” Scourge said, calm and reasonable.

  “There, there.” Marquise kissed away my tears, her lips cold on my skin. “I’ll set it here for you. See?”

  She put the plate on the floor and tapped it with an ivory-tipped finger. I stared at it, trying to master the sobs racking me.

  “She’s not mentally defective, is she?” I heard her ask Scourge with concern.

  “I don’t think so. She’s only a human, of course. Perhaps you should speak more slowly.”

  “Loook, sweet baby darling,” she drew out, “see the yummy food?”

  “Eat.” Scourge trailed the whip over my tender skin. I obeyed, bending over the plate and lapping up the tasteless patty while Marquise stroked my hair and trilled her delight.

  They left me then. Alone with my humiliation and a licked-clean metal plate.

  The food was drugged, of course. At least it made the time go faster, the stones around me pulsing in a light fog until I blacked out, waking to a glassy half-existence. By the effects, I thought it must be a hypnotic. Soon I was unable to think at all.

  All the better to take suggestion.

  Their two next visits went just the same, with me quickly learning what they wanted. Of course, they only wanted easy tricks. Crawl. Sit up. Lie down. Roll over. Just to make me obey. Scourge only struck me with the whip once, when I tried to tuck my hair behind my ear while eating. Otherwise I gratefully gobbled the food they gave me, chagrined to be pleased by Marquise’s effusive praise.

  On the fourth visit, the door opened when I didn’t expect. I’d been pacing at the end of my leash, trying to focus my mind. I dropped to my knees, but not before Scourge saw me.

  “You will not stand upright,” he said, as if speaking to the mental defective Marquise thought me to be. The whip cracked against my thigh and I clamped my lips on the scream. The whip cracked again. Burying my face in my hands to muffle all my cries, I writhed at his feet while he whipped me, the pain obliterating all else.

  It ended when his hard fist wound into my hair and he yanked me to my feet.

  “Do you stand?” he asked.

  I shook my head frantically, as best I could trying not to reach up to relieve my screaming scalp. I sobbed incoherently. Slowly he lowered me to my knees, still holding me upright by my hair.

  “Perhaps you need a reminder. My knife, Marquise.”

  She glided into view, handing him a golden knife that gleamed sickly in the gray light. She wrapped her arms around Scourge from behind, watching around his shoulder with glowing white eyes that reminded me of Christmas ornaments. A stray thought I couldn’t quite grab on to. I tried to remember what a Christmas ornament was and couldn’t. I couldn’t think of anything as the blade sawed through my hair, roughly ripping it away.

  “Kneel straight. Don’t move,” he said.

  I trembled so, I could barely stay still, but I managed as Scourge shaved my head. The blade scraped over my scalp, catching me here and there, but I made sure not to flinch. Tears seeped from under my lashes, but they were like the blood flowing from the wounds on my head—I could not stop either thing. Locks of my hair drifted down, brushing my skin.

  Finally, he finished.

  “Now, thank me.” His eerie flat voice whispered over me. Confused, I sat paralyzed.

  “Kiss his feet, darling girl,” Marquise said. She lay draped over the bed now, languid and lovely as new-fallen snow. Alien and horrifying in her beauty.

  Scourge waited, impassive. Though I’d seen the gleam of pleasure when he whipped me. He liked it when I resisted. They both drank up every moment of my pain and humiliation, bright-eyed and sated with it.

  At that moment, I took the last bit of myself and locked it away, down deep where they could never reach it. I turned the key and gave up everything else to being what they wanted.

  Otherwise I couldn’t survive this.

  I bent over and kissed Scourge’s boot, pressing my lips to it, numb, blank as a clean slate. Marquise squealed and clapped her hands.

  After they left, I ran my hands over my bald head, as if it weren’t part of me. When my knees ached from kneeling so long, I crawled over to my bed, which smelled of Marquise.

  I slept and the Dog chased me through ragged dreams of shattered delirium. Its eyes were deep sapphire like Rogue’s. It seemed both wild and loyal. But I fled, terror driving me into the shadows where Marquise waited for me with her poisonous affection.

  Time dragged on, the boundaries of it disappearing entirely. I waited for my trainers with a kind of eagerness. They had me practice more tricks, Marquise leading me around the little room on a leash while Scourge gave me various commands and I performed like a circus pony. I learned to obey without thought.

  I forgot anything but pleasing her and avoiding his whip.

  I don’t know what made them decide I’d had enough. I had no thoughts at that point. One time—it turned out to be evening—Marquise came to my cell alone and handed me a gray swath of silk and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Stand up, sweet baby,” she coaxed me.

  I started shivering, afraid of the trick.

  “Stand up and put this on.” She sounded more stern this time, so I found myself obeying. She unclipped my leash from the wall and led me out the door. We walked through a silent corridor, punctuated by a door every so often. We climbed stairs and walked down still hallways. Marquise opened a door to a new chamber.

  “Your new room! Isn’t it pretty?”

  It was. It was grand and large and decorated entirely in shades of gray. My eyes didn’t know where to rest. It overwhelmed me and I found myself clinging to Marquise.

  “There, there.” She held me close, chill fingers brushing over my naked scalp. “Don’t be afraid. You’re growing up now. Bathe. Eat. Sleep. Tomorrow I’ll fetch you for class and you’ll be a good pupil, won’t you? You’ll make me so proud.”

  She unclipped my leash from the collar and hung it by the door, blew me a kiss and left me in that grand and terrible room.

  If she hadn’t instructed me to bathe and eat, I likely would have crawled into a corner and stayed there. Instead, I did as she bade me, washing in the warm water left for me, my scalp stinging from the soap and water. A distant part of me observed that not much time must have passed since the shaving.

  Time enough.

  The food was bland but lacked the tang of the drug. After I ate, I hung up my new dress and slid under the covers, watching the sunset light fade to true night, thinking about nothing at all.

  In the morning, I sat nervously on the side of the bed and waited for Marquise, wearing my new dress. She swept in with smiles and a bouquet of flowers for my breakfast table. She watched me eat, praising me all the while, then, when she said it was time to go, attached the leash to my collar and clucked at me to hurry.

  She led me to a chamber that looked much like my old cell, except this one gleamed with a metallic sheen. Scourge stood, a black sentinel next to a silver chair positioned in front of a simple table of the same metal. He held the long whip coiled in his dark fist. I couldn’t meet his eyes, terrified to be standing up and walking. Marquise went to stand on the other side of the chair.

  “Lady Gwynn, welcome.” Scourge’s gravelly voice rolled across my nerves and I cringed. The silky dress irritated my healing wounds slightly, the whiplashes still raw on my skin. I nodded at him to show my mute obedience and he gave me an approving smile, black teeth gleaming. “We begin with baby steps. We will remove the silver and you will think of nothing. Understood?”

  I nodded again.

  “Then sit.”

  They crouched and removed the cuffs from my ankles,
then my wrists, the skin blackened and ulcerated beneath them. Marquise smoothed an affectionate hand over my bristly scalp and kissed me while she unlocked the collar. She and he both wore ornate silver jewelry that stood out against their monochromatic selves.

  “Nothing,” she reminded me.

  I did this easily.

  After all, I had no thoughts to think. I sank into the space I usually occupied, that place without hope or fear. Simply existing until directed otherwise. It came naturally to me now.

  “I want something from you, Lady Gwynn.” Scourge’s voice didn’t startle me. I waited for him to tell me what it was. Anything he wanted. He set a white crystal on the table in front of me. “I want this to be black. Make it black for me.”

  I looked at it without curiosity, uncertain what they wanted.

  “Do you want to please me?” Marquise stroked my scalp, ivory nails light on the tender skin, and I nodded. I did. Oh, I wanted to please them both.

  “Take that wanting. Visualize the crystal as black. Connect the two.”

  I did. And the crystal turned black.

  She sighed approval, petting me. He set the whip aside. I squirmed with joy, then disappointment when they clicked the silver restraints back on me. But Marquise soothed me. This was enough for today. Back in my grand chambers, silent servants brought me food and more flowers, lavish rewards for my small success.

  From there the lessons progressed into longer sessions. For days I only turned the crystal from white to black and back to white. Once, I grew a little bored with the exercise and turned the crystal pink instead. Before my horrified eyes even took in what I’d done, Scourge had bodily lifted me and draped me over his lap while he took my place in the silver chair.

  Blood rushed to my head and an iron hand held me down. He yanked up my dress and spanked my bare bottom. I wept helplessly, the pain nothing like the whip and yet all the worse for being a child’s punishment. And worse because my body roused to the touch, quickening with a rush of shameful desire. When he finally let me up, I stood before him, hands clasped together, desperately wishing for a voice to apologize.

  Marquise stood beside him, one arm languidly draped over the back of the chair, her eyes glowing with arousal.

  “Do we even need to discuss your error?” Scourge asked. I shook my head and he stood. “Then sit.”

  They kept me there even longer that day, while I fidgeted on my bruised and throbbing rear end. I didn’t deviate again.

  I graduated to changing the crystal into different shapes. Different materials.

  With each triumph, I received more freedoms. I could wander the castle and even go outside to a walled garden, where I could see the sun and touch living things. They began to invite me to join them for dinner, where I sat at the table while they discussed me.

  “Her power is not so great as Falcon suggested,” Scourge commented one evening. They sat facing each other at the end of a long table while I ate at the other end, child to their parents. At least I sat in a chair. Always though, I perched on the edge, ready to slide to my place on the floor.

  Marquise surveyed me, her face an exquisite blank. “Well, we haven’t really plumbed those depths with her yet.”

  “Do you think so?”

  She shrugged. “For humans, power comes from emotion, particularly sexual. Right now our pet has only wanting to please us.”

  “That should be power enough.” Scourge frowned at me, as if I had failed him. I hunched my shoulder blades. “Besides, she reacted sexually when I spanked her.”

  “Oh, yes. That was just lovely. We could do more of that. To really evoke her power.”

  I shuddered inside my skin. I so hoped they wouldn’t go there. I turned the thought over, surprised I still hoped for something. That’s what those sidelong looks had been about. The “filthy source” of my power was sexual—an answer to so many questions. I tucked the knowledge away. For the day I might be able to be my own person again.

  “It’s a shame Rogue put such restrictions on this.” Scourge looked sour.

  “We still get to enjoy her.” Marquise pursed her lips and blew me a kiss, then tossed her ivory hair over a slim shoulder. “That’s the disadvantage of the intensive method. Falcon knows that. He’s a fool, preferring to weaken a tool to gain perfect control.”

  Rogue’s name woke me further. I kept my eyes down, but turned over the new emotion surging into my heart. He knew what they would do to me. He’d kissed me and walked away, sending me to this. Burning hate clawed at my heart.

  “Even Rogue cannot control everything. And perhaps he knows something we do not. Sometimes I wonder…”

  “What do you wonder, sister-mine?”

  Marquise held out a hand to me and obediently I went to kneel at her side, letting her search my eyes and my mind, keeping it carefully clear. Pure gray. “I think sometimes that she’s not vanished, but rather sleeping. Hiding.”

  “Nonsense—our method works perfectly.”

  “Of course it does, brother. But humans only seem like simple creatures. Their minds are labyrinths of conscious and unconscious thought. They have many places to tuck away bits of themselves in those dense, isolated brains.” She held my skull in her hands, pressing thumbs into my cheekbones with agonizing pressure. “What say you, darling? Have you hidden anything from me?”

  She rifled through my mind like a sweet breeze, turning over my few, useless thoughts. I closed the door on Rogue and the Dog. They were down below ground, by the bottomless lake. Unreachable to me.

  “She is perfect, isn’t she?” Scourge studied me with his pitiless gaze and I ducked my head.

  “Do you doubt?”

  “We haven’t really pushed her.”

  “Oh yes.” Marquise flashed me a brilliant and sensual smile. The food roiled in my stomach. “We have a bit of time yet. Let’s see where her limits are.”

  “Time to enjoy the side benefits?” Scourge’s voice held a cruel sensuality. I pressed my forehead against Marquise’s slim thigh, wishing I could beg them not to. Knowing I was so close to escaping. Just a bit more to endure.

  It was the worst part.

  They used pain still, yes, but they layered in pleasure now, teaching me to amp up the power.

  Scourge would chain me naked to the wall and tease me with the whip while Marquise draped herself over the silver chair, drinking in the sight and holding my dress, sometimes stroking her cheek on it. The stinging whip flicked my nipples, my thighs, and I writhed under the torment. She taunted me softly, offering all I could do to make it stop. The cuffs were iron—I could turn them to water. The whip could be easily vanished. Didn’t I want to? It would be easy. Or maybe I didn’t want it to stop. Maybe I liked it. Then she’d take it down a dark and foul path of all the things they could do to me and how I couldn’t stop them. Or could I?

  I knew better. Never did I fall for their tricks.

  Only when they gave me a direct order did I obey. When Scourge asked, I immediately gave the whip metal spines that dug into my flesh. I took the glass of water I desperately thirsted for and turned it into a pretty stone at her request. They took great pleasure in teasing me to greater levels of arousal and frustration, seeming to feed off my energy, like sleek and fat lions gorging on a hapless ungulate. They stoked me higher, goading me to perform larger and more complicated magics, delighting in what they could get me to do.

  I learned to follow their complex mental instructions as easily as the spoken ones. They let me answer them mentally now, though I was still never allowed to speak.

  They pronounced me perfect. I hadn’t worn silver in a long time.

  My skin felt as if it glowed where the bands had been for the past months. I thought it had been months. There seemed to be no seasons. Sometimes I thought time didn’t pass at all and I would be here foreve
r, in this purgatory. I fought the urge to touch my throat, to keep making sure the collar was really gone.

  The end came abruptly, with no forewarning. I sat in my walled garden one evening after another brutal day of school to watch the fading twilight. I held on to that bit of the real world, that the light changed and days really did pass. Garden was a misnomer, though, since only a few scraggly plants grew there. Barely alive. Not unlike myself.

  And Darling padded across the stones and leaped onto the bench beside me.

  His thoughts poured into my mind, vivacious and brightly colored. His pleasure at seeing me again fell like a balm against my wounded psyche. I petted him and he purred, sitting beside me and agreeing the twilight looked most lovely.

  He was the one to tell me that I would be leaving. Heading off to the war with him and the rest of Puck’s entourage.

  He was bored of being a Familiar for healing, of the leisurely velvet-pillow life. Lady Healer didn’t get out of the palace much, it seemed. Darling wanted glory and excitement. He even had a plan for a kind of shiny cat-armor he wanted me to get for him, which apparently would be my job. Darling didn’t like talking to many people, so preferred to keep a mouthpiece around.

  Bemused, I listened to his tales and speculations. Other thoughts ran through my mind. My own thoughts. Maybe fed by a little trickle of hope.

  I would be free.

  I would have my revenge.

  Part III

  Early Experiments

  Chapter Eleven

  In Which I Emerge from My Cocoon

  The sun shone brightly on our procession. The sky lay gentle over us, that same rich ultraviolet blue that so struck me the first day I arrived. As a sign of my newly recovered status as an actual person, I rode my own horse—a pretty white mare with a silky stride. No one asked me if I could ride. Just lucky I could. Darling perched behind me on a special pad Lord Puck had arranged for him, eyes slitted in a doze as contented as if he lounged on a window sill.